Arbitron's fourth monthly InfoStream webcast ratings
report -- reflecting January listening -- was released 
yesterday
(on May 17th), and the big winner was a new entrant, London-based
Virgin Radio.
The InfoStream report for January had 315 participating radio
stations. Unlike traditional radio ratings, stations must volunteer
-- and provide Arbitron with their server logs -- to be included
in the report, which is simply a tabulation and verification of
the station's server logs and not an estimate in the traditional
sense.
According to Arbitron's press release, Virgin Radio was
the first international broadcaster to participate. Its monthly
cume of 173,200 was more than twice as big as any of the
participating U.S. webcasts' cumes.
The
#2 station in terms of monthly cume was another new entrant
-- Salem Communications' Internet-only station "Christian
Pirate Radio" (at the URL "www.mycpr.com").
Full details and analysis will be coming up this weekend
in RAIN.
Until then, you can read Arbitron's press release (including charts
of the top 25 stations in cume and Time Spent Tuning) here
and RAIN's coverage of the release of the December InfoStream
results beginning here.
(Use the arrow to the right of the issue date to navigate to later
days' coverage.)
BY
KURT HANSON
If
you're here in Boston
for the Radio Ink Internet Conference East -- or
if you're a simply RAIN reader who lives, works, or goes
to school in the Boston area -- you're invited to join fellow
RAIN readers tonight for cocktails and appetizers on a
beautiful outdoor patio tonight at 6PM on Newbury Street in Boston.
The event is specifically designed to give you a pleasant outdoor
social event during the conference's 6:00-7:30PM dinner
break, and yet get you back in time for the evening session, "Strategies
to Increase the Value of Your Programming," which will be
moderated by former AMFM programming chief Steve Rivers
and features panelists including Bill Troy (RadioResearch.com)
and KPIG's William Goldsmith (KPIG) -- RAIN readers
all.
Joe's American Bar & Grill is exactly one block from
the Copley Theater. As shown by the map above, just turn right
as you exit the theater, turn left on Newbury Street, and
you'll see their outdoor patio at the end of the block, on your
right. Given the fact that we have to share the patio with other
customers, it'll be a "no host" bar, but RAIN
will buy a generous spread of appetizers.
Hope to see you there!
Reprinted from Monday's issue (with new reader feedback following):
BY
KURT HANSON
About 600 people from the worlds of radio and Internet audio
are going 
to
converge on Boston today for the Radio Ink Internet Conference
East, Eric Rhoads's follow-up to his extremely successful
Silicon Valley conference last fall.
Before we all converge on the Copley Theater this afternoon, I
thought it might be worth a few minutes for us to review what
we've already learned about where radio vis-a-vis the Internet
is going...and what we still aren't sure of.
In other words, let's take a look at what we're going
to Boston to learn.
At the Radio Ink conference last fall, we heard a lot of
what today seem like naive comments about the size of Internet
webcast audiences -- e.g., "We don't know how much more to
charge a broadcast 
advertiser
to have their spot played on the webcast, but certainly
it's worth at least 10% more."
Well, thanks to Arbitron's InfoStream first three monthly
webcast ratings reports, we now know that the most successful
large-market radio station webcasts they measured added only perhaps
1% -- or even only .1%! -- to the size of their broadcast audience.
Meanwhile, 
we
know next to nothing about the size of the Internet-only broadcasters'
audieces. They either choose not to participate in the InfoStream
study or they don't make the top 25 stations.
However, from what we can infer and speculate, here's what
webcast listeners seem to want:
| |
1 |
Some
office workers who have reception problems -- or who
for whatever reason don't have a radio at work -- may enjoy
listening to their favorite local station via the Internet.
|
| |
2 |
Some
people who've moved to a new city may enjoy listening
to the radio stations from their old hometown (including sports
broadcasts). |
| |
3 |
Some
people -- but more like tens of thousand than tens of millions
-- enjoy listening to niche formats that aren't available
in their markets (e.g., Americana). |
| |
4 |
Some people seem to enjoy the novelty -- at least for a while
-- of using the Internet for listening to radio station webcasts
from around the world |
| |
5 |
Some people may be abandoning broadcast radio entirely for
the Internet-only broadcasters, which offer less (or
no) talk, fewer spots, and a wide range of niche formats. |
What we don't
know at the current point in history are several things:
Will Internet radio listeners
migrate to the Internet-only broadcasters?
The multi-channel broadcasters offer lots of music channel choices
and fewer and shorter interruptions to the music -- but, on the
other hand, the opposite side of the coin is that they have less
personality (a/k/a "stationality").
In any event, if broadcast stations cobntinue to load up too many
minutes of spots per hour -- and economize in other areas -- are
they sewing the seeds of their own future destruction?
Can broadcasters complete effectively against Internet-only broadcasters
-- e.g., with subchannels?
