May 2008

Just wasn’t happy with the former theme. This new one is simpler and easier to read and navigate. Still a few minor tweaks to get it completely functioning and the features right. Thanks for your patience.

jf

• Cut the crap out of my thumb cooking a cheese & veg pie. Think I may live, but I have new found respect 4 the prehensile digit & the knife. #

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I’ve abandoned the world of television. It’s been about six months now since I’ve given up the burden of paying for and watching brainless TV. Of course, if there is a TV show or a movie that I absolutely have to or wanna watch, there’s always Netflix or torrents. But the one thing I really pined over and truly felt that I might be missing, although this too may be just something I convinced myself of, is watching TV news. Of course you can always read the news on-line, still there is something easy and dare I say fulfilling about watching television news.

So how do I get my video news fix without TV? Video podcasts. Two of the ‘big’ broadcast networks. ABC and NBC both offer video podcasts of the nightly news. ABC’s feed is hands down the best. ABC produces a separate podcast feed especially for the the web with Charlie Gibson. Gibson is friendly and personable while maintaining an authoritative news presence. The ABC feed is available every day at about 4ish Eastern Time and again updated around 7 or 8. The feed contains elements especially produced for the podcast including a Google segment. Although I subscribe to the NBC feed, I find myself almost never watching it. The newscast is a feed of the recorded nightly news and unfortunately isn’t available until sometime after 10pm ET. So by the time I get around to watching it, it’s usually the next day. The NBC feed is almost an automatic delete the following day. NBC also offers a weekly podcast of “Meet the Press” in its entirety. ABC makes available the Sunday morning roundtable “This Week,” if you can handle the no-talent, ponderous George Snuffleupagus.

CNN offers a couple of interesting feeds. By far my personal favorite is “In Case You Missed It.” This podcast is news stories cut together as a vignette, without a talking head. Kind of a “produced” raw feed. Usually there are one or sometimes two daily feeds of “In Case You Missed It.” The other CNN feed I use is “Now in the News.” These podcasts are usually around 3 minutes, updated every few hours and are produced much like “CNN Headline News.”

On the international front, Sky News offers a couple of different podcasts. After subscribing to a few of them, I’ve paired it down to just one: “Sky News Headlines Update.” Very similar to the “Now in the News” CNN feed, but from a Brit perspective with both international news headlines and news from the UK. Well worth the subscription. By far, My favorite podcast subscriptions for news come from Link TV. Link offers a few news related podcasts including: “Mosaic,” “Mosaic Intelligence Report” and “Global Pulse.” “Mosaic” is an insightful program with news reports from numerous MIddle East broadcasters in a half-hour format. I highly recommend it. “Mosaic Intelligence Report” is Middle East broadcast reports with commentary and dare I say, sometimes unnecessary opinion. The excellent “Global Pulse” reports on news stories from a perspective of numerous international broadcasters. It’s informative and telling to see how different countries and broadcasters report on the same story. “Global Pulse is by far my favorite news podcast.

Here’s my “short list” of recommended video podcast feeds, formatted for iTunes subscriptions, of course:

• ABC World News Tonight
• NBC Nightly News
• Meet The Press
• CNN In Case You Missed It
• CNN Now in the News
• Sky News Headlines Update
• Mosaic
• Mosaic Intelligence Report
• Global Pulse

If you’ve got any other suggestions for video news podcasts that you think are worthwhile, please share em’.

This morning I surfed over to the usual web sites to gander for the latest openings and job postings. About once a week I do check out the Clear Channel and CBS sites, you never know what might be lurking. But I have learned from experience over the years that once jobs turn up on internal company job sites, they’re usually filled anyway. At least in theory. As unfortunate as it may seem, job postings in broadcasting are often just the first and last stop to fulfill EOE requirements. I hope I’m not letting the cat out of the bag here. It’s not any big secret is it?!

So I find this rather interesting job opening on the Clear Channel site:

Morning Show Content Censor
Job Description: Clear Channel in Washington, D.C. has an immediate full-time opening for a Morning Show Content Censor. As the Morning Show Content Censor, you will be responsible for providing content protection for the “Elliot in the Morning” radio show on DC101. Content protection entails carefully listening and archiving the radio broadcast. Should show content violate FCC indecency or obscenity rules, you will be responsible for activating the content delay and/or preempting the broadcast with external content until you deem content is safe for returning to the broadcast….

Holy Cow! A show content censor! I guess in this day and age, whatever day and age this will be remembered as being, it’s not a ‘half-bad’ idea. But what’s this gig gonna pay? I’m betting that it’s not a six-figure income. If I had to take a half-baked guess, I’d venture to guess it pays closer to minimum wage than it does 30 grand a year. But, who knows? Still, I am intrigued with the idea that an employee making let’s say, 10 or 15 bucks an hour is the last gatekeeper for keeping everything legal with the FCC. I mean, let’s face it, the Feds don’t even have any clear guidelines as to what is or isn’t indecent. Even the most seasoned broadcasters know that the FCC’s current versions of ‘indecent’ is a shell game, an endlessly shifting and moving target. Hell, a law professor at an Ivy League college that specializes in media law would have a hard time trying to figure out when to or not to hit the dump button. Sheit. And smart money would say that the hire they have in mind is undoubtedly a few letters short of a PHD.

And so it goes….

