Wednesday, 30 April 2008
Christopher England said:
So, what am I supposed to listen to?
I'm afraid I don't have any suggestions for you at the moment. Things are, as you indicate, rather bleak.
Globotech under Richard Park and Jonathan Richards have taken LBC down this road of authoritative newstalk and more unified station sound. Personalities and individuality have been surpressed. Nick Abbot is having his style severely cramped. It seems he can't even use any Carol McGiffin voice clips now she has left and I doubt it is her stipulation. He still does make me laugh but sounds obviously uncomfortable. My current LBC favourite is AntHony Davis on weekend overnights but he is best when in a funny mood and that happens less often now than before. He has done some stand-ins on earlier shifts but often seems to get more serious than on his regular slot.
Talk 107 started off poorly, had its ups and downs, and then I thought it was getting into a good groove, but now the new MD Matt Allitt has made big changes in response to supposed audience research and focus groups (yuk!) and the need to try to cut costs. I was keenly following the fortunes of this station even though it still needed working on. With the latest semi-relaunch it has gone way down in my estimation so I listen much, much less now. They do lots more "Talking amongst themselves" in the studio and rely less on callers. I zone-out if I feel they are not addressing me and I am not invited to the party. The Edinburgers have disappointed me I must say. Why are they so rubbish at phoning-in and having a conversation?
I haven't listened much to City Talk at all, but when I have it hasn't really impressed me at all. Perhaps I'll give that another go.
Been listening to a couple of talk stations from New Zealand, but nothing remarkable to report there.
I still listen to the lads on Play Radio, they are relative novices but are giving it a go. Still listen to Iain on Virgin whenever I can as well.
Occasionally find something of interest amongst all the dross in Skypecasts which shows that you can produce a good talk show even with a surprisingly small number of listeners/participants if you know how.
The opportunity on radio is very much there for the taking.
Christopher England wrote:
: Never been a fan of games consoles. Ever. Or games on PCs. But, man,
: the more stuff I see on the Wii the more I'm convinced this is the
: console and gaming system that will wipe out all the others. I have
: become a Wii anorak.
Have you seen this, Christopher? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw
Imagine the possibilties!
Sky Results today.
==============================================================
Net customer growth in the quarter of 56,000 to 8.888 million
– New customer additions of 289,000
– Lowest third quarter churn for four years at 10.5%
• Total gross product sales of 1.2 million in the third quarter included:
– Growth in Sky+ households of 262,000 to 3.393 million
– Multiroom growth of 40,000 to 1.571 million
– HD growth of 43,000 to 465,000
– Broadband growth of 229,000 to 1.428 million
– Sky Talk growth of 180,000 to 1.095 million
Eric Tesug said:
C.E. and I have been advocates of Twitter for ages, recently a guy from a large broadcast organisation wrote a piece, after flying to a show in the USA, saying he'd found this great new thing called Twitter – he got HAMMERED for his story. In the future that kind of cock-up will make a huge difference to the brand and as such the value of the broadcaster.
Just my view
Eric
................................................................
Interesting opinion Eric, as I already see "Twitter" becoming the equivalent of DAB in Radio.
In the States I am seeing that "Twitter" is already starting to fade in popularity, it was used initially a lot in the current US Democratic Party nomination campaign, but it is now having nothing like the success rate of MySpace and Facebook.
So I see it as being just a short term popularity "fad"
John
The same boring, bland, politically correct
management approved, unchallenging, aural
wallpaper the rest of us switch off after
five minutes max.
What did you really expect after 40 years
of the establishment having its own way
all the time.
It pulls in the advertising, manipulates
the audience, but fails to entertain, inform
or challenge, for fear of offending sections
of the population which are prone to using
contentious material for there own ends.
merely a small part of the many things wrong
with society today. Get used to it, we let it
happen, and now are powerless to do anything about it
Arthur G. R. Sutherland
http://www.radioscotland.org.uk/Radioscotland.htm
http://aquan.tripod.com/Pichome.html
http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~ags3/Work.htm
Jay BS <...> said:
Interesting opinion Eric, as I already see "Twitter" becoming the
equivalent of DAB in Radio.In the States I am seeing that "Twitter" is already starting to fade in
popularity, but it is now having nothing like the success
rate of MySpace and Facebook.So I see it as being just a short term popularity "fad"
Actually I would say MySpace and Facebook are fads as well. especially the later. Alot of the younger personnel in the office had Facebook, now mostly are either taking themselves off or checking it very infrequently, rather like friends reunited (another ITV winner, bought after it peaked).
