Why wouldn't a radio station want to be broadcast on the internet? (1 Viewer)

[Brian Perry]

My favorite radio station is an all-sports station in Chicago, WSCR-670 AM. I work in a tall office building downtown, and AM is virtually impossible to receive. The technology is obviously available for the station to have the signal sent over the internet at a very cheap cost. The question is why haven't they offered it?

Are they trying to figure out a way to charge for it? If so, that's ridiculous because the signal is absolutely free over the air as picked up by your AM radio. Is there an FCC rule against it? If so, why? This seems like such a no-brainer.

 

[BrianW]

It's expensive. It costs about a dollar per hour per listener. There's no rule against it, but it is bandwidth intensive, and bandwidth on the Internet costs a lot of money. Few radio stations are willing to put up the money for Internet access.

 

[Chet_F]

Brian:
That's putting aside what they just did with per song rates for internet broadcasts which is pretty ridiculous.
Here's the link to the story
http://www.msnbc.com/news/770156.asp?0si=-
This story is talking about royalty rates of .70 cents per song play for 1,000 listeners. There goes all the little guys who can barely afford what they are doing now. Just the big record companies trying to squeeze more money out of the average Joe.

 

[Alex Spindler]

I don't know the level of support for multicasting in the intenet backbone, but it could be used to help alleviate any transmission costs of these services. It should be pretty trivial for streaming audio to be certain.

 

[Danny R]

Does this station offer national shows? If so, then they might not want to broadcast online because it offers competition to local affiliates who have their own advertising dollars.

I know Limbaugh was very reluctant to put his show online for a long time (and even complained about local stations who might do it without permission) for just this reason. People would listen to the online feed, and miss the advertising broadcast by the local one.

Of course now he does it anyway, but also charges premium fees for added content.

 

[Brian Perry]

No, it's just local (except they will broadcast Monday Night Football and a couple other national CBS radio shows.)

As far as the advertising, I assumed the feed would be identical to the on-air broadcast. Obviously the local commercials wouldn't interest someone logging on from Seattle, but at least the advertisers wouldn't care if a listener in Chicago was getting the broadcast from the web instead of the radio.

 

[Bill Slack]

There's not a lot of multi-cast infastructure for stuff like this on the (land based) net. I used to work for a company that did a very bad job at trying to make that happen.
I'm not sure if Akamai has gotten beyond caching yet, but if they haven't, they should. They could make it work better than anyone else, at this point.

 

[Patrick_S]

Along with some of the issues already mentioned another issue is the royalties for the commercials.

At one time WGN used to include the commercials during their Cubs broadcasts and then they had to stop because the union that governs the voice talent threatened to sue over the Internet broadcasting of commercials.

Now when you listen to the games on the Internet the commercials are not played between innings.

 

[Wayne Bundrick]

Not long ago there were a whole bunch of radio stations streaming on the Internet. Then came the dispute over the copyright royalties for music and the dispute over compensation for commercial voice talent. And so just about all of the radio stations decided that the additional bullshit just isn't worth it.

 

[MickeS]

Plus, they probably don't have the right to broadcast sports events over the Internet.

/Mike

 

[Michael*K]

that's ridiculous because the signal is absolutely free over the air as picked up by your AM radio.

This is one thing that pisses me off about DSS (and a significant reason why I don't have it)...that I have to pay five bucks a month for the privilege of seeing my local stations.
Mike, WSCR is a talk radio station slanted toward sports. They don't actually broadcast the events themselves.
Brian, I could have sworn that MNF was carried on WMVP. Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought it was their affiliation with ABC/ESPN that allowed them to air the games. By the way, has the Score run the commercial for The Little Guys in Glenwood? I've heard it on WMVP and it's hilarious.

 

[Brian Perry]

By the way, has the Score run the commercial for The Little Guys in Glenwood? I've heard it on WMVP and it's hilarious.

Oh, yeah. Mike North does a pretty funny job with the Little Guys commercials.

MNF is definitely on the Score. Even though ABC has the TV broadcast, CBS does the radio. Howard David is awesome!

 

[Chris Lock]

> Then came the dispute over the copyright royalties for music and the dispute over compensation for commercial voice talent.

What I don't understand is how the net is any different. Why is it OK to broadcast the music & ads for free over the air, but not online? (i.e., why do those performers have to be compensated differently for the net? There's no way of knowing how many people are listening over the air.)

It really sucks when it's a local station you want to listen to online, because you're in a building that blocks the over-air signal.