Reinventing yourself in the digital age

Here's a case study of reinventing yourself in the digital age - and not from the 18-39 generation.

Charlie and Bill Benton have kicked around the Columbia radio market for years.

Late last year, it was curtains, as their show, "Good Morning Columbia," was yanked from the air in yet another radio reshuffle.

So what do you do in this digital age?

You take your talent and depth of market knowledge - and hopefully your audience - online.

The pair have resurfaced in a podcast in conjunction with a local digital publication MidlandsBiz.com.

 I don't know whether they'll be successful. The first podcast was not overly impressive, and I don't know whether in this age, when people seem to increasingly want quick bites of useful information more than a folksy conversation, the production will work.

The production values weren't all that great (cue the announcer from what sounds like a barrel), and there's no evidence of a social media or other infrastructure at the moment beyond what's on the MidlandsBiz page.

But it will be interesting to see how it develops and if they can create their own little narrowcast channel that brings in some revenue. And it's a way to show students what their future is likely to be - one where the only constant is reinvention.

WOWO - the day the earth stood still

Long ago, I worked for one of the rockingest-ever news organizations, Group W News (the old Westinghouse Broadcasting). Part of that included a stint at 50,000-watt WOWO in Fort Wayne. There's a great history site for the station historyofwowo.com that brings back those great radio days.

There are photos of station mementos and lots of airchecks, including a couple with yours truly. (I've mentioned the site before, but Webmaster Randy Meyer, who is doing this out of a love for the station, has put up a tremendous amount of new stuff in recent months.

And Nick McCormac now has sent me this great other site about a legendary day in WOWO's history - the day the Emergency Broadcast System went haywire and WOWO had three states thinking there might be a nuclear attack under way.

And why do they call me "Darling Doug Fisher"? You've gotta listen to find out. (MP3)

Good times. Not to be too over-the-top nostalgic, but those really were fun days in radio - even if we did occasionally scare the beejezus out of people.

ACES 2010: Copy editing on the radio

A panel of ACES folk were on WHYY Thursday explaining what copy editors are, what they do and how they are endangered.

Listen in. Or download the MP3.

David Sullivan kindly mentions this blog at 28:42 left. 

If you're heading to BEA, NAB, RDTNA in Vegas - free access to NAB show

I got an e-mail in that seems to check out, so I'm onpassing. Comes from a Jason Rouse at Tuvel Communications, which is repping the NAB show next week, April 10-15 (a phone call to the number on the company's Web site confirms the e-mail).

Rouse is offering to CSJ readers "free access to the exhibit floor, opening keynote and state of the industry address, info sessions, content theater and destination broadband theater and exhibits. Please pass this along and visit http://ow.ly/13T8Q to redeem or register at http://nabshow.com/register with the code A913."

He lists this as a $150 value.

I've followed the links as far as I can without actually registering and, again, things seem legit, though always caveat emptor.

Convergence Conference: Radio's conundrum

Tony DeMars, Texas A&M: HD Radio and local market broadcasting

Recent studies in general show:
• People are paying attention to digital radio
• People are interested in listening to online radio in car
• Younger people less interested in radio – tend to focus on personal music devices
• Two-thirds of those questioned are aware of XM/Sirius. Of those, most have made their decision whether to adopt. So unsure how much more product growth is available there.
• Only about a third of audience aware of HD radio

Media plans and developments
• Automakers are putting Internet radio tuners in cars
• Home wi-fi radio "tuners" emerging
• With Wi-Max rolling out, more opportunity to use these tech tools.

How do local radio people feel:
• Rights fee concern
• HD radio not viewed as profitable (few listen)
• Wi-fi radio is a concern
• Emphasis becoming on unique local programming vs. Clear Channel cookie-cutter model
• Putting niche programming on HD channels
• No longer talking about using stations to introduce "new music" because your audience probably already has found it through iTunes,, etc.

Problems
• Incremental costs vs. declining revenues
• SoundExchange fee problem: example, one station would pay $771 for 100 listeners at a time
• But Internet buyers paying $5/CPM (the SoundExchange model combines number of listeners with gigabyte downloads for total fee)
• Quote from one: By pushing people to wi-fi radio, "We are promoting our own self-destruction."

It's encouraging broadcasters to air fewer songs per hour. If a handful of your listeners are online, that's OK. But if it's half their listeners per hour, they can't survive.

WOWO history

Early in my career, I had the great fortune to work for Group W - the old Westinghouse Broadcasting in Philadelphia and Fort Wayne.

Fort Wayne's WOWO, at 50,000 watts, clear channel was the most fantastic place to work in the mid-1970s. DJs with great pipes and great personalities like Ron Gregory, Chris Roberts, Calvin Richards and Bob Sievers. And a great newsroom with folks like Dugan Fry, Jerry Hoffman, Bill Fisher, Ed Kasuba, Debbie Lowe and Art Salzberg -- and immediate on-air access to the famed Group W network.

