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Struble: Analog Radio Is All Alone
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Never shy about
expressing his thoughts, CEO of iBiquity Bob Struble recounts his trip to Las
Vegas for the recent CES show in his latest column, which appears under the
headline “I Looked Hard But Could Not
See: AM/FM Is the Only Analog Technology at CES.”
Struble, advocating
as always for a continued transition by radio to his company’s HD Radio
technology, said that almost every product of any communications consequence
involved digital technology of some kind, except analog radio.
“That AM/FM is still
growing and profitable while using 100-year-old technology is a testimony to
the industry’s resilience and adaptability,” he wrote. “But it is not a viable
long-term growth strategy.”
Struble focuses on
the car dashboard and how a record number of car companies showing at the show
demonstrated “digital” dashboards that lit up with touchscreens and featured apps, docks for smartphones and other new features.
Radio’s market is
being assaulted from many directions and doing nothing will not stop the
assault, Struble feels. He also thought that simply installing an AM/FM chip
into a smartphone wasn’t enough of a response: “A 1970s transistor radio look
and feel in a phone, which is all analog broadcast radio is capable of
delivering, will not get it done.”
Struble’s column
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