Red Wolf Broadcasting is Geo Blocking their streams. I tried listening to the online streams of their Country Station in New London County US 99.5 and their Oldies Station KOOL 1180 (Hope Valley) and both came up with an error message that the content was unavailable because I was outside the geographic area of the radio stations. I gotta say this is a stupid business practice. Especially considering how much better US 99.5 is than WWYZ in Hartford.
-
Get involved.
We want your input!
Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.
After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.
After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/
Thanks in advance and have fun!
RadioDiscussions Administrators
Redwolf Broadcasting - Geo Blocking their Streams
- Thread starter MarcB
- Start date
Seems like a good business decision for a music station. If your sales staff is only selling in New London County, there's no need for listeners from Southington, CT. Unless you'll be driving to New London for a body shop or tanning or banking?
I wonder if nearly all stations will geoblock over the next couple of years. There doesn't seem to be a way to monetize the out-of-market audience, and streaming gets more expensive with each additional Internet listener. Other than having to answer (or more likely, send to the trash) a few sad/angry e-mails from upset people who used to live in the area and now can't hear their old favorite station, what's the downside of geoblocking from the station owner's point of view?
In theory, stations could monetize the distant audience by playing different (national) ads for the out-of-towners, but that's probably more overhead than it would be worth. I can't imagine Progressive Insurance would be willing to pay much for an "out-of-town" play on a small radio stations web stream.
By that logic why have a 50,000 watt coverage area if you are only going to target your home market. If you don't want people to listen 100 miles away why spend the money on so much output power?
The reason is that in most noisy major metros, it takes a 10 to even 15 mV/m signal to overcome noise. And that means 50 kw to just get that kind of strength over the more densely populated parts of a large metro.
They don't want to pay Sound Exchange for listening outside the area they can monetize, which is the local market area or metro survey area. Nothing beyond that can be converted into revenue.
WTIC has a huge east coast footprint. Same with the NY AM's. Sure they are only selling ads to their local market. But if they are being listening too over 500 miles way on a good night why don't the advertisers complain. Why is there such an issue with a web stream. If the idea is to narrowcast why bother with a stream at all.
The WTIC 10 mV/m signal falls short of the MA border, does not reach Torrington to the west and does not touch Tolland County to the east. It falls short of Middletown and Waterbury to the SE and SW. At night, interference limits its groundwave coverage even a bit more due to skywave cancellation and co-channel interference.
WTIC no does not get ratings in Bridgeport and Danbury Nielsens, and gets below a 1 share in New Haven. In fact, the only place it breaks the 1 share barrier is Springfield.
Since almost all radio sales is for time between 6 AM and 7 PM, the night skywave is irrelevant. And WTIC does not show ratings anywhere that only gets night skywave, so that coverage is, to agencies, not of any value.
Streams are of value when they complement AM or FM signals in the local market. They help stations in places where radios can't pick up a station due to work rules or where there is too much noise to listen to OTA radio. In some cases, they help limited coverage stations to reach an entire metro in some form.
Advertisers would not complain about listeners or lack of same outside a local rated market. They only pay for measured audiences, not maps.
The WTIC 10 mV/m signal falls short of the MA border, does not reach Torrington to the west and does not touch Tolland County to the east. It falls short of Middletown and Waterbury to the SE and SW. At night, interference limits its ground wave coverage even a bit more due to sky wave cancellation and co-channel interference.
What does 10 mV/m mean? The so-called "city grade" signal on a typical coverage map? It doesn't reach Torrington from their Avon Mountain site? Which part of Tolland county to the east? (Once past Vernon, maybe?) As for co-channel interference, I'll assume it's from WBAL-AM 1090 of Baltimore and (to a lesser extent) KYW-AM 1060 of Philadelphia. I know some further limitation is with KRLD-AM 1080 in Dallas.
What does 10 mV/m mean? The so-called "city grade" signal on a typical coverage map? It doesn't reach Torrington from their Avon Mountain site? Which part of Tolland county to the east? (Once past Vernon, maybe?) As for co-channel interference, I'll assume it's from WBAL-AM 1090 of Baltimore and (to a lesser extent) KYW-AM 1060 of Philadelphia. I know some further limitation is with KRLD-AM 1080 in Dallas.
WBAL and KYW aren't co-channel. They are adjacent and second adjacent. The co-channel interference would be from KRLD.
You can most likely thank the Music MAFIAA for the Geo-Blocking. I remember reading something about the fees being reduced if a station limits the geographic area where it's streams can be reached. This would be a problem for me and many other Comcast users. You see, when I use an IP locator site, it puts me (and a few others I've tracked) out in Wichita KS! I am in West Haven, CT... but Comcast must be routing me through some server farm in that location. According to Google Maps, it's way out in the middle of nowhere. At first, I was wondering why "so many people" that were listening to the WIHS stream, were out in Wichita... until I tried tracking my own IP address. Mystery solved... so a Geo-blocked station in CT would then be unreachable to CT Comcast users, because it would think we were all in Wichita.
Music fees aren't reduced for geofencing your streams beyond that you will have fewer listeners, which means less to be paid in royalties. It also means you need less bandwidth, which used to be really expensive, though I understand the costs have gone down since the early 2000's.
Also, with geofencing, you can guarantee your advertisers that they'll only be paying for local listeners, though you should be able to do that anyway by only airing those spots to people in your area.
Also, with geofencing, you can guarantee your advertisers that they'll only be paying for local listeners, though you should be able to do that anyway by only airing those spots to people in your area.
K
K.M. Richards
Guest
For a discussion as to why geofencing is very likely going to become the norm sooner rather than later, read the most recent posts in this thread:
http://www.radiodiscussions.com/showthread.php?686681-KOAZ-Stream-down-for-the-past-ten-days
- Status