According to the folks at Air America Radio, beginning in January Franken will launch a daily podcast newscast. It will be Franken’s voice, but according to Air America, the audio will be lip-synced by attractive underwear models, with both male and female versions. [B&C]
How I would have loved to have been in the meeting where that idea was first floated.
Madison radio station WIBA has sold the naming rights to its newsroom. According to a story in the Wisconsin State Journal, beginning January 1, the WIBA newsroom will be called the Amcore Bank News Center. Jeff Tyler, vice president of Clear Channel Radio-Madison, says the deal will not affect news content.
(Disclosure) Our company does business with WIBA and I met Jeff Tyler some years ago. A very sharp guy and a well-respected radio station.
What happens if the FDIC decides to investigate some of the Amcore Banks in Wisconsin? If WIBA does a story (or does not), a listener might wonder if there was any influence. Now that I think about it, it won’t matter. A swarm of bloggers will be all of any such story. Just one more missing frog in the broadcast journalism ecosystem.
NBC has inked a deal with Apple to become the second network to sell television shows a la carte on Apple’s online iTunes store. More than 300 episodes from about a dozen prime time, cable, late-night and classic TV shows are now available for $1.99 apiece, viewable on computers or downloadable on the latest, video-capable iPod.
The programming spans from the 1950s to the present, including shows from “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” “Dragnet,” USA Network’s “Monk,” the Sci-Fi Channel’s “Battlestar Galactica,” and NBC’s hit series “Law & Order.” Sketches from “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” and “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” are also for sale.
I’m guessing that’s the toe-in-the-water list and we’ll quickly see last night’s stuff on iTunes in the morning. One more example of that Long Tail. Those programs were just gathering dust and now they’ll generate dollars.
George Carlin’s latest comedy special on HBO (Life Is Worth Losing) had some really strong moments and others where I thought he was reaching. The open was Carlin at his best. A pissed-off poet for the 21st century. The all-suicide cable channel didn’t work for me, but he was at his rage-fueled best explaining why our education system will never get any better (3 min video). Recorded live at the Beacon Theater in New York City, this is why you want to have HBO.
“When you think about it, satellite radio and iTunes are the best positioned in the new world for pay content … Print content is pretty much all free by now. Networks and cable and program producers and all bound up in their mutually destructive deals. But iTunes enables the sale of content and Sirius is producing content worth paying for and neither is trapped by their histories. — Jeff Jarvis
Our company has the multimedia rights for 19 of the biggest and bestest colleges in the country. Would those legions of fans pay $.99 for some video highlights from Saturday’s big game, if they could do it quickly and easily and have them download automatically to their video iPod? Ch-ching!