“As an advertising medium, the Internet is already larger than radio. It will approach $34 billion this year and is on a trajectory to overtake newspaper advertising within five years. In virtually all markets, the largest local Web site (typically run by a newspaper company) is now grossing more ad revenue than the largest radio station in that market. In some markets, the largest site is grossing more than the largest cluster of stations.”
“Your radio reps have a bounty on their heads. We survey more than 3,000 local Web sites every year about their revenues, expenses, number of salespeople and other revenue-related topics. The ones with the greatest market share and revenue have an interesting characteristic in common: a star-performing “former radio rep” on the sales staff. The word has spread that radio salespeople know how to sell the Internet, and newspaper and TV Web site managers have been recruiting them left and right. Radio reps know how to cold-call, how to generate new business, and how to sell reach and frequency. That’s a perfect match for Internet sales.” — Gordon Borrell, writing in Inside Radio
Tag Archives: Early Net Culture
90 Day Jane (The Movie?)
I really hope this is a promotional gimmick for a movie (I think of life in terms of good movies and bad movies). Here’s how I see this one unfolding.
“I am going to kill myself in 90 days. What else should i say? This blog is not a cry for help or even to get attention. It’s simply a public record of my last 90 days in existence. I’m not depressed and nothing extremely horrible has lead me to this decision. But, does it really have to? I mean, as an atheist I feel life has no greater purpose. My generation has had no great depression, no great war and our biggest obstacle is beating Halo 3. So, if I feel like saying “game over”, why can’t I?”
Jane starts a blog to chronicle her final 90 days. Along the way she meets someone (or something happens) to change her mind. At least that’s how my “Old Yeller can’t die!” movie ends. I sort of hear a voice-over reading her blog posts, a la You’ve Got Mail.
The thing that makes me suspicious is the video of Jane shopping for her “suicide dress.” We get a good look at Jane in her undies and she just looks too fine to kill herself. (Yes, I am naive and sexist)
Moral dilemma: Do I follow Jane’s blog? Will I feel like a chump if/when this is revealed as a marketing scam? Will I be depressed if she does “it?”
PS: One last thought on this. Jane says she is an atheist. In the unlikely event this is legit… is it ironic that religious nuts kill half a dozen strangers before killing themselves…while an atheist goes alone?
UPDATE: Not a movie tease. An art project. The site has been taken down. [Thanks to John for letting us know]
Brits tuning in to personalized Internet “radio”
Mark Ramsey shares some thoughts on a story in the Sunday Times of London about the growing number of Brits tuning in to personalized Internet “radio” every week (and tuning out traditional radio).
Sunday Times: “Personalised broadcasts of the future will probably have either advertising or a price tag attached, just as they do today. But once your radio knows exactly what you want to hear, the idea of a human DJ – however cheeky his banter – might start to sound a little dated.”
Ramsey: “Over the long haul I fully expect the influence of music-oriented radio to diminish. Because music, my friends, is a commodity. Not only can anyone string together a playlist, but nobody can string together my favorite playlist better than I can.”
“What it all adds up to is the gradual near-obsolescence of music radio, not in a blink, but by a slow and persistent siphoning of audience and attention and interest and advertisers. This process will take years to happen.”
I read a lot of stories like this but very few on the impact of Internet “stations” on non-music formats. Are news-talk formats feeling any effect from the web? My radio pals can feel free to post an anonymous comment.
Too late for web training
Mindy McAdams (Teaching Online Journalism) points to a very interesting post by Paul Conley. Mr. Conley has held senior positions at Knight-Ridder, CNN, Primedia/Prism and Bloomberg. He serves on the professional advisory boards of College Media Advisers, the national group that works with student journalists, and Northwest Missouri State University’s Mass Communications program. His clients include Primedia/Prism, Reed Business, About.com and IDG.
“I’m urging employers not to offer any training in Web journalism. There are two reasons for this. Here they are:
1. You cannot train someone to be part of a culture.
For someone to work on the Web, they must be part of the Web. That, after all, is what the Web means. The Web is a web. It exists as a series of connections. An online journalist isn’t a journalist who works online. He’s a journalist who lives online. He’s part of the Web.It’s a waste of time and money to teach multimedia skills and technology to someone who hasn’t already become part of the Web. And there’s no need to teach skills and technology to the journalists who are already part of Web culture, because the culture requires participation in skills and technology.
Or, to put it another way — I cannot teach the Web. No one can. Yet all of us who are part of the Web are learning the Web.2. When the fighting begins, the training must end.
We cannot move backward to round up the stragglers and train them to fight. It’s too late to try to convince print journalists that the Web has value. It’s too late to tell them that an Internet connection is worth a few dollars a month. As revenue shrinks, we can’t spend money on training. We can’t gather up the print folks and “prepare them as online journalists.”You can’t prepare people to dig a fighting (fox?) hole. You just tell them to dig. And the ones who don’t dig fast enough, deep enough or well enough, die.”
Wow. I confess that I agree with Conley but would never say it around my reporter friends. What good can come of telling them it’s too late. The train left the station and they can’t run fast enough to catch it.
Why “old” media struggle online
Lost Remote’s Cory Bergman on why most TV stations haven’t done well online:
“I’ll give you these four reasons: 1) lack of investment in people and technology 2) unwillingness to take necessary risks 3) TV-driven power structure which results in the inability for web management to quickly allocate resources as they see fit and 4) a bizarre addiction to brand consistency, which limits creative ideas up and down the organization.”
I think these apply to most “old media” companies. Brand extension is not always the way to go.