Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, will return to their television shows on January 7 but will have to improvise their monologues and interviews without the help of their writing staffs.
In a statement, the two hosts said they would prefer to return to work with their writers. “If we cannot, we would like to express our ambivalence, but without our writers we are unable to express something as nuanced as ambivalence,” they stated.
Far and away the most asked question about the annual holiday card, “How did you get the dogs to sit still for the photo?” The answer has always been a combination of patience and treats. This year, neither was enough to get Lucy to pose. When the camera came out, she freaked and ran. Barb never lost her cool but I really thought this would be the year she’d have to punt.
The image above perfectly captures the exhaustion of everyone involved. Not an award winner, but an honest and true image of the season. We’re all a little exhausted.
“Newspapers are losing their own core market because they didn’t understand the scale of the internet. They still thought mass when they should have realized that small is the new big. That is, online, newspapers still threw their lot in with the big advertisers who had been the only ones who could afford their mass products. They didn’t see the mass of potential spending in a new population of small, local advertisers who never could afford to advertise in newspapers but who now could afford to buy targeted, efficient, inexpensive ads online.”
“Even the online sales teams at newspaper companies didn’t how now to sell small; they were — as I once put it in a meeting — putting all their effort into saving the old $100,000 advertiser and saw getting 1,000 $100 advertisers as a distraction. The new-media divisions had already become big and old.” — Buzz Machine
Jeff Jarvis goes on to offer suggestions on how newspapers can generate new, local dollars online:
“Start a new company that makes small, local advertising its sole focus. That means they need to set up automated systems to accept and place highly targeted local ads and directories. That means they need to come up with new means of selling without on-the-street sales staffs: outbound phone sales, direct response, even local sales network (instead of citizen journalists, citizen sales people), making aggressive use of the promotional power of the newspaper while you still have it. That means they need to have lots of targeted local content without large editorial staffs.”
Most sales organizations with which I am familiar are just not wired for this. The math just doesn’t work. It will be interesting to see which traditional media companies are able to make their sales machine work in a New Online World.
So says Doc Searls. I’ve been waiting for someone smarter than I to put into words my “issues” with social networks (Facebook, My Space, etc). The focus of this post is the effort by companies to use social networks for marketing.
“…today’s “social networks” look to me like yesterday’s online services. Remember AOL, Prodigy, Compuserve and the rest? Facebook to me is just AOL done right. Or done over, better. But it’s still a walled garden. It’s still somebody’s private space. Me, I’d rather take it outside, where the conversation is free and open to anybody.”
“…the thing companies need to do most is stop being all “strategic” about how their people communicate. Stop running all speech through official orifices. Some businesses have highly regulated speech, to be sure. Pharmaceuticals come to mind. But most companies would benefit from having their employees talk about what they do. Yet there are still too many companies where employees can’t say a damn thing without clearing it somehow. And in too many companies employees give up because the company’s communications policy is modeled on a fort, complete with firewalls that would put the average dictatorship to shame. If a company wants to get social, they should let their employees talk. And trust them.”
What he said. Truth be told, the company I work for has “highly regulated speech.” And no shortage of good reasons for it, but I agree (with Doc) that we would be stronger if our employees could “talk about what they do.” There’s more to the post than the graphs I pulled. Read it if you’re interested in social networks.
One of our news directors forwarded a very interesting article by Graeme Newell, a “web marketing and revenue specialist” for 602 Communications. The article (“Hiding – The Latest Challenge in News Marketing”) touches on how social networks (My Space,Facebook, etc) will change (are changing?) how mass media advertising works (or does not work).
Mr. Newell explains how difficult it will be for companies to advertise and market to those who choose to communicate with only those on their “friends” list. That’s a gross oversimplification of one of the articles key points. Here’ are a few of my take-aways:
“Spam” will grow to include any message that does not come from a trusted source.
