"If you speak the truth, have a foot in the stirrup." Turkish proverb

"A smile is the chosen vehicle for all ambiguities." Herman Melville

"Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions." Ralph Waldo Emerson

Today's image: cloudy by twentyeight. Beautiful. Thanks for sharing.

Ongoing discussions about the leadership problem in media leads me to add one more quotation. Something more to think about, the bottleneck is at the top...

"Where are you likely to find people with the least diversity of experience, the largest investment in the past, and the greatest reverence for industry dogma: At the top."

Gary Hamel

Podcasting: Fad or trend? Kurt Hanson offers the pov of three bloggers and his take here.

Congrats & cheers: Radio programming ace Patty Martin & her team at The Drive in Chicago. Early pre-currency indications are, again, history making and please let me add, well deserved. A highly respected local tells me "...a consistently well-positioned, well-programmed and well-marketed station since day one." There you have it dear friends, the secrets to great success.

Internet radio rock star Kurt Hanson and crew at AccuRadio are launching 30 new channels in 30 days. Check it out here.

Making the hits: Web 2.0 impresario and video entertainment ace Rob Barnett is making things happen. Kudos to the My Damn Channel gang, they continue to amaze. In August the site delivered 2.8 million views. But wait, there's more...now they're adding Yahoo! as another distribution partner.

"None are more liable to mistakes than those who act only on second thoughts." Luc de Vauvenargues

"Problems always appear big when incompetent men are working on them." William Feather

"Patience is bitter, but its fruits are sweet." Jean Jacques Rousseau

Today's image: Dreamy World by dhahi alsaeedi. Beautiful. Thank you for sharing.

The Slow Growth of HD Radio. The assiduous Tom Webster of Edison Media Research reviews the bidding and makes a suggestion...

"HD has to start with great, new digital brands first, with distribution over HD receivers AND online, and at least some of these have to be big, high profile national shows. Radio's goal should be compelling digital brands for the future, and in that context HD radio is just one means of distribution...The solution is not a programming issue but an HR strategy issue."

Bravos to Tom. He's right, it's not either/or, rather it's an issue of AND. Read Tom's entire post here. Thanks, Tom. Let's keep the conversation moving forward.

Let me suggest we run with Tom's concept of "big, high profile national shows" AND continue local innovation (e.g., The gifted programmer Mark Pennington and his award winning offering - RIFF2)

The national creative is getting better. My thought is it still lacks the power of localization. It needs the local tag, that specific and very local "door buster" to drive retail. It's what Rob Walker calls "the Desire Code...(his) name for the complex factors, rational and otherwise, that spark us to make particular purchase decisions." [via]. It's what Douglas Atkin refers to saying "The time has arrived for brands to take their place among others as new iterations of community in contemporary society." [via]. The first tribe of wireless has the ability to create communities from scratch practically overnight. Nothing subtle about this, what's needed now is full on, in your face, retail selling, take the gloves off stuff engaging the Reptilian brain. Let's agree to stop playing around and commit every industry resource to a full blown initiative of Manhattan Project or Moon shot scale. Let's agree to put every advantage available into play and create our own future. It's analog, it's digital, it's online, it's wireless in every configuration. Every platform matters.

Doc Searls: The new business of free radio. Doc understands the big picture as few do. Have to disagree with his notion of towers being less useful in the future. As it pertains to analog, agreed but HD Radio offers the potential of a unique depth and richness of practical apps. Wireless wins.

Stay tuned: I'm willing to wager that branding wizard Kelly O'Keefe and team have something special up their Radio 2020 sleeve.

Now, on the N=1 Tech desk: The uber-cool tech maven Dave Winer. Thanks to a wee bit of script this blog now features a preview of Dave Winer's TechJunk, Hot Product News for Tech Innovators. Check it out, left column. Use the link and put it in your reader. Thanks, Dave!

Summary judgment: Song of the Summer of 08 - I Kissed a Girl, Katy Perry [YouTube]. After conferring with radio programming aces Brian Kelly and Mark Edwards, advantaged, as well, by the considered opinion of pop music aficionado Austin Johnson, it seems fair to pronounce Katy the winner.

NPR API, the back story: Steve Gillmor delivers the goods with NPR's Dennis Haarsager, Zach Brand and Daniel Jacobson via The Gillmor Gang here. Kudos to Steve for a good show. Bravos to Dennis for his refreshing and exceptional leadership. Highly recommended (the show and Dennis' leadership)

Run that by me one more time: WGCI is a top ten no show in the 12 to death pre-currency Chicago PPM data. Here's the 12+ ranker. 1. WGN 2. WDRV 3. WBBM-AM 4. WTMX 5. WUSN 6. WLS-FM 7. WVAZ 8. WLS-AM 9. WLIT 10t. WLEY, WOJO. 25-54 pers, WDRV #1, WTMX #2. The headline news for me was reach. 12+ cume - WDRV #1. WLIT #2. WTMX #3.

