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From the San Francisco Chronicle: "The president of NBC Internet, the San Francisco online media firm, will resign following a tenure punctuated with shifting strategies, a falling stock price and a redesigned Web portal.

"Edmond Sanctis, who served as president and chief operating officer since November, said in a statement yesterday that he is leaving to ``pursue other interests,'' though he added that his departure is at least partly because his duties overlapped with the chief executive, William Lansing.

"The president position will be eliminated, the company said.

"NBC Internet, best known as the home for much of NBC television's online content, has struggled to compete with other Web portals like Yahoo and Microsoft's MSN. The company is the 11th-most-visited Web property, according to Media Metrix, an online research firm..."

Read the San Francisco Chronicle story here.



BY PAUL MALONEY
Cleveland-based Internet radio programming provider Everstream is helping its affiliates bring the latest news and analysis on the Middle East situation to their audiences with JPost Radio, the online radio division of the Jerusalem Post newspaper.

Last spring, JPost Radio assembled a team of experienced journalists and furnished them with a full-scale radio studio for the purpose of producing news and features to accompany the newspaper site -- becoming the first audio news source targeted specifically to the Web. JPost Radio's staff includes veterans of the BBC, ABC News, CBC Radio, Reuter's, and The Times and The Sun newspapers of London.

Everstream creates radio programming which adds value and "stickiness" to sites of affiliates, such as newspapers. The Jerusalem Post is an Everstream affiliate. Through a special agreement, the JPostRadio stream has been added to the array of programming choices on the Everstream tuner, available worldwide on any website of the company's more than 200 affiliates.

News of the affairs in Israel are of great interest to many around the world, especially here in the United States. Israel is this county's strongest ally in the volatile region; Israel is the source of more absentee votes for US elections than any other foreign country; and The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune both Everstream affiliates, serve cities with significant Jewish populations.

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Reprinted from this morning's edition:


BY KURT HANSON with RALPH SLEDGE and PAUL MALONEY
A few weeks ago in this space, RAIN intern Ralph Sledge contributed a column in which he listed three things that he saw blocking the widespread acceptance of Internet radio. Briefly, those three things were:

     (1) The Internet isn't fast enough.
     (2) The equipment (hardware and software) for listening to
             Internet radio isn't easy enough.
     (3) The web isn't wireless (enough).

Ralph concluded that Internet appliances would eventually be likely to surmount all of these problems. Until those appliances appear, however, a few companies are looking to speed the growth of the medium with different new approaches.

New York-based, venture capital-funded ClickRadio recently debuted a software based Internet radio solution that differs from every other offering in one main respect: The music is stored on and played from your computer's hard drive.

This approach seems to address at least two of the problems mentioned above -- the facts that the net isn't fast enough and that the equipment isn't easy enough. (The ClickRadio player is blatantly "easy" -- you'll see what we mean in a moment.)

ClickRadio has been a long time in development -- almost four years, apparently -- and lots of top radio programmers have been involved, at least to some degree, with its development. Former WNEW-FM/New York City PD Charlie Kendall is its VP/Entertainment Programming, and other big-name programmers signed on as consultants include Patti Galluzzi, Scott Shannon, and Tony Grey.


In early February, ClickRadio's website said it was "Coming in March." In March, it was "Coming in April." We actually received our ClickRadio CDs last month -- and we've been testing them out since.

How it works
As just noted, ClickRadio arrives in your home on CD via mail. The ClickRadio website allows you to request up to two CDs, with each CD holding two formats' worth of music. (The CDs offered on the website represent the following pairs of formats: Classic Rock & Mainstream Rock, Alternative & Retro Modern, Top 40 Hits & Dance Hits, Hip Hop & R&B Jams.)

However, once you've installed it, ClickRadio actually gives you a choice of 37 different formats that you can listen to -- once you download a library of songs for each new format from the "mothership" (see below for explanation).

Once an initial library of songs is loaded onto your computer, ClickRadio works -- according to a somewhat over-simplified (to the point of possibly being confusing) introductory video that plays during installation -- by first waiting for an idle Internet connection, and then, when it finds one, connecting to the ClickRadio "mothership" (i.e., the server) to download songs (and, we assume, spots and promos also) in the "station" (i.e., genre) that you've selected.

This way, your browsing isn't interrupted, and -- unlike all other forms of Internet radio -- you can listen to ClickRadio even when you're not online.

Interesting and unique features
ClickRadio offers some interesting features, a couple of which you won't find on most other Internet radio alternatives:

Stand-alone player: The ClickRadio player (shown at right with the format-choice pull-down menu pulled down) takes up the top half-inch of your compupter monitor and incorporates its "What's playing" feature.

Thumbs-up and thumbs-down: As you listen to songs, you can vote on them and ClickRadio will, they say, increase or decrease the frequency of play of that song. (Several thumbs-down votes will apparently remove the song from your hard drive entirely.)

Skip: If you don't want to hear the song right now but you don't want to vote it off your station, there's a "Skip" button (accompanied by a cool sound effect).

Information: The "i" button in the player brings up a window in which you can access the song's cover art, the tracks listing of the CD from which the song came, a fairly-comprehensive bio of the artist, and, most surprisingly, the lyrics of the song! (Rights to use the song lyrics were, I assume, tricky to negotiate -- I've never seen them on an Internet radio station before.)

History: ClickRadio keeps a log of all of the music and spots you've listened to. You can click on any of them to hear a sample of the song, review its lyrics, or ("Coming soon") buy it.

Read Part Two of this story tomorrow in RAIN...

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From the company press release: "...Sonicbox, Inc. today introduced the versatile, low-cost Sonicbox K.O....

"Sonicbox K.O., an easy-to-use Internet radio device, uses wireless RF technology to remotely control the iM Tuner Software. This 'Knob Only' iM Remote Tuner is ideally suited for college students or anyone who doesn't need the flexibility of a wireless connection to their stereo.

"The Sonicbox K.O. consists of the base-unit that plugs into a USB port and a remote that controls the iM Tuner Software 'eyes-free' away from the PC. Through their PC speaker and/or by connecting a stereo to the PC with the supplied stereo cable, listeners can tune into the broadband-optimized iM Band, any station on the Web, and MP3 or Windows Media playlists to experience the best Internet radio...

"The iM Tuning Service supports the major streaming formats: Windows Media, MP3 and Real; enables e-commerce; and provides global access to cultural, geographic and device-specific content... The Sonicbox K.O. is currently available for $79.95 from the company's Web site..."

Read the press release here.

November 5-7	NAB European Radio Conference, Berlin
November 12-14	Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) "Broadcasting 2000: On-air / On-line," Calgary
Nov. 28-Dec. 1	Radio Ink Internet Conference, Santa Clara, CA, featuring a brand-new national study on Internet radio usage presented by Eric Rhoads & Kurt Hanson
February 1-4, 2001	RAB 2001. Details coming soon.