The number of Americans that listen to radio at work is declining, as more and more people turn to Internet radio.

According to data from the Arbitron/Edison Media Research Internet & Multimedia series of studies, among people who are employed full or part time and listen to radio at work, the portion listening most often via the Internet has grown from 12% to 20% in one year’s time.

Even more ominous for traditional radio – educated listeners are among the first making this move.

The difference is particularly stark when looking at the data sectored by education. Among college graduates who listen to the radio at work, fully 30% are listening most often via the Internet, as compared to non-college graduates, among whom 12% listen most often online.

“The implications of this finding are clear,” says Larry Rosin, President of Edison Media Research. “For a growing number of people, obviously especially among those whose work is in front of a computer all day, the Internet is simply a better solution for ‘radio’ listening than a traditional AM/FM Radio.”

“Thus radio stations need to think about the quality of their streams, and promote their streams. After all, on the Internet, the competition is not just the other stations in town; instead the possibilities are essentially infinite.”

Traditional radio needs to look beyond Edison’s recommendations, too. Radio needs to understand its competition is not just the station across town or around the world, but it’s competing with the radio station that you’re creating with podcasts and playlists.

AdAge reports that Google has a plan for monetizing YouTube – getting you and other content creators to sell ads:

Professional content producers — those who come equipped with their own ad-sales teams — are now able to sell advertising on their YouTube channels. That includes the click-to-expand overlays that run across the bottoms of YouTube videos and display units on the page that hosts the video player.

The revenue is split between the content creator and YouTube, just as it would be if YouTube sold the ads.

For many professional content creators and producers, being able to control the inventory that surrounds their videos is an important factor when they consider where and how to distribute content online. Revision3, the online-video-production company behind shows such as “Diggnation” and “Techzilla,” is selling advertising on YouTube, starting with GoDaddy, a sponsor that’s regularly integrated into the content of its shows. Many Revision3 shows have integrated sponsors, and the company’s CEO, Jim Louderback, said the ability to pair companion YouTube advertising in and around the videos is appealing.

YouTube is by far the largest video site, with more than 4 billion videos viewed in March, but it has not been able to translate that success into significant dollars.

This move mashes up their video and ad managing infrastructures in an intelligent way – offering content producers a complete solution.

The SFGate has published an interesting piece that looks at how Internet media affected Hillary Clinton‘s campaign:

What hurt Clinton most, political analysts say, is that she couldn’t consistently use the newfound ubiquity of video to soften her image with voters. Or, as George Washington University Professor and new-media analyst Michael Cornfeld said, “It’s like the Clintons, both of them, had sort of a ‘Sunset Boulevard’ thing going on. They were silent screen stars who couldn’t make the transition to talkies.”

Conquering video in the digital age has less to do with being telegenic or smart, as both Clintons are. Being a politician in the YouTube era means being comfortable with giving up control of your message and realizing that everything you say or do can be uploaded within minutes for the whole world to see – and then mashed up into something new.

“Hillary’s announcement video had really high production values, like it was a made-for-TV movie,” said Dan Manatt, executive producer of PoliticsTV.com, a political video site.

So were her first Web chats, where she answered questions from voters. They may have looked good, but they weren’t the stuff that generates buzz for a campaign.

“The Web values authenticity,” Manatt said, “and these were seen as staged and scripted and inauthentic.”

Barack Obama, on the other hand, has proven to be very adept at using Internet media – embracing not just podcasting, but Twitter, Flickr, MySpace, Facebook, YouTube & more.

This has helped get his message out inexpensively and has proven to be an effective fundraising strategy.

Will McCain Pull A Hillary?

While Obama has used Internet media very effectively, John McCain seems tentative. He hasn’t embraced social media to the extent that Obama has, so he’s not bringing his message to many of the places where people are spending their time.

He has just now added a blog to his site, and it can only be described as awkward.

The blog encourages you to take a chance on McCain – because he’s a huge ABBA fan.

McCain needs to use his blog, and other Internet media options, to do more than tell us he’s a big ABBA fan. He needs to use it to explain his position on the war, to connect with social media users and just to get his message out.

If he can’t do that, he’s going to face an uphill climb in the general election.

There’s a lot of rampant speculation going on about Apple‘s WWDC announcements tomorrow.

The biggest question, though, may be whether or not Twitter will go down because of the traffic during Steve Jobs’ keynote.

Over the last year, Twitter has become a love/hate relationship for most users. The site has the worst uptime of all social networks, but also has some of the most passionate users.

To prepare for the onslaught, Twitter is taking some special precautions:

During the event, we are expecting approximately ten times our normal daily traffic so we’ve made some plans to accommodate this dramatic surge.

