Radio (2020) Nowhere!

Denial.

Take General Motors chairman Rick Wagoner’s comments at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit yesterday.

Following a juggling act – I can’t make these things up – Wagoner, only a couple of decades late, cautioned the crowd on the necessity to find alternative fuel sources. He even quoted the U.S. Department of Energy’s prediction that the need for more energy will increase by 70 percent by 2040.

Showing how fuel-efficient GM has become, he showed off their new Hummer model. This one runs on ethanol.

Just to make sure the audience got the message, GM’s North American marketing chief Mark LaNeve added, “You know we have come full circle when we roll out a Hummer that’s fuel efficient.”

Let’s stop right here.

It’s nice that GM’s “invented” a fuel-efficient Hummer. Just answer these three questions please.

First – Please define fuel-efficient. Is it fuel-efficient just because it doesn’t run on gas?

Second - How many miles to a gallon of ethanol does this hybrid Hummer get anyway?

Third - How does one fills its tank when less than one percent of the 188,000 gas stations in the U.S. pump ethanol?

Minor details.

It’s like HD Radio. If no one is buying how can it sell? If no one’s listening how can it be heard?

GM's shut down assembly plants and phased out between 20 and 30-thousand jobs and renegotiated its health care and slash retirement benefits.

Remember how Detroit snickered when Honda and Toyota introduced their tiny, boxy cars to the U.S. market?

(Anyone in any business should read David Halberstam’s The Reckoning.)

It reminds one of the two I’s in our world – Internet and iPod. If radio doesn’t meet to your satisfaction, there’s always something ready to take its place.

Want a parallel to the U.S. radio industry? Just look at Detroit.

Now, let’s travel 2,400 miles west to San Francisco.

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This morning, at the annual MacWorld Conference and Expo, Apple CEO Steve Jobs will address the gathering. You’ll see it on all the news channels and networks tonight.

It should be as upbeat at the Moscone Center as it is grim at the decaying Cobo.

Apple uses its annual MacWorld convo to introduce its latest consumer goodies. Last year, one of the products unveiled was the iPhone.

This time Steve Jobs is expected to debut a mini-Mac, a new PC to rival Sony’s Vaio, iPhone and iPod software upgrades, and announce deals with movie studios and TV networks to distribute content through iTunes.

Roughly 450 other manufacturers – including Belkin, eMedia Music, H&R Block, Skype and Ricoh will introduce new products to interface with Apple products.

Even Microsoft will be launching its new Office 2008 for Macs, which will allow consumers to create and share compatible documents between Macs and PCs.

I haven't heard of any plant closings, layoffs or benefit slashing at Apple or any other new media company.

That’s growth - American-style.

And what’s radio up to?

David “Fumbles’ Rehr and the boys at the National Association of Broadcasters and his equally accomplished buddy Peter “Sgt. Bilk-o” Ferrara at the HD Radio Alliance announced that they will be launching their – try not to laugh – Radio 2020 Initiative in March.

They claim the Radio 2020 campaign will not embrace fancy slogans – no one could come up with any – or catchy jingles – probably because this past year’s HD Radio Alliance campaign dried up their creative well – though some may disagree using the word creative in the same sentence as HD radio.

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The marketing flacks at the NAB insist that this will not be another in a series of their six-month rah-rah-sis-boom-bah campaigns that die due to lack of interest.

Those sissies spend more time telling you what they won’t do than what they will.

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They’re even claiming that the Radio 2020 campaign may grate on for years. They stopped short of saying “all the way to 2020” to avoid snide laughter.
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The NAB and the HD Radio Alliance. Whenever you have Fumbles and Bilk-o teaming up you’ll get no bangs, just whimpers.

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Even when you kick these clowns to the curb the curb kicks ‘em back.

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One of the new slogans their minions plan to sandbag you with is their new “Radio Ready” symbol - a pathetic imitation of “Intel Inside.”

I keep saying it over and over. I couldn’t make these stories up if I tried.

They plan to use "Radio Ready" to promote any appliance that uses a radio - if they can find one.

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Maybe they’ll come up with some catchy little notes to accompany it until the RIAA demands royalties for its use.

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Sgt. Bilk-o, no matter how many times you try to plant a rumor about Apple manufacturing a product with an HD Radio embedded – forget it! Repeat after me, Bilk-o. It’s not going to happen. It’s not going to happen.

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Is there a doctor in the house? Bilk-o needs a new scrip for truth serum.

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In his world it’s all about being seen at the right places and talking the talk others want to hear, which is not necessarily the truth.

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If Bilk-o shilled for GM instead of the HD Radio Alliance and was confronted with the fact that less than one percent of gas stations in the U.S. sell ethanol, he would’ve made some fictitious claim about GM setting up distribution deals with Exxon, BP, Shell, and Mobil - and that they’d all be selling ethanol by Christmas.

There are more Radio 2020 campaigns in the works but I won’t bore you with their idiosyncrasies and peccadilloes other than to say that’s what happens when organizations believe their own hype.

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Think of the backlash the NAB and HD Radio Alliance will get from this pitiable campaign. Allow me change that word to hacklash.

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So, what does Radio 2020 have the most in common with? The auto show in Detroit or Steve Jobs’ iOrgy in San Francisco?

Put another way. Whose event would you prefer being hitched up to?