Washed Out on KCRW’s YouTube channel
YouTube became radio in another way today when Santa Monica public station KCRW began live streaming performances from its long-running Morning Becomes Eclectic program. This morning’s performance was by new British artist King Krule.
The station already has an archive of “greatest hits” performances on its YouTube channel, and is one of the few public stations in the US known for also airing cutting edge music across popular and classical genres. Nathan Lubeck, KCRW’s Director of Web & Mobile Development, said “YouTube has been a successful platform for KCRW to share the greatest music moments in our studios, but now we have a chance to open up our unique programming to a massive audience.”
The station already streams its audio program live on its website, on its own mobile apps and across platforms like iHeartRadio. Streaming live video may help the station better engage the audience that already watches its on-demand archive, while potentially attracting new viewers and listeners for whom YouTube and video are the preferred media.
It’s also worth noting that on YouTube KCRW has more flexibility for making money from its content than on its terrestrial broadcast. This can be via YouTube ads, which the station already uses, or other sponsorships inserted into the video stream, but not in the radio broadcast.
Quote a few radio broadcasters have branched into video, offering on-demand playback of in-studio performances on their websites or on YouTube. I know the Boston Globe’s Radio BDC hosts live videos streams of its “Live in the Lab” series at Boston.com. But I don’t know of many other stations that have regular live video events, and even fewer that use YouTube for these live streams.
Please let us know in the comments about radio stations you like and know about doing live video streams.
