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From Entertainment Weekly: At
around 3:00PM Wednesday, the heavily trafficked ''Survivor''
home page  made
an early announcement about its most tightly kept weekly secret:
the contestant who was kicked off the island in the yet to be broadcast
episode.
The spoiler: Greg Buis, the ''lovably eccentric'' Ivy League
graduate, had his nature phone service permanently disconnected
after 24 days on Pulau Tiga.
For about 40 minutes, CBS's site offered Greg's bio...photos
of the decisive moment at the Tribal Council... in other words,
all of the updates that usually appear on Thursdays, after
the episode has aired. Then, suddenly, by 3:30PM, all of this information
disappeared and was replaced by a blank, untitled browser window.
Was it an in-house glitch that caused CBS to give away its most
closely guarded secret, or did a hacker somehow access the
site...? The network declined to comment... Our solution: exile
the culprit to Pulau Tiga.
| Read
the full article from
Entertainment Weekly here.
(Note
that this is a different problem than the possible major
revelation described in RAIN yesterday.) |
|
The moral: If your radio station's website is critical
to an on-air contest, keep a close eye on it...and keep your
webmaster on 24-hour call (with server access from home) to
immediately fix
problems if they arise.
|
From
Radio & Records: "Radio
ad revenues  exceeded
$2 billion dollars in May, making for the highest month of revenues
in the history of the medium.
"It was only six years ago — in May '94 — that radio
revenues exceeded $1 billion for the first time. The incredible
showing has spurred RAB
President/CEO Gary Fries to predict the radio industry will
end the year with more than $20 billion in revenues. That’s 15%
higher than last year’s $17.4 billion, and Fries says the figures
could even be higher if the economy performs as expected..."
Read more in R&R Online here.
From
Radio Business Report: Monday’s
[print version of] RBR
told you that S&P analyst Will Donald had raised his estimate of
2000 radio revenues to over $20B, to $21.2B. Now there’s further
confirmation  from
the RAB that the $20B barrier will fall this year. |
RAB says May radio revenues topped $2B, making it the #1
revenue month in the history of radio. The trade group says it’s
“conservative” estimate is that 2000 revenues will rise 15% from
1999 to $20.33B. “While the biggest gains have been in the largest
markets, we are now seeing significant growth in even the smallest
markets,” noted RAB CEO Gary Fries.
Read more in RBR.com
here.
From the New York Times: "Less than two years ago, the
first handheld MP3 player was
introduced, at a time when  downloadable
digital music was still a mystery to just about anyone...
"That first player,
the Rio 300 PMP, has now spawned its third generation, the Rio
600, as sleek and curvy as its predecessor was boxy and bland.
"And it is only one of a new wave of consumer-friendly
 digital
players, aimed not at the early adopters, the
tech-hungry minority who will buy anything as long as it is shiny
and showy and it beeps, but at the mass market...
"The goal is nothing less than overtaking the cassette
player and the CD player as the standard for listening to music
on the go..."
| Read
this comprehensive piece on
the new generation of MP3 players -- including one that plays
Iomega Clik disks (but none that seem to have built-in FM capability)
-- from the New York Times's "Circuits" section
here.
|
Bertelsmann
agrees to buy CDNow
From
CNET News: "German media conglomerate Bertelsmann today
said it has agreed to buy cash-strapped online retailer CDNow
for $117 million... Under terms of the deal, Bertelsmann  said
it will begin a bid for all CDNow common stock for $3 per share
in cash... In addition, Bertelsmann will give CDNow about $42 million
in advance financing to pay off its existing loans and to fund the
company's ongoing operations until the close of the transaction.
In the past year, its shares have traded as high as $23.25 and as
low as the $2-per-share range..." Read the full story here.
Entercom partners
with Innuity for six markets
From
Radio Business Report:
Leveraging 17 stations in six markets, Entercom announced an agreement
with Innuity’s Media  Services
(IMS) division to produce comprehensive revenue-generating web sites,
along with training for the staff and their advertisers. The deal
includes IMS’s “e-ListenerSuite,” providing listener profiling,
contest management and an email marketing system that will be integrated
into the sites. IMS has more than 300 radio station clients.
WebRadio
issues revenue-sharing checks
From
Radio Business Report: WebRadio.com,
co-owned by GEO Interactive Media and Westwood One,  announced
the issuance of its quarterly revenue-sharing checks to affiliate
radio stations streaming on its network. The company claims some
checks were 200% higher than the cost of streaming. One six-station
market cluster GM, Scott Gillmore of LBJS Broadcasting in Austin,
was quoted as saying, ”Broadcasters are asking who’s making money
on the Internet..the answer is we are..."
Microsoft unveils Windows Media Player 7
From
Streaming Magazine: "Microsoft
announced that the final version of Microsoft Windows  Media
Player is now available for download... The latest release adds
more functionality to the player, integrating new audio-CD-creation
technology from Adaptec Inc. and a wide array of new skins and visualizations..".
Read
more in Streaming Magazine here.
BroadcastAmerica launches BroadcastBible.com
From
Radio Business Report:
BroadcastAmerica.com,
now sporting more than 10 separate online channels, has launched
BroadcastBible.com,
featuring Christian music  and
programming from Southern Gospel to Hip-Hop. Along with a host of
syndicated programs, two stations have signed to stream on the channel:
WJIS-FM Sarasota, FL and KXOJ-FM Tulsa.
 |
"If I ever get real rich, I hope I'm not real mean
to poor people, like I am now."
Buy this fine item from Amazon here.
(RAIN doesn't have an affiliate deal with Amazon or
anything. It's just a great book.)
|
Reprinted from yesterday's afternoon edition:
 From
this afternoon's press release: "The
Arbitron Company has entered into a strategic alliance with
Lariat Software, a leading
developer of streaming media infrastructure solutions, to power
InfoStream, the world’s first webcast audience ratings service.
"Under the terms of the agreement, Lariat will license
its MediaReportsTM software to Arbitron for use in the collection
of data from streaming media servers for the InfoStream ratings.
MediaReports is a robust streaming media measurement and analysis
solution."
...
 |
...
Arbitron Internet Information Services VPGM Bill Rose
told RAIN this afternoon, "The purpose of
this partnership is to make the whole process more timely,
more scalable -- meaning that Arbitron can measure more channels
and more stations -- and make it easier for the content distributor
to participate.
"The current system is that we gather log files
through an FTP system, which requires that we work with people
at the other end of the phone to help us set it up. Lariat's
software will make this whole process seamless."
This partnership comes at a time when Arbitron is falling
months behind in getting out its webcast ratings reports.
(See second story in Thursday's issue of RAIN here).
According to Arbitron personnel, the slowdown has been
caused, at least in part, by the complexities involved in
processing terrabytes of data that come into Laurel in a wide
variety of different formats. Using Lariat's software to standardize
the incoming data should help solve that problem.
How soon should Arbitron be able to start releasing
timely data? "We have some meetings coming up on that
in the next week," Rose told RAIN. He said that
his long-term
goal is to release results within four to
six weeks of the end of each month's survey period.
...
|
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