Whither Kerbango/Audrey?
Since you asked, no, I don't own a Kerbango. But over time because of Kerbango's internet radio capabilities (as well as other features like easy email access) I expect Internet Appliances like Audrey to replace the various radios, portable TVs, and at least the secondary computers scattered throughout my house -- and yours.
For those who don't yet know, Kerbango provides easy access to Internet radio. It is being incorporated in 3Com's Audrey internet appliance. I doubt the rest of the world shares my passion for radio but it doesn't matter. World-wide internet access to radio bitcasting is an unavoidable wave of the future. The number of radio stations here and abroad who have begun bitcasting live on the Internet is accelerating at an astonishing pace. They see the future bearing down on them and hope to survive it somehow by adopting early.
The future can be plainly seen by looking at our past. In Broadcasting's infancy almost every community and certainly every moderately sized U.S. city was a major producer of original live radio and television programming (just as every moderately sized city once had a proliferation of local newspapers, many with their own national and foreign desks). The variety and proliferation of unique programming, talent, and perspectives was, from today's perspective, quite impressive. During the 1950's, however, commercial radio became homogenized with the advent of 3 strong networks in New York and L.A. and, for music, the development of a relentless "play list" mentality. In the 1960's the same trend toward centralization and the same corresponding diminution of locally produced programs, viewpoints, voices, and talent occurred in public radio even as the sheer number of stations multiplied with the advent of National Public Radio.
(A similar concentration of programming voices occurred in the television industry, ironically even as the number of stations multiplied with UHF frequencies and cable channels.)
Sure, most people still listen to a favorite local station of one kind or another (just as they may subscribe to a local newspaper), but with rare exception the bulk of what they are seeing and hearing is nationally produced (or in the case of music play lists, more or less dictated) out of New York, L.A., Washington D.C., and Boston.
In what we call "broadcasting" today, the shrinking world promises to counter balance all of this. Until two or three years ago, except in a few fortunate U.S. communities, you could listen to the BBC only on a short wave radio at certain designated hours of the night. Today, everyone in the world can hear the BBC live (or any of hundreds of other foreign stations) 24/7 through a computer. With equal ease, one can tune in directly to off-beat stations in Seattle, San Francisco, Houston, Tampa, Boston, Montreal, Moscow, Buenos Aires, or Beijing. What the Internet Appliance will do is make audio programs around the world accessible to everyone, not just computer users sitting at a keyboard.
To a degree, Audrey-like appliances will expand access to the variety of voices we have lost because of increasingly centralized U.S. programming sources. (It is this same virtue, by the way, that Justice Department and F.T.C. staff hope to protect against an AOL-Time Warner merger. Just as there are those like me who highly value a variety of different and unique programming voices, so there are those like AOL/TimeWarner, Gannett, etc. who want to own all those voices.) Audrey will enhance access not only to international programming sources, but also the proliferating number of Internet-only bitcasting radio stations and thousands of the new low power FM stations now being authorized by the FCC.
A corresponding proliferation of digital TV sources will have similar effects for the television industry. Indeed, some proof of this is you who are reading this instead of watching TV. Soon enough, just as everyone will have a Palm Pilot in her auto dashboard as well as the briefcase, I expect to see television- and radio-enabled Audreys on the kitchen counter, by the bedside, and hanging on a rack inside every land yacht where the portable TV used to be. |
