Link.
Responding to calls from conservative groups for tighter standards for decency in broadcasting, the chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission has raised the option of allowing pay television viewers to pick their own channels, setting up a potentially costly brawl with the cable and satellite industries.
My first reaction reading about this in my morning paper was, "My Gawd, what new stupidity hath the FCC wrought?"
Then I thought about it some more. There are a whole host of things wrong with this notion of letting people pick cable channels a la carte. The first thing that comes to mind is that it will allow people to essentially dig themselves deeper into an ideological sinkhole. Conservatives will pick Fox News and hear no opinions that they disagree with through their idiot boxes, resulting in yet another echo chamber situation.
Secondly, how will new cable channels get started without a guaranteed distribution right off the bat?
Thirdly, isn't this against everything I ever read from Ayn Rand? Umm, yeah.
Then again, think about the upsides. It's certainly a blow struck for consumer choice. Such a move would simply usher in the age of Citizen Media even more quickly than it's currently speeding toward us. Think about what the world would look like if broadcast and cable relinquished one of the few advantages it still has over emerging media - its penetration into households.
The advertiser community would have a collective conniption, and the siphoning of emerging media ad dollars from broadcast and cable budgets would accelerate greatly. (Back up a dump truck!)
Most likely, this is just more posturing by the FCC. But what if it wasn't? Strategically, I'd let them have their way with this one and then fight them tooth and nail on regulation of the Internet and satellite, armed with the notion that the FCC's mandate doesn't apply when bandwidth isn't constrained by geography and signal strength as is the case with terrestrial radio and TV stations.
If this is real, then the FCC has pushed a good chunk of its chips to the center of the poker table. It's time to call their bluff.
There's little in the media planning business that's more frustrating than reps who refuse to read an RFP.
After we sent out our last client RFP, we got some VERY positive feedback from our reps, who took time out to send us e-mail saying that our RFPs were the best they had read. It's because we take time to outline client goals and our strategy. We disclose everything that we possibly can so that reps can come back to us with the strongest programs possible, tailored to what we're looking for.
But when people don't take the time to read the damned things, and they simply submit the same thing they did last year with a 3% rate increase, that's how they get cut from plans.
It's entirely possible that Match.com could represent the best $80 I've ever spent.
I signed up a few weeks ago to meet some new single people on Long Island (as opposed to in the city, where almost EVERYBODY is still single). At first, my profile went up and precisely nothing happened. So, of course, two forces immediately went to work:
1) Fragile Male Ego - "Whaddya mean nobody responded to my profile?!?!?!"
2) Overkill: The Principle By Which We Live Our Lives - Danny Losquadro and I say this all the time. Basically, it's what leads us to meet challenges not with a measured response, but with an overwhelming one.
So I sent out approximately 60 e-mails one night to women on the service with similar interests. And then the tidal wave came in. I had two dates weekend before last and three over the Thanksgiving Break. All were very cool people, and although I didn't click romantically with one of them, we still e-mail one another just to talk.
It definitely puts my experience on OKCupid to shame.
Just figured out you can tweak a lot of Firefox settings by typing "about:config" into your address bar and clicking on the individual settings you want to change. Very cool.
Just for shits and giggles, I started an Excel spreadsheet that details everything I'm spending on personal media. That is, not stuff that work pays for, but the content and delivery I actually pay for aside from work. Between cable and wireless bills, subscriptions to various websites (Straight Dope Message Boards, TotalFark, Match.com, etc.), ISP accounts, XM subscription fees, web hosting and whatnot, I'm well over $400/month. And I know there are things I'm forgetting about.
I wonder what this would look like as a percentage of income for the average citizen... Is it increasing or decreasing vs. YAG? Versus 5YAG?
In two weeks, Morning Sedition as we know it will be no longer. I got XM just in time to find out that after 12/15, Marc Maron is gone. Mark Riley will continue from 5-7 and Rachel Maddow is on from 7-9. No more characters, no more comedy. This is so incredibly lame I don't know what to say.
