Category Archives: Media & Culture

If the boat is leaking, learn how to swim

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Had a chat with an acquaintance who now lives and works in another part of the country. He’s a long-time radio news guy and he called to get my advice on how his newsroom can better take advantage of “new media” (which ain’t that new anymore). As he talked about his newsroom and the company he works for (a good one), it became clear there was no clear direction for making the transition from Old Media to New Media. And unlikely to be one. So what can he do?

First, what he cannot do. He probably cannot change (or provide) the larger online strategy his company needs. But he can begin learning the skills he needs to survive. In no particular order:

  • Start blogging (any topic)  This includes reading other blogs
  • Start using an RSS news reader
  • Set up a twitter page (get a grasp of social networking)
  • Get a smart phone and learn how to use it (see above)
  • Keep a small digital (still/video) camera on his person at all times
  • Get a YouTube and flickr account and start using them. (any subject)
  • Begin the process of creating your brand

To an old radio dog, all of this sounds like a lot more work than it really is. But here’s the question I posed to my friend: If your current job went away overnight, what would you do? Try to get a job at another radio station? A newspaper? TV station?

What kind of skills to you think they’re looking for these days? Will it be enough to give them a cassette tape of your best work? Maybe a list of the RTNDA awards you’ve won?

The skills he learned in J-school are important. His many years of “radio” experience are valuable. But it’s a new game, that demands new skills. You got ’em or you don’t.

President Bartlet will see you now Senator

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I never got hooked on West Wing but I must have been the only one not watching this popular TV show about fictional U. S. President Jed Bartlet (played by Martin Sheen). NYT columnist Maureen Dowd asked WW creator Aaron Sorkin to imagine a meeting between President Bartlet and Senator Barack Obama. As you know, I’m fond of such fictional conversations, so I share a nugget or two from this one:

OBAMA The problem is we can’t appear angry. Bush called us the angry left. Did you see anyone in Denver who was angry?

BARTLET Well … let me think. …We went to war against the wrong country, Osama bin Laden just celebrated his seventh anniversary of not being caught either dead or alive, my family’s less safe than it was eight years ago, we’ve lost trillions of dollars, millions of jobs, thousands of lives and we lost an entire city due to bad weather. So, you know … I’m a little angry.

OBAMA What would you do?

BARTLET GET ANGRIER! … Mock them mercilessly; they’ve earned it. McCain decried agents of intolerance, then chose a running mate who had to ask if she was allowed to ban books from a public library. It’s not bad enough she thinks the planet Earth was created in six days 6,000 years ago complete with a man, a woman and a talking snake, she wants schools to teach the rest of our kids to deny geology, anthropology, archaeology and common sense too? It’s not bad enough she’s forcing her own daughter into a loveless marriage to a teenage hood, she wants the rest of us to guide our daughters in that direction too? It’s not enough that a woman shouldn’t have the right to choose, it should be the law of the land that she has to carry and deliver her rapist’s baby too? I don’t know whether or not Governor Palin has the tenacity of a pit bull, but I know for sure she’s got the qualifications of one. And you’re worried about seeming angry? You could eat their lunch, make them cry and tell their mamas about it and God himself would call it restrained. There are times when you are simply required to be impolite. There are times when condescension is called for!

Sharing music

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We were listening to some new tunes on Roger’s iPod as we drove back to Jeff City from Columbia. Like most new cars, his has an input jack for the iPod (or whatever). So it was easy for me to pull out my nano [insert joke here], plug in and play one of my tunes.

As we listened, it occurred to me this simple act couldn’t happen in a pre-iPod world, at least not easily. Yeah, I guess I could have had a pocket-full of cassettes or CD’s, but Roger and I had thousands of songs between us and we thought nothing of switching from his iPod to mine.

Cb011960My old pal RP was an avid collector of 45 rpm records. He had big cardboard boxes jammed with “singles.” The best we could do back then was stack 20 or so on a fat little spindle that would drop the next 45 down to the turntable. Shuffle? Sure, like a deck of cards.

I seem to recall RP telling me he had copied all of his 45’s to CD. Don’t know if he’s made the final leap to an iPod.

It’s hard to imagine what’s next but even hard to imagine there won’t be a “next.”

More US mobile phone than Americans 13+

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The following stats were featured in a marketing piece I received today. And I’m guessing the numbers are even higher in other developed countries.

