Intelligence Briefs

In late April, the Comisión Federal de Telecomunicaciones — Mexico's equivalent of the FCC — said sí to new regulations that require all smartphone manufacturers to enable the chip that allows every headset to receive FM radio signals. This makes the nation the first on planet Earth to require everyone from Samsung to Apple to bring local FM signals to one's mobile device. Will the USA be the last nation to take such action?

The Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS) has released a white paper aimed at helping broadcasters transition to IP with minimal disruption. The paper, titled "AIMS Guidelines to Preparing Broadcast Facilities for IP-Based Live TV Production," presents basic methods broadcasters can follow to make the shift from SDI to IP as trouble-free as possible.

No matter the size of the media company, one universal truth of sales failure is lack of formal accountability within the sales team. When this Media Information Bureau columnist mentions the word, managers get red and sales people get fire in their eyes. But why? We wait too long, he says.

There's a lot of negative press about the President of the United States. In the view of Roslyn Layton, a Visiting Fellow at AEI's Center for Internet, Communications, and Technology Policy, many tech media conform to this trend. Why? In her view, recent news stories on the FCC have been characterized by a focus on drama over analysis.

Have U.S. consumers become a bit less materialistic than they've been in recent years? New research from GfK suggests that's the case. What can a radio station glean from this study, in particular with its contests and giveaways designed to lure and keep listeners?

The recently concluded FCC spectrum auction "of a big chunk of old broadcast TV airwaves" was supposed to make the big mobile firms bigger and reduce competition in broadband. In the eyes of AEI Visiting Fellow Bret Swanson, that's the assessment of "activists and a few self-interested parties." As he writes, the "alarmist theory" that went into the auction didn't pan out.

According to a study of close to 5,700 respondents across all Nielsen Audio PPM markets, nearly 60% of likely PPM panelists listen to radio at work. It's far more than the number of those who predict they wouldn't participate in a Nielsen Audio survey, NuVoodoo Media Services finds.

"Eventually, asking our voice assistant to track down a fact or order more cat food will become a normal, everyday interaction – the same as asking it to dim the lights." That's a conclusion from ReportLinker, which late last week released the findings of a May 4 online survey of 508 respondents. Will asking our Amazon Echo or Google Home device to tune to a specific radio station also become a "normal, everyday interaction"?

As a Futuresource Consulting analyst sees it, the smartphone will likely remain the most important personal electronics device for consumers for the foreseeable future. As technology progresses, however, we won't rely on or be limited to the smartphone forever. What could this mean for broadcast media's C-Suite?

Better and more transparent audience measurement is a demand advertisers are delivering to Facebook, which has a bug in its system. According to The Wall Street Journal, some clients are getting refunds after this bug led the social media giant to overstate clicks on marketers' websites when accessed via a mobile device. Facebook says it's a minor glitch. What do radio and TV executives have to say, and will they use the bug as part of their own "repellent plan"?

The digital denizens have been actively pushing OTT for several months. The chatter over "cord-cutting" won't cease, and it's crippling big, established players such as ESPN. But, is "OTT" really an acronym for "Overblown Technology Tweet"? The latest data from Hub Entertainment Research begs the suggestion, says RBR+TVBR's Editor-in-Chief in this Intelligence Brief.

As noted by the IAB, digital advertising is the No. 1 advertising medium in the U.S. According to eMarketer, TV advertising came in at $71.3 billion. Recon Analytics cannot underestimate the significance of this event, and in this Media Information Bureau intelligence brief, notes that advertisers demanding efficiency and effectiveness measurements "have voted with their wallets to make digital advertising the biggest spend category." What does this mean for you?

An increasingly competitive commercial environment, with intense competition for audiences and advertising revenue from other media companies, has led to the end of broadcasting license fees and datacasting charges. Furthermore, there's been a repeal of the "two out of three" and 75% audience reach media ownership rules. G'day, readers: This is what's happening in Australia.

Now that Pandora has its long-awaited subscription-based on-demand platform, can it help the streaming audio company grow? What about iHeartRadio, or Spotify, or Tidal, or ... You get it, the market is crowded. Yet, Glenn Peoples, Pandora Media's Music Insights and Analytics chief, is convinced big growth is set to happen between now and 2021. Is he crazy, or is he right on the money?

Quite some time ago, Erwin Krasnow, partner at Washington, D.C. law firm Garvey Schubert Barer, wrote a poem. The subject: deregulation. Given the push by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and Republican Commissioner Michael O'Rielly to rid broadcasters of what they perceive is unnecessary rules and restrictions, Krasnow revisited his poem.