Now, Randy Meyer has put together a wonderful tribute site to the old "WOWO 1190." He's done it up right at http://historyofwowo.com. It's got airchecks (the 1973-75 one of Calvin Richards and Ron Gregory (MP3) was the beginning of my stint there - a snippet of one of my newscasts is very near the end - 43 minutes in), some of the great old jingle packages (MP3), photos, etc.

If you really want a taste of what music-news radio in its heyday was like, head on over to the site. I've got to go rooting through the attic to see if I have anything left to send Randy. Anyone else out there with old WOWO mementos, consider contacting him as well.

The Voice will be missed

As a former radio guy, of course I was insanely jealous of Don LaFontaine, the voice behind all those movie trailers.

He died this week at age 68. The few times I'd heard him "off" mike, like on "Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me," he seemed like a heck of a guy. It was borne out in the Geico commercial, and this You Tube video is a fitting tribute (how many guys like this would knock off a voice mail announce message for people who just asked).

RIP S.C. jazz radio

Well, South Carolina's educational radio network has pretty much gutted any of the few hours of jazz programming it had left, except for "Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz" (since SCETV produces that, it would be rather unseemly to cut it).

In addition to doing away with the all-jazz format on WNSC so that it can largely duplicate programming already offered by the Charlotte area's other public stations, it's also done away with late-night jazz blocks on its other stations. (Not, by the way, that you'd find that information in The State, the state capital newspaper where ETV is headquartered -- an area covered by two and, in some places, three of ETV's stations. And that story I just linked to? Good luck if it's there in a week, as the Observer, like The State, is a McClatchy paper and things tend to disappear.)

It's a shame, really, in a state that produced the likes of Dizzy Gillespie and has a long jazz tradition (beach music notwithstanding) and active jazz education program.

For now, ETV is providing a helpful link of jazz streams on its Web site. Phhhhhht.

Yet another reason not to donate to a public broadcasting system repeatedly hobbled by the legislature and whose news programming already sucks. I'll take ETV head Moss Bresnahan at his word when he tells the Charlotte paper, “Local content is going to be one of our competitive advantages going forward.” And when he says he hopes to create a regional news network next year (about a decade after pressure from the legislature gutted what used to be a pretty good news department that got a little too feisty about reporting on state government).

Yeah, I'll take him at his word, but I'll wait till I see it. As Reagan said, trust, but verify. In the meantime, I'll be listening elsewhere -- on the computer.

Inside digital NPR (and other good stuff)

Yeah, yeah. I'm a lousy executive editor of The Convergence Newsletter.

We have good stuff in two issues, and I forget to flog it. So let me make up for that.

In the February issue, Editor Brad Petit begins a two-part conversation with Maria Thomas, senior vice president of digital media at National Public Radio, about the public broadcaster's digital strategy. A sample:

The Web site plays a variety of different functions, one of which is simply to make radio not ephemeral. ... So on some level, we are representing the stories that are told on the radio so that they can live on in an archival form. That’s a very basic element. Beyond that, if we think of these people in NPR News as storytellers, eventually we’ll want to move to a place where we think of them as storytellers or journalists and not necessarily affiliated with one platform or another.

I hope you'll check it out. The second part of the interview will be in the March issue (that link will work early nest week when we get it up). (Also, see a good story on NPR and its future from the Christian Science Monitor.)

Also in the February issue, check out Sid Bedingfield's The Problem with Broadcast News on the Web. Sid, who spent many years with CNN -- and before that UPI -- dissects why the current broadcast news package formula doesn't work on the small screen.

The package format has been the workhorse of broadcast news since the days of Murrow and Friendly. It is an efficient means of visual storytelling. In skilled hands, it can pack an emotional wallop. In the passive environment of television, where viewers “lean back” to watch the news, the package works well. On the Web, however, users “lean in” to engage with the content. There, the broadcast format falls flat.

The newsletter is free and comes out monthly, except in January when we're on break. (We may also take a break in July as we do some shifting of format.)

We are always looking for good contributions. Please consider proposing an article. We try for a mix of theoretical and practical from the field. We especially are looking for work that explains how convergence has affected communities and how it is reshaping international media as we go to some special issues on these topics. Feel free to pitch your idea my way (dfisher@sc.edu). No heavy lifting. Articles run 750-1,000 words and citation is miminal. We see the newsletter as a place to first try out some of your ideas before you go to a larger publication or to a peer-reviewed journal.

If you want to get the e-mail delivered monthly, send us a quick e-mail.

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Ira Glass - great videos on storytelling

Discovered on You Tube a great set of videos in which Ira Glass ("This American Life") discusses the art -- and the hard work -- of storytelling.

If you are a beginner, start with video 3. You need both the advice, and the reassurance, that things will be OK, but that you have to work at it and recognize the disconnect between your skills and ideals.

In video 1, he talks about the power of the anecdote in storytelling and the need for a nut graf (or more than one).

