Webcast

A typical webcast, playing in an embedded media player.

A webcast is a media presentation distributed over the Internet using streaming media technology to distribute a single content source to many simultaneous listeners/viewers. A webcast may either be distributed live or on demand. Essentially, webcasting is “broadcasting” over the Internet.

The largest "webcasters" include existing radio and TV stations, who "simulcast" their output through online TV or online radio streaming, as well as a multitude of Internet only "stations". The term webcasting usually refers to non-interactive linear streams or events. Rights and licensing bodies offer specific "webcasting licenses" to those wishing to carry out Internet broadcasting using copyrighted material.

Webcasting is also used extensively in the commercial sector for investor relations presentations (such as annual general meetings), in e-learning (to transmit seminars), and for related communications activities. However, webcasting does not bear much, if any, relationship to web conferencing, which is designed for many-to-many interaction.[1]

The ability to webcast using cheap/accessible technology has allowed independent media to flourish. There are many notable independent shows that broadcast regularly online. Often produced by average citizens in their homes they cover many interests and topics. Webcasts relating to computers, technology, and news are particularly popular and many new shows are added regularly.

Webcasting differs from podcasting in that webcasting refers to live streaming while podcasting simply refers to media files placed on the Internet.[2]

History

Webcasting is the distribution of media files through the internet.The earliest webcast equivalent of an online concert and one of the earliest examples of webcasting itself was by Apple Computer's Webcasting Group in partnership with the entrepreneurs Michael Dorf and Andrew Rasiej. Together with David B. Pakman from Apple, they launched the Macintosh New York Music Festival from July 17–22, 1995. This event audio webcast concerts from more than 15 clubs in New York City. Apple later webcast a concert by Metallica on June 10, 1996 live from Slim's in San Francisco.[3]

In 1995, Benford E. Standley produced one of the first audio/video webcasts in history.[4]

On October 31, 1996, UK rock band Caduseus broadcast their one-hour concert from 11pm to 12am (UT) at Celtica in Machynlleth, Wales, UK – the first live streamed audio and simultaneous live streamed video multicast – around the globe to more than twenty direct "mirrors" in more than twenty countries.[5][6]

In September 1997, Nebraska Public Television started webcasting Big Red Wrap Up from Lincoln, Nebraska which combined highlights from every Cornhusker football game, coverage of the coaches' weekly press conferences, analysis with Nebraska sportswriters, appearances by special guests and questions and answers with viewers.[7]

On August 13, 1998, it is generally believed the first webcast wedding took place, between Alan K'necht and Carrie Silverman in Toronto Canada.[8][9]

On October 22, 1998, the first Billy Graham Crusade was broadcast live to a worldwide audience from the Raymond James Stadium in Tampa Florida courtesy of Dale Ficken and the WebcastCenter in Pennsylvania. The live signal was broadcast via satellite to PA, then encoded and streamed via the BGEA website.[10]

The first teleconferenced/webcast wedding to date is believed to have occurred on December 31, 1998. Dale Ficken and Lorrie Scarangella wed on this date as they stood in a church in Pennsylvania, and were married by Jerry Falwell while he sat in his office in Lynchburg, Virginia.[11]

Virtually all major broadcasters now have a webcast of their output, from the BBC to CNN to Al Jazeera to UNTV in television to Radio China, Vatican Radio,[12] United Nations Radio and the World Service in radio.

Origins of the term

"Webcasting" was first publicly described and presented by Brian Raila of GTE Laboratories in 1989 at InterTainment '89 held in New York City, USA. Raila recognized that a viewer/listener need not download the entirety of a program to view/listen to a portion thereof, so long as the receiving device ("client computer") could, over time, receive and present data more rapidly than the user could digest the same. Raila used the term "buffered media" to describe this concept.

Raila was joined by James Paschetto of GTE Laboratories to further demonstrate the concept. Paschetto was singularly responsible for the first workable prototype of streaming media, which Raila presented and demonstrated at the Voice Mail Association of Europe 1995 Fall Meeting of October 1995, in Montreux, Switzerland. Alan Saperstein and Randy Selman founded Visual Data, now known as Onstream Media (OTC:ONSM), which was the first company to feature video webcasting in June 1993 with HotelView,[13] a travel library of two-minute videos featuring thousands of hotel properties worldwide.

