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Streaming audience rating service MeasureCast has released their first weekly "Internet Radio Top Ten List." The chart below shows the top ten of the 944 rated stations in the study.

ABC Radio had the best showing, with six of their Talk or News/Talk outlets ranking in the top ten. WABC-AM/New York topped the list with over 107,000 hours of reported online listening for the week of Monday Novemeber 27 through Sunday December 3. Total cume, which is the estimate of the total number of unique listeners that tuned in for at least five minutes during the week, was nearly 20,000 thousand.

Only four stations on the "Top Ten" list were music formats. Two were traditional broadcast outlets (The Beat/Los Angeles and WPLJ/New York) and two were "Internet-only" ("Radio Margaritaville" and "3WK"/St. Louis).

The following table is The MeasureCast Weekly Top Ten for the week of November 27.

Rank	Station	Format	Network	Total TSL (in hrs.)	Cume Persons
1	WABC-AM (New York)	Talk Radio	ABC Radio	107,409	19,336
2	The Beat LA (Los Angeles)	Urban R&B	CyberAxis	59,590	6,558
3	WBAP-AM (Dallas / Ft. Worth)	News/Talk	ABC Radio	53,188	7,755
4	KSFO-AM (San Francisco)	Talk Radio	ABC Radio	49,237	9,673
5	WLS-AM (Chicago)	News/Talk	ABC Radio	40,116	9,475
6	KGO-AM (San Francisco)	News/Talk	ABC Radio	33,214	6,922
7	WPLJ-FM (New York)	CHR/Top 40	ABC Radio	32,894	3,243
8	Radio Margaritaville (Internet-only)	Classic Rock	Broadcast America	32,222	5,893
9	KABC-AM (Los Angeles)	Talk Radio	ABC Radio	30,343	6,418
10	3WK Original Underground (Internet-only)	Alternative Rock	3WK	28,861	9,713

Of all the stations studied, MeasureCast offered this analysis:

	-- More men (71 percent) tuned in to Internet radio than did women (29 percent).
	-- Nearly 90 percent of all on-line listening took place on weekdays, with Wednesday being the top day for listening.
	-- 73 percent of all streaming audio listening took place between 9 a.m. and 7 p.m. EST.
	-- 3 p.m. EST was the peak listening hour for Internet radio.
	-- Nearly 25 percent of the listeners were aged 35-44, followed by 25-34 year olds (23 percent), and 18-24 year olds (21 percent).
	-- The South (33 percent) had the greatest number of Internet radio listeners.
	-- California had more Internet radio listeners than any other state.

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From The Standard: "So the startup market has stumbled and dot-com marketing budgets are shrinking... and we're only beginning to see how the recent shakeout will impact online advertising spending...

"Many marketers now see the trend going...away from offline dollars and in the direction of rich-media advertising.

"According to a new study from AdRelevance, advertising used specifically for branding purposes accounts for 54 percent of impressions. Click-throughs are no longer a realistic expectation.

"The explicit shift toward Internet brand advertising means that a greater emphasis should be placed on rich media. After all, the opportunities presented by rich-media ads - interactivity, full motion, sound and more space to display creative - allow advertisers to communicate the complexities of a brand in a way that a 468x60 space cannot.

"'Everyone is talking about getting more traditional advertisers into the space,' says Charles Buchwalter, vice president of media research at AdRelevance. 'These companies were born and raised on branding, and Internet branding will not take off until rich media is the standard.'

"According to Allie Shaw of Unicast...it is particularly an issue for companies accustomed to the nuance and potentially emotional kind of creative available via television ads...

"As users come to expect a more TV-like experience on the Internet (remember convergence?) and rich-media ads become more prevalent (they now represent only 9 to 10 percent), advertisers may hop aboard."

Read the article here.

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From the company press release: "Multicast Technologies, Inc., announced today that the company is releasing the Internet’s first multicast audio player, The MCT Player. The MCT Player is available to the public as a FREE downloadable file on the company’s audio station, www.On-The-I.com...

"Multicast Technologies recently announced the creation of their commercial, multi-domain Multicast Network, which dramatically reduces the cost of Internet broadcasting...

"Multicast Technologies is demonstrating this new technology through its own dotcom, www.On-The-I.com. This will mark the first time that Internet broadcasting will be able to reach more people than current terrestrial radio.

"Currently, web sites "unicast" their audio. Unicasting sites send out one signal for each computer which accesses the site. This technology makes it difficult to reach mass audiences due to the limitations and costs involved in unicasting an audio stream, thus making Internet broadcasting inefficient and unprofitable. Multicast Technologies uses multicasting so that one stream is able to eventually reach millions...

"The MCT Player is the first to deliver CD quality sound and the first to track multicast traffic. The MCT Player also features "Staggered Erasure Protection," a patent pending technology developed by Multicast Technologies that corrects for missing data, which otherwise causes drop-outs in sound."

Read the press release here.

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From the company press release: "Citing that it has met initial distribution channel and sales forecast goals, akoo.com also announced that Kima's manufacturers' suggested retail price will be reduced to $99.95 through the end of the year as part of a holiday promotion...

"Akoo.com announced that it has signed more than 100 companies to its new Kima Affiliate Program...

"Akoo.com's affiliate program allows qualified partners to sell Kima (RAIN publisher Kurt Hanson is shown here holding a Kima unit) via their websites and earn a commission for each sale. Additional cross-promotional and marketing efforts are also part of the program.

"Kima allows users to wirelessly access Internet audio - including Internet radio, MP3 files and digital music - away from their computers and on any stereo or portable radio up to 1,000 feet away."

Read the press release here.

Dec. 12-14, 2000	Streaming Media West 2000, San Jose, CA
February 1-4, 2001	RAB 2001. Details coming soon.