Would you pay $5 a month to listen to the Cumulus radio stations online?
Maybe a year and a half ago, Cumulus made the odd choice to make its conten available on the rival clear channel iHeartRadio – the notion was CC would do the work and promote the Cumulus groupon like Sweetjack service.
Today’s blockbuster news is that Cimulus has cuta deal with Rdio for online streaming – Rdio is a $5 a month music streaming service started by the folks who created Skype – it competes against Pandora and spotify.
If you are willing to endure extra ads, there is also a free version. While the announcement doesn’t come right out and say it, Lew Dickey sounds like he will drop iHeartradio whenever he can do it. The deal really made no sense for either company.
It seemed to me ta iHeartRadio was trying to be the Hulu of audio, but Hulu is so bogged down in conflicts that its owners don’t seem to want it to work well.
Radio is a bit like newspapers – if one goes behind a pay wall, customers will get their news or music/talk elsewhere.
I don’t see that iHeartRadio or Cumulus has a lot to offer for a monthly fee when for the same fee, listeners can get the same content (more or less) with no commercials, or get it with commercials without the monthly fee. In the olden days, stations wanted listeners so that advertizers would be willing to pay more per ad.
Time Warner part “A” : http://www.mediaite.com/tv/ive-never-heard-of-such-a-thing-happening-cnn-anchor-blanks-on-ft-hood-shooting/
Time Warner part ” A’ ” : http://dailycaller.com/2013/09/16/time-mag-hides-putins-success-from-u-s-voters/
Seems like no matter what you do or how much you pay, you’re still going to get commercials (like with satellite radio), so they’re really just screwing themselves. Cumulus’ stations aren’t any better than Clear Channel’s, and in a lot of ways are much worse, so they’d have to offer something that no one else does to justify charging for it.
What’s that? They’ve got Michael Savage, Geraldo Rivera, and Don Imus?
Well, then. Let me get my wallet.
You don’t need them to get Glen Beck for you to get your wallet – he wants you to pay him thought your cable bill. 😉
The Blaze radio feed is free still, and not half bad. 12 hours of live programming a day, too. Even though I have my misgivings about Beck’s sincerity, Jay Severin and Doc Thompson are still good hosts.
And I don’t have cable. Or a TV. But I’d rather pay for Beck than Al Jazeera.
FIOS has be pay for Al Jazeera and not Beck. I haven’t really watched Al Jazeera but when I have, it was actually quite good. It’s loaded up with people they hired from CNN and MSNBC but they are under new management. They have one show each evening focused on US news and it is actually quite good. I don’t ever recommend getting your news from only one company – variety gives you enough information to make up your own mind and be a better voter.
AMEN!
Al Jazeera is pure propaganda!
I haven’t seen much of it. What positions do you find they support and which do you find they don’t? The couple times I had watched their North American news hour, it seems like I was watching “60 Minutes” on CBS or “Dan Rather Reports” on the HD Channel. A bit on the liberal side, but with a focus on people that were actively solving problems and making things better for others.
“Would you pay $5 a month to listen to the Cumulus radio stations online?”
Hell No!
parrott