Week of April 23, 2007

Lonestar 92.5--Built To Stream

Friday, April 27, 2007

Last week Clear Channel launched a revolutionary radio station, Lone Star 92.5. The station got a lot of press for its new way of handling music, with its Texas-flavored roots rock/classic rock mix. There was also a lot of attention paid to the fact that the voice talent on the station was Willie Nelson and the presentation was stripped of high-profile production elements. Finally, much was made of the station's NPR-style business plan-It doesn't play commercials: it presents each hour as being sponsored by a company.

Most of the questions around the station have been about its format (Would it work?) or its revenue plan (Could they charge enough for sponsorships to make it worth doing?). While these debates were going on an interesting point got lost: Lone Star 92.5 is a radio station built to be streamed.

How is it built to be streamed? Well, the presentation is much more similar to online radio stations than terrestrial radio stations, from the stripped down production to the lack of commercials. The music is also more akin to what you'd find online-a niche approach with just enough mass-appeal elements to generate a rabid and reasonably-sized fan base. But perhaps the most important reason the station is built to be streamed is that Lone Star 92.5 completely eliminated any issues with union commercial talent-it simply doesn't run commercials.

The result is that if Lone Star 92.5 generates a handful of rabid online listening fans in offices in the Dallas area, and one or two of these fans get diaries, those diaries will count in the Arbitron ratings. The fact that the Lone Star stream is the same as the Lone Star terrestrial broadcast guarantees this.

WiMAX Gets Dissed

Thursday, April 26, 2007

There has been a tremendous amount of positive press about WiMAX and its future as a way to seamlessly link large geographic areas with single uninterrupted wireless access. Well, Qualcomm group president Len Lauer wasn't quite so positive at the Wireless Innovations Conference. Lauer discussed how WiMAX was not any more fast that current third generation cellular bandwidth rates, while it was more costly to deploy.

Qualcomm has sold its core wireless hardware businesses, but its close relationship with wireless phone manufacturers and network providers makes Lauer's comments important when considering the future of WiMAX.

Mobile Web Browsing

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

A recent study by M:Metrics, a leading mobile research specialist, shows that mobile web browsing levels are consistently higher in the US than in the UK. The top ranked sites in both territories is Google's mobile portal. After that, US users prefer Yahoo! And Microsoft sites, while the UK users preferred the mobile offerings from their carriers. Another interesting difference is that the biggest day for mobile web usage in the US is Fridays, while Tuesdays is the busiest day in the UK. Other highlights from the latest M:Metrics study are available here.

This difference is usage levels with mobile web browsing, primarily by smart phones, also leads us to wonder if the heavier usage of these phones and their email capabilities, is one more reason why text messaging in the US, while growing fast, still lags behind other countries. Users who surf the net on a data plan may find it just as easy, and sometimes less expensive, to send an email rather than a text message.

Lone Star launch

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Clear Channel has just re-launched Classic Rocker KZPS as "Lone Star 92.5." Besides a new format that combines various rock and country influences, the station is built on the premise of no commercial breaks. Instead of commercial spots, the station is utilizing sponsorships, a la public radio. Clients sponsor blocks of programming with jocks working the sponsorship mentioned into their banter.

The sponsorship model is a throwback to the old days of broadcasting when both radio and television used sponsored programming. Potential sponsors should be just as interested in this experiment as radio stations are. The sponsorship model provides a soft rather than hard sell. Sponsors, unlike spot advertisers can be seen as providing something wanted, lost of entertainment programming, rather than merely trying to sell something.

Web Page Traffic Sometimes Overstated 250%

Monday, April 23, 2007

Quite a few websites measure traffic and detailed user information by using cookies and third party site statistics software. It's been long understood that this usage is overstated due to the fact that many security software suites and users themselves regularly delete their cookies. The result? Two visits from the same person will be logged as different people.

This problem was recently quantified by net ratings company Comscore, which stated, "The study shows that cookie deletion is much more frequent and indiscriminate than previously believed. Because of this, we can see that cookie-based measurement techniques, whether using Web site server logs or web analytics software, can over-represent the number of unique visitors to a site by a factor of 2.5x."

Overstated by 250%? That's a lot and worth examining if you value accurate data about your site and use cookies to measure it.