NPR's Demographic Split?

Rafat Ali, on PaidContent, points out that the new iPhone app to listen to public radio could be a game changer, transforming the model of local public radio listening to a more national, a la carte one. There's also some back and forth about whether the app -- which will eventually allow contributions from the phone, and may be available on other phones, too -- will hurt radio stations by removing local loyalties, or help by encouraging more contributions.

I see another issue: will the new app cause a split in the public radio audience, between the have-mores and have-lesses? As I wrote in a comment:

Those who use smartphones will tend to be of a higher socioeconomic status, and probably be younger, than those who listen only over the air. Phone listeners will get a richer, more diverse set of programming, and at some point may be more highly valued than those who listen only over the air. It’s analogous to cable vs. broadcast, and how the broadcast-only audience is less valued, commercially, per viewer.

Public radio may find some dissonance between its mission to serve all and its desire to target higher revenues. The public radio listener demo tends to be a higher educated and desirable economic group than radio listeners overall, but what happens if that public radio group gets split into the have mores and the have-lesses?

iPhone Sells (Despite Reports it Didn't)

So, the analysts said the iPhone 3GS didn't sell. Then Apple released data that said it did. I was at the Apple store on 14th St in Manhattan on Saturday morning before it opened at 9a. Here's the pic.

But Mac Also Opts for (Sigh) Control, with new iPhone

Well, my to-be-consummated love of the iPhone is less likely now that I have this detail: Apparently, you'll have to activate the thing in the store, or AT&T will penalize you.

I still have, I think, about 5 months left on my T-Mobile contract, and had thought, "well, I'll get the iPhone, use it as an iPod, THEN get an AT&T contract" and have the best of all worlds. Looks like, instead, I'll have to carry two contracts at once, if I do want the iPhone. Grrr.

You're Taking Ballmer Too Literally

There's a discussion on a listserv (remember those?) I'm on as well as some Internet discussion about Microsoft leader Steve Ballmer's remarks that paper media will go away in 10 years. Only he doesn't say that, exactly. He says it's immaterial whether it's 8 or 10 or 14 years. The exact timing isn't his point.

He also doesn't literally mean, I would guess, that all ink on paper production will cease in toto, full stop. Horse and buggy still exists, as do books made by hand, despite the invention of the press and moveable type. But his point in a larger strategic sense is, I think, well-founded. That the lion's share of media -- media that matters in a larger, societal and business sense -- will be delivered over an IP network, at least in the industrialized world. Who can refute that, honestly? Newsprint and fuel costs rise, we're choking on garbage and need to recycle, our forests are becoming denuded. Meanwhile, the technology of the next next next generation Kindle and Sony reader and iPhone and e-paper and tablet computer will all be better better better, and eventually get good enough that people will be comfortable opening their flexible, reaable (and listenable and watchable and networked) thin, bendable screen (or goggles or mini-projector or who-all knows what?) as they do a newspaper or book today.

People love books and magazines and newspapers not because they're ink on paper, but because they're right now the best technology around: quick, easy, never need rebooting, easy to fold, put in a bag, read in nearly all conditions, don't need power, etc, etc. If the IP device technology approaches those attributes, it will be immaterial on what surface people read, and the cost- and other pressures I mention above will move folks to digital (or IP, if you prefer).

Sure, some glossy magazines will still give a "luxury" experience that won't be well-approximated by the screens. And some may get news on paper -- those at the bottom rung who can't afford digital or at the very top who CAN afford good apper -- but the mass will probably be digital. So, yes you'd win the bet if you said there will be print around in 10 years. But if it's 14 or more, you might lose if you say it will have primacy above digital.

iPhone, Limited, Locked, but Desired

A woman with an accent, European it seemed, came into the Apple Store near the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan today and asked a salesperson if she could buy some iPhones for her friend who was returning home. The clerk told her limit was five, she could not use cash, and they were locked to AT&T in the US (but he also said they couldn't say what she did with them after they brought them home). Tacitly, a recognition that folks will buy the phones, hack them and do what they want. And, silly, that Apple limits purchases in this way. A sign of non-internationalization ... who wants a phone locked to one country's network?