BY KURT HANSON
The Wall Street Journal's "Personal Technology" columnist, Walt Mossberg, told the 600 attendees of the Radio Ink Internet Conference East yesterday that the PC as we know it is basically dead, that music is "the heroin of the Internet -- powerful and addictive," and that radio's current business model needs to be trashed and a new one needs to be developed.

Mossberg was one of several dozen speakers to appear on stage at the semi-annual conference, which began Monday evening and ends at noon today.

"Traditional radio, as we know it today, is going to decline and eventually disappear," Mossberg said. "But not the concept of radio -- of listening to audio content as a pleasant way of passing the time.

"However, there's no natural law that says it's the current set of companies that's going to provide it. Music is the heroin of the Internet, and the way its delivered in the future is going to destroy the way you do business now.

"Radio will not be programmed the way you program it now," he predicted, noting that the same thing is also true for newspapers and TV.

He urged attendees, "Think of what you're doing today as a huge database from which listeners will pick and choose, selecting for themselves the programming they want to hear."

Regarding the future of PCs, Mossberg called them "junky, unreliable, and unstable...the lowest-quality, least-reliable piece of equipment you have in your household." He told attendees to expect an explosion of information appliances soon, most of which will have audio capabilities.

He also predicted that their use of the Internet will be as transparent to the end user as current appliances' use of the power grid is . "You won't say 'I'm on the Internet' any more than you told your spouse today, 'Honey, I'm on the electrical grid!"

Group heads moving cautiously, looking for
e-commerce opportunities and ROI
By contrast, AMFM's Kenny O'Keefe summed up the tone of the group heads panel -- which also included Emmis's Jeff Smulyan, Susquehenna's Dave Kennedy, Cumulus's Lew Dickey, and New Northwest's Ivan Braiker -- by saying "I don't believe we're much further along than we were a year ago."

Several of the panelist described plans to try to get a piece of newspapers' classified ads and/or coupons businesses. Smulyan noted that they are still trying to put together the Local Market Internet Venture (LMIV) that was under discussion at the previous Radio Ink conference seven months ago.

Except in response to a question from the audience, there was no mention of music -- or of programming in general! -- from any member of the panel. (And their answer to the question was that they weren't particularly worried about the potential threat of new competition.)

O'Keefe concluded, "There is no Return on Investment (ROI) on the Internet, I'll tell you that right now."

Look for more on the conference this weekend in RAIN.

May 22-26	Real [Networks] Conference 2000, San Jose
June 12-14	Streaming Media East 2000, New York City
June 14-17	R&R Convention 2000, Los Angeles
June 14-17	PROMAX & BDA, New Orleans
July 13-16	Upper Midwest Conclave, Minneapolis
August 3-5	Morning Show Bootcamp, New Orelans
September 20-23	NAB Radio Show, San Francisco
October 5-7	Billboard/Airplay Monitor Seminar, New York
November 5-7	NAB European Radio Conference, Berlin

About 150 RAIN readers from around the U.S. and the world gathered for cocktails and appetizers -- including spinach dip, barbeque nachos, and fried calamari -- last night at a Newbury Street bar and grill in Boston.

The crowd included the programmers of some of the top webcasts in America, execs from several of the leading Internet-only broadcasters, trade publication executives (from Radio Ink, Radio & Records, and Gavin), representatives of most of the ad insertion and music subchannel providers, NAB execs, and readers from Ireland, South Africa, and Singapore.

One highlight was former group head (and current First Internet Media Corporation executive) Norman Feuer's willingness, since we were in Boston, to sit at the end of the bar with a stein of beer in his hand so that new arrivals could call out, "Norm!"

Thanks to everyone who stopped by. If we all had a good time, perhaps this can be the start of a new tradition at industry conferences.

(Comments? Suggestions? Drop me a line here.)

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