 RAIN 12/17: CBS will merge local TV, radio news sites ·Dec 17, 01:30 PM “SOME OF OUR RADIO PEOPLE (WILL) TEACH THE TV PEOPLE HOW TO SELL LOCAL DIGITAL”CBS, in an effort of “synergy,” will reportedly begin merging radio and TV news websites in 14 markets. CBS Local Media COO Anton Guitano said, “We want to make it hyperlocal, equivalent to the best local paper with all the local information, and then have links to our assets outside of the local areas such as CBSNews.com and CBSSports.com, etc…
“Radio has done a very good job of selling digital, whereas TV may not have done quite as well,” he said. “We’re going to try to get some of our radio people to teach the TV people how to sell local digital together.” Guitano hinted that this is only the first step in meshing CBS radio and TV offerings. TVNewsCheck.com has more on the story here via Tom Taylor at Radio-Info here. 40 MILLION HAVE SIGNED UP FOR PANDORA; ONE MILLION EACH DAY LISTEN ON MOBILE DEVICESPandora announced this week that 40 million people have now registered to use the personalized Internet radio service — 20 million in 2009 alone — across all platforms. That comes out to over 3 million different users tuning in each day. Pretty amazingly, one million of those are listening via mobile devices.
[This doesn’t necessarily mean that “one-third of Pandora’s total listening is mobile,” as some have inferred. One could reasonably predict that a typical mobile user, on average, is likely to listen for shorter periods of time than a listener at a desktop.] And while Pandora is available on 78 different smartphone devices from various manufacturers, it’s clearly Apple iPhone owners who are largely driving the growth. Last December, Pandora had two million “registered iPhone users.” That number hit 10 million this month. Pandora predicts that later this month it’ll be signing up 600,000 new users a week — and fully half of those will be on mobile devices. The Financial Times, meanwhile, says Pandora is a prime candidate for its stock to go public with an initial public offering in 2010. An FT blog post paraphrased recent comments by Peter Rip, general partner at Crosslink Capital (a venture capital firm that managed funding for Pandora). FT says he called Pandora “a prime candidate in Crosslink’s portfolio as VC firms look to bring their best companies to market in 2010.” Read more here. AOL RADIO iPHONE APP UPS STREAMING QUALITYAOL Radio’s application for Apple’s iPhone (which includes both AOL and CBS radio stations) can now stream at what the a press release calls “CD quality.”
[To be a stickler, 2 channels of 16-bit audio sampled at 44.1 khz comes out to 1411 kbps, and CBS couldn’t possibly be delivering that. Most webcast streams are 64- or 128-kbps, and a 256- or 320-kbps MP3 is considered “very good” quality. Now, “CD quality” might mean “it sounds as good as a CD to us,” but be certain it’s not literally the same data rate as a disc in your CD player.] The company also announced the app has been downloaded over 6 million times. Find AOL’s press release here. share: del.icio.us.  Reddit  Digg  Yahoo  Wink  Windows  Google  Newsvine 
CommentCommenting is closed for this article.  Other stories RAIN has upgraded (and moved)! RAIN 9/13: RAIN Summit Chicago takes place today! RAIN 9/12: First Summit in RAIN's hometown takes place tomorrow RAIN 9/9: Summer holidays, "doldrums" impact July Webcast Metrics, but audience up over last year RAIN 9/8: Clear Channel launches new customizable iHeartRadio beta; RAIN goes hands-on RAIN 9/7: Meet more speakers you'll hear at RAIN Summit Chicago in less than a week RAIN 9/6: Clear Channel taps The Echo Nest to take on Pandora RAIN 9/2: RAIN reviews Spotify's radio-like product Artist Radio RAIN 9/1: UK online radio aggregator Radioplayer campaigns b'dcasters to create "all radio" ratings RAIN 8/31: Execs from Merlin, Triton Digital, jacAPPS and more to appear at RAIN Summit Chicago |
