Power of Web Broadcasting Signals a New Era for Radio

WASHINGTON â€”  With just 6,000 watts of power, Annapolis, Md., radio station WRNR-FM could barely reach listeners 15 miles away--a big disadvantage in competing with full-power rivals whose signals invaded its market from as far away as Baltimore and Washington. That was before WRNR started using the Internet to broadcast into cyberspace.

Now the station’s eclectic playlist of artists such as Lyle Lovett and Ziggy Marley can be heard anywhere in the world by anyone with a personal computer.

Station Manager Judy Buddensick brags that WRNR regularly gets feedback from listeners as far away as Europe and Alaska. Although the numbers aren’t yet large enough to boost local ratings, the new listeners are helping to draw new online advertising, with a Toyota dealership and apparel and jewelry retailers putting up ads on WRNR’s Web site.

“We don’t have a lot of the signal strength of a lot of our competitors, but the global Internet has put us on a nearly level playing field� in terms of audience reach, Buddensick said.

Charlotte, N.C., travel agent Suzanne Errera, a former Pittsburgh resident, has begun lobbying her boss for a new piece of equipment: a sound card for her work computer. That’s so she can receive radio broadcasts at work of games played by her beloved NFL Steelers--she already has a radio-ready desktop computer at home.

“It’s just kind of cool that you can listen to any kind of station anywhere in the country,� Errera said. “The Internet is really becoming transformed.�

Radio, that stalwart of old-fashioned broadcasting technology, is finding a new lease on life in the digital age as 1,700 stations from 100 countries around the world have begun transmitting their signals over the Internet--a nearly tenfold increase since 1996.

These stations are drawing crowds. The audience research firm Arbitron reported in January that 13% of the American public has listened to radio online, twice the percentage of six months before and a far larger group than experts had expected.

The rise of Internet radio represents a shot in the arm for a medium whose demise has been predicted for some 50 years, first with the advent of television and as recently as the ‘90s with the growth of the Web. In fact, radio has suffered a slight decline in usage--Americans spent 50 fewer hours, on average, listening to the medium last year than they did in 1990, according to a survey by media research firm Veronis, Suhler & Associates in New York. But by hitching a ride on the Internet, the medium has an opportunity to reach a wider audience than was possible before.

“This new medium will reach many more people in offices than you can with traditional media,� said Todd Wagner, chief executive of Broadcast.com, which provides live video and audio over the Web.

Similar to Cable Phenomenon

The phenomenon mirrors what happened in the late 1970s, when broadcasting mogul Ted Turner began transmitting signals from his Atlanta TV station over cable TV, boosting the station’s audience from 700,000 to more than 70 million, creating the nation’s first so-called super-station.

“The Internet is to cable what cable was to broadcasting in the 1980s,� said Scott C. Cleland, a technology analyst at Washington-based Precursor Group, a unit of the investment house Legg Mason. “Cable was a better technology that marginalized over-the-air broadcasting.�

Consider:

* Chris Peaslee oversees Internet radio operations for Los Angeles Top 40 radio station KIIS-FM, sports station KXTA-AM and several other Southland radio outlets owned by Jacor Communications. He said KIIS and KXTA made money from their Web sites for the first time this year, by selling banner ads online. “This year the cash is really starting to roll in,� he said.

* Randall Mays, chief financial officer of Clear Channel Communications, told an audience at the National Assn. of Broadcasters convention in April that his company’s 450 U.S. radio stations are receiving 60 million visits a week on their Web sites. He said the company plans to have all its stations providing audio on the Internet within 18 months to capitalize on the surging interest in Internet radio.

* Internet radio is triggering an investment frenzy on Wall Street. In February, for example, entertainment powerhouse Viacom said it would acquire Imagine Radio as part of an effort to “create the ultimate online destination for kids and music fans.� Yahoo, the Web’s leading portal site, recently bought Broadcast.com for about $4.4 billion. And Microsoft recently formed a division dedicated to Internet radio and similar media.

Radio’s attraction to the Internet is no mystery.

The Internet gives broadcasters a low-cost way to reach a national or global audience, because the cost of sending signals has nothing to do with distance--over the Web, it’s no more expensive to send radio 10,000 miles than 5 miles. The Web also helps overcome radio stations’ inability to reach listeners who lack personal control of a radio--in their offices, for example--but do have their own desktop computers.

Moreover, establishing a radio presence on the Web has become cheaper.

“The expense of the technology to put stations on the Internet has decreased substantially over the last year or so,� said Brian Parson, Internet/intranet coordinator for Jacor and Peaslee’s boss. “Radio and the Internet are made for each other.�

But Internet radio presents something of a quandary for managers of corporate communications networks, Internet service providers and even many users.

For one thing, continuously sending audio over the Internet strains online resources that might otherwise be devoted to Web browsing or sending e-mail. It may add to the distractions available to office workers, who can tune in to news or music programs of their choosing.

And it’s still impractical for many people, who can listen to Web radio only by tying up their home phone line, possibly at hefty per-minute rates.

High-speed Web technologies such as cable modems and digital subscriber line service for telephone connections promise to ease that concern, however, because they allow Web surfers to stay connected to the Internet without interfering with cable TV or phone service.

That prospect has helped drive radio broadcasters to the Web. With just a few mouse clicks, computer users are already able to find everything from the latest news reports from Britain’s venerable BBC (https://www.broadcast.com/bbc) or sample the Portuguese sounds of Brazilian musician Milton Nascimento on FM radio station Radio Musical of Sao Paulo, Brazil (https://www.uol.com.br/bandfmsat).

Wendy Miller, who listens to Santa Fe radio station KBAC-FM from her suburban Philadelphia home while she works and cares for her 10-month-old daughter, says the technology is so good that she has all but abandoned local over-the-air radio.

“I really, really like my Santa Fe station and wish that they had one like it in Philadelphia,� said Miller, who said she listens to the station over the Net one to two hours a day. She added that the sound quality is often equal to or better than what she gets from nearby over-the-air stations.

Sound Quality Varies Widely

As with all Internet phenomena, however, Web radio is still far from reaching critical mass. Only about 30 million Americans--that’s about half the number of wireless telephone subscribers--have access to the Internet.

And the sound quality of Internet radio varies widely according to the amount of congestion on the Web produced by other data traffic and by the speed of the computer user’s online connection.

What’s more, Internet radio is meeting resistance where it has made some of its biggest inroads--in the workplace.

Many businesses, already wrestling with a panoply of electronic distractions, say they want no part of yet another technology that might distract workers and use up online resources already straining to handle e-mail and other business-related data.

So for now, many Internet radio fans are keeping a low profile in the office.

A few years ago, when she was in an office doing business consulting, Miller didn’t publicize her interest in Internet radio out of fear that colleagues might start listening online and overload the computer network.

“I told only the people that had to know that I was listening to radio over the Internet, but I didn’t advertise it,� Miller said. “I didn’t want everybody to sign on and create a bandwidth problem that might bring the whole system down.