One of my most-read blogs is also one of the most frustrating things I read.

Mark Ramsey posts a thoughtful but sadly xenophobic blog at hear2.com.

He posted a few days ago about getting radio into a Nintendo Wii as if it was a new thing - wondering why radio wasn’t doing it, and sounding alarmist. It’s depressingly familiar - not just because Virgin Radio did it a month ago (well, December, actually, but we only announced it last month) but because, as per usual, he’s ignoring what happens outside the US as not relevant to radio there.

I posted a too-clever-by-half comment, and I accuse him of ignoring, once again, what’s going on beyond the US. He replies, in part:

I do NOT dismiss what’s happening in Europe as irrelevant. I note that SOME things happening there are irrelevant because of market fundamentals. For proof of this, check the HD radio sales chart in the U.S.

The fact is that DAB is selling - albeit nowhere near fast enough - and HD isn’t, isn’t a marketplace issue; it’s much more fundemental than that. It hardly shows that the marketplace is different - it just demonstrates proof that Mark doesn’t understand what DAB offers and what HD doesn’t.

But Mark’s not alone. A few years ago, I met with many people from US radio, and I was disappointed that they simply didn’t listen to the knowledge we brought from the UK. Those that make it out of the US to NAB Europe, hateful though NAB Europe is, always express excitement at the ‘new ideas’ we have. I appreciate that Mark feels that there’s nothing he can learn: and I suspect he doesn’t bother reading this blog, or similar from Authentic Buzz, Nick Piggott, or the many fine contributors to the blogosphere from the BBC. I watch for his name in major European radio conferences - he’s never there. Which is a real shame.

The fact that an impressive amount of radio listening hours ARE NOT ON A RADIO (ranging from 12% to 28%, depending what station you look at, what survey you choose, and what methodology you want to play with) is pretty impressive. We’re leading the world in multi-platform listening, and it’s disappointing that nobody in the US feels it’s relevant to their marketplace. Playstations, DS lite, Wii, PSP, iPod, the internet - everything’s taking potential listening time away from us, the broadcasters. That marketplace is global.

True, there are differences; we listen less to the radio in cars here, and more in home. Commercial radio is in the minority for total radio listening: but in the clear majority for listening in ‘digital households’ (those with internet, digital tv, digital radio, regardless how they listen). This shows a healthy commercial radio industry (and that additional choice, whatever Mark claims, is important to listeners).

But the true similarity between the two marketplaces is that technologists like us are talking broadcast radio down. We say it’s doomed, and we point to new platforms such as the internet which don’t yet have the ubiquity, scale or business models to cope. We call jukebox services (like slacker.com, or last.fm, or Pandora) by the name of “radio” - when they’re nothing more than an iPod on intelligent shuffle. We jump up and down about the SoundExchange internet rates, yet somehow ignore the fact that the UK interactive rates are higher - or that people like last.fm have no agreement and have just gone ahead and provided a service that’s apparently unlicensed. We are talking our industry to death - literally.

That’s what makes me frustrated about his blog. Frustrated beyond belief that he’s a bright man, but ignoring so much knowledge from other marketplaces because he doesn’t deem it relevant to the land of the free. It’s so, so depressing, because there’s so much that we in Europe have done (and screwed up), and tried (and succeeded) that US radio can take advantage of.

Mark, because if you only looked further than your own shores, you’d see so many new ideas you’d be a millionaire. Trust me on this one: I’m a Brit.

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