James Keown’s blog roll

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I arrived home this evening to find a message on our answering machine from a reporter for the Boston Herald. He said he was doing a story on James Keown who was arrested this morning (here in Jefferson City) for allegedly poisoning his wife with antifreeze in 2004. The reporter called me because smays.com was on James’ blog roll.

I met James eight or nine years ago when he was the assistant program director at KMBZ in Kansas City. I was still doing affiliate relations back then. James seemed like a bright, personable young man. I knew that he was back in Jefferson City but had had no contact with him in recent years. I was linked on his blog because he knew bloggers who knew me.

Once the story broke, it didn’t take reporters long to Google James and discover his blog. Others found it too and quickly began posting (anonymously) comments and some of were…harsh. The comments have been turned off but the blog is still up. The BostonHerald.com story included a link.

Most of today’s 600+ page views at smays.com have come from James’ blog. I suspect it will be a while before we see any new posts. If the charge against Mr. Keown is dismissed or he is tried and acquitted, will he blog his experiences?

Once again I am reminded of how connected we have become.

Ford squeezes office into truck

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Ford Motor unveiled a mobile office designed for the new F-Series truck that includes a touch-screen computer, printer, wireless broadband access and Global Positioning System. Ford, which introduced its mobile office at last week’s Specialty Equipment Market Association show in Las Vegas, is targeting general contractors but the first thing I thought of was farmers and ranchers. [C|net]

When we first started repurposing content from our farm network for the web, everyone said, “Farmers don’t have access to the Internet.” When we started streaming our audio reports, they pointed out, “Farmers are on very slow dial-ups and can’t access rich media.”

I’m no visionary. I just pull my head out of my ass a couple of times a day and take a look around. If your pick-up is your office, this is gonna make sense to a lot of farmers.

George Carlin: Why American education sucks

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George Carlin’s latest comedy special on HBO (Life Is Worth Losing) had some really strong moments and others where I thought he was reaching. The open was Carlin at his best. A pissed-off poet for the 21st century. The all-suicide cable channel didn’t work for me, but he was at his rage-fueled best explaining why our education system will never get any better (3 min video). Recorded live at the Beacon Theater in New York City, this is why you want to have HBO.

Quoted by Jeff Jarvis

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Back in March I posted –somewhat giddily– about being added to Halley Suitt’s blog roll (I’m still there). Ms. Suitt was kind enough to say she stopped by smays.com from time to time. I suspect she was being kind, but still a thrill.

While he’s far less sexy than Ms. Suitt, Jeff Jarvis orbits in that same blogosphere firmament. His BuzzMachine is #49 on Technorati’s Top 100 Blogs (if you go in for such rankings, and Mr. Jarvis is not the sort to do so).

Today, while reading his latest post, I came across a quote that sounded strangely familiar. Mr. Jarvis attributed the quote to “A media exec even older than I…”

Good news: Jeff Jarvis read something I wrote and thought it worth pointing to (or someone sent him a link). Bad news: I’m older than Jeff Jarvis.

As I emailed Jeff (He’s just a kid, I can call him Jeff), this is like being in the audience at a Bruce Springsteen concert and hearing the Boss shout out, “Steve Mays is somewhere in the house tonight!”

Jeff Jarvis: “Trapped by history”

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“When you think about it, satellite radio and iTunes are the best positioned in the new world for pay content … Print content is pretty much all free by now. Networks and cable and program producers and all bound up in their mutually destructive deals. But iTunes enables the sale of content and Sirius is producing content worth paying for and neither is trapped by their histories. — Jeff Jarvis

Our company has the multimedia rights for 19 of the biggest and bestest colleges in the country. Would those legions of fans pay $.99 for some video highlights from Saturday’s big game, if they could do it quickly and easily and have them download automatically to their video iPod? Ch-ching!

Living Healthy Podcast #2

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Just uploaded the second Living Healthy podcast and we record #3 (What over-the-counter pills will make you healthy?) this Thursday. My doc is doing this because he sees it as the perfect vehicle to help people (his patients and others). I’m doing it because it’s fun. And it’s so easy and inexpensive to do, we just did it. We don’ need no stinking sponsors! But if you did want to make this pay, it might work like this:

Let’s say a year from now, there are 1,000 people downloading the show every week. With patients, friends, colleagues… I don’t think that would be an impossible number. Would a local hospital or medical group be willing to pay $100 per show (nice mention at beginning and end and maybe a drop-in somewhere in the middle)? Maybe.

Now, can you think of, say, nine more show ideas out there? I can. (SFX: calculator) Hello! We’re at $50,000 annually. The only thing missing are the 30’s and 60’s.

Update: Looks like I might have been off by a factor of four. Maybe. Good article by Heather Green at BusinessWeek online:

KCRW, the public radio station in Santa Monica, cut a deal with Southern California Lexus Dealers for a sponsorship this summer, when the station was getting 20,000 downloads a week. Since then the number spiked to 100,000. When the Lexus deal ends, KCRW plans to charge $25 per thousand listeners.

Why the premium for some podcasts? They help advertisers reach specific groups, even as media fragments. That’s one reason Sequoia Capital’s Mark Kvamme thinks podcasting could siphon $1 billion to $2 billion away from the $30 billion radio advertising market in three to five years.

Hugh MacLeod business cards

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Bizcard

In this email/PDA/Blackberry/digital age, business cards seem kind of… quaint. Every few years I toss a couple of hundred when something changes.

Now, at long last, my (personal) business cards reflect who I am. I’m a regular reader of Hugh MacLeod’s blog and a fan of his art (cartoons drawn on the back of a business card). There’s a link on his blog where you can order your own.

thirtiesandsixties.com

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I own a few domains that I’m not using. Squatting, if you will. I keep renewing BasementDiaries.com in hopes that I’ll eventually get around to moving that site to it’s own space. I just registered thirtiesandsixties.com. An idea that occurred to me while swilling beer with Scott earlier this evening. We were talking about radio and advertising and the big-chested blond at the bar and I went off on a riff about how someday the notion of little 30 and 60 second chuncks of advertising would seem quaint. More to the point, how our business (radio networks) is dependent on the concept of “thirties and sixties.” We’ll sell you “x” 30’s (or 60’s) between 6a and 7pm for “x” dollars. We sell “units.”

A blog about advertising or radio or networks could do worse than thirtiesandsixties.com. We’ll have more on that, right after this from our sponsor.

Why broadcasters are not cashing in online

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Gordon Borrell on why broadcasters are not taking advantage of online advertising opportunities (from TVSpy):

“The big problem however, is the web is not a broadcast medium. In most cases we are not talking about a $1 million or even a $100,000 contract for advertising. We are only looking at several thousand dollars per contract. Broadcast sales people don’t have the time or interest to focus on those types of deals. The current compensation structure and incentives also don’t motivate broadcasters to focus on web advertising.”