Tag Archives: Jeff Jarvis

6% of U.S. adults are listening to podcasts

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Jeff Jarvis pulled a couple of stats from the latest Nielson report on podcasting. 6 percent of U.S.adulst (9 million people) have downloaded podcasts inthe last 30 day. The most successful podcasts are getting two million downloads a month. It has occurred to me that the same people (in my world) that pooh-pooh such reports, are the same people that insisted “this Internet thing” was nothing more than hyped-up fad that would soon fade. If you want to understand why people are creating and listening to podcasts, read The Long Tail.

We are turning from a mass market back into a niche nation, defined now not by our geography but by our interests. (Pg. 40)

A co-worker recently observed that most of the podcasts he has listened to were boring. That’s like saying most of the books in the library are boring. I think that will change for him as he finds more and more podcasts dealing with things that interest and entertain him. It’s no longer necessary to watch/listen/read boring stuff. For the first time in recorded history, it’s possible to find all thing things (and only the things) that interest you. I’m sure glad I didn’t miss this.

“Everybody is a network”

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“Networks are about sharing now; they used to be about control. Networks are two-way; they used to be one-way. Networks are about aggregation more than distribution; they are about finding and being found. Networks are now open while, by their very definition, they used to be closed. You join networks and leave them them at will; you can join any number of networks at once and content can be found via any number of networks, there is no practical limit. Networks used to be static. Now networks are fluid.” — Jeff Jarvis

You need to read the full post to appreciate the point Jarvis is making. I’ve been thinking about how it applies to the various networks our company owns. And what does it mean to “own” a network? We have contracts with the radio stations that make up our networks. We own the satellite uplink and the downlink receivers that distribute our programming to those radio stations.

Our company has purchased other, smaller networks. And it was the affiliation contracts and the contracts with advertisers that we perceived to have the greatest value. Has that changed? Is it changing? Stay tuned.

On being normal

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“…learned that the people in front of me are going at their own speed, probably for a reason. They’re not trying to get in my way as I rush past. I need to stay out of theirs. And I need to be grateful that I can rush past again. I need to appreciate normal.”

— Jeff Jarvis

“…so freaking happy I can’t even describe it. And when I speak to a packed ballroom, like today, I feel reborn. It is pure joy, and I feel like the luckiest guy in the world. Every day feels like a gift now. And that, my friends, is the rarest neurological disorder of them all.”

— Scott Adams

Value of New Media vs. Old Media

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Jeff Jarvis on the the Rockeboom ad auction:

And here we have in a microcosm the explanation of why media is so horribly out of sync today: The public is valuing new media much more than the old, but the advertisers still value the old. Most every newspaper and in many cases TV networks and magazines have much larger audiences online, but the revenue for their old media properties remains much higher because the advertisers and agencies still value the old and the safe. They want metrics. They want control. They want guarantees. This, in turn, makes big publishers and producers play it safe because they don’t want to mess with the cash cow. And that means that advertisers miss the opportunity to reach a larger, younger, smarter audience in the new medium, which is — supposedly — what they’re dying to do. And that means that big media companies now face competition from a thousand Rocketbooms and a million Gawkers.

And if you are in the media/advertising business and you’ve never heard of Rocketboom or Gawker… you’re probably already screwed. Tick, tock…tick, tock.

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!”