Wednesday Blogs

44° - overcast at 7:40am. Above: a boring airport photo from my wife's cellphone as she sat on the runway for three hours in Atlanta last night.

Joy of Air Travel. Over the last 12 hours I've been exchanging emails and text messages with my wife and her Blackberry as she tries to return home from a trip to Atlanta. Bad weather meant a 3-hour sit on the tarmac; which meant missing a connecting flight, resulting in an unplanned overnight stay in Minneapolis.

Listening: This morning to one of Jay Mitchell's recorded Teleseminars at his Killer Jock website. Drinking coffee this morning while Jay, Kipper McGee, Patrick Davis and Van Harden talk shop. Too cool!

A great resource - listen here.

Remembering Keeve Berman. My only exposure to Mr. Berman was listening to him on the ABC Radio Network many years ago. One of many great voices in an era gone by.

Dave Martin writes about his early-career contact with Keeve Berman here - and shares the philosophy of taking the call and making a positive first impression.

Careful. Folks still complaining to the FCC. An example from South Bend here.

Congrats to Tom Taylor; his daily industry newsletter celebrating its first anniversary today.

Added: Wi-Fi/Wi-Max. I've written here before that radio isn't about towers and transmitters anymore, but about content and distribution channels. Over-the-air, HD...and broadband. Especially wireless broadband. Like Wi-Fi....and Wi-Max.

Current Wi-Fi routers typically serve an area of 30-50 feet. With Wi-Max, it can be almost 30 miles from a transmission point.

And I read two pieces on the topic today.

Originally posted a little over a week ago - Triple A Radio's Mike Lyons wrote here about Sprint/Nextel's merger with Clearwire to form a new Wi-Max venture under the Clearwire name. And Mike mentioned a test a friend of his did in Hawaii:

"One of my oldest friends, Brock Whaley, who runs a station group in Honolulu owned by Vision Related Entertainment (including rocker KPOI), told me today that since Clearwire is a major wi-fi provider on Oahu, he ran his own test for a drive around the island. He rigged a system together in his car and was stunned at how solid the stereo signal was as he listened to KNX Los Angeles, WDRV in Chicago and the BBC as he rolled around the island through the mountains without barely a signal dropout at all. And this is with Clearwire now!"

Too cool! Also took note of the legendary John Rook - who wrote about the internet and Wi-Fi on his blog:

"No longer am I saddled with fewer than a dozen “local” radio stations, that in reality are no longer “local” but distributors of nationally syndicated programming."

"WiFi, with its delivery of thousands of radio stations and hundreds of internet offerings, has really greatly expanded my radio menu. Given the limited number of “local” stations available to me, I had mistakenly considered radio hardly worth turning on. Not true with my discovery of WiFi."

"I keep tellin' ya...the future for radio is WiFi."

What a future! Have a good night.