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In the near term (+/- 5 years or so), I think we'll see fewer stand-alone AM/FM and AM/FM/SW "radios" being made and sold, more radio tuners being incorporated into other devices, such as clocks, phones, etc. I was in a Wal-Mart and a Target a couple of nights ago, and neither had ANY radios on display. Radio Shack had one or two.
Whether over-the-air broadcasting itself can or will survive is another question. There are still large areas of the world where internet access is not common, but I think in industrialized countries people will increasingly turn to streaming services as an alternative to radio.
Posted by: Keith Beesley | December 23, 2012 at 08:15 PM
For what its worth, take this as coming from an "outsider" in the radio world, but before I discovered your website (I believe it was when browsing for pictures of the Invicta 6903) I had no idea that there was such a thing as radio collectors. I suppose the question is whether the radios like an eight track or vinyl - a transitional technology or a classic. No one, except for perhaps a few people in Portland OR trying to be ironic, listens to eight tracks, while many folks still collect vinyl.
Or take model trains, for instance. My father is a bit into them so I know a bit, but not a lot, about them. On one hand it is a "graying" fan-base - there are more model train collectors dying than being converted. Yet there are still a number of new recruits, so they aren't going away anytime in the immediate future. Part of the problem with hobbies like model trains is that the start up cost is quite large - just to get an engine and some track requires at least a hundred bucks, sometimes hundreds, which is prohibitive for kids getting into it.
So I imagine that radio collecting will be around for awhile - there's a bit of everything going on, as evinced by Youtube and the internet in general - but I also would guess that there will be a gradual fading away so that, say 50 years from now, the radio is closer to the eight-track or the laserdisc than it is to the LP or the watch.
Posted by: jonnybardo | December 24, 2012 at 06:52 AM
I don't know. I look at factory capacity in China---and they are cranking out tens of thousands of radios----some expensive, many very inexpensive----shortwave, AM-FM, multi-band...and radio broadcasting is still alive and kicking. Talk radio hosts have audiences in the millions----with advertisers spending quite a bit of money to reach those listeners. Radio is still king in the car----morning and afternoon drive-time. And with millions of motorists commuting to and from work, again, sponsors want a piece of that action. I don't see radio going away anytime soon. As for "podcasts" and the like----nothing beats live radio.
Posted by: Angelo | December 24, 2012 at 03:54 PM
Also, while a radio station's terrestrial transmission can service 10,000 customers or 10,000,000 customers with no change to the infrastructure, the same is not true for streaming Internet radio. With the latter, each customer takes more bandwidth, so costs the station more. Plus, I don't think there is currently enough capacity on the Internet backbone to support everyone using streaming. In fact, I've heard that Netflix streaming alone uses a significant portion of total Internet bandwidth at night.
And you can be sure that as more people use streaming, ISPs and cell data providers will charge more and more for this additional usage, because it's a cash cow for them.
Posted by: Gary | December 24, 2012 at 04:49 PM