Category Archives: Internet

“Radio audience as big as it’s ever going to get”

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I had lunch this week with a long-time acquaintance who happens to be one of the most successful small market broadcasters in the country. His stations generate millions of dollars in ad sales and have for years. He asked us to come up and talk about the Internet and I was expecting the usual “Don’t waste your time on that Internet bullshit” line. So, when he said (paraphrasing here) if broadcasters don’t figure out the Internet, they’ll perish… the hair on my arms stood up. He went on to say he thought radio’s audience was as big as it’s ever going to get. And that most small market radio stations are breaking even at best. Oh, and he said he didn’t know any young people that listened to the radio these days. Digital radio? Gonna be bad, not good, for rural broadcasters. He said more but I was in such a state of shock I can’t recall everything.

And I’d heard it all before. Online, not from a life-time broadcaster. I didn’t get the impression he’s shared his concerns with other broadcasters. Sort of the elephant in the room that nobody is talking about. And I’m not going to out this guy. Besides, nobody would ever believe he said –or believes– any of the above.

This must have been the mood when the plains Indians saw the first wagon trains roll over the hill. It ain’t gonna ever be the same again. Might be good. Might be better. But it ain’t gonna be the same.

Gnomedex 5

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Presenters at this year’s conference include: Adam Curry, Dave Winer, Steve Gillmor, Steve Rubel, Robert Scoble, Marc Canter, John Battelle, Dan Gillmor, and others. Okay, this is the kind of stuff that interests me. If sitting in a conference room for three days listening to people talk about blogging and podasting and RSS and shit like that doesn’t sound like any fun to you… you can start to understand why your idea of a vacation doesn’t make me clap my little hands.

Ad dollars moving online

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“This year the combined advertising revenues of Google and Yahoo! will rival the combined prime-time ad revenues of Americas three big television networks, ABC, CBS and NBC, predicts Advertising Age. It will, says the trade magazine, represent a watershed moment in the evolution of the internet as an advertising medium. A 30-second prime-time TV ad was once considered the most effectiveand the most expensiveform of advertising. But that was before the internet got going.”

— Economist.com on an article in this week’s Advertising Age. More of the same at Yahoo!

Internet radio “not real radio”

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David Goldberg is VP/GM for Yahoo! Music, the home of LAUNCHcast. From his keynote speech at last week’s RAIN (Radio and Internet Newsletter) Las Vegas Summit:

“We really want to replace broadcast radio for music discovery. We believe music will migrate off of terrestrial radio to the services we are offering because we can deliver the music consumers want, when they want it, where they want it,” he explained. “We don’t believe music will continue to be broadcast on analog radio. Terrestrial radio will continue as a very successful, profitable business — but it will be mostly talk (he cited the only formats growing on terrestrial radio as Talk and Hispanic),” he said. And, he explained, this goes for satellite radio as well.

Susquehanna Radio Senior VP Dan Halyburton claimed that since Yahoo! Music couldn’t bring the “personality” and “local community” like AM and FM radio, it’s “not real radio.”

XM Radio Online.

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Okay, this is neater than I expected. The new subscription structure includes XM Radio Online (doesn’t include all channels). As a rule, I don’t care to listen to anything while I’m online. Breaks my concentration. But XM has an excellent UI and it all just works. I might look into some of the wireless appliances (is it a radio?) you can tote around the house, listening to your favorite XM channels. Or any Internet radio for that matter. Stay tuned.

“Telemarketing Wiz”

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This is a true story although I have changed the names to protect the innocent and the clueless.

A couple of months ago, a friend (I’ll call him Ishmael) started a blog called “Telemarketing Wiz” and began posting all kinds of interesting stuff about telemarketing. He started hearing from others in the telemarketing business and people started linking to his blog. He got a little buzz going. Not a raging wildfire, but a little brush fire. Google “telemarketing” and his blog is #3 in the results.

One day recently, Ishmael has a meeting with someone at a publication called “Telemarketing.” (Remember, all of the names have been changed. This has nothing to do with telemarketing) The Telemarketing executive tells Ishmael they are not happy with him using the name “telemarketing” and they’d really like for him to stop. They even offered him a few worthless incentives.