Maron's site is down today due to excessive requests. Probably people wanting to express their opinions about the changes. Put me down for "This Sucks."
The head unit I put in my truck supports an XM tuner, and I was in an electronics store on Black Friday, so I asked about how much it would cost to add XM to my truck. Turns out I needed to spend an additional $100 on equipment (antenna, tuner box, interface box, etc.), plus the activation and subscription fees. So I bought the equipment and headed home with it.
Getting XM installed in an XM-ready radio is a big pain in the ass. There's a box about the size of two cigarette packs side by side, which plugs into the antenna. It needs to go in a well-ventilated area and not be installed on top of carpet, so there goes most of the potential locations you might think to mount it. I ended up mounting it in a small compartment under the big armrest console, stripping out a small patch of carpeting inside the compartment. From there, you have to run the antenna outside the vehicle. I ran my wires through the main rubber grommet in the firewall, up next to the driver's side fender, and underneath the weather stripping between the windshield and the door. The antenna then mounts magnetically to the roof.
Then there's the interface box, which is about the size of a pack of cigarettes and sits between the first box and the head unit. I mounted this with double-sided tape behind the dash, on top of the dash compartment I stick change in. There are a lot of cables involved - I also put in a selector switch I bought from Radio Shack, so I can switch between XM and my iPod by pushing a button.
Once all this was installed, however, I really dug the content offering from XM. I was having a big problem tuning in Air America on WLIB 1190 in the city. Now it comes in crystal clear over XM. I'm also listening to the comedy channel and some of the rock stations, particularly the one that plays deep album tracks and other stuff you don't normally hear on the radio.
I like that there's no static and no signal fade. Just keep a clear line to the sky and everything's cool. Speaking of which, I went under the ATM thing at the bank and my head unit started blinking [No Signal], but the listening was strangely uninterrupted.
I think I could get used to this. The only complaints I have are the installation headache and XM's website, which hosts what is arguably the worst e-commerce process I have ever seen. The activation process crashed my browser TWICE, and when I rebooted, the system didn't remember any of my information and made me resubmit - but I couldn't use the same e-mail address. It dead-ended, saying something to the effect of "Same e-mail address already exists in system." Thankfully, I had multiple e-mail addresses I could use.
For some reason, my web server is running really sloooooooow today. So gimme until tomorrow morning.
Everyone is resting comfortably in Wading River.
Alex was born yesterday at around 1 PM. Mom and baby are both doing well. 7 lbs. 11 oz.
No photos yet, as I'm not allowed in the hospital except for this ridiculous 1-hour window, so I haven't seen the baby.
Congratulations to Kim and Rob!
Sister Kim went to the hospital last night. Word is they're inducing her. All is okay. My last update came from Mom at about 5:30 this morning.
I have two big client presentations today. Once they're done, I'm heading to the hospital.
I wouldn't put it past me to moblog Alex when he arrives and debut his first picture on the web. :-)
Stay tuned for updates.
I was in Best Buy this weekend picking up a game for my PSP. Best Buy is one of those stores (like Home Depot) where I walk every aisle, just in case there's some manner of consumer electronics sweetness that I've managed to miss.
Problem is, there are these weird floor associates who won't leave you the frick alone. You can't take a stroll two feet without some over-caffeinated tech dork breathing down your neck. "Can I help you? Can I help you?" they chirp. Even a disinterested "Nah" without so much as a glance upward doesn't work. They stick to you like glue.
I was walking down the aisle where they have cheap portable keyboards. I have a nice, expensive one at home, but as I walked by, I wanted to see how the cheap ones sounded. So I walked up to one, cast a glance around to make sure there were no weird sales dorks lurking around and tapped out the first few notes of the piano solo from "A String of Pearls." I swear to you - I barely touched it before a sales dork came up behind me and started asking me questions.
"Hey. Howareya? Howlongyoubeenplaying? Thisoneisnicebuttheonebelowitisnicer. Blah, blah, blah, blah..."
