The Web Catches and Reshapes Radio

January 16, 2000

The Web Catches and Reshapes Radio

Related Article
Television and the Net Converge

By CLEA SIMON
s I sit down to write, an accordionist accompanies me, embroidering a fast, bluesy riff over an ancient melody. This kind of music -- part swamp pop, part zydeco -- doesn't get much play on my local Boston radio. But the station that is helping me get down to work comes straight out of Eunice, La., and the reception on my little iMac is just fine.

Logging on to Disc Jockey.com connects a listener to Internet-only stations like Love Beat, which plays only old love songs.

Although we are still in the minority, my friends and I are among the growing number of computer-literate radio fans who are logging on, tuning in and dropping out of our local market to listen instead to the global offerings popping up around the Internet dial. Whether we choose to hear our international news delivered by the refined voices of the BBC or from a Chinese perspective, courtesy of Joy FM's English-language service out of Beijing, we can find a source on the World Wide Web. If we seek to share our disappointment with this year's football results, we can catch postseason griping by members of the Patriots and Packers coaching staffs on Sportsfanradio.com. If we simply yearn for a little fantasy travel, we can eavesdrop on the pop, rock and samba of the Brazilian top-40 station JB, which broadcasts at 97.7 FM out of Rio de Janeiro and at jb.fm on the Web.

Browsing Around the Dial
Audio servers like Broadcast.com from Yahoo! and BRS Media's Radio.FM are clearinghouses for hundreds of traditional and Internet-only stations. Broadcast.com connects listeners to stations like the BBC World Service, in English and Spanish, with news-only options -- no cricket scores -- as well as extensive listings by genre, location or call letters.
Radio.FM offers connections to Radio Deutschland (which can be looked up directly at www.rtlradio.fm) and China's Joy FM, which maintains archives of speeches and political ceremonies as well as features, like an interview with a Beijing music teacher and choir leader.
DiscJockey.com also acts as an intriguing starting point, with dozens of Internet-only stations, including all-Brazilian, all-Native American and all-love-song options.
In addition to such network-style offerings, individual stations of interest include:
npr.org
National Public Radio lets browsers listen in to its 24-hour news stream and provides access to archived shows from "All Things Considered" to "Weekend Edition."
kbon.com
This 25,000-watt station in Eunice, La., plays primarily country, Cajun and zydeco.
kcrw.org
This public station in Santa Monica, Calif., has live broadcasts and archives of the popular and aptly named "Morning Becomes Eclectic" world music program.
francelink.com
This clearinghouse site connects Francophones and fans of European news and music to such French stations as Radio Sorbonne, Europe 1 and Radio France (which can also be reached directly at radio/france.fr/)
whrb.org
Harvard's student-run station is best known for its monthlong "orgies," as it calls the music marathons it broadcasts during the reading periods before exams in January and May. Highlights this month include the Steve Lacy orgy, featuring the avant-garde soprano sax player; it begins Thursday at 3 p.m.
wmbr.org
In addition to its own eclectic, largely rock programming, this community station in Cambridge, Mass., offers extensive links to Web radio stations around the world.
orf.at/roi
Radio Österreich International broadcasts Austria's daily news in six languages and music programs and has extensive archives.
sportsfanradio.com
This New York-based, Internet-only station offers live coverage and extensive interviews.
wwoz.org
This popular public station in New Orleans features Louisiana music and jazz shows, and broadcasts the Jazz and Heritage Fest each spring.
CLEA SIMON

