Prepping for Super Bowl XL: Radio Parody Songs from The Bob Rivers Show

One of the classic forms of radio that continues to entertain is the radio parody song. You know what they are…hit songs a radio show will re-do and re-produce with new topical lyrics, creating something that really makes you laugh on the way to work.

Some shows do a better job than others. Some much better. The best, in our minds here at the Jointblog, is The Bob Rivers Show, based on 102.5FM KZOK in Seattle, Washington. Bob Rivers calls them “Twisted Tunes”. It’s a perfect description.

His hometown team – the Seattle Seahawks — are making it to the Big Game for the very first time. So what does Bob Rivers do to honor them? Create some terrific twisted tune parodies. He’s been doing this form of high radio art for 25 years. If you’re a fan of radio, I recommend you give them a listen.

To listen to the streams, just click the songs below (note: it takes you to a new page; just click the back button on your browser to come back to the Jointblog when you’re done).

“My Hawks“

“50 Ways To Beat The Steelers“

“Hasselbeck“

To hear more Bob Rivers Show song parodies, click here.

– All posts written by Chris Kennedy

Truthiness Update Exclusive — "Oprah Winfrey, On Existence of Stephen Colbert: "Yeah"

I saw the audio/video evidence myself tonight on “The Colbert Report”. Yes, Oprah acknowledges that there actually is a Stephen Colbert on Comedy Central. He’s fighting the good fight for truthiness…Fight on, Stephen, fight on…

– All posts written by Chris Kennedy

To TiVo or Not: Either Way, TV Has Changed

I know people addicted to the TiVo “blip”. If you TiVo, you know who you are. And yes, you use it as both a noun and a verb.

We’ve clearly entered a new TV age: those that TiVo (or use any form of time-shifting DVR — digital video recorders) and those that don’t (some don’t even use cable at all). Sure, both groups are still couch potatoes and studies haven’t conclusively said one group watches more or less TV than the other.

In a report called “The End of Television As We Know It” (IBM Business Consulting Services), the TiVo’ing group insists on living an on-demand TV world, where they can watch “anytime, anywhere content through multiple channels.” What this means for advertisers: overall advertising will increase, partly because DVRs “will increase content consumption”, partly for experimenting with new buying patterns to see what sticks. But DVRs will also “decrease demand for traditional spots, as will video-on-demand.”

Non-TiVo’ers will still be the traditional couch-potato crowd that sits back and views TV in the living room, being less insistent for “on-demand”. But they still love having the choice when offered.

Either way — Tivo’ed or not — TV viewers are pulling what they want more and more…and pushing back what they don’t want.

Related story

– All posts written by Chris Kennedy

Site lets listeners rate broadcast, satellite, and Net radio stations

Ratings systems are changing fast. And they need it. Both Nielsen and Arbitron – the leading ratings services for television and radio — are frustrated by rising costs just trying to find people to participate in surveys. Particularly, they both are having trouble finding 18-34 year olds — Madison Avenue’s prized demo. Their joint electronic data-gathering gadget — dubbed the Apollo project — is still in development. Until that works, new methods of figuring out ratings keep popping up.

How about putting it in the hands of the people, Zagat-style?

A new ratings website has been designed for radio users who want to express their listening preferences and reviews (the good and the bad). It’s for regular radio, satellite radio and even Internet radio (they even provide ratings for radio blogs). It’s located at RadioRatingz.com.

This free website intends to give people a new way to vote for what they like and don’t like. Anyone can post and read reviews.

For frustrated listeners, this could become a new forum to vent your feelings of displeasure. Visitors to the website can praise or pan the radio shows that are already listed, and even add listings for programs that don’t appear in the site’s database.

– All posts written by Chris Kennedy

"Truthiness": A Vote For Word of the Decade

Tuesday night, Steven Colbert announced “I fixed Canada in 77 days!” No, Colbert is not Canada’s new Prime Minister (that goes to conservative Steven Harper). Colbert’s announcement was just another example of “truthiness”, perhaps the biggest catchphrase of ALL time (okay, that’s a stretch).

And that’s the point. Stretch those truths!!!

When Steven Colbert first used the word Truthiness in his new show “The Colbert Report”, it quickly became a catch-phrase. What a smart word…it reflects our times today. The American Dialect Society named “truthiness” as its word of 2005 (meaning “truthy, not facty”, or, in other words, statements that have some fact in there despite some obvious fibs, satire or outright lies).

