An Occasionally updated series of rantings and musings live from "Content Central". These are solely my personal views, happily presented here on the interwebs for your viewing pleasure. Comments are welcome.
Google knows it. Viacom knows it. The Chamber of Commerce knows it. Internet democracy groups know it. BoingBoing knows it. But, the Internet hasn't been told yet -- we're going to get blown away by the end of the year. The worst bill in Internet history is about to become law. Law is very real here in the United States and legal language is often different than stated intentions -- this law would give government and corporations the power to block sites like BoingBoing over infringing links on at least one webpage posted by their users. Believe the EFF, Public Knowledge, Google when they say this bill is about much more than copyright, it's about the Internet and free speech everywhere.
The MPAA, RIAA, Hollywood knows that they have been flying in CEOs of as many companies as possible, recruiting people to get petition signups at malls in California, and here's the big point-- they know they have gotten their message through to Congress -- the worst bill in Internet history, the one where government and their corporations get unbelievable power to take down sites, threaten payment processors into stopping payment to sites on a blacklist, and throw people in jail for posting ordinary content is about to pass before the end of this year. The only thing that is going to stop Hollywood from owning the Internet and everything we do, is if there is a big surprise Internet backlash starting right now.
PROTECT IP (S. 968)/SOPA (HR. 3261) creates the first system for Internet censorship - this bill has sweeping provisions that give the government and corporations leeway and legal cover for taking down sites "by accident," mistakenly, or for NOT doing "enough" to protect the interests of Hollywood. These bills that are moving very quickly through Congress and can pass before Christmas aim to give the US government and corporations the ability to block sites over infringing links posted by their users and give ISPs the release to take any means to block peoples' sites, including slowing down your connection. That's right, some say this bill is a workaround to net neutrality and is bigger than net neutrality.
This is the worst piece of Internet legislation in history - the lawmakers who have been sponsoring (Leahy, Lamar Smith, Conyers) this bill need to be shamed by the Internet community for wasting taxpayer dollars on a bill that would break the very fabric of the Internet, create an Internet blacklist, kill jobs and great startup companies, huge blogs, and social networks.
Everyone, the entire Internet community needs to stand together if we don't want to see this bill actually become law. Internet and democracy groups are planning an Internet-wide day of protest called American Censorship Day on Wednesday, November 16th for the day Congress holds a hearing on these bills to create the first American Internet censorship system. Every single person with a website can join and needs to.
Boing Boing, Grooveshark, Free Software Foundation, The Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge, Demand Progress, Open Congress/PPF, TechDirt, Fight for the Future and dozens of other sites have created this day to ask you to join them to stop S. 978 and HR 3261, as hard as you can. Write them, protest, call them, protest, support your favorite sites, protest, sign a letter, block out your site, protest.
Many public intellectuals who are often the ones to help win the public interest over and over are about to come out to lead the charge to stop PROTECT IP/ SOPA - they have to when they learn that the House and Senate will be working to pass this bill before the Christmas. From those doing work on the hill, it's very clear we have been stacked comparatively lightly. The House bill has 40 co-sponsors and major industry support. The only thing that will change the dynamic now is if Congress gets a knock on their door by CEO"s of small and large tech companies, blogs, and news sites and if Internet users start piling on, one by one, and protest.
Tech companies, blogs, news sites are already in a death-do-die battle cry -- listen to them -- it's a few days before the hearing on this bill. But, we need more tech companies, blogs, new sites before the hearing on this bill. Help get them.
I've been trying to think about whether or not the world is going to end if this bill passes like it's supposed to -- and the answer is, "kind of yes". When small sites, and it's the small sites that get turned off in the night and no one for the most part notices, say my friend's political blog or news site gets blocked by the US government and she has no way to get it back up even though everything she did was legal according to current law, and no one can help her except she can choose to file suit to defend herself, I feel like I die inside a little. Living in a country where you are being shut out and left powerless to really defend yourself is like living in another country, the ones you hear about. Life starts to feel shot when that happens, especially to our friends or our favorites sites.
Every site who has user-generated content, posts links or videos to anything copyrighted in it could face new legal threats.
If a copyrights holder disliked links you have on your site, they could simply file a complaint with a payment processor (Visa, PayPal), who would then have 5 days to respond to their request or risk legal ramifications. If bills like this are allowed to pass, we'll be spending another $47 million dollars every year to help corporations fill out and enforce Internet blacklists.
Sites that would be legal under the DMCA and its safe harbor provisions would now risk losing everything for allowing user generated content. It also has added in the streaming felony bill that would make it so ordinary Internet users are at risk of going to jail for 5 years for post any copyrighted work that would cost $2,500 to license. And because copyright is so broad, that means videos with copyrighted music in the background, kids in a school play, people singing karaoke could all be a risk.
Because the law affects almost every Internet user and the sites they use every day and have come to love, and because granting sweeping blacklisting powers is just sickening to almost everyone, we need your help -- if you can encourage your favorite site to join the protest, and help drive the maximum number of people to contact Congress on November 16th (until the bill dies), please help.
These bills represent a major blow to openness and freedom on the Internet, free speech rights, and the fabric of the Internet itself. If SOPA is allowed to pass, the Internet and free speech will never be the same again.
