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Actually, I think the (disputed) anniversary is of audio transmission via radio. Not radio broadcasting per se. Fessenden wasn't doing regular scheduled broadcasts at the time, he was just assembling the apparatus to do so and testing it out. I believe there is some dispute as to the 12/24/1906 event. It's been claimed there are no records of the transmission, logs of the reception, or any subsequent coverage in the press regarding the event at the time. It's also claimed that the incident wasn't even mentioned until the 1930s. Check out this piece from Radio World online http://rwonline.com/pages/s.0106/t.502.html Still, as to the original point, there's little 20th century technology that doesn't have Tesla's fingerprints on it somewhere... he really jumpstarted a lot of new avenues of discovery.

So this is what happens when you buy this rhetoric that the conservatives represent laize faire politics. That's bullshit. Like the Bush administration, Merkle represents big money and this news clearly demonstrates that fucking over the public in a shakedown for big business is clearly not an issue for these conservative pricks.
        So, let's not hear about how the left is where the problems are coming from. Sure, in the U.S. Diane Feinstein and a few others have sold out the public's interests in these matters but that doesn't mean the Republicans represent an alternative. If you're a California voter, I suggest you write to Feinstein and tell her you don't appreciate her selling out her constituents for a few bucks on such an important issue. But voting conservative is not the answer.
      Merkle has shown her hand and it is up to the German voters to slap that hand by voting her out of office.

If you're a California voter, start setting things straight right now. The Democrats cannot be a valid alternative to the Republicans if they not only support but seek to tighten the absurdly outdated copyright regime in place in the US today.

The following two California politicians drafted the PERFORM Act among other efforts to tighten the copyright noose.

Blurb about the PERFORM Act.
http://www.rwonline.com/dailynews/one.php?id=9011

But beyond the PERFORM Act, contact these people and tell them directly that non commercial sharing of copyrighted material is NOT theft. Tell them their job is to leave the citizen's private Internet communications alone and that their job is to support the private non-commercial communication rights of their voters not to win favors from industry groups. Let them know that the alternative is to lose in the next election. Speak up!

Senator Dieane Feinstein
202-224-3841
202-228-3954
http://feinstein.senate.gov/email.html

Representative Howard L. Berman (D - 28)
  202-225-4695
  202-225-3196
  http://www.house.gov/berman/contact/

And yeah, I'm posting anonymously. But that's the whole point here. I should be able to post anonymously and all of our Internet communication should be anonymous and private. Let's make it so.

XM's strategic investors include General Motors Corp., American Honda Motor Corp., DIRECTV, Eastbourne Capital, Hearst Corporation and Baystar Capital.
-- http://www.xmradio.com/faq/faq_list_servlet.jsp?se ction_id=1&section_main=XM%20Satellite%20Radio#141

"Sirius... Tends to be more hits based but not anywhere near FM"
-- http://www.xmorsirius.com/programming.html

"En masse, they are led by a Music Director, Lee Abrams, who has set forth the prime directive: "Respect the listener, respect the artist." As long as this rule is adhered to, the individual Program Directors are free to play what they want. Except for one other tiny rule: "If it sounds like FM, you're out." That means play music, lots of it, with lots of variety within the channel's genre."
-- http://www.crutchfieldadvisor.com/ISEO-rgbtcspd/re views/20030623/xm_hq.html?print=1&page=all

"SIRIUS has a song library of 500,000 tunes"
-- http://radio.about.com/library/weekly/aa062403a.ht m

"The designers also had to make the system capable of holding music from 200,000 CDs assembled by the company - about 2 million songs"
--http://www.rwonline.com/reference-room/t rans-2-d igital/05_rwf_xm_1.shtml

"HD" Radio (formerly known as IBOC, or In Band on Channel), is an inferior technology which many have found less than awe inspiring. It's adoption in the U.S. is the result of politics and money, not technological superiority.

One reviewer above described IBOC thus: "Let's start with audio quality. It's my opinion that the current 96kb/s codec is incapable of reproducing even a simple male voice without generating objectionable artifacts. It gets worse with music. On the classical cut the strings were thin and harsh. For those of you who are broadcasting contemporary formats, the codec removes sibilance unnaturally, changes the timber of symbols and makes back up vocals strident. This is not CD-quality by a long shot. In fact, during my listening test I found that our station's plain old analog signal sounded better than the 96kb/s codec."

At the same time that the U.S. has locked themselves into IBOC, the rest of the world has been moving ahead with Eureka 147 DAB, a purely Digital technology without the legacy concerns. Fifty countries and counting, with DAB building steadily, especially in Europe.

Eeeeyup. The biggest problem is that most people (note the word "most") listen to radio very differently than they watch TV -- they're not tuning in at specific times. The programming model of radio has thus differentiated itself from that of TV quite a bit. This is why the concept of an audio VCR (tape based) never caught on. Yes, it was tried, several times. A columnist at RadioWorld mag covered this in two columns just last month:

• first column
• second column

I bought a Neuros thinking that it would do this for me, perhaps in a forthcoming firmware upgrade, but it doesn't seem likely now.

Eeeeyup. The biggest problem is that most people (note the word "most") listen to radio very differently than they watch TV -- they're not tuning in at specific times. The programming model of radio has thus differentiated itself from that of TV quite a bit. This is why the concept of an audio VCR (tape based) never caught on. Yes, it was tried, several times. A columnist at RadioWorld mag covered this in two columns just last month:

• first column
• second column

I bought a Neuros thinking that it would do this for me, perhaps in a forthcoming firmware upgrade, but it doesn't seem likely now.

Can it be "CD-quality" at about 96 kbps? We'll see.

A good site for learning more about IBOC is Radio World Online.