Entering its fifth year, Internet, or Web, radio is a newcomer among electronic media, but its potential to change the way we listen is enormous. Right now, its audience across the country is relatively small: according to a recent survey by Edison Media Research for the Arbitron ratings service, only about four million listeners -- an audience roughly the size of Philadelphia's regular radio market -- tune in each week. But at the dawn of the sort of Internet/content-provider interchanges symbolized by the announcement of the planned merger of AOL and Time Warner, new technologies are increasing the quality of Web radio's sound and are making logging on easier, sometimes almost computer-free.
And since radio is already ubiquitous -- what Thom Mocarsky, an Arbitron vice president, calls "the thing you do while doing something else" -- the next step seems obvious. If at its best Web radio can deliver better-than-FM audio, and the Internet can offer you thousands of choices ranging from Radio France to little KBON in Eunice, then your mouse may soon be an indispensable companion while you prep dinner, or the tool you turn to for truly global news.
Strictly speaking, Web radio is not really radio. The nearly 3,000 stations that broadcast over the Web -- a number that grows by more than 100 every month, according to BRS Media, an Internet company that tracks Web stations -- have largely adopted the forms of radio, with hosts or disc jockeys announcing programs or leading discussions. Most of the audio comes from established outlets, stations like KCRW in Santa Monica, Calif., or organizations like National Public Radio. And the more than 240 sites that broadcast strictly on the Web -- such as Radio SonicNet and Rolling Stone Radio -- are usually careful to use the word "radio" in their name.
But radio, at 105 years of age our oldest electronic medium, is audio transmitted over airwaves. Web radio is not; it's a changeling, a powerful new means of broadcasting audio. Radio, by its nature, has been limited by space, or distance from a tower or transmitter, and by time, since traditional stations present shows in sequence. Web radio is limited by neither. Because of its medium -- telephone or cable lines -- it does away with the geographic restrictions of radio. And because of the computer's virtually unlimited storage capacity, Web radio can archive nearly any number of programs indefinitely and offer them for access at any time.
Moreover, because the world, not to mention our government, has been unable to agree on how to regulate the Internet, Web radio is exempt from F.C.C. licensing and restrictions. Any hacker is free to set up a guerrilla site, and listeners will be able to tune in from around the world.

