WBGO/Newark debuts ads on streaming service

[PTBoardOp93]

This month, WBGO began airing commercial messages on its web stream, with programmatic placement by SoundStack.

There was a meeting of WBGO's Community Advisory Board tonight, where listeners were planning to raise objections. I did not attend this Zoom meeting to see what transpired, if anything.

 

[Steve Green NEPA]

NYC rock-and-roll punk here (Rascals, Chiffons, Steppenwolf, Boys) who learned to appreciate Jazz off NYC's 106.7 WRVR from a few of the Older Guys on the block, and later as a Long Islander I enjoyed it off Connecticut's small WYRS and Les Davis' all-night show on WEVD 97.9. Lived in Philly for a few years and was equally awed by the sounds of Temple U's listener supported all-Jazz WRTI. Had a car button for it.
Up here in NE PA WRTI has a small relay-translator station nearby with a nice signal. In 1997 -- that long ago??? -- I heard their switch to half-Classical in the day and half-Jazz at night. Seems that, iIrc, Greater Media bought out Philly's lone classical WFLN to put on a hot new pop format*.
No longer living in Philly I remain unaware of any committee outrage regarding their Classical or Jazz. No doubt there was some. I mean, we're talking a city that boos Santa Claus (and maybe even astronauts and Popes if occasions present themselves).

Denouement? A sigh and a word to any radio or stream jazz fan: Be glad that this listener-supported music is available ANYWHERE. Yeah, so it stands to be compromised in a way you're uncomfortable dealing with. As radio plods on toward its respirators at least your stuff is there for free.

* I forget the new calls. They didn't last long, anyway. That new pop station on 95.7 was hyped as wanting to 'dominate the market 18-49'. They bombed. They didn't even dominate the market 18-19.

 

[TheBigA]

If you look at the ratings, the stream gets a larger share than the air signal. That's not common.

I'm told the station has a larger worldwide audience than it gets locally. Seems to me there's great potential here.

 

[Barry]

InsideRadio has an article about this today. It states that the station reaches around 220,000 listeners, with another 60,000 listening online.
The article indicates that running ads on their stream was in response to recent cuts in funding from CPB. It mentions that very few listeners have contacted the station with objections.

From InsideRadio

 

[lanceventa]

It's about time that non-commercial stations began doing this. There's no FCC license for streaming so nothing legally preventing them from doing so. Its simply an untapped revenue stream.

 

[SomeRadioGuy]

This month, WBGO began airing commercial messages on its web stream, with programmatic placement by SoundStack.

There was a meeting of WBGO's Community Advisory Board tonight, where listeners were planning to raise objections. I did not attend this Zoom meeting to see what transpired, if anything.

And a fair amount of people who complain about stuff like this.... wether its commercial radio, "too many commercials" or "i dont wanna hear commercials on "public radio"...... usually show very little support to the station or advertisers monetarily... so they want the service but dont want to help p[ay for it

 

[Theater of My Mind]

And a fair amount of people who complain about stuff like this.... wether its commercial radio, "too many commercials" or "i dont wanna hear commercials on "public radio"...... usually show very little support to the station or advertisers monetarily... so they want the service but dont want to help p[ay for it

What about the people who DO support WBGO by donating and becoming members? Do they get a login to listen to a commercial-free stream? That seems to be the most obvious member benefit for the station to offer. After all, lots of people are willing to pay for commercial-free tiers, whether it's Spotify, Netflix or public radio. I looked at the member benefits section on WBGO's website and didn't see that mentioned, though, which doesn't seem right.

 

[Yabadabado1]

What about the people who DO support WBGO by donating and becoming members? Do they get a login to listen to a commercial-free stream? That seems to be the most obvious member benefit for the station to offer. After all, lots of people are willing to pay for commercial-free tiers, whether it's Spotify, Netflix or public radio. I looked at the member benefits section on WBGO's website and didn't see that mentioned, though, which doesn't seem right.

And how do they do that? There's going to be an extra cost involved with having to run two streams and how do you keep them synced to play the same when you're doing one with ads and the other without? Only way I can see is to have two separate streams, unsynced.

 

[Miss Tuned]

And how do they do that? There's going to be an extra cost involved with having to run two streams and how do you keep them synced to play the same when you're doing one with ads and the other without? Only way I can see is to have two separate streams, unsynced.

This is how you'd do it - two streams. It doesn't matter if they're precisely synced because nobody is going to be listening to both at once. On the free stream, you insert the ads, on the paid stream (and in this case, also on the non comm signal) you replace the ads with other content.

Various UK commercial stations do this for paid-tier listening, where ad breaks are replaced with a "bonus track" that free-tier and OTA listeners don't get, because they're listening to 4-5 minutes of ads.

Rayo Premium | Free for 30 days, then just £3.99/month

Listen to your favourite radio stations without ad-breaks, and get access to dozens of exclusive stations.

www.hellorayo.co.uk

 

[ted chittenden]

It's about time that non-commercial stations began doing this. There's no FCC license for streaming so nothing legally preventing them from doing so. Its simply an untapped revenue stream.

