Commentary

Real Media Riffs - Monday, August 19, 2002

Somethin’s Wrong With My Radio: Our Media Daily News and everybody else keeps reporting on the latest monthly revenue figures from the Radio Advertising Bureau. And that’s cool, because it’s a good story to cover in this slow summer for news, and those numbers show a convincing turnaround for national advertising on radio, after it spent much of last year in the tank. But I still think radio needs a big time overhaul. And you know what? It’s not gonna get it. And the reason its not gonna get it is because satellite radio isn’t putting any pressure on the Clear Channels and other big networks to crack their playlists. And its not going to put any pressure on big markets like New York to take any risks, like put up a true adult contemporary channel. So what you get when you turn on the radio is the same stuff from one end of the dial to another whether you’re in Boston, Bentonville, AR or Bakersfield, CA. I thought by this point that satellite radio would create more of a buzz than it has. I thought its wide-open menu of music and talk selections would have its consumers raving to friends and the media about how much better it is to be free from the fascism of the network dominance of the airwaves. I don’t sense any buzz around it at all. I hear Sirius, who along with XM is the key marketer of satellite radio technology, is in financial trouble. And when I went to get a new car stereo two weeks ago, the display models for satellite radio sounded like crap, and cost double the CD player with an FM radio that I opted for. This fall several car manufactures are including satellite radios as standard equipment on high-end models. That better get some buzz going or I’m afraid satellite radio is headed for a traffic jam.

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MouseEars: I hate to admit it, but I’m a Michael Eisner fan. You don’t get to the spot he’s in by being insular, ignorant or out of step with the times. He has played a major role in building arguably the best brand, Disney, of the last century. Last Friday he re-purchased $10 million of his own company’s stock, while the buzz around LA is that some board members want to hang him by his ears. I’ve always said that hit titles create fast genius. Eisner has a $100 million hit on his hands with Signs, and his ABC network scored well in the upfront. It also executed the only cross-media deal worth its salt so far, exacting $1 billion from OMD in July. Hey, everybody’s taking a stock hit. I’ll bet on Eisner pulling this thing out. Or maybe they’ll trade him straight up for Karmazin.

Finda The Pope, Finda The Pope, Finda The Pope: Remember Father Guido Sarducci? He was the irreverent Vatican ambassador on SNL. I say that these cable news networks leasing roof space in Rome so they can see the whiff of smoke that heralds a new Pope, should hire Guido. He’d make it entertaining. I mean, what are we gonna do? Sit and watch the PopeCam? How about the PopeCam sponsored by one of those digital camera companies that run all those damn pop-ups?

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