Radio World Buyer’s Guide articles are intended to help readers understand why their colleagues chose particular products to solve various technical situations. This month’s articles focus on products that support streaming, podcasting and online content delivery.
Alaska Public Media (AKPM) harnesses the power of multiple media platforms to make a more informed and connected life possible for all Alaskans.
StreamGuys says that while AKPM has used its services to deliver live/linear streams of radio station KSKA 91.1 FM for many years, the organization’s on-demand audio content had been hosted on its own website with RSS feeds created through FeedBurner.
AKPM was looking to improve their workflow, but reductions in FeedBurner functionality forced it to make a change.
“We wanted richer analytics to get a better handle on our audience,” said Linda Wei, chief content officer at Alaska Public Media.
“We also wanted to dynamically insert messages such as underwriting into both our live streams and on-demand content. We didn’t want separate live and on-demand workflows that would be cumbersome to maintain.”
She said that moving on-demand audio hosting to StreamGuys enabled it to bring all of its digital content, plus new dynamic messaging, under one roof.
AKPM now uses StreamGuys’ SGrecast to manage its on-demand content.
“It’s much more user-friendly than our previous approach,” Wei said. She likes that there are multiple ways to do any task.” SGrecast’s interface is adaptable to however each user wants to work.”
For messaging insertion, AKPM uses StreamGuys’ advertising ecosystem integration. “More of our audience is listening through streaming, and we want to target them to increase relevance and avoid listener fatigue. StreamGuys’ integration with third-party ad marketplaces enables us to do that.”
Wei said the radio industry is evolving, and streaming is an important component of its future.
“With StreamGuys heavily involved in public media, we feel like working with them will make it easier for us to collaborate with other member stations across the nation in the future.”
