Remembering Allie
Sunday, April 30th, 2006
I’m back at home now after burying my precious Allie on Friday in her hometown of Lawrenceburg, Tennessee. The church was filled with flowers, and the service was upbeat and memorable. The anchor team from WAAY-TV in the 90s was there, and several served as pall bearers. Hundreds of people showed up at the visitation Thursday night to express their love and support.
Her mother, Ma Jane, held up well and was surrounded by family and friends, and I don’t know what I would’ve done without the loving support of my friend Holly from Huntsville, the entire Hughes family, and the hugs and kisses of my sweet daughters, Brittany and Larissa. Death is a time of extreme emotions, and I don’t know how those who don’t have a familial support system endure the agony of such a loss.
It’s raining here in Nashville as I write this, and that pretty much describes my mood. But I’m going to be okay, and it’s going to be okay. I have that deep, unshakeable assurance this morning. I know there are many bad days ahead, and that I’ll burst into tears over the silliest of things, but I also know that she wants me to move forward, and that’s a part of what I want to talk to you about this morning.
There have been more than a few raised eyebrows over the post I wrote upon returning from the hospital Tuesday morning. Let me explain.
I believe — as Doug Rushkoff wrote in his book “Get Back in the Box” — that the internet isn’t a media phenomenon or a technical phenomenon as much as it is a social phenomenon. In this sense, he wrote, it will change everything. In our increasingly postmodern culture, the greatest social connection we have beyond family is our tribe, a concept both practical and esoteric. We choose our tribe, whereas we don’t choose our family.
We learn from each other, and this, too, is the postmodern way. “I experience (I participate), therefore I understand” isn’t just a bunch of nice words. It’s the cornerstone of all that’s new and all that is to come. If we don’t experience something for ourselves, we look for the experiences of others, especially those close to us.
The sense of loss that I felt that morning was overwhelmed by a fear so profound that I can’t even begin to describe it. My whole world was torn out from beneath me, and I was scared to death. The only — and I mean only — place I felt safe while I was awaiting the arrival of family and friends was right here at my keyboard. If I moved even a few steps away, I began to feel suffocated and would race back. I wrote the post and I sent an e-mail, and what happened after that kept me going. Hundreds upon hundreds of people responded, and I can’t tell you how important that was to me.
People I didn’t know (I’m apparently a member of many other tribes) shared their thoughts, poems, condolences and experiences, and that was enormously helpful to one so adrift in fear and the unknown. This is profound in its implications for the future of humankind, and I hope you all can see that. We are not alone. None of us. We need each other, and we have the shared knowledge and capacity for compassion that will save the world. I mean that with all my heart. Our institutions have failed, but we will not.
Blogger and Marcom:Interactive president Gary Goldhammer wrote a beautiful post later that day that touched on this: Death in the blogosphere: what we gained from Terry Heaton’s loss. He writes about the outpouring of love expressed in the comments to my post and makes a very important observation:
Many of these mourners knew Terry only through his writing. They didn’t know Terry personally, they didn’t know his wife, and they didn’t know Terry�s favorite food or football team. Yet the pain in these people�s comments seeps through the computer screen as if Terry was a blood relative. There are condolences, poems, prayers and personal reflections. There are people stripped of all pretense and puffery, commenting not out of the need to get links, but the need to share love.Say what you want about bloggers and social media. Question blogging�s veracity and its place in the world of modern communications. But never question the power of one man with a computer and something to say to move a multitude of strangers.
Through his loss, Terry Heaton has given us all the opportunity to connect in a deeply personal way to him, Allie, and each other. And for that, Terry, we thank you from the bottom of our blogging hearts.
We were unable to attend church very much, but that didn’t bother either of us, and I’m sure it didn’t bother the Lord. We talked a lot about her upbringing in the church and the struggles she’d had with faith in the years following a dreadful family tragedy involving her father. But her middle name was Faith, and so she just lived it. For Allie, it wasn’t so much what you espoused as what you did, and especially as it related to other people. She was always saying hello to complete strangers — in the store, on the street, anywhere. She LOVED life and spread happiness and joy wherever she found herself.
