Mobile Radio Simplified. Accessible. Relevant.

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.

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 ##

Here is some wisdom I can bring back from my visit to Hawaii. It is a snippet from Bob Harrison’s newsletter, whose conference I just attended in Maui. Starting a bit off-topic, it relates to what can happen to any of us who resist change or remain in close proximity to others that resist it.

An overzealous zookeeper who was trying to overcome an elephant’s constipation problem fed the animal 22 doses of laxative plus several pounds of berries, figs and prunes. When that didn’t seem to be working, he proceeded to give the ailing elephant an olive-oil enema. Unexpectedly, the relieved beast unloaded on him like a dump truck full of mud.

According to the article the sheer force of the elephant’s unexpected defecation knocked the keeper to the ground, where he struck his head on the pavement. The elephant evacuated approximately 200 pounds of dung on top of him.

I know what it feels like to have someone “dump their dung” on me. This situation has happened in my life on more than one occasion. It has occurred when someone was misinformed or had allowed an accumulation of negative feelings about a proposed change to persist in their thinking. As a result, some event or announcement triggered them to overreact emotionally and respond in a negative manner. At the same time, there have been times in my life where I have misinterpreted change and therefore have reacted negatively.

In his classic book Peak Performance author John Noe states… “The greatest challenge that people committed to going to the next level will face is disagreement from those closest to them. The reason is, most of the people close to you are more interested in you not getting hurt than they are in seeing you succeed.”

“Peak performers can not allow the possible negative reactions of these people to paralyze them from making correct decisions.” Noe goes on to state…

“High achievers must be willing to risk rejection by their peers.”

Over the years I have observed that the possibility of rejection by others is a key challenge that leaders must be willing to face. This is particularly true when they attempt to remove blockages to productivity, launch new products, change operating strategies, and/or when they introduce a new person to a position of authority or influence.

Thanks for the imagery Bob. I am sure we will all think twice before forcing change on those not ready to digest it.

Stay regular!

The cell carriers are right on schedule, following our predictions almost like a script.

Just last night I was dining with a fellow pioneer in new media and I shared with him that the big mega trend that is going to change the face of mobile media is the flat-rating of cellular minutes. We are not only banking on it, but hold it to be self-evident. Then today, Verizon announced it is launching $99/mo and up fixed-rate plans for unlimited minutes in the great 48. Not to be left out, AT&T did a “me too” announcement within a mere 5 hours, always ready to react in their sophisticated market-share retention mindset.

I hate to brag, but as they say, “It ain’t bragging if you can back it up”.

Back in Oct 07, I had the privilege to opine in Talkers Magazine that the wireless media adoption trends would first hinge on airtime becoming an open commodity, forever changing our attitudes about the conservation of minutes. I see this first step to have hit the tipping point today with this announcement. My first two predictions: 1) the commoditization of airtime and; 2) consumer adoption of fixed pricing are the major keys to the opening of the voice channel media portion of the overall wireless media revolution, making today an industry holiday. Mark Feb 20th on your 2009 calendar now and we’ll throw a party. We are now 31% through the overall revolution, and you should reconsider the other 4 points on my list with a new level of interest. Radio as we know it is about to change.

We were very grateful to have the opportunity to appear on MSNBC’s Your Business yesterday morning. My 60 seconds of fame was in the ‘Elevator Pitch’ segment, where I had one minute to tell a two person panel about CelleCast, and what is seeks to accomplish. Please watch this quick clip to gain a visual context for the following.

As exhilarating as that was, I was put off, to say the least, at the way they chose to do the set up. Though not shown in the clip referenced above, they introduced my pitch by asking, “How would you like to get the Pussycat Dolls on your cell phone?” As you see in the video, two Pussycat Dolls dancers are waiting by the elevator as I get off. It’s all part of the Las Vegas on-location feel. However, I was extremely displeased by their association of our product with prurient, porn-related content.

CelleCast in actuality holds a higher content standard than the FCC in what we accept on our service. You can read our content decency standards here. We’ll hold true to this, even if it costs us the opportunity to license high profile content that fails to meet these standards. If we can’t elevate the dialog on the airwaves, then we fail in a bigger arena than business itself.

Andrew

The world of podcasting hit a milestone last week but the question of traction still looms heavily over the fledgling industry.

We see two issues that are hard for podcasting in it’s current form to overcome:

1) Listens vs Downloads
The ratio between the two is continually, deliberately blurred, because people only care about touting the bigger number as a sign of clout. You can see in this post how the transparent disclosure of one podcasters story devolved into a fracas over inaccurate reporting of his stats. Until an accurate sense of listener consumption emerges, the downloads stats will remain difficult to build credibility around.

2) Limited access.
Although podcasting is technically accessible to a growing number of people, the mainstream is likely to never get to a place of familiarity with it, until the baby boomers fade into obscurity. The process just requires a lot of adaptation from our daily natural practice.

This is why we believe cellecasting is a better focus for audio content producers of all kinds. 100% accessible and familiar to all, and 100% measurable. All of our early partners are pioneers who will benefit the most from recognizing this reality.

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.