Today I heard –for the first time– the phrase: “The Vagina Factor.” I’m sure there are more thoughtful explanations but this is the one that googled up for me:
“Its essentially saying that women really don’t follow nor care about
the issues as much as they’re just dying to vote VAGINA!!!!!!”
I mentioned this to Barb –who is very intelligent and very pro-choice (much loved by NARAL)– who replied: “I understand that.” So we now have “Yellow Dog Democrats” and “Vagina Republicans?”
I came across the following idea and have been trying to find the source: “A problem is solved not by confronting directly, but by going to a level where no problem exists.” I think it might be Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. This either seems like complete horse shit or perfect sense. Nothing in between.
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.
Good piece at washingtonpost.com on how folks are using Twitter to cover politics. A couple of nuggets from Slate’s John Dickerson:
“If I have a thought that occurs to me, I’ll fire it off,” Dickerson says. “Sometimes it ends up being the lead of a piece, or the notion a piece gets framed around.” At the same time, he says, “there’s an element of narcissism and class clownery. A wisecrack comes into your head and you want to share it.”
Huffington Post’s Rachel Sklar:
“posting my real-time thoughts, impressions and wisecracks without having to worry about fleshing them out for a proper blog post. Working within that 140-character limit — and still managing to get out your observation, your comment, your setup and punch line or what have you — is great training for a writer.”
After a slow start, I’ve come to rely on –and enjoy– Twitter almost as much as blogging. You can follow my Twitter feed at http://twitter.com/smaysdotcom. You’ll need to set up an account but it’s free and takes about 2 min.
Big time sports journalist Jay Mariotti has resigned from the Chicago Sun-Times:
“It’s been a tremendous experience, but I’m going to be honest with you, the profession is dying,” Mariotti said, “I don’t think either paper [Sun-Times or Chicago Tribune] is going to survive. To showcase your work … you need a stellar Web site and if a newspaper doesn’t have that, you can’t be stuck in the 20th century with your old newspaper.”
His bosses have a different take on things and you can read what they have to say at CBS2Chicago.com.
“Sprint Nextel subscribers will be able to listen to live radio broadcasts of National Football League games this season as part of new partnership between the wireless provider and sports league.
The live, cell-phone-accessible radio broadcasts—the centerpiece of the new NFL Mobile Live platform–will be available to all Sprint wireless subscribers who purchase a basic data plan as part of their services. In addition, as part of the agreement a select group of premium subscribers will be able to view live broadcasts of the NFL Network’s eight Thursday Night Football games on their phones starting on Nov. 6.” — MEDIA WEEK
Hmmm. Here’s one of several “take away’s” from this story by Mark Ramsey:
“For some reason, many broadcasters confuse the term “content” with “the stuff that’s on our air.” When I use the term “content” I mean the material that’s of serious interest to listeners. Stuff they will seek out. Not filler. Not commodities. McDonalds and NOBU may both offer “food,” but that’s where the similarity ends, and don’t think for a moment the patrons don’t know the difference.
In this case, the content is owned in its entirety by a third party – not a radio company. When it comes to professional sports play-by-play, radio is a distribution channel, not a content owner. Thus we will lose out to the owners of content in deals like this.”
Our company does broadcasts for a whole bunch of big (and small) colleges. We’ve been streaming (via Yahoo!) for years and on satellite radio for the last few years. It seems inevitable that these broadcasts will go directly to phones, sooner or later. Stay tuned? Dialed in?
Baseball’s playoff advertising push gets under way today, when the first spots of a $65 million campaign — the league’s largest ever — are broadcast. The spots will showcase blogging and feature Fox and TBS personalities like Jeff Foxworthy and Frank Caliendo. Separately they appear at a desk, tapping away on an Apple laptop, blogging about baseball and October memories.
In one of the spots, the scene is a desk placed at home plate, where Caliendo — an accomplished impersonator whose riffs on President Bush are hits on YouTube — sits, blogging in the voice of the president. “There’s Only One October.” (Mr. Caliendo, in his President Bush voice, closes by saying, “I’m pretty sure there’s only one.”) [Story at NYT.com]
I can’t find these on YouTube yet. If you spot them somewhere, please ping me.
Our company has three reporters in Denver (for three different networks) covering the state delegations for their respective networks. Where they were once strictly radio reporters, today they’re also posting stories to websites; blogging and Twittering.
I could be wrong, but I seem to recall one convention when we actually shipped a couple of cart machines so the reporter could produce his/her reports that where then phoned back to the network for broadcast to affiliate stations over the satellite network. We still distribute by satellite but a lot of our affiliates get a lot of our reports on the web.
I was reminded of these Dark Days by a photo O. Kay Henderson took of her equipment set-up (annotated) in her hotel room in Denver. Blackberry, wireless data cards, laptops, minidisks… it all fits in a couple of carry-on’s.
