Category Archives: Media & Culture

dMarc founders leave Google

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Looks like Google’s plans to reinvent the way radio ads are bought has hit a rough spot. Online Media Daily reports Chad and Ryan Steelberg, the founders of dMark, an automated radio ad placement company purchased by Google in January 2006, have left the company.

The brothers resigned amid reports of growing tension between dMarc, the company they founded, and Google over differing approaches to radio ad sales. There was also said to be tension over the limited remuneration dMarc could expect under the performance-based terms of its original deal with Google.

What your iPod reveals about you

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Podcasting News: Psychologists Jason Rentfrow of the University of Cambridge in England and Sam Gosling at the University of Texas at Austin, have found that strangers can accurately assess another person’s level of creativity, open-mindedness and extroversion after listening to his or her top 10 favorite songs.

While I had no data to support it, I theorized about this a year ago. Anyway, two of the conclusions in the new study caught my eye:

“Whether you can study or work efficiently while listening to music may depend on how outgoing you are. Background music can help extroverts focus but tends to torment introverts.”

I’ve always thought of myself as an extrovert but I can NOT listen to music while I’m trying to concentrate.

“Fans of energetic music like dance and soul are more likely to impulsively blurt our their thoughts, compared with fans of other styles.”

Guilty. I have a hard time keeping my mouth shut.

Sheryl’s gonna tell us how it’s gonna be

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Ann Morren (our only Belgian reader) reminds us to watch for Sheryl Crow’s Revlon ad in the Super Bowl (sometime in the 3rd quarter)… and then head over to iTunes and purchase Ms. Crow’s cover of Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away.” Proceeds going to aid breast cancer research.

Update: Purchased/listened to the song. Okay. Liked Rolling Stones & Buddy Holly versions better. Would love to know what Revlon is paying to have SC as spokesperson.

While pinging back and forth with Ann Morren, I learned she is a photographer and persuaded her to let me share a few here. I’ve noticed that a disproportionate number of smays.com readers (Henry, Bass) take great photographs.

 

Radio Iowa Week in Review

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RIWIRRadio Iowa reporter Stella Shaffer produces “Radio Iowa: Week In Review” and it’s a nice toe-in-the-podcast-water for the network. She pulls together the top stories of the previous week:

“The old governor’s got a gig teaching law at Drake, the new governor wants a dollar-a-pack increase in the cigarette tax, and an economist tells us what that might cost. The new improved state minimum wage may also have unanticipated consequences, according to HeadStart heads. Bitter cold played a part in the apprehension of an auto-theft suspect, OSHA offered a helping hand to migrant workers while one mayor wants a fulltime cop to bust them, and we mourn two more Iowa soldiers lost.”

Another of our networks began repurposing feature programs as podcasts last year. But RIWIR is our first true podcast (by my definition).

We have some really good reporters working in our newsrooms. Historically, if they came up with a good idea for a new program, it could only fly if we could convince enough affiliate stations to “clear” it.

In the world of podcasts, they are only limited by their imaginations and the hours in the day. I’m hoping to hear some good stuff in the coming year.

“Radio” listening up UK

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According to figures released yesterday, the number of radio listeners in Britain is at a record high of more than 45 million every week. The increase is attributed to growing numbers of people tuning in on the internet, digital television and mobile phones.

Almost 8 per cent of people aged 15 and above listen to the radio on their mobile phones, a 24 per cent increase over the same period of 2005. A quarter of 15- to 24-year-olds said they tuned in this way. Listening over the internet rose by 10 per cent and by 9 per cent on digital television.

Podcasts are also more popular. More than two million people, the equivalent of 17 per cent of all owners of MP3 players, listen to the audio downloads – a rise of 15 per cent on the previous three months. [Thanks, Bob]

Jon Stewart as value-added news aggregator

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I still try to watch one of the network newscasts each evening. But, increasingly, I rely on The Daily Show for the latest news.

Jon Stewart devoted over a third of one broadcast last week to Wolf Blitzer’s interview with Dick Cheney on CNN. Not only did Stewart go through numerous highlights from the interview, but the Daily Show staff gathered supporting video clips to provide context for the interview, using previous statements of position and policy to hold the veep accountable for the stuff he was saying now. You can watch the segment here if you missed it. [Eat the Press]

Get A Mac: Surgery, Sabotage, and Tech Support

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Get a Mac In the first new Mac ad, PC is getting surgery in order to receive all sorts of upgrades to run Windows Vista. Tech Support involves the PC receiving a camera upgrade (via masking tape to the head) so that he can do important business things like videoconference, only to find out that Macs come with built-in iSights now so they don’t need to upgrade. In Sabotage, the PC has decided to sabotage the commercial altogether and replace the Mac with another actor who says everything the PC wants him to say. [Infinite Loop]

The men and/or women responsible for writing these commercials are the very same people that played Keep-Away with the fat kid’s hat a lunch time in the 7th grade. Until he cried.

iPods no threat to radio?

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Mark Ramsey at Hear 2.0:

“Every so often someone in the radio industry trots out a study which says iPods really aren’t that threatening to the radio industry’s long-term health and welfare. ‘Folks get tired of maintaining them,’ they will say. ‘They’re just a new form of Walkman,’ say others.”

And the radio industry has (apparently) spent a bazillion dollars promoting HD radio. Check out the Google Trends graph posted as one of the comments.

Everything might turn out roses and sunshine for Radio but it won’t be because of HD.

Bloggers take on talk radio hosts

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A San Francisco talk radio station pre-empted three hours of programming on Friday in response to a campaign by bloggers who have recorded extreme comments by several hosts and passed on digital copies to advertisers. This article at NYTimes.com explains and I posted on this when it first came up.

For a dozen years (a long time ago) I co-hosted a one-hour daily call-in show. We did silly shit and almost never got into politics. But we picked the topics for the most part and if the water had gotten too hot, we’d have just stopped taking calls.

That bloggers can now record what we say and send those recordings to our advertisers, urging them to stop advertising on our show… well, that just changes the rules of the game. Big time. Nothing gets a station manager’s attention like a cancellation from a sponsor. “We can always find a new talk show host. Sponsors? Not so easy.”

Your politics will dictate who’s “right” in the story above. But like it or not, yesterday’s “broadcast” is today’s “conversation.” And sometimes it’s all shouting.

Reader’s Digest Podcast

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J. T. Gerlt reports that your grandpa’s favorite magazine is podcasting:

I never really thought of Reader’s Digest as cutting edge. The outside has basically looked the same forever. They have the same insides too Only in America, Everyday Heroes, Word Power, Humor In Uniform, Quotable Quotes, and etc., but someone there must be pretty progressive thinking. Most of the audio is 3-5 minutes long, the longest I saw was 11 something.

I’m betting Aunt Betty isn’t syncing her iTunes and playing canasta with buds dangling from her ears, but I could see her listening in front of her PC. Which is how a LOT of podcasts are being heard. I’ll check ’em out and report here.