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I saw a commercial last night from Sirius. It’s a great campaign all about discovering new music. Something dawned on me. I’d always thought radio would sort of whither away. I’d don’t listen to much radio. My work commute is only 15 or 20 minutes, and then I’m listening to NPR. If I’m in the car any longer, I have my iPod plugged in and I’m listening to my own 2,000 song radio station. I call it: K F E J.

Now, I love music. No. You don’t understand. I really, really love music. My blood pressure rises with the volume. My heartbeat follows the tempo. It’s a lifelong thing. So, whether or not radio will whither, here is the reason it shouldn’t: Accidental Discovery.

I feel the same way about Electronic encyclopedias and Google Maps and the Internet in general. Online search has gotten so good; you find what you want so quickly and easily that you can miss the things you didn’t know you wanted to know. I have found most of my new music from friends and the occasional sleepless night watching MTV. Yes. Music Television does still play music videos in the middle of the night.

Sure there is an argument to be made over the myspace music section or for any of the dozens of independent music sites where you can find tons of free independent music. But, frankly, there’s a lot crap to wade through there. I want someone to do some the weeding out for me. I found Maxwell one day while I was napping through the old Rosie O’Donnell Show. With Muse, it was one evening while I was reading and had my Dish Network TV box tuned to the Modern Alternative Rock channel. I found My Chemical Romance one night on MTV when my spring allergies wouldn’t let me sleep.

The randomness of radio done right can let you stumble on to new and old favorites. Music you forgot about, or never know existed. But AM-FM radio has been in trouble. Most areas across the country only have a dozen or so options, with fewer than that coming in without static. And these frustrations have given birth to the satellite radio phenomenon.

But the thing holding up satellite radio is the “format” battle. Do you want XM or Sirius. Sirius has Howard Stern and Martha Stewart. XM has Opie & Anthony and Oprah. It may sound like deciding between satellite-TV providers, but it’s not. The difference is Dish Network, DirecTV and Cable all show the same channels (Food Network, Bravo, FX, local affiliates…); subscribers are paying for the content delivery. Satellite radio is both different content and delivery.

At some point XM and Sirius are going to get together. One’s going to buy the other, or there’ll be some crazy merger or synergistic alliance where subscribers to either can listen to content from both. Then it’ll work just like the cable TV and we won’t think about it.

And it’s not all roses for satellites. First of all there aren’t local stations available on satellite radio. And I’m not sure the masses are ready to pay for music during their commute. Sirius signed up Howard Stern for $100 Million a year, and then signed up more than a million new subscribers. Yet even with those results Stern has fretted repeatedly about his audience’s not following him to Sirius.

But terrestrial radio has hope. Think about the recent surge of the nearly talk-free Jack-FM. And then there’s HD Radio. Think HDTV: but only audio and in your car or on your deck. While only about 7% of the nation’s radio stations offer HD a broadcast, the tipping point for HD radio is going to be cars. And at some point radios are just going to switch. When you buy a new radio, it’ll have HD capability whether you want it or not. You won’t have to think about it or pay extra for the service.

The “important” thing here is that any one of these offerings creates a new revenue stream for retailers and manufacturers in the form of new hardware. So stores and factories will hedge their bets to make sure they don’t pick the wrong horse.

For satellite you need to cough up the dough for both the hardware and the service. For HD Radio, you need only cough up the dough for the radio; the content is free. But even then, if you still want to hear un-FCC-encumbered entertainment and your favorite stars, you’re going to have to go satellite; but it’s gonna cost you. You’ll need to help pay for things like Sirius’ great new ad campaign.

Just as movies are facing changes to their consumption model, so too is television. What was once three stations offering advertiser sponsored variety shows, game shows and soap operas is now burdened with Digital Video Recorders, satellites, cable, DVDs, cyberspace and, to confuse things more, the end of the analog spectrum in Feb 2009.

As much as TV has changed, it has stayed quite the same. Sitcoms are still sitcoms, except that we don’t have a Seinfeld, Roseanne, Cheers or Friends going on right now. Dramas, like Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy and 24 are taking on more and more cinematic qualities, and in many cases, employ much better writing than most movies.

The 500 channels promised by broadband are consolidating due to less-than-expected ad revenue and lack of audiences. Yet there are still a lot more channels available than there were 10 or 20 years ago. With so many channels, and so many of those channels producing original content, syndication seems to be in trouble. No longer does a show that has survived five seasons have a chance to live on forever in reruns.

So here’s the big question: who is going to pay for television programming?

