Internet streaming coming back to the Triad
For those of you who like to listen to local radio via Internet streaming, there is good news.
The four stations I work with, 99.5 WMAG, 104.1 WTQR, 94.5 WGBT and 100.3 WVBZ are going to resume streaming no later than November 1st.
Most local stations were streaming over the Internet during the late 90's and into early 2001. But a new contract was signed with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) in 2000. This mandated that commercials produced by these members would be paid a royalty each time the commercial was played over the stream.
Radio stations were not making any money on streaming and in fact it was costing money to pay for bandwidth and the equipment and the fees to music licensees, such as ASCAP and BMI. So with the added expense created by the new contract, and the uncertainty of how to track it, most stations decided in early 2001 to end the streaming.
Now, new technology makes it simpler and cheaper to do what is called ad insertion. This is a process of stripping out all of the commercials, including ones produced by AFTRA talent, that play over the original broadcast, and substituting locally produced commercials in their place. This means that streaming goes from a being added expense, to being a revenue producer in it's own right. At least that's the plan. Time will tell whether or not enough streaming only commercials can be sold to pay for the cost of it. But we're going to give it a try.
We are testing the ad insertion technology now and hope to resume Internet streaming no later than November 1st. The tests are going well, and I think it will be sooner than that.
I'm excited about it. I have always listened to Internet broadcasts and with the added numbers of broadband customers out there, I think streaming is going to make a big comeback.
I haven't done any in-depth search, but I think at this point in time, there are no other stations in the Triad doing Internet streaming. If I'm wrong, I'm sure someone will point it out to me.
2 Comments:
I'll be happy to see the return of streaming because it gave me more options than I have on my local radio dial
The advent of more choices, such as Internet only radio, XM, and other satellite radio providers is one of the driving forces behind traditional stations finding ways to go back to streaming. They have to or get left behind. After all, it won't be too many years before we will have broadband Internet access in our cars just like we have at home. One of the things that will happen in the near future also is that traditional radio stations will have several versions of themselves on the Internet. For example, a country music station such as WTQR will have their regular broadcast stream on the internet. But they will also have a WTQR new country station, and a WTQR old country station that is stream only. In other words, each station will have 2 or 3 versions of their format offered on the Internet for streaming.
Post a Comment
<< Home