In previous posts in this series on media CMS platforms, I’ve looked at the current media and entertainment industry landscape, and how media companies are making CMS decisions. I’ve discussed the constant motion from one CMS to the next, and general industry consolidation across many media industries, with a specific focus on television markets. Today, we’ll look at broadcast radio and how this industries are following suit in the movement towards an open source future.
Radio Industry CMS Platforms Go Open Source Too
In the land of proprietary CMS platforms, there has been a crop of offerings that directly address the needs of broadcast radio companies. To put it plainly, proprietary CMS platforms can no longer handle the complex technology integrations required of a typical radio broadcasting company, and that means the broadcast radio industry’s CMS landscape has started to change.
One example of this was when Emmis Radio built a homegrown proprietary CMS, Emmis Interactive, and then white labeled the solution and sold it to other radio companies. It was a suitable solution for a period of time, but eventually Emmis’ needs outgrew its own solution, so it moved it’s radio station properties to Drupal and Acquia Cloud Site Factory (ACSF). Meanwhile, Emmis sold off Emmis Interactive to another CMS provider, Marketron, and the company now offers the proprietary solution as “Marketron Interactive.”
Triton Digital and InterTech Media are two other CMS vendors with tailored solutions for broadcast radio, but they have moved away from proprietary technologies too. Triton Digital’s proprietary solution was switched out in favor of it’s own customized version of Wordpress, and InterTech Media is ending the continued development of its CMS product, Vortal.One Entercom radio station producer wrote about the troubles he had with Vortal 3.0 here. InterTech instead has since moved to offering a customized version of Wordpress for it’s radio clients that it calls “Wordpress for Broadcasters.”
Entercom today has several of its Boston radio station properties using Drupal, and is moving its other stations off of both InterTech’s Vortal and Triton Digital’s solutions. This movement shows that the trend towards open source continues, and radio stations are just the next wave of media companies looking to make the move.