Topics that will be covered include global health, climate change, gentrification, public safety, education, politics, military, immigration and music. Each Argo station chose its topic based on what was most relevant to the local community.

"The ARGO project has launched a dozen independent, news sites of substance and immediacy, where people can deepen their understanding of the critical issues that affect both communities and the nation," said NPR President and CEO Vivian Schiller.

"By networking the sites, each station gains national perspective, audience and the opportunity to learn from the experiences of the others."

The sites will be connected to each other through NPR’s API that allows the integration and sharing of content among the Argo stations and NPR. Content from the Argo sites will flow into the NPR.org API.

Each Argo site is anchored by a news blog that features multiple stories each day along with community features for audience engagement and curated content. The individual stations will decide how to integrate the Argo site with their station websites.

The Argo Network is funded by a $3 million grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
 

The site was created by Nikhil Shah and Nico Perez with the intention of creating a space where DJs and radio presenters can share and promote their mixes and shows without having to use file sharing sites, according to Wikipedia. Mat Clayton is named as a third co-founder on the site.

"We’re friends old and new (many of whom met at Cambridge University) connected by our love for radio, problem solving and building exciting new projects," the team says. "It was through this intersection of interests that we realised there’s an obvious problem on the Internet that we need to fix – that of connecting radio shows, DJ mixes and Podcasts to listeners."

"We think all these forms of content offer a very similar listening experience – a ‘Cloudcast’ – that is curated by a human enthusiast or expert," the Mixcloud team adds. "That’s the important bit – we’ve always discovered great new things through people we respect, so we want to help guide listeners to those people more easily."

Mixcloud is still in beta, and has a ways to go in terms of content if it wants to become the "YouTube" of radio. The concept is a good one though, and it will be interesting to see if it becomes successful. It’s going to take a lot of users jumping on board, and if the buzz it is already starting to generate is any indicator, it just may have a shot. Either way, it’s one to keep an eye on.

The message coming from the radio industry is clear: Terrestrial radio is in trouble financially and things will get worse before they get any better. Many of the country’s largest national broadcasters are on the verge of bankruptcy, and the Radio Advertising Bureau (RAB) announced that Q1 2009 was the industry’s worst quarter ever in terms of ad spending.

“Internet Radio Makes Waves,” a new eMarketer report, predicts the radio industry will see double-digit losses in ad spending this year alone, with terrestrial radio bringing in $14.5 billion in ad revenues in 2009, a drop of 18% from 2008 levels.

At least radio isn’t stumbling into the online space as badly as the newspaper industry has. The outlook for online radio ad spending is much brighter although it’s not going to be taking the world by storm by any means. The nice thing that online radio presents advertisers is more segmentation and more niche-oriented opportunities to target ad spend in ways that were not possible in recent years.

The chart below shows that the prediction is that online radio ad spend is poised to at least continue to grow while the jury is out on traditional radio. Early returns though seem to point to the steady decline of radio for the purist. No news on ham radio operators though so maybe there is still hope

What are your habits when it comes to radio? I know mine have changed significantly but it’s still on when I am in the car. The difference is that I listen now for different reasons and will quickly play a CD or whatever once there is nothing to being offered on the air. As for Internet radio? I’m not quite there yet but that may just be me.

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"We are pleased that WideOrbit will be able to take advantage of Google’s radio automation technology as they continue to develop their business," said Jim Woods, Director of Product Management at Google.  "We are confident that WideOrbit will make every effort to improve the technology and serve existing customers at the highest possible level."

The site for Google Radio Automation is pretty much vacant. The only thing there currently is a statement announcing this acquisition and a link to WideOrbit.

"The acquisition of Google Radio Automation is key to WideOrbit’s strategy to expand our product offering and deliver the most advanced and comprehensive solution to radio broadcasters," said Eric Mathewson, Founder and CEO of WideOrbit. "This acquisition greatly benefits WideOrbit radio customers and Google’s radio automation customers alike.  We welcome the Google Radio Automation employees, customers and partners to the WideOrbit family."

WideOrbit says that the 3,600 Google Radio Automation customers around the world will now be able to expand their automation system to work seamlessly with WideOrbit’s WO Traffic for end-to-end operations. The financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Which do you prefer: Sirius XM or Pandora? Tell us.

What is the huge draw for Pandora versus Sirius XM for iPhone and iPod Touch radio fans? Unlike Sirius, Pandora is free for all (except a select few users).

Apple users tend to gravitate toward free content. Who can blame them… after paying for unlimited data, who wants to pay another subscription fee?

Sirius XM did give Pandora a "run for the money" with more than a million downloads in a short few weeks. It should be noted that the company hasn’t released any official numbers of new service agreements, which will ultimately tell if the Sirius XM app is a success.

With Pandora’s rapidly growing customer base (around 18 million), when do you expect the company to re-tool their monetization efforts? Do you think they’ll try charging a minimal fee for the service? Tell us what you think.

