All about RSS: how KUAM.com uses online syndication

Here's a quick snapshop of how I'm separating my station's textual and multimedia content through various distribution mechanisms:

• Web browsing- available on KUAM.com and over WAP for more conventional browsing & searching
  
• RSS feed - the same textual stories found on our web site are synched with our news RSS feed for aggregation
  
• Streaming (archived) - we list our nightly newscasts and special productions in our WebCast Archive for to be streamed to desktop clients; being a synchronous medium, the ad-supported shows can't be forwarded through or downloaded
• Streaming (live) - we also make our (2) radio stations available via live Real streaming audio
  
• Podcasting - our integrated VODcast features portable MP3 audio of the day's major headlines and MP4 video of special interviews, entertainment bits, major stories, performances and more.

I intentionally separated the content in Wachowskian fashion - a user who consumes all forms of media gets the total picture and the full KUAM experience, but those who don't still get it, albeit minus slight details. While all platforms are mirrored and synch online with what we're doing on the air, we don't replicate all the content in more than a single medium. This encourages people to check us out in as many forms as possible. And it's worked.

We get a ton of hits on all of our RSS feeds and on our streaming media. Our web site traffic did teeter off slightly, but not significantly. While this happened, my database is responding to more queries than ever, implying a shift towards multimedia and time-shifted content.