1981 KRON-TV report on experiment that allows you to get a San Francisco newspaper on your home computer.
I love this video. It was just a few years later (1984) that I got my first computer. It seems like a lifetime ago. Or a week.
Category Archives: Media & Culture
“If we don’t teach our children about Barney Fife and Jack Tripper, who will?”
“Every day, 350,00 babies are born at risk of not knowing that Bob Barker was the host of The Price is Right. Pop Literate is dedicated to doing something about that.
This is a place for you to find parenting tools you need to turn out healthy, well-adjusted children. Children who won’t be shunned by their peers because they believe David Copperfield is only a Charles Dickens character.”
The blog died long ago, alas. A good idea.
Everybody is on Facebook
“For a long while—from about the late ’80s to the late-middle ’90s, Wall Street to Jerry Maguire—carrying a mobile phone seemed like a haughty affectation. But as more people got phones, they became more useful for everyone—and then one day enough people had cell phones that everyone began to assume that you did, too. Your friends stopped prearranging where they would meet up on Saturday night because it was assumed that everyone would call from wherever they were to find out what was going on. From that moment on, it became an affectation not to carry a mobile phone; they’d grown so deeply entwined with modern life that the only reason to be without one was to make a statement by abstaining. Facebook is now at that same point—whether or not you intend it, you’re saying something by staying away.”
— Slate
Does size (of your audience) matter or not?
“What we are going to witness in 2009 is the diminished importance of how large your (radio) audience is and the increasing importance of how effectively you connect that audience, whatever its size, with the advertisers and marketers who have the goods and services that audience craves.” — Mark Ramsey Hear 2.0
For some reason this made me think of Apple. I don’t think I’ve ever heard an Apple or Mac or iPod spot on the radio. Lots on TV, of course. And Apple sales are through the roof. I’m trying to think of how I am “connected” with Apple products and how that came to be.
I’m just trying to think of ways radio stations can make –or are making– the connections Mr. Ramsey describes. And what does this trend mean for radio networks?
The best things in life (like Wikipedia) are not free
I was searching Wikipedia for something last month and noticed a big banner at the top of the page, asking for contributions to keep the site going. I didn’t give much but readily hit the PayPal button. Apparently a lot of folks did:
Huffington Post:
“Since November 5, the organization has raised $4.5 million, though the bulk of that came in late December when founder Jimmy Wales posted his annual appeal to the Wikipedia community. Add that to the $2 million in foundation grants and major gifts they’d received since July, and their entire $6 million annual operating budget has been met. The achievement would be remarkable in ordinary times, but it’s all the more impressive given the grim economic climate.”
Wikipedia Fundraising By The Numbers
136,000: number of donors
$35: average donation
16: number of currencies in which people donated
150: number of countries from which people donated
$6.5 million: total amount raised thus far
$3 million: amount raised in ten days in late December
I really like the idea of lots of people kicking in a few dollars to support something they believe is worthwhile.
Scott Adams: Cusp of fundamental change
“I wonder what people mean when they say the economy will recover in 2010. The only way that can happen is if another irrational bubble forms thus creating an illusion of wealth similar to our previous illusions. If you take illusions out of the equation, there isn’t anything to get “back” to. The wealth was never there in the first place.”
“I said before that I think we’re on the cusp of a change as fundamental as the industrial revolution. But this time the change will be on the consumption side, not the production side. As a society we have dabbled with recycling and such, but it has always been fairly optional. There was no real penalty for waste.”
“The coming consumption revolution won’t be strictly for the benefit of the environment. It will be an economic necessity, driven largely by the huge numbers of retired poor. There simply won’t be enough stuff for everyone if waste is allowed.”
He goes on to share some thoughts on the Internet and home schooling. My nephews and niece were home schooled and they are very well educated and socially well adjusted. The post is worth a read.
It looks like TV to me
From PoynterOnline’s Al’s Morning Meeting (Al Tompkins):
“Monday morning, WTSP-TV anchor/reporter Janie Porter was on TV, reporting live from Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., on the run-up to this week’s national college football championship game. She didn’t have a big live truck accompanying her, or an engineer tuning in a shot or a photojournalist standing behind the camera and setting up lights.”
“Porter set up her own camera, opened her laptop, connected the camera to her computer, slipped a wireless connection card into her laptop, called up Skype and used her Blackberry to establish IFB (the device TV folks wear in their ears to hear the off-air signal). It all looked just great on air.”
So here’s my question: If a reporter didn’t know how to do what Janie did, why wouldn’t he or she make some effort to learn it? If you answered, “I’m not a TV reporter,” go to the back of the line.
More media predictions for 2009
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.
“a stats geek behind the scenes tweeting interesting stuff”
I’ve been beating the Twitter drum ever since that digital light bulb came on for me. I did my best to offer some practical applications for our various businesses. But none were as spot-on as StatTweets. From the StatTweet website:
“Most sports-related media outlets that have a Twitter account simply blast everything through a single account. I don’t know about you, but I don’t find this very useful. I prefer Twitter updates targeted at just the teams I’m interested in. And I’m not talking about just a news feed. It needs to be as if each sports team had a twitter account and a stats geek behind the scenes tweeting interesting stuff.
That’s exactly what the StatTweets accounts are intended to do (but it is all automated). Not only can you follow just the teams you are interested in, but you can interact with each account to retrieve team and player stats dynamically.”
Panty Mython
No idea who this is (although she looks/sounds very familiar) but her profile page says she lives in Jefferson City and we have reason to believe she fuels up at the Coffee Zone.