Report: Pandora Radio App Cruises Into Cars

Before the iPhone, Pandora was a struggling Internet radio service fighting to stay alive.

Thanks to the iPhone, writes Jefferson Graham at usatoday.com, Pandora's audience doubled in a year, and now, with 80 million listeners, it's by far the largest and fastest-growing Internet music service.
Founder Tim Westergren's next horizon: the car.

By tapping into the Internet from the iPhone (and, in some cases, Android and BlackBerry phones) Pandora now can be played in many cars with special dashboard controls, including Ford Fiesta, new Minis and most new Mercedes-Benzes. Coming this year: Pandora in the new Toyota Prius V, Hyundai Veloster, new BMWs and Buick Verano.

In some cases, the phone connects directly through a jack to the car audio system, in others via Bluetooth. Prices for the feature range from $299 to $2,000.

To bring Pandora to older vehicles, auto stereo manufacturers Alpine, Pioneer, JVC and Kenwood are offering car radios that can connect to the smartphone for Pandora integration at prices ranging from $199 to $1,200.

Westergren's goal: Pandora in every vehicle.

"We think that 50% of music listening is done in the car," he says. "That's a huge market that we haven't been able to be part of."

Read more here.

Christmas Music Is Magical In PPMs

Many holiday music stations show spectacular gains

Arbitron Tuesday started releasing The Holiday Book which accounts for listening December 9 through January 5.  And many of the Holiday music stations have recorded some spectacular Total Persons 6+ shares.

                                                              Nov  Dec    Holiday

For example:  New York City  WLTW       5.9     8.4    12.3

                      Los Angeles       KOST      4.6     6.6      9.3

                      Chicago             WLIT        3.6    8.9    12.1

                      Philadelphia       WBEB       7.1  11.7    15.6

                      San Francisco    KOIT        4.8    7.3      9.0

                      Washington DC WASH       6.1    9.9   12.9

                      Dallas                 KVIL        4.0    5.8     7.2

                      Houston              KODA      6.7   9.2   12.7

These stations ranked #1 in their market.  To see the latest ratings, click here.

NYC:  In the all-important 25 to 54 demo, WLTW blew away all comers with an 11.8. Number two was WKTU with a 5.4, number three went to WHTZ with a 4.9, WCBS FM pulled a 4.7 for fourth place, WWFS finished fifth with a 4.2, in sixth place was WAXQ with a 3.9, WQHT finished seventh with a 3.8, eighth place went to WSKQ with a 3.7, WWPR finished ninth with a 3.5 and 10th place went to WFAN.

WLTW even dominated to 18 to 34 demo with a first place finish with a 9.9. Number two was WQHT with an 8.1, WHTZ finished third with a 7.7, fourth place went to WWPR with a 7.2, WKTU finished fifth with a 6.9. (Examiner.com)

LA:  "I think now KOST is branded as the holiday music station — if you go to KOST, it's Christmas," said Stella Prado, the station's program director. She said she heard the station being played at malls, gas stations and more public places than she was used to. "We were the soundtrack to the season."

KIIS had dominated the local radio ratings throughout 2010, leading the pack from January to November. It had been the only station in Los Angeles and Orange County to top 4 million in average audience — the number of listeners who tuned in for at least five minutes in a given week — peaking at 4.16 million in August. But during the holidays, KOST tallied an astonishing 4.9 million. (LA Times)

Chicago:  The dominance of WLIT’s holiday music in all time periods also pushed top-rated WTMX-FM (101.9) morning drive hosts Eric Ferguson and Kathy Hart into second place.

Though WLIT pummelled all contenders in the holiday book, the station, as expected, began to fall fast from its top rung as soon as the holiday music ended immediately after Christmas. As recently as the November book, WLIT was in ninth place, while the station tied for 11th place in the rankings in the October book. (Sun-Times)

Tom’s Take:  Competitors will make noise about the special nature of the ratings and surely all holiday stations will settle back to earthly shares.  But smart DOSs will plan ahead to cash-in December 2011.

Mourners Gather on the Web

In an age of commemorating birthdays, weddings and anniversaries on Facebook and Twitter, it was perhaps inevitable that live Web-streaming funerals for friends and loved ones would be next.

It is no surprise that the deaths of celebrities, like Michael Jackson, or honored political figures, like the United States diplomat Richard Holbrooke, are promoted as international Web events. So, too, was the memorial service for the six people killed Jan. 8 in Tucson, which had thousands of viewers on the Web.

But now, reports the nytimes.com,  the once-private funerals and memorials of less-noted citizens are also going online.

Several software companies have created easy-to-use programs to help funeral homes cater to bereaved families. FuneralOne a one-stop shop for online memorials that is based in St. Clair, Mich., has seen the number of funeral homes offering Webcasts increase to 1,053 in 2010, from 126 in 2008 (it also sells digital tribute DVDs).

During that same period, Event by Wire, a competitor in Half Moon Bay, Calif., watched the number of funeral homes live-streaming services jump to 300 from 80. And this month, the Service Corporation International in Houston, which owns 2,000 funeral homes and cemeteries, including the venerable Frank E. Campbell funeral chapel on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, said it was conducting a pilot Webcasting program at 16 of its funeral homes.

