There’s a whole lot of streaming going on around the country, but it’s not happening where you'd think.
   One might expect tech-savvy markets such as San Francisco, New York or Seattle to be leading the way into the streaming 21^st century.
   Not so. Rather it's cities one does not immediately associate with leading-edge behavior, such as Miami and Cincinnati, according to new data from Nielsen//NetRatings.
   So-called streaming technology is that which allows web users to listen to or watch audio or video online.
   "People are looking for alternative forms of entertainment," says Jarvis Mak, a senior analyst for NetRatings. "The markets that have the highest percentage of streaming media consumption are not the main media hubs you’d expect."
   There’s less of a need to look to the internet for entertainment options in cities that are already well served by a diverse media landscape, he reasons.
   As such it seems that streaming technology might just be the first internet technology that truly lures users through its content rather than its bells and whistles.
   "You’d expect cities with high broadband concentration to have high streaming usage, but that’s not necessarily what happens," says Mak.
   More than 43 percent of Miami’s online population used streaming media during December 2000, reports Nielsen//NetRatings, making it the No. 1 market in the country ranked by percentage of internet users who stream.
   Cincinnati was second with 41 percent of its wired residents using streaming media in December.
   This data is pointing out the percentage of a market’s online population that listens or watches streaming audio or video on the web, not the total number of streaming media users, and concerns home users only.
   Neither Miami nor Cincinnati are known as particularly wired communities in general. Ranked by size of their internet populations, Miami is 23^rd and Cincinnati 32^nd among the country’s top 35 DMAs.
   Among the top 10 cities ranked by streaming media reach, only two—New York and Los Angeles—make the cut, when ranked by general internet population size.
   When Nielsen//NetRatings last released data regarding internet penetration in the top 35 this past fall, both Miami and Cincinnati were well below the national average, with Cincinnati 28^th and Miami 34^th.
   What seems to be happening is that people in markets under-served in some ways by traditional media are discovering previously unavailable options on the internet.
   In Miami and in Houston, the No. 3 market ranked by streaming reach, the relatively high concentration of Hispanic residents could have something to do with the popularity of streaming media.
   Online Hispanics appear to be seeking news and entertainment from national and international sources that can be accessed via streaming media but are not readily available through local media outlets.
   As for Cincinnati and the other cities rounding out the top five—Pittsburgh and Hartford/New Haven—one could argue that the media options in these smaller DMAs might leave the sorts of better-educated people who tend to be online in the first place eager to find more engaging fare on the internet.
   Analyst Mak notes that the primary streaming activity among users is radio.
   This could in turn account for the reasonably high appearance of New York on the list.
   While certainly a media mecca, with plenty of entertainment options available for its residents, New York has not been a city known over the last couple of decades as offering interesting radio options.
  To internet-savvy and radio-hungry New Yorkers, the web may well appear as a savior, bringing non-formulaic radio back to their fingertips.
   Conversely, highly-wired San Francisco appears uncharacteristically low on the list—No. 26 with a streaming media percentage reach of 33.7. This, again, appears to show that streaming media usage has much more to do with the content than the technology.
   San Francisco is as net savvy as cities get, but perhaps its citizens don’t feel as starved for good radio as New Yorkers do.
   It is worth noting that this data does not include people who stream from work, which is an audience that streaming media proponents consider very important.

-Jeremy Schlosberg is the senior editor for new media. 

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