I suppose you have to have the latest fad to be at the top of your game. The winners will be the ones that use the latest fad to good effect and know when to drop it when its died
Steve
Alan Milewczyk said:
Can't stand that woman
There's no accounting for taste. Carol is funny and refreshingly honest, though she may have lost her edge a wee bit lately.
She is established in the TV gig and only had one LBC show per week but I admire her for saying on air that she was not happy with the management's direction when she left.
Perhaps the most significant thing is how Nick's show is affected by self-important idiots standing over his shoulder and breathing down his neck all the time with an endless list of don'ts and more don'ts. He needs to be given freedom to do the show he likes to do, his clips are important to him and the Carol ones were always among the ones he used the most.
In article <c5d0d05beba17a10fd27a047344af75c@jiglu-wc>, ... (Stephen Sullivan) wrote:
I suppose you have to have the latest fad to be at the top of your
game. The winners will be the ones that use the latest fad to good
effect and know when to drop it when its died
SPOT ON Sir, and that was the point I was making.
You can't report a new trend a year after it became a trend.
Eric
Quoting a previous Jay BS contribution:-
In the States I am seeing that "Twitter" is already starting to fade in
popularity, it was used initially a lot in the current US Democratic
Party nomination campaign, but it is now having nothing like the success
rate of MySpace and Facebook.
The issue with Twitter that dumbfounds me is that it is just a poor relation to Jaiku. Jaiku has very sexy threading and actual conversations, plus a brilliant mobile phone application that doesn't actually rely on sending and receiving texts. No wonder Google bought Jaiku. Most of the Web 2.0 developers are on Jaiku rather than Twitter. Yet Twitter is the far more popular service globally. Having said that, the number of applications written for Twitter is phenomenal, so I guess it's more about how you use Twitter in conjunction with other things rather than using Twitter as a stand alone package! But, I still don't get why Jaiku is effectively the poor relation (Actually, I think it will be the 'engine' part of something big from Google coming out later this year, but my mind's gone blank as I write as to whether or not that is embargoed, so I'll go vague now!).
The biggest enemy of the Twitter / Jaiku type services in the States and Canada is the stupid tariffing system of the cellphone companies, so I can understand why interest might be waning. Unlike Europe, Japan and Korea (massive Twitter users) and many other places, their mobile phone networks charge people for each incoming call or text message they receive. After a couple of weeks worth of tweets from Twitter I can see how the Dollars probably mount up and people outside of the Web 2.0 anoraks start to reduce their Twitter dependence.
It's certainly not waning over here though. It's doing a Bebo. ('Doing a Bebo' refers to the USA based MySpace/Facebook lookie-likey called Bebo which has limited interest amongst the American yoof, yet huge interest throughout Europe – I've no idea why though 'cos Bebo's as crap as MySpace imho.)
Even Number 10 Downing Street send out tweets – and, interestingly, answer tweets aimed at them too! So, Government is suddenly looking at its Web 2.0 presence.
Twitter (or Jaiku) is not a rival to MySpace or Facebook, more a supplement – or 'application' (to use that overused word) with a specific purpose which is different to MySpace and Facebook. (Interestingly, European Facebook usage is waning slightly too.) Indeed, both Twitter and Jaiku have 'applications' that nicely integrate their functions into Facebook to enhance your Facebook experience. (Not that I personally like Facebook, no matter how many 'applications' are used to try to make it sexier! I hate it, but am forced to use it 'cos everybody's using it.)
Anyway, don't write Twitter off, it'll change and migrate as any other Web 2.0 application does, but the basics of it will continue for a very long time yet. Short bites of 'presence' information or quick-fire comments are the new way. Long meandering posts like this one are soooooo yesterday!
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* Christopher England just said that *
Quoting a previous Stephen Sullivan contribution:-
Actually I would say MySpace and Facebook are fads as well. especially
the later. Alot of the younger personnel in the office had Facebook, now
mostly are either taking themselves off or checking it very
infrequently,
Isn't this being called 'Facebook fatigue' and is due to an overload of information and people's brains about to explode? Something I read about how people just become tired of trying to fit it all in!
