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(en) Radio Hits The Internet
From
MichaelP <papadop@PEAK.ORG>
Date
Fri, 20 Feb 1998 14:24:35 -0800 (PST)
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Radio Hits The Internet's Airwaves
(02/19/98; 6:58 p.m. EST)
By Andy Patrizio, TechWeb
The Internet's greatest promise is its use as a platform for
viewpoints that might otherwise not be heard through traditional print
and broadcast media outlets.
One example is the return of defunct Los Angeles radio station KNAC,
which came back to life on Sunday on the Internet.
KNAC's return gives its disc jockeys a new medium in which to play the
hard rock and heavy metal that has been absent from the city's
airwaves for three years and an outlet for fans who feel MTV has
neglected their favorite genre.
KNAC was a major force in breaking new bands in the hard rock/heavy
metal genre in the '80s and early '90s, but went off the air in 1995
after the station was sold to Spanish-language broadcasters.
Operations manager Rob Jones Jr., who has been involved in the Los
Angeles music scene for years, decided to revive the station as an
Internet entity because its call letters -- associated with the rise
of bands such as Guns 'n Roses -- were known around the world. Only
the Internet could give the station a truly international reach.
"The Internet will be an alternative, competitor, and complement to
radio stations," said Greg Tapper, an analyst with Giga Information
Group in Redwood City, Calif. "It represents both opportunity and
competition. It's very likely you'll see a lot of radio stations
popping up [on the Internet] in the next year or two."
But KNAC's reincarnation online isn't an easy proposition, as KNAC
staffers have discovered.
Learning to juggle requests from the station's chat room while
spinning records hasn't has been easy for KNAC's disc jockeys, some of
whom hadn't used the Internet before. However, the worst problem
occurred on the day of the launch. To avoid congestion, KNAC set up
four reflector sites on the Internet in addition to its own host
server. But all listeners were kicked to KNAC's host server, which was
simultaneously taking visitor hits, serving music up to the reflector
sites and delivering the music.
"We had the bandwidth sucked out of us," said Jones.
And by traditional radio standards, KNAC's audience is quite small.
The station's website has gotten 7,000 visits in the three days it's
been on the air.
"By our standards, we've exceeded our expectations," said Jones, who
has heard from fans from all over the world. "The chat room never
empties. People live in there." TW
Related Stories:
Acoustician Lobbies For Bandwidth, Champions Net Radio
Internet Revives Defunct Radio Station
Will Internet Users Go For Radio GoGaGa?
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