Updates from January, 2010

  • Buffalo’s WKSE and WTSS 2.0 Site’s Launch

    Admin 3:20 pm on January 22, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply

    Hello,

    I’m happy to announce that Entercom Buffalo’s  WKSE “Kiss 98.5″ and WTSS “Star 102,.5″ websites have both launched, one right after the other.  The market webmaster, Heather Harwood, has worked hard implementing her vision on the design while not compromising the content offering on the websites.

    I always enjoy Heather’s design sense, and it shows on these sites.  They both have an energy that match the formats of the stations.

    The Star website is a great example of embracing social networking into their host’s profiles.  Entercom Digital’s new Twitter integration into QuickPosts has been implemented for their hosts on this site.  I’m encouraged to see this seemlessly blending into the Quickposts website’s without any problems.

    On Kiss, (again, I love the design) props to the morningshow’s Janet & Nick’s blog.  They put up a post nearly every day.  I am always happy to see this.  It is so important to have consistant postings from a show on the site.  The latest posts are added to the center area of the homepage, making a strong link into the blog and improving it’s value to the site.  If you need some direction on how to do this, please contact the Digital staff or even ITM.  We both can give you some direction on how to do this.

     

  • Seattle’s KISW 2.0 Website

    Admin 2:44 pm on January 22, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply

    KISW-HomepageKISW in Seattle - http://www.kisw.com

    Charlie Lybecker is the Seattle Webmaster and part-time Entercom Digital staff member.  Many of you may have worked with Charlie now and then.  Charlie brings a long career or overseeing and developing radio station websites, and it shows in his masterpiece KISW.com.

    We should all look closely at the KISW website for features that could benefit our own websites.   I notice implementations on KISW.com of many of the features we had discussed while designing this project.  It is reassuring to see them successfully added.

    What I love about KISW.com is it creates buckets of information on inside pages, not just the home page. Going into the BJ Shea page, for instance, you see the page has content similar to a site homepage.

    • It’s own flipper linking to key pages for the  show (I personally enjoy the BJ Shae “Out Pick Lil Mick” page).
    • Audio section listing audio clips specific to the show
    • Blog section listing links to recent blog posts and teasers
    • Video player for video from the show

    A nice package if you ask me.

    Other areas of interest are:

    • Weather through InterTech.  Few stations know that this is content offered by ITM for free.  Just ask ITM to add this to your site.
    • Traffic information that was gathered from the Washington D.O.T. website
    • The KISW station Schedule that integrated the same system KDFC created for their website.  Charlie and the Digital team set this up in no time.  All it took from Charlie was modifying the styles to match his site.  NOTE: If any of our stations would like their own copy of this, please ask.
    • Of course the gratuitous photos for the lads.  Notice how the page links to the photo galleries for each model.

    Nice work Charlie!

    Next up Buffalo’s two launches.

    ~n

     

  • Where to Find the Latest Multi-Market Digital Deals…

    Admin 11:14 am on May 19, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Corporate, Digital Sales, Inventory, Multi-market, National

    A friendly reminder that you can find the latest multi-market Digital deals posted at this here blog. Please bookmark this page or subscribe to the RSS feed to get updates pushed to you.

    We’re posting these deals as soon as they are accepted, and they generally fall within Corporate’s 20% of inventory. Due to resource limitations, we won’t be able to post all of the streaming remnant deals accepted via TargetSpot and AdWire, but those only run in unsold inventory.

     

  • FlyCast, PODS and Voki (Oh My)

    Admin 10:08 am on September 15, 2008 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: FlyCast FlyTunes Voki PODS Content

    Hello,

    We are of course violating the first rule of blogging by not posting meaningful updates more frequently. So here’s our attempt to address that.

    Three quick updates have been pushed out in various forums, but seemed blog-worthy as well.

    1. FlyCast – FlyCast is the company that is enabling us to stream to the iPhone and iPod Touch (and soon Blackberry, FYI). Right now, Portland, San Francisco and Seattle are streaming on FlyCast. Several markets are coming up (based on bandwidth and Digital sales readiness), and we are proactively reaching out to markets as we slate them. The FlyCast app is now the #9 most popular app in Apple’s app store. Everything you need to know about FlyCast is here.

    2. PODS – At the beginning of 2008 we announced that we would be phasing out the seasonal PODS [Promotions on Demand] program in order to focus on station-specific content and BizDev/content initiatives such as 1Thing and Balance. That said, we are still supporting the current PODS if there are existing sales commitments. Nick Borders and the team need four weeks notice for these. More info here.

    3. Voki – Oddcast, our partner who powers the Voki avatar communities, is no longer offering free Voki communities as a result of changes they have made internally. If you have a sponsor interested in sponsoring a custom Voki site, you should contact Sandy for details and pricing. These are generally in the $2,500-$5,000 range.

