News

With XM Canada and Sirius Canada now on the air, speculation is rife about the future of traditional radio: Will it survive the satellite version?

My short answer, not surprisingly, is that traditional radio will survive, but it will have to adapt. Some stations might go under, others will thrive.

The key is content.

So far, most people who are welcoming digital radio are focusing on the all-music-and-no-ads image, but that's not the whole story. A number of stations on both new services have advertising, some pushing products or services not available in Canada. It's quite jarring to hear them.

The wild card is cost. It's hard to foresee how the public will react to the idea of spending almost $200 a year for 100 to 150 satellite stations as opposed to listening to the handful of ad-supported "free" ones. It will surely break down by what we want to hear, not by how much it costs. The success of iTunes, which offers music by subscription, suggests we might be ready to pay.

I recently tried both services. Neither XM nor Sirius had started their Canadian content yet, so I will leave that consideration for another day. But I learned a lot by what I heard.

Technically, you get superior sound from both — "near-CD quality," as they say, which is a major step above FM. Signal strength is another issue. When I tested both XM and Sirius, neither had yet turned on the repeater antennas, which are necessary to reach into the urban canyons.

This means that in rural areas there will be no repeaters, and if there's a natural barrier between you and the southern sky or you're too far North to receive signals from say, XM, which has low-lying satellites on our horizon, satellite radio might not work for you.

Sirius' signal is a lot stronger, even without repeater antennas. But when I was driving around Montreal's West Island, which is very flat, the signal would unexpectedly cut out even when there were no buildings of a reasonable size around. FM signals, however, remained very clear. I'm sure there's an engineering explanation, but I'm sure it will all improve eventually.

American content can be downright alien. Canadians might be startled by the parochialism of some of the programming (from "Y'all support our troops, now, y'hear?" to NPR's nervous both-sides-now mandate), and be put off by it. This will probably send listeners to search out Canadian content, on either satellite or local radio.

The big argument being put forward by the industry is that satellite radio will not compete with local radio for such things as advertising or local news. This is allowing Canadian broadcasters to utter brave statements about not being affected.

We've lived in a world of local radio for so long we have little idea of what a universe with (inter)national radio might be like — even the CBC breaks away frequently for local content. We might in fact be surprised by how many people want local news, local sports and its accompanying boosterism, local weather conditions and on-air personalities' happy talk (we're all part of a huge local family). This will be the first real test of how wedded we are as a market to local interests.

Still, some of the U.S. stations are clogged with attitudes Americans believe to be universal but we in Canada see as hopelessly regional. You'll know what I mean when you hear an announcer with a cracker accent talking about "supportin' our president" or spending an hour discussing whether "the nation" should introduce health care. It might as well be coming from another planet. And now that XM and Sirius are in Canada, I don't think news directors at Fox News, CNBC, ABC, CBS and NPR, which come on satellite, will suddenly start including Canadian content.

To my mind, this spells trouble for those "Bob" and "Jack" stations, which have fired their announcers and are now "playing what we want." Unless they can offer more thematic or local content instead of the haphazard mix they do now, they will just be another source of oddly selected music jammed between ads, and will have a hard time against those satellite stations with clear mandates, such as all-1970s music or "deep tracks" from Broadway shows.

As an example, on Report On Business Television's The Wrap, Michael Hainsworth recently interviewed Pat Cardinal, general manager of Toronto's Jack-FM. Mr. Hainsworth made the perceptive observation that we live in an iPod culture, with no ads, and that's what's driving our desire for satellite radio. To which Mr. Cardinal agreed partly, and explained his philosophy: "The disc jockeys weren't particularly necessary for what the radio station was all about. When you come to Jack, you're guaranteed to be hearing two things: You're going to hear a song, or you're going to hear a commercial, which we have to play to pay the bills."

I see only one traditional Canadian broadcaster that should remain untouched by the advent of satellite radio: CBC's Radio One. It's often fashionable to dismiss it haughtily (its preciousness and too-cleverness can be annoying), but it really does reflect the country, and it can be terrific when it breaks to local content. There's little the U.S. stations can put up against the CBC 6 o'clock news, and I sincerely doubt that an all-news Canadian channel on either Sirius or XM would be able to deploy a fraction of Radio One's resources.

CBC Radio Two, however, is another matter. There is a lot of serious music on satellite radio, and that could provide rough competition.

I see little threat to all-talk local radio stations (CFRB in Toronto, CJAD in Montreal), or music stations with disc jockeys who actively engage the local neighbourhoods (John Derringer of Q107 in Toronto).

I haven't listened enough to the Canadian content on satellite radio yet to decide how appealing it is, but I'm sure that since XM and Sirius have invested heavily in the business, they're not likely to spend more than the bare minimum to comply with regulations laid down by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. Radio, of whatever stripe, doesn't win an audience overnight; it might take the satellite companies a long time and some money before they find their market.

If I were a Canadian broadcaster, I think I would be sweating with the advent of satellite radio, but not thinking about selling my business and becoming a plumber instead. The idea is to follow developments in the market carefully, and adjust content in such a way as to offer what satellite radio does not. Some of it will be expensive, some not.

The winner will be the one most ready to adapt.

Letter to the editor: Singing the decompression blues

Letter to the editor: A rave for Canadian content

Letter to the editor: Getting the satellite message