Category Archives: Media & Culture

Looking for pork in the stimulus bill

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The Huffington Post is asking readers to dig through the compromise Senate stimulus bill and report any examples of “wasteful pork-barrel spending or corporate giveaways.”

This just seems a great example of the Net empowering people. Thousands of folks who care enough to dig through this mother, taking notes and sharing them. And when they find the bull-shit we know is there, we all scream bloody murder. Has anyone turned the kitchen light on the the DC cockroaches like this before. We used to leave this stuff to the AP or the Washington Post or some other MSM entity. I love the idea of anyone with time and inclination to get involved. Shoot, this seems almost as useful as voting.

“If we don’t teach our children about Barney Fife and Jack Tripper, who will?”

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“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

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“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?

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“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?