We began the new year with a look back at some of the biggest news stories in radio and the Internet in the year 2000. These were the events that helped shape the issues with which we're dealing today. As always, we'd love to hear your thoughts on our choices and analysis. To read Part 1, click the blue arrow to the left of the date at the top of the screen, or simply click here.

Evidence that perhaps some of the bigger technology players were now seeing Internet radio (or at least an appliance for it) as a serious investment opportunity, this news arrived June 28th... Kerbango sells to 3Com for $80 million! BY KURT HANSON The former Apple Computer execs who designed the Kerbango radio -- the Internet radio appliance you read about first in RAIN last February (here) -- have sold their company to Santa Clara-based 3Com for an astonishing $80 million, they announced yesterday. They also revealed, in a separate announcement that the parent company of RCA, Thomson Electronics, has signed a licensing deal with Kerbango to build Internet radios under the RCA brand name. Read RAIN's coverage here.

The following month, some real ideas about the size of Internet audiences became possible. Unfortunately, the true audience sizes weren't what anyone had been hoping for. This first item is from July 13th, and RAIN's analysis from the following day... Arbitron releases February InfoStream using new statistic From the Arbitron press release: NetRadio, a leading Internet-only streaming audio Web site based in Minneapolis, claimed five out of the six leading slots in Arbitron's February 2000 InfoStream Webcast report. NetRadio's "Hits channel" and "80's Hits" channel were ranked first and second. International Webcaster, Virgin Radio, a hot adult contemporary station based in the United Kingdom, was ranked number three in the February Webcast rankings. NetRadio's "X" channel, the "Vintage Rock" channel and the "Smooth Jazz" channel were ranked fourth, fifth and sixth respectively... The February rankings are based on a new metric for online listening called Aggregate Tuning Hours (ATH), the sum total of all hours that listeners tune to a given channel during the month. Aggregate Tuning Hours captures the total volume of tuning to Webcasts by combining the impact of both the cumulative audience and the time they spent tuning over the course of a month. Top-rated InfoStream webcast had AQH of 339 listeners! BY KURT HANSON Since last December, Arbitron has been releasing webcast ratings reports that seemed intentionally designed to make it difficult to see how many listeners a given webcast actually had. Now we know the reason: Arbitron tabulated the audience sizes of 389 Internet audio channels during the month of February 2000. Wednesday afternoon, they released audience size numbers on the top 50 of those channels. And upon doing the math, it looks as if the top station in the entire report, NetRadio's "Hits" channel, apparently had only 339 concurrent listeners at the average moment during the month! Read RAIN's coverage here and here.

Later that same month, we had the climax (so far) of online music's biggest saga. Back to July 27th and 28th for... Napster shut down! From last night's MSNBC.com: "A federal judge today granted a temporary injunction barring Napster Inc. from trading music online pending a trial. "Federal Judge Marilyn Patel said the online company was encouraging 'wholesale infringing' against the music industry. Patel noted that 70 million people are expected to be using Napster by year’s end and said 'what lures them is the infringing use.' Patel said the injunction will go into effect at 4PM Friday." Napster gets reprieve! From CNET News: "Nine hours before it would have been forced to shut down its music-swapping service, Napster has won a temporary reprieve. "The decision late today by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals allows Napster to remain in operation past midnight PT tonight, when a previous court order would have forced the company to halt the sharing of copyrighted music--effectively shutting it down..." RAIN's coverage of these stories is here and here.

On August 31st, Internet radio's promise of delivering targeted, inserted ads became a reality... Era of profitable Webcasting begins: Targeted spots served! BY KURT HANSON (with PAUL MALONEY) The long-awaited technological innovation that may be required for profitable Internet radio broadcasting has arrived: Sometime in the past week or so, Salem Communication's Christian Pirate Radio has begun to use Hiwire's ad insertion technology to send different, paid audio ads to different listeners based on their gender, age, and location. Christian Pirate Radio (CPR) is an L.A.-based, Internet-only station with live-sounding disk jockeys which Salem launched three years ago. It was the 7th-hightest-rated Internet-only channel in the most-recent Arbitron InfoStream report (see rankings here). Read RAIN's coverage here.

Please look for the third and final part in this series, coming soon in RAIN.

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From RBR: "Roger Clement, BroadcastAMERICA’s attorney, announced the company may have a firm investment offer from Bowman Investments and a binding sales agreement by 1/4.

"If the sale goes through, the court will be asked to approve the deal. Other interested parties are invited to appear at the hearing to top Bowman’s offer. Bowman Investments is a subsidiary of Bowman Transportation...

"Pursuant to a court order, BA’s streaming providers MCI, Sprint and Real Networks have cut their services to the company, effectively leaving most of the 700 affiliates without streaming."

Also from RBR: "How does the potential deal with Bowman affect that-is it safe to assume that Surfer (surferNETWORK) will still control BA (BroadcastAMERICA)? 'You know, honestly, I don’t think anything’s safe to assume at this point. And it’s a crazy world-anything’s still possible. We’re working through those issues over the weekend, as we have been over this week, so I don’t have anything specific to say,' observed BroadcastAmerica President John Brier. 'I think we’ll know more next week.'

"Agrees surferNETWORK SVP Marketing Strategies Susanne Curry: 'We’ll have information coming out next week as everything gets signed and moved forward with our agreement.'"

Read the stories here. .

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Listener-formatted MEDIAmazing, in its first appearance in publicly released MeasureCast ratings results, has taken the number one slot away from ABC Radio's WABC -- which slipped to number two for the week of December 25th. It's the first time since MeasureCast began releasing their weekly results that the New York News/Talk station hasn't been on top. However, ABC Radio stations retained their dominance, placing 13 in what is now the MeasureCast Top 25 rated webcasts.

It isn't clear whether this is the first time MEDIAmazing streams have been rated, or up until now haven't had the listenership to crack the Top Ten.

Listenership took another big hit during this holiday week. Looking back just a month, to MeasureCast's first release, we've seen the Total TSL number (sum length of all listening) of the top ranked station drop 64%. And if you track the listening of specific stations, that drop is often even larger.

Even MEDIAmazing, in the top slot, had a total TSL (Time Spent Listening -- the sum length of all listening) of only 38,433. That works out to about 229 listeners at the average moment during the Christmas week. KABC has a TSL of 4,766, good enough for the number 25 slot. That's about 28 listeners at the average moment for a Los Angeles News/Talk!

To see the MeasureCast Top 25 list, click here -- or you can always click the MeasureCast link under Metrics on the left-hand menu for the latest study.




From the press release: "Sonicbox announced the appointment of technology and entertainment industry veteran Scott Smith to CEO. In addition, the company also announced the appointment of Jon Holtzman as Chief Marketing Officer.

"As CEO, Smith will be responsible for overseeing key OEM deals, the further development of "Best of Planet" programming for the iM Band, and managing the deployment of the company's ad insertion and licensing of key iM technologies.

"Co-Founder Niko Bolas will now assume the role of Chairman...

"Bolas also announced the appointment of Jon Holtzman as Chief Marketing Officer. Holtzman brings over 25 years of combined experience in the high-technology and entertainment industries. As Chief Marketing Officer, Holtzman's focus will be on driving iM listenership through national and regional marketing initiatives."

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February 1-4, 2001	RAB 2001, Dallas, TX
February 26-28, 2001	Broadcasters Website Sales Conf. 2.0, Tempe, AZ