The cybercast project is the brain child of Micheal "Mac" McKoy, KKDM's general manager; and Skyy, the station's production director. They began working toward that goal when the station first went on the air in July 1995.

"This is the most exciting part for us. We're going to be at the point in which, very soon, we'll have a server on-line in which 100 people anywhere in the world can tie into our homepage and listen to our radio station live, as it is," McKoy said. "Not delayed, not pre-recorded - live as it is."

While the cybercast will allow KKDM to reach listeners around the globe, McKoy pointed out one of the biggest benefits comes a lot closer to home. "My mom and dad live four and a half hours away," he said. "And they're in the process of buying a computer for the sole purpose to have it on in the kitchen when I'm on the radio in the morning. They've never been able to listen to their son on the radio. Never. I've never worked in town. So there's a good example. My mom and dad are going to log in every morning when the coffee's brewing to listen to their son.

"You have to realize this is almost miraculous to them, the fact that I didn't have to move to Podunk City, Nebraska, and they didn't have to move to the big city, Des Moines."

The station, of course, also realizes the potential for more far-reaching effects. "The advantage I see is my radio station is no longer limited by a 100,000 watt signal," McKoy said. I can now advertise in the New York Times. You ought to see all the Hawkeye fans that live in Southern California. What if you could take those Hawkeye games live to the people in Southern California? And that's what we'll be able to do. My sister, who lives in Southern California, can tune in a hometown radio station and listen to what it sounds like back home, and listen to the local news and the local music and the local weather and what's going on."

Others in the field, such as National Public Radio, presently use Real Audio to post their newscasts, pre-recorded, to the Web. Skyy explained KKDM's project is unique in that the broadcast will be completely live.

"There's two versions of real audio. The second version is the one that's true, real audio. If you actually go into Real Audio now, it's pre-recorded. We didn't want to do that because at the time, it was a question of money, where we could get the same thing that is real," he said. "I think Real Audio is mislabeled at this point. Everyone says `Real Audio' and they assume that it's real. We waited until it became real audio."

"The product that we send down the `Net for Real Audio is what we do on the radio everyday," McKoy said. "There's not another product being developed for Real Audio; there's just another way to deliver the product that we already have. It's kind of like putting a drive-up window at McDonald's. We're already making the product, we just have another way that somebody can come in and get it."

McKoy said the cybercast will be a challenge to his station's engineers because the sound in Real Audio cannot be modified like that of a standard radio signal.

"What's interesting is the processing, and this is the technical side of it," he said. "The processing that we use for on-air is different than the processing we need to use on the `Net because the `Net is so clean. On the air, we can compress things and we can make things sound bigger. We can't do that on the `Net. We've got to have a pure signal."

While the cybercast is still waiting in the wings, KKDM has been active on the Internet since July. In that time, the site has racked up over 2500 visits. The station's cyberspace involvement seemed natural to McKoy. "When we did the research on our lifestyle," he explained, "it was evident that we had to be able to be talked to and we had to communicate with our lifestyle and our audience through the `Net. It's part of the lifestyle; it's not even fringe, it's part of the lifestyle."

McKoy said feels KKDM's `Net activity gives them an advantage when targeting the Generation X audience. "The issues that we took to task when we did the research for this radio station is `what's our lifestyle doing?'" he said. "Every other radio station in Des Moines, no fault intended on them, had locked into an audience and grown with them, in one way or another. And so no one was really approaching the younger lifestyle.

"When you do the research on the younger lifestyle, to not talk about computers and the lifestyle that lives on the `Net would be like a 30-year-old never playing computer games," McKoy explained. "How could you ever go to a 10-year class reunion right now and not talk about computer games, whether it be Pac-Man and all those things that were played back then? That was the revolution of computers that anybody 30, 35 or 40 was dealing with 10 or 15 years ago. It's just not pinball anymore."

McKoy said what makes his station's page special is up-to-date information. "I think that the information we've put on the `Net is fresh and updated and, therefore, timely. Rather than, `Oh, let's just stick it up there and take a look at it in five or six months.'"

Skyy stressed the importance of KKDM's hands-on approach to the site, which allows the station to update as often as it wishes. "Most companies have somebody else do it. They pay an outrageous sum of money and they never touch it," he said.

In addition to his duties as production director, Skyy works on the maintenance of the KKDM page. He first went on-line two and a half years ago, and has been intrigued by the `Net ever since. "I'm a junkie," he said. "They say that the `Net's very addictive, and that's true. It's a whole new way to live your life."

In November, the station bought its own Internet server. Skyy said the server has logged over 800 e-mail messages in the 90 days it's been up and running. KKDM can now monitor listener feedback via e-mail, something Skyy views as a plus. "The listener can take more time in writing it [the response] out. Look at e-mail versus somebody calling in," he said. "They can put more time and effort into it; they can rethink the thought before they send it to you. So you get a lot more opinion from the listener on the pros and cons of the station."

McKoy also sees the value of e-mail from listeners. "I think we take the input from the audience real seriously," he said. "I mean, it's not unusual for messages off the e-mail to get copied and sent around and talked about in meetings."

DJs can also use the Internet in the studio while on the air. A terminal is set up which allows announcers to access e-mail requests, or to look up information and trivia on artists' respective homepages

"We have the Internet in studio," McKoy said. This allows the DJs to read and respond to e-mail immediately, he said, as opposed to other stations that only check their mail periodically.

"It's kind of like a request line. If a jock gets on the radio and says, `Hey, call me on the request line,' hope to God he's got the phone right there with the lines open. Well, we do, too. We have e-mail right there. So it's used interactively, right then and there. It's not some thing we hang out there; we're watching it."

McKoy said the drawbacks of his station's `Net involvement have been minimal. "You come in on Monday; and Mac and Amy, who haven't been in since noon on Friday, have 40 messages to return. But, gee, what a nice problem to have!"

Once the cybercast crackles to life, KKDM's next step may be the incorporation of video into their homepage. "I see us videotaping, like, some of the concerts and stuff we're doing or the interviews we do with artists and putting that stuff on," McKoy said.

The station also hopes to increase the number of people able to access its site. "The next big challenge, too," McKoy added, "is just the number of servers - from 100 to 1,000; 1000 to unlimited, whatever the case may be."

After that, the sky's the limit for KKDM. "If I get to the point where my national audience is larger than my local audience, I'll produce a second radio station," McKoy said. "There's the other thing down the line. You produce a second radio station that is a `cable' station, that doesn't have air broadcast capabilities. There aren't enough users on the `Net to make that worthwhile. Not yet. But there will be."