It doesn’t matter how they’re designed or what content management system it uses, the commercial radio industry has come to accept that their online home is going to suck.
Where else can you go if you want to be bombarded with advertisements, promotional graphics, and rehashes of articles posted on TMZ a couple hours before with poor SEO to ensure nobody ever finds the posts? Just head over to your hometown radio station’s website and you’ll be all set.
Where else are there bios of hosts telling all about how they’ve moved from town to town to town without establishing roots anywhere and how they’re favorite sports team and musicians have no connection to their current station? Give it up for that guy Otto Mation working simultaneous shifts across the country!
Unfortunately for most companies the station’s website remains an afterthought. Look at what happened this past weekend in Dallas following the launch of “Hot 93.3“:
70 minutes after station launch this is what the website for what should now be “Hot 93.3” looks like. pic.twitter.com/wJXeJvHHho
— RadioInsight.com (@radioinsight) October 3, 2014
Over 72 hours ago KLIF-FM Dallas relaunched as Hot 93.3 and began promoting this URL. This wasn’t acceptable in 2001. pic.twitter.com/yUwFy31H54
— RadioInsight.com (@radioinsight) October 6, 2014
Most radio station websites exist to be promotional machines for the station instead of being a brand extension. Thankfully there are some exceptions, but mainly in the spoken word formats. Hubbard’s WTOP.com has enabled the station to become the top biller in the nation. Bonneville has done similarly with MyNorthwest.com in Seattle and ArizonaSports.com in Phoenix that places the station promotion behind the content as opposed to being all encompassing.
Why can’t a station have multiple websites? Look at how SNY in New York separates each of its team content under different sites? Where’s the station with the website dedicated to local music and concerts? In a food-centric community, where’s a site dedicated to new restaurants? Partner with local bloggers to enhance their exposure in exchange for handling advertising and hosting. Let them focus on the content. There are so many ways to easily expand your brand without on-air changes.
maytableinc 
Owen McCormick 
Nathan Obral 
Beachguy 
airplane777 
Markie63 
StogieGuy 
JD 
Marc B
Embarrassing to say KLIF had to promote listeners to get onto their Facebook page to get information on a contest they were running during last weekend, Since their site wasn’t exactly “ready” yet. Hopefully no other major market station will go through the same horror with their sites during format flips.
Note that the first two sites mentioned (KFIL and KWWK) have new websites now. Those sites listed are the old Cumulus sites. Cumulus sold those stations to Townsquare. KWWK’s new website is quickcountry.com. KFIL is kfilradio.com.
The saying I always use is “Check your facts before you bash.”
Actually that proves my points well. Why are those sites still up let alone having a much better Google SEO than the new ones?
My intent wasn’t to bash rather than prove a point.
And radio industry cheerleaders wonder why the medium is considered by the common folk to be antiquated and increasingly irrelevant.
I also thought of the domain name lapse that caused the NASH FM in Cincinnati to lose their website for close to a week… and no one at the station noticed for days.
I see more and more truly embarrassingly bad sites for radio than anything else. They’re tacky and ugly enough to make porn site operators cringe.
What is so hard about hiring a company to produce attractive, and FUNCTIONAL sites?
I wish broadcasters would offer better listening options. Listening through the priority I heart Radio platform sucks as well. I do not want my listening device bombarded with tracking cookies, ad-ware, spyware and other undesirable software. Also if I listen online I want to hear local commercials not a string of public service announcements. We should post the worst radio pages and tell why they suck.
KVOR 740 – No Mp3 Stream
KTOK 1000 – purple logo with neon green bars
KXXY – boring
KJ103FM –looks like the page was quickly put together
Website bashing is deserving. Not one radio website has anything to do with music. It’s all a bunch of junk. Do you wonder why people, as myself do not listen to over the air radio, preferring internet?
Speaking of horrible websites, look at this iHeartMedia monstrosity: http://www.1035kissfm.com/main.html
Everything that’s wrong with radio websites is represented here: off-putting visual noise, tons of cookies and side apps running along, tacky hit-you-over-the-head ads everywhere, and the usual mindless and out of date TMZ-style crapformation. And, mind you, this one is “slick” when compared with most smaller market radio websites. There are far worse (like most of Cumulus’ offerings).
Yet it’s not very useful and offers little or no value. Perfect example of what’s wrong here.
Radio Stations need to embrace and build their on air content around their websites. A news talk station that positions itself as the place everyone turns to for information, need to be full of actual info relevent to shows on the stations and not just links to cnn and msnbc.
Stations also need to re-think and re-evaluate how they operate on social media sites like facebook. being able to connect to your listeners with facts about artists that you talk about on air should also be posted on facebook, instead,
A few stations in my town stoop low enough that all they do is post silly internet memes that can be seen on over 1000 other Fb pages.
http://www.wsprpower1270.com/ is the website for POWER 1270/POWER 990 in Springfield, Mass/Hartford, Conn. The site hasn’t been updated since before June. The site still shows the station as airing Luis Jiminez in the morning and there is still an ad for the Reggaeton Fest being held Saturday June 14th at FOXWOODS. Their Facebook Page isn’t much better. Aside from a few photos they put up on Sunday December 7th, the Facebook hasn’t been updated since September when they posted that they were going to broadcast Springfield’s Puerto Rican Day Parade.