This isn't the wild ravings of a small group of activists. This is a serious threat to content providers and regular people who use the internet every day. The RIAA is the only organization I have had personal experience with in regards to abuse of copyright laws, and they are simply EVIL. If this bill becomes law, they and other industry groups will be able to have almost anything taken down from the web at their whim. We don't need this kind of censorship in the name of copyright or protecting artist's rights. I believe in protecting artist's rights and that artists should be compensated for their work. I don't believe in "industry organizations" acting like brown shirted Storm Troopers yanking anything they think threatens their ability to make a profit from the internet. America may be the land of opportunity, but it should not be the land of censorship or prior restraint. Please do what you can to make ure this bill doesn't become law.
Today is a special day, a day we dedicate to the legendary rock star Nigel Tufnel. Today is Nigel Tufnel Day!
If you are unaware of Mr. Tufnel's body of work, you need only look at his Wikipedia bio or watch this video clip of his brillianace: http://youtu.be/ll7rWiY5obI. ; Sadly, the Copyright Police will not let me embed this masterpiece for your viewing pleasure. If they haven't taken this down, you might want to look at this video for a HI DEF understanding of the importance of this day.
A day like this comes only once in a lifetime, and I for one will be celebrating it by turning MY life up to 11. I hope you will do the same.
I came across a post on LockerGnome, Chris Pirillo's website about all things tech and geek (and I say that in only a good way) posted by Matt Ryan that asked if local radio was dead. Chris's conclusion on a video that was part of the post was that it was but it just doesn't know it yet, and it got me to thinking about the industry I've been involved with for most of my life, its past, and most importantly its future.
According to the ratings service Arbitron, local radio reaches 93 percent of Americans 12 years and older in the average week. I certainly have had my disagreements with Arbitron over the years, especially since they've introduced the PPM as the way to measure radio listening, but I do believe that local over the air radio still touches almost everyone almost on a daily basis.
For now.
The PPM, or Personal People Meter, is a means to electronically measure what listeners are hearing and it has forced many broadcasters to drastically change the way they program their stations so they are more "PPM Friendly". That means stations have had to move commercial breaks to "better play the PPM game", tell talented Air Personalities to cut down the amount of talk they do on the air, and make it easier to import generic programming to local stations.
All that is just background for the meat of this post. The people who own radio stations, whether they are the big companies or the smaller operators, simply do not understand that the way they deliver "radio" has to change, and they have to get out in front of the change.
CourtesyTom Bosscher
Those big giant towers in the middle of cornfields and cemeteries, those 50,000 watt legendary AM stations, those HD Radio channels that nobody is listening to, they are losing value and necessity every day. Broadcasters think all those things are trophy's, somehow showing how "heavy" they are in the industry. Going forward, all that hardware and early 20th century based technology will mean very little to listeners or advertisers.
Wireless device usage is exploding, and now there are more wireless devices activated than there are people in the United States. Most of those devices have the ability to play audio, whether they be iPhones, Android devices, tablets like iPad or Kindle Fire, or gadgets we haven't even heard about yet. Yet, broadcasters continue to do a second rate job of serving those devices and don't see the future where people can receive the radio station from their home town, Spotify, Pandora, or a local radio station in Turkmenistan on the same device WITHOUT using AM, FM, HD Radio, AM Stereo, FM Quad, or any of the other failed and antiquated technologies that broadcasters have tried to force on consumers. Toyota is rolling out a car with Pandora and I Heart Radio in 2012, making it even easier to not listen to local radio.
The days of wireless delivery platforms and complete parity for any kind of audio or video stream are here, and American broadcasters are not prepared for the migration from those old school technologies they've relied on for almost a century to the wireless, personalized experience that listeners will discover, adopt, and almost certainly use to replace traditional broadcasts. As media guru Fred Jacobs wrote almost a year ago, being local matters, no matter how the content is delivered.
Jacobs isn't the only one who sees the future, The brilliant media strategist David Martin wrote this blog post in August of 2004 about the future of music radio.
It is time to admit it - we are operating in a fundamentally different
business environment; the rules of the game are changing and so must we.
Speaking at the Web 2.0 Summit last month, KCPB's Mary Meeker showed the growth of mobile usage and the fact that Pandora, the online radio network, is already getting 60% of it's traffic from mobile devices. Those people listening could be listening to traditional broadcasts, but they're turning off AM and FM and turning on digital streams.
Radio companies will tell you they have a "digital strategy". Here are real live examples of those strategies in action at some of the major radio companies right now.
A major radio company has moved all its stations to its own app for smartphones and tablets, but after testing the Android app on six different devices over three carriers, the app was only able to stream listenable audio on two of the devices. Android now commands 40% of the U.S. smartphone market, but this company's stations can't be heard on a majority of those phones and many Android tablets.
Clear Channel Media Holdings, the country's largest radio owner, has recently hired Bob Pittman to run the company. Pittman is a very smart man and understands the future of content delivery as shown by the company's huge investment in I Heart Radio, their streaming and station creation app. Unlike the above example, this app works on every Android device I tested it on, as well as devices on other platforms. They may have some of the right ideas, but have eliminated hundreds of jobs in the last month as they add more centralization to their programming, completely ignoring the fact that being local is one of traditional radio's most important ways to differentiate itself and keep listeners, regardless of how the content is delivered.
