Wade Into Streaming Media

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, April, 2001 by Dale Buss

Magazine publishers are exploring the use of multimedia online, from streaming audio to on-demand Webcasts, to lure users and advertisers to their sites.

History buffs can go to Newsweek.MSNBC.com to watch and listen to an interview with Jon Keacham, editor of a new anthology about Civil Rights movement that is being published by Newsweek. At ITWorld.com, technologists can catch a 30-minute infomercial about the latest database-software offering by KX Systems Inc. And at Playboy.com, visitors can call up spools of audio-video footage from Hugh Hefner's parties.

Each of these Internet outposts has become a pioneer among magazine publishers in deploying streaming audio and video presentations online. And while the industry's use of streaming hasn't exactly reached diluvial proportions, it already amounts to a lot more than a trickle, and it's growing weekly. More online publishers are seeing it as the quickest way to test the possibilities of broadband-distribution networks and the best way to move toward the multimedia platform that many publishers believe will be the sine qua non for future success for any major media concern.

"It's really perfect for magazine companies because it builds community and activity on their sites," says Rich Seidner, vice president of data analysis for Streaming Media Inc., a division of Penton Publishing that produces Streaming Media magazine. "It supplements a magazine audience; it doesn't cause substitution. And it economically can help build a sizeable repeat audience online."

But establishing a steady flow of audio-video presentations online isn't easy or cheap. Enough content must be available to justify streaming in the first place, a challenge for magazines--with their emphasis on print and still images. An even bigger issue is how to bring advertisers along in the evolution toward streaming media for a lucrative transition.

The bottlenecks in bandwidth at the other end of transmissions, where few consumers yet have broadband, mean that streaming still is often limited to audio-only presentations or talking-head video interviews. Doing on-demand streaming requires publishers either to invest at least six figures in digital cameras, servers and other technology or to find a way to rent those capabilities from partners in the TV-production business or from giant rich-media serving companies such as Akamai Technologies.

"We're great believers in the future of streaming media, and that five to 10 years from now its use will be at parity with that of text and animation online," says Michael Rogers, editor and general manager of Newsweek.MSNBC.com. "But for now, it remains too difficult and expensive to do much with. You have to be selective."

Here's how four magazine publishers are testing the streaming waters:

RollingStone.com

Streaming doesn't have to be full-blown, major-motion-picture-quality video in order to be tactically effective for an online magazine. Audio-only streaming is gaining in popularity with certain magazines, a phenomenon that is being assisted by the spread of online music through Napster and other file-sharing programs.

Rolling Stone is a perfect candidate for this technology. So far, it has released online two major prerecorded, streamed programs: last year's "Pop 100," a DJ-hosted romp through the 100 best pop songs of all time, as selected by editors, and whose appearance coincided with a print-magazine cover with the same title; and this year's "Behind the Covers," a more eclectic gathering of audio clips based on various covers of Rolling Stone since its inception and including aural glimpses of everything from the Beatles to President Nixon, from Jimi Hendrix to Star Wars.

Advertisers participate as well: Listeners can click on an icon for Geico Insurance in the audio-player window, for example, hear a Geico radio ad and then be transported to Geico's homepage for more information about auto insurance or the brand's other products. One advantage for Rolling Stone is that it outsources the entire enterprise to RadioWave.com, a Net-radio concern that produces and streams the programming and recruits advertisers as well.

"To try to do video with this kind of content as well as audio would require such a great amount of bandwidth that many consumers would be horrifically frustrated all the time, because they wouldn't be able to download anything," says Berry Meyerowitz, vice president of marketing for Chicago-based RadioWave.com. Rolling Stone is "a prime example of a publishing entity that only needs to have streaming audio at this point, as the No. 1 brand in the world for music. What better authority could there be?"

Newsweek.msnbc.com

The magazine this year is entering what Rogers calls a "big push in terms of creating multiple forms of streaming media," in part because he believes that the next few years will finally bring the long-awaited explosion in broadband access in American homes. "Streaming changes the experience so much that it creates a very loyal audience when you give them good stuff, so this year we'll be focusing on building that out."