Congrats & cheers: Early happy birthday wishes to the one year old My Damn Channel (7/31). Web 2.0 ace Rob Barnett and his gang of co-conspirators are writing their own sheet music. It sounds, and looks, mighty cool. Facebook signs search and advertising deal with Microsoft (MySpace has a somewhat similar deal with Google).

Closed circuit to Google: I'm lovin my iGoogle but what's up with the slow loading of GMail? Seems to be getting even slower, more often than not requiring a reload prompt..."This is taking longer than usual. Try reloading the page." Is it a bug that is part of the iGoogle "experiment"? Have anything to do w/Firefox 3?

It's a social thing: Best line of last week, Jason Calacanis..."FriendFeed drinks Twitter's milkshake." My thought is last summer Twitter was white hot, this summer it's FriendFeed that's clearly on. Twitter fail?

"The most widespread beliefs draw their power from the fact that they cannot be verified." Alessandro Morandotti

"The world, like an accomplished hostess, pays most attention to those whom it will soonest forget." John Churton Collins

"Sometimes we praise the way things used to be in order to blame the present, and we esteem what is no longer in order to scorn what is." Madame De Sable

Today's image: Come on Pino, We're going Home by Mattijn. Wonderful. Thanks for sharing.

Your future is free (some restrictions apply): Should you be a radio group exec or cluster manager working for one of the top thirty broadcasting firms Kurt Hanson will comp your entry into next Monday's big event the RAIN Las Vegas Summit: The Future of Radio. Use the magic words - please and thank you - more info here. See you there!

Howard never got the memo: The one that told us the dead tree guys were, uh, dead. So when Starbucks decided to spend some cash to get out the word on its new coffee they went dead tree. E&P writer Mark Fitzgerald has the story Starbucks Embraces Newspapers In Launching New Coffee here.

Bonus: Videogum

Midtown buzz: Let the Katie Couric countdown clock begin. She just ain't feelin the love @ 6:30. The popular wager seems to be sometime after the election. Same outfit but totally unrelated: Why did Les have to go negative and say 18-34 was a "BS demographic"?

Congrats & cheers: Rob Barnett, the energizer bunny studio head of web video, shoots and scores again. Webby noms including Wainy Days and You Suck at Photoshop (Comedy: Long form or series), You Suck at Photoshop (How-to and DIY), Harry Shearer - Waterboardin USA (Music). Read more here. Sue Naegle hires on at HBO as entertainment prexy. Hugh MacLeod, the man who put the FU back in fun (and official cartoon artiste of N=1) on his very cool book deal. Broadcast rock star Big John Wetherbee joins WTOC-TV full-time, solid gain for TV, a real loss for radio. PRX (Public Radio Exchange) on getting a well deserved MacArthur Foundation grant.

Bonus: someecards Love their tag line "ecards for when you care enough to hit send."

Video: Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch on Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams (76:26). Highly recommended. This is the video link we shared last New Years and the first link to get rave reviews from every single person, 100%. Well worth your bandwidth. Chock-full of take away including..."Fundamentals & Hard Work!"..."Wait long enough and people will surprise and impress you" - Jon Snoddy..."Brick walls are there for a reason: they let us prove how bad we want things, they let us show our dedication"..."Enabling the childhood dreams of others"..."You obviously don't know where the bar should be and you are only going to do them a disservice by putting it anywhere"..."Find someone better than you"..."Millions of kids having fun while learning something hard"..."You're such a good salesman, that any company who gets you is going to use you as a salesman, and you might as well be selling something worthwhile like education"..."All-time best head fake award - 'Yeah, but why is that fun?'"...FUN..."Decide if you're Tigger or Eeyore"..."Never lose the child-like wonder"..."Help others"..."Loyalty is a two-way street"..."Never give up"..."You can't get there alone and I believe in Karma"..."Tell the truth"..."Be earnest"..."Apologize when you screw up"..."Focus on others, not yourself"..."Don't bail; the best gold is at the bottom of barrels of crap"..."Get a feedback loop; and listen to it!"..."Show gratitude"..."Don't complain; just work harder"..."Be good at something: it makes you valuable"..."Work hard"..."Find the best in everybody"..."Be prepared"




The Heston mashup...