In video 2, he talks about the need to be willing to deal with many false starts and the need to be ruthless in knowing when to kill those so that you are doing enough reporting to find the really great stories.

And in video 4 he talks about being natural -- and being compelling as a result.

Yes, he frames this in terms of broadcast, but there is plenty of good stuff here for "print" as well -- and besides, who's really making that kind of distinction anymore when it comes to storytelling?

In memoriam: Bob Sievers

Word comes today that a former and dear colleague, Bob Sievers from WOWO in Fort Wayne, Ind., has died at 90.

I worked with Bob and the other great folks at WOWO (Jerry Hoffman, Dugan Fry, Bill Fisher, Art Saltsberg, Ron Gregory, Chris Roberts, Bob Chase, Ed Kasuba and many others) in the early 1970s, during the end of the station's heyday. There was a reason WOWO gushed green ink, and it was Sievers. He and Jay Gould and the morning "Little Red Barn" show brought in numbers that station managers would sell their mothers for.

Of course, being 50,000 watts full-time helped (the station no longer is 50K at night -- the Wikipedia entry on the station is pretty complete).

But Sievers was someone special -- yeah, corny, old-style, with a set of pipes aspiring radio folks would kill for. But most of all he knew people and cared about people. It came through on the air and in person. He always had a kind word for young staffers like me. The number of public appearances he did would kill many of today's DJs. And I never once saw him not stop on the street and have a chat and hearty handshake with whoever had hailed him. In these days of celebrity and glitz, you don't really know real celebrity unless you knew Bob.

I'm honored to say I got to work with him and knew him -- as I am about all the WOWO crew from those days. The station is a shadow of its former self, but Sievers' broadcast legacy will always be a little larger than life. The world is a little emptier for his passing.

SCETV should be ashamed

Being a state employee, I generally avoid commenting on anything having to do with state governemnt, etc. But there is one agency that continues to show how deficient it is as a media outlet, that after this week's deaths of nine firefighters in Charleston has shown what an embarrassement it is.

The agency is South Carolina's educational TV network, specifically its radio operation.

In many states like this one already starving for solid radio news, the NPR affiliates have risen to the challenge. Not this one, despite its network of stations around the state.

Nine dead firefighters in Charleston. And where is NPR getting its information? Not from an SCETV correspondent as near as I can tell -- in fact I listened to various NPR newscasts yesterday, and the voicers were coming from stations in places such as Wilmington, N.C. Or when there is a big story, NPR's Adam Hochberg, who is based in North Carolina, has to work the phones or head down here.

In fact, what we get on our NPR stations in the morning that passes for local news is warmed-over AP, stuff that's often a day or more old. And even worse than the few commercial stations that do news -- if that is possible -- the program director records one or two newscasts and then they just play in an endless loop. Listen during the hour and you'll hear the same thing two or three times. Several times, clearly outdated information has been on all morning. What? It's too much trouble to rip, read and record something fresh every 60 or 90 minutes? Maybe even take five minutes to rewrite it?

SCETV used to have a pretty powerful news staff. It was gutted in a dispute with the Legislature. Now, it seems that SCETV officials are scared of their shadows if anyone mentions radio "news."

What an embarrassment.

(Please, someone from SCETV correct me if I'm wrong, because on this side of the speaker it's really bad. And, yes, I'll answer the question -- no I do not contribute because I have seen no initiative by SCETV to stand up to the state pols and try to put in even a rudimentary news operation. Show me some initiative, and I'll show you the money.)

On SCETV's TV side, there has been at least a little attempt to get back in the news/public affairs business with "The Big Picture," which tonight is devoting its time to the tragedy. NPR, on the other hand, has blanketed the story -- no thanks as near as I can tell to much help from SCETV radio -- in fact, it's so embarrassing that SCETV's "coverage" of this story on the Web pretty much consists of pointing to NPR's content.

When the news hits your eye like a big pizza pie

It's not amore, but just silly, as in ths squib sent out by my boss today under the note: This sort of speaks for itself. But what does it say?

Ledo Pizza buys naming rights for WTOP "nerve center"
The Washington Business Journal reports Bonneville's News Titian WTOP in DC has struck a deal with Ledo Pizza to become the exclusive sponsor of its "glass-enclosed nerve center." Starting Monday and continuing every day for the rest of the year, listeners will be reminded at the top of the hour that the news they're hearing is originating from "from the Ledo Pizza glass-enclosed nerve center" at WTOP Radio. Max Schmitz, president of DC-based Maximilian Communications, which negotiated the deal for the Annapolis, MD-based pizza chain, tells the paper it was looking for "a reach monster" to deliver a new kind of branding for Ledo.


Some of my suggestions:

Sounds pretty cheesy ...

All pepperoni all the time ...

Those who work in glass houses shouldn't throw pizza dough ...

You give us 22 minutes, we'll give you the anchovies ...

I could go on, but ... why don't you pick it up in the comments column.
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UPDATE:

DCRTV has an MP3 of the WTOP stinger. See also the Washington Times story.