Category Archives: Internet

Connected.

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A couple of nuggets from a new Arbitron/Edison Media study (pdf) released today:

* Eight in 10 Americans have access to the Internet from any location. As of January 2005, 81% of consumers have access to the Internet from any location. This is a remarkable rise from the 50% penetration figure from just six years ago (January 1999).

* The number of people with a broadband Internet connection at home equals the number of people with a dial-up connection at home. In January 2001, only 12% of Americans with Internet access at home used a broadband connection. That figure has since quadrupled. Now, in January 2005, 48% of people with home Internet access have broadband, and 48% have dial-up service.

PrairieLinks.com

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Spent the morning visiting with Dwayne Leslie (5 min interview). He’s a farmer from Manitoba, Canada, who –five years ago– decided to build a web page to help pass the cold winter days when he couldn’t farm. He created PrairieLinks.com which is the #1 ag portal in Canada. When he couldn’t find any good farm auction sites, he started FarmAuctionGuide.com which attracts 10,000 unique visitors daily. Do not tell me that farmers are not plugged in.

Randy Michaels on future of radio

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“People today are being entertained different, and that’s a problem for radio. (By the) time a profit is made, satellite radio will be eclipsed by something more profound. Namely, Internet-based radio stations available nationwide thanks to wireless broadband technology. Radio is going to be interactive, and it’s not going to be delivered just by transmitters. The next thing is not satellite, which is another form of point-to-multipoint technology. It will be interactive, two-way communication that’s available to everybody that is the next big thing. Radio companies will have no more defense in defending their business than the railroads did when airplanes came in and took their freight business.”

— Randy Michaels, former Clear Channel Radio CEO, on the future of radio

Internet surpassed radio as source for political news

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The Internet surpassed radio as a source for political news in the United States last year as more people went online to keep up with the presidential election campaign. So says a new report by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Twenty-nine percent of U.S. adults used the Internet to get political news last year, up from 4 percent in 1996 and 18 percent in 2000. Television remained the dominant medium for most voters, but 18 percent said they got most of their political news from the Internet, compared with 17 percent who said they turned to the radio for their news.

Google the weather

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Google has added a 4-day weather forecast to its search offering. Simply type in: weather, city, state. Link to example search for Destin, FL. I find this just insanely handy. I know I could click over to Weather.com but it would be several more clicks to the same result. I do the same thing when I need a spelling. Just google it and there’s the correct spelling.

Website domain names

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Our company has registered a lot of domains since we first drank from the Big Web Pond, but two of my favorites are Legislature.com and SchoolViolenceHotline.com. And we registered these very late in the domain game. It is still amazing to me that they were still available. We’ve since transferred SchoolViolenceHotline.com to the client we aquired it for… but still have Legislature.com.

We jumped in early enough that we were able to register (not purchase) the names of most of our networks (RadioIowa, Missourinet, WRN, Learfield). On the other hand, I was reminded this week that 16 members of the National Association of State Radio Networks have NO public, online presence. Maybe they have good domains registered but if not, what are the chances of getting anything CLOSE to the name of your network.

Radio “schedule integrity”

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“Compared to other media, spot radio ranked No. 8 and network radio ranked No. 10 in schedule integrity behind magazines, newspapers, network TV, spot TV, outdoor, syndicated TV, cable TV and Internet. Agencies and advertisers also had less confidence in the accuracy and timeliness of radio affidavits to prove ads ran as ordered than in the affidavits from network TV, spot TV and newspapers.” [Mediaweek story]

From Radio Advertising Bureau’s annual perceptual study (funded by Arbitron):

Mainstream media suffers from “freedom envy”

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Peggy Noonan (WSJ.com) wonders if mainstream media suffers from “freedom envy” where bloggers are concerned:

Bloggers have an institutional advantage in terms of technology and form. They can post immediately. The items they post can be as long or short as they judge to be necessary. Breaking news can be one sentence long: “Malkin gets Barney Frank earwitness report.” In newspapers you have to go to the editor, explain to him why the paper should have another piece on the Eason Jordan affair, spend a day reporting it, only to find that all that’s new today is that reporter Michelle Malkin got an interview with Barney Frank. That’s not enough to merit 10 inches of newspaper space, so the Times doesn’t carry what the blogosphere had 24 hours ago.

This is a really good piece on blogging that –once upon a time– I might have forwarded to the reporters working in our newsrooms. I’ve stopped doing that. With one or two execeptions, our reporters are clueless and/or threatened by the whole notion of blogging. Don’t get it. Don’t want to get it.

The rise of podcasts

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NPR’s Robert Smith reports on the rise of “podcasts” — amateur music and talk shows created by the users of Apple’s popular iPod personal music devices and other digital music players. Whole “shows” of music and talk can be downloaded from the Internet to individual players automatically, and some of the show hosts have become celebrities among the burgeoning podcast audience. Related stories from NPR:Personal Radio Via Podcasting Grows More Popular; Slate’s Gizmos: The Future of Radio; Does the iPod Play Favorites?; TiVo, iPod, the Human Ego and the Future.