How Adam Carolla Became a Podcast Superstar

This article at Fast Company is more about Adam Corolla and podcasting than radio but this bit sort of jumps out at you:

“Radio has a lot of rules that are set up to protect the foibles and weaknesses of the host.” He names names: “Mark and Brian, Opie and Anthony are, like all radio guys, comedically second tier. I’m not putting these guys down; I’m in that group.” But you’re not going to find a Jon Stewart, a Stephen Colbert, or even a Jimmy Kimmel telling anybody the time during your morning commute. The rules enforce a sameness that eliminates any chance of something original happening. “Radio’s about guys with subpar intellects killing four goddamn hours…

As a former radio guy, I also enjoyed this:

“I’d rather have 10 smart people than a billion retards listening to me.”

I thought we couldn’t say retard.

I enjoyed Carolla when he and Jimmy Kimmel hosted The Man Show. (I think that was what it was called) I’ll sample his podcast and report back.

Letters to the President

From The Huffington Post: “In his first week as president, Obama asked his staff to select 10 letters a day for him to read from among the tens of thousands that were flooding into the White House. … Fourteen months later, Obama still takes 10 letters (including e-mails and faxes) with him when he heads upstairs at the end of each weekday. He personally writes back to three or four.”

My suggestion posted here in March of 2008:

“President Obama reads, answers and acts on one email –from an American citizen– every week. Let’s say, on Friday. Here’s how it might work:

Anybody can email the president once a week. Yes, people will try to find ways to scam this but you can deal with that. On Friday morning, 10 emails are selected at random and forwarded to President Obama’s in-box. He looks through them, picks one and responds –personally– to the sender. If action is required, the email is forwarded to the appropriate subordinate who has to DO something because the president –and the country– will be watching.

My suggestion goes a bit further but the two are eerily close. And, yes, I did email my suggestion to the Obama campaign.

Video Affiliate Advisory


I love this idea. The head of affiliate relations for Learfield Sports (Keith Kowalski) posts a brief (60 sec) video, explaining a new text alert service for keeping radio affiliates up to the minute on changes to broadcast times due to weather. Nothing fancy here. Just pointed the Flip camera and popped the advisory up on YouTube. Our sports ops folks are making excellent use of their website (WordPress) which serves 40+ networks.