From BusinessWire: "Arbitron Internet Information Services announced today that The Broadcastweb Network, a Maine-based company that owns and operates several Internet radio stations, has joined its InfoStream Webcast ratings alliance...

"Arbitron Internet Information Services will provide audience measurement services for The Broadcastweb Network's three Internet radio stations, which provides both on-demand and live streaming audio programming around the clock. The company has been Webcasting via the Internet since April 1999...

"'We're thrilled to be working with Arbitron Internet Information Services to develop a valid and reliable measurement solution for streaming media usage,' said Ed St. James, chief executive officer, The Broadcastweb Network. 'Comparisons to The Broadcastweb Network and terrestrial radio stations in an advertising context are inevitable. Having Arbitron measure our listening audience size and habits contributes to a widely trusted measurement and realizes the impact of our streaming channels to potential advertisers. Our goal is to set an audience benchmark for multiple channel measurement.'

"The Broadcastweb Network joins other Arbitron streaming media alliance participants including ABC Radio Networks, Magnitude Network, Real Broadcast Networks, BroadcastAMERICA.com, Access 21, LaMusica.com, Audioscape and others." Read Arbitron's full press release here.

The next InfoStream report (covering the month of December 1999) must be due for release soon, seeing as the previous "monthly" report was released over six weeks ago. (See RAIN's 1/31/00 issue here.)

However...


BY KURT HANSON
As in the famous Sherlock Holmes tale, "The Hound of the Baskervilles," what's missing from the press release above may be as important as what's present. (In that short story, if I remember it correctly from junior high school, the fact that a dog didn't bark was Holmes's key to solving the mystery.)

Note that NetRadio.com, the Minneapolis-based multi-channel Webcaster that was supposed to be included in last month's InfoStream report -- but which was pulled out at the last minute, allegedly for technical reasons -- is missing from the list of participants. Does that mean they're out? (Or are they included in the "others" mentioned in the press release above?)

(We reported in late January (here) that "Arbitron executives also revealed to RAIN that the two major players that were scheduled to debut in the November report -- content provider OnRadio and Internet-only broadcaster NetRadio -- will not be represented in the report after all, apparently due to technical problems involving incomplete data in the server logs supplied to Arbitron.")

There's an old radio saying, "It's easier to sell with no numbers than with low numbers." Is that what's going on here?

After all, Arbitron's first InfoStream report showed that one participating company was streaming several dozen Webcasts, each of which had an average AQH audience size of less than one listener. That can't have been helpful to the firm involved.

(On the other hand, that company voluntarily and knowingly delivered their server logs to Arbitron, so they should have known this in advance, right? (On the third hand, if RAIN hadn't calculated and printed that statistic, it might have never come out, since the general take on Arbitron's report in the popular press was along the lines of "Ratings indicate Web radio has lots of listeners."))

According to a recent article in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune (read it here), NetRadio claimed a total of 1.3 million listeners in the fourth quarter of last year, with an average listening span of 90 minutes each.

I think that they probably actually mean they had 1.3 million listening occasions -- not an AQH or even a cume of 1.3 million listeners, either of which would be almost unbelievably huge. (If Orin Johansenson listens to NetRadio twice a day for a month, I think they would count him as 60 listeners in the context of the quoted claim.)

If NetRadio is in fact referring to listening occasions, then I believe that works out to an average AQH audience size of about 7 listeners on each of their 120 channels of music. (What's my math? I'll show you tomorrow.)

From the Los Angeles Times: "Tribune Emphasizes Deal's New-Media Play: ...At the same time, Tribune scrambled to counter adverse investor sentiment resulting from the Chicago-based company's huge investment in the slow-growth newspaper business. The company highlighted its new-media strategy, claiming that together with Times Mirror Co. it would reach more Internet surfers than the New York Times and USA Today combined... Tribune envisions giving advertisers a one-stop shop by delivering a range of local outlets such as television, radio, newspapers, cable channels and Internet sites in the same city...

"Tribune highlighted the new-media attributes of the deal, outlining how it would use the promotional clout of its 22 television stations to drive traffic to newspaper-based Internet sites, particularly in cities where it would own both, namely New York, Chicago, Hartford and Los Angeles...

"The company said that when combined with Times Mirror, its Web sites would reach about 3.4 million unique visitors a month--more than the 1.8 million people who visit the New York Times' sites and the 1.3 million who sign on to USA Today's site. "The combination of our two interactive groups puts us in the top 20 in terms of Internet reach," said Jeff Scherb, Tribune's chief technology officer and Tribune Interactive president. "This will be significant in capturing the national advertising dollars on the Web." Read the full article here.

From the New York Times: "In Chicago, the Tribune Company has been quietly transforming itself in recent years into what its executives say is a new media company that funnels old media content to television, cable, radio and the Internet...'We think we're creating the premier multimedia company in America,' said John W. Madigan, the Tribune Company's chairman, president and chief executive. 'We'll have a major presence in the three largest markets in the United States, and that presence will be defined by taking what are essentially local-market media companies and putting them together into a national footprint.'" Read the full article here.

You might also like to visit the Tribune-owned local Chicago entertainment portal, Metromix, here.






Don't you just hate it when you get suckered? When you take someone at the word...you give them the benefit of the doubt...and you end up falling for the oldest trick in the book?

Well, that's what happened to RAIN yesterday, when we gave prominent play to a story that KSAN/San Francisco was going to change formats at noon. (Excerpting an item from R&R, we noted, "KSAN GM Dwight Walker says a new format for the Susquehanna Classic Hits station will be announced at 11AM and debut at Noon. "It will be a completely different station, right down to the name and logo...")

We took them seriously. We believed them. Given the fact that Susquehanna is doing a cool Internet/radio hybrid in Dallas, we took a gamble that something like that might be involved and we made it our second lead story.

And then, at noon, with baited breath, we logged expectantly onto KSAN's website and saw their new name and format: "The Bone -- Classic Rock That Rocks."

Suckered!  (Actually, I should have seen it coming. If you look back, you'll see that Dwight's quote really implies, if you read between the lines, that it's just going to be a new name and logo.)

This reminds me of the time I was in high school and got enthralled by the biggest, most fantastic radio contest in history -- dramatically promoted as the final contest that the station would ever run, possibly so great and so impossible to improve upon that it might be the final radio contest in the entire market, ever. "The Last Contest!" (It was designed, although I didn't know it at the time, because I was just a listener, by legendary consultant Jack McCoy.)

And it all built up to a spectacular conclusion, after weeks of exciting drama -- the conculsion, the finale...the end of "The Last Contest." The final radio contest ever! Reverb! Tympani! A thrilling radio event!

Until the very next day, when the station began running "The Last Contest, Phase Two."

Suckered again!

More coming soon! Contribute your suggestions here. (Suggestions already in the hopper include RadioWoodstock.com, Nerve Radio, Radio Gogaga, and HotCountryHits.)

RAIN has returned to America from a week in Tokyo, where we were reporting to you on the latest in home electronics, wireless Internet (via cell phone), station website ideas, and more.

If you missed any of RAIN's coverage, you can access it via the links below. (Each day's issue included two or three stories from Japan; the issue's lead headine is described below.)

Complete RAIN News Archives here.