Howard Johnson’s and Radio… back in …

Howard Johnson’s and Radio… back in the 1960s, if you traveled on a turnpike, you probably remember being trapped by a Howard Johnson’s. In exchange for an exclusive government license to operate the only restaurants on the turnpike, the traveler had little choice – it didn’t matter if the food tasted bad, had been sitting under a heat lamp for hours, the prices were double what they should have been and the help barely noticed you existed. That’s what a monopoly causes. I’m drawing an analogy to radio being in that position today. For 30 years, radio had a monopoly when you were trapped inside your car. The only choice was the radio or silence. Eventually 8 track tapes, cassettes and CD players came along, but with the problems that carrying your music with you created another set of problems. We’re now at a crossroads – Big Radio can lean harder and harder on the government to entrench their monoply, or they can realize you now have choices (like plugging an iPod into your radio), and create a product that is better than the other choices. You’ll notice there are not very many Howard Johnson’s around any more, and few people miss them