Re: Vikings upset Karmazin

[mwaters@mail.wesleyan.edu (Martin J. Waters)]

>Rob Landry wrote:
>Internet "broadcasting" is not and probably never will be profitable. To
>the extent that people do listen to it, it promotes audience
>fragmentation. However, most people won't listen to it; not only does it
>lack two of radio's principal advantages (it's not free nor is it
>portable) but it's unreliable. Net congestion and server capacity limit
>the number of people that can receive a given station's streaming audio,
>and that makes it likely that many listeners clicking on their favorite
>station's "Listen Live!" icon will hear intermittent audio or worse yet,
>nothing at all.

        First of all, Mel is going to have to get over it. Even he's not
big enough to stop internet radio.

        Never is a very long time. The problems with listening to internet
radio broadcasts that you identify will be taken care of. Even now, they're
not all that bad. As to portability, a lot of people leave a radio on all
day at home or leave a radio on where they work. They can do  (and already
do) the same thing with the computer, and it gives / will give them the
choice of a lot more stations (unless they want to listen to Mel's
stations!) and in many cases better signals. Eventually, Arbitron will
start measuring it. As another post said, it's like putting an FM station
on the air in 1946.

        We're already just about to have miniaturized, hand-held, wireless
internet/e-mail devices proliferate. All those Buck Rogers and Star Trek
devices are about to be on sale at Radio Shack. There's no reason that a
little farther down the road one of those devices can't be playing your
favorite radio station over the internet at the same time. What goes around
comes around. It'll be back to those palm-sized transistor radios all us
kids had circa 1962, except they'll have a computer screen on them. I can
see wireless phone, internet/email access and radio reception all in one
unit. The radio will mute when the phone rings. You'll plug the whole thing
into the dashboard when you get in your car.