Mobile Radio Simplified. Accessible. Relevant.

One of the key founding values of CelleCast is to empower people to not only get more from radio on demand on their mobile phones, but also to speak TO the media and to have their voices heard. When we learned of the repression of reporting in Tehran not only of journalists, but of citizen reporting by the shutting down of internet resources as well, I knew that we should open this channel for the people of Iran. I only wish I did so a week ago. Let them try to shut down an entire bank of phone numbers! All anyone has to do is to dial 001 (415) 707-3003 from their mobile phones or landlines anywhere in the world and tell the truth of what is going on in Iran. We feel a viral campaign to get this number into the hands of people in the streets in Iran will be as easy as the system is to use. For every Iranian savvy enough to record and post video and pictures with their mobile phone, I’ll bet there are 50 who would dial up our number and make their own radio report if they felt there was a sympathetic audience on the other end.

I am calling upon all our radio partners to share this channel with their audiences! They should not think of it as competing with their own phone number, as what I need them to do is to simply tell their audience to text the number to friends and relatives in Iran as well as any Iranian who wants to share their voice.

We hope to gather hundreds of voices in the next few days and will continually alert the media of the talkback publications on CelleCast. The raw audio can be heard on our twitter timeline and we expect a whole lot of retweeting to take place.

I am inspired to throw in a quick note today after watching this video on Mark Ramsey’s blog about what agencies think about radio today.

A couple of the points I especially liked were the references to windshield brands and the effective opportunities ahead as radio goes interactive. We have been looking at developing local advertising at this stage and proving this concept as valuable. National initiatives for large scale deployment have been a tough road, but we think we can get more marketing interest thrrough local tests like this.

More information to come. Contact me to discuss what we can do now for your brand in a local market.

With the recession running in full gear at this point, we are settling into a season where re-evaluating value in media options is now commonplace. As I’ve been rethinking my methods of articulating our own value proposition to radio partners, I have decided that the discussion of podcasting should come into a new focus with all of its merits and liabilities carefully charted and weighed, and that, what the heck, we should consider throwing it into our service offerings as well.

I have been somewhat dismissive of podcasting discussions when talking to partners to this point, and am keenly aware of the diminishing attention the topic has commanded in conferences since 2006. (Heck, I just realized I don’t even have a blog category for it until this post!)

Podcasting web portals are becoming, as I felt they would, more and more ghetto-ish with 2nd and 3rd tier content dominating the home pages, with broken links and super stale programs. Smart radio properties are carefully avoiding being found in these places, making their podcasting strategies critical in regards to the possible effect it has on brand.

Anyway, what I have in mind for podcasting and audio archive delivery as a service will fit well into helping us help our partners reach their audiences in more ways over a clean, interactive interface.

We’ll announce more about this soon, but would love to get your thoughts on it while the idea is fresh. I have only shared about 15% of my thinking here on this post, so that should make for a good open door for discussion about opportunities for creating a better comprehensive audio mousetrap.

Like my run-on sentences today? There is more where that came from. It is a by-product after a full day of brainstorming and research.

As phones get smarter, they are inevitably going to overcome the propensity toward being proprietary in what they deliver. In short, standards are better.

So if you have a blackberry and want to access the best variety in personalized radio on demand on your phone, it is better to choose a service that also works well on iPhones, Android, razr’s and everything else. Why? Services that are accessible to all are more like real radio in that they are more promotable by the radio industry, which leads to better support, format compliance and more.

Now, the way mobile application providers like us achieve this is to make our mobile apps web based. This makes it easy for you to obtain access to the shows over a familiar interface, whether you have an icon to click on, or whether you just type CELLECAST.COM into your phones browser and bookmark it.

Once you do this, you will be able to access and interact with over 50 programs in our network via direct dial, build a playlist, monitor what is fresh to you, and track your usage.

Give it a shot and let us know how it behaves in your Blackberry. We have ben hearing good things so far!

Really nice events and milestones are coming and going quickly these days, and the blog is suffering when things get busy. Twittering has also been a fine alternative for getting the word out on events and such. You can and should always get the latest here:
http://twitter.com/cellecast

But here are the recent highlights you should know about…

Our quasi-hidden little demo page now says…

CelleCast Partner Dev created this field report in preparation for 5 minute pitch for tonight. Imagine the ways cellecasting can change the way you think about audio media.
I’ll be giving a live plug for CelleCast in the next hour, and I’ll let the tool itself do the talking, asking…
When was the last time you heard a startup pitch where every last person in the room was able to take a device out of their pocket and immediately use the product?

