News Corp. is set to unveil one of its more audacious content bets in recent years: The Daily, a newspaper designed for the iPad and the generation of tablet devices it inspired.
Conceived by News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch, who negotiated directly with Apple CEO Steve Jobs, the publication breaks new ground in a couple of ways. First, it’s one of the biggest bets on traditional journalism in years on any platform — 100 writers, editors and designers have been hired for the project. Read more about this story in Adage here
Canadians will soon be able to own a piece of a U.S. company whose only service is blacked out in Canada.
Having last week declared its intention to go public, Oakland-based Pandora Media Inc. has become a household name in Internet radio in the United States, attracting some 80 million listeners since its founding more than a decade ago.
Read the entire Financial Post article here.
Listener Driven Radio today announced the release of its latest software offering – LDR.Takeover. With a lucrative set of new features and capabilities, including deep integration with Facebook, LDR.Takeover provides radio stations the next step in leveraging the power of social media to grow ratings and revenue. The product is optimized for daypart programming and designed for stations looking to offer increased control to listeners for specific time periods and shows.
Bonneville-owned WTMX-101.9 The Mix, a perennial leader in Chicago radio, will be the first station to launch the platform. WTMX will engage LDR.Takeover for U Mix It, a new nightly show, which allows listeners take control of the station. The program will launch on February 16 at 8 p.m. CT. The station has already sold a premium digital sponsorship to Pepsi for the program.
“U Mix It is a new social music experience for Chicago music fans,” said Bonneville Senior VP/Programming, Greg Solk. “We’ve enjoyed working with Daniel Anstandig and the LDR team on the new platform that will power this show. Never before have Chicago radio listeners had this level of control and influence. Now every weeknight at 8 p.m., our audience becomes the Music Director.”
With heavy Facebook and Twitter integration, LDR.Takeover offers listeners real-time control of a radio station’s programming, allowing them to move songs in the playlist queue; recommend songs for airplay; receive SMS text messages, IMs, or e-mails when their favorite songs play; and dedicate songs to friends via Facebook. LDR.Takeover also has a built-in music recommendation engine to introduce listeners to new music.
“We continue to innovate and create new ways for radio to integrate social media and real-time listener input,” said Daniel Anstandig, President of Listener Driven Radio. “Greg Solk, Mary Ellen Kachinske and the entire Bonneville Chicago team have been closely involved in the development of the LDR.Takeover platform. Their vision for real-time collaboration with the audience combined with our group’s knowledge of social media has resulted in an entirely new and paradigm-shifting way of programming radio.”
The LDR.Takeover platform also ties directly into RCS Nexgen Automation and a number of other automation systems. Like all LDR products, it is white-labeled for each station to brand as they choose. It is the second product offering from Listener Driven Radio designed for broadcasters. The company’s original platform, LDR.1, continues to add features and affiliates. It is now used by stations in more than 50 markets globally, including New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Detroit, Paris and five major markets across Canada. Learn more abut Listener Drive Radio here.
The current licensee of CFWC-FM in Brantford, 1486781 Ontario Limited, has been denies two applications by the CRTC.
The first of these was to eliminate a condition of license, effectively allowing the station to switch formats from Christian to a more broad based Rock format.
The second, which was contingent on approval of the first application, was to sell the station to Durham Radio Inc.
The CRTC denied the application to change format for a number of reasons, including maintaining diversity in the market.
Read more here.
A Rock station targeting males in New Zealand has got in some hot water by offering a Ukrainian bride as a prize. The winner will fly from New Zealand to Zaporozhye where they will choose their bride from The Endless Love Agency. They will then start married life together during a 12-night stay with free accommodations and $2,000 NZD.
The winner can choose one lady from those registered with Endless Love to correspond via two video conferences and unlimited translated emails with photos in the lead up to the face to face meeting. Extras include a food and beverage welcome pack on arrival, first day breakfast, a bunch of roses for the lady on their first meeting, interpreters for the first meeting, a three-hour river cruise with the lady, taxis to and from the river cruise, photographer on the river cruise, additional assistance from the Endless Love Agency tour guide for the length of stay in the Ukraine.
Check out the radio stations website here. Read more about this story on RBR here.
The Wave has been nominated for a “SALTY” award. On Friday February 17th the Saint John social media community, a diverse group of tweeps, facebookers and bloggers, will gather to honor those who have used social media to achieve personal, business and community related goals. Awards will be given out for Twitter Person of the Year, Best Facebook Page, Coolest Blog and Best Use of Social Media in a Campaign. The Wave has been nominated for BEST FACEBOOK PAGE.
“97.7 HTZ-FM Program Director and Afternoon Drive Announcer, Mike Tyler has amicably parted ways with Astral Niagara due to management re-structuring. Mike can be reached at mtyler17@cogeco.ca“
OTTAWA-GATINEAU, february 8, 2011 —The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) today launched, of its own initiative, a proceeding to review its decisions on billing practices that would have applied to the residential customers of Small Internet service providers (Small ISPs).
“The great concern expressed by Canadians over this issue is telling of how much the Internet has become an integral part of their lives,” said Konrad von Finckenstein, Q.C., Chairman of the CRTC. “Our approach is based on two fundamental principles:
With these principles in mind, we will be reviewing our decisions with fresh eyes and look forward to hearing the views of Canadians.”
Following a series of decisions, the CRTC had given Large Distributors the permission to change their billing practices for the residential Internet services provided to wholesale customers (i.e. the Small ISPs). Starting on March 1, 2011, the residential customers of Small ISPs would have been subject to additional charges for going over specific bandwidth caps. The CRTC has suspended the implementation of these decisions pending the outcome of the proceeding launched today.
The CRTC is seeking comments on:
Interested parties may submit their comments by April 29, 2011, by filling out the online form, by writing to the Secretary General, CRTC, Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0N2, or by fax, at 819-994-0218.
The company that measures radio listening in the U.K. RAJAR (Radio Joint Audience Research Limited) has released the latest results. Radio reaches almost 91% of all adults living in Great Britain each week. This means radio reaches over 42 million people in any week.
This is spread over both analog and digital platforms and 25% of all tuning now happens on a digital receiver. Great Britain adopted DAB several years ago, and today the Brit’s have lots of different ways they can listen to digital radio from set top boxes, television, internet and also via their mobile devices. DAB digital radio listening hours are up 26.9% on a year-to-year basis and access to a digital receiver is up 7.9 percent, to 18.5 million adults.
DAB accounts for 63.2% of all digital listening hours, with DTV and Internet also on the rise.
More information on the study can be found here
Toronto is not the only Canadian market with too many radio stations chasing the under 25 demographic. At 1:04pm on Friday (4/2) Astral blew up it’s heritage AC EZrock brand in Edmonton replacing it with Virgin. Now it would appear John Yerxa’s Hot 107, CTVglobmedia’s The Bounce 91.7 and Astral’s Virgin 104.9 are all hoping to attract the younger demo’s. In Toronto four stations have been splitting the younger demo’s including KISS 92.5, Z103.5, Virgin 99.9 and Flow 93.5 now owned by CTVglobmedia. The question remains how many stations can make a living in this space? Time will tell and we may see at least one of the players blink and change format in Toronto before 2011 is done.