Most other radio companies let each station create their own digital presence, controlling the overall look of websites, but using a myriad of vendors for streaming and mobile applications. Most of the reason for this is that the companies either refuse to acknowledge the future of mobile while they concentrate on those big towers in the cornfields, streaming a single station (often badly), or trying to make people care about HD Radio. One major company will let any station have an iPhone app, but the station has to wait until a certain number of iPhone apps are downloaded before they can have an Android app. Looking at the penetration of Android, it is clear this company does not understand how listeners use streaming or even what they listen with.
All of this brings us back to the topic of this post. Is local radio dead? Not yet, but in most cases the people who own local radio stations don't realize that their properties are dying slowly in a hospice called AM and FM.
These broadcasters, notorious for spending their lifetimes in perhaps the last industry to see the world as it really is time after time, need to get their brands on life support by coming up with a well thought out, forward thinking strategy that involves delivering audio how and when people want it, making local information available no matter where the listener is (how many radio executives really understand the power of GPS and location based application development?) and adding a strong social and interactive component to their brands. The benefits will be immediate, and will keep their brands viable for years to come.
There once was a radio in the kitchen
Almost a decade ago, these same broadcasters began to see the number of people using radio in the morning begin to decline Traditionally, the morning show was the most listened to and most profitable daypart for radio stations. Where did the listeners go? Directly to television, because TV figured out they could give all the local information and much of the entertainment people were getting on the radio and add pictures to it. Morning radio listening continues to decline, especially among listeners under 40, and some of the most successful local TV morning shows are produced by former radio morning show producers. Yet, the radio industry for the most part has done little to fight the migration of listeners to television.
A recent story in the Chicago Tribune talks about how FIVE local TV stations are doing local morning newscasts starting at 4:30AM and two of them continue locally after the network morning shows start on affiliate stations.
The moves reflect a national trend that has reached critical mass over
the past two years. Most large-market stations now broadcast local news
at 4:30 a.m., with at least one station starting that early in all of
the top 50 markets, according to Steve Ridge, president of the media
strategy group for Frank N. Magid Associates, a television consulting
firm.
"Thirty years ago, we had to beg stations to get into the morning news
business," Ridge said. "Now, it has become the most lucrative daypart in
local television."
I for one do not want to be a pall bearer at local radio's funeral, but I'm afraid that I'll live to see that day.
I had the joy of being downsized out of my job yesterday, joining a LOT of people in radio who are now out of work. I'm not too proud to use the power of the Interwebz to get my story out, so below are many career related links about me.. Even a quick glance will show you a long and successful career in radio, a growing track record of accomplishment in new media, social media, Web 2.0, or whatever you'd like to call it. Most importantly, it shows that I'm available now for your employment or project pleasure.
The world may have just lost a wildly unhinged fascist dictator, but hell just gained a wildly uninhibited fashion icon. Had Gaddafi been a contestant on Project Runway, there is no way he would ever have been accused of "boring Nina," though he might have gotten the occasional "that crotch is insane!" from Michael Kors. In his memory, we've gathered some of his more insane, and insanely fabulous, looks from throughout his decades of volatile rule.
You can add awesome computers, music-changing iPods and revolutionary iPhones to the list of things God apparently hates according to the hate-spewing Westboro Baptist Church.
The outfit- headed up by prejudice-monger Fred Phelps and daughter Megan- has made a name for itself by harassing grieving families in their darkest hour, with practices like picketing the funerals of dead US soldiers with signs reading “Thank God for IEDs.” It’s clear there is no true biblical basis for their hatred, and anyone could see their behavior is directly contrary to the teachings of Christ. Their selection of any high profile deceased person is painfully obvious with news of their newest target- Apple founder Steve Jobs.
The outpouring of grief over the loss of Jobs at 56 is a testament to how valued his contribution to technology truly is. (Note: I am typing this on a MacBook.) Jobs was not known for any sort of embrace of sin or even general unpleasantness, but that hasn’t stopped the Westboro Baptist Church in their plans to intrude on his family’s grief with one of their vulgar demonstrations.
Megan Phelps gleefully used Twitter to announce the hate group’s plans to picket Jobs’ funeral:
“Westboro will picket his funeral. He had a huge platform; gave God no glory and taught sin… No peace for man who served self, not God. Westboro must picket.”
With much class, Phelps appended the hashtag #hellgreetedhim to her tweets, but the kicker is that the hatemonger-in-training made the announcement to Twitter from her iPhone. So if Jobs is guilty of some amorphous sin for making our world a bit more connected, surely the Phelpses will be joining him in eternal torment for supporting his alleged sinful empire.
Mark's comment: Some things you just can't make up. This almost sounds like a post from The Onion, but it is from The Inquisitrhttp://www.inquisitr.com/148491/westboro-church-will-protest-jobs-funeral-use...and completely true. I posted last night that I am not an Apple Fanboy, my work has kept me in the PC world since 1984. Before that it was Commodore and TI hardware. But I have always admired Steve Jobs and put him in the league of Thomas Edison and Henry Ford when it comes to people who have fundimentally changed our lives. He was a great man, died a horrible and unfair death, and will be missed. For Westboro Baptist Church to even think about coming 1000 miles, let alone 1000 feet from Steve Jobs' funeral is truly a sin they should be punished for.
CUPERTINO (The Borowitz Report) – A clever work-around discovered by a tech-savvy smart phone user has enabled millions of consumers to avoid buying Apple’s heavily touted iPhone 4S: at the end of emails, they merely type, “Sent from my iPhone 4S.”
