Talk radio, the broadcast format best known for bringing political commentary to the masses, is infiltrating the meetings industry, with two new programs promising to deliver news, trends, and insight from industry experts. But instead of setting their AM dial to hear the programs, planners "tune in" from home or office via the Internet.
Meetingsradio.com, set to debut in this month, will air live in the mornings Monday through Friday and be available for download on the Web site after it airs. Bill Wulff, president and host, says the first month of broadcast will be "experimental," as he takes input from listeners to tweak the programming. At the beginning, the show will run about half an hour each day.
"The idea of industry-specific Internet-based radio is very exciting," says Wulff, who is also president of Above The Rim Events in Fort Lee, N.J. "You couldn't have done this two or three years ago. But now virtually everyone has broadband, and most of the industry uses Wi-Fi. The time is right."
Meanwhile, Association Nation, a weekly, one-hour program for and about associations, recently entered its 14th week of broadcasting with the addition of a new 16-minute segment for association meeting planners called Your Meeting Matters, hosted by Katherine Markham, co-founder of meetings Web site, www.ConventionPlanit.com.
Although the program airs at 10 a.m. Sundays on WMET-AM 1160 in the Washington, D.C. area, most of the program's listeners tune into the downloadable version available for on-demand listening at the program's Web site, according to Association Nation creator Kevin Murphy.