From CNET News: "CBS today named veteran Internet executive Russ Pillar president and chief executive officer of CBS Internet Group, a new division at the network...
"Pillar, 34, will be responsible for creating an integrated online presence for CBS, as well as for managing and increasing CBS's existing portfolio of equity stakes in independent Internet companies...

"Before joining CBS, Pillar was president and chief executive officer of [Richard] Branson's Virgin Entertainment Group, where he charted the growth of the Virgin brand in entertainment and e-commerce-related markets in North America.

"Before that, Pillar led the turnaround of online service provider Prodigy Internet, where he served as president, chief executive officer and vice chairman of its board of directors..."

CBS has traded airtime for equity in more than a dozen Internet ventures, including CBS SportsLine, CBS MarketWatch, Switchboard, iWon, ThirdAge, Hollywood.com, Office.com, and others. They've committed over a billion dollars' worth of airtime over the next seven years for their stakes.

Read the full story in CNET News here.



From MediaCentral: "Mark Cuban, a 41-year-old enterpreneur who became a billionaire selling Broadcast.com to Yahoo Inc., agreed to buy a majority stake in the Dallas Mavericks, the Dallas Morning News reported today. Cuban signed a letter of intent that would transfer control of the franchise, valued at about $280 million...

"A Pittsburgh native, Cuban made the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans last year at No. 28. Yahoo, a California Internet company, paid about $6 billion for 4-year-old Broadcast.com, which pioneered the broadcast of radio and television programming over the Internet, the newspaper reported. Cuban was reported to have received about $1.5 billion from the sale."

Note that the $6 billion sale price that Cuban and others received from Yahoo! works out to several million dollars for each station that Broadcast.com had signed.

Click here to read the story in MediaCentral.



Reprinted from yesterday's late-afternoon edition

From Bloomberg News and CNET: "CNET plans to start an all-tech radio station this month with radio broadcaster AMFM, hoping to benefit from consumers' desire for news about the Internet. The venture will broadcast over KNEW 910 AM in San Francisco, a station owned by Dallas-based AMFM. San Francisco-based CNET, publisher of News.com, will produce programming for the station..." Read the item here.

Additional information on this story: At least until last week, CNET offered a "CNET Radio" service dealing with tech news. The product consisted of a 5-minute archived show posted at 8AM PST and an 8-minute update posted at 2PM PST. (On the other hand, the site's "Help" page says that CNET Radio offers three programs -- 5 minutes at 10AM, 20 minutes at 1PM, and 5 minutes at 4PM. To me, this inconsistency suggests that at some point in recent history CNET reduced its output from 30 minutes of programming per day to 13 minutes.)

As shown in the screenshot above (taken 10AM PST 1/4/00), however, there have been no updates to CNET Radio since December 30th. (Has the product been abandoned?)

An article in Radio Ink (here) notes that, according to AMFM CEO Jimmy deCastro (left), "CNET and AMFM will incubate the new format in the San Francisco Bay area, with plans to roll it out nationally by the end of 2000... Under the terms of the agreement, CNET and AMFM will share revenue on the sale of advertising on the new station. Additionally, AMFM will cross promote CNET Radio on its six other Bay Area radio stations."

The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition (click here for the story; subscription required) adds that "while details of the programming are still being formed, CNET has hired about a dozen staffers for the venture, based in San Francisco."

In addition, deCastro told Radio Business Report, which predicted this story last November, that this particular model may be the shape of things to come with up to “30 other AMs that we could follow it up with." Click here.

CNET, by the way, also owns the domain name www.radio.com.


Reprinted from yesterday's late-afternoon edition

BY KURT HANSON
From eRadio and InternetNews.com: "Premiere Networks, the producer of popular talk radio shows from Rush Limbaugh, Art Bell, and Dr. Laura Schlesinger, has opted not to renew its contracts with Yahoo Broadcast, the streaming media division of the Internet portal.

"On Jan. 1, Premiere began hosting its own RealAudio and Windows Media streams of radio programs from its Web sites. Visitors to sections at Yahoo Broadcast devoted to Premiere's talk show personalities are greeted with a terse message about the contract expiration, but with no direct link to the Premiere-hosted sites."

In fact, by 12N today, Yahoo! Broadcast had added a link to Premiere's site, which then linked to individual sites for five of the talk shows, including Rush's (pictured, above right, giving the finger to the camera).

The article quoted Premiere's Brian Glicklich, vice president of interactive services, as saying "We can certainly duplicate any of their infrastructure, and when Rush Limbaugh says on 600 radio stations to go to a particular Web site to listen to a stream of the show, that's probably got at least equal value to having it all conglomerated at Broadcast.com."

Glicklich was also quoted as saying that Premiere's departure from Yahoo Broadcast "was amicable and had been planned for months." This, however, seems inconsistent with the fact that Yahoo! Broadcast did not initially offer a link to Premiere and the fact that some of Premiere's talk shows, such as Michael Reagan's, still don't have websites or audio streams set up yet.

The termination of the deal seems to decimate Yahoo! Broadcast's program offerings, as Premiere's product seems to make up a majority of the major long-form shows that had been streamed by the aggregator (see screenshot at right).

The departure leaves Yahoo! with long-form programs including Dr. Joy Brown, Dr. Toni Grant, Ed Tyll, and several other lesser-known shows, including "JM in the AM" and "The Ludlow Porch Show."

RealNetworks apparently also losing out
in Premiere's departure from Yahoo
Another apparent loser in this deal is RealNetworks, in that most of the Premiere talk shows' sites feature the Windows Media Player logo (and not Real's) and strongly suggest that the listener use the Microsoft player to listen to the audio stream.

For example, Dr. Laura's inconsistently-written "How to Listen" page, shown at left, at first tells the listener that RealPlayer is a technical requirement for listening, but then directs all Windows users to download Windows Media Player to listen to the broadcast.

The article notes that "Premiere's decision to go it alone signals a shift in strategy for the broadcast radio industry. Initially very tentative toward streaming media, radio broadcasters are now embracing the medium. 'They realize that they've got the distributional power, they own the content, they're selling the ads, and the back-end technology is becoming increasingly commoditized,' said Aram Sinnreich, an analyst with Jupiter Communications."

Read the full story at InternetNews.com here or excerpts on the eRadio site here. Add your insights or comments here.



MJI Interactive's Cataldi
promoted to Sales Manager
From All Access: "Dana Cataldi has been promoted to New York Sales Mgr./Affiliate Sales for MJI Interactive, a division of MJI Broadcasting. This new position is related to the growth of MJI's product lines...for interactive content and tool services." Read the item in All Access's Net News here (registration required).

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