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Infinity Broadcasting Bets On Cell & Net Delivery

Infinity_150x50From The Chicago Tribune, "Joel Hollander, chief of radio giant Infinity Broadcasting, thinks he has seen the future–and it’s already in your pocket or purse."

"What happens when you’re running a big media company, you have to make bets on the future," Hollander said in an interview Tuesday. "The bet I’m making is cell phones."

"Chicago’s WBBM-FM 96.3 looks to be among the first beneficiaries of a deal Infinity cut earlier this year for Visual Radio, a service from Nokia and Hewlett-Packard that enables listeners to receive local FM radio on their mobile phones synchronized with interactive text and graphics."

"…New to the U.S., Visual Radio already is in use in Germany, Sweden, Finland and the United Kingdom. Combined with Infinity’s forays into digital broadcasting and Internet streaming, it offers a sense of how the Viacom-owned outfit thinks it will hold its own against competition from iPods and satellite pay services."

Xmradio_25 "One satellite service, Sirius (which gets Infinity morning moneymaker Howard Stern at the end of the year), just did a cell-phone deal with Sprint. Another, XM, has an Internet arrangement with AOL."

"…Infinity’s podcasting experiment with making Steve Dahl’s WCKG-FM 105.9 show available for download–minus commercials–is going forward but is 60 to 90 days away…And Infinity’s embrace of HD Radio, which provides multiple channels and improved audio, has resulted in WUSN-FM 99.5 adding a second channel."
Read the full article here.

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