Seriously, “truthiness” should become THE descriptive term of the ’00s, aughts, nils, or whatever you call this first decade of the new millennium.

The ’30s had terms like “Radio”, “The Great Depression”, “Soup lines”, “Fascism” and “Highway” (simplier days back then).

The ’40s: “World War II”, “The Great Generation” and “Post-war recovery” (fierce, fighting days).

The ’50s: “Television”, “Communism”, “Suburbs”, “Korean War”, “Rosa Parks”, “Integration”, “Soviets”, “Cold War”, “Payola” and “Rock & Roll”.

The ’60s: “Transistor radio”, “Revolution”, “Johnny Carson”, “The Beatles”, “Civil Rights”, “Baby Boom”, “Color TV”, “Invest in plastics”, “Vietnam”, “Great Society”, “Psychedelic”" “Hippies” and “Space Age”.

The ’70s: “FM Radio”, “Free love”, “Terrorism”, “Hijackings”, “Me Generation”, “Watergate” “Impeachment” and “I am not a crook”, “Women’s Lib”, “Gas lines”, “Inflation”, “Saturday Night Live”, “Farrah”, “Polyester”, “The Fonz” and “Disco”. Oh, and “Airplane!”

The ’80s: “Cable TV”, “Trickle-down economics”, “Greed is good”, “Personal computers” (PC vs Mac), “Cocaine”, “I Want My MTV”, “Bad Saturday Night Live”, “VCRs and video tapes”, “Windows”, “You looook marvelous”, Iran-Contra, Madonna, “Double-digit mortgage rates” and “Video games”. And more cocaine.

The ’90s: “Nintendo/Gameboy”, “Tabloid entertainment”, “Corporate media”, “Grunge”, “Pixar”, “Letterman vs Leno”, “I feel your pain”, “Better Saturday Night Live”, “Pokemon”, “Generation X”, “The Internet”, “email”, “e-anything”, “AOL”, “Chat rooms”, “Synergy”, “Convergence” and “Dot Com Boom”.

So what do we have so far in the ’00s?

“Satellite radio”, “On demand”, “Irony/Satire”, “The Matrix”, “iPod/iTunes”, “Broadband”, “HD”, “New Millennium”, “MySpaces”, “Google”, “Blogging”, “Blackberry/Palm/Treo” and “9/11″ are all big media trends. “Gameboy” is still big but “PSP” has more buzz. “Harry Potter” has been a massive global phenomenon. And ringtones are hot. And fortunately, Britney Spears mania has died off.

If there is a theme in media and society, it just might be Truthiness.

Examples of “truthiness” in the ’00s:

The “dot com bust” (there were no new business rules…a bad idea is still a bad idea…but the digital age showed the good ideas remain strong; and Dow Jones and NASDAQ have both recovered)

“Compassionate conservatism” (is that what we saw from our government days after Katrina hit New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast?, forgeting to care about actual Americans)

“Mission Accomplished” (really?)

“Jason Blair with the NY Times” (factual story about made-up stories)

“There are WMDs in Iraq” (again, really?)

“We’re going to get scandal out of the White House and bring back professionalism” (cough, cough, I’m choking)

“Fox News talking head shoutfests” (’nuff said)

“Rush Limbaugh’s statement that all drug abusers should go to jail” (when he, of course, has his own problems with abuse)

“Enron/WorldCom, etc” (hey, let’s cook the books, no one will notice!)

“Reality shows” (come on, do you truly think those shows are real?)

“Scripted reality shows” (okay, maybe a little more truthy…but NOT reality!)

“Non-fiction memoirs detailing bad things and how to redeem yourself” (see Oprah taking on James Frey in posting below)

“Anorexic teen stars” (“I have no weight problem”)

“Ashley Simpson’s failed lip-syncing performance on Saturday Night Live” (SNL has gotten worse again, hasn’t it)

ALL of it…TRUTHINESS!

So, as Steven Colbert might say…”Come on, America, when it comes to voting on Truthiness as Word of the Decade, that’s right, it time for the Colbert Report”.

–Chris Kennedy

To read on how Stephen Colbert (remember, he’s American) takes credit for ‘fixing’ Canada: read here

– All posts written by Chris Kennedy

Rolling Stone Rips The New Howard Stern Show on Sirius

Rolling Stone weighs in with their review of the new Howard Stern show on Sirius. The headline and tagline of their article says it all: “Howard’s End – Stern’s show puts the “um” in “tedium.” In their mind, now that Howard has no enemies – no censors, no FCC, no Clear Channel – he also lost his edge.