We read the Bible before going to bed, and she loved the Psalms. She was fascinated by the Old Testament stories and adored the red words, but it was the Psalms that ministered to her the most. After we’d read, we’d kiss and say, “Time to go nye-nye, go seep seep. ‘He gives to His beloved sleep.’” She loved that verse most of all, and it was the last thing I said to her as we closed the casket.
My prayer for each of you this day is that God will bless you and keep you. May He repay you in kind for the love and support you’ve so generously shared with me. And may you experience — if even for a moment — the love that I found in my precious Allie.
My Allie’s funeral arrangements
Tuesday, April 25th, 2006Thank you for the outpouring of love. I’m incredibly sad, because I miss her so much, but the well wishes from former co-workers and friends has been inspirational. It’s a testament to my beloved.
Here are the funeral details:
Visitation will be held on Thursday, April 27 at the Pettis Turnbo Funeral Home at 501 W Gaines St., Lawrenceburg, Tenn.; from 4:00 to 9:00 PM.
The funeral will be held on Friday, April 28 at 10:30 AM, at the First Baptist Church of Lawrenceburg, Tenn., on Springer Road.
The funeral will be followed by interment at the OK Baptist Church Cemetery, at the corner of Grandaddy Road and OK Road, Lawrenceburg, Tenn.
If you can make it, I’d love to see you. If not, I’d love to fill the church with flowers. She loved them in life and spent most of the last month planting them around the outside of our house.
My beloved rests in peace
Tuesday, April 25th, 2006
My precious and beautiful wife, Allie, passed away during the night. I found her lifeless body on the floor of the bathroom at 3:30 a.m. The paramedics did everything they could, but she was already gone. We have no idea what happened. She was young (41). She was fit. She was so full of life that it’s, frankly, very hard to believe she is gone.
I’m in shock and obviously grieving, but I wanted to let you know and write a few words about what she meant to me. It’s my way.
She was my life, folks. She was my inspiration, the one who reached in and brought out all my essays. With her unrelenting encouragement, I’ve written 65 or so essays about broadcasting, postmodernism and new media. None of that would’ve been possible without my Alicia Faith.
She was everything to me, and I worked hard to let her know that. I’d been married a couple of times before she came back into my life a few years ago, and I wasn’t very good at it. She was different, so very different, and with her, I honestly felt the love, respect and support that the experts talk about when describing good marriages. She was my rock, too, and I don’t know what I’m going to do without her.
I’ll likely not be blogging for awhile. We don’t know about funeral arrangements and all that just yet, but I’ll try to let you know the when and where. Meanwhile, I could sure use your prayers right now. No man ever expects to bury his bride, especially one so young and healthy.
She knew I loved her, and I knew she loved me. We were fortunate and blessed for that. We just talked about it yesterday, about how our love had actually grown since our wedding 18 months ago. I’m so very lucky to have had those months with such a precious and pure soul. Words cannot express how much I miss her.
May God hold her safely in His arms now and forever.
Winer: Amateur isn’t below professional
Monday, April 24th, 2006Amy Gahran at Poynter points to the interview last week of Dave Winer by Rocketboom. This is Amy’s favorite quote and now mine too.
“Amateur is not below professional. It’s just another way of doing [media]. The root of the word amateur is love, and someone who does something for love is an amateur. Someone who does something to pay the bills is a professional. The amateurs have [more integrity than] the professionals. If you’re an amateur you have less conflict of interest and less reason not to tell your truth than if you have to pay the bills and please somebody else.”
Happy Birthday, NiT
Monday, April 24th, 2006Nashville Is Talking, the popular Nashville blog aggregator site hosted by my client, WKRN-TV,is one year old today. Go read the post and remember: this could be your station and your market.
Next up for them is an ad network to generate revenue for both the station and the bloggers.
Congrats, Brittney. We couldn’t have done it without you.
The Real Threat to Local Broadcasters
Monday, April 24th, 2006Here is the latest essay in the ongoing series “TV News in a Postmodern World.” This is a follow-up to the last essay, “Investing in a Local Future,” and examines the battle for the soul of the “local” franchise for media companies.
