That’s the rumor (unconfirmed but good source) from Kennett. Happened Wednesday at undisclosed location. I could find nary a word on the net. Could it be you heard it here first?
Category Archives: Media & Culture
Jeff Jarvis: Don’t own the content. Don’t own distribution
Another thought-provoking post by Jeff Jarvis on the “value” of owning content or distribution:
Owning the printing press, broadcast tower, cable plant, movie theater, or chain of stores is a cost burden when your competitors and customers can, without friction, effort or cost, bypass your distribution and even your marketing. So don’t own the content. Help people make and find and remake and recommend and save the content they want. Don’t own the distribution. Gain the trust of the people to help them use whatever distribution and medium they like to find what they want. It’s hard for somone raised on the value of owning content and owning distribution to let go of exclusivity and instead value openness and participation.
I’ve been blogging long enough to buy into the idea of the web as a conversation but it’s a damned hard concept to explain. Much easier to grasp the idea of producing programming (content)…pumping it over some kind of distribution channel (radio/TV signal, newspaper, etc)…mixing in some ads…and feeding it all to the consumer (audience).
Online salaries higher than in other media
Online publishing salaries of recent graduates are higher than broadcast or print media salaries, according to the 2004 Annual Survey of Journalism and Mass Communication Graduates (PDF) conducted by The University of Georgia’s James M. Cox Jr. Center for International Mass Communication Training and Research.
The survey found that the median online publishing salary in 2004 was $32,000. By comparison, the median salary for TV was $23,492; for cable TV was $30,000; for daily newspapers was $26,000; for weekly newspapers was $24,000; for radio was $23,000; and for consumer magazines was $27,000. [CyberJournalist.net]
Of all the challenges facing my beloved radio these days, that median salary of $23,000 might be the most frightening.
Smoker’s Oasis
The death of Peter Jennings (from lung cancer) last week has lots of folks thinking about smoking. I remember when smoking was allowed on airplanes and ash trays were common desk accessories in the office. Ash tray. A tray for your ashes. Do they still manufacture ash trays? I’m sure they do.
My favorite “ash tray” is The Smoker’s Oasis. The grand daddy of ash trays, The Smoker’s Oasis has sprung up like big, stinking mushrooms outside offices and buildings across America. When we drove our smoking employees outdoors, we had to come up with someplace for them to put their butts.
We had one outside our offices for a while. It was originally located 30 or 40 yards from the back door of our building. The next time I saw it, it was right next to the building, so smokers could get a little shelter from the rain.
I went searching for it to take a picture for this post but it’s gone. When I asked one of my smoker co-workers where it was located, she would only mutter, “It’s gone. I don’t know where it is.”
My current theory is our Smoker’s Oasis has become like Dracula’s coffin. Only smokers know where to find it and you can never spot them going to or from the secret location.
Do our closeted smokers take turns emptying our Smoker’s Oasis? Is there a secret duty roster somewhere, showing who has butt chores this week? And where do they dump the butts? Do they bury them in the woods behind our office, taking care to spread leaves over the shallow grave?
Do they dream of a day when they are once again in the majority and can come in from the cold? Will we have nice, cut glass ash trays on every desk, with the company logo proudly imprinted on the side? Will we see a day when there is no longer a need for the Smoker’s Oasis? We can only hope.
Fishing where the fish are
From the cover story in the August 8 issue of Fortune: “In 2006 roughly $400 million of Chrysler’s money that used to go into TV, newspaper, and magazine ads will be spent on the Internet.” [RAIN]
Nikol Lohr on pregnancy
“I don’t want kids. Sometimes I like kids okay, sometimes they’re funny or smart, but I don’t want one growing inside me like a tape worm. They grow in there and press down all your organs and give you incessant heartburn and make you have to pee all the time and make your ankles swell so the only shoes you can wear are flip-flops. And then when they’re finished leeching off you, they slide out like greasy little piglets all mucousy and pink.”
“Then afterwards, you have twenty years of no life of your own. If you do it right, anyway. And then a whole lifetime of worry. Like having a dog that outlives you and runs away all the time and chews up all your furniture and pees everywhere and hates you at least for a while no matter what. A dog that no matter how good you try to be is slightly embarrassed of you and will definitely lie and deceive you. A dog that won’t let you pet it and that talks back.”
