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AG News:
Monday - 7/19/2010
CBS Radio - New Online Player
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Many words have moved from my keyboard to these pages chastising the radio industry for lack of action. One such group appeared at AG on May 27, 2009 in an article titled "An Exercise in Radio Station Addresses, Online." Quoting: We'll start with the most obvious top-level domain name (URL), Radio.com. Radio.com was first registered by CNet News, the company CBS Radio paid over a billion dollars to acquire about a year ago. Early on, Radio.com redirected users to the more highly profiled MP3.com, also owned by CNet. Today both URLs are the property of CBS, but only the MP3.com URL is active. Go on, see what's at Radio.com. If your jaw takes more than a second to hit the floor, you're still not understanding the impact of using a descriptive domain name.
That last sentence described my reaction to seeing "Radio.com," then being used as a place-holder domain. At the time, Radio.com listed web sites with little/no connection to the radio industry. It mostly served paid-for links; you can call them ads, bought by companies on a cost-per-click basis. This increases online inventory while lowering CPM.
Times change.
What is now at Radio.com has made CBS Radio a major player in the world of online radio. So let's give the CBS Interactive Music Group's team a sincere congratulation.
Here's the caveat: Knowing the difficulty in creating a functional radio web site, I'd say taking a year to develop what CBS Radio has placed at Radio.com is reasonable. But two years? That's the result of sitting on your laurels waiting for this "internet fad" to die. At the least (upon buying CNet) CBS Radio could have had a redirect placed at the radio.com domain to move anyone typing that address over to its listing of CBS radio web sites. Arranging the redirect takes five minutes to accomplish.
With the now functioning Radio.com, keep your eyes on those Ando Webcast Metrics because CBS is going to start a climb to online radio dominance. This will happen for two reasons: 1) the use of Radio.com as its web site address, and 2) there's little in the way to keep a visitor from finding what they came for.
With the above said, let's call attention to another paragraph in that May 2009 article: In this day of radio barking its heritage of "localism," start exploring what happens when you use a geographically-targeted domain assocated to the term "radio," like HoustonRadio.com, DetroitRadio.com, DenverRadio.com, LosAngelesRadio.com, MiamiRadio.com, PittsburghRadio.com, or even the mother of all radio industry names, NewYorkRadio.com. Just click on each name and see what you get. The radio industry dropped the ball in securing what is possibly the most important online address for each destination - besides missing out on RadioAdvertiser.com and RadioAdInfo.com, [both] owned by Audio Graphics.
It's too late to grab local top-level domains without paying thousands of dollars over the $9.95 registration fee charged at GoDaddy, but it's not too late to begin capturing the upcoming mobile radio market.
Here's the growth between January and June 2010 in the use of smartphones to reach radio stations listed at RadioRow.
If it takes years to understand the importance of this trend - as it took the radio industry to comprehend the value of a descriptive top-level domain - then two years from now broadcast radio will be again asking "what happened?"
I'm hoping that this piece of information won't be put on the backburner by radio industry executives, as many other internet-related items have been through the years.
CBS Radio is on cue to lead this evolution. This industry's future now sits on how long it will take other radio groups to climb onboard.
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