Interesting read from today’s NY Times about the 31-year old who is in charge of GM’s restructuring
Very funny bit from last night’s MTV Video Music Awards host Andy Samberg - a parody song about guys who walk away from explosions
A video clip of Bruce Springsteen’s first European show of 2009 - it’s Bruce and the band doing “Thunder Road” with special guest Brandon Flowers of the Killers…
Things that have caught my attention this Friday morning..
A piece on Mashable that talks about how the Chicago Tribune is effectively and creatively utilizing social media with their fictional Colonel Tribune character…
Something I caught on the Today Show this morning - a heartbreaking story about a 15 year old kid who died by playing something called “the Choking Game” - which apparently is a You Tube sensation amongst kids…This kid by all accounts was a good kid - great grades, no drugs, happy, etc. - but he died in his bedroom in front of his computer while “playing” this game…tragic…
Someone whose blog I read religiously - Chris Guillebeau’s “The Art of Non Conformity - Unconventional Strategies for Life, Work and Travel” - he just did a great post from Haiti which kind of recaps what he does and why he does it for anyone new to his site. I recommend it highly.
A few of the things that I have been reading today and have found interesting:
David Gregory - Meet the Press moderator David Gregory has a new video feature on his blog - it’s called ‘Gregory’s Take’ and today’s topic is his take on the torture debate.
Scott Weimer - Reading my friend Scott Weimer’s blog - WhyMedia? The Blog…Today he has a post called ‘What Else Does a Guy Have to Do To Get a Job? Bookmark this site - Scott is an intelligent and passionate voice in the Social Media community.
Ted Leonsis - One of the best, if not THE best owners in sports has to be Ted Leonsis - The Caps owner strikes me has a nice, gracious and generous guy who is dedicated to making his team better. They’ve done a great job with the franchise and have a very loyal fanbase. If they weren’t playing my team, The NY Rangers, I’d be rooting for them. In today’s post, Ted talks about the challenge ahead as his team finds themselves down 3 games to 1 agaginst the Rangers.
Seth Godin - And something I read every day - Seth Godin’s Blog. Today I thought he had an especially on-target post - It is called ‘What You Say, What You Do‘. It’s short, it’s simple, it’s the truth.
The true power of radio is undeniable. At its very best, radio has the ability to transcend the normal media clutter and become something truly special. Because of the intimate nature of the medium, stations, individual programs and on-air hosts have the ability to truly touch people and become a part of their day-to-day lives. This is amongst the reasons that have made radio so unique and kept it relevant amidst the advent of other media technologies.
If it’s about making personal connections with people (and it is), then radio is uniquely positioned to take advantage of the ‘new media world.’ With all the buzz about social networking these days, keep in mind that radio was the first mass media social network!
As I was listening to New York’s WFAN a couple of Friday afternoon’s ago, I realized that I was experiencing one of those ‘why radio is great’ moments. A little background: on Thursday August 14th it was announced that one-half of WFAN’s “Mike and the Mad Dog” afternoon drive radio program was leaving the show. Chris Russo (the Mad Dog) announced that he was leaving the program effective immediately. Along with co-host Mike Francesa, the two had been doing their afternoon-drive sports-talk radio show for the last 19 years. Yes, 19 years. In New York City. In the radio world that is an eternity.
In my previous post I was discussing how my son ‘taught’ me how to Google, and about the fact that kids really have NO idea how drastically the world has changed over the last 15-20 years in terms of technological developments and how they’ve altered the way we live, work and play.
Following up on that I thought I would try to identify what the biggest ‘game changers’ have been over the last couple of decades. And not just ‘game changers’ in terms of actual technologies, but also with products and services that utilize these new technologies. Of course this list is completely subjective - it’s things that I have seen from my perspective and mostly about things that have affected my life the most. And I’m going to leave out the general ‘Internet’ because even though that has been the development that has had the most impact, it is too broad, encompassing just about EVERYTHING. So to be fair, let’s just say that the ‘invention’ of the Internet (thanks Al) has been the biggest, most important thing ever. Now on with the list.
So the other day my son ‘taught’ me how to Google. He’s 8 years old.
We were talking about something or other and needed to find out more information. So he tells me, “hey Daddy, you can Google it” - I shook my head knowingly, but apparently not knowingly enough because he felt the need to continue. He explained to me this concept of using this new-fangled Google to get more information about things we needed information on. “You know the place where you put the www thing?”, he asked, before continuing, “well, to the right of that there’s a bar where you can put in whatever it is you want to find. It’s Google.”
Never one to dampen a child’s enthusiasm, I replied simply, “Ah, gotcha…Thanks.”
