x Our second mid-day update for RAIN includes news of the participation of Saga Communications' online simulcasts in tomorrow's event, a link to CNBC coverage on the "Day of Silence", and information on KCRW's "D-Day for Webcasters" program. Read more here. -- DM x

BY KURT HANSON, PAUL MALONEY, and DANIEL MCSWAIN
Thousands of Internet radio stations and channels across North America are preparing to go silent tomorrow (6/26) as part of an industry-wide "Day of Silence". The landmark event is designed to draw attention to impending royalty rates that threaten to virtually shut down Internet radio as a medium.

Plans for the event have already received coverage in numerous press outlets, including in The Wall Street Journal, on public radio's "Marketplace" program, and, this morning, on CNBC.

Webcasters participating in the event range from thousands of "hobbyist" webcasters and mid-size commercial webcasters to major commercial and public broadcasterscasters and most of the largest Internet-only webcasters (including Yahoo!, Pandora, MTV, Rhapsody,and Live 365).

The event has the potential to galvanize public support behind webcasters and move thousands of Internet radio listeners to call their representatives in Washington D.C. and urge them to help our industry by supporting the Internet Radio Equality Act.

In 2002, the webcasting industry faced a similarly unworkable royalty rate structure. The May 1, 2002 "Day of Silence" event organized in response to that crisis was massively effective in drawing national media attention to the plight of the webcast industry, and many who were involved consider it to have been instrumental in turning the tide in webcasters' favor and to secure more reasonable rates for the industry.

When does the "Day of Silence" start?
Most webcasters are going silent from midnight tonight (12 am Tuesday morning) to approximately 11:59pm Tuesday night — either in their own time zone or EDT.

What to do with your streams
In a show of solidarity for the day's event, RAIN hopes that everyone participating will commit to a stream that is PRIMARILY — more than 50% — silent (although bleeps, surf noise, and static could all count as "silence"), with occasional PSAs interspersed that very briefly explain the event and its significance.

A number of brief and clear PSAs produced by Spacial Audio and Mountain Echoes Radio are available for all webcasters's use at the SaveNetRadio.org site.

Message on website
Webcasters participating in the event may want to explain to their audiences that the "silence" they're hearing is part of a national event, and that listeners' action is instrumental to the day's success. Also, in order to not confuse listeners into thinking that their favorite webcast is simply not functioning right, a message on the page could assure listeners that your service will return on Wednesday as scheduled.

An example message that you could post visibly on your site is below, taken from the SaveNetRadio.org website:

Another broadcaster joins "Day of Silence"
RAIN has learned that Saga Communications, a Michigan-based terrestrial radio operator, has agreed to stand alongside webcasters in tomorrow's "Day of Silence". Like other terrestrial broadcasters participating in the event, Saga Communications will make the simulcasts of their online streams "silent" for the day, as confirmed by Executive VP/Group Program Director Steven Goldstein.

"Day of Silence" coverage on CNBC
A segment of today's "Morning Call" program on CNBC was devoted to tomorrow's "Day of Silence" event, and featured RAIN publisher Kurt Hanson live from the network's satellite operation in Chicago. Click to watch the video here.

KCRW's "Day of Silence" segment
Public radio station KCRW (Santa Monica, 89.9 FM), tomorrow will present a one-hour program titled, “D-Day for Webcasters.” Online, KCRW will replace all its regular webstreams with this program, every hour on Tuesday, from 12:01 am to 11:59 pm on KCRW.com. [below graphic taken from Wired's Listening Post blog]

Guests on the segment, hosted by KCRW GM Ruth Seymour, include:

•  NPR's Mike Riksen

• AccuRadio's Kurt Hanson

• Pandora's Tim Westergren

• WAMU's Caryn Mathes

• Yahoo! Music's Ian Rogers

• Bagel Radio's Ted Leibowitz

• Live365's GM Media Johnny Floater

Tomorrow, webcasters can send their listeners to KCRW to hear the program, or provide the following link to play the looped show (which starts at the top of every hour) in a new window:

http://www.kcrw.com/media_player_channel?channel=0

More resources
If you'd like to issue a press release to encourage coverage of your activities in your market, you may download a template here (.pdf) or here (.doc), and customize them.

Here's a banner to include (make it link to: 'http://capwiz.com/saveinternetradio'). SaveNetRadio has more banner material available here.