Tracy Klugian, a self-described “gizmo fanatic” from Akron, Ohio came up with the ingenious solution after deciding that the iPhone 4S’s price tag was too rich for his blood.
“I’m glad that this work-around will give non-iPhone 4S owners the same thrill that people who spent $299 on it have been experiencing,” he said. “It’s definitely a much cheaper way to go.”
Across the country, millions of iPhone 4S owners who learned about Mr. Klugian’s inventive fix jammed Apple stores to return their devices, many of them purchased just hours earlier.
“The only reason I bought an iPhone 4S was to let people know that I owned an iPhone 4S,” said Donnelly Rixon, 24, a self-described “douche” from Sacramento. “This wrecks everything.”
An official statement from Apple indicated that the company would not accept returns of the costly devices, but assured consumers that the $299 price tag was well worth it: “The iPhone 4S is the most amazing device in the history of the smart phone, until the iPhone 5, which will be released tomorrow.” **** DON’T MISS OUT: For a limited time, click here to pre-order Andy Borowitz’s critically acclaimed new book and save 45% **** Get the Borowitz Report delivered to your inbox for free here.
The nation’s major mobile-phone providers are keeping a treasure trove of sensitive data on their customers, according to newly-released Justice Department internal memo that for the first time reveals the data retention policies of America’s largest telecoms.
The single-page Department of Justice document, “Retention Periods of Major Cellular Service Providers,” (.pdf) is a guide for law enforcement agencies looking to get information — like customer IP addresses, call logs, text messages and web surfing habits – out of U.S. telecom companies, including AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon.
The document, marked “Law Enforcement Use Only” and dated August 2010, illustrates there are some significant differences in how long carriers retain your data.
Verizon, for example, keeps a list of everyone you’ve exchanged text messages with for the past year, according to the document. But T-Mobile stores the same data up to five years. It’s 18 months for Sprint, and seven years for AT&T.
That makes Verizon appear to have the most privacy-friendly policy. Except that Verizon is alone in retaining the actual contents of text messages. It allegedly stores the messages for five days, while T-Mobile, AT&T, and Sprint don’t store them at all.
The document was unearthed by the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina via a Freedom of Information Act claim. (After the group gave a copy to Wired.com, we also discovered it in two other places on the internet by searching its title.)
“People who are upset that Facebook is storing all their information should be really concerned that their cell phone is tracking them everywhere they’ve been,” said Catherine Crump, an ACLU staff attorney. “The government has this information because it wants to engage in surveillance.”
The biggest difference in retention surrounds so-called cell-site data. That is information detailing a phone’s movement history via its connections to mobile phone towers while its traveling.
Verizon keeps that data on a one-year rolling basis; T-Mobile for “a year or more;” Sprint up to two years, and AT&T indefinitely, from July 2008.
The document also includes retention policies for Nextel and Virgin Mobile. They have folded into the Sprint network.
The document release comes two months before the Supreme Court hears a case testing the government’s argument that it may use GPS devices to monitor a suspect’s every movement without a warrant. And the disclosure comes a month ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Electronic Privacy Communications Act, an outdated law that the government often invokes against targets to obtain, without a warrant, the data the Justice Department document describes.
“I don’t think there there is anything on this list the government would concede requires a warrant,” said Kevin Bankston, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “This brings cellular retention practices out of the shadows, so we can have a rational discussion about how the law needs to be changed when it comes to the privacy of our records.”
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) has proposed legislation to alter the Electronic Privacy Communications Act to protect Americans from warrantless intrusions. Debate on the issue is expected to heat up as the anniversary nears, and the Justice Department document likely will take center stage. Infographics: Michael Cerwonka/Wired.com. Cell tower photo courtesy Locomotive8/Flickr
This makes all the Facebook privacy uproar seem like child's play compared to what the Wireless industry is up to. Worth a close look and consideration of who you use as your wireless carrier. Thanks to wired.com for digging this up!
Many thanks to The Inquisitr for finding this story. Being a professional broadcaster (and not just playing one on television) I find this quite amusing and disgusting at the same time. The only kind of contest I can do is give away tons of cash on 99.7 The Point in Kansas City. Not that there's anything wrong with that....
Win A Children’s Radio Contest Get An AK-47, Thanks Somalia
The last time I won a radio contest I was given tickets to some crappy concert nobody wanted to go and see however if I had been a child in Somali I could have potentially walked away with an AK-47 assault rifle.
A Somali radio station run by extremist group al-Shabab held a contest this weekend for children aged 10-17, each child was quizzed on Islam and al-Shabab and the winner and runner-up walked away with a treasure trove of money, al-Shabab books and the customary jewelry of choice in Somali an AK-47 to dangle from their necks.
Third place I have to admit got the shaft, they only received two live hand grenades.
Apparently the contest was a big deal with an entire awards ceremony taking place outside of Mogadishu.
In true Islamic extremist fervor Sheik Muktar Robow Abu Monsur of the al-Shabab sheiks lamented:
“Children should use one hand for education and the other for a gun to defend Islam.”
Al-Shabab is an offshoot of al-Qaeda and controls much of Somalia since the region has no central government.
Don’t be surprised if his “education” comment isn’t taken seriously, al-Qaeda members and regions they occupy are typically full of illiterate people who learn to fire a gun before they ever open a book while people in Somalia will never see the inside of a book.
