US-based terrestrial radio stations suffered an absolutely brutal decline in 2009, according to data released Friday by the Radio Advertising Bureau.  Across various revenue-generators - on-air, off-air, digital - revenues slumped 18 percent to roughly $16 billion.  Of that, local stations suffered a 20 percent decline to $10.8 billion, and national stations slipped 19 percent to $2.4 billion.

The downturn comes during a difficult time, and a major pare-down in advertising.  Digital was a rare bright spot, lifting 13 percent to $480 million.  RAB chief Jeff Haley pointed to second-half improvements, while optimistically suggesting an upturn in 2010.  "In 2009, radio went from negative 25 percent in May to flat in December - a tremendous lead-in to 2010," Haley stated.

Whether that happens is speculative, though stations are undoubtedly hoping 2009 was a bottom.

Ok, let me get this straight: the original filetrading free-distribution music media machine that can be accessed anywhere on $2 worth of gear now finds it cannot compete with the new free-distribution kilo-dollar-receiver music machine, and why is that?

Oh wait, I forgot: they don't actually play much 'music' on their airwaves anymore and what is played, even outside of the corporate pap that cream-fills the bulk of their hours, but the little bit of actual music tucked into the odd-hours is still lathered with cynicism and framed by barbarism, yellow journalism backed by canned press releases. Oh yeah, mama buy me some o' dese -- and as if that weren't enough, instead of local radio getting down and getting local, that being their propitious god-given niche and the hardest-part way of the world getting in with the ten-thousand channel online world, they instead keep copying each other's failed one nation, one jerk business model of program misdirection, cutting costs by cutting content until they are left with nothing more than SOCAN fees and dead air, and then they pine and woe to the press when it fails to work for them? Ah, ok. I was just checking.

I did offer to help, I did. I was shown the door. And a mighty fine door it was too, I will wager paid for back in the earlier glory days when they actually had some relevance to more than just the homebound right-wing retirees.

I found this great app for Android, a port of the popular 'Real Book' charts into an iPhone app just ported to Android. 800 charts, albeit just changes, but fluidly transposable, apparently readable, could be, just could be actually useful. Only there is a problem:

Priced applications are currently only available to users in the following countries:

• Australia
• Austria
• France
• Germany
• Italy
• Japan
• Netherlands
• New Zealand
• Spain
• Switzerland
• United Kingdom
• United States

Notice any obvious omissions?

On reading this list a big flashing light of Obviousness went up and here is my guess, and I'll bet I'm right: Rogers.ca likely does not like the idea of allowing other people to make money from 'their' phones, and thus there are no 'paid' applications in the Android Market. Not, at least, until they 'negotiate' some deal whereby Rogers gets a cut of the pie. This is the same basic reason why Bell dis-allows Skype from purchasing bulk Canadian telephone numbers to allow Skype subscribers the incoming call feature, thereby ensuring that none of their subscribers will have any option to dump their landline in favour of a free USB Skype phone.

I wondered why this great new phone was only optioned to run largely quite amateur software, although much of it is still better than the RIM proprietary, nonetheless, a lot of it appears written by students, by kids, miminally functional just to get their name in the game. Naive fool that I am, I thought, "oh, that's just because the Android is 'new' and it always takes a while before people really find their way around any new computing platform." but that's not true, is it. Android 2.0 may be new and uncharted, but we Canadians only get the dregs from the wealthy industrial nations: Our 'latest' Android is only 1.6, maybe even 1.5.

Oh well ... patience is a virtue!