I was interviewed yesterday on Sun’s BTR show called Socially Speaking. It went for a while and we got pretty deep into the uses of cellecasting for business as well as for radio. I got into the value comparison of current vs live, which is something i want to expand upon soon.

Finally, I got a write up in Radio and Records recently which was excellent. If you got a copy, please read it and let me know what you thought of it.

Thanks.

Relating to radio, the departure of David Rehr as CEO of the NAB will likely be a welcome change.
The industry has been under a lot of strain during his tenure, and although most of what he has faced was outside of his control, the parades he has stepped in front of to lead have been disappointments. Radio Heard Here has been castigated as a flat and lifeless appeal. Radio 2020, even with its laudable tenets which we have offered to help them achieve, were correctly interpreted in action as mostly a shill for HD Radio. The HD Radio parade itself has drifted off onto a country road to nowhere.

I like David and wish him the best, but for the sake of the radio industry, I hope we quickly get someone who will actually sit down with innovators, syndicators and stations together to create solutions that can bring the industry truly in line with the times, and defy the criticism of radio’s detractors.

Kudos to those who saw it coming 6 months ago, and let there be mercy on an industry in genuine transition.

We got written up in the Washington Times for the work we did with PJTV last week!

No time to comment on this right now, but the news speaks for itself.

Will update it soon with other news mentions gathered lately

Although not overtly political, our blog is all about our efforts in enabling passionate voices that are crying out to reach people in new and exciting ways. Therefore, with all the Tea Party business going on and the rising groundswell of a new protesting generation, we feel it is a good time to introduce the new CelleCast citizen reporting tools we have been working on this year. The Tea Party movement is young and full of new passionate voices looking for ways to empower ordinary people to speak their mind and be heard.

Largely dismissed by the mainstream media, this movement is organizing mostly online through Twitter, Facebook and new video sites like PJTV. Talk Radio is playing a strong role as well, and altogether, there will be over 500 Tea Party protest rallies tomorrow nationwide. The need for tools that can go into the hands of people and turn them into reporters as well as simply giving them a way to vent is obvious. Talk Radio can only receive one screened caller at a time, and by my estimation, there are thousands more than don’t just want to blog or write tweets, etc. They want to speak. They want to be heard, and there is a heightened sense of frustration that they are being ignored by a disconnected elite class at the top.

Enter CelleCast.

Starting tomorrow, what we specifically have to offer is the ability for people standing in the crowd to be able to call in and record field reports on what they are seeing happen at their local Tea Party. We looked for a good partner to work with in this effort, and discovered that Pajamas Media was making headway in its call for citizen reporters. Well it was natural, and it was overnight, but we joined forces with them to enable their still growing list of hundreds of citizen reporters to post field reports using their cell phone. Check out the Tea Party Coverage Program on CelleCast.

Anyone from around the country will be able to hear the reports after a basic screening, and the best will be included on Pajamas Media comprehensive coverage. People calling in can also hear the reports and post audio comments to them as Talkbacks, which is similar to posting a comment on a blog post. All opinions are welcome. The posts will update various Twitter statii as well, making for a sort of audio petition ideally, pushed out in real time, but also retrievable and sharable in various ways. We are hoping the CelleCast contribution will help make a difference in terms of the people being heard, and that is reward enough. We are not taking sponsors for this program for tomorrow, as we feel that this is our chance to contribute to increasing the national dialog.

It is likely you have never called your House or Senate representatives before. One reason I believe you haven’t is you feel the call will likely be wasted on an intern answering who just looks for a category to drop your message into. Who knows if your opinion really even gets recorded at all?

To that end I suggest a whole new way of getting your voice heard.. not only by your representative, but by anyone else who you care to share it with. CelleCast Talkbacks create a permanent, subject sortable audio petition opportunity with each and every call. Since our listeners are already on the phone enjoying their own personalized radio playlist of news, talk and information, the ease of contributing is as familiar as pressing 3.

