Tips From Successful Streamers
by Craig Johnston
Internet radio may still be in its infancy, fishing for its precise
business model. But Web streaming operators are certain that, no
matter what the business model turns out to be, the medium will
obey one of terrestrial radio's laws: to have revenue, you must
have listeners.
"Obviously, audience is everything," said Dave Casper,
the Radio Advertising Bureau's senior vice president for Internet
services.
"This isn't much different than it is for a radio station,
so stations should be doing everything they can to build a really
effective Web brand for their radio station."
Casper said issues such as copyright fees and commercial talent
fees have made him back away from advising stations whether or not
to stream.
"There are so many unanswered questions that I don't feel
I'm in any position to advise stations on what to do, because you
almost need legal counsel."
Still, he's bullish on the Web for stations.
"Stations should be doing everything they can to build a really
effective Web brand for their radio station. I think the most successful
Web brands out there are built around branding that Web site with
the station's core audience."
The Bay on the Net
"The Internet as NTR is something that I get really passionate
about," Casper said. "I think it offers some wonderful
NTR tools; not necessarily in the streaming areas, because that's
problematic. You know, there are all sorts of avenues for your client
who's talking about promotion, it's right on target."
Radio World talked with two operations that have built audiences
for their streaming signals, in turn generating traffic to their
Web sites.
Susquehanna Radio Corp.'s four-station San Francisco group includes
two longtime powerhouse Bay Area stations, KNBR(AM) and KFOG(FM),
as well as KSAN(FM) and KCTC(AM). The popularity of the terrestrial
KNBR and KFOG have been key to driving listeners to the sites of
all four stations.
"In both cases, we have put what we call Web promotions on
the air, reminding listeners of the broadcast, so when they get
to work they don't have to stop listening to KFOG, KNBR, and particularly
The Bone," said Leonard Nelson, Susquehanna San Francisco's
Web director, referring in the latter reference to KSAN.
"So that when they fire up their computer, just click on KFOG.com
and turn the player on, and they can hear KFOG on the speakers on
their desktop at work.
"We have a huge audience from 9 to 5 now on the Internet,
and when we look at our Web trend reports, the people listening
to us are definitely looking at the site while they're probably
working, in other words while they're in their working environment,"
he said.
"Our successes are based on Web packages that we make available
to sponsors, where a sponsor can pick up a feature, a promotion,
an event that occurs on the Web site that's driven by the on-air
staff, so that the on-air interface is significant to make it work."
An example of Susquehanna's success is its Queen of the Hardwoods
promotion, run each March in tandem with the NCAA Basketball Tournament.
Listeners are asked to vote for the best female super-model, the
best actress, musical performer and athlete.
"That event, driven by the air staff, last year drove some
5 million people to the Web site, from one silly little thing we
had for three weeks on the site," Nelson said. "It was
just amazing, and that's how it's been since we started doing this
four years ago."
Communities
Susquehanna's KFOG has spawned a community of listeners, called
Fog Heads, who make use of the station Web site for a variety of
purposes. One of them is a ticket swap.
"They have tickets to an event and they can't use them,"
he said. "We only allow them to be sold for face value for
the tickets that they're posting. And other people will come on
and go, 'I think I'd like to have those tickets.' They start a chain
of communication, and (this has become) a community within KFOG."
Nelson said in some months, the KFOG site has seen as many as 60,000
exchanges of information.
Entercom Communications Corp.'s Boston sports/talk station WEEI(AM)
is an example of a station preparing for success, then benefiting
from good luck. Planning the station to break into the top 10 on
Arbitron's January Webcast ratings.
"Outside of our control, our local sports team, the Patriots,
kept winning and winning and winning, and going to the Super Bowl,
which boosted interest in sports in our town," said Jeffrey
Porzio, Entercom Boston Internet manager.
But WEEI hadn't been sitting on its hands waiting for the sun to
shine on its Web site.
"Through the marketing of the station, we've been able to
position ourselves as the top-of-mind source for sports in Boston,"
said Porzio. "So we already had that. When people were thinking
about sports, and you ask anybody about sports talk, they always
were thinking about WEEI. We had a top-of-mind share.
"From the Web perspective, we would constantly update our
Web site. That was Lesson No. 1."
WEEI also encouraged listeners to opt-in to its e-mail database,
called the Clubhouse, through which the station sends updates to
its contests and other happenings.
"Most of our contests on the year are actually done through
our e-mail database," said Porzio. "So we have a pretty
big circulation of people who are constantly going back to our Web
site, checking for new and updated information."
High-rise radio
The station's streamed signal is a vital part of keeping listeners
connected to the station during the day.
"We have a difficult time getting our signal into the majority
of high-rise buildings in Boston," said Porzio. "Streaming
online enables us to give those listeners access to the radio station
that they wouldn't have by conventional radio. We have a whole lot
of workplace listening. I would venture to say that 70-80 percent
of our online listening was people in the workplace."
With the importance the station attaches to its streamed signal,
Porzio advises stations to pay attention to the quality of their
streams.
"If I was a station that was not yet streaming, I would spend
a very long time examining the companies out there that offer this
service."
He also credits constant updating of the WEEI Web site with bringing
listeners to their streamed signal. "That type of dynamic changing
of the Web site and the dynamic nature of the information we're
putting up there, which is contently changing, gives users a whole
lot to do, bringing them back to your Web site for one reason or
another. So as long as they're there, they're more likely to listen
live online."
RAB's Casper echoes the need to focus on the content of a station's
site.
"One of the questions I think a station needs to ask itself
is, what are they broadcasting and why? Because the reality is that
people will go to the station's Web site for the same reason they
go to the radio station: to be informed, to be entertained,"
he said.
"The Web is a content-driven medium, and once the content
is in place, radio is so well-positioned to take advantage of it
because we have these large loyal, terrestrial audiences we can
drive back and forth between our Internet sites and our radio stations."
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