Unsurprisingly, perhaps, I do know a little about this as my employer is part of it.
Many UK stations already stream, and some like the BBC and Absolute Radio (my employer - formerly known as Virgin Radio) don't block by IP address. However, it's likely that this uber-player will block by IP range. So US readers won't be able to make much use of it. Fortunately, this is a player that for many stations will be in addition to what they currently do. In UK radio - ILR stands for Independent Local Radio and is most of the commercial radio industry. There are a few national digital channels, three national AM/FM commercial channels, and community stations. Resonance FM (a good station!) counts as a community station and isn't an ILR station as such. There are many other community stations which are sometimes just what you might imagine the name to mean - very small services serving communities. Those communities may be non-English language speaking, but more often that not, aren't. The key difference, apart from size, is that they're not-for-profit. They can only raise up to 50% of their revenues from advertising and sponsorship. The rest tends to come from drives within their communities. Some stations only broadcast at certain times of the year - such as the many Ramadan services. As to whether these would be part of this broader player? I'm not sure. I would think that many will be. In the end, the idea of this is to make player technology easier for listeners who are often asked to install a variety of programs to make a player work (the industry over here is tending towards Flash now, but there are obviosuly Real, Windows Media, Quicktime and Silverlight alternatives to name but a few), and to drive take up. 2.2% of all radio listening is currently via the internet, and that could probably be larger - especially "at work" listening. Hope that helps! Adam On Mon, Oct 26, 2009 at 9:10 PM, Mark J. <[email protected]> wrote: > > A new industry group made up of both the BBC and the commercial--uh, > "Independent Local Radio" sector plans to have a web site up in beta > form by Christmas that will give users access to *every* analog and > digital radio signal in the UK: > > http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/6436051/Website-to-offer-all-British-radio-stations.html# > > Of course, some of those ILR stations that stream block the stream > from U.S. Internet users--would they still be able to on this > ubersite? > > Adam can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe "ILR" includes not > just commercial stations, but college and community stations, stations > that only operate a few weeks a year to cover events or give new > community owners a test run at radio and the newer low-power stations, > which I believe are mostly foreign-language, with the major exception > of London's ultra-avantgarde/lefty political Resonance FM. IIRC, all > of these stations can air ads (Resonance chooses not to, making it one > of the few UK broadcasts outlets dependent on listener contributions). > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
