Myth #3 – Radio is dead

… it ain’t. Well this was a myth I subscribed to, until this morning, so from this demographic of 1 (albeit an important 1!) I thought I’d share my findings.

Although I’ve been following Helen Coonan’s new laws and such on radio, I thought it was all a bit of a storm in a teacup. I mean, who cares about digital radio when the whole genre is for old people and those driving without an iPod in their car, right? Until I read scripting.com:

There’s a conference for public radio stations at the end of the month in Boston. I want to speak there, and there’s a chance I might, but in case not, there are a few ideas I wanted to insert in the flow, after blogging, podcasting, and extrapolate towards what I think will happen in the 2008 election, and the role public radio can play. First, I’d like to offer hearty congratulations to public radio for doing such an excellent job of embracing podcasting. Their programming makes the most sense, imho, for podcasting, they have few of the licensing problems that commercial media have. As the Internet is used more to distribute content, whether streamed or via MP3, the role of the local broadcaster is diminished. There is nothing to be done about this, no point struggling against it. There’s no way we’re going back to the terrestrial broadcast model, the producers of the shows need distribution less and less, that’s just a fact.

And from the conference site:

“New Realities” in Public Radio.
New leadership at PBS.
New entrants. New rules.

Twenty years from now, Public Media will look quite different from the well-defined networks of PBS and NPR. More players. More platforms. More diversity. And a lot more involvement from media-savvy citizens.

Join 400 (actually, it could be 500!) public media professionals–from stations, networks, together with speakers, consultants and service vendors
–at the first Public Media Conference.

OMG! They even have a conference wiki! How cool is that! John and Maxine, are you paying attention? 😛 Pfft, I think they are in Canada doing the WebDirections thing…

But I digress – I read recently how easy it is to set up a radio station on your laptop and (I guess, inadvertently?) hijack the airwaves. Though I’m sure the federal police or someone have a law against using radio spectrum, apparently its an easy, downloadable, self install, wizard that any 12 year old could set up. Or so I heard. I will link to the article shortly, when I’m sure I won’t be arrested and thrown into jail, sharing exercise yard privileges with the terrorist who posted up how to create an atomic bomb on the ‘net, or forced into military service with teenagers who piggyback wireless connections. Oh wait, the last are in Singapore.

Sometimes I’m a wee bit miffed at being stuck in Sydney, so far from 3GSM in Barcelona and cool conferences in the US… and Canada. *whimpers* What’s the weather like in Vancouver guys?