BY RALPH SLEDGE
Recently, RAIN pointed you (
here)
to the beta version of the LMiV's second official website -- for
Chicago's
Q101
website. (The Local Media Internet Venture, or LMiV, is a joint
effort by several broadcasting companies to establish an industry-owned
network with large scale resources to provide content, technology,
and marketing to local member station websites. Participating
broadcasters include Emmis, Bonneville, Entercomm, Jefferson-Pilot,
and Corus. The CEO is Jack Swarbrick. In April, the LMiV launched
their first site at Bonneville's
WTOP-AM/Washington).
We followed the fairly impressive beta for a week or two,
and now the beta has become prime-time. Not content to simply
have a placeholding-site for the station, Q101 has launched a
large site chockfull of news and information about music, Chicago,
and sex.
Initially, it did seem as if the site has a great deal of
content. There are sections for music, "Out and
About" (reviews of clubs, bars, etc.), "Life," and so on. The
information goes beyond the radio station itself, extending to
as many areas as might possibly be relevant to people who listen
to Q101.
However, once you start digging, you'll realize that there
is a somewhat minimal amount of truly "original" material on the
Q101 site. The site is actually more of a "contained portal"
than anything else. The reviews of clubs and bars are all
Citysearch.com
reviews. Many of the CD release reviews and the artist information
entries are from
Rollingstone.com.
The content from Dr. Drew and Mancow is straight from
Dr.
Drew.com and Mancow's site (
here).
It isn't that Q101 is, technically speaking, a badly designed
portal. The information that it brings in from
other places is generally relevant, and it's pretty easy to see
how it's useful to have it all in one site.
It is incredibly comprehensive: the section on clubs and
events has everything from reviews of high-profile Chicago clubs
such as Red No. 5 and Spy Bar, to schedules of events at the Art
Institute of Chicago. There is a pretty strong embrace of what's
going on in Chicago on all levels, and the site designers are
certainly bringing in an ambitious amount of material.
It is also interesting to note that, at the moment, there
isn't an actual online stream for Q101. Emmis Broadcasting (Q101's
owners) are part of the LMiV, whose stations had removed their
streams after the well-documented AFTRA talent issue arose, and
though they have supposedly signed with RealNetworks for streaming
ad-insertion, the streams have not yet been resumed.
It's also worth keeping in mind that the site is brand
new. One expects a few flaws and a few rough areas before user
response will (hopefully) help the designers figure out what's
useful and what's not. Granted, the LMiV has been in development
for over a year, and it's reasonable to assume that at least some
research and usability testing has been done. But sometimes there's
just no substitute for letting the market tell you where your
product is going.
For all the little gripes I've made about the station,
I do want to stress that they have a good template for a station
site, if they can keep it up. Even though much of the information
comes from other sources, there is a very ambitious amount of
information on the site, and it looks as if it would take a small
fleet of web maintainers to keep it going. I have a feeling, though,
that unless the designers tune the site a bit, it might get passed
over by some Q101 listeners as just a collection of repeated information.
From DigitalMusicWeekly: "Los Angeles-based digital
broadcaster
Radio
Free Virgin wants to be a key player
in the transformation of Internet radio into digital radio.
According to General Manager Zack Zalon, this ongoing revolution
means 'taking online music beyond the PC' and onto a variety
of platforms, from handheld devices and cell phones to PocketPCs.
'Our goal,' he emphasized, 'is to be the most widely distributed
digital radio service in the world.'...
"The firm's revenue model follows traditional terrestrial
AM/FM radio, as a business built on
audio
advertising. Responding to criticisms that ad-supported
models don't work on
the Web, Zalon counters that '
they've
worked with amazing success for many years in both radio and
television.'
"The problem of the last few years, he believes,
has simply been a lack of
quality entertainment
to entice
listeners and advertisers. In the near term, however, Zalon
is confident that 'great programming' will reel in 'great revenues.'
And, again, with the Virgin name behind it, the company doesn't
have to work as hard to sell itself in comparison to its lesser
known, independent Net brethren...
"'Consumers are finally seeing digital radio as an alternative
for terrestrial radio,' expounds Zalon." (pictured at right)
"And Radio Free Virgin is exactly the kind of professional
music programming site that hopes to break the mold. 'Many have
staked their futures on personalized music stations (i.e. LAUNCHcast),'
he relates, adding that
he doesn't
believe that will work.
"Rather, he wants to rely on the same good old-fashioned
sensibilities that have sustained terrestrial radio -- access
to good music, colorful personalities, and a strong relationship
with artists and labels."
Read the full article
here.
concerned,
this site represents the future of radio.
both bright and bleak
at the same time. The future is bright, because Live365's content
is fabulous. The future is bleak, because making money on the Internet
is tough. I understand that Live365 is burning through a
a month. If this site ever runs out of cash,
losing it will create an enormous loss to the Internet community.
radio provider on the Net,
as far as original programming is concerned. This site doesn't deliver
a useless mishmash of recent baseball broadcasts or commercial radio
programs. Instead, the site provides a forum for thousands of independent
homebrew channels, pumping out a ton of unusual programming...
, and I can't recommend
it enough. Support it."
