Radio says goodbye to Streaming

[4UH8SIMBKAGN]

I find these posts a combination of humor and some insight. Some of you can't be serious. Newspaper migrated its content to the web and once it was there for free why by the printed version? Radio must learn from this error.

Newspaper subscriptions have been in decline for more than 20 years. Afternoon dailies died in the 80s, long before the internet. So putting newspaper content on the web didn't cause their current crisis. There are lots of free options on the web for news. Not all of them as credible as the print pubs. But people read them. And they do so in place of subscribing to newspapers. Same with radio. Radio stations can ignore new technologies. But they will continue to lose audience to them because that's where listeners are.

The problem with your suggestion for seperate content on the stream is it requires its own staff. A typical web operation simply can't charge as much for web advertising as it can for on-air. So paying for staffing is as unprofitable as paying music royalties. Acoustic performances, if owned by record labels or performed by contracted acts, are also subject to royalties unless a waiver is signed. Artists and labels won't sign waivers unless the performance directly promotes something that makes them money, such as a concert or CD release. Once again, it will take staff at the station to handle all these details.

The REAL solution to these problems is to find ways to derive revenue from new technologies. Create content and services people want, and either charge them for them, or sell the audience.

Some, and I personally only feel this is a partial reason, feel that CNN and the explosion of local tv newscasts in dayparts that never had them, such as mornings, are the reason why newspapers started their dive south.

I totally agree it was not the internet. The internet only accelerated the decline of newspapers as they could not get a clue on how to build their own model for it or compete with it.

I think the newspaper that is making the boldest move is the Christian Science Monitor which is going only online this month. That's a model for the future. Why do I want only news that makes my fingers black?

 

[TheBigA]

What I find amusing radioprofessor is just how out of touch you are with reality. Once again someone who is a backward thinker and can't get a grip on the future. You must have also worked for the record industry.

Not only is radio going to move online, that's the only place we're going to get it.

I also don't agree with this view. Because it puts ISPs and broadband providers in the power situation. They become the new Clear Channel. Why would companies that already own access to the public want to be dependent on outside companies. It's like cable radio.

I believe that the companies that own the internet (Verizon, Sprint, Comcast, etc) will become as hated as the companies that own broadcast (if they haven't already) for exactly the same reasons. At some point, people will have to decide between the nickle and dime fees imposed by ISPs vs. free over-the-air radio. Comcast is already charging for broadband usage. Right now, it's a generous allowance, and few reach the threshhold for an additional charge. But they could drop that threshold and anyone who streams video will get hit with a surcharge.

That's when radio as a transmission system will be revived.

I think it's great that a number of traditional companies will be dropping their internet streams. I would prefer to see the future of radio out of the hands of big conglomerates, most of which are going to go into Chapter 11 anyway.

The problem with that view is that it takes a big company with diverse sources of revenue to pay all the fees involved. Not to mention the endless negotiations with SoundExchange over the amount of that fee. CBS was in a better position to pay music fees than Yahoo, so Yahoo turned their stream over to CBS. Small operators are the ones getting squeezed by the royalties, and why so many of them have gone silent. The problem is that in the world of the net, a few thousand silent streams makes no impact. If Cumulus stops streaming, that will make an impact. If companies begin to develop alternative content for the web, using their larger resources, then the future of broadcast becomes clear.

 

[Robnoxious]

Don't want to be hit with royalties and the like, move the streaming servers to Sweden. Not only is nethosting in that country ridiculously cheap, their internet infrastructure is far more advanced that it makes ours look like a Model T (which it is). More importantly, if The Pirate Bay wins the case against them by the record labels seeking damages due to piracy then it will set a huge precedent that flying the Jolly Roger within the boarder of Sweden is perfectly legal and essentially untouchable. The verdict will be coming next month.

The current trend in the U.S. climate is becoming more and more anti-business and that is a road we should dare not continue to travel upon.

 

[CHRles]

The stations that stream their content with streamaudio.com seem to air the actual over-the-air commercials (at least some stations), and the same is true for some of the small and non-rated market stations.
As for streaming via Sweden, or any country in the world, that should be looked into. Corporate America has been outsourcing plenty of jobs abroad due to cheaper rates, so the question is whether the same could be applied to streaming providers.

 

[davideduardo]

The stations that stream their content with streamaudio.com seem to air the actual over-the-air commercials (at least some stations), and the same is true for some of the small and non-rated market stations.

If a station does any agency business and the agencies use AFTRA talent, it is almost a 100% given that the agency will put a "no streaming" mandate on every order. Stations that violate that order will lose the business, and the agency will be liable for additional talent fees.