He must have teleported in. And he was acting like that little cartoon puppy who used to follow the big cartoon bulldog around, going "HeySpike, howzitgoing? Huh? Huh? Huh?"
Overzealous floor salespeople really tweak me. I ended up getting rid of this guy by telling him I already had one, but he wasn't getting the message that I didn't want him tailing me all over the store. He followed me almost all the way back up to the counter.
It's not like these guys know what they're doing, either. Ask one of them a basic computer question and it's like someone blew their buffers. They just kind of stand there and stutter like idiots until you get frustrated and walk away.
Stores like this should issue customers a little pager when they walk in. Press the button and help shows up (and not before). And they should actually train people to know what the heck they're selling.
Speaking of PSP, I've been playing mine on the train quite a bit. I grab my usual Newsday, read it and then jam out the crossword puzzle and Sudoku, but once I'm done, it's time for games.
Lately, I'm addicted to Hot Shots Golf, Ridge Racer and NAMCO Battle Museum (which is one of those compilation discs with a bunch of old school games on them, like Ms. Pac Man and Dig Dug).
This morning I got a hole-in-one on Hot Shot Golf and the machine went bonkers. Even though I was wearing headphones, the guy next to me heard and gave me a weird look. Guy probably wishes he had one.
We've just heard from the fifth of the five potential clients we pitched at the end of the summer. (We nailed the previous four and this one makes it a perfect 5 for 5.)
Underscore is really taking off. The office we moved into is starting to get a bit packed, and our office mates have already started looking elsewhere in the building for additional space for us to expand into.
One thing's for certain. This isn't the dot com boom all over again. Cooler heads prevail, and all of these are hard-won assignments. I think we're really hitting our stride.
Joseph Chernov of BzzAgent wrote this on the Spin Board:
You have repeatedly asked for others to enlighten you on ways that WOM makes sense. Several posters have replied with opinions and insight. Some of that information complements your argument; some counters it. Yet each time someone challenges your case, you dig your heels in to defend yourself.So which is it? Do you want to discuss this very interesting subject or just prove yourself "right"?
Both. That's what this board is all about. Spin writers put an opinion out there and the topic is debated openly on the Spin Board. I'm doing my best to respond to the points as they're coming up, but there's only one of me and several of you. (And pretty soon, my lunch hour will be over and I'll be done posting until I get off the clock at my day job.)As far as this thread goes, I haven't seen much that would change my opinion. I am keeping an open mind, though.
Of course I'd dig my heels in to defend myself. This isn't Marketing Happy Talk Hour. This is about making an assertion and having a conversation. But the conversation is debate style. Think I'm full of crap? Then challenge my assertions with some citeable facts and thoughts of your own, but don't ask me to stop defending my assertion in the first place. It wouldn't produce any meaningful dialogue if I just rolled over and played dead, right?
Jeff Jarvis had it right. There is no end of inventory.
But that doesn't stop The Wall Street Journal from looking like it's a hop, step and a jump behind the conversation regarding the long tail.
It's one of my biggest frustrations about the online media business - Too many media planners believe that the "Big Three" are where the only action is because they're the biggest, traffic-wise. Either they believe that deals with smaller sites aren't worth the trouble or they fail to realize that aggregating huge chunks of their target audiences in one place is no longer a prerequisite of doing business. Or they like seeing their ad on the home page of Yahoo just like they like seeing their commercial in the Super Bowl.
Whatever.
Indeed, the Spin Board has taken off with a discussion on the merits (?) of buzz marketing.
I'd love for some of the folks who stop by here and respond to my posts about marketing to head over to the board and offer up an opinion over there. (Steve? Tig? Doc? Jaffe?)
If Bruce Willis were truly a badass, he would go all Die Hard on Bin Laden. But instead, he wants someone else to do it. Willis is offering another $1 million on top of the $50 million the U.S. Government is already offering for anyone who turns OBL in. The reward is also good for Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi.
