From the Wall Street Journal: "To cast a wider net for job seekers, one online recruitment service is trying a new medium: urban radio stations.

supplies programming to the stations in exchange for air time. It says the radio presence helps it reach about four million people a week -- 75% of them from minority groups 'often missed by traditional recruitment efforts...'

"The radio stations air career-advice shows based on content jobcityusa produces for the Internet, including 10-minute call-in and e-mail chats with recruiters about job-hunting. Targeted commercials for jobcityusa air on the stations [and] the Web site carries ads for the radio stations.

Apparently the site design (and back-end) is licensed from a Cleveland-based firm called JobOptions, which also has deals with Xoom, EarthLink, Deja.com, and others. According to the press release announcing the deal earlier this year, the stations are providing $4 million in advertising. Incidentally, that press release begins with the sentence, "More than three million minority radio listeners in the New York Tri-State area -- New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut -- are searching the Internet daily to find jobs on a new partnered website, www.jobcityusa.com." This was, of course, a TOTAL LIE (unless every single one of the three stations' listeners was using the site the moment it launched, which seems unlikely. The week that sentence was written, actual site usage was probably closer to a few hundred people than three million people).

RAIN talked with FastBand Founder, President and CEO Andrew Spanswick yesterday, who disputed All Access's take on the changes happening with his firm's New Orleans-based GlobalCast channel.

Spanswick confirmed that as part of a change in strategy to give a reduced emphasis to non-music-related talk, the station did in fact choose not to renew Executive Producer David Ervin's contract. However, of the two producers on Ervin's staff, one left for personal reasons and the other was transfered to an on-air position, Spanswick claimed.

In addition, Spanswick told RAIN that record producer Paul Fox and his staff did not, in fact, "exit," but would be continuing to work with FastBand in some capacity.

Regarding the report that the station would scale back to a 12N-12M weekday-only live schedule, Spanswick said that was categorically untrue. (In fact, the morning shift today did, in fact, have a live on-camera jock and the station is promoting a live weekend-long feature this weekend.)

Visit the FastBand GlobalCast website here.



Regarding ClevelandHits.com (see original story here), various readers are writing in, including Hits Network president Mike Hilber...

"It comes as a shock to me how comparatively inexpensive it is..."I

In answer to "A RAIN Reader" about the size of our sales staff here at clevelandhits.com and how will I measure their success, my answer is this:

As a former broadcaster, it comes as a shock to me how comparatively inexpensive it is to build a radio station when you don't have a 75 million dollar license that comes along with it.

Therefore my goals for the Internet station comparatively are much less than even a small market broadcast station. I want to make a profit and, more importantly, build the network of 83 stations. The network will probably become more valuable than the stations profitability. By the time I get through building the network, high-speed access will become the norm and at that point I will have 83 Internet TV sites.

So right now we are building goals that reflect our expenses. They are doable. Streaming is hot and when you can combine an audio delivered spot with the visual advantages of an interactive site advertisers take a much stronger look at you. The main reason is even if the site is minimized the commercial message is still delivered. What is the real value of a page view if an Internet user hits a commercial-free jukebox site...?

"What, if any, copyright issues...?"I

I'm interested to know what, if any, copyright issues Mike Hilber needed to resolve to launch ClevelandHits.com.

"Local radio stations can easily combat this approach..."I

Local radio stations can easily combat this approach by providing great web sites and stream their own stations music to reach their target audience who may be listening to hits.com. In other words, why go to ____hits.com to hear CHR when you can already get it on your favorite local CHR station?

Reprinted from yesterday's afternoon edition:

Ex-record exec named COO of Napster
From Streaming Magazine: Napster announced that Milton Olin has been appointed its Chief Operating Officer. Mr. Olin comes to Napster from another Internet startup company, FirstLook.com, where he was Senior Vice President of Business Development. Prior to that, Mr. Olin was Senior Vice President of Business & Legal Affairs for A&M Records. Mr. Olin was previously a partner in the Los Angeles law firm of Mitchell, Silberberg & Knupp. Read the piece in Streaming Magazine here.

To read the original piece on ClevelandHits.com, click here.

"Korn into Britney Spears?"

I always scope out the "competition" and the ClevelandHits idea sounded interesting, so imagine my dismay (and competitive delight) to discover another fine mess the terrestrial radio mind declares as internet radio.

Terrible looking site -- so busy I get a headache. Our sales manager describes it as a trip to Coney Island on a budget. But the worst problem is that the audio quality is so bad at 28.8 that I couldn't hear anything. It was buffering so badly that every syllable was garbled and totally unintelligible. It even timed out on me. I'll try out our ISDN connection later and see if this makes a difference.

Maybe this is an opening day problem, but I tend to think they're putting all their money into marketing (and press releases), and absolutely nothing into content, design, or audio quality. And letting your listeners program your content? Korn into Britney Spears? Keep up the good work, guys.

I despair that terrestrial radio will ever "get" internet radio. But at the same time, I'm delighted that they don't. Give us "amateurs" a chance to build our audiences!

                              Wanda Atkinson, General Manager
                              3WK Undergroundradio
                              Music as art

"My question to Mike..."

July 13-16	Upper Midwest Conclave, Minneapolis
August 3-5	Morning Show Bootcamp, New Orleans
September 20-23	NAB Radio Show, San Francisco
October 5-7	Billboard/Airplay Monitor Seminar, New York
October 9-12	QuickTime Live! Conference, Beverly Hills (NEW)
November 5-7	NAB European Radio Conference, Berlin
Nov. 28-Dec. 1	Radio Ink Internet Conference, Santa Clara, CA

  Find BRE?

"Whenever I start thinking that I am not living up to my potential, I remind myself of the old farmer and his fight to the death with the insane pig. It's an exciting story, and it takes my mind off all this 'potential' business." Buy this fine book from Amazon here. (RAIN doesn't have an affiliate deal with Amazon or anything. It's just a great book.)

xxx

Try it out! Explore the wide world of Internet audio by clicking the screenshot above.

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