Lots of folks in the radio space are talking about Emmis’ NextRadio initiative to activate FM chips in smartphones (here and here), but not a lot of folks in the industry are paying attention to NextRadio’s primary partner, Sprint. Remember that one of the driving arguments for NextRadio is that consumers can conserve bandwidth by tuning in radio over-the-air without eating up precious bits and bytes. But nobody in radio seemed to notice Sprint’s announcement last month that

So I read with interest today this distribution-related tidbit from NTS MediaOnline: Cumulus Media-owned Westwood One has announced an agreement with NextRadio that will enable all U.S. radio stations to use advertising inventory to fund the industry’s payments to Sprint. Over the past year, broadcasters have been asked to commit dollars and/or inventory to fund the Sprint NextRadio Initiative, which plans to sell at least 30 million FM receiver-enabled smartphones in the nex

From Radio Ink: The latest statistics from Emmis regarding NextRadio show the popularity in the app is still on the rise. NextRadio allows listeners to access their favorite radio station on select Sprint phones without using data. In addition to the NextRadio app being downloaded over 240,000 times, listeners have tuned to nearly nearly 8,000 radio stations racking up over 190,000 hours of listening through the app since it was launched. In January and February of 2014, the

Last week one of the radio industry’s big headlines was the preliminary deal struck between Sprint and various players in radio to provide over-the-air FM on Sprint devices via the Emmis/HD Radio NextRadio platform.  I haven’t seen much thoughtful analysis on this yet, so here goes nothing. On the surface, this is good news.  After all, it means more ways for listeners to listen to the stations they love and more ways to interact with those stations. Looking deeper, however,