Clear Channel Goes Video
By L.A. Lorek, San Antonio Express-News
Jan. 10–Clear Channel Radio wants to become a video star.
The San Antonio-based company’s online music and radio division Monday announced today’s launch of its music video on-demand service on 16 of its radio station Web sites in New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Washington, D.C., and St. Louis.
The videos feature thousands of artists ranging from Gwen Stefani to Aaron Neville. Clear Channel has a deal with 18 major labels, including Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and EMI Music, to license the music videos.
As the nation’s largest radio station owner, Clear Channel in the past year has moved to offer more content online as it faces increasing competition from portable music players such as the iPod, from satellite radio, other Internet music stations and even cell phones.
This latest push into video comes on the heels of Apple Computer’s launch of its video iPod late last year, along with the more recent announcement of the Apple iTunes phone, the Motorola ROKR E1, with a 100-song capacity.
Clear Channel’s video-on-demand service also helps the radio company compete with music sites such as Yahoo! and America Online, where videos are one of the biggest attractions, said Evan Harrison, executive vice president of Clear Channel Radio and head of the company’s online music and radio unit.
Clear Channel’s service also competes head-on with Viacom’s MTV, a music video pioneer.
The first video aired on MTV — it went live on Aug. 1, 1981 — was the Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star.” That obviously didn’t happen. Today, Clear Channel radio stations attract more than 100 million listeners a week.
Yet Clear Channel continues to create new products to compete with technology and media companies offering new ways to get people to listen to music, whether it’s on a phone or an MP3 player, Harrison said.
“We stay connected to our audience regardless of distribution platform,” he said.
Clear Channel now has 450 radio stations that play online music live. Those stations attract an estimated 860,900 listeners each week, according to comScore Arbitron ratings. Yahoo! Music attracted the most listeners online with 2.6 million, and America Online’s AOL Radio Network garnered 1.6 million.
But Yahoo! and America Online offer different products than Clear Channel’s locally focused radio Web sites, said Kurt Hanson, publisher of Radio and Internet Newsletter.
“Clear Channel has chosen not to compete in Internet-only radio,” Hanson said. “What they are doing is a smart business strategy for Clear Channel. Their strength is that they have 1,200 individual brands for radio.” Video on demand is a “powerful complement” to Clear Channel’s on-air programming, Harrison said. Clear Channel is also exploring possibilities to sell downloadable songs, similar to products offered by AOL, Yahoo! and Apple’s iTunes music stores, he said.
Clear Channel’s video-on-demand service will have features such as the ability to buy a CD, send the video link to a friend, or link to an artist’s Web site. It also has a “video challenge’” area that lets people vote for their favorite artist video. The videos are free to visitors but they must watch a 15-second advertisement.
Eventually, Clear Channel plans to expand its video service to other Clear Channel radio-station Web sites nationwide.
Under Harrison’s leadership, the company has greatly expanded its online offerings in the past year. It launched “Sneak Peak,” with previews of new music releases, and “Stripped,” showcasing concert performances from select artists. It also launched “New’” to promote new artists and independent artists.
It also made podcasts (audio or video files) available on 80 of its radio station Web sites and has provided 6.5 million podcasts to listeners in the past six months, Harrison said.
All of the initiatives, along with a doubling of the number of stations offering live content from 200 to 450, helped boost visits to Clear Channel Web sites from 5 million at the beginning of 2005 to 9 million by the end of the year, Harrison said.
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