So there you have it Somali radio stations are hard at work training the next group of Somali pirates and al-Qaeda operatives who will take over ships of innocent freight workers.
What do you think about the contest? Makes that last prize you won from a local radio station seem a bit lame does it.
Perhaps you, like me, are pretty close to having your, excuse the expression, head explode over every channel on TV (including ESPN News) running almost constant 9/11 programming since yesterday.
Today is something else very special, National Grandparents Day. I've lost all my Grandparents, and I miss them. But sometimes you need Grandpa or Grandma for comic relief, so I present this from Someecards.com for your consideration.
My guess is you'd rather read this than my rant about how we were told 10 years ago to go about our business, visit Disney World, and have a good old time so the economy doesn't crumble and therefore the Terrorists win. I remember our leaders telling us that every time I, uh, look at the economy and state of our government.
Makes me wonder 10 years later who really DID win. I know my late Papa Udie would have an opinion on that. Happy Grandparents Day Udie, Josephine, Max, and Sarah. You're in a better place than you'd want to be in.
Perhaps the strangest thing about the 10 year anniversary of 9/11 on Sunday is how it hasn't managed to suck all the air out of the news cycle.
To be sure there are plenty of retrospective specials, most of the cable networks will be airing wall-to-wall coverage on Sunday, and the big newsweeklies have all issued anniversary editions (the best of which is far and away New York magazine's 'encyclopedia').
But this is more or less just an increase by degrees of what happens every year, and there is a sense in the air, at least here in New York City, of exhaustion with the topic.
Maybe it was last month's hurricane that saw the shut down of the subway (for the first time since 9/11) and the evacuation of parts of the city for the first time ever that drained the city of its ability to gin up the sort of emotion one would anticipate from the milestone anniversary. Nothing reminds you of how terrible an actual emergency is like an actual emergency (or in the case of Irene, preparing for one).
Or maybe all the left-over emotion from 9/11 was exerted last year during the Ground Zero Mosque controversy.
Either way, four days before the anniversary, the news cycle remains consumed with Obama's jobs speech, the economy, the GOP debate, and the generally dire outlook of the nation.
Which makes sense when you consider that many of the big 9/11 retrospectives put out so far seem to be drawing the same conclusion: America overreacted to 9/11.
The first person to float this was Bob Woodwardin Foreign Policy:
"It's so sobering for journalism: You think you know what something means, and you think something is a disaster. But maybe it isn't. One of the big questions about 9/11 now: In the history books in 50 years, is the headline going to be "U.S. Overreacts to 9/11"? In other words, if there are no other attacks in this country, if we have strategically defeated al Qaeda. Or maybe the headline's going to be "U.S. Wins the Cold War, U.S. Wins the War on Terror." Or maybe it's going to be "The Ongoing War on Terror.…"
In New York magazine's 9/11 retrospectiveFrank Rich, who spent much of the decade from his NYT perch castigating Bush for going to war, says:
In retrospect, the most consequential event of the past ten years may not have been 9/11 or the Iraq War but the looting of the American economy by those in power in Washington and on Wall Street. This was happening in plain sight—or so we can now see from a distance. At the time, we were so caught up in Al Qaeda’s external threat to America that we didn’t pay proper attention to the more prosaic threats within.
In such an alternative telling of the decade’s history, the key move Bush made after 9/11 had nothing to do with military strategy or national-security policy. It was instead his considered decision to rule out shared sacrifice as a governing principle for the fight ahead. Sacrifice was high among the unifying ideals that many Americans hoped would emerge from the rubble of ground zero, where so many Good Samaritans had practiced it.
But what we did know was that only one word really sufficed to define the scale and gravity of what had taken place: war.
The bait was meant to entice the United States into ruinous, polarizing religious warfare against the Muslim world, so that the Islamist fringe could seize power in failing Muslim and Arab dictatorships. The 9/11 attacks were conceived as a way to radicalize a young Muslim population through a ginned-up war of civilization against the Great Satan on the Islamist home turf of Afghanistan and, then, Iraq. It looks obvious now. It wasn’t then. We were seized with righteous rage, every ounce of which was justified. But the victim of a rape is not the best person to initiate the strategy to bring the rapist to justice. And we, alas, were all we had.
The NYTran a piece over the weekend about how media outlets are walking a fine line in their coverage of the anniversary.
But one wonders, coming as it does in the midst of Obama's jobs speech and the inevitable GOP reaction, and the dire economic numbers, if the impending retrospectives will capture the country's attention in the manner we would have anticipated even a year ago. One gets the sense the catharsis they are aiming to provide is no longer necessary.
There will be many, far too many, stories written about 9/11, but the very bright Glynnis MacNicol may have managed to nail the story with this piece on www.businessinsider.com. Thanks to Glynnis for her usual great writing and for not being afraid to say what many of us feel.
I work for a radio station, and our station's website is, well, all about our radio station. I got the following e mail today, and I've got to hand it to this company for having perhaps the worst targeting EVAH. And I'm leaving their name and contact info in the e mail just because something this spammy doesn't deserve to have the details redacted.
Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4
Hey there,
I'm reaching out to you because Thumbtack is getting a lot of job leads for lawn care providers, and I'm looking for another lawn care provider who is interested in taking on more clients. After checking out your website I think you are a great fit for Thumbtack and I'd love to start sending you job leads. Please fill out a few details about your skills and rates, and I'll start forwarding you potential new clients. If you have any questions about what Thumbtack can provide, please don't hesitate to ask. Thanks, Heather -- Unsubscribe Link: One-click unsubscribe. 1001 Page St, Suite #45, San Francisco, CA This message is an advertisement.
