Mark Ramsey (Hear 2.0) offers still more insight on Google Audio Ads, including some screenshots of pages where you specify the demographic and geographic details of your buy. For businesses that don’t need an “advertising consultant” to show up with a media kit and a coverage map, this might be an effective way to buy radio ads.
Yearly Archives: 2007
Radio Announcers (John Mays and Mr. Rudy)
That’s what they called them when my father and Mr. Rudy (Pylant) were on the air at KBOA in Kennett, Missouri. Pop and Mr. Rudy have since made the transition to Pure Amplitude Modulation but the audio waves of their wonderful voices are still streaking through space.
I had never seen this photo of John and Rudy standing in front of the KBOA studio but, based on the automobiles behind them, it could have been as early as ’49 or ’50. The station went on the air in July of 1947 and my father started in 1949. Any of you car freaks able to ID the year of the car at the right edge of this photo?
What happened to the news?
A scary little story in today’s USA Today about the findings of a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. According to Project Director Tom Rosenstiel,
“The dirty little secret of the information revolution is it has been more about repurposing or repackaging news than gathering it.”
In recent years, because of their own cutbacks, radio and television have increasingly been relying on newspapers and wire services to do their newsgathering for them.
If you think the news is thin on local radio and TV stations now, imagine what it would be if they didn’t have newspapers to rewrite. If,however, your local radio station long ago abandoned any pretense of news, you’ll be okay.
Halliburton hauling ass
Halliburton, the big energy services company, said today that it would open a corporate headquarters in the United Arab Emirates city of Dubai and move its chairman and chief executive, David J. Lesar, there. The company will maintain its existing corporate office here as well as its incorporation in the United States.
Halliburton, which was led by Vice President Dick Cheney from 1995 to 2000, is currently in the process of spinning off KBR, its military-contracting unit, to focus on its business of drilling wells and maintaining fields for oil companies. The company did not say what implications the Dubai development might have for its Pentagon contracts. [New York Times]
Overlawyered.com
From the About Us page of the site: “Overlawyered.com explores an American legal system that too often turns litigation into a weapon against guilty and innocent alike, erodes individual responsibility, rewards sharp practice, enriches its participants at the public’s expense, and resists even modest efforts at reform and accountability.”
Hey, some of my best friends are lawyers.
The Death of Bingo (Seniors Online)
Someday in the not to distant future, our nursing homes (“long term care facilities”) will be filled with residents who spent a portion of their lives online. Email, web surfing, etc. They’ll expect/demand net access in this new phase of their lives. (I first posted on this in November, 2005)
If I owned such a facility, I’d install a fast DSL line, just for the residents. And a strong, wifi signal throughout.
I’d invite family members to equip mom or dad with a computer if they wanted and I’d have a procedure in place to make sure access was restricted to that resident and that the computer didn’t walk off (a problem with valuables in many such facilities). I’d arrange to have some computers in the day room that anyone could use.
I’d invite high schools students to take part in a program to show the residents how to use the Internet. Help them send/receive/read email from family members. Send photos back to their loved ones around the country.
I’d put webcams on a couple of the computers in the Day Room (or whatever it’s called). Yes, I know there are privacy issues, but I’d find a way to deal with that. And I’d encourage family members to video chat with their loved ones. Wouldn’t have to be long or involved, just a short “visit” with a familiar face/voice.
All of this is going to happen eventually. But some enlightened, well-run facility has the opportunity to be a leader in this space. The winners are: the resident; the family of the resident; the young people who share their knowledge and –perhaps– get some wisdom in return; and the facility that has improved the lives (if only for a few minutes) of their residents.
Disclosure: My wife, Barb, is a long-term health care attorney and many of her clients own or operate such facilities. But the idea for this post comes from my own interest in all things online and the time I spent visiting my father in such a facility.
Why I would vote for George Clooney
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George Clooney plays down any talk of being pressured to run for political office with a typically self-effacing quip. “No, I’ve slept with too many women, I’ve done too many drugs and I’ve been to too many parties.”
How do I look? Is my swastika straight?
