The death of radio as we know it?

WSJ has an interesing article on radio station's reaction to iPods, satellilte radio and the likes. Radio stations are getting paranoid that satellite radio and iPods are taking aways their audience - and for a reason. With over 22 minutes of advertising and the lame selection of songs, go figure.

FM broadcast technology hasn't significantly changed since they became popular in the '70s. What other consumer technology is still that lame? Some may say TV, but digitial cable is fast picking up and of course there is satellite TV. Its high time radio stations invested more in digital broadcast technologies such as DAB (digital audio broadcast) or other similar technologies. Added value to the user being richer content - audio intermeshed with even vidual content like weather and traffic reports. And someone's gotta do something about all those ever increasing ads.

My personal take is that unlike in the past where radio faced competition from TV in the 1950s and the Sony Walkman in the 1980s, this time its different. And my prediction is not stallite that would kill the radio - it would be iPod-like players integrated with streaming Internet radio stations - services beyond those such as AudioFeast, who already work well with your iRiver MP3 players providing you a selection of songs customized to your taste. Motorola has announced a similar service, iRadio at DEMO@15 that works with your mobile phone. Now imagine all this integrated with a 3G radio service such as that offered by Virgin Radio.

Now that woud be interesting! It won't take too long before we see such services kick conventional radio right in the nu*s!