Thanks, Bruce. The $50 million wasn't enough, but $51 million? Maybe I'll let OBL out of my basement now. He's been chained to the water heater for a couple years.
I can understand that when you break up with someone, the friends you made while a couple are up for grabs. But the friends you had beforehand? For over 20 years? That live 70 miles away from your ex but right down the block from you? I say they're mine. Somebody back me up, here.
Hollywood writers and actors want product placements disclosed.
Buzz marketers want paid agents to disclose their relationships with marketers.
What do both of these things have in common?
They both acknowledge that dishonesty can't be a solid foundation on which to build a relationship with a customer. Since I expect folks to gang up on me when they read my Spin tomorrow, I just wanted this notion on the record prior to the fact.
I'm expecting a shitstorm tomorrow when my new Spin breaks. It's all about buzz marketing and why it seems (to me) to be fundamentally flawed in how it treats people. Put simply, I don't understand how anyone who wants to have a respectable brand would invest in it.
Of course, this is going to make certain fans of my column go absolutely bonkers. I've invited them to the Spin Board for the inevitable flame war. I'll be standing by with my asbestos underwear on.
This is why you don't do pre-roll ads in movie theaters.
Slides are probably okay, since they don't hold up the start of the movie. But pre-rolls are a strict no-no. That is, unless your ad strategy involves being deliberately inflammatory toward the moviegoing public.
Growing up, I never really learned a lot of manly basics. Sure, I know how to tie on a fishing lure, and I can handle most basic plumbing with my eyes closed. But my family was never really big on working on cars, building stuff, etc.
That education never really stops, living in Wading River. This weekend, I needed to take care of the front stoop, which the butthead contractor never finished before walking off the job.
First we had to demolish the old front stoop. Craig came over and brought all his tools, and I chipped all the old brick off the old stoop while Craig worked on prepping the sill under the front door. There was a lot of termite damage, so we had to cut out sections and nail up new boards and a ledger board so we had something to nail the new front deck to.
Craig and I got a bunch of stuff from Thurber Lumber and built out the stoop portion, using 2x6s and Trex decking. Unfortunately, we couldn't place the columns we wanted to put in because we needed someone to put in the aluminum flashing under the roof (the part the contractor DID build). There's also some electric work that needs to be done first. But we did get the stoop done.
Then there's the stairs leading up to the stoop. Danny came over on Sunday and we sunk two concrete pillars for the stairs to rest on. They were tough because we had to dig 2' deep pits, set tubes into them for the concrete, and make sure the tops of the tubes lined up with where the stairs are. Everything had to be perfectly level, so we measured everything out and had levels on top of everything. At some point, I need to dig two more pits and put two more concrete pillars in for the other two stair stringers.
The point is that I don't have the first idea about what to do. No idea how to get started, and I have no idea about the tricks of the trade. Thankfully, I have friends who are generous with their time and can help me get out of jams like this.
So thanks to Craig and Dan for sharing their time and their expertise this weekend.
Yeah, I know. I did the Google AdSense thing and now you hate me.
I figure maybe I could get some beer money out of this blog thing. Maybe so, maybe not.
Wish they could add me to the AdSense for Feeds beta so I could load up my RSS feed, too. I'm nagging my contacts at Google. We'll see.
If Nick Nyhan wasn't such a good moderator, odds are that the folks on our panel would have politely agreed with one another on every question asked. But when Nick asked Ari Schwartz and Trevor Hughes to explain the differences in their approach to the cookie problem, the shit really hit the fan. It quickly devolved for a second into four people trying to talk over one another. At one point, I think I felt Nick's hand on my shoulder - perhaps he thought I was about to throw a chair, Springer style.
At one point, I disagreed with Ari's assertion that there wasn't any benefit to a consumer accepting a third-party ad server cookie. Thankfully, Esther Dyson was on my side. (Every once in a while, you need to go see Esther live, if for no reason other than to simply be reminded of how scary-smart she is.)
