Author Archives: Steve Mays

More media predictions for 2009

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Lost Remote’s Cory Bergman calls Dianne Mermigas “one of the smartest, most pragmatic media columnists I’ve ever read. She never resorts to hyperbole.” He then points us to her predictions for 2009. A few of my favorites:

“Major advertisers such as automotives, financial services, retail and real estate will not return any time soon; they will be diminished and different when they rebound a year from now. That is a disaster for local media, which could easily see more than half their ad revenue base wiped out in 2009. For instance, automotives generally have comprised 40% of local TV income.

“Local is the new social. Some local TV broadcasters and newspapers will begin to monetize enough to stay in business. Some Internet players will begin to dabble more in this huge void. Relevant local information, social sharing, retail coupons, school and community data, sports scores, car pools, etc. remain a big missed opportunity.It will be delivered to Internet-connected mobile devices, including smartphones. A new player will emerge and do for local content and services online what Craigslist did for regionalized classified advertising.”

“Mobile connectivity will become the core platform. The road to universal WiFi and WiMax may be bumpy, but anywhere, anything interactivity on smartphones, video-friendly PDAs and other wireless mobile devices will be the global screen of choice. Primary drivers will include interactive communications, location-based services and e-transactions.”

I have no idea what 2009 will bring but I don’t think we’re in Kansas any more.

I’ll be i20 on January 1st

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I have not felt my age for years. I’ve always felt (and acted?) much younger. Or so it seems to me. You might recall that I turned 60 back in March and I sure as hell don’t feel 60.

And on January 1st, 2009, I will no longer BE “sixty.” My new –more accurate age– will be i20 (“I” for Internet). My new “doi” (date of Internet) is 1/1/89:

“CompuServe was the first online service to offer Internet connectivity, albeit limited access, as early as 1989 when it connected its proprietary e-mail service to allow incoming and outgoing messages to other Internet e-mail addresses.” – Wikipedia

No presents, please.

Internet overtakes newspapers as news source

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From latest Pew Research Center Survey:

“Currently, 40% say they get most of their news about national and international issues from the internet, up from just 24% in September 2007. For the first time in a Pew survey, more people say they rely mostly on the internet for news than cite newspapers (35%).

For young people, however, the internet now rivals television as a main source of national and international news. Nearly six-in-ten Americans younger than 30 (59%) say they get most of their national and international news online; an identical percentage cites television. In September 2007, twice as many young people said they relied mostly on television for news than mentioned the internet (68% vs. 34%).”

Radio gained a little ground (from September 2007 to December 2008) among young people (18-29), up from 13% to 18%.

In this essay, Terry Heaton argues that just surviving is not a strategy:

“This theme of surviving 2009 is everywhere, but I’d like to pose an important question for anybody so hunkered, hanging, waiting or rowing, because waiting it out assumes “it” will end and that there will be a reward for those who are still standing when “it” is over. I’m not so sure, so here’s the question: What if the old model is gone for good and it doesn’t come back?”

UPDATE 12/26/08: A number of folks have accuratelty pointed out that a LOT of the news on the Net comes from newspapers. Worth noting but doesn’t solve any of the problems facing newspapers. If it comes down to getting less news (volume and variety) online or buying a copy of the Daily Bugle, online is gonna win. Business models will evlove that will support quality reporting w/o the overhead of current publishing models.

I am not that smays

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I was trying out the new People Search feature on Twitter and discovered another “smays.” And he is also “Steve Mays.” There should be no confusion, however, because he appears to be very smart and successful.

“Steve Mays, Chief Technical Officer — Steve has over 15 years experience in senior technology development positions. His former roles include Director of Infrastructure Services and IT Security Analyst for Semaphore Partners, Chief Information Officer for Xamplify, Inc., Director of Technology and Founder of Gloss.com and Manager of Online Operations for Vivendi Universal. Steve holds a BS in Business Management and an MBA in Global Business Management from University of Phoenix.”

Couldn’t find an email but maybe he’ll see this. We could drive up to Seattle and have a beer with the other Steve Mays West

Taking the “paper” out of “newspaper”

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“The American Society of Newspaper Editors is planning to remove “paper” from its name and expand its membership to include editors of online-only news Web sites and journalism educators.” — CyberJournalist.net.

I’ve scratched my head on this one –as it pertains to radio– in numerous posts. What is radio? Gotta have a tower and transmitter? An FCC license? Is an Internet station with 100,000 listeners not “radio,” while a small-town AM station with 10,000 listeners is “radio?”

Please take out your Blue Books and write a 500 page essay on: Defining Radio in the 21st Century. Begin.

Old people sucking up bandwidth

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Chuck at AgWired points to some stats on net use by age demo (eMarketer):

“Although Internet penetration within the 40-and-over crowd is lower than among younger demographic groups, boomers and seniors outnumber younger adults in the general population—so that lower Internet penetration still translates into greater numbers of older Internet users, according to comScore Media Metrix.”

Forrest Gump on the bailout

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This showed up in my in-box and I don’t know the source or the author but will be happy to properly attribute if anyone knows.

“Mortgage Backed Securities are like boxes of chocolates. Criminals on Wall Street stole a few chocolates from the boxes and replaced them with turds. Their criminal buddies at Standard & Poor rated these boxes AAA Investment Grade chocolates. These boxes were then sold all over the world to investors. Eventually somebody bites into a turd and discovers the crime. Suddenly nobody trusts American chocolates anymore worldwide.”