  • Tin_can_string85% of Americans have a cell phone (there are actually more US mobile phones than Americans age 13 and older) Source: CTIA Wireless Association
  • 66% of cell phones in America are equipped with a camera Source: comScore
  • 40% of Americans with cell phones send/receive text messages (80% among 13-24 year olds; 63% among 18-27year olds) Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project
  • 24% of Americans with cell phones send/receive photo or video messages (up 60% in the past year) Source: M:Metrics

And it will just get easier and easier to share those photos and videos. I’m not feeling particularly left out because I probably shoot-and-share more video than the average bear. But I can’t deny my mobilness much longer. Holding out for video iPhone.

The photobooth is back

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PhotoboothLast week I pointed to a book called American Photobooth, a new illustrated history of photo booths. Seems like photobooths are making a small comeback as a novel way to take photos of weddings.

You’ve probably been to a wedding where they leave disposable cameras on each table for guests to use and leave.

Barb attended a wedding/reception last weekend that featured a photobooth (a new digital one, I assume). Guests jam inside for group shots. I’m unclear on whether you get the pix on the spot or they mail them to you later. The former, I think.

Not sure why the photobooth sounds like more fun than the cameras on the table but it does.

“Growing new crops”

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Chris Brogan observes “the bigger or older or more successful the company, it seems, the more difficult this experience” of finding the next new hit. An observation he feels applies particularly well to media companies.

Brogan would call his approach to this problem the “escape pod” model:

  • Pick a small core team, half insiders, half raw new outsiders.
  • Stake them a startup seed round.
  • Let them go a few months on that.
  • No corporate oversight, only report backs. It’s spend/try/live-or-die.
  • Assess. Good? Then raise an A round or give them more corporate assets.
  • Revise revenue targets.
  • Observe. Kill, or green light.

He ends is post with the Big Question: CAN media organizations put new crops into the ground without pulling up the roots to check how they are growing? [via David B.]

KBOA 830

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In an earlier post I wondered about some recent move affecting the radio station I worked at many years ago. Our friend Jeff pointed us to a post on a radio message board:   

"Eagle Bluff Enterprises has received FCC permission to move KOTC from Kennett, Missouri to Memphis, Tennessee.  KOTC (830 AM) signed on in July 1947 as KBOA.  KOTC went silent on 6-1-08.  The justification for the STA was "The station has been temporarily turned off pending format changes and equipment repairs".  After the move, KOTC will diplex its 10 KW signal from a tower shared with WHBQ, 560 AM, in Memphis."

When I worked at KBOA the frequency (a daytime clear channel) was 830. When consolidation hit there was a series of call letter/frequency shuffles I was never interested enough to try to sort out.

I think they moved the KBOA calls to a frequency (105.5) licensed to Piggott, Arkansas, but operating in Kennett, MO. The 830 freq was assigned some newer, local (Kennett) calls (KOTC).

The KBOA I knew and loved died long ago. And it was nice to read some kind words about KBOA830.com. Thanks to all.

Cyborg Anthropology

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I doubt there’s any shortage of scholarly papers on the sociological and anthropological effects of the mobile phone. I’ve never had a desire to search out and read any of them.

But my interest was piqued by Amber Case, one of the attendees at Gnomedex 8.0. A recent graduate, Amber describes her area of work and study as “Cyborg Anthropology.” Ooh. She was kind enough to send me a copy of her thesis: “The Cell Phone and Its Technosocial Sites of Engagement.” Here’s a snippet from the introduction:

“Mobile telephony has ushered in social geographies that are no longer entirely public or entirely private. The mobile phone allows place to exist in non-place, and privacy to exist in public. Never before have people been able to disembody their voices and talk across any distance, in almost any place. Cell phone technology has thus changed the dichotomies of place and non-place as well as the private and public dichotomies into a technological-human hybrid.”

I think I’ve had a whiff of this idea from all the time I spend communicating online. And when I break down and graft an iPhone to my hip, it’s only going to get better/worse.

No satellite or cable TV? No problem.

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Our DirecTV works great until a heavy rain rolls in and blocks the signal. It’s called “rain fade” and you lose your signal a couple of minutes before the rain actually reaches earth.

That happened last night while we were watching the Democratic National Convention. It wa getting close to time for Obama to speak and, since we didn’t know how long it would last, I grabbed the MacBook and started streaming CNN’s live feed.

It was a little small and I didn’t bother to go full-screen because we were on the floor in the bedroom and could see it fine.

This has become so easy and mundane, it’s hardly worth mentioning. But that’s my point. Distribution is becoming –has become– a non-issue. In four years I have no doubt I would just swipe the iPhone and watch the speeh there.

Perhaps I’m still awestruck by this because I remember a time before color TV, cable, VCR, DVD, computers, web, etc.