He was pretty proud of himself.
It made me laugh, of course, but also made me think once again of the phenomena of seeing things through a child’s eyes. There has been such great technological advancement over the last 20 years - truly ground-breaking, life-altering change - advancements that have affected the way we live, work and play. Think back to the time before the Internet, Blackberry, TiVo, Skype, iPod, Google and a zillion other things - is it even remotely possible that we were able to survive? Seriously. How did we do it? What do you mean we couldn’t book our airline tickets and check-in using the net? If there was no such thing as e-mail, how did we communicate with others? How did we conduct business? How did we get sports scores, like RIGHT NOW!!? Heck, forget about checking scores, that’s so after the fact. When I’m unable to watch the Yankee game on TV and don’t want to wait to watch it later on my DVR, I follow the game pitch-by-pitch on my Blackberry on the MLB site. Nice.
There was some interesting radio news coming out of the U.K. a week or so ago with the announcement that Virgin Radio U.K. was bought by the Times of India Group for roughly $104M (USD). The station will be run by a group called Absolute Radio, an investment and consultancy business headed by two former U.K. radio executives.
I have always been a huge fan of Virgin Radio U.K. I think they’ve had a really interesting, and wide, playlist - a mix of rock and pop from various eras and they’ve always put an emphasis on on-air personalities. Plus, they always got involved with or created on their own some really cool events. Add that all together and it was a pretty compelling package.
But apparently not compelling enough. Virgin Radio U.K. has had some “audience challenges” in recent years. Their audience share has decreased steadily and their overall audience number is much lower than it was 9 years ago when the current ownership group purchased the station for $440M USD!
One of the problems, interestingly enough, was the Virgin name itself. It should be noted that Virgin Radio U.K. isn’t actually owned and operated by Virgin. Like many Virgin brands, the name has been simply licensed by the Virgin Group. This has been problematic with advertising revenue because some companies were reluctant to advertise on Virgin Radio because they considered them a competitor to one of their brands. James Cridland and Adam Bowe have written about this on their respective blogs.
I got a call last night which shocked me.
The phone rang and before I picked up I took a look at the caller ID and saw by the 800 number that it was yet another telemarketer. Instead of ignoring it or picking up and then immediately hanging up as I usually do, I decided to answer it up and see what they wanted.
This is where the surprise came in.
The person on the other end of the phone simply said, “Hi Mr. Sabatini this is (name) calling from Verizon Wireless. We just wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for being a customer.”
Hmmmm…Okay. The classic setup. Good telemarketing technique - thanking me for my patronage and then coming in for the hard sell. I was ready. Ready to hear the pitch so that I could quickly cut her off by issuing my terse, “no thank you” followed by the sound of me hanging up.
I waited for her to continue with her pitch. But there was nothing. I waited some more but then the silence became deafening. “Uh, thanks” I mumbled semi-coherently. She thanked me again and then hung up. I stood there a bit dumbfounded. It wasn’t exactly what I was expecting.
Sure it is just another telemarketing technique but damn it is a good one. They didn’t actually want anything. Well, that is not entirely true, as they obviously want my business. But at that moment they didn’t want me to do anything, sign up for anything or think about spending more money with them for services I probably didn’t need.
It got me thinking about customer service and the value of GREAT customer service. There are companies that are renowned for their customer service but many, many more who are not.
Tick-tock.
It’s been two months since the U.S. Department of Justice approved the merger of the two U.S. satellite radio companies, XM and Sirius. That was supposed to be the hard part. It was thought that the FCC approval was soon to follow. It was a mere formality. As I’ve written about here and here - the merger of the two satellite radio companies was the right thing to do and in the best interest of the consumers. So I have to ask, what’s the deal?
Andrew Dubber’s post was right on.
As he pointed out, now that social engagement is moving from being a destination to a feature, it’s a big opportunity for radio.
Indeed.
Terrestrial radio has done a lot of things wrong in recent years but a way for them to get back in the game and re-establish their relevance is to make sure this is not an opportunity lost. Radio ain’t dead, but it’s broken. It’s critical for radio to re-engage listeners in new (and old!) ways.
And the whole ‘social thing’ is a big opportunity to re-engage.
Back in the day, the great state of New Jersey had an advertising campaign designed to promote tourism (and if there was any U.S. State that needed a campaign to promote tourism, it was New Jersey – Bruce Springsteen and the Jersey Shore not withstanding). The tagline of the campaign was New Jersey and You – Perfect Together! Taking creative license from the Garden State, I propose a slogan which applies to the topic at hand: Radio and Social Networks – Perfect Together!
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