“Hank Paulson now wants the American taxpayers to buy up and hold all these boxes of turd-infested chocolates for $700 billion dollars until the market for turds returns to normal. Meanwhile, Hank’s buddies, the Wall Street criminals who stole all the good chocolates are not being investigated, arrested, or indicted.”

Mama always said: ‘Sniff the chocolates first, Forrest’.

Quote of the day from a fund manager: ‘This is worse than a divorce… I’ve lost half of my net worth and I still have my wife..’

And one more perspective:

“Back in 1990, the Government seized the Mustang Ranch brothel in Nevada for tax evasion and, as required by law, tried to run it. They failed and it closed. Now we are trusting the economy of our country to a pack of nit-wits who couldn’t make money running a whore house and selling booze?”

“News has cooties”

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Jeff Jarvis recalls "the golden age" of newspapers when "cities had many papers, many voices, many views, and papers still spoke for and with the people." And that's where we're headed again with the internet but "now it's the people talking."

"I have no doubt that there is a sustainable business in local news. The problem is that, at least for the present, the current and former owners of local news ruined it. Thanks to them, news has cooties."

Media 101

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My recent visit to Central Methodist University included a tour of the campus which wound up in the studios of what was –I believe– the student radio station. I’m not sure when or why the station went off the air but the plan is to bring it back as an internet station.

During the few minutes I chatted with a couple of instructors and students about the project, I got the impression the approach will be… traditional, for lack of a better term. By that I mean, they’ll have a control room and studios with the usual assortment of recording and mixing hardware. Instead of pumping it all out to a transmitter and tower… they’ll stream it.

As for programming, they plan to do what we used to call “block programming.” An interview program followed by a news program followed by… Music licensing issues prevent them from programming music.

The way college radio stations have always been programmed. I don’t doubt the students can learn some useful skills and gain some valuable experience doing this but I’m not sure it will prepare them for the future that is already here.

So what would I do if they put me in charge of the program for a semester?

I’d start by dropping the term “radio” and go with “media.” Not “new media,” just media.

I’d assemble production teams made up of a producer and host (and co-host?). These teams would be responsible for one 25 minute program a week. Can be any topic (more on that in a moment)

A Senior Producer and Managing Editor would coordinate these teams (using Basescamp or some similar online collaboration tool) and insure quality standards and deadlines were being met.

All or most of these programs would be produced as live feeds and podcasts. Instead of a “college radio station” (Internet or otherwise), you’d have a portal site (I hate that term) that featured each of the individual programs with a link to that programs blog (where the hosts and producer interact with listener/viewers). Show notes, comments, etc.

The central feature of the portal page would be a video section. It could be a live stream of one of the shows being recorded or some live event on campus. Or just a live webcam from the student center.

Equipment. Each team would have a laptop, a digital camera (video capable) and a small webcam. All shows would be produced on location. No reason to schlep back to a studio jammed with expensive equipment.

I wouldn’t limit this project to just students. I’d open it up to the community as well, but with students producing.

Once these podcasts are up, it’s an easy matter to track which ones produce a following. If nobody downloads, you fix the podcast or replace it. But you aren’t limited to the 24 hours of a real-time station. You can have as many programs as you have people to produce and watch/listen.

So what are the students learning here?

  • How to write, edit and tell a story
  • How to shoot and edit video and share it with the world
  • How to build an online community or tribe
  • How to produce a live webcast
  • How to take and edit photos
  • How about a course in Smart Phone Reporting?

…and so on and so forth. I’m not an educator so there could be lots of things wrong with this approach. I’m pretty sure it would cost a lot less than a more traditional approach while involving many more students (in and out of the communications program). If you have suggestions on this mythical program, please include them in the comments. Or, if you see flaws, post those as well.

PS: I think this might be a powerful recruitment tool, as well.

UPDATE/12.08.08: On a recent edition of NPR’s Morning Edition, Steve Inskeep interviewed journalist Sreenath Sreenivasan who, within an hour of the attacks in Mubai, began hosting a web radio call-in show with other Indian journalists, relaying what they knew. Sreenivasan used a service called Blog TalkRadio:

“BlogTalkRadio is the social radio network that allows users to connect quickly and directly with their audience. Using an ordinary telephone and computer hosts can create free, live, call-in talk shows with unlimited participants that are automatically archived and made available as podcasts. No software download is required. Listeners can subscribe to shows via RSS into iTunes and other feed readers.”

Website make-over

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We relaunched our corporate website today. Same content, just a fresh coat of digital paint provided by Caffeinated Studio in Dallas. Much thanks to Trent, Brad and Rob for the design and to Joel, Phil and Andy for all the under the hood stuff.

We’ll be fixing broken links and such for days but it’s it good to have finally thrown the switch. We ripped off the previous design from GE back when a company website wasn’t all that big a deal (“Yeah, sure, go ahead. As long as it doesn’t cost much.”)

Today our company has lots of web pages “out there.” Internet, intranet, extranet, blogs, etc etc. Thousands of pages. This “Internet thing” has caught on and I no longer have to sell the idea of the web et al. Even blogs and podcasts have become part of our company culture.

I used to say I was an EMT frantically giving CPR to the Internet patient in the back of the ambulance as it meandered toward the hospital. Today, our online patient is feeling much better. Drinking apple juice and watching Oprah. I’m so glad to see him feeling better.