     

  • “Twitter is Blogging at Light Speed with a Little IM feeling Thrown In”

    Admin 7:28 am on March 26, 2008 | 0 Permalink | Reply

    I love that headline… I only wish I had come up with it.

    Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send “updates” (or “tweets”; text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the Twitter website, via short message service (SMS) on phones, instant messaging, or other third-party applications. Great so what?

    If you haven’t caught on just yet, my theme for 2008 is to find ways for users to “touch the studio in some way”. Blogging is a must for any radio personality speaking to a modern audience. Folks these days want to opine over a point of view.  Blogging gives a voice to your audience they know is there on air but cannot express.  Folks want to hear that.  It’s just a fact, can’t argue with that. So Blogging = Good.

    Twitter… hmmm… Well I’m not entirely convinced this doesn’t go into the realm of “white noise” in our daily lives. I mean, getting a 100 character message telling me that “Dave, is walking to the office in a good mood” is something to make me all of a twitter… sorry for the pun. So how can we use a tweet to get in touch with our listeners. Well here are some ideas:

    • Events. If you are sending a person to a huge event, lets say The Super Bowl, you can give folks feedback instantly on what is going on as an experience. I found this useful with a podcast I listen to regularly. This person was going to attend the January Apple Conference. It was exciting and brought me into the event to get a tweet saying “Steve Jobs is presenting a new mac, MacBook Air. More to come”. I tell you what, i was on this guys website so quick to see this thing I don’t think I took a breath in between.
    • Alerting users of an unexpected on air event. Tweet out your next unexpected guest to the studio.
    • Topics discussions. For you news/sports folks, giving a tweet of a great topic you want others to listen to would add value and direct users to the stream (or on air).
    • Promotions. If your promotions folks are at a location, tweet out the location. Heck give away something while you’re at it (clean out those cabinets).

    All of these things will remind folks of the great value your station and station website is and keep your brand in their frame of reference.

    One last thing… and this is important. Just like with email marketing, and probibly even more, MAKE SURE WHAT YOU TWEET IS A VALUE TO THE RECIPIENT. Got that? If not, call me and I’ll send you 20 emails today so I can remind you that folks are busy and don’t want to be bothered.

    Twitter may not be anything your station may want to jump into, but keep it in mind. It’s just another tool for us to use.

    ~n

    —————-
    Now playing: Beck – Beercan

     

  • Shhhh…. Why is it so quiet?

    Admin 10:46 am on January 17, 2008 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags:

    I’m down to reading email only twice a day this week. We have Dan our designer in town to help us with some of the heavy lifting on the new Entercom corporate website(stay tuned on a sneak preview). So we’re making the most of this week by banging out a few big things.

    That said, what is on our plates for the next few days?

    Tops on my list is to solve the lack of a video solution for the stations. We may have something real close. We have had ProStructure (our IT consuling firm) install FFMpeg on the RadioTown servers. We can now encode video into any format including FLV format (Flash video). Now all we need is an upload script combined with a logical way of storing the bits of data into the database…

    OK a bit to technical. Anyway, we have an in-house solution on the way. I’m hoping this will work nicely.

    If not, we have the “big boys” out there trying to get our business. I have had talks with about 3 so far and another called just the other day. My feeling is these may be overkill for now. We are in radio after all. Our video needs are 1/100th that of a TV network, albeit just as important.

    Stay tuned!

    ~n

    —————-
    Now playing: Explosions In The Sky – Six Days At the Bottom of the Ocean

     

  • OneThing….USA!

    Admin 11:49 am on January 3, 2008 | 0 Permalink | Reply

    OneThing NW Hey Y’all, I’m wrapping up implementing the OneThingNW site enhancements to the Seattle version of the site. Portland has done a decent job of creating a nice back-end for this that is relatively easy to replicate. For use by all of the markets, we will need to tidy a few things up. However none of that is a show-stopper.

    Check it out at http://www.onethingnw.com/seattle/

    Also, I purchased the domain name “onethingusa” just in case you people outside of the glorious (and currently rainy) NorthWest want to take part.

    ~n

    —————-
    Now playing: The Band – Forever Young

     

  • Welcome to the Blog

    Admin 10:35 am on December 17, 2007 | 1 Permalink | Reply

    Welcome to the Entercom Digital Blog.

    We’re using this space for communication to all of the markets on issues that benefit all of us. I also want to use this space to document projects implemented in the past so we all can review their process, challenges and outcome.

    Other issues posted will be:

    • Design and development articles
    • Information about policy changes
    • Things EntDig (Entercom Digital) are working on or thinking about

    So stay tuned. I don’t see this being updated daily or weakly, but plan on a few posts a month for now.

    ~n <— Nick Borders

    —————-
    Now playing: Arcade Fire – Intervention

     

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