Mixmaster Tony Rocca said:+1000 to what you say about the podcasts...which brings up a very very valid point that nobody has actally directly addressed. I will address this point now.
People simply want to listen to things that THEY LIKE. Simple as that. Podcasts are a exact valid solution to what I just said. Seems the terrestrial programming problem is caused by PD's who have no balls and succumb to the corporate boss because he/she is afraid that if he/she gets "creative" with the programming, corporate will fire him/her and then...well, try to find another job in this economy.
Stations suck because corporate is promoting the big picture through their mandates which are not in the direct interest of their audience, ala' JACK FM (that abortion)..face this hard fact my friends. I came up with the idea of a JILL FM to correct the JACKoff FM disaster with CBS, nobody at corporate wanted to listen...to bad.
As far as internet radio I can talk from actual experience here. I had internet radio in my car 10 years ago. Yes, it was expensive because it required an actual laptop wired into your audio system with wireless broadband. It was very cool because it gave me to opportunity to listen to what I REALLY WANTED to listen as well as having general internet access. This setup can be had today for much less today and I would still choose this option over sat radio.
Sat radio is run by typical non-radio jerkoffs, and I experienced firsthand the level of nonsense which goes on when trying to bring content to both XM and Sirius. Not saying all Sat employees are bad, but the good ones are surrounded by the majority of fools and get lost and therefore become insignificant. I would not want to work in an environment like that....hey kinda reminds me of the record industry...
YEAH T!!!!!
I gotta add because I've been doing this as of late with my AT&T Tilt phone (and others might be doing this too)....tuning in to streaming Internet feeds via a SMARTPHONE (Pocket PC).
Programs like Pandora and Mundu Radio allow you to customize feeds based on your specific interests, thus agreeing with Tony saying that people will listen to what they like. For me, there are some terrestrial stations in the U.S. that actually cater directly to my interests and have their feeds streaming to which I can pick it up! (C 89.5 in Seattle and Energy 92.7 in San Francisco...both are dance stations). I also have access to streamers such as iPartyRadio, MusicOne, and Dance.fm from the Netherlands that I can access via my cell phone (you just have to get an unlimited data package because not doing that would be VERY expensive). I've even gone as far as purchasing a USB headphone adapter, which will allow me to plug my cassette adapter into my cellphone, to allow these streams into my car, or external speakers!
The only downside is that at times, you may experience buffering issues...but aside from that with 3G already here, as well as technology always getting better along the way, buffering may be a thing of the past.
Can't wait to drive around NYC blasting Z103.5 - Toronto in real time!
If you want to reach the next generation.....this MAY be the one way terrestrial radio can save itself. But corporate won't "get it".