PDs: MSN Radio Not 'Just Like' The Real Thing.

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Author: Stark, PhyllisHeine, PaulTeitelman, Bram

Microsoft recently unveiled its new MSN Music Service to much fanfare. But at radio stations across the country, one element of the new service was met with a mixture of amusement and hostility.

MSN Radio, operating within the Microsoft Windows Media Player 10, offers more than 1,000 Internet stations patterned after terrestrial stations. Additional stations are being quickly added.

MSN is using the call letters and often even the slogans of broadcast stations to describe its Web offerings, all of which are free. (A premium version can be purchased for $4.95 per month.)

Web browsers, for example, can choose stations that are described as being "just like" AC outlet WLTW New York or modern rock KROQ Los Angeles. Using monitored airplay data licensed from Nielsen Broadcast Data Systems, the Web stations play virtually the same songs as the stations they are modeled after.

In press materials, the Web stations are touted as being like the local stations they emulate, "but with fewer ads, no DJ chatter and less repetition."

Of course, the stations aren't identical to their broadcast counterparts. In addition to the jocks and spots, they are missing the production elements, contests and service elementsâ€"such as news, weather and trafficâ€"that local stations offer. And the MSN music list is altered to comply with different laws governing Web radio or sometimes to remove a song Microsoft does not have the rights to distribute.

But some programmers still think Microsoft is pilfering their brand and their intellectual property.

"MSN Radio is Bill Gates' attempt to cash in on the brand equity broadcasters have built into their stations over the years," says Frank Bell, VP of programming for Keymarket Communications. "Given the problems they've had establishing compelling media content, it's one more sign that Microsoft is creatively bankrupt . . . Next thing you know, they'll be on the street corner trying to sell fake Rolexes."

Jay McCarthy, PD of country KMLE Phoenix, says MSN Radio's use of call letters and similar playlists is "completely unacceptable and borders on unethical. At the very least, it's lazy. What's wrong? Can't MSN afford to hire skilled programmers to create their own playlists?

"Our playlist is our intellectual property," McCarthy adds. "I'd like to think that I don't have to register it as such to protect it."

Charlie Morgan, VP/market manager for Susquehanna/Indianapolis, says MSN's stations are similar "to when you go to the grocery store or the drugstore and right next to the branded item is the store generic brand item on the shelf that says 'just like Excedrin' or whatever. There is certainly a precedent for that, [but] I don't particularly like being on the receiving end of it.

"When I go to the drugstore and buy the generic, I don't feel all that bad," Morgan adds. "When I'm being attacked by the generic, I have a different sensitivity to it now."

Despite his concerns, however, Keymarket's Bell does not believe MSN Radio poses a serious threat to broadcasters.

"If your radio station is nothing more than the music you play, MSN Radio, just like a cable music service or commercial-free satellite radio, could be a problem," he says. "As we all learned many years ago, though, it's what programmers put between the records that make a difference."

Many broadcasters share Bell's view that as long as broadcast radio continues to serve its communities, MSN Radio may not pose a threat.

"It's not radioâ€"it's just a radio wannabe," says Clarke Brown, president of the radio division of Jefferson-Pilot Communications. "Why would I want to listen to a radio wannabe when I have the real thing?"

Country KZLA Los Angeles operations manager R.J. Curtis says, "In a way, somebody cloning us and calling it 'just like' KZLA is flattering. But without elements beyond the music, it's really not 'just like' KZLA."

Steve Goldstein, executive VP/ group PD for Saga Communications, says, "Anything that is out there that competes with radio concerns me." But he notes that the Internet stations "are not like KIIS in Los Angeles or WPLJ in New York. They are [only] musically like those radio stations.

"While the base of those stations is the music, hopefully there are other components which draw people to the station," Goldstein adds. "If we're doing it right, that's our hedge against technological competition in the future."

Morgan agrees. "I don't think it's going to be a large threat," he says. "You can copy a playlist, but that's not the essence of the brands we create. They're going to miss that magical element . . . At the end of the day, I'm not all that threatened by it. Annoyed, but not threatened."

Clear Channel Radio CEO John Hogan seems more amused than annoyed by MSN Radio.

"I am impressed that a company like Microsoft thinks enough of the radio industry and of us to imitate what we're trying to do," he says. "They say that's the greatest form of flattery.

"I find it interesting that they're touting that they're playing the same music without all the things between the records," Hogan continues. "To me, great radio is that personality. Great radio is that local connection. Great radio is the local news, weather, traffic, sports scores and what's going on in your area. And that is something that radio . . . continues to do extraordinarily well.

"It is not very hard to mimic a playlist," Hogan says. "That's a huge reach to say that mimicking a playlist makes a product 'just like WLTW.'

"Radio has been and continues to be a great business," Hogan adds. "Microsoft recognizes that, but they don't understand what it takes be successful at it."

MSN product manager Kevin Horn says the point of MSN Radio is to help users discover new and different music by giving them plenty of choices. If someone recently traveled to a city and enjoyed a station there, for example, that person could find something similar on the Web.

Horn says the MSN versions aren't an exact match of broadcast stations either.

"It isn't like [we said] 'At 8:45 this song was played, and we're going to match this,' " he says, noting that the idea is to more closely emulate styles of music than to precisely duplicate playlists.

In addition to the sound-alike stations, MSN has partnered with a few stations to stream their audio broadcasts.

"We've always had strong relationships with stations," Horn says, while noting that "their call letters and frequencies are in the public domain." He also points out that attorneys in Microsoft's legal department "don't see an issue with it."

While acknowledging receipt of some complaints from radio, Horn insists "we've been able to work through those situations," with the complainant.

Nielsen's Rob Sisco says Microsoft is just one of many companies that licenses Nielsen BDS data, which is already available to subscribers at radio, record labels and retail, as well as readers of Billboard (which has the same parent company as Nielsen).

"There is no restriction on how people use our data to formulate their . . . programming," says Sisco, who is president of Nielsen Music and COO for Nielsen Entertainment's East Coast operations.

Sisco likens MSN Radio to the time-honored industry practice of putting on a competing station across town and trying to emulate the incumbent station's music.

"I started as a radio station [PD] 30 years ago, and I don't think much has changed between then and now," Sisco says. "Clever PDs are always looking at what similar and even competitively formatted stations are doing to determine the makeup of their own programming."

PHOTO (COLOR): BELL: MSN RADIO LIKE FAKE ROLDEXES

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By Phyllis Stark

Additional reporting in New York by Paul Heine and Bram Teitelman