Levine: Pandora Isn't Radio Broadcasting

It's Web Streaming
From Richard Wagoner, dailybreeze,com

Saul Levine is the owner of Go Country 105 FM KKGO and 1260 AM KMZT (Los Angeles). I consider him to be one of the better broadcasters in radio, primarily because he tries as much as he can - during an era when so many have given up on the idea - to make his stations relevant to the local market.

Yes, you could make fun of the number of format changes on 1260 over the years (I'm guilty of that myself). But compare that to his FM station, which has run exactly three formats total since it signed on the air. Consider, as well, that often Levine uses the AM to try to fill a format void in the market and that he does this expecting little; he could have sold the station years ago but held on to it because he enjoys radio, itself, more than the station's monetary value.

Earlier this week, I received an email from Levine with an interesting thought. In reference to a news article on the Pandora music service, he wrote, "I am becoming impatient with the media that refers to non-radio transmissions as 'radio.'

"Pandora is Web streaming, not radio. Satellite programming is called Digital Audio Broadcasting by the FCC; it is not radio. Radio should take steps to educate the consumers (and media) as to this fact. Radio is what comes out of a radio, not a computer or smart phone from the Web."

In the strictest sense, Levine is correct, at least when it comes to the Internet. Webster's dictionary agrees, defining radio as "a system of of telecommunication employing electromagnetic waves of a particular frequency range to transmit speech or other sound over long distances without the use of wires."

There is a slight problem, however, in thinking that the definition applies only to traditional broadcast radio.

Note that satellite services fit the definition as well, using electromagnetic waves over a particular frequency range to transmit their programming. And if you want to stretch it a little, a smartphone allows exactly the same thing. I can hear broadcasts via my iPhone wherever I can pick up my cell-provider's signal, and those signals arrive via electromagnetic waves.

But I understand his point, and in a general sense, Levine is correct.

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TomZTake:  It's been said that many railroad barons thought they were in the railroad business, when they were really in the transportation business.  Fast forward to today: broadcasting is a delivery platform as is streaming.  "Radio" is in the entertainment and information business.