Weekly Rant: 6/1/2009: Internet Radio has hit it BIG!

The New York Times this morning has published a column that every freak with an INTERNET station has run with it. The fact that net radio is a HUGE deal, now I have been involved with net radio and broadcasting since 2000. I love the place, I think what it has done and what it can do will be amazing. However much like back in the day every freak with a station thinks they are the one. They do not wanna work with others. They are all trying to outwit each other at every turn. Much like the big boom back in the day, people did this and people will continue to do this. However back then, there were few people who knew radio to be able to do net radio.

Back in the day Zip heads and retards dominated the INTERNET radio scene. Now you have experienced broadcasters who are out of work and are still wanting to be involved in the biz. The list is long and lengthy. First off all the people who were sidelined by CBS radio, such as Adam Carrolla, and Tom Lykis and Don from Don and Mike show,etc. Then you have people who could make money but no one has the money to bank on them such as Kidd Chris {formerly of Wichita Kansas and Philly's WYSP.} Brother Ken, my close friend and mentor in this business is out of a job. The guy can do amazing ****ing things with a microphone, however the radio biz in Salina Kansas sucks and most of the radio groups either have a hiring freeze or are trying to dig themselves out of a hole before moving forward.

It will be HUGE when you can hear it in cars, Now that is a quote from my personal friend, Frank Cotolo. Frank has been in and out of the world of broadcasting from the days of the Wolf man to now. Frank got back into the game with broadcasting threw Ampcast.com and now has become a sort of godfather to net radio. The guy is a broadcasting legend on both sides of the coin. Most people would have agreed with Frank's statement. However when the net casters could have saved their industry by going to Washington back in the day and bargaining to get royalty rates down. They got greedy and most were driven out. The others were driving out by Pod casting. The invention of Ipods and Sat alight radio made the whole net radio in car things unforeseeable.

Howard Stern was gonna save net radio. Remember this, Stern had teased after his contract was up. He would run to the confines of free speech and that was net radio. People in the net world thought holly crap Stern will help us out. Then Howard found after some investigation, that bandwidth, adverting and other factors would maybe dump him into the unknown world of broadcasting. So he took a quick pay day over free speech and went to Sirius radio. He eventually helped to cripple the platform and force XM and Sirus into partnership and now they are steps away from Chapter 11.

What the chuckleheads do not get and that is the guy from the Times article wants to do net radio his way. He wants people to buy his device and listen to his stations. Just like most people who listen to net radio and do things on line. They will not just buy his crap and listen to his select stations. People want to turn on net radio for lots of reasons, there local radio sucks or they want something that is not avail anywhere near them,etc. I used to listen to Tom Lykis on 97.1 Free FM, why..because I would not be able to hear him in my market. Lots of choices and if you ask someone like me to want to pay for a tuner like the NY times story is promoting, it's like telling me I can only listen to Salina radio or Wichita radio.

My view on this is simple, and that is net radio has it's positives and it's negatives. Positives being people understand it better than back in the day. People who used to call it crap are like Richard Gere in the movieAn officer and a gentleman. {I have no where else to go!} such as Kid Chris who thought it sucked is now driving people to Kiddshow.com. People like Brother Ken who took a concept like Net radio and made it local and picked up listeners. Yeah Ken will get local advertisers and local listeners and if he gets people from Florida tuned in, cool. If not all he wanted was to accomplishing bringing back Salina's Kansas Rock Station and making money.

Finally I want people to know I am not down on net radio. I just see that in this world, Net radio will take baby steps. Most people know what it is now, they understand it and eventually every jackleg will be able to open a station and make it work. Currently the big stars are out there but they are making their stuff work and could care less about everyone. Here's a salute to the future of the world of online media. Let's hope someday, I can make a dime, currently most are not and that includes yours truly.

Jiggy Jaguar
http://www.jiggyjaguar.com