Spots can be individually removed from streams, using some type of coding or electronic logging indentifier, and replaced with fill, PSAs, bonus local spots, etc. Any spot or PSA not using AFTRA talent quialifies for streaming.

But if one single spot is not simulcast, Arbitron will not allow single line reporting, and the stream will be listed separately in the ratings reports.

This is a separate issue from digital artist royalties, and is about the usage of union talent on commercials, generally from ad agencies.

A small market station may have no agency business, so they can stream 100%.

 

[TheBigA]

If a station does any agency business and the agencies use AFTRA talent, it is almost a 100% given that the agency will put a "no streaming" mandate on every order.

By the way, AFTRA is part of the MusicFirst Coalition that is lobbying for the performance royalty. So AFTRA is no friend of broadcasting.

 

[Mid West Clubber]

If anything happens, it will probably be most the CC stations, which cant even be streamed over sea's.. We arent going to stop streaming... Stream Audio has decent rates and lets you air the commercials we are allowed to air, but blocks out the Aftra Related ones... I dont see big stations like KIIS or Z-100 dropping their streaming, but some others might.... Oh well... I still got plenty of European, Australian, middle Eastern, and Latin America stations to listen to,,, plus all the pirates that dont pay royaltys,,, plus Ive got Live 365, and they have reasonable rates, so im not too worried.

 

[TheBigA]

I still got plenty of European, Australian, middle Eastern, and Latin America stations to listen to,,, plus all the pirates that dont pay royaltys,,, plus Ive got Live 365, and they have reasonable rates, so im not too worried.

Foreign streamers are still liable for American royalties if their streams are heard here. That has led some foreign streamers to block their American streams. Also, the rates may be reasonable now, but they escalate every year. The deal the NAB just made increases the rate to as much as 30% of revenue in 5 years. That is beyond reasonable, and is why Jerry Lee is dropping his stream in Philadelphia.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

Some in this thread seem to have over-simplified what has happened to newspapers.

Putting their news on-line may not be the BIG thing affecting them.

Angie's List, Ebay and other venues for selling your old guitar, exercise bicycle, etc, have gutted the classified ads income for newspapers.

Monster.com and other job search sites have gutted the classified ads income for newspapers.

The excalating cost of newsprint may be doing more to eviscerate the print industry that everything else we have listed so far combined.

And this one is a stretch, but is part of the "poison mix" affecting the health of newspapers:  Cable News Channels and Conservtive Talk Radio have made NATIONAL politics so hot and flammable these days that the minds of the listeners/readers no longer crave local and state news as much.  The strength of newspapers has been their ability to provide city council happenings and other such "low grade" news content. 

"Hon, let's drop the newspaper.  There is nothing important there that Limbaugh hasn't already covered."

The life of the newspaper publisher has to be much more complex and confusing today than is the life of the broadcaster worrying:  To Stream or Not to Stream,... that is the question.

 

[TheBigA]

Add to that the huge amount of money they owe in pensions to retired employees. Newspapers are in the same hole as the car companies.

 

[davideduardo]

Some in this thread seem to have over-simplified what has happened to newspapers.

Having a relative in the business makes this more or less interesting to me.

Afternoon papers died because folks got home from work and watched the network news on the big three networks. Why read, when you could watch?

As a result, the number of afternoon papers fell enormously between the late 50's and the early 70's.

In the morning, the rise of the Good Morning America type of show maed it possible to watch TV and get a news overview without the paper.

Fast forward to the beginning of CNN. In the 1980 era, you could get news with vastly improved satellite enabled photo journalism at any time you wanted.

The we got the Internet in the middle of the next decade. The assault on the revenue base of classifieds... particularly automotive, jobs and real estate... was almost total. Business news and stock quotes could be obtained almost instantly. Sports scores were online the moment a game ended.

The younger demos stopped looking for news in print decades ago. Now buying and selling and investigating purchases can be done better on the web... along with dozens of other things.

The model for the daily newspaper is dead. Only those who haven't learned new technology still depend on papers printed on paper... sure some of us use "papers" in other forms (I get the WSJ on my Kindle and my iPhone) but I have not gotten home delivery of a paper for more than a decade.

 

[4UH8SIMBKAGN]

Add to that the huge amount of money they owe in pensions to retired employees. Newspapers are in the same hole as the car companies.

So is the state of California, where you can retire at 50 as a state employee. We, the people, even have to pick up the difference if the union investments go south, as they have over the last 6 months.

 

[LA_Guy]

Typical radio short sightedness...

To compete with the new technologies out there (including but not limited to the Internet), radio has to EMBRACE these new technologies, NOT shun them!

This decision is just another example of why radio is dying. Radio has already lost most people under 25, now they want to make sure that they NEVER, EVER come back!

