x If you're attending this year's NAB 2007 in Las Vegas, we hope you include the RAIN Las Vegas Summit '07 in your plans. This year, our lauded annual Summit will be all day Monday, April 16th, (with our customary cocktail hour following), just steps from the Las Vegas Convention Center at the Renaissance Las Vegas Hotel. (That's the Convention Center on the left in the photo above.) Over the next few weeks, we'll announce the meeting agenda and give you a run-down of scheduled guest speakers. We hope you can join us! xx

From Jerry Del Colliano's Inside Music Media blog: "A few days ago when the two... satellite operators announced their merger intentions,... I warned  that if the merged satellite operator didn't make some major changes, it wouldn't really matter whether their merger succeeded or not because their mission wouldn't.

"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. The rights fees will eventually come down...

"More excuses.

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"Can't get into the Internet radio business and develop new separate stations. No! Radio executives would apparently rather develop stations-on-the-cheap for their HD sub-channels where no one is listening than get into the Internet radio business where everyone is listening. Go ask Kurt Hanson, publisher of RAIN how he is doing it. And he's doing it well with AccuRadio.

"Perhaps you're beginning to see where I am going here. Radio and the merged satellite radio company need to get into the Internet radio business now because tomorrow Internet radio will be the next radio. Why? Because that's where the listeners will be and universal WiFi will make it all possible...

"Listeners of tomorrow are online today. They have their cell phones on during all their waking hours — on their person or nearby. Even the ubiquitous radio does not enjoy that kind of access to their audiences.

"Will a major broadcaster please stand up and get into the Internet radio business in a major way now and not too late as radio has a habit of doing?"

Read the entire blog post at the Inside Music Media blog.

From Radio World Online: "Barnabas Road Media announced a program aimed at stations not yet broadcasting on the Internet.

"It said it will provide a 20 kbps stream at no charge for six months. If at the end of six months the station has not simulcast at least 1,000 audience hours of listening during the sixth month, it said, the stream continues to be free until the audience exceeds that amount of hours of monthly listening, for up to an additional six months.

“Radio stations will still have to provide their own personal computer dedicated to their online broadcast, copyright fees for music rights and of course at least a DSL connection to transmit their broadcast to our media servers."

Read the entire article at Radio World Online.