Radio is the theater of the mind, what's that make internet radio?

Radio has always been fun to me. Its been a start to many things in my career.

Officially, I did start my media career as a picture printer at the Jesup Citizen Herald, but one of my first jobs at Wartburg College was working at KWAR radio. I did several radio shows on several topics and had fun at every turn of the record.

That was over the air, you could get the signal for 5 miles around campus and that was about it. There was no internet streaming to supplement your signal. KWAR was truly 10 watts of pure power.

What if you only had the internet signal? It wouldn't really be a signal, but rather a stream.

That's what is fun about the internet, everything is new and you can experiment and see what works.

Just like radio was when it started. It was new, people experimented and tried new things.

A Des Moines area business owner, J. Michael McCoy has done just about everything in media in this town. He's been on country, rock, talk and even christian radio stations. Now he's started up a web-only radio station. Its called Mac's World Live, a play on his old talk radio show.

The line up covers all sorts of topics and age groups. It really is community radio the way it once was. Even my friend Dave Price has a show.

The station is run out of his bar, Miss Kitty's in Clive. The studio is carved out of an old service area of the bar. The signal is only online but its also a webcast as well. There's 3 cams and the host of the radio show also is the director, switching shots as people talk on the radio in a room no bigger than my closet at home.

But that's what is so fun about radio and broadcasting. You hear it, you think big, grand thoughts. You think expansive studios with stuff happening all around it.

Radio has always been theater of the mind. Its a challenge to make it happen and be good. That's what is fun about it.

You can tell, I was excited to get a chance to do radio again.

Michael Libbie was one of our guests on our social media Iowa Journal. Libbie owns an ad agency called Insight Advertising, Marketing and Communications. Michael is also an old radio guy who loves the theater of it as well. He hosts Insight on Business Monday - Friday from 1230 to 2p. He talks business, but wanted to talk more about IPTV and The Iowa Journal.

We did talk about social media, Sandi Lincoln, Twitter, Pat Dix, WHO-TV, gay marriage, Iowa, Wartburg, and eventually we did get to IPTV and the Iowa Journal.

Give us a listen if you like, the archived version is here.

Thanks again to Michael for the opportunity. Who knows, this may be the future of broadcasting.