• by Shankar Gupta , August 28, 2006

Reaching out to the Boomer audience, AOL Wednesday will begin offering free streams of Bob Dylan's weekly radio show, "Theme Time Radio Hour."

The show, which debuted on XM Satellite in May, features songs that Dylan says influenced him as a musician. The program comes to AOL via the company's content partnership with XM Satellite, which began last year. AOL also will stream 18 "Theme Time" shows in a back-to-back marathon this weekend.

In addition to the stream of the radio show, AOL will also simulcast XM's world premiere of Bob Dylan's new album, "Modern Times," today and Tuesday--and will stream the album on demand all week. The album will hit record stores Tuesday.

Erik Flannigan, vice president of AOL Music, said the division will explore including more XM Radio streams in the future. "We think XM's creating some other valuable content that would benefit from wider distribution," he said. "We're always looking for ways that other great things that XM's doing can be included on AOL Music."

AOL has made other recent efforts to tap into online Baby Boomers. Earlier this year, AOL Music forged a deal with Bruce Springsteen to stream video footage from his summer tour.