From Wired News: "The National Association of Broadcasters said Tuesday it has sued to prevent the recording industry from charging special royalties to radio stations that stream their signals to the Web.

"The broadcasters asked a U.S. District Court in New York to rule that sending over-the-air radio signals with recorded music to the Web is no violation of "digital performance" rights under a 1998 copyright law.

"The broadcasters said in their suit against the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) they were apprehensive they would soon face a legal claim...

"'Congress never intended for over-the-air radio stations that also stream their signals on the Internet to be subjected to new expensive copyright royalty fees,' said Dennis Wharton, senior vice president for corporate communications at the NAB...

"Stations which broadcast only on the Internet are without question covered by the digital copyright law. To comply with the law, an online radio company in Irvine, Calif., WWW.com, signed an agreement with the RIAA in February. Terms of that agreement were not announced..."

Read the full story in Wired News here.

Read RAIN's exclusive story on the WWW.com/RIAA agreement here.


From Radio & Records: "Mays to unveil web strategy in two months...and maybe sooner, Clear Channel CEO Lowry Mays tells Bloomberg. He says the company wants to devise an Internet strategy that includes its own radio stations and the ones it's acquiring from AMFM. "We are working on those integration issues right now," he said. "We aren't yet sure whether we'll maintain [the Web operations] embedded within our own company or have some tracking stock."

From Bloomberg: "Clear Channel is expected to announce specifics of its Web strategy during a two-day investor and analyst conference in May, analysts said. `'I'm a believer in all sorts of activities on the Internet that can reach out to more people and help sell our customers' products,'' Mays told the Bloomberg Forum.

"Right now, Clear Channel and AMFM combined have Web sites for about 65 percent of their stations in the nine largest U.S. Internet markets, according to a recent study of radio companies and the Internet by William Meyers, an analyst at Robertson Stephens..."

Read R&R Online here (subscription required) or this full story on the Bloomberg.com website here.



From Radio Ink: "President of Clear Channel Internet Division Jenny Sue Rhoades and Kim Johnson, largely responsible for millions of dollars in Internet revenue for Clear Channel in Orlando, are gone as Randy Michaels inserts long-time colleague John Martin.

"The split of Rhoades, who was also the GM of the highly successful Clear Channel Orlando cluster and WTKS-FM, was not a friendly one. Rhoades was called in to the San Antonio office by Randall Mays who let her go.."

Read the full Radio Ink story, including excerpts from the press release on the previously-announced transfer of John Martin to President of the Clear Channel Website Services Group, here.


From Broadcasting & Cable: "Pat Fili-Krushel, president, ABC Television Network, resigned yesterday and was subsequently named president and chief executive officer of WebMD Health, the consumer division of Healtheon/WebMD, the internet healthcare company...One internal candidate to replace Fili-Krushel is said to be Robert Callahan, president, broadcasting, ABC."

Read the full item in Broadcasting & Cable here; it's the fourth story on the page.



Including part 2 of RAIN's exclusive interview with Arbitron InfoStream executives. (Read part 1 here.)

Tell some of your industry colleagues about RAIN this week and you could win a fabulous prize package consisting of a amazingly stylish Sony Music Clip digital music player (pictured at right, below) plus a gorgeous Nextel i1000plus Internet-ready cell phone (pictured at left)!

The cell phone, this week's addition to the RAIN Viral Marketing Contest prize package, is totally packed with features -- including the ability to give you wireless Internet access when Nextel begins that service in some markets next month. (See full specs sheet here).

But the best part about the Nextel unit, in my opinion, is this: It's got an integrated speakerphone. That means you don't have to hold it up to your ear like one of those old-fashioned telephones. Instead, you can talk into it holding it halfway at arm's length -- exactly like Kirk, Spock, and McCoy used to talk into their communicators in "Star Trek: The Original Series!"

Here's how to win it: You're invited to recommend RAIN to your friends and colleagues. If RAIN gets 100 new "subscribers" this week (i.e., new readers who fill out the "Enjoying reading RAIN?" form above), we'll give away the entire prize package to one lucky winner (chosen randomly from everyone who has sent out an e-mail recommendation to date).  If not, we'll roll over all the entries, add something more to the prize package, and try again next week. (Three more paragraphs of fine print here.)

So think of a few people you know who would benefit from knowing about RAIN -- co-workers, subordinates, friendly competitors, clients, vendors, college friends -- and tell them about this fine Web-based daily newsletter. And win!

(Want to write an e-mail to a couple of colleagues right now, but need help composing the e-mail? Click here for some suggested language.)

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

Miss an issue?
Visit the RAIN News Archives here.



If you'd like an easy-to-read set of tables of the Arbitron InfoStream December 1999 results, they're now available for your viewing here in RAIN. Click here for...

           Top 25 stations in Monthly Cume
           Top 25 stations in Time Spent Tuning
           Side-by-side comparison of the above two lists

           Monthly Cume trends
           Time Spent Tuning trends

We're still tabulating Sunday and Monday's e-mail, but it looks as if new "subscriber" sign-up continues at Friday's rate, we'll be giving away the RAIN Viral Marketing Contest prize package this week for sure.

If you can think of a couple of more industry friends who might like to read RAIN, it wouldn't hurt to drop them a line today or tomorrow. (Click here for sample copy.)

Thanks...and good luck!

You can easily click through previous issues of RAIN by using the blue arrows next to the issue date at the top of the page. (This navigation element has been added retroactively to all of March's issues.)