Recapping Monday At NAB Spring Conference

More Coming Today From Vegas

ALL ACCESS News/Talk Editor PERRY MICHAEL SIMON is attending this year's NAB SPRING CONFERENCE. The show officially opened SATURDAY (4/9), with exhibits beginning YESTERDAY at the LAS VEGAS CONVENTION CENTER.

SIMON submitted several reports YESTERDAY (4/11), from the event, including:

* CBS RADIO Pres./CEO DAN MASON joined RAIN SUMMIT founder KURT HANSON for a "fireside chat" in LAS VEGAS. MASON said that "I'm in a much, much different place then I was five years ago," noting that CBS stations did not stream and the company now offers streaming through RADIO.COM and owns LAST.FM as well. MASON said that the company looks at streaming not as something that will be immediately profitable but will be successful in the long term, and added that he expects that streaming to the car "will happen." He also said that the company plans to relaunch MP3.COM next month. Read the full report here.

* Legendary radio programmer JOHN GEHRON moderated a panel on creating compelling content for digital platforms. Another radio programming legend, LEE ABRAMS, warned about a crisis in media content, telling about walking into a newspaper during his stormy tenure at TRIBUNE and hearing many innovative ideas that were all for the paper's website, but when he asked why they didn't do anything for the newspaper itself, the response was, "oh, no, we can't touch that." Online media, both social media and other websites, are "the new rock 'n' roll," ABRAMS said, but he said that the content area is not seeing the same action. Terrestrial radio, he charged, is "still playing from the '80s playbook," with stations still using "Two-Fer TUESDAYs," deep-voiced imaging and STAR WARS sound effects. Read the full report here.

* "Things are moving faster than we think they're moving," RAIN founder KURT HANSON told the audience at his annual RAIN SUMMIT "State of the Industry" address, listing listenership, revenues, and adoption of technology among the things moving forward and portending a "third Golden Age of Radio." Read the full report here.

* At the final RAIN SUMMIT panel MONDAY, "The Future of Music," MP3TUNES' MICHAEL ROBERTSON defended his business model of the remote, cloud-based "locker" of music accessible everywhere, which, at his present company and at MP3.COM, has been the subject of music industry lawsuits. Joking that he invented several years ago at MP3.COM what AMAZON unveiled at the end of MARCH, ROBERTSON said that the music industry's objection to his companies, which have generated lawsuits, lies in its intent to make people pay for each time a song is used on a different device rather than to allow people to own the song as they did before the digital age. Read the full report here.

More exclusive coverage from the NAB SPRING CONFERENCE will be posted later TODAY on ALL ACCESS.

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