"Whose cruel idea was it for the word 'lisp' to have an 's' in it." George Carlin

"The 'silly question' is the first intimation of some totally new development." Alfred North Whitehead

"Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute." Josh Billings

Today's image: Keukenhof by prophead. Awesome. Thanks for sharing.

Change involves deciding. You can decide to embrace change making the best of it, to fight change working to preserve some version of the status quo or to ignore change. No matter how you decide, change - to some degree - will happen. So, how does one decide? My suggestion is you need to make an informed decision. You need to do your homework.

Here's an example. In the last century Arbitron proposed a series of major changes to advance radio ratings. One of the most controversial was the introduction of monthly data, Arbitrends. Industry opinion was mixed. Some saw "trends" as mere escalation in an ongoing ratings war, an answer to the already established Birch Monthly. Some predicted "trends" would fall into the hands of buyers and disrupt market pricing. Many were concerned with the statistical validity of the data. All objected to paying more to get the new data. "Didn't we already pay for that data? Now, we have to pay for it again?" being typical of the comments.

We did our homework and became the first major market group to sign an Arbitrends contract. Hearing of this signing the majority of our peers said we had made an evil pact, a Faustian bargain. Emotions ran high. We had done something that would only encourage Arbitron. Surely, "trends" would cause irrefutable harm in unimaginable ways. We had sold out, taken the wrong side.

In those early days of Arbitrends the product was not without problems. We made it through the changes by working with Arbitron. Things were made better.

Which brings me to PPM. Radio needs electronic measurement. It's time. We can and should work with Arbitron and any other firms that care to take on that challenge. We need to keep in mind that three years from now media measurement will be as different from today as today is from twenty years ago. Let's be a part of that process. One more quote...

"If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less" General Eric Shenseki

Congrats & cheers: Bruce Ravid on yesterday's very cool radio Raveathon on Madison student radio station WSUM. During the broadcast Bruce featured a rich mix of music, conversation and a special announcement. Chancellor John Wiley announced a donation will be made made to assist WSUM in moving to new studios this summer.