Let's say I'm an AAA listener who lives in Chicago, but I actually
want to listen to a more "retro" version of the format
than WXRT offers nowadays.
Am I going to be able to
find and prefer to listen to an Internet-only broadcaster's AAA
channel (e.g., NetRadio
or Gogaga)...or will
WXRT offer its own variety of subchannels for its listeners to
enjoy -- and would those channels, with WXRT branding and talent,
be more preferable to me?
Last fall, no one seemed to know what type of advertising
was going to work on webcasts. (Some speakers even suggested that
the only viable revenue stream was going to be e-commerce.) This
spring, it's starting to become clear.
It now looks as if there are several different potential
revenue streams available for Internet-delivered radio: (1)
Banner ads and 
sponsorships
can be sold on the station's website. (2) Banner ads can
be inserted into the station's audio player. (3) Broadcast
stations can benefit in the traditional manner from having local
listeners to their streamed webcast as long as those listeners
write down their listening in Arbitron diaries. (4) Alternatively,
radio stations can sell different spots to their webcasts listeners
by 
using
"ad insertion" technology.
And there are even several different approaches to ad insertion
possible. (A) Spots called "gateway ads" can
be inserted at the beginning of each access of a stream. (Broadcast.com,
for example, makes money by running a gateway ad before delivering
each stream request.) (B) At the radio station
level, spots can be inserted oto cover the over-the-air signal's
spots ("server-side insertion"). (C) Or different
listeners can be fed totally different spots based on their age,
sex, and location ("client-side insertion").
The three
best-known players in this space, I believe, are RadioWave,
which demoed server-side insertion at the RAB last February, LightningCast,
which offers client-side insertion for Internet-only broadcasts
(i.e., those that are comprised of sepeate .asx files for each
programming element), and Hiwire, which offers client-side
insertion into live streams. All three are also are building staffs
to make ad sales.
How
should sales staffs be organized?
On a local level, one of
the things we still don't know is whether Internet
sales (banners, sponsorships, and/or audio ads) should be the
responsiblity of the current AEs or should be sold by a special
dedicated team. There are reasonable arguments in favor of each
approach.
What
kind of CPMs are audio ads worth?
Another thing we don't know is the kind of CPMs that audio
ads may be able to get from advertisers. They're highly-targeted,
audited, and I would think are going to be proven to be clearly
more effective than banner ads. Does that mean they'll sell for
three or four times the CPM of banner ads or traditional radio
spots? It's currently unclear.
Also, who will sell these national spots most effectively
-- traditional rep firms, "interactive" rep firms (ala
Interep Interactive), ad insertion networks (see below), or some
other entity?
By the way, if you aren't going to Eric's conference
today, many of the same questions will be addressed next month
at Erica's conference -- i.e.,  Radio
& Records publisher Erica Farber's "R&R
Convention 2000," which will be held in Los Angeles,
June 14-17, with an Internet track produced in association
with Webnoize.
(The next Radio Ink conference will be their second
annual Fall show, November 28th thru December 1st in Santa
Clara.) |
What do consumers want when they visit a radio station's
website? That's obviously a key question that I hope would expect
will be addressed thoroughly this week.
First and foremost, I believe we've learned, is that consumers
expect (1) access to the station's streamed audio.
(As previously observed, however, the 
CBS/Infinity
radio stations in particular have chosen not to satisfy this desire.)
Other desired items may include: (2) The title and artist
of the song currently playing -- and a log of those played in
the recent past. (3) The ability to enter a station contest,
request a song or dedication, or send an e-mail to station personnel.
(4) Particularly 
for
a talk-based station, national and/or local news headlines, weather,
sports, and traffic information. (5) Jock photos. (Joke.)
(6) Games, animations, and other amusements. (7) Music
news and concert information relevant to the station's format.
(8) Information about station advertisers. And more.
Some of the best-known firms that build websites for stations
include First Internet Media
Corporation, CBS/Infinity's Feed
the Monster, which develops very elaborate,albeit slow-to-download)
sites, and new entrant SiteShell.
There are now over a dozen firms competing for streaming
business. The high-end firms offer lots of capacity and 
multiple
servers operating closer to each listener. Other firms offer decent-quality
streaming at prices ranging from low to free (although they keep
some 
revenue-generating
opportunity for themselves, such as rights to a gateway ad or
an ad on the player). Some a
ggregate
your station on their radio guide or portal -- which could be
either a benefit to you or a detriment.
I
would assume that we'll be looking at these options during the
conference for a better understanding of the pros and cons of
each firm's offering.
And
which encoding format is best?
As for encoding techniques, different ones of which are supported
by different streaming vendors, there are now at least four competing
alternatives -- RealAudio 
(the
original "standard"), Windows Media (the aggressive
newcomer) , Emblaze (which requires no download or plug-in),
and Apple Computers' QuickTime (which CBS has chosen for
their its first step into streaming archived programming).
