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From BBC News Online: "'Old media' executives in radio,
television and publishing agree on two things:
The internet
is a threat.
It presents
a huge opportunity.
"But they have a problem. None of them is quite sure how to
make the web work to their advantage...
"Walt Disney, Sony, Viacom, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation
and German media giant Bertelsmann all have struggled
to come up with an internet strategy. UK firms like Granada,
Pearson and United News and Media have faced similar problems. Getting
it wrong can be costly. Time Warner, for example, set aside $500m
last year to invest in new online efforts, before opting for the
AOL merger.
"Dan O' Brien, internet analyst with Forrester Research, says
that traditional media companies 'have
had a hard time understanding the dynamics of the web.
It's
not just a matter of digesting your content, setting up a site and
expecting people to beat a path to your door. It doesn't work that
way,'
he says. Walt Disney, for example, has spent millions of dollars
building up its internet network go.com, but has not had much success
in pushing its entertainment content..."
Read the full piece in BBC News here.
From a Dataquest press release: The announced merger between
America Online (AOL) and Time Warner has created a media giant that
leads with the Internet, and its competitors must respond quickly
or be left behind, according to Dataquest Inc., a unit of GartnerGroup
Inc.
"Small companies and midsize companies newly formed by acquisition
must position their offerings in a way that it is accessible for
partnering and further acquisition," said Kathryn Hale, principal
analyst for Dataquest's e-business group.
"Major players such as RBOCs, Disney and Yahoo need to acquire additional
technologies, not build them, or they risk being sidelined. Traditional
media companies need to double their interactive media staff, or
risk finding that their new powerhouse competitor is streaming interactive
entertainment to their former audiences."
Read the Dataquest press release here.
| Clearly,
the observation I've highlighted in maroon above is exactly
applicable to radio, seeing as more than a dozen significant
new players (see "Kurt's Guide to Internet Audio,"
below) are trying to stream music-based Internet radio stations
to radio's current listeners. -- KH |
In Monday's issue of RAIN, we ran a piece on broadcaster
Lee Zapis's new company, Everstream, and his plans to offer newspapers
branded radio stations on their websites. (Click here
to read it.)
Lee
has an interesting idea...
--
Mark Bingaman, Saga/WSNY |
January
10, 2000 at 10:22:47
|
I had the pleasure of working with Lee Zapis and his family in both
Cleveland and Youngstown. I'd have to agree that Lee and the folks
at Everstream have quite an interesting idea on their hands. Those
of us pioneering the integration of radio and the internet have
been so busy figuring out how to get into the newspaper's backyard
that we may have sorta forgotten that the internet now affords print
the ability to get into radio's kitchen as well. Intriguing...
Add your
feedback here.
From today's New York Times: "In a move that threatens
the recording industry's attempts to control the distribution of
music online, MP3.com, a San Diego-based company that operates a
popular music Web site, plans today to launch a service that will
enable customers to store music online.
 "While
the service will employ a password security system, it could facilitate
the
swapping of copyrighted music over the Internet
by users... Like the Jukebox software, made by RealNetworks
and another software developer, MusicMatch,, the MP3.com service
will enable consumers to record CD's as MP3 files or to listen to
such files on their computers. But unlike the existing Jukebox,
the new service will be Internet-based, meaning that a customer
will have access to his or her music from any Internet-connected
computer...
"Mark Lemley, a professor specializing in Internet law at the
University of California at Berkeley, said it was likely that MP3.com
would be sued but that the company had a good chance to win such
a case if it could demonstrate that the service was being used legally
by a substantial number of people. 'As
long as there are a substantial number of people making legal use
of the service, it doesn't matter if there are a whole
lot of people making illegal use,' he said. 'The
recording industry would have to sue the individuals'..."
Read the full New York Times story here
(registration required).
Knight Ridder's chief executive, P. Anthony Ridder, said
yesterday: "Our company's primary product is local content; our
Internet strategy -- one of the most aggressive in the newspaper
industry -- is to exploit that local market content into a national
network of regional hubs. In this emerging world, they will be perceived
as increasingly valuable." NYT here
| "In
the past we always thought that Internet companies needed
traditional assets to succeed, and it's becoming more evident
that it's the traditional media companies that need the
help because they can't figure it out," said Charlene
Li, an analyst at Forrester Research. Read the CNET
story here |
Indeed, old media may learn a thing or two from new media.
AOL earns revenue from banner ad sales, but the lion's share of
its ad revenue comes from major sponsorship deals. "I bet Time will
start using AOL's sponsorship model," said Mike Donahue, executive
VP of the association. "They already have $100 million in deals.
Now I'm sure they'll migrate that to TV and cable." Industry
Standard article here.
(Form same article: Broadband, however, could be even better
for advertisers. Faster speeds mean richer media – for example,
banner ads may soon become as primitive as billboards, and Internet
users could see TV-like commercials playing online. )
From today's Wall Street Journal: After America Online Inc.'s
earth-shaking announcement of plans to buy Time Warner Inc., all
anyone in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street wanted to know was which
giant would swallow or be swallowed by the Web's other blue-chip
player, Yahoo! Inc... But Yahoo poured cold water on all that. "We
are not changing our strategy in light of this [AOL-Time Warner]
deal," said Tim Koogle, Yahoo's famously laid-back chief executive.
"We have created a distribution platform that is hugely valuable,
and that path is not wavering." WSJ here
(subscription required).
From All Access and Webnoize: "Industry veteran
Evan Hosie has been named Programming  Dir./Music
at America Online. Hosie joined America Online in 1998 as Executive
Producer/Music, for AOL's Entertainment Asylum. She's based in AOL's
Culver City, CA offices." All Access here
(registration required). "Hosie was formerly music producer
for Microsoft's entertainment division." Webnoize here
(subscription required).
Click on
the logos above to go to the corresponding site. More to come.
Contribute your suggestions for additional sites here.
(New today: MacroRadio.net)
Also...
Click here for some
screenshots of various audio players.
For a sample "RAIN Internet Audio Guide" page on
WWW.com, click here.
Want to read
even more? See menu at top left.
Any
thoughts or comments? Contribute them here!
|
|
Radio
and Internet Newsletter is
a daily compilation of news (plus essays, commentary, and
resources) designed to help you better understand the Internet
and its potential impact on radio -- both the dangers
it presents and the opportunities it offers. We hope
you find it valuable.
--KH |
Thanks for reading RAIN today. And if you like it, please
tell your colleagues about it!
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