AR&D Reinventing Local Media

I’ve discovered a great band through Pandora that I want to share with everybody. Great Big Sea. The band’s lead singer, Alan Doyle, keeps a journal when they’re on-the-road, although it’s not officially a blog (I guess).

With Irish roots, I’m naturally (spiritually?) drawn to the sound of Irish music, but it would be a disservice to call these guys “Irish.” From Newfoundland, their music is pretty hard to describe, kind of melodic, sea shanty, powerful, Irish rock-n-roll. They have so much energy that the sound just leaps from the speakers and dances around the room, over and over again. I’ve yet to hear a bad song from GBS, and that’s saying something coming from me.

I LOVE this band, and I feel like I’ve just discovered a rich vein of gold.

But the story here isn’t the band; it’s the way I found them. I’ve written about Pandora before, and I want to restate that their methodology is the means by which we’ll overcome the pejorative “group think” that the pundits fear about the blogosphere and all things that relate to information distribution via the web. After I first wrote about Pandora, people commented that Last.fm was better. I think it’s a great site too, but their model of finding new music is based on the tastes of other people in the database who are listening to music similar to what you’ve chosen.

Call me a nut, but I think this can be manipulated, whereas Pandora’s algorithms are based solely on similarities to music styles that you’ve selected. Think about that for a minute. The algorithm can be created that’ll “read” your tastes in news and information and send more your way, and it wouldn’t be easy for big dollar institutional players to manipulate that.

I want to personally thank Tim Westergren and the folks at Pandora for opening these old ears to the sounds of a truly remarkable band in Great Big Sea.

As most of you know, I’ve learned a lot about life without health insurance in the past few years. Last year’s breast surgery was the pits, but what I’m going to share with you now cannot possibly be topped.

A couple of weeks ago, three bills came in the mail. They were all addressed to Alicia Heaton, my Allie. I got a second statement from one of them yesterday.

Number one was from the paramedics:

$650 EMS transport
$ 15 mileage (yup)

Number two was from the Emergency Room Physicians group.

$1,600 for:
Emergency evaluation & management services
Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR)
Endotracheal intubation, emergency procedure

Number three was from the hospital:

$1,958.06 for emergency services

In other words, my decision in the middle of a horrible crisis to call 911 resulted in charges of $4,223.06 even though she was pronounced dead on arrival.

Now, here’s the real nightmare. I knew Allie was dead when I found her on the bathroom floor. Her pupils were fixed and dilated and she was cold to the touch. I figure she’d been gone for at least two or three hours when I found her. Yet, I did what my instincts and training told me to do; I called 911. The operator was adamant that I perform CPR, so I did and waited until the experts got there. Those minutes were the longest of my life and the most horrible.

But you see, they (we) don’t teach you that there’s a price tag associated with the call. Nobody asks if you have insurance. And who in their right mind is going to ask if there’s going to be such charges anyway? You don’t do that. You just pick up the phone and call 911.

Insurance companies usually pick up these charges and nobody says “boo.” The hospital was gracious to give me the typical 30% discount for paying cash, and I suppose I should be grateful. I’m not.

Add to this the cost of the funeral, and I gotta tell ya, folks, dying ain’t cheap. And people wonder why I rail against the status quo!

And for those of you who’ve been asking, I’m hoping to learn how she died next week.

These are the last days that my company will function independently as DONATA Communications. Beginning Thursday, I’ll be joining my old friend Jerry Gumbert and his innovative company, Audience Research and Development of Dallas. Six great minds make up the core of AR&D, and I’m honored to now be in their midst.

AR&D has acquired DONATA as a part of the deal, and we’ve yet to decide what will happen to the name. Let’s hope my little damselfly survives somehow.

AR&D is a leader in research and consulting for the local broadcasting industry, and we’re joining forces to take the vision of opportunity to local television. The company has been quietly percolating a vision for broadcasters that includes both the traditional and beyond, and by bringing me into the mix, it will explode on the industry this year. These are smart, smart people, and we’re putting the industry on notice today that there are real solutions to the real problems broadcasters face and that we have the model. We’re in a business cycle where stations must be amphibious and exist in two completely different worlds. It’s tricky and there are a lot of people who think you can be one or the other, but this is provably false.

