I decided to do some work from home today, as at my place of work the Halloween activities inevitably result in hours upon hours of Halloween traffic in the afternoon. Normally while I'm driving into work, I like to listen to either mentally stimulating (NPR) or funny (Howard Stern - The Howard Stern Radio Show). Either way, it's a little break and it lets me get my mind into what's going on in the world. At home, I thought I'd indulge in the same, but I was displeased to discover that my concrete and steel building provides absolutely no reception. You'd think you spend money to get near the top of a building, and what do you get... a whole lot of nothing.
But have no fear, I'm a geek. Certainly, _I_ of all people can jury rig some solution together using this wonderful thing called the "Internet". Alas, I failed miserably. By the time I found anything even remotely similar to live simulcast, all my morning programs were over. My question is, outside of the few public radio stations out there doing this, why wouldn't all the major radio stations broadcast over the web?
I once got into a heated discussion (READ: big argument) that TV stations would get no benefit by providing their television streams over the net. My point was they'd be reaching audiences that couldn't watch them through the normal methods (i.e. those in bad reception areas)... the counter was that it would basically be pure cannibalization of their existing market and would add no additional viewers (therefore increasing cost per viewer). A lot of this seems like it comes down to the ATM argument where until one bank had ATMs, it seemed like a big cost increase, but when one started getting them, it was game over. Everyone had to had them otherwise, you'd be the bank that didn't have ATMs and people would laugh at you.
Someday I hope that's where television is. But today, that's where radio _should_ be. Radio is so low bandwidth, plus there are many places that it's just not convenient to bring an actual radio (though you may have a computer) and internet radio is reception independent... it seems like a no brainer. But no, it's massively difficult. I'm sure a non-zero part of this is the insanity that the RIAA make all internet broadcasters go through for licensing. I'm sorry, but charging someone differently for your radio stream that goes over the airwaves vs. one that goes through ethernet seems impossibly stupid. But that's just me.
Net of the story: I lived the morning in silence. Well, really, relative silence, considering I had my favorite internet broadcaster to which to listen (Digitally Imported). :)