Ishmael was shocked and said he’d think about it but wasn’t inclined to change the name of his blog. There were dozens of companies using the term “telemarketing”… why was the Big Publication concerned about him? Could it be that Big Publication was getting tired of hearing about Telemarketing Wiz?

Legal issues aside, this is a nice example of cluelessness on the part of MSM. I suggested to Ishmael that he change the name of his blog to “TelemarketingSucks.com,” but he’s more of a grown-up than I.

Would it have made more sense for Big Publisher to say, “We’ve noticed what you’re doing and think it’s pretty exciting. We’d like to hire you to blog for our publication.”

I’m sure that Telemarketing is a very good publication. Maybe the best. With lots of talented writers and editors and advertisers and big building with a nice lobby. A great place to read about telemarketing. But not the only place.

If Ishmael was writing a little paper newletter and mailing to a few hundred people, Big Publisher probably wouldn’t care what he called it. But the web is national. It’s global. Anybody can play. It’s no longer about who can come up with a few hundred thousand (million?)dollars to start a magazine. One guy, with a computer, and a head full of good ideas can get in the game. It’s a new day.

Wire Service

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In 1972, radio station KBOA had a little closet in the newsroom that housed two teletype machines. One for the Associated Press and one for the National Weather Service. These typewriter-like printers spewed out line after line of news, sports, weather… everything a radio station might ever want to pass on to its audience. They were loud and smelly and mechanical and the ground through box after box of paper and ribbons. I remember a tractor trailer pulling up to the station every few months to drop off dozens of boxes of each. It was –for all practical purposes– the radio station’s only source for news outside the local community. If someone forgot to feed the beast a new box of paper… or the paper jammed overnight… or the printer ribbon broke… no news. And if the damned thing just broke, you were probably miles from a technician that knew how to fix it.

I was reminded of those primitive days by a visit from old friend David Gerstmann, founder of WireReady. I met David at an NAB meeting in Boston back in 1991 or ’92. David had just graduated from Tufts University and was exhibiting at the show. He had written an inexpensive software program that could run on the personal computers that were coming into use. Instead of grinding through all of that paper and ribbon, his software could capture and store the information and you just printed out the stories you wanted. Not just from one wire service, but from as many as you had. An amazing idea at the time.

WireReady could also do some word processing tricks that radio news guys found handy. It was affordable, easy to use, ran on the piece-of-shit computer that trickled down to the newsroom and David gave great customer support. He sold a boat-load of WireReady systems and –over the years– introduced new features (networking, digital audio editing, etc).

For a long time, Associated Press and United Press International (UPI) were pretty much the the only sources for world and national news. Not technically a monopoly but they had broadcasters by the balls and they squeezed hard and long. It was a tightly controlled information pipeline but –thanks to the Internet– those days are gone forever. RIP.

Disclosure: The company I work for operates a sort of “poor man’s wire service” (sorry, David) called Learfield Data. It exists today, in part, because broadcasters wanted alternatives to the Big Wire Services of yore.

RadioDavidByrne.com

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“A friend who relocated to California from NY said she missed hearing all the odd variety of music that was played around the office here. I miss hearing what you all are listening to,” she wrote. This “radio” is my response. It will stream for a few hours and then it will recycle. Maybe it will run longer in the future. The artists played here are respectful of one another and gunplay is forbidden.”

David Byrne explains why he started his own Internet radio station. What an interesting idea. I confess I like most of the songs I’ve heard, even though I’ve never heard of any of the artists. Other Internet radio stations to which I would listen: Radio McVey, Virettarama.

Gnomedex 5

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My idea of a fun vacation is a few days at a technology show, so I’m looking forward to Gnomedex 5.0 coming up in late June in Seattle. I attended the first Gnomedex in Des Moines but missed the last couple. This year’s show looks like a good one. Adam Curry is the keynote speaker and other presenters include: Steve Gillmore, Robert Scoble, Marc Canter and a bunch more. Chris Pirillo is a sharp guy and I’m betting he puts on another great conference.