RAIN: Radio And Internet Newsletter

Slowly, some major radio stations are beginning to return to the Internet. This morning, RAIN was able to

receive a stream from Tribune Broadcasting's WGN-AM/Chicago. WTOP-AM/Washington, DC (owned by Bonneville) has been streaming again for at least a few days, and last week WCLV-FM/Cleveland announced that they would "black out" AFTRA commercials so that they might resume broadcasting on the Internet.

WGN seemed to be replacing ads with music beds, and what sounded like live local commercials. WTOP is simply "silencing" the AFTRA spots.

If you know of more stations who are once again streaming, please let us know here.

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From CNet News.com: "Aimster, one of the most high-profile file-trading services to launch in Napster's wake,

on Monday asked a New York federal court for a 'declaratory judgment' stating that its service doesn't violate U.S. copyright law.

"Like several of its rivals, Aimster received a letter from the Recording Industry Association of America in the aftermath of court rulings against Napster, asking it to block trades of copyrighted music through its

service. Now, the company is telling a court that it is primarily a service for private communications and that it should not be forced to dig into each subscriber message to determine whether it might contain copyrighted music...

"The company's software piggybacks on IM contacts, drawing 'buddy lists' from programs such as AOL Time Warner's AOL Instant Messenger and Microsoft's MSN Messenger and then allowing people to swap files within that group. Because the files are available only to a small number of people, these short-lived private networks of buddies are hard to monitor."

Read the entire story here.

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From the press release: "MeasureCast, Inc., the first company to provide streaming media content providers

with next-day audience size and demographics reports, announced today that it has entered into a marketing and distribution agreement with Microsoft Corp. that will make it easier for users of Windows Media Services to download and install the MeasureCast streaming audience measurement technology...

"As part of the agreement between the two companies, Microsoft is making MeasureCast's Active Event

Monitoring software plug-in for Windows Media Services available for free download today from the Microsoft Web site" (here).

"MeasureCast also will provide Microsoft with support for future enhancements to the Windows Media server software."

Read the entire press release here.

...

...
For some time, several RAIN readers have been under the impression that MeasureCast only rated Real streams (for example, see Reader Feedback here).

But MeasureCast Communications Director Sven Haarhoff emphasized to RAIN that his company has always been able and willing to rate WindowsMedia streams. But with this new agreement, setting up such an arrangement will be much easier.
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We'll send you a brief daily summary of each day's stories with a clickable link to the RAIN home page.

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From The Onion.com: "The lowest common denominator (LCD), the leading cultural indicator for American mass-market tastes, continued its precipitous drop last week, fueling worries about the future of the U.S. marketplace for ideas and stoking fears of a long-term cultural recession.

"The ill health of the LCD, in steady decline since the advent of television, has been cause for concern among the intelligentsia for decades. But double-digit drops in the LCD since October 2000 have alarmed even the most pandering members of the entertainment industry...

"The media are attempting to respond to the crisis: The eight-minute attention-span limit on network TV programming, a longtime staple of the medium, has been lowered to four minutes. Radio personality Howard Stern has been warned by producers to 'dumb down' his daily radio show. And Pamela Anderson Lee's syndicated action program V.I.P. will be retooled to a dialogue-free all-kung-fu/bikini format starting this fall.

"Despite the challenges, many remain optimistic. 'America has stood tall as the world leader in spoon-feeding mindless swill to the uneducated, sub-literate masses, and we will continue to do so,' Viacom president Mel Karmazin said. 'Nobody is better at pandering to people's basest tendencies than this great nation's entertainment industry, and if our material isn't stupid enough for them, then, by God, we'll use good old American know-how to make the product even worse.'"

Read the entire story here.


June 20-22, 2001	Streaming Media West 2001: Long Beach, CA
Sept. 5-7, 2001	XStream: Broadcasting on the Internet at the NAB Radio Show: New Orleans, LA