On November 4, 1994, Stef van der Ziel distributed the first live video images over the web from the Simplon venue in Groningen.[14] On November 7, 1994, WXYC, the college radio station of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill became the first radio station in the world to broadcast its signal over the internet.[15][16]

The term webcasting was coined (in the early/mid-1990s) when webcast/streaming pioneers Mark Cuban (Audionet), Howard Gordon (Xing Technologies), William Mutual (ITV.net), Craig Schmieder (Applied Media Resources) and Peggy Miles (InterVox Communications) got together with a community of webcasters to pick a term to describe the technology of sending audio and video on the Net... that might make sense to people. The term netcasting was a consideration, but one of the early webcast community members owned a company called NetCast, so that term was not used, seeking a name that would not be branded to one company. Discussions were also conducted about the term with the National Association of Broadcasters for their books — Internet Age Broadcaster I and II, written by Peggy Miles and Dean Sakai.

The actual word "webcast" was coined by Daniel Keys Moran in his 1988 novel The Armageddon Blues:

...DataWeb News had done an in-depth on it not two weeks ago, and tourists had been trekking up into the New York hills ever since the webcast.
— page 191 of the Bantam paperback

Translated versions including Subtitling are now possible using SMIL Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language.

Wedcast

A wedcast is a webcast of a wedding.[17][18] It allows family and friends of the couple to watch the wedding in real time on the Internet. It is sometimes used for weddings in exotic locations, such as Cancun and the Riviera Maya, Hawaii or the Caribbean, for which it is very expensive or difficult for people to travel to see the wedding in person.[17]

Webcasting a funeral is also a service provided by some funeral homes. Although it has been around for a decade, cheaper broadband, the financial strain of travel, and deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan have all led to a recent increase in this phenomenon.[19]

See also

Look up webcast in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

References

  1. ↑ Shiao, Dennis (26 December 2012). "Webcasting 101: Planning and Executing High Quality Webcasts". INXPO. Retrieved 15 May 2013.
  2. ↑ "Overview of Webcasting and Podcasting". WebMarketCentral. Retrieved 15 May 2013.
  3. ↑ "Heavy Metal Metallica Plans to Rock Cyberspace: Apple Computer to ‘Webcast’ band’s concert". San Francisco, CA, USA: SFGate. 1996-05-30.
  4. ↑ "Benford "Buffalo" Earl Sandley". Digital Media Festival. Retrieved February 19, 2014.
  5. ↑ http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/wales/archive/bbc-mid-wales-mystory-caduseus-1996-internet-broadcast.pdf
  6. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIBggEZqSW0
  7. ↑ http://scarlet.unl.edu/scarlet/v7n25/v7n25nibs.html. Missing or empty |title= (help); External link in |newspaper= (help)
  8. ↑ "Year in reviews August". Montreal, CA: The Montreal Mirror. 1998-12-25.
  9. ↑ "Various TV News Clips". Online (Toronto, CA: Various). 1998-08-13.
  10. ↑ Graham, Billy. "Occupying Till He Returns" (PDF). BillyGraham.org. Retrieved 15 May 2013.
  11. ↑ Gibb, Tom (31 December 1998). "Hollidaysburg couple plans to be virtually wed on the Web". Post-Gazette. Retrieved 15 May 2013.
  12. ↑ Radio, Vatican.
  13. ↑ Hotel View, Onstream.
  14. ↑ "First Webcast". Jet-Stream. 1994-11-04.
  15. ↑ Grossman, Wendy (1995-01-26). "Communications: Picture the scene". Online (Manchester, United Kingdom: The Guardian). p. 4.
  16. ↑ "WXYC announces the first 24-hour real-time world-wide Internet radio simulcast" (Press release). WXYC 89.3 FM. 1994-11-07. Retrieved 2008-04-05.
  17. 1 2 Blanton, Kimberly (October 22, 2007). "Can't make the ceremony? Watch the wedcast". The International Herald Tribune / The Boston Globe.
  18. ↑ Lee-St. John, Jeninne (December 6, 2007). "Wedcasting". Time.
  19. ↑ "Funeral webcastiŋ is alive and well", Spectrum (IEEE).
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