"Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of." John Stuart Mill

"The greatest genius will never be worth much if he pretends to draw exclusively from his own resources. What is genius but the faculty of seizing and turning into account everything that strikes us?" Goethe

"All men's miseries come from their inability to sit quiet and alone." Blaise Pascal

Today's image: The Old Bog Road, Kilkenny Ireland by Edward Dullard. Beautiful. Thanks for sharing.

Pig on the runway - pay radio update: Mel uses a Jedi mind trick when talking with an Ad Age writer. My guess is he probably said something like "These aren't the ratings you're looking for." Andrew Hampp writes "...the biggest hurdle between his company and advertisers is trying to agree on the measurement system that most accurately meets their needs." The dirty little secret here is the ratings for pay radio are already available and they don't look good. In his writing Andrew makes a couple of errors. First, he reports radio billing as "...$6 billion terrestrial radio collectively banks annually" when the actual number is $21+ billion [Source: RAB 2007]. Second, he falls into the trap of thinking subscribers are listeners "One thing Mr. Karmazin can offer advertisers these days is a bigger audience, having more than doubled Sirius' subscriber base to 19.5 million" While it is true that the audience now on sale is certainly bigger we still are not able to get a sense of scale here without the actual numbers.

Let me get back to the subscriber sleight of hand. Perhaps the best way to understand this is to use cable tv as an example. You probably have VH1 on your cable system channel lineup, this means - strictly speaking - you are a VH1 subscriber. You do not count as a member of the VH1 audience until you actually watch the channel. During my days as a cable MSO it was common for networks to pitch us using their hh numbers. Not hh ratings but subs. The truly sly approach was "homes passed" a totally meaningless number. For the purposes of discussing advertising subs don't mean diddly it's the audience that matters.

Mel does manage to again make good copy. He wants to be the Walmart of audio, "...the low-rate provider." He also goes on to say his "...direct response has been phenomenal." Adding that "...one of my goals has been to dramatically cut back on our direct response." I imagine Mel went shoe shopping after the interview with Andrew. He had to, the shoes worn during the interview surely must have caught fire. Please join me in my personal mission to get Mel on the next round of Dancing with the Stars. Read the entire article Karmazin: Damned if He Does -- and if He Doesn't, here. Closed circuit to Andrew: Next time you're writing an article on audio advertising you'll improve your writing by talking to more than just one exceptionally gifted salesperson.

Tom Webster, new media maven at Edison Media Research will moderate a discussion - Music Royalties and the Future of Webcasting. Monday, Oct 6, 12 noon, Eastern. Get more info here. Very cool, kudos, Tom.

Bonus: Live Web rock star Marc Canter shares his slides. How to build the Open Mesh, here. Very cool, thanks Marc!

"I'm not finished, because I'm still curious." Barry Diller

"Nature is garrulous to the point of confusion; let the artist be truly taciturn." Paul Klee

"However much you knock at nature's door, she will never answer you in comprehensible words." Ivan Turgenev

Today's image: Claudia, lost in the Garage by Portrait and Fashion Photographer. Great shooting. Thank you for sharing.


Danger, Will Robinson: Thanks to Barron's scribe Alan Abelson we learn the updated report from those smart guys at hedge fund T2 Partners bears title language including "We are still in the early innings of the bursting of the housing and credit bubbles..."

Then there's the University of Michigan consumer confidence survey hitting a 28-year low, and that pesky $4-a-gallon gasoline. S&P 500 first-quarter earnings down 25.9% from the same quarter last year. [Up and Down Wall Street, 5/19]

The recent buzz about online rates is CPMs have headed south. My sense is online is still pacing up at 20 something percent. The danger for sellers is depending on the usual suspects to deliver their month. Sales leadership needs to be more focused on developing new business including new categories. While this environment is certainly challenging to sellers now is a great time for buyers to invest in advertising. Rates are attractive and you'll gain share of voice (especially valid should your competitors fail to spend). The most optimum time to advertise is when others are not. As baseball player Wee Willie Keeler famously said "...hit 'em where they ain't."

Buzz: Vegas odds say...Mr Softy buys Yahoo (at least Search now says Arrington) then Facebook (so say others). Stay tuned.

Pre-order: Outliers the new book by Malcolm Gladwell is now on offer at Amazon for $18.47 - info here. Related 800-CEO-READ

Say it ain't so: Firefox checks their own box. Do the custom install option and you can uncheck the box making Firefox your default browser. Shame on Mozilla. Opt-out, bad. Opt-in, good.

If I give you my business card, do I give you the right to publish it on the internet? The Comcast-Plaxo, CBS-CNET deals and the important data portability issue (think last week's Facebook smack down of Google) gets thrown around and the discussion is nothing less than informative, if not plainly and purely entertaining (thanks to Steve Gillmor, Sam Whitmore, Michael Arrington, Robert Scoble, Chris Saad, Marc Canter) in the latest Gillmor Gang podcast. Don't start tomorrow without it [Audio, MP3 Heads up, NSFW - language]. Bravos, guys. Good show! [Related: Marc Canter details his argument here]

Agenda item: The issues discussed in the Gillmor Gang podcast above are more important than one might first believe. We are at the beginning, the early days of a very real "data war." This amounts to nothing less than an arms race for some kind of control of user identity. Fair warning - get deep into this issue, now. What's in your ToS (and how well you play w/others) will play a role in the future of what's in your wallet.

Congrats & cheers: May sweeps winners, Fox leads 18-49, CBS leads in households and total viewers. The strike seems to have been the primary factor in 18-49 viewing being down almost 20% vs last year. The young guns of wireless being honored by Edison Media Research [names named here] Ken Fisher and team Ars Technica acquired by Conde Nast.[Ken's announcement]

Bonus x 3: 21 Accents + Ex-Boyfriend Jewelry + Ztail

Lost in space, the reality show: They call it "The Pioneer Anomaly." For reasons yet unknown something has dragged Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 a quarter-million miles off course. Robert Lee Hotz, WSJ's Science Journal editor chats about the anomaly in the following video. Could Newton and Einstein be wrong?