The second day of the convention is also the last day of exhibits, which is where I will spend most of my time today.

I have not seen attendance numbers yet, and when I asked I was told that they should be released on Friday. I expect to see a decrease from last year; possibly a significant one. The sessions have fewer attendees. The show floor is fairly quiet. Even the show Daily is pretty thin.

I ran into Jeff Littlejohn of Clear Channel this morning. After the initial hellos he asked if I had seen the Zune media player with song tagging. (Read about the idea in the Radio Currents.) I had not seen it firsthand yet, so the demo began. First, he tuned one of the Clear Channel station here in Austin and tagged the song that was playing. Then we walked back to the newsroom where there is an open Wi-fi connection, where he accessed his tagged songs and then purchased the one he just tagged. Within a minute or so, he had the song and album art on his Zune ready to play again. His credit card was automatically billed for the transaction in the background.

Talk about instant gratification.

The NAB Radio Show starts today. I dropped into a few sessions already, and I’m on my way to another. The first observation: The show looks smaller than ever. The exhibit floor is a decent size, but I know I’ll easily be able to cover it in the 11 hours or so of exhibit time.

The size can’t be blamed on any storms. The location was picked more than a year ago. The storms might affect attendance, and we’ll see if that’s the case.

I’m about to board a plane for Austin. When Ike was heading toward Texas I wondered if it would affect the convention, but from what I see, Austin is ok. I wish we could say the same for Galveston and Houston.

Not to ignore their situation, but looking on to the convention, I’m looking forward to some of the sessons — particularly on revenue generation from AM towers and copper theft — as well as seeing some of the new products being shown.

What are you looking for at the convention?