msb-0098 What's wrong with advertising?

msb-0098 What's wrong with advertising?

Feedback come first, so...

the stats from my little show are looking:

• worse
• the same

or

• better

Pick one. (Hint, hint, its the last one. :-)

Apart from that, its been mostly about, and taken care of on, the various blogs I try to visit (Got a blog to add to my list? Email me: charles (at) MSBPodcast.com )

I'm hoping that I might have picked up a few new listeners from the exposure I got from being (or is that going to get from today's appearance) on Sirius Radio. (If you came on board from the promo show, and I figure some of you must have because the numbers are definitely up, won't you let me know by sending me an email: charles (at) MSBPodcast.com.)

I'm over 5,000 downloads. After only 11 months. With a really special audience. Who'd a thunk it. :-)


---- "Snakes on a Plane The Official Unofficial Theme Song" by: "Former Fat Boys"

Things are pretty dead at this time of year.

Specially at the Dallas Fort Worth airport.

The tornadoes that blew through the area last Friday killed some people as well as our scheduled flight, and my wife's plans for our return.

The weather was really, really bad. Our plane was delayed getting in so that it couldn't take off again.

All of Sunday the 31th of December 2006 was spent in noisy airports and in steel cylinders pretending to be buses and birds before finally landing in the dark back home in Joysee.

Kudos to Continental airlines for having wheel chairs waiting at the gates and for making sure that our luggage didn't end up in Fiji, or somewhere else I'd rather be than in Joysee. :-)

Exhausted, my wife and I finally made our way back to our condo after enjoying over a week off in the wilds of Texas somewhere in between Dallas and Fort Worth.

(Being driven everywhere since I had to give up the car is warping my sense of geography.

I didn't give up on driving directly because of MS but I just didn't want to pay the parking tickets anymore when I couldn't make it down in time to shift to the alternate side or have to park far away and then walk to and from...

Having a car in Manhattan definitely detracts from your mobility.)

I came back to a heap-load of phone messages.

No kudos to [leave name of carrier out to avoid a law suit].

My friggin' phone didn't ring once while I was away and meanwhile people were leaving me all sorts of messages.

That was the whole point of having a cell phone, so people could reach me.

I am looking for a contract so I can get some income, uh, incoming

When I checked I found out that it wasn't working. Grrr...

---- "Roadless Traveler" by: "Anduze"

So ... Apart from the deliberately ambiguous phrasing of the question of this post, I'm going to play some tunes that I just happen to like. (I hope I won't get in trouble with any of you. My tastes are pretty eclectic. But, don't worry "Miss Chris", there's no Country and Western music. :-)

---- "I Dont Like To Travel" by: "Byther Smith"

The phrasing, the accents we place and the weight we give to each syllable, in the title of this podcast was deliberately ambiguous because we have a lot to discuss.

Lets take it as "What's "wrong" with advertising?"; meaning: "What's broken with the advertising model."

Every one of us, as a consumer, hates advertising.

Its intrusive, distracting, obtrusive and interfering. Its in our face and we don't want it there. We'd rather watch what we'd thought the show was about.

Getting fewer minutes of "Friends" doesn't seem fair when we wanted to watch the whole episode. Instead we're getting less content depending on "Friends" popularity.

The very act of liking something means that we get less and less of it because our eyeballs and ears are so fuckin' precious to the channels that carry both ads and content, and unfortunately content is not paying the freight.

Product placement was supposed to alleviate some of this problem by placing a selection of competing products, and the selection would be based on who had the bigger advertising budget.

All that's happened is that there was even more money involved and getting in the way of the content.

---- "Future Travel" by: "Dreamline"

Lets now take as"What's "wrong" with advertising?"

It makes many things available to us, of course.

I could take that as meaning what is broken with the advertisers.

The problem is the clock. In broadcasting that clock is the tyrant. In podcasting, it isn't.

In broadcasting every second that streams by is gone. (Even though TiVO and other catching/time shifting device help in that respect by putting you in control of when you watch, you're still limited by the broadcaster's clock and the ingrained blockbuster mentality.)

This means that every second that your eyes, ears and attention aren't focused on whatever media presentation device they are using is not a good thing. You are required to sit there and passively consume.

They are totally focused on selling access to your senses and they figure that you'll take what ever they're giving for what ever content they trade off for the 86,400 seconds of your time. (Think about that: access to your senses. )

And since they don't make any money delivering you content, the less of their precious 86,400 seconds that content uses, the more money that can make, and you know its all about the Benjamins, baby. Its all about the Benjamins.

In podcasting, you control when you watch, but you have access to so many more possible things to catch, things that couldn't possibly interest enough of an audience (things like a model railroading channel, say, or a special channel for a disease, like this one for MS.)

---- "travelling radio" by: "jr"

Last, lets take is as "What's wrong with advertising?"

The answer is that there's nothing wrong with advertising, if the advertising is relevant and not interrupting the flow of a show.

This is where podcasting can really shine.

Relevance is guaranteed by the narrow focus of this and other podcasts and ads can work if they're discreet.

You won't find car ads and other mass market goods or services here. I don't put them up because they are already successfully done in other media.

And since odcasts are not fighting with every other ad for your attention for that one precious minute, they can really be effective.