Mobile Radio Simplified. Accessible. Relevant.

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.

Good to see this line up from eMarketer on a pretty thorough variety of sources in which people that know the internet use to get informed.

31% use talk radio and 6% use mobile media.

That may seem like a small share, but nothing even gets 70%! This is the year where it all turns toward mobile. We believe the best interfaces will be the most intuitive, personal and portable. The iPhone is bearing that out, but they are just the beginning. We’ll be building radio apps for Android and the iPhone and more as the year progresses.

The shift is not just technologically based, but cultural as well. 2009 is going to be a very political year, with new voices striving to be heard and more people seeking narrow channels of on demand media to participate in. We are about to see convergence not just around what is possible, but what is practical for a people striving to survive as well as lead in this trying time in our history.

This is a topic that is dear to our hearts and I am glad to say that despite the justified concern in the Talk radio industry, this issue likely won’t be on the table in the short term. Take a gander at what Tom Taylor wrote on this today:

Obama’s win won’t immediately change the [FCC] Commission.
Chairman Kevin Martin now shows signs of wanting to hang around longer than expected, and it could be a while before the new Democratic Administration gets its ducks in a row to nominate a new Chairman and new Commissioners (both Dem and GOP). Would Martin accept a demotion to just-plain-Commissioner, since his term’s not up yet? That’s almost never happened, historians tell me. And if Martin really does want to rev up a political run back in North Carolina (for Sue Myrick’s House seat in 2010?), he’d want to get going pretty soon. An Obama presidency might be interested in elevating Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein to Chairman, and he’d be a good consensus builder. If that happens, expect fellow Democrat Michael Copps to turn a deep shade of green - for jealousy. But Obama could well look for a fresh face to run the FCC, and if that’s his wish, Martin could be around the 8th floor for quite a while.

For our part as advocates for the Fourth Speaker, I say that no one segment of media should be complacent about what the Fairness Doctrine would mean if implemented. Just because Talk Radio is the target of it, it doesn’t mean you are immune. You have to think of the precedent it would create. Your blog could arguably be next. Not next year or next term, but 20 years from now a president could seek new ways to silence dissent as well.

We put together a new small mobile campaign experiment today, inviting supporters of various campaigns to shout out their support for the man who earned their vote.

Here is what it looks like at first glance on many phones:

This is a preview of what we are gearing up our service for big time. So far the response is great as the mobile community loves the advantages of a click to call system, with easy browsing, playlist control and more.

The official announcements will come soon.

You can preview our mobile site now by just putting cellecast.com into your phone wap browser now.

The political season is in full swing. It is a season for hopes and dreams, dreams of a better future and the promise of innovation. No matter which candidate you support, it is likely you believe your favorite will deliver on the promise and their potential. The political tussle is a good example of how some of us are drawn to change, and new ideas and a different way of doing things while many are happy with the status quo, the safe way and the proven approach.

I believe the radio industry’s reaction to change is a great example of how these opposing points of view work in the real world. I’ve been involved in this industry for 20 years and the changes in the business have been dramatic. Over the last 5 years the need to move rapidly to new technology, new products, and new delivery methods has become essential and inevitable. Any external analysis of the radio industry shows a decline in audience and an increase in the number of alternatives to terrestrial radio. Industry pundits beat this drum daily, and yet the traditional broadcaster is moving slowly if at all into the realm of alternative delivery. In spite of the obvious need to change and the volume of evidence that time is of the essence many of the leaders in the industry are touting change but hanging on to the status quo. It is time to try new things or be replaced.

CelleCast is one of the truly compatible services giving terrestrial broadcasters a mobile, time shifting partner to expand listening and deepen the relationship between listener and program. Innovators like Dr Laura, Envision Radio, United Stations and Lou Dobbs, among others, are doing more than talking about the future, they’re doing something. Each has taken the first step by offering their programming via CelleCast on their listener’s terms, and on their schedule, and each will see the benefit of a more loyal and engaged audience as alternatives grow.

We’re watching the politicians and the industry executives with the same cynical eye, asking the question, “Are they serious change agents for the future, or the same old thing?” It is time to get off the sideline and take a chance on something new, something bold, and something fresh.

The Equity Kicker’s post about the trending of social networks is excellent in it’s forward thinking. I agree that the future of it is not all automatically guaranteed rosy, and that there is going to be a shakeout of this space soon… at least the generalized networks, where the community factors are an end unto themselves.

Our socnet niche is in building for a specific audience of people that love talk radio, or more specifically, thoughtful, informative discussion and debate that is relevant to their lives. Since people have a built in affinity around the media voices they listen to, there is a natural desire to gather together with others who share that affinity. Empowering this paradigm, we plan to bring a whole a new group of people into social networking, who have not bothered with it to this point.

The talk media channels are just the beginning, but are a powerful beginning, provided we can convince our emerging talk partners that the model is being built to support them, rather than derail their focus.

We are about to launch a new program at CelleCast.com that is focussed on creating an audio forum regarding the news of the day on the presidential primaries and beyond. It has 2-3 news roundups of the day from various public podcasts (fully attributed) and relies on UGC feedback from our users to make everyones voice be heard.

We could really use your feedback now on this as a beta user of the updated features of our talkback tool. Please visit the Presidential Cellect 08 page now and call in to the number and post a talkback. Make sure you are registered first so your profile page link will work.

We are building the final touches now to make the users public profile live to tie it all together into this. We realize that in order to have user generated content, you also have to have at least the right basics of a social networking site as well. That is no problem for us, but will be added gradually into CelleCast. Custom fields will be added over the weekend to make this profile page work nicely.

Please post your ideas here on the blog for ways to improve the user experience.

Thanks.

Kinda fun to see Mike Huckabee and Rush Limbaugh bantering about whether they can reach each other to make sure they are not at enmity. Who says Rush was dissed by Huck? How clever is it to not reply to Huck’s email?

It is amusing to me that no matter how good the geeks like us behind the scenes get at making communication easier, more open and more accessible, there is an unmentioned need in society still,a nd in politics in particular, to claim that getting in touch was just not possible.

You can’t blame the communications industry, or the media industry, or the administrative offices when the goal is to be the wounded party waiting for the phone to ring. The technology still does not exist that will actually make you answer the call. The just isn’t a market for that I am afraid.

With all the talk about how high tech the candidates are, here is the truth about the pathetic showing in keeping their podcasts up and running:

The three candidates that have “official” podcasts are all Democratic.

John Edwards
http://johnedwards.com/podcast.xml
- no dates given, but not updated since the summer

Barack Obama
http://obama.senate.gov/podcast/index.xml
- not updated since April

Hillary Clinton
http://clinton.senate.gov/news/audio/hrc.xml - updated in December — podcasts from Senate floor

The other candidates are not directly represented. Either they have a podcast being done by a supporter, as is the case with Ron Paul, or they have no presence in the podsphere apart from interviews, etc by podcasters or broadcasters who also podcast.

We are going to set up an interactive candidate round-up on CelleCast very soon, using alternate sources since the candidates themselves have little to show.