Webby Award winners to be announced tomorrow morning

This is just a heads-up that winners of the 12th Annual Webby Awards will be announced tomorrow morning.

Among the five nominees was "AccuTunes (from AccuRadio)," a new graphical user interface (a/k/a "GUI") for the 320+ channels of Internet radio programmed by AccuRadio.

AccuRadio was the only commercial U.S. webcaster nominated for a Best Radio award this year by the Webby Awards. The four other nominees were the BBC World Service, CBC Radio 3 (Canadian public radio), KEXP/Seattle (originally funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen), and Virgin Radio International. The five organizations that received an "honoree" mention but did not make the final five consisted of AOL Radio, NPR.org, ESPNRadio.com, iCat fm (public radio from Catalonia, Spain), and KCRW/Los Angeles.

AccuTunes.com was launched in January 2008 as a new graphical user interface (GUI) for the 320+ channels of Internet radio programmed by AccuRadio. The new design allows listeners to navigate all of the 320+ channels of music within one easy-to-use page. The website, which uses AJAX web technology, was designed by a team that includes AccuRadio CEO Kurt Hanson and VP/Programming Paul Maloney, who are also publisher and editor, respectively, of the leading trade publication for the Internet radio industry,"RAIN: Radio And Internet Newsletter" (www.kurthanson.com), and AccuRadio VP/Technology Ralph Sledge.

"People's Voice" voting was open to the public from April 8th to May 1st at http://pv.webbyawards.com. As of the final day of voting, AccuTunes had received hundreds of positive comments from voters -- in fact, Hanson notes, more positive comments from voters than all of the other 34 "Media" category (radio, newspapers, magazines, etc.) nominees combined. "We're proud of the fact that the judges and voters thought so highly of the product produced by our ten-person staff," noted Hanson, "particuarly seeing as most of the other nominees are produced by multi-billion-dollar companies with thousands of employees."

Internet radio is particularly in the news this week due to a recent finding released by Arbitron and Edison Media Research showing that among consumers who listen to the radio at work, 20% now say they listen most to Internet radio rather than a terrestrial signal -- a finding that's up from 12% one year ago. Among college-educated adults, the finding is even higher, with 30% saying they listen most to Internet radio rather than a terrestrial signal.

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