Photo:
Ron Fell

Thanks Ron











"A word too much always defeats its purpose." Arthur Schopenhauer

"It is remarkable to what lengths people will go to avoid thought." Thomas Edison

"Everyone has his superstitions. One of mine has always been when I started to go anywhere, or to do anything, never to turn back or to stop until the thing intended was accomplished." Ulysses S. Grant

The Public Radio Talent Quest is on! Bravo to PRX and CPB on an excellent idea. More info here. (Closed circuit to commercial wireless folks: Now is the perfect time to launch your quest for the best)

Congrats & cheers: David Liroff named CPB's SVP, System Development and Media Strategy. Fox & CBS - Fox took first 18-49 in the Feb sweeps, 5.2. CBS 5.0, ABC 3.9, NBC 2.9, Univision 1.7 and CW 1.4; The Super Bowl helped CBS to win the total viewer crown. Merv on signing the NBC O&Os for the fall debut of his new show Let's Play Crosswords. Jerry Lee on being #1 in Philly, again (PPM "Pre-Currency" data). ABC on World taking first in the sweeps.

Making new waves: The Content Factory, a new content development and syndi enterprise by Jimmy deCastro, John Coulter and Chris Crane signs Chicago media legend Bill Kurtis who will host a daily radio offering. Good luck! (Thanks to Robert Feder for the tip)

Wireless wunderkinds: Detroit radio's Riff2 is honored for their innovative weekly program Detroit Local 101. Detroit Weekly gives the show a "Real Best of Detroit 2007" honor. Congrats to the stars of the show Suzy Cole and Melody Licious. Kudos to Riff2's programming wizard Mark Pennington.

Say what: Fred Winston blogs, as only he can, on balls of concrete here, licking and sticking here, and shares a winter pic of Chicago's big church of the small ball Wrigley Field here.

How much, really: Forbes estimates the Chicago Cubs to be worth about $448 mil, the rumors were Mark Cuban was willing to pay the Trib $625 mil to buy the club (not true says Cuban).

Take a gander at Google: Google's latest 10-K filing here. Lots of good reading, a few cuts...

"Many people around the world have their first experience of the internet - and Google - on their mobile phones" "Our product development philosophy involves rapid and continuous innovation with frequent releases of early stage products that we seek to improve with every iteration." "10,674 employees, consisting of 3,695 in research and development, 4,366 in sales and marketing, 1,649 in general and administrative and 964 in operations." "We generated approximately 99% of our revenues in 2006 from our advertisers." "We believe that a critical contributor to our success has been our corporate culture, which we believe fosters innovation, creativity and teamwork." "International revenues accounted for approximately 43% of our total revenues in 2006 and more than half our user traffic came from outside the U.S. during this period." "We believe that our approach to hiring has significantly contributed to our success to date."

Cool: Spotplex launches, in beta; the platform allows you to find popular blog articles - check it out over here.

Very Cool: Michael Rosenblum is blogging...

"The entire world of media is about to change due to a new and very destructive technology. Those who adapt will survive, but they will evolve into something very different from what they are now. Those who fail to adapt will die."

Check out Rosenblum here. Bravo Michael! (Thanks to Steve for the tip)