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TEN
SCOOPS IN TEN DAYS!
We've got a LOT of excellent, exclusive material in
the queue. Look for original reporting on brand-new stories
involving radio and the Interent every day for the next 10
business days in RAIN!
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 BY
KURT HANSON
Responding to a webcast ratings service from Arbitron
that's most recently-released ratings estimates are (as of mid-August)
for February,  a
new Portland, OR-based firm called MeasureCast
announced plans to compete yesterday with a service that will offer
its clients, among other things, a 24-hour
turnaround time.
The firm also announced the signing of its first client, the
Portland, ME-based aggregator BroadcastAmerica.com,
which  bills
itself as the "World's largest Interent broadcaster" based
on the number of different stations it streams.
MeasureCast, like InfoStream, intends to produce its statistics
based primarily on actual, hard data
from its client's servers. (By contrast, Arbitron's broadcast measurements
are merely rough estimates projected
from a random survey of a few thousand consumers in each market.)
Unlike InfoStream's current approach -- in which clients provide
server logs to Arbitron after the fact for tabulation and analysis
-- MeasureCast's approach involves putting custom-developed software
on the hosting provider's  computers
that reports back to MeasureCast on a virtual real-time basis.
According to MeasureCast, "This technology is tailored for
streaming media, and results in accurate, tamper-proof, and up-to-date
audience size and usage information."
Information on demographics is intended to eventually come
from a concurrent panel survey of webcast listeners.
(Note that Arbitron recently announced a partnership with Lariat
Software -- read RAIN's story here
-- that will eventually have them using an approach more similar to
MeasureCast's.)
MeasureCast was founded last year by a team of executives largely
from outside the radio industry. According to bios provided by the
firm:
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Founder/CEO
Randy Hill has more than 10 years of software industry
experience, including co-founding
Creativepro.com, formerly Extensis Corporation, a
web portal for creative professionals and previously held engineering
positions at Claris Corporation and Now Software, where he was
a founding employee. |
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VP/Engineering Aaron
Starr previously worked as a lead developer at Creativepro.com
and spent five years developing operating systems and development
tools at Videx. |
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VP/Marketing
Bill Piwonka previously served as a product line manager
for WebTrends Corporation,
held marketing positions at Intel and Oracle, and holds an MBA
from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. |
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VP/Sales
Pete Landry served as West Coast regional sales manager
for Creativepro.com. Before that, however, he developed and
directed the local sales efforts for two Portland radio stations
owned by Clear Channel. |
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According
to Piwonka, MeasureCast has been testing its systems on some
of BroadcastAmerica.com's servers, and
therefore they are already receiving data for portions of their
network on that 24-hour turnaround basis. He says we should expect
announcements on the signing of additonal clients before the NAB
next month.
A demo of MeasureCast's report-generating software is available
on their website here.
...
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...
MeasureCast has an impressive Portland operation which I
got to see when I visited the firm last month (full disclosure
here).
They've got cool, Internet-company-type offices and a
young, enthusiastic management team -- funded by an initial
round of $3.5 million from the Seattle-based venture
capital firm FBR CoMotion.
More details -- including, I assume, Arbitron's response
-- coming later this week in RAIN.
... |
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Want
to comment on the above story? Thanks
to the work of RAIN's crack team of interns, clicking
the headline at left should bring up a nice pop-up form. |
According to the website, "Rushlimbaugh.com
is the only place where you'll find the  award-winning,
and thrill-packed Rush Limbaugh Radio Show on the Internet. You
can hear it live, every weekday from Noon to 3pm Eastern, through
your computer." The stream is offered in both RealAudio and
Windows Media formats.
It adds, "For your convenience, you can now order The
Limbaugh Letter, America's number one political newsletter, here
on this website. Order today and you'll get Rush's new election
year bumper sticker "Algore Is a  Risky
Scheme" FREE, and his "Why I am a Conservative" travel coffee mug.
"View the Rush Station List to locate all the EIB affiliates
that carry Rush's radio program... so you can continue to listen
to America's Truth Detector no matter where your travels take you
across the fruited plain. Be sure to bookmark the RushLimbaugh.com
home page and get ready for more Internet Broadcast Excellence."
Limbaugh is syndicated by Premiere Radio Networks, which
is owned by Clear Channel. Visit Premiere's website here
or Rush's website here.
(And note the witty use of italics on the word "Reverend"
in the screenshot at left.)
Reprinted from yesterday's issue...
 BY
PAUL MALONEY
Non-commercial folk radio lives on
the Internet!
Operating
from the
University
of Massachusetts
in Boston, WUMB
is the flagship of a four-station
"Folk and Roots" network in
New England.
The station, while more formatically unified than many non-com's,
is still block-programmed. In
other
words, while most everything you'll hear somehow fits into the general
scope of folk music, there are periods of time during the week dedicated
to more specific programs.
And like a lot of other non-com's, there's plenty of human
interest news and community-interest items on the
air. And plenty of requests for listener support.
 As
for the website itself, they're undoubtedly on a budget; the
site is pretty utilitarian-looking. (There's a link to Boston Internet
Technologies, but we're pretty sure they're not behind to front-end
design of this site. They probably handle database management, hosting,
etc.) There's no specialized player (the stream is Windows Media,
supplied by Magnitude), very few graphics, and  the
pages load quite slowly (especially considering they're mostly
text).
But there's plenty of information for the devoted listener
-- programming schedules in both graphical (see left) and textual
forms, live performance
schedules, a Boston venue directory, a "top 100 CDs" list,
a pretty exhaustive list of artist links, and more.
Listener service pages including a FAQ, directory of station
personnel, and even a cool "how-to" on making your own
antenna to improve reception.
Visit the WUMB website by clicking here.
Lots of feedback is still coming in regarding last week's
various threads (Napster, GlobalMedia, etc.). Look for more feedback
shortly...or discuss among yourselves
on the new RAIN Message Boards here.
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 We'll
send you RAIN's e-mail news updates on a regular basis,
plus bulletins when important news breaks. (In addition, we'll
appreciate knowing that you're reading our efforts -- and
you'll hopefully appreciate reminders to read RAIN.)
You should be receiving
a confirmation e-mail from us shortly.
Thanks!
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| xxx |
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Try it
out! Explore
the wide world of Internet audio by clicking the screenshot above.
Miss an issue?
Visit the RAIN News Archives here.
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