Here's a lesson to all you e mail marketers out there, you might actually want to look into your lead lists before spamming the world. I don't know many radio stations that do lawn care on the side. Of course, with the economy being what it is, I could always be wrong.
Feeling bleary-eyed after a long day in front of your various screens? Here’s an infographic full of tips and techniques to ease your eyes into the digital world, showing you ways to cope with staring into screens all day.
If that’s not enough, the infographic gives you a peek at present and future tech that will make your eyes positively bionic, as well as new devices doctors are now using to diagnose eye problems much more efficiently than ever.
This must be getting bad — Those Acronym-Making People (TAMP — okay, I made that one up) have created one for the eye health problems that ensue after staring at screens for an average of six hours per day: CVS, or Computer Vision Syndrome:
Imagine the look on your guests’ face when your cheese noodles are letting off a cute little flame. That’s the experience the Koko Candles brand is giving you with this self assemble DIY Mac & Cheese Candle. The noodles are hand-shaped without molds, and have a burntime of 7-10 hours. The kit comes with an eggshell colored fluted porcelain ramekin and a package of mac & cheese noodles.
The ramekin measures 3″ x 1.5″ height and the candles are unscented. ($22 @ KokoCandles)
All I can say is "I gotta get me some of these". Consider this my "Christmas In July" tip. Thanks to Foodbeast.com for the Food Porn find of the month!
"I was on my way to an airport," said Richard Marx, "flipping the dial. I was like, 'Awesome, it's the new single!'" At a June 23 performance at Clear Channel's P.C. Richard & Son Theater in New York, Marx is talking about hearing his new song, "When You Loved Me."
"At the end of the song, the DJ came on and said, 'That's brand-new from Richard Marx. Next up: Nickelback with 'Photograph.' I freaked out, because usually, if I hear my song on the radio, it's like, 'That was Richard Marx, and next up is ... Bette Midler's 'Wind Beneath My Wings,' which is cool," Marx said to the crowd's chuckles. "But, that day, I was sandwiched between Daughtry and Nickelback - and it was a little cooler."
Marx's reaction is a fairly typical response to an artist finding success on adult contemporary radio-often maligned as the vanilla of radio formats. And in truth, AC was designed not to offend, but to provide background companionship during the workday, and to lull listeners to sleep with gentle ballads on late-night love songs shows. While Marx did add, "Thank God I hear my songs on the radio," being pegged as an AC act, for those who consider themselves hipper than Midler's "Wings," can be humbling. When you think you're Phish Food, you find out you're vanilla. The flip side? Vanilla is the top-selling ice cream flavor (according to the International Ice Cream Assn.'s latest rankings).
A few stats: In Arbitron's May ratings for persons aged 6-plus, AC stations ranked first in top 20 markets New York (WLTW); Houston (KODA); Philadelphia (WBEB); Seattle (KRWM); Nassau-Suffolk, N.Y. (WALK); and Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Fla. (WDUV). New York's WLTW (Lite 106.7) likewise led the nation's top market with a 7.5 share in women 25-54 and a 6.4 share in persons 25-54. "In Boston," says Don Kelley, VP/director of programming at Greater Media, which owns the city's WMJX (Magic 106.7), the station "has celebrated No. 1 rankings [in] persons 25-54 44 times since 1991. That's a market record."
That's also why Marx understands that being heard next to Midler ultimately means you're being heard. By a large audience. "With approximately 35 years of music to choose from," Edison Research VP of music and programming Sean Ross says, "AC is the format most likely to be playing a song that people are passionate about at any given time. 'Uncool' isn't quite an issue. Successful AC stations always turn up a wide swath of listeners-including men and 18- to 34-year-olds. Even when a successful station was mocked in TV campaigns by a competitor for being 'lite,' the taunt ultimately didn't take, ratings-wise."
THE EVOLUTION OF AC
In line with the AC format's image, the Billboard chart that is celebrating its 50th anniversary debuted unostentatiously in the July 17, 1961, issue. Without any editorial mention of its debut, the first survey appeared next to the Billboard Hot 100 as the 20-position Easy Listening chart, with rankings of songs considered "not too far out in either direction" (according to the chart's legend) culled from their standings on the airplay/sales hybrid Hot 100.
Brook Benton's "Boll Weevil Song" (Mercury) ranked as the first AC No. 1. (The chart's current leader, Adele's "Rolling in the Deep" [Columbia] is the 756th topper.) The list joined previously launched Hot C&W Sides (today, Country Songs) and Hot R&B Sides (now R&B/Hip-Hop Songs) as a tool for those who were programming current hits but, as rock'n'roll was emerging, opted to offer a softer mainstream musical menu. The chart repeatedly changed names, with Middle-Road Singles and Pop-Standard Singles alternating as the list's title through 1965, when it reverted to Easy Listening. Adult Contemporary took hold to stay the week of April 7, 1979. (It became an airplay-only chart beginning Aug. 21, 1982.)