Traveling to funerals was once an important family rite, but with greater secularity and a mobile population increasingly disconnected from original hometowns, watching a funeral online can seem better than not going to a funeral at all. Social media, too, have redrawn the communal barriers of what is acceptable when relating to parents, siblings, friends and acquaintances.

Read more here.

Murdoch: 99 Cents Per Week 'Makes Sense' For 'Daily'

Watch live streaming video from dldconference at livestream.com

Nerws Corp.'s James Murdoch told the audience at the Digital, Life, Design conference in Munich, Germany, that the 99-cent price for the company's new iPad-only newspaper The Daily is a "very good price that makes sense," and that "pricing models for apps and paid journalism in general is developing."

O'Reilly: MSNBC A 'Failure'

Comments on Keith Olbermann's departure without using KO's name.

SiriusXM Wants to Raise Basic Subscription Rate

Sirius XM Radio Inc., the U.S. satellite radio broadcaster, wants to be free to raise its basic monthly subscription price from $12.95, reports Bloomberg.com.

Sirius, which reported 19.8 million customers at the end of the third quarter, told the Federal Communications Commission in a Jan. 20 filing that the agency shouldn’t extend a price freeze negotiated as part of the 2008 merger that formed the company.

Sirius, the New York-based company created by Sirius Satellite Radio Inc.’s purchase of XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc., didn’t say in the filing whether it wants to raise rates.

Sirius and XM agreed to hold the basic subscription price unchanged for three years after the closing of their merger, an anniversary that falls on July 28, Sirius said in its FCC filing. It asked the agency to take “no steps” to extend or modify the rate cap.

Sirius said it faces a “robustly competitive” market with consumers able to choose terrestrial radio and Internet music services such as Pandora and Rhapsody, while carmakers including Toyota Motor Corp. and Ford Motor Co. offer ways to access Web- based entertainment in their cars.

Read more here. 

GOP Loses Local Radio Voice In Seattle

In its heyday, Seattle talk station KVI-AM was a powerful engine

"Talk radio is to a large degree the base of the Republican Party in the way labor is the base of the Democratic Party," Chris Vance, former chairman of the Washington Republican Party tells Jim Brunner at seattle.nwsource.com. "You could go on those shows and you could communicate to the Republican family. It's how Republicans got motivated and organized," he said. "Now it's gone, and it's a very big deal."

As a virtual arm of the Republican Party, 570 AM KVI for years gave GOP politicians a platform free from what they viewed as liberal bias elsewhere in the Seattle-area media landscape. In 2000, KVI even produced the Republican nominee for governor in Carlson, who lost to Democrat Gary Locke. (KVI recently flipped from talk to an oldies/classic hits format).

While another local station, 770 AM KTTH, fills the Seattle-area conservative-talk niche, its schedule is dominated by national hosts such as Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity.

"What's been lost is the local part," Vance said.

KTTH's sole local show host, David Boze, recently saw his program cut to one hour, down from three. The other two hours were given to an expanded Hannity show.

"Right now, I feel very privileged to be the last man standing," said Boze, who grew up listening to KVI.

For Democrats and liberals, the end of KVI's conservative talk can't be a cause for tears. The station's hosts were sometimes accused by critics of improperly crossing the line into political campaigns and spreading lies about Democrats.

Read more here.

Chicago's Battle For a 4-Share

Imagine, writes Robert Feder at chicago.timeout.com, starting a war when you have no ammunition:

That’s what Emmis Communications did in Chicago over the weekend when it abruptly switched the format of WLUP-FM (97.9) from hard rock to classic rock. Loop listeners woke up Saturday morning to hear Doobie Brothers, Fleetwood Mac, Foreigner and Journey in place of AC/DC, Metallica, Rush and Ozzy Osbourne. Overnight “Chicago’s Rock Station” had rechristened itself “Chicago’s Classic Rock.”

"It’s no coincidence that the move came just three days after Bonneville International announced the sale of Chicago’s leading classic rocker, WDRV-FM (97.1), in a package deal with hot adult-contemporary WTMX-FM (101.9), adult contemporary WILV-FM (100.3) and 14 other stations to Hubbard Broadcasting for $505 million. The blockbuster transaction only served to underscore how much less the Loop and Emmis’ other distressed properties are worth these days.

I hate to break the news to them, but if the folks at Emmis think they have a prayer of mounting any real challenge to the Drive, they’re delusional.

After 10 years of refining and perfecting its format, the Drive is so well-programmed, so well-promoted and so well-managed that it’s folly to think it could be vulnerable to a pale imitator. In terms of air talent alone, it’s not even fair to compare the Drive’s lineup of Steve Downes, Bob Stroud, Bobby Skafish and Phil Manicki with the Loop’s Pete McMurray, Pat Capone, John “Byrd” Kempf and Walter Flakus.