As broadcasters gather in Las Vegas for the National Association of Broadcasters annual meeting, they do so with what I believe is a false sense of understanding about what’s tearing their business model apart. The disruption isn’t multiple platforms from which to sell their wares; it’s the Personal Media Revolution — as Glenn Reynolds so beautifully puts it, “The triumph of personal technology over mass technology” — and beneath it, the increasing drain on local advertising money by outsiders.
The shift of ad dollars from broadcasting to the web has been confirmed in many ways, but the shift hasn’t significantly impacted the bottom lines of local broadcasters. Why is that?
To paraphrase Ross Perot, “That sucking sound you hear is local ad dollars going to businesses with no investment in the local community.” Moreover, as smart technology companies up the ante in the local INFORMATION space, local media companies are in danger of losing this franchise altogether. Overstated? Perhaps, but it’s dangerous to underestimate players who have proven they know what they’re doing and aren’t afraid to invest a few dollars to experiment. Read on:
Cell phones and horse crap
Sunday, April 23rd, 2006One of the truly original people on the planet is David Weinberger, he of Cluetrain fame. Today, he laments about his cell phone in one of the funniest posts I’ve read in a long time. He references the Cingular claim that they have the fewest dropped calls as a “statistically significant steaming pile of horse crap.”
My own study certainly backs up the horse crap hypothesis. My Cingular phone only works if I actually climb a Cingular antenna tower, of which there seem to be a total of nine in the continental United States. Fortunately, the towers are only 11 inches tall.I exaggerate. My Cingular phone also works if my phone is within shouting distance of yours. In fact, I’d like a rebate for the total minutes I spend yelling “Can you hear me now?” into my phone. If the terrorists were smart they’d use variations of “Can you hear me now? How about now?” as code, thus slipping by any covert government eavesdropping programs.
If it ain’t broke, break it (Oh, but it’s already broken)
Friday, April 21st, 2006Long time readers of this Website will recognize the advice given to broadcasters yesterday at the Television Bureau of Advertising (TVB) meeting in New York. The headline in the New York Times says much: Television Stations Are Urged to Break a Few Rules.
“Conventional wisdom, it’s an enemy at a time like this,” said Beth Comstock, president for digital media and market development at NBC Universal, part of General Electric. “In media today, I don’t think there is a single rule that can’t — and frankly, probably shouldn’t — be broken.“This isn’t just about driving growth,” she added. “It’s about staying in business.”
My friend Gordon Borrell (he of Borrell Associates local Website revenue research fame) told a panel that it’s a time of great opportunity.
“All media are in flux, and flux is a great time to institute change.”…When it comes to capitalizing on additional methods of delivering content and ads, Mr. Borrell said, “we are where television was in the late 1950’s.”
“We must be like Google, in a constant beta state,” said Christine M. Di Stadio, senior vice president for marketing and new media at the New York Times Broadcast Media Group. Her reference was to the myriad test products and services offered on the Google Web site.Local stations ought to offer opportunities for social networking on their Web sites, Ms. Di Stadio suggested, to compete with popular services like MySpace; streaming video, to compete with Web sites like YouTube; and mobile marketing.
As an example, Ms. Di Stadio described a “mobile physician finder” she is developing, listing doctors and their telephone numbers. Cellphone users will be able to “click on the phone number and dial, using click-to-call technology,” she said.
“Guys, we needed all these screens to come along to make us exciting and vibrant again,” Ms. Di Stadio said, laughing.
But here is my warning amidst all this excitement. Embracing the multi-platform universe isn’t going to rescue your business for two reasons. One, the business disruption isn’t coming from multiple platforms; it’s the drift from mass media to personal media. And, two, if multi-platform is your only strategy, you are assigning yourself to the content-provider (only) space for the future. The real opportunities are on the aggregation side, not just in making content available everywhere.
There is so much more available to local broadcasters than trying to shift their reach-frequency business model to other worlds. That vision keeps me on the outside with groups like the TVB and NAB, but that’s okay. Wisdom is justified of its children.
