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BY KURT
HANSON (WITH PAUL MALONEY)
 One
of the great things about international travel is that you sometimes
get to see products and businesses and sights that seem much  better
than those you see in the U.S. -- e.g., the mussels-and-french fries
restaurant chain in London called Belgo, the running path in Vancouver's
Stanley Park, and the miniaturized cell phones in Tokyo.
Similarly, when you're surfing the World Wide Web and actually
taking advantage of the "worldwide" aspects of it, you
can run across some great things.
One of those great things, in my opinion, is the London-based
webcast of VirginRadio.co.uk,
the adult CHR which was founded by Virgin's Richard Branson, sold
to a firm headed by Virgin Radio morning man Chris Evans, and recently
acquired by the Scottish Media Group.
You may have briefly checked out this site already yourself,
seeing as the webcast  made
the news a couple of months ago when it was the #1-ranked webcast
in Arbitron's InfoStream report for January, 2000. But even if you
visited it briefly then, let us encourage you to visit it again.
There's lots that that most of us in the U.S. could learn from it.
It's a great-sounding, real radio
station
After
spending much of the past few weeks listening to megabytes of
"automated jukebox" Internet-only webcasts lately, I must
admit real, live radio really sounds nice for a change.
And these guys are good. Great energy and enthusiasm from
the jocks and listener phoners make Virgin Radio just what any station
should be: Fun. Yet the station gives plenty of emphasis
to the music -- as you can see by the title of the station's home
page, it's "The Home of 10 Great Songs in a Row."
(According
to the station's owner's corporate website, "Launched on
30 April 1993, Virgin Radio is targeted at musically disenfranchised
people who are too old for chart music yet too young for gold format
stations.")
Well-designed home page
The Virgin Radio home page (shown above) is a well-designed
introduction to the radio station and the site. Virtually every
time one visits the site,
it presents a fresh face, because the main photograph is a 440-by-148
pixel photo that is swapped out each hour. Sometimes the
photo is of a station promotion, but usually it's a photo of one
of the station's featured musical artists (pictured at left: Reef).
Note that the station is aware that the artists are more
important to listeners than the air personalities.
On the other
hand, for the many who do care about the air personalities,
 the
first link on the page, as shown in the screenshot excerpt shown
below, leads to a profile of the DJ that's currently on the air.
(See example at right). Of course, that means that that small portion
of the home page is also updated every few hours
And what else might listeners like to do on the Virgin Radio
website? Well, they might like to (1) win prizes, (2) listen to
the radio station, or perhaps (3) buy music and music-related items
from a subsidiary company.
All of those links are right there where they should be at the top
of the page...along with an icon that links to the station's fishcam.
It's obvious
there's a high priority placed on content. There's lots of
it, most of it is at least good, and they promise right at the bottom
of the home page that it's updated every hour all day. You
 don't
find much like this from U.S. broadcasters; it's clearly not the
part-time promotions/production intern behind this.
Customized audio player
includes website links within the player
Virgin Radio offers listeners an extremely wide variety of
options for listening to the station's webcast.
You
can listen with the customary technology (RealAudio, Windows
Media, or QuickTIme), or pull down high-quality music samples elsewhere
on the site in Liquid Audio format.
But check out  the
site's proprietary player, called "the G.I.M.P."
-- which, although the player's icon alludes to the character in
"Pulp Fiction," actually stands for Ginger Interactive
Media Player. (Ginger Media Group is the name of Chris Evans's company.)
With the G.I.M.P., shown at left, you
can listen to the live stream, leave the site, and still have one-click
access to key areas of the site's content. It also incorporates
a nice "Now Playing" feature.
Advertisers
get good treatment, too
If
you've ever been a jock, surely you've had a listener call and
ask for details on an ad you had long since  mentally
"tuned out." Virgin's website offers a great information
service to the station's listeners -- and a nice spiff for clients
on top of it.
The "Ads" link leads to a very exhaustive  alphabetical
list of station advertisers, including links to the appropriate
sites, and even some Real audio spots. (Though
I had never thought of
it this way, a guess Twix Ice Cream really is "The only
ice cream with a biscuit backbone.")
Thorough music coverage
is included
You'll
also find a pretty thorough "Music"section --
including news, artist interviews and photos, a station playlist
with listening samples, sales charts, the lowdown on their "V2000"
fest, and a RealAudio "GIG Guide."
In addition to the other
typical departments ("Shows," "Freebies," and
a cool out-sourced "Sports" guide!), Virgin has
a very impressive Magazine
area. Lots of cool links to video reviews, a kind of tech-heavy
webcam, and "groovy gadgets." There's a fun little toy
that allows the user to zoom in and pan around in posted pictures,
though it seemed that Virgin was still learning to use this technology.
The freebies
are there too.
There's lots to download, like icons (e.g., a Virgin Radio
on-screen pointer), wallpaper, screensavers, and what we found cool:
Old station jingles
(if your devoted P1 listeners are your site's most likely
visitors, this is just the kind of thing they're looking for...)
 Support
for WAP cell phones
In
the Magazine, you'll find something most interesting:
Virgin's support of WAP -- "Wireless Application Protocol."
Hmmm.... wireless radio. Actually, it's Virgin extending
their brand to yet another medium, wireless phones.
According to the site, the WAP service currently includes:
- information
about the song currently being played (with a link through to
the Virgin Radio directory where the record can be purchased)
- the on-air
schedule and playlist,
- online
interactive games (including a Rock Trivia Quiz, a Film Trivia
Quiz and 'Rock n Roll Top Trumps' where listeners pitch their
wits against the Virgin Radio computer), and...
- details
of current advertisers, with telephone numbers and links through
to advertiser's own WAP and web sites."
No WAP?
No problem.
Click the "iobox" for a "wireless Virgin emulation!"
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Here
in the U.S., some
broadcasters are still struggling with just the most basic of
web issues like generating content and streaming. In the UK,
Virgin is not only taking advantage of the additional listening
and branding and revenue opportunities offered by the Internet,
but the next step after that! |
Navigation is clear and consistent
You'll
find one-click links for contests and other important features
on nearly every single page
of the site. They don't let you get lost.
The
site itself is pretty easy to navigate, especially given the
amount of info. As you enter deeper into any of the main sections
(like Music, the Magazine, Sports, etc.), there's
always a sub-menu of the section you're in, right there on the left.
Links to main section are always along the bottom, and clicking
the ever present Virgin star logo gets you back to square one.
A
window into another culture
Finally,
listening to radio stations from countries other than
your own can be quite a telling "window" into another
culture. The musical staples seemed 
to include records we're sure have never felt the warming glow of
a CD player in an American broadcast studio (deep Iggy Pop library
cuts!), but they're not too cool for Bruce Springsteen's
"Hungry Heart" and the Aerosmith song shown on the player
near the top of this page.
You can hear a familiar positioner like "The Home
of 10 Great Songs in a Row" followed by a mention of "the
Queen Mum's 100th birthday." Sorry to sound a bit naive, but
listening to radio (especially good radio) from around the globe
is still pretty neat.
In conclusion,
Virgin Radio is a very good, listenable radio station that has
done a great job of enhancing their brand with an excellent and
very usable web site.
Discuss your opinions about VirginRadio.co.uk or recommend
a future "Site of the Week" here.
Secondary
menubar from home page.
Fishcam.
Studio tour.
Pan-able and zoom-able studio view. |
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Lots of feedback is still coming in regarding this week's
conversational threads (Napster, GlobalMedia, etc.). I have to run
to Iowa for a wedding, but look for more feedback on Monday...or
discuss among yourselves
this weekend on the new RAIN Message Boards.
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