Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Today, CBS Radio is streaming it’s biggest radio properties – including the Nation’s #1 Rock format radio station, KROQ 106.7FM – over the Internet using Microsoft Windows Media audio.

This nearly brought a tear to my eye on Friday but I couldn’t write about it until today.  I have a personal connection to this move of CBS radio to stream its radio stations over the Internet using our technology.  Many of you may not know that Windows Media is one of my personal ‘favorite’/’pet’ products from Microsoft.  There’s simply no better technology out there for getting multimedia communicated over TCP/IP data connections.

 

 

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About 6 years ago, I met with then KROQ Engineering Manager, (now CBS Radio’s VP of West Coast Engineering) through my friend Blake Handler to talk about streaming technology and how it could benefit KROQ to get its audio feed and its advertising to more people… and why Microsoft Windows Media was the way to do it.  While there we also met with the Programming Manager and the General Manager of the station. 

 

I won’t bore you with the details but the result was that they weren’t convinced that this was a good thing for the station.  The GM was only concerned about ‘things that would draw in more listeners’ to the FM feed to affect the station’s Arbitron ratings.  The Programming Manager said something about having to renegotiate all their talent’s contracts (the radio jockeys) since the contracts didn’t cover "Internet streaming" as a usage policy.  I was also told that Mel Karmazin (CEO of Viacom, the parent compnay of CBS Radio) had a problem with the prospect that New York could hear Los Angeles’ radio feed over the Internet and that their own properties might potentially compete against each other.  There was also some concern over whether or not KROQ would have to pay a fee for their broadcasting of music/songs over the Internet, which would be a complete dealbreaker being that KROQ runs on a shoestring budget.

 

There were "conspiracy" ideas flying around the room from the non-Microsoft parties about how we or someone else could/would help KROQ ‘force things’ so that only LA listeners could hear LA-based KROQ, and San Francisco listeners could hear only SF-based Live105FM.  Management didn’t want advertising to cross geographical boundaries because "their contracts with advertisers didn’t account for nationwide advertising which was billed differently"… or something like that.

 

The meeting ended rather sadly.  While KROQ’s Engineering Manager was thinking about how to get the ‘best’ stream on the Internet, KROQ’s management basically didn’t recognize the value of streaming and put a ki-bosh on any initiative around the topic.

 

As I was about to leave that meeting, the concept of potentially streaming ‘one-off’ events was left on the table.  It seems that the loophole in all of this was that they might be able to stream KROQ’s annual concert events – "Acoustic Christmas" and "Weenie Roast", however the implication was that it would have to be something that Microsoft ‘cowboy-ed up’ for.

 

I contacted the Windows Media group to see what we could do, and had one of our ‘money guys’ (folks with budgetary authority) talk to KROQ because I still believed that this was a worthwhile investment.  We committed to spending a fairly sizable amount of money to provide a stream for KROQ’s upcoming "Weenie Roast" event.  Sadly, KROQ’s Internet service provider was… well… incompetent at the time (they’ve since changed ISPs) and when the stream went live during the event, the link to connect to the stream didn’t appear until most of the event was over.  Since no one was ever actually able to really use our technology, it wasn’t the best money we’d ever spent.

 

KROQ’s management fortunately recognized that this was extremely uncool for us as sponsors.   They offered to give us first right of refusal to sponsor the next event they had – an event called Acoustic Christmas.  Which we did and the relationship continued.

 

To this day, even after 5 years I’ve been very pleased with the fact that KROQ streams their concert events as well as their music samples exclusively in Windows Media format even without our sponsorship, meaning that you must use our free Windows Media Player to listen to the content KROQ broadcasts.

 

So here we are 5 years later and KROQ is finally getting ready to stream their FM station feed… and thankfully it’s still in Windows Media format.  Since then, the Engineering Manager for KROQ was promoted and became responsible for Engineering across the West Coast.  I don’t know who the management is at KROQ these days, but I suspect that it’s someone who is thinking a little more out-of-the-box with regard to media streaming than folks were 5 years ago.  Either that or the previous management has gotten a little more pragmatic about the value of streaming since then.  In either case, good for them.  And great for us as listeners.

 

I suspect that over the years, CBS Radio learned that:
a) Listeners listen to streams that they KNOW… streams that are local to them.
b) When contracts are renegotiated, it’s not hard to include Internet broadcasting in them.
c) Competitors are already streaming radio content and that this is something that is possible to do.

 

In any case, thank you CBS Radio and KROQ 106.7 for continuing to use Windows Media format for your broadcasts.  It means a lot to us… and to me especially.