MESQUITE, Nev. ? How's that for a dateline?

Those looking for reports from Las Vegas will no doubt be mystified by any mention of Mesquite. It is, after all, a small highway town some 70 miles northeast of the famed and hideous Strip. I got the last room here, at 11:09 p.m. Saturday. If you ever visit this part of the world, you'll like the Eureka Hotel/Casino. For only $79, a fresh new room with a king-sized bed will be yours.

And don't mind the drunken, screaming yokel kids running down the halls ? the St. George, Utah, softball championship was held today, and this is the closest town with lodging.

Considering that I drove from Los Angeles today, it should be assumed my coverage of the 2001 National Association of Broadcasters convention is already a total failure.

We have another four days to accumulate evidence.

Why has the Online Journalism Review dispatched a reporter to NAB2001? Convergence, babies. Between now and Thursday, the nation's broadcast barons will jabber about their plans for the post-Internet era. They've watched Silicon Valley/Alley dump truckloads of cash into stupid online ideas. Now it's time for a new Net trick: making money.

The Dubya administration will be happy to help. Cheney has even sent his FCC chairman, Michael Powell, to give a breakfast chat about the friendly new climate of Total Deregulation. Powell, it should be noted, is the son of Secretary of State Colin Powell, who earned millions on the board of AOL.

The NAB is the chief lobbying machine for the broadcast industry, and its directors recently made some enemies among the big networks. Perhaps forgetting Clinton was out of the way, the NAB sided against plans to merge more giant media properties. This resulted in all the big networks ceremoniously quitting the association, with the exception of Disney/ABC. But with Young Powell and his crew already making way for Viacom/CBS to keep its little UPN network, we can expect a quick retreat from these old-fashioned notions.

As the convention begins, Murdoch has renewed his efforts to buy DirecTV (and the DirectPC service that provides satellite broadband through the same dish that brings 137 channels of slop). The federal push for that high-definition digital television gimmick is bankrupting small stations ? especially public stations ? that can't afford to upgrade before the deadline. The climate has never been sweeter for Total Information Monopoly.

Such topics were of great interest to the hippies last year, when the NAB convention in San Francisco was protested by people angry about the selling off of more public airwaves and the death of micro-power stations. An alt-weekly reporter even got arrested for photographing the protest. But this year, the hippies are in Quebec with Dubya, throwing chunks of concrete at Canadian policemen. I asked the Independent Media Center folks in the Bay Area if they cared about this week's convention. They never replied.

There are, as of yet, no signs of dissent in Vegas. And if the protesters came, they'd have no place to stay.

Due to my usual lack of planning and a cheapskate editor refusing to pay $250 a night to house me in the nice Hilton right at the convention center, I hunted down my own lodgings. It took days. The whole city is completely booked and has been for weeks, months. Finally, I secured four nights at the gruesome Excalibur for about $125 per 24 hours. But they were sold out on Saturday, like every hotel in town.

Remembering the days when I'd run out to Vegas without notice and find an acceptable $50 room, I waited until the desert town of Baker and then began calling the numbers posted on the endless billboards. ROOMS AVAILABLE, the signs flashed. Sure.

After parking and walking around the convention center, I stopped inside 16 hotels, checking for cancellations. Nothing. The NAB has filled the city. The dirty little dumps on the end of the Strip were also full. Finally, I found an available hovel packed between those topless joints in the wasteland that separates the Strip from downtown. The nightly rate was a fair $120. While waiting for someone to appear at the dirty reception desk, I attempted to use the lobby restroom and interrupted a military guy performing a lewd act on his buddy. Tolerance is my middle name, but it was time to check the suburbs for hotel rooms. Many bedless travelers had the same idea.