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Click
the blue arrow next to the issue date above if you missed
yesterday's issue, which featured (1) the new Microsoft
acquisition MongoMusic as the "RAIN Internet
Radio Site of the Day" and (2) news that Capstar's
Steve Hicks has joined Everstream's board of directors.
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BY KURT HANSON
Successful
venture capitalist
and Fortune magazine columnist Stewart
Alsop, speaking on a panel 
at
last week's NAB 2000 convention
in San Francisco, advised radio managers and programmers to look
beyond mere streaming of their broadcast signal when looking
for ways to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the
Internet.
The panel
Alsop appeared on was titled "The Experts Weigh In on
Broadband" and also featured Arbitron's Pierre
Bouvard, Coleman Research's Warren
Kurtzman, Yahoo! Broadcast's Andy
Collins, and Emmis Communications's Rick
Cummings. (Cummings and Bouvard are pictured below.)
Alsop
noted that, because radio is already
streaming, "You guys have the opportunity to really control
and define how streaming is done on the broadband Internet."
Asked by an audience member what radio executives who have
to go back home and deal with Internet and broadband should do
next, Alsop made the
following observations:
"If I understand it correctly, most of what you've
done on the Internet involves a radio station dealing with the
Internet by putting up a website and putting your broadcast out
on that website. And I think that's the
wrong thing to do strategically, because in order to
deal with and understand what the Internet represents strategically
to you, going forward, I think you have to create
new products.
"You have to understand well enough what your audience,
your customers, are doing on the Internet to be able to deliver
to them something different
than you're doing now." He cited 
Bonneville's
government-employee-targeted Internet-only subchannel of all-news
WTOP/Washington DC as an example of a new product designed
specifically for the Internet.
"I'd take whatever it is that distinguishes your station
from every other station in your local area and try to find a
significant value and build a new broadcast
that's strictly on the Internet. Essentially, try to introduce
a new product and find a way to associate a
revenue stream with that and build a new business for yourself."
(CONTINUED BELOW)
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FROM ABOVE)
At last week's Gavin.com convention, also in San Francisco,
I heard it observed more than once that the first iteration of
content for a new medium generally simply copies
the form of the previous medium -- for example, the
first movies looked like stage plays and the first TV programs
were simply radio programs 
with
cameras pointed at them -- but eventually
new forms evolve that take into account
the strengths of the new medium.
During the Q&A section of the panel, I stepped up to
the microphone, quoted this observation, and asked the panelists
if they foresaw new forms
of
Internet radio
emerging that would be better suited to the characteristics of
the new medium.
Alsop observed that "Background usage is not good
for new forms to develop" but suggested we look at the stations
launched by Enigma Digital, a firm his company declined to invest
in ("Venture capitalists don't like weird media companies")
but that had interesting interactive
components (e.g., KNAC.com
jocks chatting with their listeners
in a chat room while songs are playing).
Disagreeing with panelists who observed that radio's
primary strength is its localism, he noted, "There are countries
where radio is not local -- and the Internet is the least
local medium of all." He advised radio to look for new opportunities
for non-local approaches.
Finally, Alsop also noted that the oft-quoted statistic of
20 million Napster users is,
in his opinion, a wildly exaggerated number: "Nothing's ever
happened to 20 million people in a year ever
in the history of mankind. 
So
this is kind of a huge thing, and I keep scratching my head and
trying to figure it out.
"But if you break the number down, first of all you
have to toss out about 15 million
who have downloaded the software just once to kind of play with
it, and figured out that if you have a dial-up connection it just
takes too long and it's too painful and Napster's just terrible
software anyway...and it really doesn't work. So you get down
to about 5 million left, and 4 million
of those are students in their dorm rooms on a university
network -- not on even T-1s but on T-3s...which
is a relatively small phenomenon right now."
That, of course, would leave a regular Napster user base
of typical consumers closer
to about 1 million people, which makes a lot more sense.
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From the
press release: "NetRadio
and Comedy Central,
the only all-comedy network, today announced a 
partnership
to launch a 24/7 all-comedy Internet radio station. The Comedy
Central partnership also marks NetRadio's first co-branded agreement
as part of its strategy to develop similar agreements with a number
of leading content providers.
"The new comedy Internet broadcasting station will
provide premiere comedy from the best contemporary and classic
comedians
culled from CD releases and Comedy Central's vast library of original
stand-up performances. In addition, the station's content line-up
will be peppered with comedic songs from Adam
Sandler, alternative bands such as Barenaked
Ladies and They Might Be Giants...
"NetRadio will provide Comedy Central with a CO-branded
player that users can access through their site. The new comedy
station will be launched October 2nd."
From The Industry Standard: "Seagram's
Universal,
soon to be part of Vivendi,
cut a deal with Loudeye Technologies
to
encode and store 14,000 audio tracks and 30,000 music videos,
the label's 'entire U.S. active catalog of audio and music video
titles.' Loudeye has some high-profile encoding deals with other
entertainment companies, but the news here is that it'll be hosting
now, too...
"'We'll be storing 150 terabytes,' Loudeye 
founder
and CEO Martin Tobias boasted
to News.com. 'Between
us and the US Department of Defense, there's nobody else who comes
close to that capacity.'
"At a conference in Beverly Hills, the president of
Emusic.com said that
the subscription model made the most
sense, while the public statements of major labels like Universal
continue to suggest that they want consumers to pay by the track.
And while Napster's
still in business, no one's buying anything."
Read the full news story in "The Industry Standard"
here.
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