Under current management, the Loop and Q101 have become mere echoes of their past glory. Throughout all of the 1980s and much of the ’90s, they were two of Chicago’s hottest and most influential radio brands. Today, they’re a couple of also-rans — ranked 17th and 18th, respectively, in the December Arbitron survey among listeners in the 25-to-54 age demo that defines success in the industry."

Read more here.

Keith Olbermann Tweets Out

Glenn Beck calls him world's 'biggest pain in the a--'

Keith Olbermann broke his silence about his split from MSNBC on Monday night, taking to Twitter to thank his fans for their support, according to the nydailynews.com.

"Citizens Of The Free World: Greetings!" he wrote, three days after announcing he would no longer host "Countdown" for the network. "My humble thanks to all Friends of Keith for the many kind words. The reports of the death of my career are greatly exaggerated."

While fans of Olbermann were shocked on Friday night when he announced his immediate departure from MSNBC, there was at least one person not surprised by the news: Glenn Beck.

"You can handle the mediocre ratings if the guy's not a total pain in the ass," the conservative talk show host said on his show Monday. "But from every indication, Keith Olbermann is the biggest pain in the ass in the world. Nobody liked working with him."

Olbermann, once the highest-rated anchor on the left-leaning network, told viewers during his broadcast on Friday he'd "been told" the show would be his last after a nearly eight-year run.

MSNBC quickly confirmed the news in a statement issued minutes later.



Many speculated that Olbermann's exist had to do with Comcast's purchase of NBC Universal, MSNBC's parent company, though a network spokesman denied any connection.

Yet Beck maintains he predicted the Comcast sale would lead to a new direction for MSNBC, one that "won't feature Keith Olbermann."

"He was impossible to work with," Beck said.

Read more here.

Ted Williams Leaves Rehab

Against doctor's recommendations

Ted Williams has called it quits on rehab, according to a story at nydailynews.com.

The "Man with the Golden Voice" left the Origins Recovery Center in South Texas against his doctors' advice, TMZ.com reported.

Williams became a YouTube sensation after an Ohio reporter filmed him along a roadside waving a handwritten sign to advertise his vocal gifts in the hopes of scoring a job in radio or TV broadcast.

Within days, Williams had been ferried to New York for the morning talk show circuit, had recorded a commercial for Kraft Foods and appeared as a guest on therapy talk show "Dr. Phil."

Before he won worldwide fame, Williams had long battled alcohol and crack addictions, but claimed he had kicked the habits. Dr. Phil McGraw, as many experts did, cautioned that Williams' journey would be tough even without the drastic life changes he'd experienced in such a short time.

Williams seemed to keep it together for his Kraft gig – but there were signs that he might not be coping with his new fame.

"Ted Williams completed his work for us last week, and we think he did a great job," a Kraft food spokesperson told the Christian Science Monitor an email Jan. 13. "We hope the best for him."

Days earlier on Jan. 10, his daughter accused him of hitting her and said that he had gone on drinking binges.



Read more here.

Mass. State House Bans Tweeting

Some pols say Twitter ban for the birds

M.West/Boston Herald photo

The social media phenom Twitter may be sweeping America, but it’s banned in the Massachusetts Legislature, which has blocked lawmakers and staffers from tweeting from their office computers, according to a coumn by Joe Battenfeld at bostonherald.com.

The Twitter ban is frustrating some Web-savvy legislators, who say they use the popular Web site to communicate with constituents.

“I think it’s silly,” said Sen. Jamie Eldridge (D-Acton) , who goes by the Twitter handle @JamieEldridgeMA and has 375 followers. “Social media is a great way to let people know what you’re doing.”

But not all pols are suffering Twitter withdrawal.

“This place has enough distractions already,” said Sen. Robert Hedlund (R-Weymouth), who admitted to being a Facebook user but said Twitter is just another time-waster. “There should be more sites that are blocked. We should also ban solitaire, Bejeweled and Farmville.”

A spokesman for Senate President Therese Murray said the Legislative Information Services department made the decision to block Twitter, claiming the site is vulnerable to viruses. When staffers and lawmakers try to go on Twitter, they instead get a huge, red “Warning!” message that blocks them from using the Web site.

But Facebook is not blocked, leading some to question whether legislative leaders just don’t want staffers and lawmakers using taxpayer time to tweet what they just had for lunch.

Read more here.

Another Super Bowl Ad Banned By Fox

Fox has rejected a controversial Super Bowl ad from conservative comedy site JesusHatesObama.com, according to the site's creator. Richard Belfry insists the proposed 30-second-ad, which depicts bobble-head versions of President Obama and a scowling Jesus, is just a joke.



"Do I really believe that Jesus hates Obama? Absolutely not," Belfry, a comedian based in L.A. who sells Jesus Hates Obama apparel on his site, told the Daily News.

The company admits on its site that it doesn't really hate Obama. Belfry insisted he was merely trying poke fun of the Obama Administration and to also sell his merchandise.

The site received an e-mail from Ruth Levenson, Fox's vice president for broadcast standards and practices earlier this month that said the commercial was "not acceptable to air on FOX."

The group then tried to appeal the decision, and that too was rejected.

Read more here.