Radio One Looks To The Internet To Boost Revenues

July 29, 2009

Radio One Inc., the largest radio broadcasting company targeting African-American and urban listeners, is busy building audience through another platform — the Internet.

The company has quietly begun relaunching websites at its 53 radio stations. It recently relaunched all of its sites in the Washington D.C. market, including KYSDC.com, MyMajicDC.com, praisedc.com, myspiritdc.com and woldcnews.com. Relaunches in other Radio One markets are to follow.

It’s all a part of Radio One’s desire to develop additional revenue streams. Local radio stations of every type have been hit hard by the recession. Sales from automotive advertising — a staple of radio ad sales — is near historic lows in some markets, and other advertisers have shifted advertising away from radio and onto the Web. By relaunching its web sites, Radio One expects to be in better position to generate more revenue from Internet sales.

The strategy makes sense. The company has stations in key urban areas such as Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Charlotte, Cleveland, Dallas, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. With the network of stations Radio One will be able to offer major advertisers large, national campaigns featuring both the Web and the radio stations. That could give the company an advantage over some sites that lack the promotional power of a radio partner.

In addition to the 53 stations, Radio One owns Giant Magazine a financial stake in TV One, and a majority stake in Reach Media, Inc., home of the Tom Joyner Morning Show and blackamericaweb.com.

Category: Advertising, News, web 2.0 | Tags: KYSDC.com, MyMajicDC.com, praisedc.com, radio one

qui

The leveraging on web properties and radio space is a good strategy given Radio One’s core assets.

The issue that I have here is that after looking at these cookie cutter sites, the web treatments are clearly missing a clear and distinctive content strategy that would make a user want to visit the site with any frequency.

As the web continues to move in the direction of niche, personalization and socialization, radio stations already have a core audience in place. They are in tune with the pulse of their respective community and I feel with some additional research - could extended their radio presence to the web in a very interesting way.

I understand economies of scale, but it looks to me like - someone just wanted to say “hey we got web sites you can put your ads on too” as opposed to building vehicles that would attract users and therefore ad revenue.

facebook-8910952

don't forget Blackplanet and Radio One's digital arm Interactive One

BlackAdAgencyGuy

BlackPlanet is unfortunately a sinking ship and the problem with radio station sites is that consumers dont 'live' on/clammor to/return-often to radio station sites all that often. The best they can do with that is convince some their local clients who respect their local radio reach into giving them some additional budget to be on the radio site. The site's look good but they're all the same - that can be a win or lose in an advertiser's eyes depending on the vantage point (can be perceived as cookie cutter and not personalized to those local communities)

At least they're trying so hats off to that...they don't have much time left from what the press is showing:

The stock is at sub 60 cents and a report from Standard and Poor’s downgraded Radio One Inc.’s credit rating to CCC+ from B-, expressing concerns that one of Maryland’s largest minority-owned business might be overextend itself on its debts.
http://baltimore.bizjournals.com/baltimore/stor...

RadioOne makes money but burns through it at a much faster rate.

AO

It seems companies are creating sites to reach scale for media buys instead of think about the audience that they will connect with. It is good RadioOne with be able to increase their ad inventory but how much do they understand the users of their websites and can they gather relevant data that differentiate their portal from others.