It broke my heart when Scripps announced it is selling the Rocky Mountain News, which appears to be a death sentence given the number of papers already on the market and the specific complications in Denver that likely would turn off prospective buyers. But I wasn’t surprised to see the staff of the Rocky respond with a site designed to get readers to rally to the newspaper’s defense. It’s a long shot but it’s worth a try. As Mike Littwin notes, “And if we can
I know I’m a bit of a late-comer here, but I’ve become addicted to Internet radio, even to the point where I paid $4.95 to try Radio Io for a month ad-free. At $50/year, it’s a lot cheaper than XM/Sirius, and it provides a pretty wide range of stations. I’m listening to a progressive rock station as I write this, and I’m also frequenting everything from radioioGrunge to radioioNewgrass to radioioJambands. It didn’t take much tinkering to repurpose an old Mac laptop to work with my stereo and wireless network for streaming purposes.
So this post on A VC caught my eye today. Apparently, CBS Radio is positioning itself to be a key player in Internet radio. Much of the focus is on TargetSpot, which apparently allows targeted ad avails to be delivered in streams.
So I started wondering. If they can rig Internet radio so that targeted, relevant ads are appearing in streams instead of the endless jewelry ads Radio Io was feeding me, would I feel compelled to spend $50 a year for ad-free streams? Probably not. And those satellites that XM and Sirius launched into orbit? How long before they’re as useless as the person who paid tons of money to put category 5 cable throughout his new house only to have wireless technology negate it a few years later?
Things are moving fast. I love it …
A few cool tidbits that I’ve stumbled across during the past few weeks. Not claiming any of this is new, but it was new to me …
Shameless — This might be the coolest thing I’ve ever seen on TV. Part soap, part British comedy, totally hilarious and always off-the-wall. At times, even I’m appalled and offended. That ain’t easy to pull off. Kudos to Sundance for having the balls to air it in the U.S.
Mad Men — I stumbled across this in the iTunes store when I was looking for something to download to my iPod to ease a mind-numbing flight to Montana. It worked. The second season just started on AMC, but I’m only about half-way through the first season, thanks to my iPod and Apple TV. It hooked me with the Pete Campbell character. It would have been so easy to make him the stereotypical oily villain, but the writers gave his character complexity and actually manage to make you feel sorry for him at times. It’s also amazing how different today’s world is from the 1960 Madison Avenue setting of the show. The characters are constantly drinking and smoking in a creepy patriarchy that makes you wonder how anyone ever came to idealize the ’50s and early ’60s. Great stuff.
Hayes Carll — I’ve been hearing his stuff on WDVX and never seemed to be able to catch his name. During a drive from Crested Butte to Denver, “She Left Me for Jesus” came on XM’s X Country station and I caught his name and realized he’s the one who also sings “Good Friends” and “Chickens” of WDVX fame. I’ve been downloading his stuff ever since. Twangy-ass country goodness.
iLife ’08 — I resisted buying this upgrade for a while but finally broke down when I wanted to synch photo libraries between my laptop and desktop. I didn’t realize how much cooler iMovie is in the upgrade. They’ve finally taken the same approach with iMovie that iPhoto has been taking almost from the start. It allows you to create a library of all your video. That alone was worth the price of the upgrade.
Led freakin’ Zeppelin — I loved these guys when I was a kid, but I grew tired of them and drifted away. My rediscovery came from the strangest of places — John Baker. I never thought Zeppelin would be his thing, but he’s a total convert, preaching the gospel of Plant and Page while sipping a Cold Smoke microbrew. I was dubious at first, but then I burned a few of their CDs, including a copy of “Jimmy Page & Black Crowes Live at the Greek” and “How the West Was Won.” (To show how far I’d drifted from Zep, my iTunes library had only Led Zeppelin III in it.) I’d forgotten how good this band could be when they were hitting on all cylinders. Total rock. I even had to dust off my air guitar …