Jeff Jarvis on “Freedom Center”
Mr. Jarvis is so right when he calls for “the truest expression of American freedom: commerce.” Instead of a “Freedom Center” (at the site of the World Trade Center), he wants to see life:
I want to see stores that sell scanty clothes, no burkas allowed.
I want to see restaurants that serve liquor.
I want to see movies that show anything, even sex.
I want to see bookstores that celebrate free speech.
I want to see stores selling products from all over the world: the fruits of globalization.
I want to see life there. Defiant, unapologetic life.
Halley Suitt on class reunions
“Within one week, two fairly nice, rational, reasonable guys I know told me about 1. (first guy) attending a college reunion and loathing the experience and 2. (the other) told me how he was dreading attending an upcoming reunion. I’m sorry, but what the HELL WERE THEY THINKING? Why put yourself through such a thing? Remind me why people even bother going to reunions? If you’re doing a lot better than the people in your graduating class, surely you have something better to do than go rub your former classmates’ noses in it. If you’re doing worse, that’s reason enough not to go. If you still see and like your college friends, have a party at your house and invite them over. Aren’t reunions just a wallet-cleaning activity for the alumni fund-raisers? Wait, wait, do guys go so they can see who ended up with what woman? This might have some logic to it, but what a waste of time!”
Interview with Mary Quass
Mary Quass has been doing the radio thing for a long time. She bought her first station in 1988 and was right in the thick of the consolidation “land rush” of the late ’90s. Mary’s from a small town in southeast Iowa (Fairfield) and got her first radio job in 1977 selling advertising at KHAK in Cedar Rapids. She became sales manager of the station for two years (1979-82) and then served as GSM at KSO Des Moines until she returned to Cedar Rapids to purchase KHAK.
Ten years later, Quass Broadcasting merged with Capstar to form Central Star Communications, and Mary oversaw all aspects of the radio stations in her region. In July 1999, when the company merged with Chancellor Media to become AMFM Inc., Central Star Communications consisted of 66 stations in 14 midwest markets.
I’ve known Mary for a long time and she’s been a good friend to our company. Mary is one smart lady and she doesn’t think out of the box because she doesn’t know there is a box. So I called to get her take on what’s happening “out there.” I asked her about satellite radio, podcasting, consolidation, blogs, Internet radio and a bunch of other stuff.
AUDIO: Interview with Mary Quass 30 min MP3
Correction and update: I knew that Mary had been interviewed by Radio Ink in 2003 –and mentioned it in the interview– but when I went back to check a couple of things I thought I was looking at a new interview. I wasn’t. But I found a couple of interesting nuggets while re-reading the piece. Remember, this was two years ago.
“We cant just stick our heads in the sand and think that the Internet wont have an impact on Radio. This is the first technology to mean that anybody can have a radio station as good as, if not better than, whats out there today and it has nothing to do with a license. I want to be in and out of the business by then. When I was growing up, I could tell you my favorite radio station, and I was adamant about it. Well, a 12-year-old today can tell you the artists, but they may or may not have a Radio station where they know the DJs. Im very concerned about this, because we havent remained relevant to these people.”
“As an industry, we got away from that and have lost sight of the fact that we must give people product that they cant get everywhere else. If we dont differentiate our product when the Internet becomes wireless, it will be a whole new ball game for all of us. We had better be ready, or the frustration we feel will only grow.”
“Radio audience as big as it’s ever going to get”
I had lunch this week with a long-time acquaintance who happens to be one of the most successful small market broadcasters in the country. His stations generate millions of dollars in ad sales and have for years. He asked us to come up and talk about the Internet and I was expecting the usual “Don’t waste your time on that Internet bullshit” line. So, when he said (paraphrasing here) if broadcasters don’t figure out the Internet, they’ll perish… the hair on my arms stood up. He went on to say he thought radio’s audience was as big as it’s ever going to get. And that most small market radio stations are breaking even at best. Oh, and he said he didn’t know any young people that listened to the radio these days. Digital radio? Gonna be bad, not good, for rural broadcasters. He said more but I was in such a state of shock I can’t recall everything.
And I’d heard it all before. Online, not from a life-time broadcaster. I didn’t get the impression he’s shared his concerns with other broadcasters. Sort of the elephant in the room that nobody is talking about. And I’m not going to out this guy. Besides, nobody would ever believe he said –or believes– any of the above.
This must have been the mood when the plains Indians saw the first wagon trains roll over the hill. It ain’t gonna ever be the same again. Might be good. Might be better. But it ain’t gonna be the same.