Twice a year, Apple CEO and head honcho Steve Jobs gets up in front of a large group of people who ardently follow his company’s operation. The events are the MacWorld Show and Exposition in January and the Apple World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June. The group of attendees to these keynote addresses consists of journalists and fans of Apple products and is always a friendly crowd. As a bona fide Mac fan, I’ve been to two of these events, and it’s a blast.

The 2008 WWDC was a much anticipated gathering this year, because most everyone who follows these things believed that Jobs would announce a new 3G iPhone. They (we) were right. He did. The new product is a freshened, thinner, 3G network capable iPhone that costs much less than the first generation device. Everyone seemed happy.

Well, not everyone. There were few gripes about missing features (there always are). They include:

• No cut/paste
• No video (or video chat)
• No extra storage for data
• No Bluetooth built in for music listening
• No FM radio

Since this isn’t a Mac blog, we’ll concentrate on the issue of the last "missing feature."

In short, the iPod doesn’t NEED and FM radio built in. I must admit, the first time I saw Microsoft’s Zune, I was impressed, because it has an FM radio built in! I thought how…1990s! Now, keep in mind, I make most of my income programming a terrestrial radio station. Why would I slag FM terrestrial radio?

Simple. Because the transmission of energy through a big long piece of metal that vibrates isn’t the only way we distribute our content anymore. We stream it, we podcast it, we post it on the web. And as the iPod develops, it can receive all of those forms of data that contains the content we create. Why do we need a 21st century device that’s bigger and more expensive, just so it can receive 20th century data transmissions? We don’t.

Almost all of our terrestrial broadcasts (including HD) are streamed these days, and now that the new iPhone operating system is coming in July, there are developers working on software that will allow iPhones to stream audio just like a PC. With the bandwidth of 3G networks available, there will be nothing to stop radio listeners from listening to their favorite terrestrial broadcasts on their handheld devices.

CBS and AOL have already formed a partnership to make CBS stations available on the iPod (and won a design award for the FREE software that will be released in July). More will follow. No, virtually ALL will follow.