In the end, I think it was an interesting treatment of a less-than-sexy topic. I think I got most of my major points across with respect to how the ad industry should deal with consumer vis-a-vis cookies (TRANSPARENCY, TRANSPARENCY, TRANSPARENCY). Now, if we could just end this polarizing situation in the industry and avoid sweeping the issue under the carpet (again), we might actually have a shot at preserving cookies and addressing the problem once and for all.
I've never seen Ad Tech so healthy. At the same time, many of the exhibiting vendors are of the "Got Traffic?" variety.
I got the chance to swing by today, but not yesterday. We're much too busy. Tomorrow I'm spending a good chunk of my day there. My morning panel is with Esther Dyson, Ari Schwartz and Trevor Hughes and we're talking cookies, which might just be the most boring subject in the history of anything.
The parties last night got some good reviews. I might go out tonight, but I can't stay out late with the panel coming up in the morning.
Anyone who knows me well knows that I often avoid watching new television programs because I don't want to get addicted to them. I cannot survive without my Sopranos fix, and I pretty much avoid all the "new" and "hot" TV shows, lest I get reintroduced to the idea of "appointment TV."
Yeah, I know I should just get a DVR. But my cable bill is already up to $200/month, given the number of boxes we have in the house, the cable modem, the VOIP and all the damned "on demand" movies my family buys in the average month. A $250/month cable bill is something I wouldn't like to see in my lifetime, thankyouverymuch.
So I was at the Sony Store this past weekend, looking for something cool for my PSP and I came across a disc with the pilot episode of "Lost" on it. Since I wanted to get something I hadn't seen before to test the PSP's video capability, this seemed as good an idea as any. Wrong.
I watched the episodes on the train. And I got addicted. I then ended up buying the first season on DVD and watching the first half-dozen episodes or so. I can't wait to watch the rest.
This is one of the reasons I avoid television. ;-)
There are a lot of people like me who are usually too busy for a sit-down meal during the course of the business day. We want food on the run, or at least something that can come back to the office with us and be easily consumed at one's desk. And we don't want to wait for it. After all, if we had the time to wait, why would we be eating at our desks during lunch?
But almost all the fast food out there seems to be empty calories. It doesn't need to be. Why does all fast food rice need to be the starchy kind instead of the whole grain wild rice? Wild rice would be so much healthier, and I'm sure most people would love the taste.
Why does all bread need to be made with enriched white flour? Why are there no whole grain rolls for grilled chicken sandwiches? Furthermore, why does all meat need to be prepared in some sort of sugar-saturated marinade or sauce? Why can't it be prepared with some basic spices and herbs and some lemon juice?
I'm against the fast food lawsuits, but something is wrong when the market for junk food dominates the market for healthy food and makes it almost nonexistent. I'm not for messing with the free market too much, but we've got to see some alternatives here.
With the success of Whole Foods, and the realization that people will pay a good deal extra for healthy foods than they might have otherwise, why isn't there a healthy fast food place? Makes me wonder if something else is at work here.
If we could just get rid of the empty calories and bad carbs, that would be such a huge step in the right direction.
Why am I reminded of the classic Scooby Doo line when reading this article? "I would've gotten away with it if it weren't for these MEDDLING KIDS!" Ad Age informs us that most folks responding to its poll about reading blogs at work were against the notion of people reading non-work-related blog material during business hours. That is, until Gawker "Gawkered" the poll.
The tone this "story" takes is just dripping with 'Papa knows best' Old Guard bullshit. Lemme see if I've got this straight:
1) AdAge introduces a completely non-scientific poll to get reader opinions on the topic.
2) Gawker skews the results.
3) AdAge writes a story about how Gawker skewed the results.
Like the results weren't skewed to begin with? I would have missed the poll entirely because for some reason, unlike just about every other trade publication covering advertising and marketing, AdAge has apparently failed to recognize the existence of RSS. So who is still reading this stuff? The lack of an RSS feed is bad enough, but the coverage of interactive and emerging media? Please. As I type this, the last story they have posted on their website in the "Daily Breaking News - Interactive News" section is a story from last month about VW short films. I don't think too many people would dispute that AdAge seems to be the trade publication of record for advertising's Old Guard.
