Explode your radio
: Doc Searls has a wonderful, brain-blasting post on the future of radio — or what we all should imagine the future of radio to be.
He starts noting that Nokia wants to make phones the preferred device for listening to radio (amen to that; I wish I could listen on my phone or my iPod and not have to carry another device to stay live with the world). And so Nokia wants stations to send data with songs and enable phones for purchase and limited interactivity.
Doc sees that bet and ups it four four big ideas. He wants stations, starting with NPR et al, to send out RSS notifications with programs. I want to hear more about what that can do (which is my way of saying I’m too stupid to get the full potential). Second, wants big companies to partner with small developers and he links to some examples. Yup. Third, he wants to improve the software we use to play Internet radio. Amen. Fourth, and this is where the brain starts to blow, he said:
…we need to take this chance to break radio free from the notion that it’s just a commercial utility controlled by government and exempt from constitutional as well as common sense protections of free speech. That means we start our own stations, on which we play, much as we now blog, what we please. But not on the old broadcast model. Instead, on the new RSS-fortified interactive model. The one with the civic gestures we call links.
Imagine a world in which all this comes together to take an old medium and explode and reinvent it:
: New means of transport bring richer data.
: New means of transport bring two-way communication.
: New means of transport bring new commerce and financial support.
: New high-speed, always-on-everywhere means of communication (3G cellular, wi-fi, and their successors) bring high-quality entertainment and communication to you wherever you go.
: New authoring tools allow anyone to create high-quality entertainment and distribute it to the world and even raise support for it.
: New tools yield new passion and new outlets for talent (see blogs)
: The result, as Doc says, is blog radio: an explosion of choice, talent, commerce, communication, interaction, entertainment.
Forget Howard Stern just going to satellite and reinventing radio. He should help create a whole new f’ing medium.
