The vehicle’s dashboard is the next technology frontier for...

The vehicle’s dashboard is the next technology frontier for content companies, said panelists in a Future of Radio discussion at the Piper Jaffray conference in New York. “The battle for the dashboard is real,” said Bob Struble, CEO of HD Radio developer iBiquity Digital. Where AM/FM used to have a monopoly position in the dash, now “you can clearly assume that the dashboard will have Sirius radio built in, it will have Internet connectivity, native Pandora or Slacker or iHeart or TuneIn and Bluetooth connectivity,” he said. It will also have HD, AM/FM and hard disk storage for the user’s music collection, he said. A vehicle-based radio world is emerging where there will be a variety of choices rather than an either/or scenario Struble said. Rather than picking from Internet, satellite or broadcast radio, “they're just going to build it all in,” he said. The competition will be for “who has the most relevant content for the consumer,” he said. “There won’t be one clear winner,” he said, as consumers will “jump back and forth” between media. HD Radio, he said, makes broadcasters more competitive in that environment by offering interactivity and the ability to show album art. Lew Dickey, CEO of Cumulus Media, compared the competition for ears in the car to that for eyeballs in the living room. “This is media today,” he said. “It’s all a competition for consumers who want compelling content,” he said. Internet radio service provider Slacker, too, is “moving into drive time,” said CEO Jim Cady. Cady noted the ability of Slacker servers to keep track of listeners, offering data telling when listeners are in vehicles and when they're interacting with the service.