On the road again
Tuesday, April 18th, 2006
I’m headed up to New York for a presentation to important people and a meeting with other important people. Sounds important, eh? I’ve been looking forward to this trip for a long time.
Light blogging the next couple of days. Back Thursday afternoon.
Does ABC really believe in what it’s doing?
Tuesday, April 18th, 2006Here’s a remarkable note from an AdAge panel — The Upfront Conversation — this morning as reported by Steve Rubel.
I asked the panel where digital fits into this mix. For example, how do emerging new channels like ABC’s effort to put shows online fit into the upfront (which is when most TV time is sold)?…Surprisingly, Mike Shaw, President of Sales and Marketing for ABC, went straight for the numbers of people watching video online. He said they were too small in relation to the mother ship. He dismissed the significance of these new platforms because of the numbers. This is despite ABC’s lead in testing new channels. He said that streaming video and other online viewing platforms “are not scalable.”
..It struck me during the panel discussion that the TV networks - despite their recent initiatives - still do not live in a long tail world. They’re largely focused on reaching mass audiences. Shaw’s comments indicates that the nets are not seeing an opportunity to augment their huge reach by using the Web to help marketers build a deeper level of engagement with select slices of micro audiences who tell the larger group what to watch.
The marketers, meanwhile, are far along in their “getting it.”
Of course, Mr. Shaw may simply be positioning himself to deal with advertisers for the forthcoming upfront, which is what this discussion was all about in the first place. After all, who, when selling $10,000 spots, wants to admit the validity of $100 spots?
Don Fitzpatrick R.I.P.
Tuesday, April 18th, 2006Word is in from Rick Gevers that Don Fitzpatrick has passed away. Don is a legend in local broadcasting, the original headhunter. He was always on the side of the workers in the industry, creating the first newsletter, Rumorville, that was faxed to stations every day. That became ShopTalk, and the rest is history.
Here’s what Rick had to say in an email:
Don died over the weekend in Alexandria, LA. Details are sketchy, but he apparently had been in the hospital for tests and was released on Friday.For many years, Don operated Don Fitzpatrick Associates, a head hunting firm for broadcasters, from offices in downtown San Francisco. He also began one of the first online newsletters, originally called Rumorville, which later became Shoptalk.
Don closed DFA in late 1999 to concentrate on Shoptalk and a website, tvspy.com.
May he rest in peace.
It’s not enough just to participate
Monday, April 17th, 2006Technorati’s Dave Silfry has issued another “State of the Blogosphere” report, and the results are familiar. The blogosphere is doubling every six months.
It’s not enough for local broadcasters to just get into new media alternatives to their business model; they must also use their mass marketing clout — while they still have it — to encourage people to use new approaches in media. Yes, I realize that sounds heretical, but you don’t have to actually ask people to abandon your broadcast platform to invite them to use your RSS feeds or your smart aggregators, or to teach them what those things are.
Look, the point is that the migration from old to new is happening whether mass media entities assist in moving it forward or not. Would you rather have your viewers learn of Media 2.0 opportunities from you or Yahoo! and Google? Moreover, wouldn’t you want them using YOUR applications instead of theirs.
Looking the other way as all this is happening is another way local broadcasters are shooting themselves in the foot as the Media 2.0 disruption eats away at their value props.
NFL draft comment
Monday, April 17th, 2006This is an off-topic note, but I want to say something on-the-record that I can reference downstream. I watched Mel Kiper say on ESPN yesterday that Jay Cutler is overrated. Cutler is the Vanderbilt quarterback that single-handedly carried a consistently underdog team in the tough SEC conference.
I want to say that Kiper has missed this by a mile, and I want to remind him of such when Cutler performs above the other quarterbacks in this year’s draft class. You have to have seen Cutler play to appreciate his talent, something Kiper has apparently not done. I felt the same way a few years ago when watching a fellow play for Miami of Ohio. His name was Ben Roethlisberger.
The internet eliminates middlemen
Monday, April 17th, 2006I’m quoted in a Christian Science Monitor article on how podcasting — audio AND video — is disrupting the local broadcasting business. No surprises for regular readers here, but, hey, it IS the CSM.