Even though it's not supposed to be covered by the FCC, I'm willing to bet that should more U.S. public radio stations follow this model, Mr. Brett Carr, at the behest of his direct boss, will initiate an investigation anyway.

By the way, most NPR-affiliated stations, though they do not run commercial advertisements, run sponsorship announcements that are not overheard at the same time on-air at the beginning of each strean listen. For the time being, I think that's going to be the optimal way to go. (And for small Alaska outlets like the one run by @SomeRadioGuy, I think it behoves you to find, if you can, a national sponsor for your streams as well [Forr the record, I haven't listened to @SomeRadioGuy's station for a while, and his station, may already have one or more national stream sponsors.])

 

[SomeRadioGuy]

What about the people who DO support WBGO by donating and becoming members? Do they get a login to listen to a commercial-free stream? That seems to be the most obvious member benefit for the station to offer. After all, lots of people are willing to pay for commercial-free tiers, whether it's Spotify, Netflix or public radio. I looked at the member benefits section on WBGO's website and didn't see that mentioned, though, which doesn't seem right.

offer a stream thats commercial free too

 

[radiofan2023]

NPR did ad-free versions of their podcasts for donors to certain public radio stations a few years ago and was planning to expand the offer for other public radio stations:

‘Next generation of tote bags and mugs’: NPR launches ad-free podcast bundle for new station donors

NPR's podcast bundle allows listeners to access sponsorship-free podcasts with a donation to a participating member station.

current.org

I read about underwriting-free streams of some public radio stations for donors a few years ago, but I don't remember which ones they were.

 

[luperm]

It's actually a great value proposition if they have a "clean" feed for donors. Support the station with cash and get something in return (no commercial interruptions). Don't donate and get served some advertising. That's your contribution. It's a win-win.

If they can't provide the commercial free feed, then better to keep your cash and use it for something of value.

 

[fybush]

The technology to do multiple versions of streams exists and is proven. In my new gig with myriad.radio, I sell a version of it. It's pretty trivial to set up multiple traffic logs that can deliver content with commercial load to one endpoint and with different, non-commercial breaks to a different output. It's not even all that expensive. It's really just a question of moving to newer platforms from some of the existing ones that many of these stations still stick with out of inertia.

 

[Kent]

It's about time that non-commercial stations began doing this. There's no FCC license for streaming so nothing legally preventing them from doing so. Its simply an untapped revenue stream.

The now-retired GM of my local NPR station used to be a beer drinking buddy of mine. He told me, probably about 10 years ago, that his streams were going to have commercial announcements as preroll ads. That was probably about 10 years ago. He said he'd been promoting that they could air a price or other action item on the streams that they couldn't mention in the underwriting announcements. Not sure what it's like now, but selling streaming could be tough then if you didn't have scale, and that was a way to get sponsors to try buying streams. I don't know how successful it was, but he was always adamant that you never gave anything away. He might sell for a penny per impression, but the stream was never an outright bonus.

 

[Yabadabado1]

This is how you'd do it - two streams. It doesn't matter if they're precisely synced because nobody is going to be listening to both at once. On the free stream, you insert the ads, on the paid stream (and in this case, also on the non comm signal) you replace the ads with other content.

Various UK commercial stations do this for paid-tier listening, where ad breaks are replaced with a "bonus track" that free-tier and OTA listeners don't get, because they're listening to 4-5 minutes of ads.

Rayo Premium | Free for 30 days, then just £3.99/month

Listen to your favourite radio stations without ad-breaks, and get access to dozens of exclusive stations.

www.hellorayo.co.uk

So doing two streams with semi-identical content......still means added costs. Someone will have to edit, etc. both streams.

 

[Miss Tuned]

So doing two streams with semi-identical content......still means added costs. Someone will have to edit, etc. both streams.

Most playout systems now have the capability to run multiple different streams that opt in and out, play different content, and so on. @fybush mentioned Myriad from BroadcastRadio, that's one of the ones that is able to do it, I have used it myself.

Myriad is British. This stuff is commonplace in markets like the UK that have a lot of network radio, where they play different ads/news/traffic etc in different regions but within the same program content.

There isn't a human board op sitting there "editing" each stream. The cost is not meaningful, and the income hopefully generated from the paid options will cover it.

 

[Kent]

So doing two streams with semi-identical content......still means added costs. Someone will have to edit, etc. both streams.

It might mean additional costs, but I don't think it's as much as you think it is. If you and I were to listen to the same commercial radio station's stream, we would almost certainly hear mostly different ads based on our locations alone. That's on the same stream and is completely automated.

(I get a ton, sometimes even half the total spot break, for sports gambling, which just became legal where I live 10 days ago. You would definitely not get those ads, though you might get different sports gambling spots as those companies have been paying top-dollar to get on everywhere since the Supreme Court decision a few years ago.)