Similarly, the format itself has evolved. In its early history, the AC chart was devoid of acts that today would be considered easy listening. The Beatles, for instance, didn't chart an AC single until "Something" peaked at No. 19 in 1969. The Fab Four had placed 62 entries on the Hot 100 by then. Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl," the format's most-played '60s song for the week ending July 3, according to Nielsen BDS (whose radio airplay data has powered the chart since the week of July 17, 1993), never made the list as a current in 1967.
Instead, the mellow tones of Roger Miller, Barbra Streisand and Bobby Vinton scaled the survey throughout much of the '60s. Elvis Presley did, too, but generally with such lush ballads as "Can't Help Falling in Love." It wasn't until the '70s that the AC chart began to welcome uptempo hits more regularly, as stations started specializing in different sides of pop. The AC format began to more closely resemble its current form and, from the decade's start, even such rock-leaning acts as Chicago, the Eagles and Elton John dominated the tally from early in their careers. From Michael Jackson and Madonna in the '80s to Mariah Carey and Celine Dion in the '90s, to boy bands, Lady Gaga and Katy Perry today, AC radio has chiefly played the top adult-friendly pop hits, once top 40 has warmed them up. The blueprint has worked for both radio stations and record labels.
"AC airplay has always been a major asset and outlet for us to reach the upper-demo consumer, which, thankfully, remains a loyal physical CD buyer," says RCA Music Group senior VP of adult music Adrian Moreira, who cites the value of between 15 million and 20 million in audience that an AC No. 1 accrues weekly. Still, AC radio itself fights its vanilla stereotype. Longtime RMG acts Rod Stewart and Barry Manilow have combined for 13 top 10 albums on the Billboard 200 since 2002, but Stewart added just two AC top 10s in that span after logging 19 between 1986 and 2001. Manilow notched his 27th and most recent top 10 in 1989.
Moreira has seen that as adult listeners have begun to accept some of the rhythmic/pop ubiquitous on today's top 40 radio - in addition to Gaga and Perry infusing AC playlists, even Usher's dance club thumper "DJ Got Us Fallin' in Love" reached the format's top 20 last month - AC is making sure to keep a foothold in current pop music.
"We've seen a fairly tidal shift in what AC will play," Moreira says. "Whereas it was once always a very specific home for heritage acts, like Stewart and Manilow, with storied pasts and long histories, in most cases now, AC has essentially become a time-shifted top 40 playlist, trailing proven hits at mainstream and adult top 40 by a few months. I'd like to see more of a balance between proven hits from other formats, which I understand ACs need to play, and support for those acts which have always defined AC in the past. There's room for both. It's a missed opportunity for radio and labels when great songs from established upper-demo acts get passed over."
Great read from Billboard on the 50th anniversary of their Adult Contemporary chart. I've been programming Adult Contemporary stations of one kind or another for 27 years and involved in the format since starting in radio in 1975.. This story, and the sidebars like the all time songs and artists, make for a tremendous trip down Memory Lane and show how adults and Adult radio have changed over the years.
On Thursday night, a 39-year-old Texas Rangers fan fell to his death from the outfield bleachers after catching a ball tossed his way by outfielder Josh Hamilton. As Jon Mooallem explained in 2009, there's a long history of tragic deaths at American ballparks. The original piece is reprinted below.
I caught a foul ball once. Sort of. It was in the fall of 1998, at Coors Field in Denver, and I was sitting on the third-base side. The ball blazed over my head, then thudded into a woman's left breast a few rows back. A second later, it shot out from under my seat and rolled into my foot, as though it had just finished a trip through the interior of a miniature golf course obstacle. I reached down and picked it up.
I did the whole ecstatic exercise. I held the ball over my head. I turned right, then left, showing off my trophy. Then I caught sight of the woman behind me. A small crowd of loved ones and wincing strangers had huddled around her. I decided the only gentlemanly thing to do was to toss her the ball. But I had to wait a moment, until she straightened up and stopped moaning.
The typical baseball game sends 35 to 40 of these projectiles into the stands, some of them rocketing in at upward of 100 miles per hour. But it was a nice night for baseball in Denver, and so, for five or six more innings, even as the foul balls kept being popped, poked, lined, and ripped into the seats around me, I just sat there, blanketed by all the warm feelings our national pastime inspires. Even then, it never occurred to me that, as the introduction to a strange recent book puts it, "baseball is sometimes lethal."
Death at the Ballpark: A Comprehensive Study of Game-Related Fatalities, 1862-2007 is an impeccably sourced compendium of the men, women, and children who have died or been fatally injured while playing, officiating, or watching baseball in the United States. Its authors, Robert M. Gorman and David Weeks, two librarians and baseball historians at Winthrop University in South Carolina, have spent the last eight years scouring local-newspaper archives (sample search terms: "baseball and death" and "baseball and killed") for examples, in some cases going so far as to track down death certificates to confirm their results.
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Given the fetish for statistics in baseball, it was probably inevitable that someone would get around to recording this, too: the number of people baseball has rendered incapable of generating more statistics. Gorman told me he was drawn into this morbid line of research after stumbling across the death of a minor leaguer named Herb Gorman. ("He had my last name. It kind of piqued my interest.") Neither Gorman nor Weeks had ever really thought about baseball as a deadly activity before, and, Gorman told me, after publishing two preliminary articles—one on beaning fatalities and another on fan fatalities at major league stadiums—"we thought maybe we'd exhausted whatever was out there." They were very wrong. They chronicled 850 baseball deaths in Death at the Ballpark, spanning professional, amateur, Little League, and even backyard pickup games. And though the book purports to be comprehensive, readers have already tipped them off to about 50 incidents they missed.