Not only does the AdAge story seem a bit condescending to me, but it's also coated with this silly faux-umbrage, reminiscent of the 8-year-old boy who gets kissed by a girl on the playground. Writing about how Gawker "plastered the top six inches of its home page with a headline and garphic [sic] warning: 'A Disaster Awaits at AdAge.com'" smacks of "Ewwwww...a GIRL kissed me!" Sort of like feigning disgust when that was what they wanted all along.
Whatever.
Apparently, Vanilla Coke and Diet Vanilla Coke are going away, soon to be replaced by Black Cherry Vanilla Coke and Diet Black Cherry Vanilla Coke, respectively.
Diet Black Cherry Vanilla Coke will compete with Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper in the "Cram As Many Flavors As Possible Into A Diet Drink" category.
The question remains, when will the ultimate soft drink finally emerge from deep in the bowels of America's chemical laboratories? When will we finally see "Diet Black Cherry Vanilla Mr. Pibb with Lime (Sweetened with Splenda)," huh?
Kos is mostly right. Preventing blogs with an agenda, fake blogs, paid bloggers, etc. is just not doable.
And why would you want to? The whole premise behind the Marketplace of Ideas theory is that the cream rises to the top, no?
The only thing I think the blogosphere (and the Internet in general) needs to get a handle on is anonymity. My opinion on anonymity differs significantly from that of the mainstream. I believe that if something is worth saying publicly, the idea should carry your identity with it. If it doesn't, anonymity becomes a license for people to sling all sorts of shit they know to be untrue. This is one of the reasons why I insisted nearly a dozen years ago that the then-fledgling Sound Observer have a strict "no anonymous letters" policy.
It's way to easy to set up an anonymous blog. It's way too easy to send anonymous e-mail. It's way too easy to participate in distributed conversations under a pseudonym. I don't wish to see any form of prior restraint (even if it were possible), but I would like to see identities attached to ideas, especially when we're talking about political speech. It's a notion that has impact on believability, credibility and, perhaps most importantly, accountability.
But in the absence of such things, I say let the Wild West atmosphere permeate everything it touches. Let the cream of the idea crop rise to the top.
It's OK If You Had A Bad Quarter
Full disclosure here: My agency handles trade media for The Claria Corporation, and Viewpoint's stepping into the behavioral targeting arena here represents a new competitive threat to an agency client. Just so's ya know...
At least with Claria, there was full permissioning and disclosure that ads would be targeted based on identified behavior. But is such a thing the case with Viewpoint's install base? Didn't many of the folks who have Viewpoint's player installed get it as the result of bundling (like with AOL)?
I just wanted to ask those questions before Esther Dyson did.
So while e-mails offering to donate needed equipment went unanswered, Brownie was asking around about dog sitters, discussing his cool shirt and wondering aloud whether or not he could resign yet.
But he did a hell of a job!
So I stopped by Best Buy last night on my way to Penn Station after work. There was a DVD I wanted to get, so I picked that up and carried it with me while I was browsing the store.
So I wandered over to the video games section and was looking around. I'm going to be traveling quite a bit in the coming months, and I've been told by folks who know better than I that the coolest portable game system to have is the Sony PSP. So I start looking around for one.
I see about three different kinds of Nintendo portables on display, happily whirring and beeping out in the open where customers can play with them. About 15 feet away are two couches parked in front of two large televisions, where a group of four teens is happily playing a sports game on XBox. There's a huge section for PSP games and accessories, but no PSP.
So I ask the clerk where I can actually get the PSP unit. He tells me I need to go to the register. They keep the PSPs at the register because of theft concerns. To get to the register, I have to stand in a line of 35-40 people queueing up to buy Star Wars III.
"Can I see one? Do you have one on display?" I asked the clerk.
"No, they're all behind the counter at the register," he replied.
"What do they cost?" I asked.
