RSS for network websites

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For sometime now, I’ve been embarrassed that our news network websites were not RSS enabled. Very lame. Big Andy worked a little magic so we could add this essential feature. If you’re interested in news about Missouri, Iowa or Wisconsin…you can now subscribe to our news and/or sports feeds. A necessary step to get some podcasts going, too.

I spent a good chunk of the past week trying to convince some of the Grownups at our company that a well executed blog might be a better way to communicate with employees than an eight-page memo that comes out three times a year (as an email attachment). Take some rusy pliars…get a good grip on one of my molars…twist slowly back and forth until the tooth comes free. But god bless ’em, they paid me for every minute I worked. Whoo wah!

Nice lunch with Chuck who is doing nothing less than redefining the agriculture marketing space. His company is two years old and is doing everything right (IMHO). Chuck’s a Viet Cong sapper running quietly through the jungle in a pair of rubber shower thongs…while big media and marketing companies are sipping mai tai’s in a Saigon bar.

Nielsen: 68% of active US Net users have broadband at home

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“Nielsen//NetRatings… announced today that the number of active broadband users from home increased 28% year-over-year, from 74.3 million in February 2005 to 95.5 million in February 2006. Broadband composition among the U.S. active online population has seen vigorous growth during the past three years, increasing at least ten percentage points annually and hitting an all-time high of 68% for active Internet users in February 2006.” [via RAIN]

Doing what radio does best

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Tornados hammered parts of the midwest Sunday night, including Springfield, Illinois. TV was off, cable down, power out, Internet out, newspaper 12 hours from publication…but radio station WMAY was on the air, doing what radio does best. GM Glen Gardner shares this sement from a caller that illustates how to keep radio relevant. [AUDIO: 2 min MP3]

Notice that the person on the air who took the call didn’t interrupt. Didn’t feel the need to jump in and start yapping. That is so rare. If radio has a future –and I hope it does– it won’t be endlessly playing the same 400 songs or turning the signal over to Rush for 3 hours. It will be in on-the-ground, local relevance like this. Thanks, Glen.

Slow growth for HD radio

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Radio research firm Bridge Ratings projects HD receivers will be in the hands of 1.06 million consumers by the end of 2007, 2.0 million by the end of 2008 and 8.84 million by the end of 2010. Meanwhile, Bridge predicts that XM Satellite Radio will grow to 9.0 million subscribers by the end of 2006 as rival Sirius grows to about 6 million subscribers over the same period. (R&R via RAIN)

Too young to retire

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Barb says Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ new series (The New Adventures of Old Christine) sucks. As did Watching Ellie (2002). Same for The Michael Richards Show (2000) and both of Jason Alexander’s short-lived series: Bob Patterson and Listen up.

My first reaction to these sad efforts was, “Give it up.” But I’ve change my mind. These three actors gave us some of the best moments in television comedy. Yes, the writing on Seinfeld was great but the actors were damned good, too. If they want to do another series –or half a dozen– they’ve earned the right. Even if they suck. And a few stinkers won’t tarnish my memories of their Seinfeld performances. Those are in the vault.

Faster, cheaper net access

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In June of 2002 I finally got DSL service. For two years prior to that I paid $100 a month for an ISDN line (128kbps). That’s just Internet, mind you… local and long distance extra. Pricy, but the alternative was dial-up. I’m currently paying $65 a month for 3 meg DSL access.

Today a nice young man at Sprint upgraded me to 5 meg DSL service for $40 per month. In a perfect world, someone from Sprint would have called or emailed something along the lines of, “Mr. Mays, as a long-time Sprint customer, we wanted to let you know you can get improved services for less money. Shall we sign you up?” But I’m not complaining. I’m thrilled I lived to see this day.

Shop Talk: Covering the state basketball tournament

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Three of our four state radio networks do sports reports as well as news. It’s state tournament time and each of the networks are providing coverage. Depending on the network, we do two or three brief (2-3 min) reports a day.

Doesn’t give much time to cover all the games of the tournament. Throughout the years, we tried various formats that would appeal to our affiliates but –as a general rule– each station only cared about the teams from their region of the state. This is a little less true in Iowa and Wisconsin. But the state tournament is just not a big deal (to radio stations) in Missouri.

You smell another Long Tail example, don’t you?

We knew there were “x” number of fans who cared very much about the games…but had no way to get our reports to them. And now we do. I’ve been following Missourinet Sports Director David Sprague’s reports from the state tournament. He filed a dozen reports over two days and you can see/hear a few of them here, here and here.

Basketball TournamentI assume he was in press row with his laptop and digital camera, posting reports to our website, with no limitation on the length or frequency of his reports. No satellites, no studios. Of course, the next thought that pops into my head is that any talented reporter (or fan) could have covered the state tournament just as easily as David did. It all comes down to the quality of the reporting, not to advantages of distribution. I realize I’m stating the obvious here, but after so many years of trying to meet the needs of our affiliates and their listeners, it’s…liberating…to be able to finally reach them directly.

If I were still programming the old KBOA, I like to think I would have a heavily-promoted website with a special “State Tournament” section on my sports page. And –as a Missourinet affiliate– I’d have David load it up with lots of reports on the teams of local/regional interest. I’d take everything he had time to produce.

If you spot any interesting online coverage of state tournaments…put a link in the comments below.

Thank You for Smoking: The Movie

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I mentioned how much I enjoyed watching Maria Bello pull on her unders in the film, Duets. I failed to mention that she will be appearing in an upcoming film based Christopher Buckley’s Thank You for Smoking, a very dark and funny novel. No idea if the movie will live up the the novel but you can listen to an interview with Buckley here. The film stars Aaron Eckhart with supporting roles by Bello, Rob Lowe, Katie Holmes and William H. Macy.