Hot times in radio.

The more I think about Bonneville's DC announcement yesterday, the better I like it. "Moving" WTOP from 1500 AM to 103-whatever FM and announcing Washington Post Radio on 1500 and another FM sounds just crazy in old-radio terms. But in the new media universe, this is a brilliant transitional move.

It's also a wonderfully local move--the sort of move that makes sense, right now, only in Washington. It works on many levels. They put their top property on their best signal on the preferred commercial radio platform--FM. (They made a point in their announcement to say DC folks will now be able to get WTOP in their offices. They really know their target--the most important part of it sits behind AM-blocking marble walls.) It's now unlikely anybody else, even WMAL--now part of the Disney-ABC dysfunctional family and on the block, maybe yes, maybe no--will challenge WTOP's news position.

And, oh, by the way, Bonneville dumped their Hot AC station to make room for their dial moves. Breathtaking. It means so much that a radio group has summarily dismissed the music format baloney-slicers and one of their truly paper-thin tweak-niches, Hot Adult Contemporary. Wrap your head around this one, Radio Guy: Bonneville decides that a format with "no future," classical, is a better bet than songs that "test well."

They've moved in with the Post (well, "friends with benefits," at least), which carries enormous news weight, particularly in DC--it considers itself a local paper--and this will focus more attention on radio as a news source. It also gives the newspaper another daily channel--newspapers, like radio, need to be multichanneling to survive.

It's also a great digital move. When digital radio finally starts to move--though unless something happens it'll take at least another year to get off its butt--Bonneville will be perfectly positioned, because that FM dial spot will be what a 50,000 watt AM flamethrower used to mean in the old radio. If broadcast radio will be technically relevant at all. And next, Bonneville should be running their legs off setting up distribution to phones and cables and Blackberries and Ipod, whatever's next--just as every local steel-tower radio station ought to be doing. Another exclusive audio distribution system pops up, it seems, every day.

The rest of Bonneville's moves indicate the presence of sophisticated foresight into the possibilities of digital radio, and the current probabilities of Web radio distribution.

Now, I've considered that seeing a major radio group doing something, anything, more than firing jocks and calling the station "Melvin" or somesuch, in the face of satellite, Web, et al--well, I may be a little overenthusiastic, here. But no, I think we'll live to see this Bonneville DC move as an historic moment in the development of Marconi radio. It's one of those deep, multifaceted, gut decisions you used to see back when there were operators of licensed commercial radio stations who deserved to be called capital-B Broadcasters.