"Anyone who wishes to be cured of ignorance must first admit to it." Michel de Montaigne

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon him not understanding it." Upton Sinclair

"We are generally the better persuaded by the reasons we discover ourselves than by those given to us by others." Blaise Pascal

Today's image: mille miglia by purelook. Wonderful. Thanks for sharing.

Golden: March 13, 1967. Radio programming ace Mel Phillips remembers the debut of RKO's WRKO here. Bravos, Mel! Well done. Boston and WRKO both hold special memories for me. Paul Drew suggested that I pitch the WRKO PD job and recommended me to the GM. After a fifteen minute meeting with the GM it was obvious I was not the person he wanted to hire. Not getting that job was a major disappointment but everything worked out. Months later I was recruited to program WBZ.

Radical Idea For News Sites: Show What's New on Your Homepage

"Here’s the problem — if you visit the New York Times throughout the day, and no important news has broken, the homepage remains largely unchanged, static, like a print newspaper.

Organizing news by importance as the default makes sense when you’re only delivering the news once a day (and the “default” is all you get). But when news publishing is continuous, it’s not the best way to server frequent news consumers."

Read the entire post by Scott Karp here Thanks to Dave Winer for the tip (Dave offers an excellent post w/comments, How Internet news should work).

More music: "The level of ineptitude I've seen at the major labels is stunning. The people in charge of a lot of the digital technologies and the aspects that are decimating their business that I've seen are people that seem to not even be on the Internet." Reznor: Radiohead offering was insincere, industry is inept via ars technica

Congrats & cheers: The David Wain video series Wainy Days nominated for YouTube Video of The Year (series category). Propers due to My Damn Channel impresario Rob Barnett. Rob and team are doing work that matters and they're just getting started. Check out the noms and vote here.

Grapes: Alamos. Bonarda 2006. Another good bottle from Argentina. It happens that Bonarda is an Italian varietal brought to Argentina in the 19th century and now well known in that country. Who knew? My first encounter with this grape, not my last. A wonderful red for $10.

"Restless is discontent and discontent is the first necessity of progress." Thomas Edison

"The best and most solid work was done in the wilderness of minority." Gandhi

"Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care." Theodore Roosevelt

Today's image: untitled by Lo Zingaro. Beautiful. Thank you very much.



Dead tree & broadcast reduced: Kimberly-Clark expects to spend on 46% of its budget on TV this year, down from 60% in 2004. Related AdAge story. Image: Adage.

Dean Singleton speaking at this weeks NAA Marketing Conference..."Giving ourselves a bad image is a problem. It's part of our DNA, and readers don't care what is going on in the newsroom. We over-report it. If we need to downsize newsrooms, we maybe should start with the media reporters."

Video: My Damn Channel's You Suck at Photoshop #7. Congrats to Rob Barnett and crew! One of this week's top favs on YouTube.

Getting it right: Tom Asacker teaches us how to "prejudge any ad or other piece of marcom" in four steps...

"1. See the flower.

The first thing an ad must do is grab the attention of the audience. Therefore it must be different; different enough that the audience pauses and says, "Huh? What's that?" This is difficult to do with a TV ad. We tend to multi task with the television humming in the background."

Read Tom's entire post here. Kudos, Tom! Breaking through, capturing attention, getting them to pay attention really is job one, the first critically important hurdle in messaging.

The early line: Reed Business Information pubs could fetch $2B (via Folio).

Pls make note of it: Scoble's soon to be new home. Hey Robert, set up your feed, please.

Beating the deceased: Page Views Are Dead

Bonus: Frrvrr. I heart those Onion guys.

Congrats & cheers: Fred Jacobs and his Jacobs Media gang, celebrating another jacoBLOG birthday, it's a blog that matters; thanks, Fred. Christina Glorioso named VP Sales & Marketing Partnerships, MTVN (Program Enterprises Group) - smart. Chris Anderson and crew on the eve of another TED - preview (blog). Tim Russert for the last question last night, getting Hillary to talk about the vote, well played, TR.

"A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it." Albert Einstein

"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." Eleanor Roosevelt

"Opportunities multiply as they are seized." Sun Tzu

Image: Room 7 by Lost America. Amazing. Thanks for sharing.

Interesting discussion of online advertising at last week's OnMedia NYC. Tolman Geffs, managing director at The Jordan Edmiston Group led the conversation. When will online advertising dollars catch up with online viewership? Session video here.

Tolman shared some stats - Ad spend per household (domestic US)...