The advertisers?
I have a DVR from Dish Network. I record my shows and skip the commercials altogether. In fact, in the last six months I’ve watched more TV commercials on YouTube than I have on my TV. And I’m not alone. The only thing I voluntarily watch live is sports, so I see ad rates for football, basketball and other to jump. The rates of others, I’m not so sure. Why pay big bucks to hock your wares during the first run of a Lost episode, when that same episode is available for people to download the next day?

Of course, there is always product placement, which if done well is the solution to this whole deal. But don’t get me started about product placement.

And TiVo has been warning about adding some sort of unskippable commercial breaks added to TV programming. But would this revenue go to TiVo or the production companies?

The watchers?
Essentially, this is the HBO or Showtime model. But even these shows start to run into trouble when stars become huge and demand huge salaries (ie. James “Tony Soprano” Gandolfini).

Sure, people already pay for “regular” TV in the form on Cox, Comcast, DirecTV, Dish Network and others, but this is paying for the vehicle that delivers the signal to your house when you tire of the rabbit-ear quality. The content is mostly still supported by advertising.

But now for network shows you can now buy episodes or subscribe to some shows on iTunes and others. You can also buy most popular TV series on DVD. And not only the latest shows, like 24 and Gilmore Girls, but extensive backlogs like Battlestar Galactica and MASH. So far this has been a little extra butter on the production company’s muffin because a vintage show’s costs were paid years ago. But with future TV shows, I’m thinking it’s going to turn into a way to pay the bills.

To those cynics out there, it’s even being said that the movie and TV production industries are up for hyping the new blue laser technology is because they are running out of products to repackage. They are running out of stuff to convince you to buy. So they want to repackage old shows and movies again, and convince you to purchase them… again… to support their salaries and produce new shows.

Just like for movies, keep your eye on cyberspace as the end winner of this game. It’s too easy, convenient and pervasive to ignore.

The Independent UK thinks the future of movies at home is going to go the way of cyberspace, not blue lasers. It sounds familiar. They must read my blog.

From The Independent:
Despite the claims being made for the new players, some industry watchers believe the future of home movies and recorded TV shows lies not in physical players and discs but in cyberspace.

In the next few years, the arrival of internet video will allow people to instantly order and view films by broadband on their television sets; they won’t need a shelf of videos, DVDs or HD DVDs.

Adam Vaughan, online editor at Stuff, said the magazine viewed the battle of the formats as “a red herring”.

“It’s being talked about as a format war but we think we will just skip to internet video in the next few years,” he said.

“It’s a bit like SACD (Super Audio DC) and DVD-A (DVD Audio). We were promised that they would be the future of how to listen to music because they offered much better sound quality.

“But in fact everyone went for MP3, which is lower in sound quality, but more versatile. I think ordering movies over the internet will be more convenient.”

Check out the whole article.

In the early stages of any products life, function is what gets our attention. In consumer electronics: better picture, clearer sound, more organization, greater convenience. These are the things that sell the early adopters.

But the life of innovative function is short lived. We all know you can get a DVD player for $30. While manufacturers and retailers can continue to offer products that cost less and less, one alternative we see again and again is choosing to make them look better.

I recently ran into a friend, one of the most techie people I know, and he proudly pulled a brand-new one mega-pixel camera out of his pocket. It was tiny and could hang around his neck. Obviously, he did not buy this camera for the high-quality single mega-pixel pictures. He bought it because it was small, and it looked neat.

When function is the only thing that matters, a product can look like a giant orange turtle and still sell. But when there are lots of giant orange turtles, it won’t be long before someone decides to make theirs smaller or more attractive. Consumers will not forfeit function, but if a manufacturer is not willing to add an aesthetic value, their competitor will.

A Consumer Electronics Association survey showed us women account for 58 percent of electronics purchases.

That same study showed 46 percent of women say they have the most influence on home purchases and 42 percent reported having equal say.

In other words: “Ninety percent of the time women will make the buying decision because it becomes a function of home décor,” said Michael Steinberg, the former CEO of Macy’s West, in a recent interview.

Let me repeat that: “…it becomes a function of home décor.” Translated: it has to look good; it has to fit in the home.

If you watch MTV, maybe you’ve seen the show Cribs. In this show, we get to tour famous people’s homes and without fail, right above the fireplace is a giant Plasma TV. This is not because it performs better. It is because it takes less space, it looks cool and it no longer forces the television to be the central focus of the room. One could walk into the room and not notice that you have a giant TV on the wall. Sure the picture is good; it is a huge screen and all that. But it could just as easily be all of those things and still take up half of the living room.

The point is it does not take up half of the living because people do not want it to. There are other things worth showing off in the home. Décor is important. Style is important.

