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RadioWave Cuts Staff

The company says that the move to trim staff was made to preserve cash, and that it does not reflect any change in the company’s business focus.

According to Challenger, Gray, and Christmas, a Chicago-based firm that tracks dot-bomb layoffs, the number of jobless techies so far in 2001 is well in excess of 51,500. The pink slip parade has gotten longer by a count of 15 now-former RadioWave employees. RadioWave, also based in the windy city, has given the boot to 30 percent of its 51 person work force. The company creates custom audio players that coordinate graphics, advertising and ecommnerce with streaming audio, powering rollingstone.com and others. The company says that the move to trim staff was made to preserve cash, and that it does not reflect any change in the company’s business focus. But RadioWave is in the advanced stages of discussions to provide its services to several wireless companies, which is in fact somewhat different than the company’s focus only a year ago.

RadioWave CEO Bill Pearson told GAVIN, “Our first customer targets were traditional broadcasters who were moving onto the Internet, but because of issues like AFTRA and the dispute over DMCA licensing fees, broadcasters have been slower to do that than we had hoped.”

In March of 2000 RadioWave secured $20.5 million in initial funding from Warburg, Pincus Equity Partners, FBR Technology Venture Partners, and Intel Capital. While those funds can’t last forever, Pearson said that the firm has enough cash on hand to last well into 2002. Revenue streams for the company, initially forecast to be roughly 70 percent advertising and 30 percent fees, are now about 80 percent fees and 20 percent advertising.

“In the long term, advertising will be a substantial revenue stream, but given the general advertising lull we’re in right now-which is affecting new media far more adversely than old media-we have focused on revenues from fees we collect from relationships like we have with MSN,” Pearson concludes.  

 
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