Newspapers $446
Broadcast TV $383
Cable TV $187
Radio $164
Internet $152

While engagement remains one of most-used buzzwords in the ad game there is not yet agreement on what it means, no generally accepted definition, there are no standards of engagement at this point. It seems to me a more critical measure is attention of which engagement is a moving part, as is participation.

An excellent point was made during Tolman's session. The early internet measurement tools were created by engineers. Hits were the most common measure in the last century (essentially server calls for files). We've moved on to page views and unique visitors but we still have not reached a universal agreement on how those measures are defined.

Accountability is at the heart of this issue. It's what agency folks need to have confidence in the buy.

Congrats & cheers: Rob Barnett and his My Damn Channel team are off to a great '08 posting over one million unique visitors in January. New look/feel and all new features set to debut this Thursday, then next week three new shows join the fold. Check out the latest MDC viral smash You Suck at Photoshop #1

Spanish red: Abadia Retuerta Rivola 2003. A blend of Tempranillo and Cabernet Sauvignon. A really good value at $15 or less.

"Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock in a thunderstorm." Robert Lewis Stevenson

"Nothing will tell you more about yourself than the way you act toward fools." Mark Twain

"A really good creative person is more interested in earnestness than in glibness and takes more satisfaction out of converting people than in 'wowing' them." Leo Burnett

Today's image: Sunrise at Illuru by Ron Fell. Beautiful! Thanks for sharing.

Congrats & cheers: Michael Hirschorn & Stella Stolper on the launch of their new production firm Ish Entertainment. Rob Barnett and his My Damn Channel gang on their Katie "get" - one million uniques. Must see video.

"The works must be conceived with fire in the soul but executed with clinical coolness." Joan Miro

"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities. In the expert's mind there are few." Shunryu Susuki

"Talent without genius isn't much, but genius without talent is nothing whatever." Paul Valery

Today's image: Emotion No. 76 by michelleBlack. Beautiful. Thanks for sharing!

ZenithOptimedia released their global ad spend projections. Here are selected shares:

Media 2007 - 2008

TV 37.9 - 38.2
Newspapers 27.8 - 26.9
Magazines 12.5 - 12.2
Internet 7.5 - 8.7
Radio 8.1 - 7.9
Outdoor 5.7 - 5.8


SES Chicago Buzz: Where's Yahoo!?

Hearing the first estimates of spend for the 08 election cycle at about $4.5 billion. $3 billion in traditional media. $1.5 billion in direct mail, PR and other. This may be the first election cycle where direct mail reaches $1 billion in spend.

Nobel: Al Gore Acceptance Speech

Bonus: What's your Gmail story? Smart, very smart.

T E S T I N G

"A company with a strong message may get its story into the heads
of only a few people, and become rich. Conversely, a company with
a bad message may get its story into all the heads, and become bankrupt."
Rosser Reeves

Does your story work?
Does it pull people over to your product?

You have no doubt heard the radio commercials for HD Radio. Are those messages working? Before we can answer that question we need data. My thought is the best data set would be receiver sales. In the last 20 or so months member stations of the HD Radio Alliance have run about $450 million in radio ads. Given the assumption that 500,000 receivers have been sold over that same period would translate into $900 per set sold. Is that too expensive or the stuff of marketing genius? No real way of telling at this point. I'm making up these sales numbers because the actual receiver sales data is not at hand.

My point here is once we have benchmark sales data we can begin to evaluate the effectiveness of the messaging. As it stands now receiver sales data have not yet been published (to my knowledge). This, in my opinion, is a major error in judgment. While the HD Radio Alliance has, arguably, done a good job of raising awareness, it's time to change up the game and get into driving demand, a new and improved focus on sell through at local retail. In 2008 the HD Radio Alliance should go to work with the goal of producing a meaningful sales result. My suggestion being receiver sales represent the only result of any significance. Until a radio receiver is sold the messaging is simply not working, there is no ROI.

With all respect, it's time for Peter Ferrara and his team to do the right thing. Collect and release the receiver sales data on a timely basis. Begin testing the pull of different creative approaches. Let's find out what's working and what's not working. Let's sell receivers. We need to be asking "How many receivers did we sell last week?" and we need to know the answer in no uncertain terms. We have an urgent need for transparency here. We know $450 million has been invested now we need to know what was sold. Going forward we need measures of effectiveness, performance metrics, a good start would be full and objective accounting on set sales. In 2008 let's agree the fair and proper definition of ROI = radios sold. (FD: iBiquity Digital was previously a client of my employer and I worked on the account)

Making a list, checking it thrice: Making the year end list of media folk (and other rock stars) that actually get it. My list of the eight to watch in '08. Let's start with Rob Barnett. Forget everything the guy has done before his current venture. He's just getting started. Barnett tops my list of ones to watch in 2008. You heard it here last. From his blog...