10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed Me
Sunday, April 16th, 200610 days that unexpectedly changed me (and my life)
Sunday, April 16th, 2006A fascination with the History Channel series, “10 days that unexpectedly changed America,” put me in a retrospective state of mind this holiday weekend, so here’s my list. It’s a fun and inspirational exercise, and one that I strongly recommend for everybody. It’s my Easter gift to you.
The price of opinion
Friday, April 14th, 2006A friend and local political blogging legend “has resigned” his PR job at Belmont University here in Nashville, presumably over an article in the alternative weekly newspaper that attacked him over an insensitive cartoon he posted on one of his websites. The local blogosphere leaped to his defense (well some did), but it was apparently too late.
Bill Hobbs is a good man who I don’t think deserves this. If it turns out the university fired him — which is certainly how it looks — it would have to go down as one of the most cowardly events in the history of Christian academia. It is, however, a lesson in exercising care in today’s politically correct (and overly sensitive) world. What he did may have been stupid, but I don’t think it should’ve cost him his job.
Here’s more from Nashville Is Talking.
The Olympic failure
Friday, April 14th, 2006Most observing eyes have been saying for awhile that 2007 would be the crisis year for local broadcasters, and I don’t entirely disagree. The conventional thinking is that post-Olympics and post-election years always see a downturn in business, because the previous years were so “good.” But I’ve been suggesting that 2006 would not see the Olympics and election windfalls of the past, and that those who budgeted for these traditional gains will have a hard time hitting the mark.
Well, General Electric (NBC) told analysts yesterday that it lost $70 million in the 1st quarter on the Olympics. In January — according to MediaDailyNews — CEO Jeff Immelt said the Torino Olympics would “about break even” in the first quarter.
Despite the loss, GE executives said yesterday that the Olympics would be “slightly profitable” for the year on the backs of affiliate contributions.
The failure of this Olympics is being attributed to the success of American Idol on Fox, but this assumes old thinking — that the only thing that hurts a blockbuster is another blockbuster. I think it’s bigger than that, and that history will judge the Torino Olympics as a turning point in the collapse of mass marketing, because controlling scarcity — which is what NBC has always done with the Olympics — doesn’t work in a era of disintermediation and fragmentation. Hyperbole is revealed for what it is, and formerly compelling story lines don’t “drive” people to watch anymore. Gimme the scores, man. Gimme the scores. Moreover, the decision to time-shift events is now with the viewers, not network programmers. Strategies that run counter to this only further alienate shrinking audiences.
Time is the new currency, and there’s nothing broadcasters can do about that.
Next up is the mid-term elections, where broadcasters have always been the big winners as candidates try to “drive” people to their camps. However, the stars are lining up to produce another disappointment here, because mid-term election voters are interested voters, and increasingly, we’re finding them on the internet. Political advertising will outperform projections online and underperform projections on-the-air, and then where will we be?
Broadcast companies will find themselves in an untenable situation with shareholders next year, but it won’t be because of things that happen in 2007. This is the year that’s breaking the model. Broadcasters will tell investors to wait until 2008, because that’ll be a SUMMER Olympics and PRESIDENTIAL election year. The question is will investors believe them?
How do stations in every market get the same stories?
Friday, April 14th, 2006I’m quoted as a source in a Smart Money article this month called “10 Things Your Local News Won’t Tell You.” You can read the article for yourself, but I want to share a couple of sentences. They’re from “thing” number four, “Our consultants in Iowa are calling the shots,” and deal with the homogeneity found in local newscasts everywhere. Bill Hague of Magid makes this remarkable statement:
“Everything we do is based on local research. What works in Dallas may not work in Duluth.” Hague admits the same ideas do tend to spread. “Right now it’s MySpace [the online community popular with teens],” he says, but claims that isn’t Magid’s doing. “I don’t know how they’re all getting the same idea.”
Conscious dating
Thursday, April 13th, 2006I got a new piece of spam today (Hooray. Enough with the Chase bank stuff.). The message subject is, believe it or not, “New dating website for conscious people.” Here’s the text:
Dear Friends. Here is at last a new dating service for conscious people all around the world. Check this out and meet your match!