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Saturday, November 6, 2004
Pixup 
| | My first pix from Bloggercon are up. (Oops, most of them. A few are missing. Sorry about that. Connectivity has been a bit suboptimal, as it often is at these things.) |
Hindsite
Remaking radio
| | I'm in Adam's podcasting session at Bloggercon, where Tony Kahn just asked a question about the personal nature of podcasting, contrasting it from public radio, where he works (for WGBH). I forget the exact phrase he used, but it included the word "content." I'm thinking, Too many hands are up, so I won't be able to say what I want to say. But hey, I've got a blog. I can type. So I can say it here. So... |
| | A few years back, I had a conversation with Larry Josephson, the best morning man in the history of public radio, not long after his last public radio program, Bridges, went off the air because he couldn't find distribution for it. I had some ideas for him, so I called him at home in New York, after weaseling his number out of a fellow radio guy. Larry was bitter and irritable, but it was good to talk with him, because he had a profound answer to a question about his philosophy of radio. He said "Radio is personal." It reminded me of the way Shoeder answered Lucy's question about the meaning of life, saying "BEETHOVEN! Beethoven is IT, clear and simple!" Like it was wrong and dumb to think otherwise. |
| | So now I'm thinking that public radio's problem, like publishing's problem, is that they think of themselves as "content providers." They've bought into the idea that radio is a shipping system for moving "content" from producers to consumers, rather than a place where people get to say, and hear, what they like. For each other. |
| | And earlier than that, on the way here, I ran into Hank Barry at Peet's Coffee. I was delighted to find that we not only shared an interest in radio, but that Hank was full of fun lore about legendary top 40 giants like CKLW, during its Boss Radio days. (Yo, Hank: here are the station's strange directional patterns I was telling you about.) I realized why Hank got involved with Napster, which I often called "the people's workaround of the failed commercial broadcasting system." |
| | Now, with podcasting, I think we're on the brink of the Final Workaround. And we can do it because the Web isn't a shipping system for content, but a place where anybody can share (or sell, or choose your verb) anything with anybody else. (Background here, here, here and here.) |
| | Podcasting is personal. And it can make radio personal. Again. |
| | I know it will happen when Larry Josephson starts podcasting — and helps brings life back into public radio, which is getting grayer by the day. Can't wait. |
| | (That, of course, is a hint to folks who know Larry.) |
Fail, retry, succeed...
Be there then
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