This week I bought this:

http://www.acoustic-research.com/ho...ORY_TABLETOP_RADIOS&ACTION_PRODUCT_ID=ARIR200

It retails for under 100 dollars. THIS is what the future of radio is-NOT over the air and certainly NOT IBOC!

Guess what? Many local stations sound BETTER over the Internet then they do over the air!

But NO...radio wants to screw this up too! DON'T give the customers what they want-in a format that they want it! It makes me wonder who radio uses for their business model-the Record Industry?

But I suppose that they are arrogant enough to believe that people WANT limited playlists, crappy audio quality, no personalities and 25 minutes of commercials an hour.

I think that 1000 of us should get together and each kick in a dollar to send to John Hogan at Clear Channel. Perhaps with a grand he might be able to BUY a clue.

Either that or we can buy 100,000 shares of Citadel stock with it....

Pathetic.

 

[oaktree]

For people like me who live in California, but miss a touch of "home" (Philadelphia, New York, Wilmington, Baltimore, Allentown and the Jersey Shore,) yeah, it bothers me. I've been listening to streams on a Roku Labs Internet radio for over two years ... and I rarely, if ever, listen to "terrestrial radio" anymore at all ... I listen to the streams of a lot of "back East " stations.

Including B-101 ... until Sunday.

I'll miss that station and others as they fall by the wayside.

But Jerry Lee has been doing radio for a long, long time ... at that station, in fact, since the 1960s. He is not only an industry leader, but a damn well respected one, at that.

This will be the excuse that a lot of stations will make, now, "Well ... if the Number One station in Phily pulls the Internet plug to save a few (actually, a lot) of bucks ... I'll join the "me too" bus, as well.

Yes, it took CBS Radio time to recoup the strength it had as a streamer several years ago ... but it's platform is not streaming, per se, under Dan Mason.

It's what's happening at Last.FM and at AOL Radio, where CBS streams from that portal ... and is top dog, beating Clear Channel pretty quickly.

The platform is "apps" that direct the listener to iTunes and phone apps downloaded to PDA's, iPhones and other smarth devices.

Streaming is so "old school" to some broadcasters now ... and an expensive school at that. The move to "stream" will become a different "content" medium than what it is now, in the near future in not only my opinion, but in other learned ones, as well.

Jerry Del Colliano is one and has been saying it for several years, now.

 

[LA_Guy]

Some in this thread seem to have over-simplified what has happened to newspapers.

Having a relative in the business makes this more or less interesting to me.

Afternoon papers died because folks got home from work and watched the network news on the big three networks. Why read, when you could watch?

As a result, the number of afternoon papers fell enormously between the late 50's and the early 70's.

In the morning, the rise of the Good Morning America type of show maed it possible to watch TV and get a news overview without the paper.

Fast forward to the beginning of CNN. In the 1980 era, you could get news with vastly improved satellite enabled photo journalism at any time you wanted.

The we got the Internet in the middle of the next decade. The assault on the revenue base of classifieds... particularly automotive, jobs and real estate... was almost total. Business news and stock quotes could be obtained almost instantly. Sports scores were online the moment a game ended.

The younger demos stopped looking for news in print decades ago. Now buying and selling and investigating purchases can be done better on the web... along with dozens of other things.

The model for the daily newspaper is dead. Only those who haven't learned new technology still depend on papers printed on paper... sure some of us use "papers" in other forms (I get the WSJ on my Kindle and my iPhone) but I have not gotten home delivery of a paper for more than a decade.

If 30 years ago the newspapers had foresight, they would have seen this coming and THEY would have been the ones owning the CNNs and Foxes of today! It seems to me that the newspapers would have been the ones with the infrastructure in place to create cable journalism-instead they collectively stood on the sidelines and watched their business evaporate-while doing NOTHING constructive to stop it. There is one notable exception-Rupert Murdoch. Anyone with half a brain knew that as far as back as the early sixties Huntley and Brinkley on NBC was bigger then any newspaper. I guess the newspapers' owners had less then half a brain. By the way, my father cancelled the local newspaper back in 1965.

Radio is doing the same thing as the newspapers-sitting on the sidelines and watching their business evaporate. Radio hasn't had a creative idea in over a decade. Even JACK came from the Internet! And now CBS has the pure arrogance to honestly believe that they can be trandsetters by playing CHR? CHR plays THE HITS! They don't make trends, they FOLLOW them! What radio needs to do is BECOME A TRENDSETTER! They need to be out in the clubs, looking all over You Tube and Facebook, at the schools and campuses-finding out that the next big songs are BEFORE THEY BECOME hits! The irony is that radio did this back in the 1970s and 1980s-it's just seemed to think now that computers, auditorium testing and call outs can replace actual footwork. Well, it can't-and until the decision makers in radio realize this, it will become less and less relevant.