Of course, “back stage” products like cables, batteries and cleaners do not need to look good, they need to be invisible. If it is not going to add to the décor, just make sure it will not detract. Given the opportunity, and comparable function, ugly accessories will get replaced by stylish accessories.

But back stage products aside, there are other appliances fighting for space in the family room. For example, computer workstations may not be in their own room any more. They could be in the corner of the living room, the kitchen, or in the “media room.” And no one can deny that computer manufacturers are making their products more attractive. I am not sure of the last time I saw a boring beige CPU in my local office store, but it has been a while. Now it seems the standard is ABB (anything but beige): black, silver, white.

Going beyond the elegant white shell of the iMac, Apple is heavily promoting the computer’s wireless capability. Using Bluetooth, the keyboard and mouse can connect wirelessly. No wires on the desktop. This makes it incredibly clean and attractive.

This seems counterintuitive to the Consumer Electronics study, which showed that a majority of women said using “female” colors on technology equipment is a bad idea and would not impact purchasing decisions. But in the market, out on the retail shelf, why does that very marketing strategy work?

In early 2004, Apple introduced the iPod Mini: the smaller, more colorful version of the industry-leading iPod. Sales of the iPod Mini exploded. But here’s the catch: a colorful four-gigabyte iPod Mini cost $250, while a plain white 20-gigabyte iPod costs $300. That’s 20% more price for 400% more memory. And the Mini sold! In fact, it was often out of stock. Could it be because the iPod Mini is pink, blue or silver?

When people say they are concerned with home décor, they mean they want good looking products. Form may follow function, but sometimes, function is not enough.

It is becoming widely recognized that women are playing a larger role in the electronics that are coming into the home. That fact, coupled with the traditional woman’s role as keeper of the home means we all have a new boss. Forget about working for the man. We’re working for the woman.

My 1985 Subaru Brat, a car/truck hybrid, is navy blue with a snow-white cap covering the super-cool rear-facing jump seats in the bed. The “Roo” is a small two-seater that is so skinny it takes up barely half of a lane on the expressway and fits comfortably into the most compact of compact parking spots.

The Roo has given me more than 175,000 virtually trouble-free miles. And I am not a person deserving of such giving.

I bought the Roo in the fall of 1991 from a couple of soon-to-be parents in Ann Arbor, Mich. They were making the move to a mini-van. With the purchase came a file folder containing every repair and maintenance receipt for the car dating back to the original purchase.

“Yeah, that’s great,” I said, as I threw the folder in the passenger seat while testing the radio. “Do these seats recline any more?”

When I plunked down the $2,000 to buy the four-year-old import, I just thought it was a great way to lug my music equipment around. It was also much cooler than the rusted-out 1974 Ford pickup I was driving at the time.

There was a time - during one of the Roo’s oil-leak phases - when I used the oil pressure gauge like the gas gauge. If the oil pressure was low, I needed to put in a quart. If I waited long enough and the engine started ticking, I needed to add two quarts. Since I was putting in new oil to replace the oil now decorating the street, that was just as good as an oil change. The mechanic who fixed the leak - something to do with a head and a casket - corrected my naive theory.

Later I developed a schedule. The Roo got an oil change once a year, whether it needed it or not. An annual car wash was also in order; navy blue hides dirt remarkably well. Tires needed replacing when one blew out, hopefully close to home.

After a couple years in Ann Arbor and Detroit, I saw gold and platinum in the fabled grunge scene of Seattle. My band mates and I made the trek across the country in a four-car caravan and the Roo made the 2300-mile trip with ease.

After I settled in Seattle, the Roo became very loud and needed some exhaust work. I looked through the folder of receipts to see if any exhaust work had been done before. As I flipped through, the first few were from Dunning Subaru in Ann Arbor, mainly for oil changes and a burned out blinker bulb. Further back in time, the dealership changed to Renton Subaru. That being in Renton, Washington.

The Roo had come home. In January of 1985, those car-selling parents-to-be were newlyweds living in West Seattle. They bought the Roo and drove it to Ann Arbor sometime in 1988, only to have me drive it back five years later.

Fifteen of my 18 years of driving have been in the Roo. A lot has happened in those years. There’s a tear in the front-seat upholstery that has been growing for about 10 years. What at the time sounded like a gunshot was actually a rock from a gravel truck I was following. It started a crack in the windshield that now stretches from one side to the other. Two small patches of rust, one on the hood and the other on the tailgate, are the only imperfections on the body.

I’ve gotten married, bought a house and a new Jetta for my wife. Occasionally my wife will ask me when we are getting another car to replace the Roo. “Next summer,” I say. That has been the standard answer for seven years running.