Is radio mounting a comeback?

Six months ago, I never would’ve thought that, much less typed it. But changes may be afoot, and battered broadcasters seem ready to take advantage of any opportunity.

I’ll start with radio’s newest and most surprising ally: Apple.

In case you missed it last week, Apple unveiled its iPod Nano music player that comes with an FM tuner. It also lets consumers pause and resume live radio just as they do with live TV and a DVR. There’s also a tagging feature that allows users to save the name of a song or artist to make it easier to buy the music later from Apple’s music store, iTunes.

Without a doubt, an FM-capable iPod is a big deal for radio broadcasters that are losing avid listeners, profit and cool points by the quarter.

Marketing pitches are coming.

“We’re very excited about it because it’s a major step with Apple, which has been a holdout on all this for a long time,” said Jeff Smulyan, CEO of Indianapolis-based broadcaster Emmis Communications Corp.

More accurately, Apple has been a thorn in radio’s side for years.

First, the company created the iPod and iTunes, jump-starting the industry for mobile digital music and giving consumers a trendy alternative to radio. Apple has sold almost 225 million iPods to date.

Then, Apple created the iPhone and the App Store, which, in some ways, were far worse for radio.

Some of the most popular applications for the iPhone are for Internet radio providers, such as Pandora. Satellite radio provider Sirius XM also has an application. And with unlimited data plans from exclusive carrier AT&T, millions of iPhone users have discovered they can stream Web radio through car stereo systems.

That’s bad for broadcast radio because the car is the one place where people still listen to radio as much as they once did.

But that brings me to radio’s second unlikely — and probably inadvertent — ally: cell-phone carriers.

Recent reports indicate that AT&T is struggling to keep up with iPhone users’ demands for bandwidth on its cellular network. Everyone wants to stream music and YouTube videos.

On the surface, that’s not necessarily bad for AT&T. The carrier, after all, wants lots of customers using its network so it can charge them.

But putting up cell towers isn’t cheap. AT&T plans to spend $18 billion this year to upgrade and expand its 3G network. And iPhone users are still clamoring for more bandwidth, going to the extreme of hacking their phones to get bandwidth-guzzling features such as Internet tethering so they can use their phone’s unlimited data plan to surf the Web on a PC.

Other carriers could face similar situations as Americans’ appetite for bandwidth increases.

Smulyan suspects that sooner or later, something is going to give.

Either carriers will do away with unlimited data plans and start charging for services, such as Web radio. Or Web radio providers will be pressured into charging their customers.

Broadcast radio could be the last medium standing on phones. FM tuners don’t use cellular networks, so they don’t consume bandwidth.

The trick is getting them into phones in the first place. In the United States, less than 10 percent of phones have tuners, largely because the carriers haven’t wanted them in their phones.

If the bandwidth crunch doesn’t change their minds, Smulyan hopes the idea of letting radio stations notify the public over their phones during emergencies — such as a tornado — will persuade them. Smulyan, point man for the radio industry’s efforts to get tuners on phones, has been pitching this for about a year.

“Our goal is to have it on every portable device in the next five years,” he said. “I think this (iPod Nano) helps.”