In mid-October, BTC Radio, Talking Business Travel joined a growing list of Internet radio broadcasts aimed at meeting and travel industry pros. The show is hosted by Kevin Mitchell, chairman of the Business Travel Coalition, who brings a journalistic, in-depth approach to discussion of industry issues.

The 40-minute inaugural broadcast was part one of a two-part discussion of the airline industry's financial crisis, and included a 15-minute conversation with Bob Crandall, former CEO and chairman of American Airlines, as well as commentary from reporters from The New York Times, The Philadelphia Enquirer, and The Christian Science Monitor. Upcoming topics include the avian flu crisis, registered traveler programs, and a roundtable on travel management issues.

The show airs Sunday nights and is then archived indefinitely at http://btcblog.typepad.com/btcradio. By midmorning the day after the first broadcast, the show had received approximately 700 hits, according to Mitchell, who says he hopes to grow the show to attract 800,000 downloads a year. Internet radio, he says, “is one more tool to bring business travel issues and transparency to people.”

Mitchell says that he has been considering a radio show on business travel issues since 1999; finally, the Web-based technology became inexpensive and simple enough to make the idea feasible. The time is right in other ways as well, he says: Industry issues are increasingly complex, and people are increasingly busy, which makes a multitask-friendly information source appealing. BTC Radio can be heard via the Internet or downloaded from the Apple Music Store for free and played on any MP3 player.