There's a lot of debate over which encoding format delivers the
best audio quality at the most reasonable price. This also warrants
discussion.
One possible impediment to the growth of Internet radio has been
its current tie to PCs -- particularly when it's contrasted to
the portability and ubiquity of broadcast radio.
However, numerous new approaches will be arriving this year to
help free Internet radio from that tie, including the following:
(1) Kerbango
plans to offer an "Internet radio" that plugs 
directly
into a phone line for Internet access (with no need for a PC).
(2) Sonicbox
plans to offer a system that feeds Internet audio from a consumer's
PC to his home stereo -- and includes a wireless remote control
for changing stations. (3) Akoo
plans to offer a similar system to Sonicbox's, although without
the remote control. (4) Voquette
offers a system that allows streamed audio to be downloaded 
into portable audio players.
Also... (5) Although it's not marketed as such, Netpliance's
iOpener seems to be a $99 device that would allow consumers
to affordably listen to Internet audio. (6) A new start-up
called Savos is planning
to give consumers a way to listen to Internet radio via the new
generation of wireless-Internet-ready cell phones that
are already in consumers' hands. (7) Motorola
has announced plans to offer a wireless Internet-based car radio
called the iRadio, supposedly before the end of the year.
What we don't know yet is whether consumers will be inclined
to pay any significant amount of money to get access to
streamed audio at locations other than at their PCs.
There was an interesting dichotomy of opinion at last fall's conference
over e-commerce opportunities for radio -- particularly
regarding 
the
sale of CD's via station websites and audio players. Some speakers
suggested that this was the most obvious e-commerce opporunity
of all for radio stations; however, one or two other speakers
said that their experience so far was that CD sales were virtually
insignficant.
Among the new approaches that have appeared on the scene since
last fall is GetMedia's
"Now Playing" Java applet, which shows the last hour
of songs that a station played, plus CD cover art and a purchase
link. Whether that has improved sales levels is a subject that
I hope will be addressed.
Other possible e-commerce opportunities for radio websites
include: Classifieds. Auctions. 
Datings
services. A complete local portal (ala Lawrence Amaturo's UncleWebster.com).
Station merchandise. Employment classifieds (i.e., a "jobs
board"). And more.
It will be interesting to hear which e-commerce features radio
stations are having the most success with.
As revealed in RAIN last Friday (here),
Emmis Broadcasting is building a consortium of several
broadcast groups to develop a 
national
portal -- the Local Market Internet Venture (LMIV) -- that
will be accessed through individual radio station's websites and
supported by a billion dollars' worth of marketing support annually.
This is certain to be a hot topic this week. The key question,
I believe, is whether a radio's station's brand can be extended
to encompass a full-service portal. (In other words, even if I'm
a P-1 to Star 99FM, does that mean I'm going believe that Star
99FM has as good an Internet portal as Yahoo or AOL?)
And just as the Internet is giving radio stations a chance
to compete more aggressively with newspapers (visuals accompanying
spots, coupons, targeting by zipcode, classifieds, etc.), it's
also
giving newspapers a chance to compete with radio stations
by adding branded audio channels to their websites.
Cleveland-based Everstream
is developing a network of such sites, and I would think that
there's a career opportunity for a savvy radio guy who knows how
to sell audio ads (e.g., a LSM or GSM) in each situation.
That's my take on the big issues as we know them today.
And RAIN 
will
keep you appraised of the goings-on here in Boston
as they transpire.
(By the way, did I miss a key topic or point? Want to disagree
with me on any of this? Contribute your feedback here.)
| This
overview, by the way, is available by popular request
as a 50-minute-long speech, with attractive accompanying graphics,
for group meetings, conferences, and similar events. E-mail
me here for
details. |
| "Radio
stations should understand their options..." |
Great overview,
Kurt. My one addition is that radio stations should understand
their options when it comes to targeted ad insertion. A few streaming
network providers (including iBEAM) offer targeted ad insertion
today in addition to streaming services. So radio stations don't
need to combine seperate ad insertion and streaming solutions.
Streaming networks use the same mechanisms as Lightningcast and
others (i.e. software interface to automation systems) to flag
ad slots and then replace them with higher value Internet ads.
We also can broker ad sales and offer a complete reporting package.
In short, several companies offer full-service packages which
make it much easier for radio stations to assemble a profitable
Internet solution.
--
John Fiske, iBeam
If you're hiring for a position that's radio- and Internet-related
this week, we'll post it -- free! Simply
e-mail the job description here.
If
you're looking for new opportunities that involve
the Internet, you can take a look at the first three
available positions here.
|
New
and improved!
| xxx |
 |
|
Try it
out! Explore
the wide world of Internet audio by clicking the screenshot above.
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Visit the RAIN News Archives here.