Microsoft announced that it will open its Zune video service to the Xbox LIVE this Fall. Microsoft also unvieled its newest portable media player, the Zune HD. Designed to compete with the popular iPod Touch, the Zune HD combines built-in an mp3 and video players, an HD radio receiver, HD video output, an OLED touch screen, Wi-Fi and an internet browser.More details:

• Zune HD comes with a built-in HD Radio receiver. Users also will have access to the additional song and artist data broadcast by HD Radio stations as well as additional channels from their favorite stations multicasting in HD
• The bOLED touch screen interface allows users to flip through music, movies and other content on a 16:9 widescreen format display (480×272 resolution).
• The HD-compatible output enables playback supported HD video files from the device through a premium high-definition multimedia interface (HDMI) audiovisual docking station (sold separately) direct to an HD TV in 720p
• Zune HD will include a full-screen Internet browser optimized for multitouch functionality.
• Zune HD is Wi-Fi enabled, allowing for instant streaming to the device from the more than 5 million-track Zune music store.

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"In 2006, we launched Google Audio Ads and Google Radio Automation to create a new revenue stream for broadcast radio, produce more relevant advertising for listeners and streamline the buying and selling of radio ads," says Google’s Susan Wojcicki, VP, Product Management. "While we’ve devoted substantial resources to developing these products and learned a lot along the way, we haven’t had the impact we hoped for."

However, don’t count Google out of the audio world entirely. They are simply shifting focus to streaming audio.

"We are dedicating a team of people at Google to explore how we can best add value for advertisers, broadcasters and listeners in this emerging advertising space," explains Wojcicki. "In addition, we will continue to invest in our growing TV advertising business, where we can measure audience response and help advertisers understand how effective their ads are."

The fact that she calls the TV advertising business "growing" is probably a good sign that that part of Google’s advertising business is not going down the same path as the radio one yet. Frankly, I can’t see an AdWords-based television advertising platform not being popular enough to keep.

Advertisers will continue to be able to use Google Audio Ads until May 31. Broadcasters will also be able to publish inventory to Google until then.

Homogenized content and script-reading presenters wherever you listen are among the anecdotal statistics thrown about.

It’s never really been like that here in the UK. I think we still have a rich choice of good radio in this country, which may be one reason why podcasting hasn’t seen the proportionate scale of take-up as there has been in the US.

So I found it quite interesting to read a report from BrandRepublic quoting recent research by Ipsos Mori that radio and podcasting listening has increased in the UK over the past six months.

The really interesting part, though, concerns the influence podcast listening has on radio listening habits among those surveyed:

[...] Radio listening has also been improved by podcasts, with 15% admitting to listening to more radio since downloading podcasts. Another notable factor shows that 39% now listening to radio programmes that weren’t listened to previously.

[...] iTunes is the most popular choice for downloading podcasts, with almost three-quarters of podcast users downloading them from the Apple software.

Christel Lacaze, research manager at Rajar, said: “This survey gives a unique insight into the behaviour of the online/offline audio community and the impact of new audio delivery formats on traditional live radio listening.”

Good signs.

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If it’s ads for TV or radio you seek, you won’t find it on eBay. The passage of a year brought little business to eBay’s experimental e-Media Exchange, and the admarketpilot.com website associated with it vanished from the Internet.

AdWeek said the project never gathered support from the cable industry. Long accustomed to substantial ad revenue, they viewed eBay’s project as one that would undercut their margins.

“We have ended our pilot program in this market. We have been refocusing our resources on our core marketplace business and have determined that this initiative did not warrant continued time and attention,” eBay said in a statement to AdWeek.

eBay believes its program was misunderstood by potential participants. Instead of an auction, AdWeek noted the process would be initiated by a typical request for proposal (RFP), with responses and negotiations taking place. Older techies may see a resemblance here to the Electronic Data Interchange model used by government agencies and suppliers.

It’s difficult to see much success for eBay when it goes outside its core business. The Skype acquisition led to a monumental writeoff, its Kijiji marketplace trails Craigslist in classifieds, and now this latest setback.

Couple that with changes to the feedback system that have angered eBay sellers, along with policy shifts that favor volume sellers over the smaller individual sellers, and eBay seems to have a messy 2008 on its hands.

TNS Media Intelligence only looked at the display ad business online in comparing it to several other media segments. Only Free Standing Inserts, i.e. those inserts placed into, but not bound to, print media, outgained online display ads in the first quarter of 2008.

Here’s how they stacked up by percentage:

FSI: 8.8%
Internet: 8.5%
Outdoor: 2.5%
Television: 1.7%
Magazines: 0.8%
Radio: -4.5%
Newspapers: -5.2%

An example of online display spending came from measurement firm comScore, and its discussion of quick-service restaurant display ads served in March 2008. McDonald’s easily topped the list, serving over 295 million ads in the month. Only second-place Quizno’s came close to the 100 million mark, delivering 98 million for March.