Great Moments in Business Journalism XVII

In the Wall Street Journal’s popular “Heard on the Street” section today, on the topic of Amazon’s “Prime” free-shipping program (which we use regularly here at RAIN and AccuRadio), business journalist Martin Peers points out that Amazon’s gross margins have eroded from 24% in 2005 to 22.3% last year. He then writes:

“[Amazon CEO Jeff] Bezos told analysts a few months after Prime’s introduction that he expected it would generate long-term…
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NAB is negotiating a VERY FAIR deal with musicFIRST

Despite what several industry pundits are saying, I believe that the NAB may be on the brink of a superb deal with musicFIRST regarding performance royalties — with a proposed term sheet that should be ratified by the NAB Joint Board today as expeditiously as possible.

NAB President/CEO Gordon Smith is no doubt correct when he says that if the radio industry doesn’t negotiate something with the music industry, it will have no…
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Want to experiment with a new approach to drive times?

According to comScore, about 20% of your listeners now own smartphones. One implication of this fact is that those listeners could theoretically listen to on-demand streams of your programming during their commutes.

This opens up a plethora of potential new opportunities for you!

One possibility, for example, derives from my long-held observation that morning and afternoon drive air talents (on a music station) are doing a four-hour show, yet your typical listener only tunes in for a half-hour or so of it, which means that a…
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