—
* Christopher England just said that *
Christopher England wrote:
But how does the Wii remote (or controller) know all this stuff about
what you are doing and how you are doing it?
Integrated Circuit 'micromachined' accelerometers that can sense movement in 3 dimensions: http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/taxonomy.jsp?nodeId=01126911184209
They are also used to detect when you drop your MP3 player so as to park the heads on the mini hard disc before it hits the ground.
Clever, eh?
Cheers
Andy
CEng MIET
Quoting a previous Alan Milewczyk contribution:-
To be honest, I'm pretty bewildered about all these options and how one
is better than another. I don't have (or should I say, am unwilling to
devote) time to explore all these options and how they compete against
each other or even complement each other – I've far better things to do
with my time.
<Snip>
Convince me otherwise, Chris!;-)
Ok, I think you have to look at the whole expansion of new 'technologies' (I hate the word 'applications'!) on the web as mainly an extension of toys in a toy shop. 99% of them you don't 'need', but if that's your inclination then they are fun to play with, to explore, to examine, to get bored with, to stash in a cupboard and forget about. Generally speaking, I tend to play with the new applications that come along and largely get bored and put them in the cyber cupboard and forget about them. But now and again, what starts off as a novelty and a toy ends up being really useful.
A penknife might start off more as a toy, but it crosses over to being more than a toy – something useful, maybe if it is subsequently used daily, it's more than useful, it's essential. For somebody else who has no use for a penknife on a regular basis, the penknife's status remains that of a 'toy and not 'useful''. When that user get bored with opening and closing it they stash it in the cupboard and forget about it. So, I guess it's a personal choice issue really.
So, I can't try and sell you Twitter or Jaiku as being the next best thing to, erm, a penknife, if what they are providing doesn't / can't / won't ever fit into your 'useful' category in your lifestyle. They have to be something you find that you 'need'. Once upon a time we didn't 'need' satnav (and certainly won't need any more after this week's Doctor Who). But how many feel they 'need' it now? Same with mobile phones. I feel naked without mine. And man, you don't want me sitting next to you on a train naked. Others can take or leave mobile phones, they're not a 'need'.
To describe my Twitter adventure, I guess it's: I heard about it. Signed up and fiddled with it (toy stage) then started to realise I could have things like a daily weather check blip to my mobile at no cost to me. I subscribed to everything and anything. Pretty soon I was receiving about 300 texts a day. Suddenly I thought, "w-t-f am I doing, this constant receiving texts is driving me mad!", and so unsubscribed to most of them.
What I have now is 'useful'; it's a combination of friends and work colleagues who I'm keeping tabs on by receiving their tweets (and they mine), it's the weather (still), it's feeds of alerts telling me, for example if Anorak Nation isn't working, it's texts of certain news stories, etc. I find most of this 'useful'. It fits in with my lifestyle. I can fully appreciate how others might think I'm mad. However, if I use a particular Jaiku account to ask something like 'Anybody got a free old style DV tape spare?' then a whole load of 'targeted' people, including people I've never met, instantly know of my plight via their mobile phone and can come running to help (or ignore) me.
So, I think what I'm getting at is that a lot of what is at the 'cutting edge' today yet pointless, will become standard practice tomorrow.
On the other hand you've things like Facebook. I'm betting most people are on there because most people are on there.
And let's face it, none of us 'need' Facebook and the like. Or maybe that's just me?
So, whilst I can't quite see where Facebook leads to, yet appreciate that hundreds of thousands spend all day at work on it, uploading pictures to share with 'friends' of when they were last very drunk, I assume that eventually something useful and non-toyish can come out of it.
Actually, that's not exactly true. I had somebody apply for a job, and checked them out on Facebook to see what I could glean from who their friends were more about them and what they were like. I guess you could argue that that is the sinister side of Facebookery.
As for Twitter vs Jaiku, all I would say is "don't forget the Betamax vs
VHS" experience twenty odd years back.
Most importantly, you can have both for free!
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* Christopher England just said that *
Quoting a previous Andy Burnham contribution:-
Integrated Circuit 'micromachined' accelerometers that can sense
movement in 3 dimensions
Mysterious whiteman magic!
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* Christopher England just said that *
