"Sometimes sappy, sometimes happy," says the Web-page pitch for Brent Ingalls Internet radio show dedicated to the best love songs of the
70s through the 90s. Ingalls and fellow broadcasters Adonica Joette of the
Astrology Hour and Allan Holender of the Home Biz Show are heard around the
world on Vancouver-based DENradio, an all-Internet broadcaster that has turned
the conventional rules about radio upside down. Suddenly, the costs and
audience numbers and reach are about a whole new world, albeit a little bitty
one.
The glory of Internet radio is delivery costs. Whereas $1,000 to $4,000 might
get your weekly one-hour show distributed over the air, it costs just $60 via
the Internet, thanks to elimination of over-the-air broadcasting and
satellite up-links. The downside: We're talking audiences that wouldn't fill a church basement. DENradio!s most popular show, Tom Lucas-s Retro-Rock Request
Show, pulls 400 people at a time. "This is narrowcasting; we-re not fooling
anybody," says Hugh Dobbie, president of Interactive Netcasting Systems
Inc. "We re not hitting all 50 million Net users, but nobody is. The Net is
full of narrow markets." But, says Dobbie, his stationEs listeners stay, browse pages
and interact with the host via chat rooms. It is not unusual for, say, Chris
Lindgren of European Connection to greet listeners by name when they drop
by the Internet site. "We can tell you exactly who is listening, where they
are and how long they stay on. Try that with conventional radio." Audiences for
the Vancouver stationns programs are a global mix: South Korea, the United
States, France, Britain and the Caribbean.
Dobbie is beginning to put up advertising on the Web site. The going rate is a
pittance - $30 to $50 per thousand listeners - but he's making money through repackaging the station's professional-quality original programming and syndicating it to conventional radio stations. He admits the business is
not wildly profitable, but it is intensely exciting in the new ground it's breaking.
Interactive Netcasting has already made forays into Internet television,
including a behind-the-scenes feature at last springs Juno Awards and
coverage of the Banff Television Festival. For Dobbie, the next step is to
build an Internet-protocol broadcasting network in partnership with AT&T Canada,
onto which anyone, anywhere, with very little money, can mount their own
radio or TV show. - Jared Mitchell