In a scathing article, Rolling Stone writer Rob Sheffield pulls no punches. Some quotes:

“He sounds like he no longer has to deal with anybody who doesn’t kiss his ass, and as a result he sounds like a bored, gloomy fifty-two-year-old man.”

“Howard spends most of the mornings talking about how famous he is, how loyal his listeners are, how many millions of people are running out to buy Sirius radios, while his studio monkey-boys crowd around the mike to say, “Right on, Howard. You still the king.” Fans call in to remind him he’s still got it.”

“If you thought his sidekicks were useless suck-ups before, get a load of them now. Robin compares him to Martin Luther King Jr. Artie says the main reason he wishes his father were still alive is so he could hear him on The Howard Stern Show. “We’re making history,” he gushes. And this was the first seven days. By next month, Howard will only be able to keep himself awake ordering the staff to do tag-team ass-to-ass action.”

Hmmm, David Lee Roth is getting lambasted in the New York Post, Stern in Rolling Stone…sounds like radio does have something interesting to talk about in the morning.

RollingStone.com article

– All posts written by Chris Kennedy

Public Flogging Through Media: Oprah’s revenge

I thought watching American Idol tryouts would be the biggest public shaming highlight of the week. Skating With Celebrities came close. But neither could top what happened on Oprah this week.

The daytime queen and Book Club tastemaker didn’t just expose the lies in James Frey’s “memoir.” She publicly shamed him — and it was the right thing to do. If there is one thing Oprah Winfrey protects, it’s her credibility. Her audience has high expectations of her because she keeps her own standards exceptional high.

So, good for her acknowledging what happened. Literally, it was a modern version of public flogging. And America got to watch.

Oprah found herself in a position she has never been in before on her show: having to apologize to her audience. “I regret that phone call,” she said during a live taping of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” in Chicago. She was referring to her Jan. 11 phone-in to Larry King, during which the daytime queen expressed support for Oprah’s Book Club author James Frey, who was under the initial round of fire for having fabricated parts of his mega-selling memoir “A Million Little Pieces.” “I left the impression that the truth does not matter,” she said. “To everyone who has challenged me about this book — you are absolutely right.”

How often do we ever hear any famous person on TV ever apologize? We certainly don’t hear it on the news, on the talk shows or from the White House. Maybe the occasional apology after a drug “incident”…but not really. We’re in a victim society and someone else is to blame.

Admitting being wrong (such a breath of fresh air), as Oprah has no doubt counseled guests on her show many times, isn’t an easy thing to do, especially in front of millions of people. Yet, in the wake of this week’s New York Times reports casting even wider doubts on the veracity of Frey’s memoir, she didn’t have much of a choice. Besides the Smoking Gun’s initial investigation showing that Frey lied about time he spent in jail and various run-ins with the law, some employees at the rehab center Frey attended have come forward to dispute his portrait of life there. No doubt her many, many followers have been waiting for Oprah to finally pronounce James Frey a fraud, and to distance herself both from the flimsy book that she made into a phenomenon, and from the lying man she made into a hero.

She did. First, she admitted her mistakes. And then took it to Frey, who wimpered and sounded like an 8-year old being punished for doing something bad. Oprah could have let the issue die on a vine; instead, she corrected the situation.

This is a case where public shaming actually was a good thing, not just an entertaining one.

referenced Salon.com story

– All posts written by Chris Kennedy

What’s Big Media So Scared Of?

The questions on the minds of Big Media are heavy. What’s next? Entire business models — in place for decades — are being upended. For most of modern media’s history, the rules were straight-forward. Own a platform or delivery device, decide and create the content, then distribute it. The people would watch it, read it, listen to it…on the terms of Big Media.

With multi-media convergience and cross-platform distribution placing more and more control in the hands of consumers for an on-demand world, people get more choices in what, how and when they consume media. Technology gives consumers access to what used to be exclusively controlled by Big Media. Now, people can choose: consume what is delivered by traditional media (live or time-shofted for convenience)…or simply create and distribute what they want to consume.

Many are doing both.

It has all of Big Media scratching their head, trying to figure out what people will watch, listen to and do with these gadget machines now that they are becoming interchangeable and interconnected.

Old-line media companies’ fears can be lumped into three Anxiety categories:

* Business-model anxiety. Will paid download services like Apple’s iTunes, not to mention TiVo’s and their ad-defying fast-forward buttons, undercut TV networks’ huge advertising revenue? Can it help revenues in the future? Or is making content available through iTunes only putting a bandage on the mortal wounds? What will the Big Media platforms look like in 10 years? In 5 years?