The authors say their aim was to "raise awareness" about baseball's many dangers, but there aren't any recommendations for making the sport safer here, no real signs of impassioned outrage, and no warnings to suburban parents about aluminum bats. Death at the Ballpark is fundamentally a reference book—a list carefully organized into categories like "Thrown Ball Fatalities, Amateur Fatalities—Position Players" and "Thrown Ball Fatalities, Amateur Fatalities—Baserunners." Often, however, the authors pause for a half-page to narrate a death in noirlike detail. The opening paragraph of one entry ominously begins, "Patrick J. McTavey, 38, worked home plate during a heated semipro championship game on Long Island, NY, on September 26, 1927," and ends: "It was the last call he ever made."
It's weirdly moving, if not exactly consoling, to learn just how many of baseball's casualties made the play before expiring. There's the amateur shortstop who, in 1902, caught a bad hop in the throat and used his last moments to throw out the runner at first. The third baseman in an Indiana league who, in 1909, tagged out the runner plowing headfirst into his gut, then succumbed to the resulting internal injuries three days later. There's just something about baseball that inspires a kind of heroic resolve.John McSherry, the major league umpire who collapsed at Cincinnati's Riverfront Stadium in 1996, had actually postponed treatment for the heart condition that felled him so he could call the game.* It was Opening Day.
All the old romantic baseball tropes turn up again and again in Death at the Ballpark. But the effect is haunting, since here each is mercilessly punctuated with a death. There's the aging minor leaguer, battling his way back to the majors after a couple of stints in the show—except that Millard Fillmore "Dixie" Howell, who played in the White Sox farm system in the '50s, never gets called up again and dies of a heart attack instead. A few incidents are such ruthless perversions of our shared baseball idylls that it's as if Roman Polanski had recut Field of Dreams. One July night in a backyard in Houston in 1950, a 7-year-old boy asks if he can throw his dad one more pitch before heading inside. The father says OK. The son pitches. Then the father swings and connects, inadvertently "striking his son over the heart." The son dies before they can make it to the hospital.
There's no underestimating baseball's versatile capacity for killing us. Late Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti famously wrote that baseball "is designed to break your heart," and the statement takes on new meaning reading Death at the Ballpark, particularly Gorman and Weeks' section on commotio cordis, or concussions of the heart. A commotio cordis can be brought about only by getting struck at a particular place in the chest at the exact moment between heartbeats. And yet it manages to dispatch several pages' worth of victims.
Fatal fastballs to the head, meanwhile, aren't nearly as common as you'd expect. In the past 150 years, only one fan at a major league baseball game has been killed by a foul ball—a 14-year-old in Los Angeles named Alan Fish. The liner that fractured Fish's skull came off the bat of Dodger pinch-hitting specialist Manny Mota, whose own teenage nephew would be killed 14 years later while playing shortstop in New York—a coincidence Gorman and Weeks don't stop to note. Mota's nephew, a high-schooler, was struck by lightning as he stood in the field, five minutes after the umpire announced he was going to call the game at the end of the inning.
Lightning is another improbably frequent killer (though perhaps it's less improbable when you consider that baseball is played in summer, typically on flat fields surrounded by metal bleachers and fences). During a 1949 amateur game in Florida, the third baseman, shortstop, and second baseman were all killed by a single lightning bolt, which struck the backstop, then shot around the infield as though completing a double play.
The grim catalog rolls on. A semipro pitcher in Cincinnati is "struck simultaneously on the head by both a thrown and batted ball while warming up before a game." Pickup games played on improvised fields lead to outfielders chasing balls into the paths of cars, buses, trains, and, in one case, a hearse. At Ebbets Field in 1950, a man slumps over in his seat, shot through the back of his head by—it only becomes clear after days of police work—a teenager who was fooling around with a rifle on the roof of his apartment building several hundred yards away and with no clear line of sight.
Then there's a story Gorman and Weeks had both heard versions of but always assumed was apocryphal until they ran down a local newspaper account confirming it: In Morristown, Ohio, in 1902, one man asks another if he can borrow his penknife so he can sharpen the pencil he's using to keep score. The second man hands his penknife to the guy seated between them, named Stanton Walker, and asks Walker to pass it on. At that exact moment, a foul ball whaps Walker on the wrist, and he stabs himself.
Still, in the end, you could choose to see something slightly uplifting about the sheer volume of these freak and incomprehensible accidents. Take it as an indicator of just how much time Americans have spent on and around baseball fields over the last century and a half—of what baseball means to us. We've managed to die on the diamond in so many crazy ways only because it's one of the places we've done the most living. We've all been shagging flies in that minefield together.
Gorman told me that, while working on the book, he himself got smacked square in the forehead by a foul ball at a Triple A Game in Charlotte, N.C. "And my wife, she got hit in an odd way!" he added, almost as an afterthought. Then he launched into another story, about another game, on another night.
Correction,May 26, 2009: This piece originally and incorrectly stated that John McSherry collapsed while umpiring a game in St. Louis. It was in Cincinnati. (Return to the corrected sentence.)
Scary facts about our National Pastime, and it doesn't even count how many fans the Chicago Cubs have killed (or at least shortened their lives) by playing the way they do. Thanks to Slate.com for sharing.
