I had an interesting conversation with one of the General Managers in our company last week. He attended a seminar at a state association convention whose subject was internet for radio. The question came up, "How many websites should my cluster have? 1 per station? 1 for all the stations?" The speaker thought for a moment and said you should have a website for each radio station, PLUS a news website for your local community.
Makes sense. Here's why.
In most markets (say 100+ like our stations are) a radio station's website does not generate enough traffic to monetize the page views. Besides, a radio station website should support the on air effort and enhance the listener's experience of the radio station. It's not so much about pushing products onto the listener although sponsored promotions have their place. In my opinion, if you are a 100+ market radio station, there's no reason to sell ads on the station website. If the ads are sold on a CPM model, the station won't make much money, and if the ads are sold not using the CPM model, but value added or sold outright, the station just wasted promotional space, or an advertiser just wasted their money.
Instead, use one extra news site to clear internet banner and tile ads. Promote the news site on your radio station, but drive the listener to your station website and then a click through to the news site. Make the link easy to find, above the fold. Funnel all the local station's traffic through the station site to the news site. Now you are driving listener's to your station website so they can see all the neat things you've included on the site to enhance their experience, and now each station website is driving traffic to the news site.
Jaye Albright talks about this topic here.