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.radio is now a contested gTLD

Kevin Murphy, March 29, 2012, 22:17:55 (UTC), Domain Registries

The proposed .radio generic top-level domain is now officially contested, after the European Broadcasting Union confirmed that it plans to apply for the gTLD.
It’s the second .radio candidate to publicly reveal its intentions after BRS Media’s long-public bid.
The Executive Board of the EBU met in London yesterday – cutting it pretty fine given ICANN’s deadlines – and officially approved the bid, according to an EBU announcement.
The organization said in a statement:

the .radio TLD would allow the EBU to create an internet-based platform where the world’s radio broadcasters could assemble. Closer networking ‘under one roof’ would also bolster their position as an indispensible media sector, whose development would be accelerated by new radio services.

The EBU said its bid is supported by the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU); Arab States Broadcasting Union (ASBU); African Union of Broadcasting (AUB); Caribbean Broadcasting Union (CBU); International Association of Broadcasting (IAB); North American Broadcasters Association (NABA); Organizacion de Telecomunicaciones Iberoamericanas (OTI).
The EBU is a Swiss trade association comprising national broadcasters, mostly based in Europe.
It’s also known for its annual Eurovision Song Contest broadcast, a singing competition which is known at least in the UK as a bit of tacky joke.
Oh, and the EBU has confirmed that it is going to apply for .eurovision, which appears to be the first example – but certainly not the last – of a probably wholly unnecessary dot-brand.
BRS Media, which also has longstanding plans to apply for .radio, is the current registry operator for the repurposed ccTLDs .am and .fm.
BRS still plans to apply for .radio, according to CEO George Bundy.
“We always felt that our knowledge of the On-Air AND Online Radio marketplace, backed with 15 years of real (.FM/.AM) registry experience provides us with a much better understanding in managing, marketing and operating an Industry specific top-level domain, like .Radio,” he said.

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Comments (7)

  1. Ismail M says:

    Hopefully someone applied for .cloud
    It will be a big hit.

  2. Jean Guillon says:

    I like the “would allow” in the translation and wonder if they are already registered in TAS. It is possible they are not. In which case they would talk to BRS Media?
    Interesting case here.

    • Kevin Murphy says:

      I suspect the “approval” by the board was a formality. They’ll have been working on this for a while, if they know what they’re doing.

  3. jayjay says:

    Just one more day to go folks and all will be revealed!
    source: http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/announcements-and-media/announcement-23jan12-en
    In their own words:
    1 May: “Reveal Day”
    “After checking all applications for essential completeness, ICANN will publicly post all TLD character strings that have been applied for, and who applied for each. This event triggers several more..”

  4. blehblehbleh says:

    gTLDs killed the .radio star
    when DNS became the new VCR…

  5. jayjay says:

    D’OH… lol moment.. 1st of May is a month away not a day away!
    I don’t know how I went from March to May, seems I got ahead of myself. Oh well 31 days to go before we know who applied for .what 🙂
    Personally I’ll thinking .web or .www (if applied for) will probably be most popular amongst domain registrants and resellers, kinda been whats missing on the .net! 🙂

Leave a Reply to jayjay