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Top Traditional Broadcasters Agree: Radio Needs A Unique Strategy for Streaming
From Billboard Radio Monitor and RAIN: "To monetize radio's investment in the Internet, programmers and managers must first pull back from the logic that has guided them for years. Their basic broadcasting DNA has to be completely rewritten.
"Simply put, they need to be deprogrammed. While radio can successfully extend its brands online, the two are entirely different mediums. Merely replicating radio for the Internet negates all the characteristics that make the Web so powerful: interactivity, customization, on-demand capability and the like.
"Such was the consensus among the four Web gurus who gathered Oct. 20 at Billboard Radio Monitor headquarters in New York... While the execs who oversee the online efforts for Clear Channel, Infinity, Emmis and National Public Radio agree there is money to be made in cyberspace, there are stark contrasts in their Internet strategies...
"How different is the Web business model from radio? So different that 'success is a punishing experience on the Internet,' NPR executive VP Ken Stern said. 'The more people listen, the more bandwidth costs you have,'...
"No longer does NPR, perhaps the most aggressive radio entity on the Web, think of its sites as an extension of the on-air experience... NPR sorts its robust podcast offerings by topic, by editorial choice and by number of requests received. Served in bite-size portions, they run in six- to 13-minute bursts rather than radio's standard longer forms...
"Round-table participants agreed that radio is playing catch-up on the Internet. Case in point: station Web sites. Visitors to Clear Channel sites were not getting the quality online experience they had grown accustomed to from other sites, the company concluded. So its online unit systematically overhauled station sites...
"'Our sites were terrible,' Gerrit Meier [senior VP/GM of Clear Channel Online Music & Radio] said...To woo at-work listeners, the company also increased the number of stations streaming on the Net from less than 100 at the beginning of the year to 400-plus now. Meier said, 'Audiences told us, 'We don't have radios at work anymore. We have computers.' "
Read the full article at Billboard Radio Monitor
posted by Unknown @ Tuesday, November 15, 2005,
