Here are 19 trends to think about and help to happen in the middle year 2006. Let us know if and how much you agree; keep us apprised of your progress.

1. Government Hears the Music
For the last umpteen years record companies (labels) have not been able to collude legally to solve their problem of digitizing music for download. This year there will be slight changes in the law so these labels can work together to set the CD-online standard and temporarily elude anti-trust laws. Anti-Trust is a body of 100 year-old legislation that comprises the walls technology is running into. You know the saying: follow the money.

2. It’s a Small (Chapter) World
Reading! It’s back. In this strangely named decade (”The Zips”) there is something to say for people reading one chapter at a time and a buck a chapter (thanks, Amazon) will mean our ADD-addled personas will be able to read Dickens a couple of words at a time. Philip Roth’s point will be proven when people don’t read books, just parts of them when they get a chance, and often to impress their coffee tables and nightstands.

3. Celebrity Is Dim
People are getting wise to the wiles of Hollywood publicity’s machine and 2006 will be the year that couples who pretend to be happily ensconced will be called for it. Watch as B-stars like Brittany Murphy and is-she-or-isn’t-she (skinny) Laura Flynn Boyle find their convenient couple-hoods ridiculed because media-savvy Americans are seeing that these constructed couplings coincide with a 90-day window for new releases. As I type Tom and Katie are having a bit of a separation; neither has anything landing in theaters for a while.

4. See Ya
This is the year service businesses start to rethink the committee. For about 100 years corporate America has made decisions by a pool of several, and it’s rare to take a risk that way. Now those of us who wait for everyone to “come around” will stand up and say, “Stop. You don’t have to all agree.” Fewer meetings will mean more work. (Web site content creators will pout as money-spending time-wasters in the workplace actually get something done!)

5. New Political Closet Opening
Just in time for the midterm elections a brand new and more hopeful and positive grass roots movement begins. Again. 2006 marks a period when not only is the Government in power unpopular, but so is the other party. For the first time since the 60’s, young people will revolt—we’re not talking about Green Party power—and make a serious difference using their clout. They will vote too—and put people into office who are not afraid of dirty and righteous fighting. Some call this wishful thinking. So what?

6. Buy Me: Music
For the first time the Madonnas and Black Eyed Peas of the world take a backseat to cash-making experimentation as musicians release via the Web only, taking a cue from The Artist Again Known To Be Prince (the benefit of saying to fans “Tell me what you want”). TV and movie folks realize that releasing Web-only product is cheap and doesn’t need to be tied directly to a sponsor. Imagine that.

7. Watch Out For KC
The newest town to get “star status” is one we’ve been making fun of since Annie Oakley: the now-cosmopolitan Kansas City. Something happened there quietly and with hardly any national fanfare, and it’s a rocking good time. I kid you not. Sure it’s flat, but those people know how to have a good time. (Credit goes to mega-thinker Richard Florida for this one.)

8. Yes We’re Talking To You!
The new WiFi-slash-Mobile phone means that for the first time you can use your mobile phone in your home without fear of dropped lines. It’s a mobile phone outside, and once you get in range of a WiFi hotspot in your home or at Starbucks, it turns into VOIP handset. And for the record, you will never be sure the other person heard what you said, since VOIP is still nowhere near as reliable as a landline. You can, however, guess.

9. Sell Me Anything Phone
The commercial potential of the mobile phone will finally become known when we—like we used to at home during dinner—merely stop answering our cell phones all the time. Here’s what is going to happen: You will get calls from marketers. Just like today with e-mail we will wonder why we thought it was such a miraculous device….and look for alternatives to portable calling. Maybe the carrier pigeon will come back. Or US mail! Oh and while we are on the subject, more people than ever in 2006 will learn that in order to receive fewer unwanted e-mails, you will have to send fewer unwanted e-mails. This will become popular standard.

10. Game On
This will be the year online gaming becomes “sort of” legal when the Government agrees with Las Vegas (not the offshore companies) that there is no way to stop this newfangled addiction and it becomes tax heaven for our deficit-laden coffers. It will also be the year that computer games and advertising lie in bed together and every game will have a few dozen sponsors, driving kids fabulously insane all over the universe.

11. Kill the Middlemen
A new process of disintermediation gives everyday folks not only the power to consume entertainment directly but also to create it. It has begun already but watch for publishing to change drastically in ‘06. Watch this space for an entire Full Frontal PR Report devoted to the process of dissing the middle dude (and center gal).