S TILL, most Web radio operates much like traditional radio. A broadcaster creates a show. It could be CBS or "some 19-year-old who stays up nights writing HTML code," in the words of Tom Taylor, the editor of M Street Daily, a broadcasting industry newsletter. The broadcaster then hooks up with a company that acts as an audio server, which translates the material for computer use. This translation involves converting the radio signal into a digital one that the computer can understand and then retransmitting, or streaming, it to online users.
Some servers, like Broadcast.com, are very visible. Listeners log onto its Web site, which is set up as a clearinghouse for the stations it carries, like WSIX-FM, a new country station in Nashville, or KEOM-FM, the public station in Mesquite, Tex. Others, like Magnitude Networks, are a sort of invisible broker for stations. The listener finds the originating station's Web site; the signal, which is processed by the server, seems to emanate directly from the site -- the one set up by KCRW in Santa Monica, say.
Listeners receive these signals through audio player software, like RealAudio's RealPlayer or Microsoft's Media Player, which can be downloaded free at most radio Web sites. Like an old-fashioned transistor, the players grab the signal and reinterpret it as sound.
Of course, the translation is not seamless. In fact, early computer radio was handicapped by the size of the files needed to hold sound. Larger files take longer to download, of course, and are less likely to do so smoothly. But various compression techniques have made it possible to pack sound into smaller files; more powerful connections have made it easier for bite-size chunks of audio to travel from source to listener; and players have become more proficient at translating those chunks into a continuous flow of sound. Tune into louisianaradio.com, and you will wait for about six seconds as the signal comes in, but once that happens, vintage Chubby Checker comes through loud and clear.
And soon, tuning in Web radio may not even require a computer. Now most listening is done via a traditional Web browser -- often, according to Edison Media Research's reports, at the office, where high-speed T1 telephone lines are more common. But manufacturers, under pressure to make the new medium accessible (and universal), are once again aiming to make radio wireless. Through Macintosh iBook's wireless Internet connection, called an Air Port, and dozens of similar devices currently under development, and through the increasingly common cable modem hookups, which utilize existing cable television connections, Web radio is becoming detached from the computer modem.
The ideal is something very like the familiar kitchen or bedside radio, a small, inexpensive receiver that does not have to be directly connected to a modem and that can find a place in any room in the house. Media watchers predict that such devices will be widely available within two years. "As the technology increases, and the bandwidth to the home increases," said George Bundy, the chairman and chief executive officer of BRS Media, "well, then there will be no barriers."
These technological breakthroughs are happening at one of the most vulnerable times in commercial radio's 80-year history. Radio audiences that had bounced back from the rise of television began declining again in the 1990's, with some reports revealing as much as a 13 percent dropoff. Some studies, like those by Edison, attribute the loss in listenership to competing media and what Larry Rosin, the president of Edison, calls "the general squeezing down of people's discretionary time."
But the Telecommunications Act of 1996 played a part as well. This deregulation permitted large corporations, like Clear Channel Communications and CBS, to amass a greater number of stations than was previously allowed, and critics say that the corporate takeovers that followed have homogenized the medium. For music listeners, that has meant more mainstream formats. For talk-show fans, it has meant more syndicated shows and less chance of chatting with the host. "Some people who are listening to less radio are disaffected people who just don't have the choices they want," Mr. Rosin said.
All of which sets up Web radio as a highly attractive alternative. Yes, the corporations are heavily represented on the Internet. The Web giant Yahoo! recently acquired Broadcast.com, which (as AudioNet) pioneered the medium in 1995 by streaming KLIF in Dallas and now acts as the audio server for some 450 radio stations. And MTV Interactive, the Internet branch of the global music television company, purchased Imagine Radio, absorbing that site, which originated the model of listener-determined programming, into its new Radio SonicNet.
Plus, the traditional radio companies have an edge in experience and resources. The game, the media watchers say, is the big corporations' to lose. "The real question," Mr. Taylor said, "is whether radio people can move fast enough."
Indeed, the country's 11,967 conventional radio stations have been relatively slow to take advantage of Web radio's capabilities. More than 8,000 stations use their sites only for online promotion, posting pictures of hosts and program schedules. And most of the stations that have made the leap into Internet audio are simply simulcasting -- that is, streaming the same audio through the Web site that regular listeners are hearing over the airwaves. Only a few traditional stations have begun to expand, with some, like KISS-FMi (for FM Interactive) in Los Angeles "flanking itself," in the words of Mr. Mocarsky of Arbitron, by playing more extreme music than it can on air to keep its trendier listeners interested.
As perhaps could be expected, it is primarily the Internet-only stations that are pushing the new medium's creative limits. About.com, for example, is the host of weekly discussions and interview programs that invite listener feedback from around the globe. A handful of other Web-only broadcasters, including Radio SonicNet (radio.sonicnet.com), have adopted the Imagine Radio model, which allows listeners to design their own "stations," which will play only requested artists or desired song types.
In addition, sites like these are leading the new medium in using the Web's vaunted interactivity. Justin Herz, the general manager and senior vice president of SonicNet, said, "Traditional radio programmers say they want to excite the listener every three and a half minutes" -- the length of the average pop song. Web radio, Mr. Herz said, has the potential to use that same three and a half minutes to link listeners to another track by that artist, to a biography of the artist or to hook them up with a group of listeners.
For radio watchers, these possibilities -- and these spunky newcomers -- evoke memories of the late 60's and early 70's, when FM came into popularity. Although the FM format offered much higher fidelity than the older AM transmissions, it, too, was initially used only as an auxiliary outlet. F.C.C. rulings in the mid-60's, which opened additional frequencies to the new form and restricted the quantity of material that could be simultaneously broadcast on a station's AM and FM outlets, spurred broadcasters to experiment with FM's stereo capabilities. Listeners got accustomed to the better sound quality, and FM took over. Today, FM accounts for close to 80 percent of all radio listening, Mr. Taylor said. Considering the exponentially greater options of the Internet, it might be only a matter of time before Web radio leaves traditional radio in its wake.
In fact, traditional radio's only advantage may lie in its main handicap: its ties to a specific region or city. While Web radio's global reach is clearly a boon for audiences craving diverse music or for transplanted sports fans eager for the home team play by play, it does nothing for the vast number of listeners who tune in for useful, local news. That lack, radio watchers say, is where traditional radio could grow, using the Web's interactivity to increase hometown loyalty through online chats with on-air personalities, for example, or by providing links to on-the-spot traffic updates or live video footage.
"Radio will serve as the local on-ramp to the Web," said a confident Chuck Armstrong, senior vice president for AMFM Interactive, the Internet branch of the media conglomerate Chancellor, touting the strength of listener loyalty to familiar stations.
Even if the niche exists, however, the question remains whether radio will tune in to its own history. "When FM came along," Mr. Bundy said, "a lot of people in the industry ignored it. But those that did take advantage of it positioned themselves to become major media moguls in the late 70's and 80's. You see an awful lot of parallels with the Internet."
Technologically, Web radio may be just starting out, but those willing to listen to it may be hearing radio's future.
Clea Simon writes about radio for The Boston Globe.

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