Throwing Some Weight Around

We’ve moved much of the load off our database by utilizing more memcache, employing more read-slave servers, and by fixing some bugs for improved efficiency. This work is in intended to help handle the load and keep Twitter up and running while Steve Jobs talks about all the new products and services Apple has planned. Of course these improvements will continue to serve Twitter beyond the WWDC as well.

Operation: Gray Mode

In the event that our estimates and preparations fail, we have designed a way to keep Twitter updates moving quickly through the system to their respective recipients. We have isolated and created on/off switches for many Twitter features. Should it become necessary to shed incoming load quickly, we can turn off features such as stats, pagination, and several others to preserve the reliability and timeliness of your Twitter timeline.

Sounds like a plan – but only time will tell.

There are a lot of people hoping that Twitter gets its infrastructure together – and looking for alternatives, if they don’t.

The Simple Flash Video plugin builds on other plugins that allow easy posting of .flv or .mp4 files in WordPress.

With this plugin you can easily post .flv or .mp4 videos to your blog. Viewers can then instantly watch the video without having to fully download it before watching.

You can also use it to “float” videos over your website content.

It’s a free download. Details and a demo at the site.

Conan O’Brian wants you to make your own Late Night commercial.

One winner will get a shopping trip to the NBC Experience Store in New York City with Late Night stage hand Steve Graham, who will use his employee discount to get you 25% off all merchandise. Plus, the winner will also receive complementary round-trip bus fare for two from New York City to Albany, NY and an invitation to visit Huck Finn’s Furniture Warehouse!

Here’s how to enter:

Journalist Bill Moyers addresses the National Conference for Media Reform in Minneapolis, June 7, 2008.

Moyers challenges the current state of mainstream journalism in his talk:

“You couldn’t find a more revealing measure of the state of the dominant media today than the continuing ubiquitous presence — on the air and in print — of the very pundits and experts, self-selected ‘message multipliers’ of a disastrous foreign policy, who got it all wrong in the first place,” he said.

Moyers attributes the current state of journalism to media consolidation.

“As conglomerates swallow up newspapers, magazines, publishing houses and broadcast outlets, news organizations are folded into entertainment divisions. The news hole in the print media shrinks to make room for ads, celebrities, nonsense and propaganda, and the news we need to know slips from sight.”

Moyers makes a compelling argument that corporate journalism leads to propaganda.

Blogging, vlogging and podcasting offer an alternative to this. But will this lead to a digital divide, between those that get their news from the rich array of sources available on the Web and those that rely on mainstream journalism?

via alternet

Apple TV is seen by many as a technology also-ran.

While it’s sold several million units, it’s missing that certain something that would turn the device into a hit, like the iPod, the iPhone, or even Apple’s notebook computers. 

Apple TV is perfectly positioned to take off. It’s the most successful Internet TV device to date, and Apple has successfully lined up a lot of content partners. And the Internet television audience is growing rapidly. 

The problem is – nobody is sure what it’s going to take to turn Apple TV into another hit. 

To make Apple TV a hit, Apple needs to turn it into more than a closed box – it needs to turn it into a platform. Let developers come up with the features and apps that could help the company turn it into a hit. 

“To date, more than 100,000 developers have downloaded the iPhone software development kit (SDK),” says marketing expert Steve Rubel. “This will create all kinds of value on a platform that has arguably sold double the units as Apple TV. Expect Apple to do the same with Apple TV in the near future. It may not be at this year’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), but I guarantee it’s coming.”

The television has had a prominent position in many people’s homes for decades. Now people are spending more time with their computers, watching Internet video and multi-tasking, and less watching TV. 

Apple TV will never be a mega-hit if it only offers a second-rate Internet media experience compared to your computer. Apple needs to open up the device, like it’s doing with the iPhone, if it wants to make it another hit. 

Startup software developer Plum Amazing has announced that Plum Record for the iPhone will be available as soon as the iTunes AppStore comes online.

Apple hasn’t made an official announcement on this when the AppStore will be available, but it’s expected to open next week.

Plum Record is an audio recording application for the iPhone. While recording audio (not telephone conversations), the user can annotate with text and pictures (taken by the camera).

The software will also let you play back the audio and view annotations.

YouTube is looking for citizen journalists.

“People around the world have been using YouTube to report on the events and issues affecting their lives, shedding light on stories that might otherwise not be told and offering new perspectives on events covered by the traditional media,” notes YouTube’s Olivia M. “To highlight these journalists on YouTube, we’re announcing the launch of the Reporter channel type.”

Reporter channels are like other YouTube channel types –- such as Comedian, Guru and Musician — but are specifically intended for citizens and professionals dedicated to informing others about the news and events in their local communities and around the world.

If this applies to you, you can go to the Channel Info page within My Account, click “Change channel type” and select “Reporter” from the pull-down menu.

YouTube plans to create a special browse page to highlight “Reporter” channel content.