For broadcast radio, the only problem is reception. That can be fixed by moving the radio, shoving a hangar in it or sometimes even just touching it or moving yourself to another part of the room. Heck, Gilligan even got it through his fillings.

This represents a killer advantage. People (except geeks and engineers like me) don’t want to be bothered with complication and decisions. Every day of our lives, we are bombarded by mountains of information that we have to sift through to discover what’s important. In the modern world, that task only gets more complicated. Anytime someone can do something without having to make a decision, it just makes life that much easier.

This is why terrestrial radio will never die in the way that some people think it will. While internet audio (not generated by radio stations) may grow in market share, terrestrial radio will not disappear inside of the next 20 years because it’s widely accepted, it’s simple and it works.

That isn’t to say that internet audio is not a threat however. In the area of ease of use, products like iTunes and Windows Media Player are making the effort of getting audio from the internet easier. Future programs that we haven’t even heard of yet will get closer to bridging this gap.

The other big advantage of radio over internet audio is that radio is wireless. Whether you’re at home, work, or most importantly in the car – you can hear your station. To listen to an online stream, you need an internet connection. For the most part, that means being connected to a cable of some sort, usually through a bulky computer. In my experience, driving is somewhat tougher when you can go no further than 100 feet from your cable modem without your Ethernet cable snapping.

“But what about WiFi?”, you say. I respond that although I’m surprised I am able to hear you speaking at your monitor, you have a decent point. But even WiFi has a problem. It is mobile in the sense that if you live in an area with a lot of coverage, you can access the internet from any street corner, but WiFi is horrible at passing you off from one connection station to the next. This is especially true since many of the free access points are not run by a large network, but instead just individuals who don’t know how to secure the router they just got for Christmas from their tech-savvy nephew. Each connection might give you a new external IP address.

When you drive with your cell phone, the phone makes a connection to a tower to place the call. As you drive away from that tower and the signal grows weaker, the cell phone makes a connection with a second, closer tower. Your cell phone company then switches your call to the new tower and drops the old connection, all without you noticing a thing. That’s how technology is supposed to work. You shouldn’t have to “discover” a new tower and switch your connection manually every minute or two. This problem will be made easier in the coming years, but it is still a big hurdle for online providers – mostly because there isn’t a great business model in building a mobile WiFi network. Plus WiFi only has a range of a few hundred feet at best - unless you’re willing to put a parabolic dish on the roof of your car.

If only WiFi could work like cell phones… wait… what if I got Internet access over a cell phone? And now you see where the Gathering Storm is coming for radio.