"I remembered the energy we conjured up to start My Damn Channel and the secret sauce that went into the brew. The key ingredients we left out were doubt and fear. We left those two in the kitchen cabinet - just in case anyone from old media needed to stop by and borrow some spice. We cooked with extra servings of badass and positive thinking - we threw in enough angst to keep us from ever going through the motions - because we know that breaking out of our low-rent kitchen and into profits was a mission worth fighting for."

Bravos, Rob! Keep the audacity dialed up to eleven. Check out Rob's blog here and do yourself a favor, add it to your reader.

Word: w00t named word of the year

Congrats & cheers: Sam Tanenhaus who does a great job as editor of the New York Times Book Review now takes charge of the Sunday section Week in Review. MediaVest and Starcom tie, both named Agency of the Year by Media Magazine. MEC Interaction picks up the OMMA Agency of the Year Gold. Microsoft signs CNBC.com, adCenter platform is in - DoubleClick is out. Neal Sabin, EVP Weigel Broadcasting and one of the smartest guys in television gets well deserved NATA&S Silver Circle honors. Radio programming ace Harve Alan on setting up shop, Harve Alan Media will produce solutions from scratch including interactive strategies. Jason Witt named SVP/GM of Digital Fusion, the new MTV Networks digital portfolio.

As close to stealing as you would ever want to get: Rubens 2005. One of those 100% Tempranillo bottles. A nice Spanish red priced at under ten bucks. Another Eric Solomon project. Get yours, while you can. Cheers!

"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." Daniel Boorstin

"Things turn out best for people who make the best of the way things turn out." John Wooden

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." Leonardo da Vinci

Today's image: Untitled by Ron Fell. Outstanding shot. Thanks for sharing!

Erick Schonfeld is sharing some interesting comScore MM data on social networks. Click on data table for larger view.



Read Erick's take via TechCrunch here.

Congrats & cheers: Rob Barnett and his My Damn Channel crew on their 12/4 debate - Gov Huckabee v Sen Edwards, moderated by Tim Russert and simulcast via MDC and YouTube. Details here. Dan Kelley joins the staff of Michigan Association of Broadcasters.

"From the flow of enthusiasm I let the melody escape. I pursue it. Breathless I catch up with it. It flies again, it disappears, it plunges into a chaos of diverse emotions. I catch it again, I seize it, I embrace it with delight...I multiply it by modulations, and at last I triumph in the first theme. There is the whole symphony." Beethoven

"When you cannot make pure goods and full weight, go to something else that is honest, even if it is breaking stone." James Gamble

"In modern business it is not the crook who is to be feared most, it is the honest man who doesn't know what he is doing." Owen Young

Today's image: Autumn In Technicolor by Celine. Awesome. Thank you!

Congrats & cheers: Rob Barnett chief exec and impresario at My Damn Channel on his outfits new blog, The Night Feed and on the debut of Harry Shearer's latest effort Waterboardin' USA - check it out here.

"The shortest distance between two comedians is a straight line." Ron Fell

"Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws." Douglas Adams

"Strive for brevity and clarity in oral and written reports." William Swanson

Swanson's Unwritten Rules of Management: unwritten rule number fourteen...

"It takes longer to write cleanly and crisply. It shows respect for the time of others when you do.

Learn to type with your thumbs on a Blackberry-like device. That will really discipline you to use shorter sentences and shorter words.

As you grow in position and assume roles of increasing responsibility and complexity, you truly appreciate those who communicate with brevity and clarity. Their emails, notes and reports will get read! Conversely, and sadly, good ideas in hard-to-open packages wrapped with complicated bows may be overlooked."

Going mobile: Empowering People through Mobile Technologies in Developing Regions, A presentation by Nokia's Joe McCarthy via slideshare here.

Radar Quiz: Fox Business Anchor or Porn Star? Take the quiz here. Kudos to Neel Shah. I scored 7 correct out of 10.

Steve Dahl delivered the mail. Changes at CBS Radio in Chicago. Steve to mornings on WJMK (JackFM), Monday, November 5.

Congrats & cheers: Rob Barnett and his My Damn Channel crew on their two nominations in the TV Guide Online Video Awards competition. Jacki Kelley joins Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia as sales chief and Yahoo! loses another player. Newser principals Patrick Spain and Michael Wolff on their formal debut tomorrow.