I couldn’t be more excited, because Jerry is an old and trusted friend. I’ll be running AR&D’s Digital Development Unit. I also love the fact that the first word in AR&D is audience, because that’s the key to successful local media downstream. While most broadcasters are fixated on revenue, the real problem is audience. Money follows eyeballs, not the other way around (the Donald Trump exception noted).

And I will continue to assert that the biggest threat to local media companies is outside technology companies coming in to take advertising money out of the local market. Google didn’t start out as a media company, but they certainly have become one. Same with Yahoo and a legion of others. I’m sorry, but obsessing only with your slice of a shrinking broadcast pie is the road to the tar pits. Audience is the problem. Fix the problem!

One of the big things I’ll be bringing to the table is a knowledge of and comfort level with technology and technology companies. I think it’s important that TV stations move to tech platforms designed and built by cutting edge players instead of those with media backgrounds. This is what we did with WKRN-TV, and the things that are on the drawing board there will amaze you. I’ll be keeping my old clients, and that’s important to me.

As I said, this is an extreme honor for me but also for the vision that Allie and I shared and to which we dedicated our lives — with little compensation — during the two and a half years we were together. I know that she’s beaming with pride today, and that feels pretty nice.

Jerry and I have agreed that I will continue blogging and writing essays, although I need to be realistic about that. I’m entering the world of corporate secrets, and I think you know I’ll respect that. I do promise, however, that I won’t pull any punches and that I’ll try to remain as transparent as I always have. These are fascinating times we’re in, and I’ve no wish to be a part of the b.s. pool that’s already out there.

As I’ve shared so many times before, broadcasting is and was my life. I still have many friends who work in the industry, and I want to do everything I can to help local television remain viable for the long term. This isn’t just some fancy dream; it’s a real mission (I feel like the Blues Brothers), and by joining with the quality people, connections and resources of AR&D, I’ve moved beyond the “voice crying in the wilderness” phase. As Mike James wrote in NewsBlues today, “the nutty professor has gone legit.”

And I’ll have health insurance, what a concept!

Here’s the official press release.

One of my sayings is “just because you can doesn’t mean you should.” I originally used it regarding video effects. Most young editors get enamored with effects, and if overused, they become INeffective and actually kill story flow and pacing. I’ve adopted the saying to include just about anything in life.

The folks out there running some of these disruptive advertising technologies could use a healthy dose of that lesson, because now even something as innocent as moving a mouse is considered permission to disrupt by many in the industry. It’s not, but that doesn’t matter in the quest to sell, sell, sell. And the people’s response? There’s now an extension for Firefox called Flashblock that will block all Flash on a page. Of course, this will ruin other legitimate uses of Flash, and all because advertisers are doing this stuff because they can.

The latest is from the good folks at Vibrant Media, whose early IntelliTxt technology linked keywords in web page text to little text ads when moused over. Now they’ve got a cute little video player that will run a video ad when users mouse over keywords.

Let me repeat. My mousing over your ad is not permission for you to disrupt my experience. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

Sheesh.

Larry Kramer is a smart guy. The CBS internet czar launched a new site with a new brand today, one that, I predict, will do very well for the company. Showbuzz is an entry into the celebrity news space. The logic was simple: the entertainment section of the CBS site was always sold out, so they built a new site to increase inventory. Since I’ve been screaming for years that this is the way to go, I’m naturally going to like everything about this, mostly that it’s not covered with CBS branding or promotional hype. It’s a legitimate, separate news and information Website. USAToday’s Peter Johnson got the scoop.

By spinning out a new site devoted to entertainment news, CBS hopes to “create an environment where people who are interested in those things will go,” CBS Digital chief Larry Kramer says.

“The future of media companies, the future of the Web is about finding additional revenue streams for content you already have or to support the people who create that content,” Kramer says. In CBS News’ case, that amounts to about 1,500 employees who are involving in reporting news, much of it entertainment and pop culture features.

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