Internet streaming and the presentation of dynamic content

Abstract

Internet streaming from broadcast radio or television stations is described wherein triggers for dynamic content from internal or external systems cause an encoder system to generate command messages, and to synchronize those command messages with any delays associated with the triggering events. Command messages are delivered through a streaming media distribution system to client media players which obtain or present the dynamic content, in association with any desired configuration changes to the appearance of the media player or the method or manner in which the dynamic content is presented.

Description

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]This application claims the benefit under 35 U.S.C. §119(e) of U.S. Provisional Application No. 61 / 629,689, U.S. Provisional Application No. 61 / 629,690, and U.S. Provisional Application No. 61 / 628,692, all filed Nov. 25, 2011, and the entire disclosure of each is incorporated herein by reference.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0002]1. Field of the Invention[0003]Disclosed are arrangements related to the delivery of broadcast radio or television on the Internet with the associated ability to replace portions of the broadcast content with alternative content for the Internet audience, and to dynamically present audio and video content on the audience media players under the control of a radio or TV station personality.[0004]2. Description of the Prior Art[0005]For convenience of discussion, this document will use the term “radio” with the understanding that the embodiments described herein apply to both radio and television. In the radio broadc...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0030]In addition, multiple stations that are not physically co-located can be linked together via a centralized server so that triggering events can originate from any one station, or from a location remote from any or all of the stations, and the audio or video media and metadata or command messages associated with the triggering source are delivered to the encoder suite of each participating station, and operated and synchronized through the buffer delay system individual to each, so that all such stations send the appropriate media and command messages to their Internet audience so that all media players of all such stations act uniformly, but with properly synchronized audio and video and other content.

[0031]The innovations described herein enable the delivery of metadata associated with songs and other content, such as the artist and song title, with precision timing so that the display of the artist and song title for the a new song occurs at the moment that new song begins playing. It enables the replacement of one type of content with another type, for example, to replace an audio ad with a video ad. Furthermore it enables the replacement of generic ads transmitted by the encoder with demographically targeted ads such that each listener might receive an ad customized for them. It also recognizes that the listener environment may well include listeners with devices and software systems that are incapable of performing this type of content replacement, and therefore it provides an arrangement such that a generic replacement ad will be delivered to all listener devices, and if an individual listener device is incapable of performing content replacement it will play the generic replacement ad and thus will deliver a continuous uninterrupted stream to the listener, and they will be unaware that some alternative content might have been played.

Problems solved by technology

Continuing the comparison with TargetSpot, there is no capability to command the TargetSpot object to replace an audio ad with a specific ad, nor is there a capability to command it to replace an audio ad with a video ad, and if TargetSpot were to play a video ad, there is no capability to cause the player to display that video in any particular fashion.

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