Land Line Telephones

As bad as the broadcast side of radio is (ignoring the naivete and pandering of some) it could be worse.

Just look at the land line phone business (from the New York Times today).

"The young, hip, cool people have cellphones only, and that is bad news for traditional phone providers. In a survey of Internet users, JupiterResearch found that 12 percent “do not subscribe to fixed voice service, and nearly two-thirds of them are ages 18 to 34.”"

But the future looks worse

“12 percent of online users indicate their intent to replace home phone service with exclusive cellphone use during the next 12 months,”

Of course this could never happen to radio broadcasting. Ha, sure it couldn't. An industry must be driven by its customers. Media consumption habits and needs are changing, radio must change to meet those needs.

Podlinez is now Phonecasting.com

It seems Podlinez is now phonecasting.com. They have also raised $500K in angel money, and they're looking to raise an additional $10 million series A.

It's the type of system where they assign a fixed phone number to a series (like SayNow). It works for mainstream stuff it really doesn't scale well to the long tail. It's better than the Earkive/Cellecast approach (what we refer to as "voicemail hell"), but nowhere near as elegant as the Foneshow approach.