A Cool History of Recorded Music

from Gizmodo

Enjoy. Click on the picture for the full view.

Big Day For Twitter

Oprah has signed on.

Just today Ms. Winfrey signed up and tweeted 6 times during here show.

Now that Oprah, Ashton, and Larry King on board....and me of course...all they need now is a revenue model.

Seriously, Webnewser had this:

Yes, it's happened. This morning Oprah Winfrey joined Twitter (@Oprah) during her show. Her first Tweet: "ASHTON IS NEXT!" was very anti-climactic. Instead of hitting Update, Nate Berkus hit Refresh. So it went to Twitter purgatory. Her first successful Tweet:

HI TWITTERS . THANK YOU FOR A WARM WELCOME. FEELING REALLY 21st CENTURY .

Oprah sent six successful updates during the show (9amCT) and none since. She'd already had about 75,000 followers at the beginning of the show. As of 4:30pmET (when Oprah airs in New York), she has 144,000 followers. Many social net-watchers think now that Oprah Winfrey is on Twitter, the platform has officially gone mainstream.

But, is that a good thing or a bad thing?

What A Week!

No shortage of news...

• Clear Channel managers learn about a new batch of available "programming options" from San Antonio
  
• Ascertainment is back...hey let's find out if we are serving our communities--good idea
  
• Less wasn't more--PSA's are back
  
• Edison Research and Arbitron release a new study that shows young radio listeners are listening less
• Portable digital media devices are STILL growing and fast
  
• 42 million Americans are listening to radio on-line--and lots more competition from non-traditional radio providers like Pandora
  
• A heritage AM station in NE PA goes dark...maybe for good

...and on and on and on

Not a great week the for biz really--repackaged initiatives, discouraging research, and short-sighted operators doing more of what they do every week. Certainly, there are positive nuggets mixed in, but for the most part it's pretty cloudy out there. Innovation is practically a dirty word in the hallways of many companies these days.

I feel compelled to repeat myself a little today:

• Non-stop music machines are not the answer to excite listeners--in the long term even with PPM (long term? yeah, I know)
• Playing 30 and 40 year old classic rock on stations hoping to attract a passionate following of 25-34's is a losing strategy
• Ryan Seacrest can only be on the air for some many hours in any given day
• Why can Top 40 stations play mostly currents and recurrents for women, but most believe that strategy can't work for a "guy" station? (It can, and I am doing it successfully)
• Talk radio is not about political parties, but entertainment...period. (and no, Limbaugh is NOT the leader of the Republican party...good rhetoric though)
• Sometime soon we need to commit to attracting some young new voices to our ranks and encourage them to talk to their peers in ways that 50 year old's can't.
• Commercials are a necessity, how about reinvesting in the process of writing and producing better copy and audio?
  

I'm sure you have a few of you own. Feel free to contribute.

It's a lot easier when we all assume the position of "get along and go along" but that is not what our industry needs right now. We need a revolution of sorts. Evolution ain't gonna cut in anymore. This type of action won't come from cashflow positive stations since no one will risk that type of upheaval--understood. So we wait. We wait for grim reaper of failure to cast its ugliness upon us, and then...