Media Watch

WTEM announced it would begin embargoing their Podcasts for 24-hours after the corresponding shows air -- essentially erecting a pay wall, according to the story on NTS. If you follow this thread, you begin to realize there's a huge under-appreciation for compelling local digital content amid fears of a declining traditional audience. And that seems to be the mentality.  Indy radio notable Jerry Lee ended WBEB's streaming because he sees it as a bad business model.  While I agree with the revenue challenges in digital, I think Lee misses the boat and is doing a disservice to his industry by rationalizing an inability to articulate a successful sales pitch to sell a valuable product.   My response: Jerry presumes it's not possible to sell enough advertising to support the platform, and I would have to ask, "why not?" There's a real and growing audience in streaming, so to feign failure in digital is to fail in sales. Radio is a culture that refuses to g...

The city council of Cefar Falls, Iowa is on its second of three readings before it casts a final vote on a law that requires commercial properties to supply keys to the city government.  It's my understanding that the revised ordinance may also require owners of residential rental property to also provide access. Not having the ordinance in front of me and not being a constitutional scholar, it's hard for me to pass judgment, but I was stunned watching council meeting highlights.  It leaves me wondering from where they think they get the power to control the citizens, for whom it works. Handing over your keys seems like giving wholesale compulsory consent, implied forfeiture of liberty.  It's CF residents'  & business owners' job to call BS on this. One of the council members said, "The merits of an idea do not depend on the number of people who hold that idea".  I agree with this, which is why our founders decided against a democracy where we...

I can appreciate MSNBC's Rachel Maddow when she articulates a subject and can call BS when it's due, but she loses me when she predicates an entire segment on a false premise. Here she is telling us that Sen. Rick Santorum said Rep. Anthony Weiner should resign. But that's not what the former PA Senator said -- if you can recognize the difference between saying what you would do and telling someone else what they should do. In fact, Mr. Santorum has been pretty explicit about the distinction -- and made it when he visited Des Moines Friday.

With so much video floating around, it's easy to be tempted to put some of your own out there. And a lot of business professionals have a pretty good reason to make video part of their marketing strategy. It can't be terribly complicated, right? Somehow, $10,000 later, your videos aren't quite what you had invisioned. They sound terrible, the lighting isn't right and there's some jerking while panning and zooming. Notice my first observation was bad sound. That seems to be the first thing we notice about bad video, which seems counter intuitive, but true. It's also the first thing the beginner shooter neglects. And unfortunately the fix often means a new camera or expensive audio recording gear (and an editing nightmare). The reason the audio isn't clear is because you're using the built-in microphone on the camcorder. So the camcorder becomes the mic, meaning for best results, you would have to hold the camera as if it were a mic. In that way, you c...

Crime seems to love my neighborhood, especially police chases.  This is the second one that sped by my house in the past year, but the fourth that I know of to flee through my neighborhood.  There was also a wanted person being retrieved across the street and a murder six blocks away this month.

I came across a neat iPad app today that assembles aggregators' content into sets of print-style pages you can flip through, similar to a book reading app.  It's called Flipboard and it really cleans up some otherwise cluttery articles from their native homes. Out of the box it comes with some preset feeds, including facebook, twitter and Google Reader modules, all setup and waiting for you to...login.  Yep, just supply usernames & passwords for your accounts and it'll take you for a spin around your social network. But wait.  Where does that login information go?  On one hand, you have journalists telling you, "Never share your private information," and others extolling the virtue of this new whiz-bang newsreader. That's a problem because this data mining operation, no matter how well trusted, could be compromised by hackers, same as credit card companies.  Recently dozens of institutions had egg on their faces when they were forced to reveal to the...

Former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore visited Iowa today. Known as "Ten Commandments Judge", Moore made the announcement on WHO Radio in Des Moines this morning.  During an interview with conservative talk show host Jan Mickelson, he said he's forming an exploratory committee for a possible presidential run. Moore is perhaps best known for refusing to remove a monument bearing the Ten Commandments from the Alabama state courthouse. Watch raw video from this morning's interview.