Of course, today's owners could care two cents about radio. They got into radio not to operate stations, but to buy and sell them. After all, in their narrow world, that's where the money is to be made. Except that the bubble burst and now they have to operate the stations-which they simply don't know how to do. All they know is that the bean counters keep screaming CUT, CUT, CUT and that's exactly what they are doing. There's no more 'fat' left in radio! That was removed a long time ago. Now they use grinders and saws to grind and cut away radio's skeleton.

Meanwhile, the 700 pound gorilla is Internet media. It's the only media that's still growing and the only media that, made profit gains last year. Give things a few years-Internet radio will be available for every car. THEN watch radio's relevance fade away-while they stand on the sidelines and watch.....

 

[TheBigA]

Meanwhile, the 700 pound gorilla is Internet media. It's the only media that's still growing and the only media that, made profit gains last year. Give things a few years-Internet radio will be available for every car. THEN watch radio's relevance fade away-while they stand on the sidelines and watch.....

I think some of you are mssing the point of this thread. Radio isn't dropping internet streaming because it wants to, or because it's short-sighted or greedy. It's dropping these streams because the RIAA has imposed huge royalties on these streams for the use of their music. These royalties are increasing every year. They are a percentage of REVENUE, not a percentage of profit. Internet radio stations have been saying for years that these royalties are making it impossible for them to make any money at all. Even the President of Pandora has been testifying in Congress that it's possible he will go out of business because of these royalties.

THAT is what this thread is about, folks. The internet is a wonderful place. Recording artists who don't get broadcast radio airplay are finding new life on internet radio stations. But those who operate those stations are in danger of going out of business because of greedy record labels who are charging this royalty. And radio stations have no choice. The labels are acting as a cartel, and if you want to play music, there's only one place to get it.

It is possible that within the next three years, all music will disappear from the internet and other digital services. The reason this station is dropping its stream is it's hoping to motivate the public to speak out against these excessive royalties.

 

[wgliradio]

Streaming is much like the failed HD experiment. Radio was unable to create compelling content on HD or even agree on a delivery system. HD Radio is dead in the water after the first stations in Canada started it a decade ago. HD was AM stereo all over again, except they sold a few more AM stereo recievers! (RP humor) What radio fails to understand in my humble view is they already have a great vehicle to deliver outstanding content, why not spend your money developing the core product than fads. Expect to see many owners moving to core content and eliminating HD, Streaming, and a variety of fads that never really caught on. Better to save money in this area, than to keep cutting in the prime delivery system that reaches 95% of the population each week, in my humble opinion. Go back to creating compelling programming on the delivery system you have and can monetize. This change is already working in small and medium markets and numbers are turning around. Radio is far from dead. Independent owners met this week and expect to see big changes among the industry creative leaders...not those in the big radio groups, in my humble view.

Radio has done nothing in the last 10 years to secure its future, that's what the problem is. It's now playing catch up as it spent too much time obsessing over HD and cutting costs to the bone by eliminating talent and the staff needed to support them.

I'm not one to give up on streaming. There will be a loss there, but I find streaming is too valuable in the future of content delivery. Giving up on it now will only mean you have to play catch up again later. Those that continue to stream and navigate their way thru this will be in much better shape than those who throw in the towel.

Want to save money? Turn off that HD exciter and stop paying iBiquity.

 

[TheBigA]

Want to save money? Turn off that HD exciter and stop paying iBiquity.

First of all, more stations stream than use HD. Second of all, HD is much cheaper than streaming. Third of all, the music stations play on HD is NOT subject to the RIAA royalty. At least not now. Fourth of all, HD is off topic. The issue here is high royalty rates set by the record label cartel that is causing streamers and other digital broadcasters to go out of business. Let's try and focus on the topic.

 

[landtuna]

Slightly off topic but since the 'newspaper' issue was already raised, here is a different, and interesting, opinion:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090315/ap_on_re_us/state_of_journalism

 

[bossbill]

TheBigA, it's even worse than that. They are charging us per song per listener, whether we have any revenue or not! And we can't get additional revenue from national accounts because we can't even play their commercials. We can't get it from locals, because the hardware store in Spokane Washington won't pay for Phil Dirt in Dumptruck New York to hear their commercial.

And don't forget that Sesac, BMI, and ASCAP are also standing with their hands out, and they no longer base fees on revenue. Put a new FM station on the air and pay a fee for a long time before any revenue to pay it.

I can't speak for the big guys and their business model, but I can speak to the small market. With BMI, ASCAP, Sesac, now RIAA, throw in onerous Business & Occupation Taxes at the local and state level in many cases (based on revenue, not profit), and toss in a recession, and small radio stations have a big problem, even with great content.