BY KURT HANSON
Another well-known radio exec has segued to the Internet world: Norman Feuer, former owner/operator of Triathalon Broadcasting and previously a President of Viacom Radio and COO of Noble Broadcast Group, is joining San Clemente-based First Internet Media Corporation (FIMC) as its Chief Operating Officer, effective February 1st.

"Triathalon as a company got itself very much involved in the Internet several years ago," Feuer explained yesterday. "I had always felt that after I sold Triathalon, I would try to involve myself with an Internet-based company that interfaced with radio stations. Because of my relationships in the radio industry, and because of our early involvement in the Internet, I talked to a lot of Internet-based companies when Triathalon was sold. I felt that of all the companies that I talked to, FIMC really 'got it.' Their revenue model and their understanding of what a radio station needs is unmatched."

FIMC designs websites for over 200 radio stations -- and trains their sales staffs on how to sell their Internet inventory.

He will continue to consult MP3Radio.com, the joint venture between MP3 and Cox Interactive Media, and serve as a Director of the Executive Committee of the Radio Advertising Bureau (RAB). Feuer has been consulting FIMC since November of last year and begins the full-time COO position next week.




Any station that objects to being listed on the new Hiwire streaming audio tuner/player -- which some readers have objected to because Hiwire bypasses stations' intended audio player -- will be deleted from the player's database of radio stations upon request, Hiwire president Jim Pavilack said yesterday.

Last week, we wrote about Hiwire's elegantly-designed tuner/player, which quickly searches through a database of 3,000 radio stations and is capable of playing streamed audio no matter what format it's streamed in (i.e., RealAudio or Microsoft Windows Media format). Read that original article here.

In a heated debate in last weekend's edition of RAIN (here), some readers argued that the Hiwire player constitutes a case of copyright infringement and/or theft of services. Their arguments involve the fact that the Hiwire tuner, by bypassing the station's intended audio player, skips any "gateway ad" (the spot that some streaming companies often add when a listener opens a new stream) and any visuals (such as banner ads) that are intended to be displayed on the tuner.

Yesterday, Havilack spoke to RAIN and clarified his firm's position on the issue: "If you're listed on our player but we don't have a deal to do ad insertion with you, we're not going to make any money off you. So if you don't want the exposure on our players -- and we believe we're going to have millions of them -- then we'll take you off." Although the list of stations within the player is current static, Havilack says that starting next week it will be updated on a daily basis.

There's an "Add Station" icon at the top of Hiwire's website's home page, Havilack said, that allows you to request that your station be deleted from the player. You can also use it to modify the player's description of your station or to change the URL of the website you would like associated with your station. (Apparently some stations are already designing Hiwire-specific websites to better fit the browser window of the Hiwire player.) To visit their site, click the Hiwire logo above.

And your opinions on the subject continue to be welcome here. (We'll update the "Feedback" page regularly as new comments come in.)



From The Industry Standard: "The Time Warner-EMI deal combines two music label titans – but the talk is all about the Internet..."

"'It's Monday, so there must be a mega-merger to discuss,' said Eric Nicoli, chairman of EMI Records in announcing the merger of his company with Warner Music. But although the 50-50 joint venture brings together two of the world's largest music labels, the only topic of discussion was the Internet...

"EMI itself has invested heavily in using the Internet for more than just promotion, appointing a team in July 1999 to explore the opportunities posed by online downloads and sales. EMI President Tony Wadsworth said in July that the creation of this new-media department would help the company move beyond experimenting with the promotional value of the Web, and move into making the Internet a revenue generator...

Read the full article in the current Industry Standard here. And read Monday's RAIN article about EMI's new Blue Note Radio website here (the third article of the day).




In Monday's issue of RAIN (here), we quoted an old USA Today article that implies that Arbitron first produced a Webcast ratings report in January 1999 -- but for some reason never released it. Their first released report was based on October 1999 numbers and was released last month.

However, in doing further research, we've found that the story actually goes back even further!

On November 6, 1998, The Industry Standard ran the following item (read the full article here): "Arbitron's Net radio service is actually a site-centric audit. It uses backend technology from RadioWave.com that can collate streaming media usage data from the servers at broadcast sites... Expect both client announcements and an initial report on the Net audiences of 300 stations by the end of the month."

The end of the month would have been November 1998 -- three months earlier yet than the date mentioned in the abovementioned USA Today piece!

New feature in RAIN:

In this comedy bit from Harry Shearer's weekly KCRW/Los Angeles-based radio program, "Le Show," Tom Brokaw, a waiter, and others make fun of Dan Rather over the "virtual" Times Square billboard that CBS inserted behind Dan (to obscure an NBC billboard) during CBS News's New Years Eve coverage.

Click here and select the 1/16/00 show's "Bad Days At Black Rock" segment. (You may also enjoy the site's "Found Objects" section; see the menu at the top of the site's main frame.)

And if you find something great that you'd like to share with others, e-mail us here.

We've made it easy! Just click this button for some text that you can cut-and-paste into an e-mail document and send to people in your address book.

Thanks for reading RAIN today.
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