We believe we are at the beginning of a new movement of citizen empowerment in this country, and that this tool will help put passionate audio petitioning and citizen journalism into the palm of everyone’s hand.

Where will your Talkback’s go?
- To your Twitter status. (which can then forward to your Facebook status and FriendFeed)
- To your CelleCast profile page.
- To the CelleCast program page. (pending moderation)
- To government officials for particular petition programs coming soon on CelleCast.

We have more information on how to set up your CelleCast account with Twitter for audio tweets, with an additional section taking it a step further and becoming a field reporter. Check it out and enjoy.

So give your fingers a break and give your soul some real venting release with a Talkback today.

## End of Pitch ##

That is a phrase I have been using for a while and hearing as well from others in this space. I think it is important however to clarify the statement. It is easy to say in the way a politician says everything they say.. to get a majority of people to nod their heads. The full truth however is that Social Media has come to represent a collection of changes in media of which Radio’s early contribution represents just one aspect. The three legs of the stool are: User Generated Content (UGC) publishable and in response to other posts, media sourced from the many vs elite pros, and media sources organized in a personalized manner by the consumer. Unless I am missing something, that covers it. Of course to have any viability at all, these three have to work to support a living community, or else it is just lifeless academics.

I am not sure how others would break it down into components or whether they would even see the need to do so. To me the need arises when we begin to see just about any new innovation in media, or old as demonstrated by my headline, claim to be social media. Not unlike the term “radio”, “social media” is also beginning to suffer definition fatigue from the thousands of companies seeking authorship and/or leadership in this new landscape. Having a text messaging campaign where people reply to win a prize is not social media.

The more I think about it, to have pure social media, you need all three legs. Radio, as a step beyond newspapers’ letters to the editor, provided the first realtime feedback mechanism (UGC). With the aid of the ubiquitous and familiar telephone, talk radio hosts could pipe in the voices of select audience members and channel that back to the audience through the broadcast. These call in participants represented the whole audience to a degree, turning the monologue into a conversation. The second component where the audience voices self-published in their own right was not tenable. The third component of personalized organization of participant media — not applicable.

With the web came the ability and the need to have all three. Forums, Blogs, Facebook, You Tube and Twitter all have the open feedback mechanisms as a core components, and should pay tribute to some degree to radio for pioneering that into our media lifestyle. The second social media leg of sourcing from everyone is what is coming into more focus these days with Blogs, You Tube, Twitter, Facebook, and for radio, BlogTalk Radio. Now everyone can be a publisher. Whether we should be or not helps explain to some degree why Twitter is a rising star right now… Who has time to publish more than a quick snippet of information at a time anymore? And thirdly, since information is being produced on such adn expanded many-to-many scale, social media can’t exist sustainably without tools like RSS, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Friendfeed and others to help each of us on the consumer end of it all to organize the information from the people we want to hear from.

Now, with all that mostly self-evident stuff said, that doesn’t mean that I am a purist measuring all new social media innovations with a three part litmus test. There is a lot to be said for the majority of our media consumption to be entrusted to the professionals. My friends are good sources for where to meet for dinner and “what are you doing?” Lou Dobbs and other talk hosts are a better source for information on what I need to hold my elected officials accountable on. The local station is the best source for local news traffic and weather.

So the thing that really interests me and motivates me to write this post is.. where is the sweet spot between the social and professional sourcing of media? This second leg and the role of todays talk radio host is the big issue for us and our readers here. I believe this is where it is time not to follow but to lead. Take the 1-2 weeks to accept the 1st and 3rd components as a critical part of the future of all media, and spend the next few months actually getting strategic about it. As a show host, the second leg issue requires a personal grappling with the way you lead conversation, and the kind of brand your show will have. I decided a long time ago that our network would showcase the professionals vs the DIY crowd, but that our hosts in order to remain viable would need to encourage even more audience participation. If you are ignoring social media because you already have a big audience, that will only last a few more glorious years. What you need to do is to give your audience a voice, but still be the conversation leader. These are not just my ideas, but the convictions on which I have built CelleCast, making it program oriented, but also interactive and participatory for the audience with Talkbacks, CelleGrams and Audio Tweets. I look forward to combining these ideas with yours as we work with more stations this year.