Once considered an old-media dinosaur and something of a novelty for cube dwellers in the Net's early days, radio today is claiming a fat chunk of digital bandwidth. Hundreds of companies and thousands of radio stations are using the Internet to woo a new generation of listeners. And even as innovative audio components, tuning technologies, and software programs come to market, terrestrial broadcasters are fine-tuning the traditional model to shape the present and cast the future of radio.
"Broadcast radio claims 10 hours of total listening time per week, compared with one hour for the Net," wrote Forrester Research analyst Jeremy Schwartz in the report, The Self-serve Audio Evolution, issued in May. "Radio stations see opportunities on the Net but are hamstrung by microscopic budgets and lack of focus."
Yet, Schwartz says, 80 percent of stations have plans to take their signals online to compete for listeners directly with music-file-download sites and Internet-only radio stations. Market research firm The Arbitron Company estimates that in the U.S. there are about 12,000 licensed radio stations, both online and off, and another 3,000 Internet-only stations.
About 45 million Americans - or 20 percent of the population - tuned in online in 2000, up from just 6 percent in 1998, Arbitron and Edison Media Research found in their biennial assessment of streaming media technologies conducted in September.
"We see tremendous growth in Internet radio," says Jason Hollins, director of survey research at Edison. "Its sound quality isn't blowing anyone away yet, but with the trending we've seen - well, if you're not on the Net, you're going to be left behind."
Net radio is available in three flavors. The first is the most basic: a simple, streaming simulcast of a terrestrial commercial station - exactly the same programming you'd hear if you tuned in on your Walkman or in your car. Requiring no interaction and the least technological know-how, commercial simulcasting reflects the earliest efforts of broadcasters to add functionality to their Web sites and appeal to a potentially global audience.
The terrestrial broadcast signal is converted at the station itself to one that can be heard over the Web. Before the broadcast feed is sent to its transmitter, the audio channel is diverted to a server that forwards it to an Internet rebroadcaster, such as RealNetworks' RealAudio. There, the station's audio signal is translated into streaming data, assigned a unique URL and moved online.
The entire procedure happens nearly instantaneously, long before the signal reaches a radio tower or hits the airwaves. "There's just a moment or two of delay," says Chuck Lontine, general manager at Working Assets Broadcasting, which oversees KWAB.
"It's a way to protect an existing brand and extend its influence," says Thomas Mocarsky, vice president of communications at Arbitron, explaining why a terrestrial station should take its signal online.
Yet this push for a broader listening audience only reiterates why traditional models aren't necessarily reliable for the Internet, particularly when predicting new developments in a long tradition like radio listening. Stations that broadcast on AM and FM serve local markets; the Internet is undeniably global. As a result, the two rely on vastly different potential demographics.
The second Net radio flavor: also a simulcast, but of a station that benefits from an international audience. Often college- or community-based, and occasionally run by nonprofit organizations, these are stations for which broad, nonregional listenership is essential. KWAB, also known as Radio for Change, is a terrestrial station that also is the mouthpiece for the progressive political group, Working Assets. The station broadcasts local news and sports events on AM 1490 in Boulder. But its real listeners tune in online.
"Our Web audience has grown every month since we signed on a year ago," KWAB's Lontine reports. At its peak reach, during the national political conventions this fall, about 10,000 online listeners a week tuned in to hear KWAB, a number Lontine calls "huge."
"We walk a delicate balance between the terrestrial and the dot-com - our hosts need to be acutely aware that they're addressing two distinct markets," he says.
A third possibility is the Internet-only station. Using streaming technology to create their own signal, Net-exclusive broadcasters eschew the traditional airwaves and pipe their own usually noncommercial, often musical signals directly onto the Web. From esoteric West African hip-hop and Appalachian bluegrass to hundred-plus-channel listening centers, such as DiscJockey.Com, iCast, The Eclectic Radio Company's GoGaGa and NetRadio.com, Internet-only stations embrace an early digital premise: that the Web should provide a level playing field for everyone - broadcasters and listeners alike.