They had a little Neo Nazi march in Columbia, Missouri, this afternoon (It’s been too darn cold to march against “jew communists” until the last week or so). About 20 marchers were met by throngs of students that cursed them and tossed eggs at them. One of our Missourinet reporters (Steve Walsh) covered the event and everybody’s favorite photojournalist, Bill Greenblatt, took some photos, including this one.
Several things about this photo caught my keen fashion eye. Note the Eva Braun wannabe in the center of the photo, with the little red Storm Trooper tie. This would suggest that the Neo Nazi Clothing Catalogue has a Ladies’ Department.
The guy that looks like he’s getting ready to mix it up with “Drunk Punk” appears to be wearing some sort of hand-tooled leather belt that you might get from your uncle for your birthday (maybe it reads “Sieg Heil!)
And what serious skinhead takes a little pussy bullhorn like that to a march. Come on. And were they up all night sticking on the swastikas or do they come pre-swastuck?
Every parade needs clowns.
Why ‘not’ work for the NSA?
Good Will Hunting is ten years old, but this scene seems as fresh as today’s news:
NSA Guy: The question isn’t… why should you work for the NSA… the question is…why shouldn’t you?
Will Hunting: Why shouldn’t I work for the NSA? That’s a tough one. But I’ll take a shot.
Say I’m working at the NSA and somebody puts a code on my desk. Something no one else can break. Maybe I take a shot at it and maybe I break it.
I’m real happy with myself because I did my job well. But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or the Middle East and once they had that location they bomb the village where the rebels are hiding… fifteen hundred people that I never met, never had no problem with get killed.
Now the politicians are saying, oh, send in the Marines to secure the area ’cause they don’t give a damn…it won’t be their kid over there getting shot, just like it wasn’t them when their number got called cause they were off on a tour in the National Guard.
It’ll be some kid from Southie over there taking shrapnel in the ass who comes back to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from and the guy who put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job ’cause they’ll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks.
Meanwhile, he realizes the only reason he was over there in the first place was so we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price and of course the oil companies use a little skirmish over there to scare up domestic oil prices. A cute little ancillary benefit for them but it ain’t helping my buddy at two-fifty a gallon.
They’re taking their sweet time bringing the oil back, of course maybe they even took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and fucking play slalom with the ice bergs.
It ain’t too long till he hits one…spills the oil and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic .
So now my buddy’s out of work, he can’t afford to drive, so he’s walking fucking job interviews, which sucks because the shrapnel in his ass is giving him chronic hemorrhoids, and meanwhile he starving ’cause every time he tries to get a bite to eat, the only Blue Plate Special they’re serving is North Atlantic Scrod with Quaker State.
So what did I think?
I’m holding out for something better.
I figure while I’m at it… why not shoot my buddy…take his job…give it to his sworn enemy…hike up gas prices…bomb a village…club a baby seal… hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard. I can be elected president.
What is really amazing to me is that gasoline today –at my local pump– is very close to $2.50/gallon. Nothing close to that when GWH was filmed, let alone written. Interesting, no? If I could ask Matt Damon and Ben Affleck just one question, it would be… tell me how you came to write that scene.
Reminds me of this post from 2004.
Write for your audience
I’m a big fan of the Keith and the Girl podcast. If you have never listened you can skip this post because it probably won’t make any sense. Keith is a sort-of stand-up comic who shoots the shit with his girlfriend, Chemda, for an hour every day. Explicit content. Not for sissies. I love the show.
I finally got around to visiting the “Support” page on their website and discovered some very effective ad copy. For example:
“Blockbuster gives you sissy cuts of movies and claims you didn’t return your film. Netflix gives you the dirtiest version available and gives you the benefit of the doubt. Blockbuster doesn’t believe the holocaust happened. Netflix has all the holocaust movies. Netflix has never let us down. Blockbuster raped my grandmother. (You can rent those tapes through Netflix.)”
I would be very surprised if Keith did not write this copy. Clearly his style. This copy is effective because it is –in the context of their podcast– real. This is the way Keith and Chemda talk. This is what their listeners expect from them. Attitude.
I’m not sure some ad agency wonk could write this. And if they tried, it somehow would not sound legit. And I’ll bet you a hot oil back rub that Keith and Chemda insist on writing the copy. They get that Madison Avenue bullshit would not work on their site.