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BY PAUL MALONEY
Radio station site visitors are interested in checking out side channels, are Internet savvy and likely to be broadband-equipped, but most don't hear about the side channels over the air. That's according to Arbitron and Edison Media Research's Side Channel Study, presented this past week at the Radio Ink Internet Conference.

Side channels are Internet-only streams, available on a broadcast radio station's website, that complement the main programming or provide a formatic "flank" in hopes of preventing a competitor with a similar format from entering the market.

Results seem to strongly favor the use of Internet side channels to "fortify" a station's Internet offering. For instance, according to the report, 73 percent of respondents indicate that they are "interested" in side channels, with almost half of them saying they are "very interested."

Likewise, a very strong 74 percent of those radio website visitors who've listened to side channels say they had a positive experience -- more than half of those saying they "love it."



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Radio managers and programmers who are hesitant to add alternatives to their own program should take note: 90 percent of side channel listeners say they listen to the over-the-air programming of the radio station just as much, if not more, because of their side channel interest. Nearly one in three side channel listeners tune in to those channels on a daily basis. And, 68 percent agreed that they visit the station web site more because of the side channels.

Since the study shows that side channel listeners are overwhelmingly tech-savvy (71 percent have broadband Internet connections, 75 percent have been online for three years or more), and listen predominantly at work, radio stations might take note of a new way of reaching a desirable demographic.

Maybe if radio did a better job of promoting their side channels, actual listenership would be given a chance to improve. In the report, just over half of site visitors (not station listeners, but actual station site visitors) had even heard the station mentioning the side channels on the air.

Arbitron and Edison agree that radio stations need to address the issue of side channels, going so far as to suggest out-sourcing the project if necessary. The researchers seem to believe that side channels represent a viable source of income for the future by way of inserted ad's or corporate sponsorship of the channels themselves.

If you have the Adobe Acrobat reader (for .pdf files), you can read the study here.

Simply click the headline at left to bring up a convenient pop-up form -- or click here to use your own e-mail software.

From the company press release: "OnAir Streaming Networks, Inc. announced the company has been restructured to completely focus as a streaming media software, applications, and services company. Part of this restructuring eliminates the ad-share network, consequently laying off associated employees.

"The company's ad-share network, which currently streams music to more than 70,000 websites worldwide in exchange for a share of advertising revenue, is being sold off.

"'After being in the online music business for more than a year, we've seen where the market is going and what works for us,' said Scott Purcell, CEO and founder of OnAir Streaming Networks..."

Sources say the total lay-off was thirteen employees. The company was formerly known as WWW.com. The name change came last August (RAIN story here) with another change in the business model, when Purcell explained the firm would evolve from an Internet radio destination for consumers to a third-party streaming audio provider for other businesses' sites.

The WWW.com domain is now used by an entertainment-oriented portal site.

Read the press release in PR Newswire here, click "search" on the left, and enter "OnAir" in the "keywords" space.

Have an opinion on this article? Share it! Simply click the headline at left to bring up a convenient "Submit" form.

This feedback is in response to the RAIN story on the Arbitron/Edison study on radio station website content, here.

"Traffic is up, every quarter..."

Missing from this research (and other studies like it) is real-world evidence that an increase in "stickiness", or an increase in online listening (either in time spent listening or numbers of listeners) directly increases station profitability in a measurable and meaningful way.

The ramp up in online costs associated with "driving" listeners online appears not to be factored in. It would be a poor business indeed if a radio station were to undertake an affirmative effort to drive on air listeners to listen online, perhaps to the ultimate point of abandonment of their radios.

Finally, if it is true that radio websites do not give listeners what they want, why then, would total traffic on the RDG network continue to increase (it has)? RDG is the industry's largest hosting platform, and we have mostly major to medium market stations of all formats. Traffic is up, every quarter.

Michael C. Rau, CEO RDG, Inc.

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