12. Column A
China is all the rage in 2006 once people realize it’s cheap to hang in Shanghai and the Olympics are only 18 months away! Ka-ching. A lot of cash is being poured into the giant product-starved country. Watch for businesses to ignore the nonexistent “end of Cuba” and look into the fact no one can ignore: the world is watching China and that means go there now. Before iTunes-Beijing arrives, y’all.

13. Reality TV My Foot
Buh-bye. The networks will realize that Adam Carrolla having a “project” and/or tattoo parlors with fiendish customers is not interesting. I see a much-informed backlash to reality on TV and there will be more documentary-style programs in half-hour formats. Admit it: You’d watch a half-hour of anyone learning anything! Escapism makes a big return and people like Richard Hatch and Donald Trump (characters on TV shows) will be relegated to speaking at the Learning Annex. Wait. They do that already.

14. Interactive Hope Dreams
The wishes of people like Jon Klein (FeedRoom.com founder, RLM client emeritus, now President CNN/US) are seriously coming true as broadband hits 85 percent of America. While there was plenty of technology developed in the 1990s, adoption was slow and people haven’t really harnessed the Net except for e-mail and chat rooms—and dirty fun private habits including shopping expeditions. Even if iPod had become popular long ago, we wouldn’t have wanted to use it much because who wants to wait on downloads. Broadband is now resulting in everything Internet: the ability to shop online with ease, read news sources from around the globe (a truly informed world is my real goal!), access independent media and create and read personal Web logs and even movies that make it look like you have something to say.

15. Procure Your Own Bad Self
Folks talked a blue streak this decade about how they “captured” customers, how they “got them,” “hooked them,” “manipulated them,” “procured them,” “reeled them in,” “took ‘em from one part of [their] business and swayed them to another.” Marketers are going to realize that once you’ve treated the consumer like prey they might buy but then they hate you for it. Wooing a customer with creativity—giving them what they really are asking for by asking what they want—will be the new act of success. Those with the best P & Ls will be those who admit that the customer is now smarter than they are.

16. IP Daily
Phone becomes TV and consumers get another push from this: Verizon and all the former Bell sisters will do anything in 2006 to win cable customers over. It’s like the old AT&T days: Ask for a deal and get whatever you want. Why? IP TV (their version of cable) will hit us big in 2006. For 40 bucks you will be able to get not only the same TV networks and premiums you are paying more for on satellite and cable, but customers get video editing with a choice of sports show “angles” and the ability to edit movies to their liking! Plus, free downloadable movies on “Pay Per View.” Hello? This is what interactivity is. The cable/satellite firms will have a hard time and will attempt to get the Government to step in and help them regain ground. The phone companies, just like Ma Bell used to, will win in the end. Customers will be pleased.

17. Silly Year
On January 31, 2006 the decade is officially half over and that gives us license to be kid-like again. Every middle year in each decade has had a silly streak to it. Remember 1996 and the first dive into dot-com craziness (”We’re the first handwriting analysis Web site!”), 1986’s Bananarama or all that 1976 Bicentennial nuttiness? Trust me. People will be giggling a lot in 2006!

18. Magazines Are Alive
What’s going to happen to magazines that we all love and read? Nothing. Status quo, except perhaps finally—as I asked for last year, but no avail—fewer cynically unnecessary titles like thankfully-dead Radar and strangely inconsistent Giant which only seem to exist because publishers think they’re so sophisticated. Pundits will tell you “print is dead” but they live in glass and not paper towers. Everyone loves to grab something to take into the bathroom or on the train and until that paper-thin-computer is perfected—well, let’s just say that ink stains on hands are a thing of the present.

19. Some More, Just Because
Brokeback Mountain will win the Best Picture Oscar (wish this film could settle on a slogan –ads about the first great romance of the century are not only bullcrap but way wordy.) Yahoo! and Google! will finally become friends or friendly. Bill Gates will give away a lot more money, leading cheapos like the Waltons of Wal-Mart to ante up really publicly. Destiny’s Child will continue its profitable break-up. The Who will be laughed out of the Rock Hall of Fame for having another finale tour and for doing the theme song for CSI: Paterson NJ! Oh, and for you folks needing a laugh: Rupert Murdoch will NOT buy The Wall Street Journal in 2006, no matter what the self-claimed wonks tell us. As in all PR matters, Rupert, whose newfangled Fox Business Channel will pop on to acclaim (come on everyone –CNBC is not a business net), will coyly wish us to think WSJ is the natural step. … All the way to the last no.

RLM PR CEO Laermer is author of Full Frontal PR: Building buzz about your business, your product or you (paperback) and trendSpotting (e-book). He welcomes critical acclaim.