"I'm not sure," he told me. "You'll have to check at the register."
This sucks. What if I get up to the register, wait 30 minutes and then find out that the thing costs $400? And suppose I want to look at the unit and see how well it's constructed? What if I think the screen is a piece of crap? What if I don't want to buy it then? What if I need some time to evaluate the unit and there are 40 people waiting behind me on line? No, thanks.
So I wander over to the computer upgrades section to look at some video cards. The one I want to look at is enshrined in a thick lucite case. On top of that, the lucite case has an anti-theft device wrapped around it like a bow. Because of the thickness of the lucite and the damned anti-theft device in the way, I can't read the technical specs on the box. So I ask a clerk to give me a hand.
Turns out he's not allowed to take the thing out of the box.
"How do you expect someone to drop over $300 on a video card if they can't see the specs on the box?"
No answer to that one.
So I put down my DVD and marched out of the store. No way I was buying ANYTHING there. I'll do all my research online, thankyouverymuch.
Argue all you want in favor of taking steps to prevent loss, but that does NOT justify treating all your customers like criminals. And when loss prevention actually stands between your customers and the products they want, it's time to re-evaluate your loss prevention program from a dollars and cents perspective.
I don't want to pick on Best Buy here. This is happening at retail stores all over the place. Try to get a package of razor cartridges at your local drug store and you'll see what I mean. There's got to be a happy medium in between preventing loss and assuming every customer who walks in the door is a criminal.
I was going to fisk the living crap out of the Forbes anti-blog article, but decided it wasn't worth it. Other bloggers are doing a fine job of that already, and I'm waaaaay late to the game. After dissecting the damned thing, I quickly figured out that a Hespos fisk of that article would be longer than the article itself. I had to pause a few times per paragraph to wonder why the author has come to our planet.
Morning Sedition is my favorite program on Air America. I've been listening to it pretty much every morning since launch. It's a great companion for the 20-30 minute drive to the train station.
Maron and Riley have the best dynamic of any two hosts on AAR, including Garofalo and Seder. They're the perfect pair for their show.
I can't claim to have any sort of insight into the politics and decision-making at AAR, but I just wanted to cast my vote for renewing Maron's contract and keeping the show as it is.
It stands for Do Not Feed The Trolls. And if you're a member of an online community, you're probably familiar with the term. Internet trolls post to online communities with inflammatory speech or speech designed primarily to get a rise out of people. The best way to keep them coming back is to feed them - that is, give them the indignation they want. The best way to get rid of them is to go all Freddy Krueger on their idiotic asses and totally ignore them.
But trolls aren't necessarily confined to Internet communities. They're actually all over the media landscape. Wherever there's a channel of communication, there's usually some asshole trying to figure out a way to manipulate it to get people's goats.
A certain not-very-well-known agency announced that it was interested in hiring Neil French, the ex-WPP creative guy who made some very insulting remarks about women at a recent conference. It was so obviously a publicity stunt that I joined a chorus of industry folks in administering a most gratuitous verbal ass-beating unto the agency in question. What I should have done was simply ignore it.
Maybe I should get hats printed up with DNFTT on them.
Why, exactly, does Wal-Mart get 15 days notice before labor inspections? Unbelievable that they can boss the government around like that, to the point of making the inspections completely ineffective.
So this morning when I emerge from Penn Station, there's this guy standing on the sidewalk, dressed all in purple. He's tethered to a large bunch of purple balloons. And he's standing there, staring straight ahead, looking hung over from Halloween excess. As I walk by him, he monotonously offers up "Smirnoff...Grape...Ice...Drink."
Obviously, the guy was supposed to be some sort of buzz agent, but the experience was probably unlike what Smirnoff probably intended. Looking as hung over as he did, me and several passers-by gave him a laugh, since it was kind of unclear as to whether he was trying (lamely) to promote some new Smirnoff beverage or simply describing the libation that had done him in the night before.
Doesn't anybody from the agency ever visit the site to see if these guys are doing what they're supposed to?
