Seth Godin on the iPhone

Seth says there are two kinds of people in the world:

“The folks that want (need!) an iPhone, and those that couldn’t care less. And of course it’s not just Apple and it’s not just phones. It’s every single industry in the world. You’re not likely to convert one group into the other. What you can do is decide which group you’d like to market to.”

There you go. I am in the first group and Jobs sold me in the first five minutes.

Relaunching news websites

Learfield NetworksOne of the first Learfield networks to have a website was Radio Iowa, our state news network in Iowa. That must have been around 1996 and it was created (using Frontpage) by Dan Arnall and Allen Hammock, a couple college guys we hired to help us figure out “this Internet thing.”

Dan and Allen went on to pursue new adventures a long time ago. And we’ve added lots of websites –for our company and for clients– since those early days.

This week we relaunched RadioIowa.com. We relaunched WRN.com a about a month back and we’ll be putting up the new Missourinet.com in a couple of weeks.

Our news networks are pretty narrow in focus. We cover the legislature, state government and –with the help of our affiliates– news from throughout our respective states.

Our websites reflect that focus. State news and sports, with an emphasis on the sounds of the news. We are, first and foremost, radio networks. Our websites are designed to complement them. They are not high-traffic, destination sites. Time will tell if this strategy is the correct one. The next couple of years should be interesting.

Our new sites are very blog-like. At WRN.com, we blog the sports and our news director maintains a blog. At Radio Iowa, News Director O. Kay Henderson is generating a real following for her political blog.

Time will tell if I have taken us in the right direction with these sites. If you like what you see, email me and I’ll put you in touch with Andy Waschick, the man behind all of Learfield’s websites. If you don’t… please don’t tell me.

Apple iPhone

iPhoneYou know I’m not a cell phone guy. Nobody to call…nobody to call me (‘cept Barb). But the new Apple iPhone is so much more than a cell phone. Makes the Treo and the Blackberry look like Fisher Price toys. The iPod led me to purchase the MacBook…and the MacBook will probably lead me to buy an iPhone.

Update: Just watched Jobs’ keynote. Amazing. And take a look at the effect of the iPhone announcement on Palm (Treo) and Rimm (Blackberry) stock in the hours following.

Jack Abramoff

Bush and AbramoffThat’s jack Abramoff on the left and you know the gentelman on the right. The picture was taken at a campaign fundraiser in December 2003. Kim Eisler, Washingtonian magazine writer and a friend of Abramoff’s, confirmed the photo’s authenticity for The Associated Press. He said he had seen the picture at Abramoff’s house.

Abramoff helped raise more than $100,000 for Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign. He is serving nearly six years in prison for a fraudulent Florida casino deal and is cooperating with the FBI in a bribery investigation involving members of Congress and the Bush administration. [Associated Press]

Marketing through cell phones

Brandweek has a good article on how marketing on cell phones is finally starting to work:

“Crammed into his seat on his way into Manhattan, a businessman uses his cell phone to log onto Weather.com just to see if there’s some sunshine on the way (“Seventeen inches of snow expected by the weekend.”) Just then, a bright blue banner ad with white lettering pops up on and grabs his attention: “Aruba” …He clicks on the banner ad, and his phone dials an 800 number, connecting him to an Aruba Tourism booking agent. “

The article includes several good examples.

A changing TIME MAGAZINE

TIME Managing Editor Richard Stengel describes some changes at the magazine that “…reflect the way the Internet is affecting pretty much everything about the news business.”

In addition to a new publication date (Friday), the new feature that caught my eye was a blog:

“…now you can start your day by checking our news blog, The Ag, which smartly aggregates and summarizes the most important stories from daily newspapers and blogs around the world.”

Hmm. Someone forgot to tell the editors at TIME that real journalists don’t blog.

TV shows on cellphones

Verizon Wireless is expected to announce it will offer full-length programming to its cellular subscribers from several major television networks. The service, which should be in operation by the end of March, will consist of eight channels and will include popular shows from NBC, CBS, Fox and MTV, they said. ESPN is reportedly also in negotiations to offer programs, which will be offered for the cellphone screen soon after they appear on television. [New York Times]

“Why local media companies should fear Google”

This post by Terry Heaton made me flash on a Google search page with a “Pages from Missouri” button (or any of the states where we have networks):

“Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it easily accessible to everyone. This ought to be the mission of every local media company, for one day we will find a similar button on Google regardless of the zip code from which we are logging in.”

Will Google be able to cover state news (with audio, video, stills,etc) better than our networks? Blasphemy I know, but it doesn’t seem wise to assume that our little corner of the news/media world will be untouched by the changes happening all around us.