Many gyms have lots of TV's in front of the bank of bikes/treadmills etc. Each one tuned to a different channel and a FM radio frequency below it. This allows you to listen to the sound from the show you are watching.

Why not? A lot of people enjoy listening to radio shows, and I'd guess that using a build in FM radio draws a lot less power than streaming a radio show over the internet. Plus it won't cut into your bandwidth quote for people who have to worry about that.

Probably because it's built-in into one of the radios. If the hardware is already there, I am all in for supporting it in software.

I guess it depends on where you live. I'm in Europe and in my part of the world public radio is pretty good and without ads. I can't stand radio stations that airs ads every few minutes or just have mindless jingles.

At my old job we had a visitor from your headquarter, some head of department from TI. Someone asked why we didn't include FM radio in our chipset and his reaction was the same as yours. He was a bit surprised when he asked who of us still listed to radio and everyone put their hand up.

I was recently at a baseball game and realized that I really wanted to hear the stats that the announcers usually have when listening to a baseball game on radio. Wish I had a iPod Nano.

NPR is worth listening to.