From National Journal.com: "In Internet Alley -- this week's glitzy, floodlight-soaked epicenter of the new-media universe -- Gary Barrett is a throwback. He's the lone guy sitting before a microphone crudely taped to a table in the corner of the room. There he sits morning to night, talking, talking, talking politics.

"Barrett's one-man show of streaming press releases, commentaries, and taped interviews is not that far from that lone guy in a makeshift shack atop a Pittsburgh office building who reported the news on Nov. 2, 1920, of Warren Harding's victory over James Cox -- the first radio broadcast. Barrett, too, is a pioneer -- in all-politics Internet radio.

"Lost in the hype over new-media sites like Pseudo.com and Voter.com, which brashly shoved their way into the convention brandishing lots of greenbacks, are guys like Barrett of Policast.com, who scrape by on their sheer love for politics. Barrett and his business partner back in Davenport, Iowa, shelled out about $10,000 to set up in a 100-square-foot corner of Internet Alley.

"'I'm doing for Internet radio what KDKA -- the first radio station -- did in Pittsburgh when they first started,' said Barrett, 44, a 26-year veteran political reporter at old-fashioned radio stations in Iowa. 'We're making history. We're reinventing radio...'

Read the full story ("Two Mr. Lonelys Find Company in Internet Alley") from NationalJournal.com here. Another piece on the same general subject, from Wired News, is here.

RAIN's original story on Policast.com is the second story here.



Last weekend, RAIN's crack team of Summer interns added a new "Mesage Board" feature to RAIN.

Among the several interesting posts received so far was this one: Respected Canadian radio researcher -- and former programmer -- Jeff Vidler contributed this insightful observation on the music industry's handling of the Napster situation. (For your convenience, it's reprinted below.)

Click here for a brief overview on how to use message boards or here to go directly to the RAIN boards themselves.

Jeff Vidler New Poster Posts: 1		9:54 pm on July 30, 2000
	The fact is, Napster shutdown or not, it's probably too late for the music labels. First, they waited too long to harness the Internet. Once you give a puppy raw meat, you won't get him back on dry dog food. Given Napster and all the other choices that are now available, there is no longer any hope that the music labels will get anyone to pay $2-$3 to download a song or $16 to download a CD. Second, the music labels picked a fight with their most loyal and motivated consumers. Our firm, Solutions Research Group, has done a great deal of research on Napster users in Canada (and found, surprise, that they are very much like Napster users in America -- see www.inthenameofcool.com.) The first wave of Napster users are passionate fans and active promoters of music. They are heavy music buyers and they love telling their friends about music -- being four times as likely as non-Napster users to have recommended new music to others. How has the music industry treated their best customers? The labels have called them thieves and pirates -- and turned their passion for music against the labels themselves. If, as many predict, the battle for intellectual property and the dollars that flow from it end up in the court of public opinion, how big a slice do you think the public will want to grant the music labels now? In CNN's Napster chat forum this weekend, a Napster user proposed what he thought was a generous business model -- 50 cents per song downloaded, with 35 cents to the artist, 10 cents to Napster or an alternate software provider, and 5 cents to the music label. Ouch.
End of posts

Reprinted from Monday's edition:

Read Part Two of an insightful guest essay on how the record industry should respond to this new era as heralded by Napster, by RAIN reader Bob Bellin, here.

Thanks to RAIN interns David Don and Qianqian Zheng (top row, center, in photo), you can now search through RAIN's News Archives more quickly and efficiently than ever before!

To get started, simply enter a search term in the box below and click "Search." (Our engine supports wildcards ("*") and "+" and "-" inclusion/exclusion commands.)

For example, if you want to find all RAIN references in the past eight months for former AMFM exec Bob Visotcky, simply type Visotcky into the box above and hit the "Search" button. In Bob's case, the search engine will find two issues, listed in descending order of relevance (e.g., how often the phrase appears, how high it is on the page, etc.).

Click to one of those pages. Then use your browser's "Edit...Find..." menu choice to locate your desired term within the page. (Click here for more detailed information on RAIN's search capability.)

We hope you find it valuable.

August 3-5	Morning Show Bootcamp, New Orleans
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October 9-12	QuickTime Live! Conference, Beverly Hills (NEW)
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Nov. 28-Dec. 1	Radio Ink Internet Conference, Santa Clara, CA

xxx

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