Photo: Cara Carriveau & Dobie Maxwell

Chicago radio personality Cara Carriveau debuts her podcast Cara's Basement with Dobie Maxwell is Damn Funny. Bravo Cara! Listen in here.

Dobie Maxwell is the popular Chicago standup who once did mornings on Chicago and Milwaukee radio. Dobie is blogging. Check out Dobie's Daily Road Diary here. Everything you wanted to know about Dobie may be found on his site here. (Closed circuit to CBS Radio: hire this guy, a talent blessed with both standup and radio skills, he's perfect for FreeFM. Note to The Conclave: Dobie would be a great addition to your "ears only" faculty, he loves to teach)

"We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect." Thoreau

"Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse on all inaction." Goethe

"Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself." Faulkner

The first days of Nielsen data adding college student dorm viewing to the mix is interesting. The first indications show some big jumps including NBC's Office jumping from #20 to #8 18-24. Thanks to Steve Sternberg of Magna Global we have a first analysis - the average first two weeks of data with student viewing compared to last fall's season average data without student viewing. Adults 18-24 including college dorm students - Top Five: Grey's Anatomy 10.3/28, Idol - Tue 10.2/31, Idol - Wed 10.0/28, House 8.7/26, Lost 5.7/16 (Jan 29 - Feb 11, Nielsen). Some big jumps among 18-24s when comparing the new "with students" 18-24 numbers with the previous "without students" numbers. Grey's Anatomy up 67%, House up 89%, Ugly Betty up 87%. Kevin Downey has the details in Media Life Magazine, his article Revealed: Top shows for college kids here. So much for the myth that college students are not watching broadcast tv.

Ron Fell's Queen Mary 2 Adventure: The latest from Ron, his Day Twelve report, here. Heard Ron on KGO with John Hamilton this morning. Ron was literally phoning it in from the Pacific where it was 4:30am. Cheers to Ron and John, good segment. Kudos to Jack Swanson's web team. The KGO stream was up and sounding great with one click. My only suggestion is the breaks be filled consistently. When I first connected there was no audio, not a player problem, the break was not filled. Significant upside opportunity here. The less patient might discontinue their session failing to understand the break was simply not filled - they need to hear something that tells them everything is ok.

Gratuitous use of sound: Stayed with the KGO stream after Ron signed off and caught the ABC net toh news (8am pac). Michael Barr did his usual fine job of anchoring but the cast was cluttered with unwarranted sound, pure noise. The cast was a mess. Sound should be used to assist the story telling, to bring something to the cast that words alone can not. This trend of using sound just to use sound does not add to the cast it subtracts. Too clever by half. Under-produce the cast, tell me a story.