BY KURT HANSON
I just read another news story about Internet radio yesterday that included the following paragraph:

"According to Arbitron, 11 million people in the United States are listening to Internet audio on their PCs, where they can listen to Internet-based audio on their own schedule, listen to programs that aren't available on their local radio stations, and create a personalized playlist of programs."

Yeah, yeah, yeah, sounds great. But there's only one thing:

The statistic quoted in that sentence is ABSOLUTELY untrue! Nonetheless, it's a statistic that's sweeping the country, as one journalist picks it up from a previous journalist's story and repeats it and then another one picks it up from that story and repeats it again.

But it's just plain dead wrong. What the Arbitron study actually said was that 11 million people have tried listening to Internet radio at least once.

The important, critical difference is that the vast majority of those consumers apparently found the experience unsatisfying because they are not currently listening!

Only about quarter of those 11 million people said they'd listened in the past week. And given the apparently low TSL that Internet stations seem to be getting, it's possible that only 100,000 people (or even fewer) literally are listening to Internet audio at the average moment. (This figure is consistent with a popular Internet-only webcaster or streamed broadcast station having an AQH audience size of 150 to 300 persons, whereas a big-market broadcast station might have an AQH of up to 100,000 persons.)



From yesterday's New York Times: "[Internet websites] have recently attracted a Los Angeles bureau chief from The Wall Street Journal, a New York Times copy editor, a Seattle Times sportswriter, an assistant city editor at The San Francisco Chronicle, a Chicago bureau chief from Business Week, a business writer and a copy editor from The San Jose Mercury News, the beauty director of Elle, a Fortune columnist and the editor of American HomeStyle and Gardening...

"This was an opportunity The Journal couldn't provide," [departing Los Angeles bureau chief ] Gumbel added. "I had this image of my daughter saying to me in 20 years' time, 'What did you do in the Internet revolution, Daddy?' If I had to stand there and say, 'Nothing special, dear ...'". Then Gumbel, a former foreign correspondent, added that he had found the technology revolution just as transforming as the collapse of communism, which he had covered. Only this time, he asked himself, "Do I want to be an observer or a participant?"

As RAIN has been reporting, several dozen radio executives have also left radio for the Internet world in the past few months, although they are typically not going to the Internet-only radio operators (but elsewhere instead). Click here for the full story in yesterday's New York Times.



From a company press release: "RadioWave.com, which creates customized interactive audio players that coordinate graphics, interactive advertising, and e-commerce with streamed audio, today announced an investment by the Susquehanna Radio Corp., the nation's largest privately held radio group. Susquehanna, which is the first radio group to showcase RadioWave.com's proprietary live broadcast advertisement insertion technology on its station web sites, furthers its pioneering commitment to the Internet.

"Susquehanna, which owns and operates twenty-three AM and FM stations in major markets across the country, signed an agreement last week to feature RadioWave.com players on all of its station web sites and to begin to use RadioWave.com's live broadcast advertising insertion capabilities. The proprietary technology developed by RadioWave.com is the first to allow radio stations to separate their over-the-air and Internet advertising inventories for a live broadcast so that the same inventory can be sold twice, once for each medium. RadioWave.com's unique services are helping Susquehanna to open up their broadcasts to new Internet revenue models."

This follows a recently-rumored investment by Intel in the company, which was originally launched as a wholly-owned division of Motorola.


From a company press release: "WebRadio.com, a wholly owned subsidiary of GEO Interactive Media, today announced the integration of a 'Now Playing' feature into the WebRadio player, making available a turn-key e-commerce solution to WebRadio's close to 200 radio station affiliates.

"WebRadio.com offers this free service to its affiliates where listeners can hear the station's music streaming live over the Internet, see the name of the artist/song playing and buy it on the spot.

"WebRadio.com's strategic partner, GetMedia, the leading provider of impulse driven e-commerce for radio stations, designed the 'Now Playing' technology."

As shown in the "Pixy 103" (WPXC/Hyannis, MA) example above, a listener can scroll across recently-played songs in the player and, as he or she does so, the album cover art in the player window changes and links appear for more information on the album or to buy it. We've seen this Get Media feature before, but I'm not sure we've ever seen it incorporated into a player before.

The press release continues, "GetMedia's technology is available to major market radio stations and networks. GetMedia's mission is to become the leading provider of media to consumers around the world." (That's a pretty aggressive mission!)

Reprinted from yesterday's edition:

According to a report issued last week by NYMRAD (the New York Market Radio association), the New York Radio Market X-Ray report prepared by Miller, Kaplan showed that Internet/e-commerce spots were the market's #2 category of advertiser for the full year of 1999 and the #1 category in December, during which they accounted for about 1 out of every 7 spots aired.


The following chart shows total 1999 spending for the top ten categories of advertising in the New York market:

Overall, as previously reported in the press, total ad revenues for New York market radio stations rose 19.5% in 1999 to a record $693.0 million.

Internet/e-commerce advertisers accounted for 9.2% of annual spending and 14.0% of December spending -- i.e., about 1/7 of total December spot revenues.

Read the full NYMRAD press release here.

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Part Two:

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