Beyond Broadcast

"Listeners of Tomorrow are Online Today"

After three days at the IMA‘s (Integrated Media Association) Public Media conference, followed by a day listening to new-Information Age seers Henry Jenkins, Charles Nesson, Dave Winer, Doc Searls, and Dave Weinberger at the Beyond Broadcast 2007 seminar (co-sponsored by the Berkman Center at Harvard and MIT’s Comparative Media Studies program, today I discovered this post from Jerry Del Colliano, Professor of Music Industry at USC. Can’t be much more than a dittohead on this one. Worth reading every word. Sample grab:

“….Now, it’s time to mention the killer app.

When universal WiFi or its equivalent is available and consumers can
take the Internet with them then it’s all over for radio. Ditto for
satellite radio.

That is, of course, assuming that terrestrial radio broadcasters don’t
have an epiphany soon and decide to get into the Internet radio
business. Ditto for satellite.

So far, the excuses are pretty lame.

Radio is a fading industry thanks to the misdirected major
consolidators. They’ve lost the next generation as they migrated to
their mobile devices and the Internet. So what does that say? Well, when
they are not fighting Arbitron’s People Meter or when they stubbornly
try to sell HD radio as the next big thing, they make excuses.

Can’t pay the music licensing fees to stream our terrestrial signals. It
would be prohibitive. No, it would be suicide — not to stream the
signals. Pay the fees and get your programming where the next generation
is — online.”

WHEW. And Jerry hasn’t even seen the Resco Radio application I just downloaded on my Motorola Q Smartphone. More on that in a future post.