Radio: Media comfort food

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A couple of new services from Sprint allows “some subscribers to stream live music to the phone in a radio-type format without having to buy a new phone or have lots of storage.”

I don’t have a mobile phone and wouldn’t buy one to stream live music (I didn’t think I’d buy and iPod either) but that’s not the point of this post. When I read this story (in the Seattle Times) I thought, “Where in the hell are the stories about cool things happening in radio?” I realize it is a “mature technology” but, come on… there’s got to be something going on out in radio land. Help me out here.

Dave, you work in/for/around radio. What’s the buzz? What has radio juices flowing? Bob, Morris… tell me something to get me excited. Send me a link and I’ll read/post it.

Then again, maybe radio is like your mom’s cooking. You take it for granted. No, it’s not hot or new or sexy…but it’s always there for you. A funnel cloud was sited near (?) Jefferson City tonight and I turned on my little transistor radio and listened to some pretty good coverage. Not very high tech but reliable and…comforting.

Companies don’t blog; people blog

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The headline above was my big take-away from an excellent white paper (from The Content Factor) titled: To Blog or Not to Blog? How Business Can Get Closer to Their Markets through Blogging. Their “Ten Rules for Starting Your Corporate Blogging Off Right” are on the money (for my money). Nuggets:

* You can’t blog by committee.

* Conversations are already taking place among the millions of blogs that you can tap into. These conversations—about you, your industry, your company, your competitors, and your market—will occur whether you participate in them or not.

* The unique word-of-mouth marketing secret of the blogosphere: the human urge to tell people about things that interestus, adding our own impressions as we do. This is the DNA of conversation.

* Blogging has potentially the lowest barrier to entry of any communications medium to date aside from word of mouth, and offers the farthest reach for the least cost when done right For this reason alone, there is no question that your organization should be participating in the world of blogs. This is no time not to be part of the conversation.

If you own a company…work for a company…do business with a company… I encourage you to download and read this white paper (PDF).

Is the advertising pie big enough?

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I’ve wondered about this but not as thoughtfully as Ben Compaine, who posts on the Rebuilding Media blog:

Can the media survive on advertising? Lots of folks are counting on it. Broadcasters have always had this single revenue stream. Daily newspapers get about 80% of revenue from advertising and the hot print properties, such as the give-away Metro dailies, depend about 100% on advertising. Now much of the Web is counting on advertising: Google, Yahoo! and increasingly AOL to name just a few of the biggies.

Either the pie gets bigger or somebody gets a smaller slice.

Why no computers in the grocery store?

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Maybe I’m just not shopping at the right stores, but wouldn’t it make a lot of sense to have a couple of computers scattered around where you could search for items? You get a little “You are here” icon and a dotted line to the location of the item. They could offer suggestions. Looking for pasta? How about some garlic bread? You know they could sell enough ads on the thing to pay for the installation and upkeep. Why make us roam the aisles, looking for someone to help us? Hardware stores, video stores, every store. I can’t imagine why this isn’t being offered.

Equally hard to understand… have you noticed more businesses are having people stand beside the road, holding up signs? I saw a guy today in the middle of a busy 4-way intersection holding up a “50% off at K-Mart” sign. Is this really an effective advertising vehicle? And is this a coveted job or punishment for screwing up?

“I’m not gonna fire you, Mays, but I want you to take sign and go stand on the corner in the sweltering heat for the next couple of days.”

I have to confess I broke my #1 Rule (Never leave home without your camera) so I don’t have photos of this phenomenon. I’ll update in a day or two. If you’ve ever done this job…or sent some poor schmuck out to do this job, please enlighten me.

Merrill Brown on future of news

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Editorial by Merrill Brown on, the founding editor in chief of MSNBC.com and is a former executive with RealNetworks:

The future course of news, the basic assumptions about how we consume news and information and make decisions in a democratic society, are being altered, perhaps irrevocably, by technologically savvy young people no longer wedded to traditional news outlets or even accessing news in traditional ways.

There’s an inescapable conclusion to be drawn from research I completed earlier this year for the Carnegie Corp. of New York about the news habits of 18- to 34-year-olds. In short, the future of the U.S. news industry is seriously threatened by the seemingly irrevocable move by young people away from traditional sources of news.

The thing that always chills my bones in pieces like this is the total absence of any mention of radio. Where are we?