Worst of the Week: Show? What show?

Hello!
And welcome to our Thursday column, Worst of the Week. There’s a lot of nutty stuff that goes on in this industry, so this column is a chance for us at RCRNews.com to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the wrong way. We hope you enjoy it!
And without further ado:
So the CTIA Wireless I.T. & Entertainment show in San Francisco is wrapping up today. Boy, what a show, huh? I mean, AT&T Mobility announced an over-the-air music deal with Napster, BlackBerry users will now have access to Facebook, and End2End acquired Terraplay. It just doesn’t get any bigger than that.
Am I right?
In case you can’t tell, I’m being sarcastic.
Here’s my true, non-sarcastic reaction: What the heck? Where were all the flashy announcements, glitzy new products and witty keynote repartee?
During the first day’s opening event, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer talked about mobile device management. If there’s something less interesting than mobile device management, I don’t know what it is.
I mean, come on.
Anyway, I feel like I should ask for my money back. With all of the major issues bouncing around in the industry today-ad-supported services, the 700 MHz auction, the consumer bill of rights, the growing mess in the MVNO market, the rise of true mobile TV services, the introduction of WiMAX, the muni Wi-Fi flameout, the push for unlocked handsets, the open-access battle, the iPhone-I figured there would be plenty of interesting stuff at this show.
Instead, I got treated to announcements such as MobiTV renewing its deal with Sprint Nextel. (The show was so quiet, this was actually a major headline.)
Indeed, the news outside the show was more interesting:
—Verizon Wireless settled an advertising lawsuit for $1 million;
—AT&T Mobility scored 2 million new customers in the third quarter;
—And CTIA took on Verizon Wireless’ challenge against open access.
Perhaps my expectations were too high. Perhaps the big deals are being signed at this show, and will be announced to us cattle at next year’s show.
Or perhaps Google, Apple, Yahoo and the rest of the current movers and shakers in the wireless industry simply overslept.
OK! Enough of that. Thanks for checking out this Worst of the Week column. And now, some extras:
–Motricity announced it will offer over-the-air downloads of books onto smartphones. I think I speak for everyone when I say: Finally! I’m so sick of reading books with large type under good lighting.
–Virgin Mobile USA announced a service that will give its subscribers the chance to create their own wallpapers and ringtones-and then sell that content to others. I’m very excited about this service, but I suspect I would have trouble finding buyers for my ringtones and wallpapers as they are very . inappropriate.
I welcome your comments. Please send me an e-mail at mdano@crain.com.