* Creative anxiety. McLuhan’s classic rule “The medium is the message” has been “mashed-up” in today’s media world. Anyone who wants to tell a joke, spin a tale or report the latest White House news can produce any combination of video, text, sound and pictures for viewing on a 50-inch TV, a laptop computer or a cellphone screen. No one in conventional media is sure what audiences barraged from all sides actually want. Digital right management and figuring out how to control who owns what is causing a lot of creative agita.

* Control anxiety. Since the invention of the high-speed printing press, mass media have been created for the masses, not by them. It’s been all push to the consumer. Now, it’s pull. Consumers decide. The rise of Weblogs has given everyone a printing press (tah dah!). Now we can all be DJs, publishers, reporters and film directors, distributing our podcasts and movies online without groveling before a studio executive.

So if the mashup is the message, and control anxiety is keeping big media from profiting from convergence as they hoped, what are the traditional media companies to do?

It would be easy to dismiss them as dinosaurs, but it would also be wrong. The major media companies are not going away.

The solution remains the same. As father of modern management principles Peter Drucker states, “the purpose of business is to create a customer and innovate.” Big Media needs to decide who the real customer is and can’t try to satisfy everyone. Are current and potential shareholders (and anyone shaping Wall Street perceptions) the real customer? Or is it the public at large, regardless of investor status or potential? Can it be both?

Creating that new customer in these converged times and innovatively satisfying their media need(s) is essential in order for Big Media to find its next growth. Figuring out how to do that is the challenge. Sounds like some therapy sessions might be needed to cure that anxiety.

related article

– All posts written by Chris Kennedy

Search patterns, trends, and surprises for January

First month of January is almost done…what are people searching for online? What’s hot?

If you look at Google’s “Zeitgeist“, you’d find that “Anna Benson” (Playboy cover girl and wife of former NY Met/now Baltimore Oriole pitcher Kris Benson) is the most searched query this week. Interestingly, she also was an in-studio guest on “The Big Idea” with MSNBC’s Danny Deutsch. Coincidence? I think not…

Kate Beckingsale (new movie), Miss America, (new winner) and Jenna Elfman (new show) all made the Top 5…but Zac Efron at #2? Come on, a teen from the WB no one over 18 knows? American Idol was 8th? Hmm, smells like some press/PR agent working overtime typing in over and over searches for Zac…

Here’s this week’s Top 15 from Google:
Week Ending January 23, 2006

1. anna benson
2. zac efron
3. kate beckinsale
4. miss america
5. jenna elfman
6. leif garrett
7. barrett jackson
8. american idol
9. tanith belbin
10. australian open
11. martina hingis
12. jill carroll
13. maria sharapova
14. seahawks
15. steelers

As a note, Google says “Pulling together interesting search trends and patterns requires Google’s human and computing power together. Search statistics are automatically generated based on the millions of searches conducted on Google over a given period of time – weekly, monthly, and annually. With some help from humans, and a pigeon or two when they have time, these statistics and trends make their way from the depths of Google’s hard drives to become the Google Zeitgeist report.

We should note that in compiling the Zeitgeist, no individual searcher’s information is available or accessible to us.” Considering the recent controversies with the US regarding protecting databases and keeping information secure, it is a good point to know.

For interest, what do you think we were searching for 5 years ago this week? Here’s the list from the archives:

1. Chinese New Year
2. Australian Open
3. Chinese horoscope
4. Chinese zodiac
5. Year of the snake
6. Chinese astrology
7. Golden Globes
8. Hotmail
9. Chat
10. Warez

Google Top 15 searches this week

– All posts written by Chris Kennedy

Living A Purely Online Media Life

Could you set aside all your normal media connections — newspaper, radio, TV, the telephone, magazines, cell phones, iPods, pagers — and only living digitally online 24/7?

Someone is trying that experiment for one month right now…and so far, he seems to be holding up okay.

His questions and tests are simple ones: what kind of media outlet does the internet really offer? Can his appetite for video and audio media survive on internet-available rations? And if it can, does that mean his TV viewing experience will eventually be an extension of his internet experience?

Imagine trying that yourself and how much you’d have to adjust your viewing and listening habits to find out what was going on in the world and with your friends.

He started January 15th and continues till February 15th, only consuming media via the internet.

To check his progress, click here.

– All posts written by Chris Kennedy