• happy flippin mother’s day. now make me a sammich. #

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The perpetual coffee

Originally uploaded by spootiespoothead

• I have been neglecting my twitter. Hope it doesn’t fall off. #

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Today Apple is a darling, a huge success story. A company that has returned from the ashes and reinvented itself more times than The Trixter has. But it wasn’t that long ago that the un-elected computer intelegencia and the everyday end-user was predicting a quick death for the company that has had more lives than the common cat. It wasn’t just the geeks, the alleged bastions of journalistic integrity such as Fortune, Time and Business Week back in ‘95 and ‘96 were writing that Apple was already a dead duck, they just didn’t know it yet.

Hey, I admit it, I’ve been an Apple fanboy for quite a while. Through good times and bad. Having first been introduced to the Mac because of its ease of use as an audio editing workstation. It wasn’t the amazing adds or the slick use of marketing, it was with much resignation and a lot of weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth, I was dragged kicking and screaming into the Apple cult of computing. But once I did, there was no looking back.

In the ’90s times were tough for Apple, very tough. The stock was in the crapper, The Newton was considered a ‘joke,’ (even though it gave rise to the very successful Palm platform and yes, the iPhone. Not to mention the fact that we’ve yet to see what Apple will finally do with the real holy grail of the Newton, Rosetta) month after month the market share was dwindling for Apple. The eminent death of Apple was expected to happen any day, with rumors of Sony, Adobe and yes even Microsoft picking the last remnants of flesh from the once great upstart company. Enter Steve Jobs…. In 1997 on his first day on the job, with Apple bleeding money to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, Jobs launched the project that would become the iMac. Apple had already spent 400 million dollars for the purchase of NeXT, and bled countless millions to develop the Newton under Scully. After freezing their research spending in 1996 to about 5 percent, and cutting its workforce by 30 percent in ‘97, Apple started to spend again on R&D with Jobs back in charge. Apple was funding more money into Research and Development than any of its competitors, including IBM and Dell. R&D spending reached over 7% in the early years of the new millennium, even though Apple experienced a few quarters with losses in 2003. Prompting CFO Fred Anderson to make a very remarkable quote: “We’re not going to mortgage the future for short-term profit maximization.” And according to Anderson, Apple was spending nearly a half a billion dollars a year on R&D.

Sure Apple had a few misses in those early years under Jobs. The Cube failed to take off, but this didn’t stop Jobs from pushing ahead in his belief in form factor, something that would later make the iMac a huge hit and arguably the Cube would later be reincarnated as the Mac Mini. And I have to admit, I originally thought the iPod was a joke. Even though I had one of the first iPods, I couldn’t really see beyond the trees of it being “just another mp3 player.” Only now are we starting to see Mr. Jobs real vision of a digital hub and the evil genius of his viral marketing of OSX through iTunes and the iPhone.

So what does all of this have to do with broadcasters? Plenty. Today we find Radio, TV and of course the Print Media being handed much of the same monikers that Apple had to endure back in the ’90s… “beleaguered” and “antiquated.” Advertising spending on radio is falling just like Apple’s market share did just a few short years ago. So radio tightens its belt, hires more salesman to chase the ever decreasing add dollars and cuts the bottom line from its programing departments across the board. Just a few weeks ago the cuts in programming were happening in markets ranging from NYC and LA to Middletown, Ohio. Our product is shrinking, and lets face it, it’s been happening for quite a while now. It sucks ladies and gentleman, but radio doesn’t hold a death grip on the music biz and audio entertainment anymore. You know it and I know it. It’s been coming down for a long long time.

So what to do chicken little? Let the sky fall? Have a fire sale? Not a chance. Radio is just changing, it’s not dead, dying or on life support, it’s just getting a rectal exam. What we’ve got to do, is do what Apple did. Invest in our “R&D.” Invest in the product. Start ’spending’ money and using our assets to give our users a product to believe in, trust and in turn use more and more. Our customers, the listeners, have to ‘rediscover’ radio again for what it is… a great and compelling product. If your product becomes ‘beleaguered’ you don’t continue to pretend that everything is fine, and just hire a bigger marketing and sales-force and ’sell the hell out of it.’ (Why am I suddenly reminded of the Monty Python “I’m not dead yet skit.“) It’s a lesson the Detroit automobile manufactures learned, or you would think would have learned in the ’70s. I believe in the power of radio. It’s great. It once was absolutely amazing and completely compelling. Damn it, that’s why I got into it. It was not only amazingly powerful and a huge social community that really had a tangible and intangible impact on peoples lives, it was fun as hell to be a part of and to listen to. And it can be again. And it’s not rocket science. It’s time for managers and radio groups to bite the bullet and start investing in our future, or we may not have a very promising future to look forward to. As former Apple CFO Fred Anderson said about his company, We’re not going to mortgage the future for short-term profit maximization. The days of endless double-digit returns every quarter for broadcast investors may be gone and they may never come back. But the long-term forecast is just fine, because we have an amazing product, if we just get back to paying attention to the damn product and nourish and encourage what makes it great… innovative ideas from creative individuals. Radio needs to go back and reinvest in its research bottom line; the product and the talent that is given the environment and encouragement to create and grow a great product.

Oh, and for all the money Apple spent on R&D over the years and all the great products it’s spawned, Apple CEO Steve Jobs, the man behind the iPod, iPhone, iTunes, iMac, AirBook and all the other gadgets you and yes Sony lust after, remembers another important lesson as well: Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it. - Fortune, Nov. 9, 1998.

Get it?!

• cooking mojo. roolin weeds. Mary is near neeked. All is good with the world. #

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