As consumers get more and more overwhelmed by the amount of communication in their lives, smart technology will help them prioritize and eliminate all the time wasters in their daily routine. These systems will filter TV ads, email, text messages, web interaction, phone messages and all other forms of personal communication. The trend will be that if I don’t know you, then I don’t want to talk to you.Technology will seek to eliminate “interruption” advertising
There is an adage on the internet that if you obstruct the flow of information in any way, the community will not fight you, but simply go around you. You will quickly find yourself irrelevant. As technology gets better and better, tools will continue to arise that simply eliminate unwanted interruptions like mass advertising and promotion. Holding people hostage and forcing them to watch a non-targeted ad is not going to be tolerated in the future. The audience will demand that the ads they let in be customized to their individual tastes and desires.Mass media advertising will move towards a system of “mass personalization.”
People want products in their lives that share their priorities, interests and values. As mass markets continue to splinter into ever more fragmented and specialized groups, consumers will expect advertisers to follow their lead. Technology will allow truly personalized ad communication with millions of people – all of it customized to the emotional and intellectual needs of the buyer.
Now that everyone (online) can –theoretically– reach everyone else, we realize we really only care about hearing from our friends (or select acquaintances). Social networks –augmented by technologies like text messaging– make it possible to do so.
If I ignore most of my email and rarely turn on a radio or TV (without the Tivo filter)… how will advertisers and marketers reach me?
I’m sorry I can’t link tot he full article. I can’t find it online but will keep searching.
If you’re a Sue Grafton fan and have not read her latest Kinsey Millhone mystery, you’re in for a treat. T is for Tresspass (#20 in the series) is about "identity theft; elder abuse; betrayal of trust; the breakdown in the institutions charged with caring for the weak and the dependent."
This was a real page-turner. Perfect for a snowy weekend.
I fear it’s a bit late for this holiday season, but this WiFi detecting T shirt would make a great gift for that geek on your list. Not only finds WiFi signals, but displays the strength.
Runs about $30 and you can remove the electronics for washing, although that wouldn’t be much of a problem for the people on my list.
Spotted this at Keith Povall’s Sturdy Soapbox.
The Iowa Caucuses (Jan 3) is a big deal in the national political scheme of things. One of Learfield’s news networks –Radio Iowa– will cover it, just as we’ve done since the network began in 1987.
We’ll provide two 4-minute reports each hour throughout the evening. These audio reports will be fed by satellite to affiliated radio stations throughout the state (and streamed live on our website). The radio stations will air some or all of these reports along with whatever other programming they are doing that night. This is the way networks like ours have operated since… well, since forever.
The editorial edge of state networks is our ability to focus on the "state" angle of the stories we cover. The Iowa Caucuses will be the big national story of the day (evening). Every news organization in the country will be covering the story, wall-to-wall.
So where’s our niche? What do we provide that a listener can’t get more of, faster somewhere else? Is our "target audience" people who can’t be in front of their TV or computer that evening? We have to proceed on the assumption there will be people listening to their local radio stations that night and hearing our reports a couple of times an hour.
I’m not sure where I’m headed with this ramble. I’m just trying to understand how –and to what degree– things are changing for news organizations like ours.
And whither the bloggers? Will they be live blogging the caucuses? Is that allowed? Not sure what that would add, since the news organizations (or the Associated Press) will have –I assume– someone covering each of the caucus locations.
My friend (and Radio Iowa News Director) Kay Henderson has been living and breathing Iowa politics for the last year or so. She probably has the answers to most of these questions. Or at least some interesting insight. I suspect she’s too busy to enlighten us, but watch the comments, just in case. She checks in here.
I think I’ve lost the thread of this ramble… I just know that I’m glad I’m no longer responsible for coming up with long and short term strategy for our networks.
We’ll know how many radio stations are "clearing" our reports on Caucus night. We will NOT know how many people are listening to those reports. That’s a question for the Magic Eight Ball. If I could ask one more, it would be how will all of this change four years from now?
I spotted this lovely camo covered recliner at the local Orschlen store this morning. Aside from the inherent aesthetic value, I wonder if it is practical as well.
You come from a week of deer hunting and the last thing you want to hear the old lady bitching at you. So you sneak in –in full cammy, of course– and plop down in this baby and disappear.
“Kids, have you seen your father? I thought I heard him come in. Hmm. Guess not.”
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