UTICA/ROME -- The four stations owned by Connecticut-based Townsquare Media have brand new websites. The company says it's part of an initiative to "re-launch all its local radio stations' digital properties" -- for 171 radio stations in 36 markets -- by the end of the first quarter of 2011.
The old sites, which were originally designed while the cluster was owned by Regent Communications, have been completely rebuilt from scratch under Townsquare's ownership. Earlier this week, Townsquare announced it already re-launched 30 websites for stations in six other markets, including Buffalo. It also launched a new nationwide website called "Taste of Country," offering news and lifestyle content targeted toward country music fans. Townsquare says content from the national site will be pushed to local country station sites, such as Utica's Big Frog 104 (WFRG).
Compared to the old sites, the new sites seem to put less front-page emphasis on station promotions, and more emphasis on format-appropriate lifestyle news and DJ-written blog posts. (For the Newsradio 950 WIBX page, the blog posts are replaced by local news stories -- and links to those stories appear in the sidebar on the other three stations' sites.) The new sites also move the old "sidebar" navigation links to the top of the page, with easy-to-find icons linking visitors to each station's Facebook and Twitter feeds.
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