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I've been thinking a lot about radio as I've watched my hometown market of Boston - once vibrant and varied - consolidate under the big boys. One path forward is to swing the pendulum the other way: offer hyper localized, focused content relevant to the geography. As a lover of rock music, a station that plays emerging artists from Allston and Berkeley School of Music would have me over the moon. College radio does this to an extent, but they still have to contend with crippling costs.

[quesera]

It's actually not that expensive to run a radio station. Especially one staffed by volunteers and operating a (relatively) low-power transmitter, in the range of a few hundred or a thousand watts. Far less expensive than streaming to even a tiny fraction of the potential audience of any mid sized MSA.

Even commercial stations are not big business. That's why consolidation has been so successful -- no one was making enough money to hold back the tide. Economies of scale, etc.

But Boston has the absolute best college radio options in the country and probably the world, and each of the five or six excellent stations runs a local music show. They're not always conveniently scheduled, but that's an inescapable problem with broadcast media.

None of these operations would survive in a commercial context, and they'd be even less likely to if they were hyperlocalized. The audience is there but the market is not.

[marblar]

Why would I use that over a curated streaming playlist that does the same thing?

[mikeash]

I personally like the radio setup sometimes, where the playlist is determined by someone with their own tastes and with a reasonably broad audience. However, even wanting that, I'd still just pull up a stream on my phone rather than use traditional radio to hear it.

[fudged71]

I'm lazy. While my phone has music on it, I haven't built playlists to curate my likes and such. Both of my cars have inadequate means of taking my phone music through the car speakers. Radio is almost my only option. It can get repetitive but I like that I can get news and local opinions between songs.

[mikeash]

I couldn't get my phone to hook up to my car radio very nicely, because my car was built in the in-between years where it no longer had a tape player, but was too early for ubiquitous aux-in ports. So it has a CD player and a radio, and that's it. FM transmitters suck.

If you're in the same boat, then here's the secret: FM modulators are great. These are the same basic concept as an FM transmitter, except instead of trying to pick up a foolishly low-power station with your radio antenna, it's a direct hard-wired connection from the modulator to your radio's antenna port. Quality is very good (not as good as a CD, but as good as the best FM radio station you'll ever hear) and there's no chance of any interference because it never picks up external signals. Installation can take some work, but it's well worth it.

[fudged71]

I've had this damn thing bookmarked for a couple months now and I haven't bought it yet http://dx.com/p/ultra-thin-bluetooth-v2-0-music-receiver-for... One of my vehicles is similar to yours, stuck in an awkward period where Aux ports weren't acceptable, tape players were too old, and the only input other than CD was the first-generation iOS port. Yes, an ancient 2009 model of car that already has an outdated port for fricken audio. What a mess.

[mikeash]

At least you have that iOS port! My 2005 car doesn't even have that, just CD and radio. Made me wish somebody made a dummy CD you put in that would work like those dummy tapes with a headphone jack. Probably way too hard to build such a thing, though. The modulator works nicely after going through the hassle of installing it, at least.

[smtddr]

>FM transmitters suck.

YMMV, I have a cheap COBY FM Transmitter[1] and it's amazing in my little 2002 Civic XL.

http://www.cobyusa.com/files/hi_res/CA745_HR.jpg

[mikeash]

Where do you live? My (limited) experience has been that they can be OK away from big cities, but that finding a free frequency in urban areas is really tough. They put out enough power to work when that's all there is on the frequency, but even tiny amounts of external signal on the same frequency make it go to crap.