Cassette tapes and overnight DVD’s

The news division of our company is in the process of launching a new radio network called Living the Country Life. It’s part of a joint venture with Meredith Publishing, which created the magazine and TV show (of the same name).

We’re producing a series of daily radio features and our affiliate relations guys will attempt to get the new programs on as many stations as possible. Toward that end, we’ve produced demos, so radio stations can hear what the programs sound like. I’m getting to the point, hang on.

One of the producers popped in this morning and asked how quickly I could create a web page where they could post the demos (MP3 files) for stations to download/listen?

A few years ago, I would have parked the files on an FTP server or cobbled together something in FrontPage. A few more years ago, and we would have been mailing out CD’s (or cassette tapes!).

This morning it took about 15 minutes to pull together a nice little blog on Typepad. Our affiliate relations folks can now just email  a link to a prospective affiliate. Such a site could easily become a cornerstone of our affiliate clearance effort. Fast, inexpensive, and no programming skills necessary.

I found a similar application for one our clients.

Children’s Trust Fund of Missouri has a 10 minute video on Shaken Baby Syndrome. You can order the DVD (for free, I believe) from their website, but what can you do with it then? Show it to your club or organization, I suppose. But why not make it easy for anyone with a web browser to watch the video.

So I put it up on Google Video and embedded the Flash player on their website and a world-wide audience is now just a click away.

This kind of stuff was damned hard or impossible, just a few years ago. And now, anyone can do this stuff. This is the real power of the web.