Monday, April 24, 2017

i♥, Likely RIP


iHeartRadio is in serious trouble.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/iheartradio-parent-warns-it-may-not-survive-another-year-2017-04-21-121035436

Unlike some recent speculations by visitors to this site on Cumulus's looming demise, this looks like the real thing.

It seems unlikely this would mean the disappearance of the iHeart streams and other services.  A Chapter 11 bankruptcy, if it happens, means restructuring, selling off assets, and the like -- those assets don't just disappear.

I will leave to Confessors who do more streaming than I do (all of them) to comment on whether it matters to them if the iHeartRadio app for Ticket monitoring lives or dies.


14 comments:

  1. It doesn't matter. I put the stream URL in TuneIn Radio and listen there. There's still the SportsDay DFW app as well. I didn't even know that iHeart Radio was still a thing.

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  2. Since the last update and the improvement to the SportsDay DFW app I use it more days than not. with Tunein Radio as my back up. I never found iHeart to be that useful or stable.

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  3. Anyone know the commercial George was talking about this morning. With the girl on the big wheel.

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  4. This one I think, Nissan Midnight Edition https://www.ispot.tv/ad/wLKq/2017-nissan-midnight-edition-black-paint-song-by-gin-wigmore

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  5. I use iHeart on my phone almost exclusively when I'm listening from home. It's worked great for the last year and a half, and I've been thinking about switching to their upgraded service. A few months ago they up'd their game to compete with the spotifys and apple musics of the world. It seems like they've got a competitive catalog (Napster, who merged with Rhapsody at some point) and the radio from anywhere in the US seems like a nice differentiator. Apparently, when you hear a song you like on the radio, you can hit the save button and it saves to a play list and you can listen whenever like a regular streaming service. There are two services, $4.99/mo and $9.99/mo of you sign up on the web (not through the app). I don't know the difference. Maybe too little, too late.

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  6. I was a Tunein Radio P1 for the longest time for my Ticket listening, but with the updates to the Sportsday App where you can go back in time 1 Hour I use it pretty much exclusively now. As others have stated, the only drawback to the Sportsday App is the lack of ability to skip forward 15 or 20 seconds (this might be some kind of agreement with advertisers to make it a little more difficult to skip commercials) I used to lose paused audio I had built up from time to time using Tunein, but I never have that problem with the Sportsday App. I never had any use for iHeart radio.

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    1. I agree with you about dropping Tunein for Sportsday. It's nice going back an hour if I walk from my car into work. I rarely have buffering problems and have gotten pretty decent about going forward about 7 minutes to skip commercials.

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  7. Random thought: yesterday's Desoto high school football segment on The Hardline was a microcosm of why I don't religiously listen from 3:30 - 7 anymore. Few years back I started getting increasingly frustrated with Community Quick Hits and the blatant factual errors and lack of preparation. It got to the point where I'd tune out because I'd get worked up over it. That kind of stuck and now I rarely listen. I tuned in yesterday because I found the Desoto story interesting, and then quickly realized it was a mistake. There are so many insiders out there who cover this stuff daily, I'm shocked they didn't even attempt to bring one on.

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  8. I don't listen to the Hardline anymore because it's just not good.

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  9. @11:42 AM Could not agree more. They spent the entire segment talking about the player's dad getting a job at Desoto, and whether he was promised the head coaching job for brining the player. Then at the end of the segment, Matt Stepp, who actually covers High School football, tweeted them that the dad is not even at Desoto any longer. It was a disaster of a segment and a prime example of THL lack of prep and shoot from the hip mentality.

    Did anybody hear Corby completely butcher the history of Guy Fawkes yesterday? It was, quite frankly, embarrassing.

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  10. Random question that may be old....
    Does the same people that own KTCK still own the ESPN signal? I know awhile back there was a discussion about they owned both stations signals? Does 103.3 answer to ESPN or someone locally? I saw that Jean Jacque Taylor was let go yesterday and curious if he was leaving the radio station. I know the day before they said he was in Bristol and then he was gone. Wondering how much authority in what they play and who they hire is directly back to ESPN. I know they changed their programs around quite a bit and J-Dub City was a new show with a host just getting let go. Ticket related if they are still owned by the same company.

    Also wondering why the your an ___ if by Junior the other day complaining about the guy on an airplane that leans the seat way back. How about the guy that takes more than he needs because he is a radio HOFer. It is just amusing that customer service norm would lose it if the roles were reversed.

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  11. ...Or when Corby said John Candy played Pizza the Hutt in the Spaceballs movie? No. No he did not. John Candy played Barf, Dom Deluise played Pizza the Hutt.

    I watched that movie probably twice two decades ago and knew that.

    Nothing is more incorrect than E-news Cobra.

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  12. Anonymous 9:40

    As I understand it, ESPN still controls content but management of the day to day activities fall under the leadership of Cat ad Dan Bennett. I think Cumulus is just a rent a manager here.

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  13. You can move forward on the Sportsday App just not 15 seconds at a time. You need to use the slide bar. Not very precise but doable. Just remember you cant actually forward into the future.

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