CPB – Subsidizing American Culture or Unnecessary Intermediary

Should the CPB continue to receive tax payer dollars?

On one hand, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting funds some of the most well known American culture icons – Sesame Street, Clifford the Big Red Dog, Nightline, among them. Programs and lessons that shaped my childhood and the childhoods of everyone I know.

On the other hand, the CPB is structured in such a way that the reigning administration pulls the purse strings. As Mike O’Connor has stated repeatedly, “he who pays the piper calls the tune.”

This begs the question on the definition of “public”. Are we talking “publicly funded” or “created by the public”?. Tax dollars are public monies funding all sorts of services only a subset of us (the public) agrees with at any given time; highways, Medicare, Iraq War, education, parks, space travel. Seems to me, financing extremely large projects that none of us can accomplish individually is what governments and taxes are for. Whether we as individual investors fully appreciate them or not. Does the CPB’s mission fall into the ‘bigger than all of us’ category?

The fact you’re reading this weblog means CPB’s current model is expiring. As Jeff Jarvis states, It’s time to..

“Reexamine the mission of public broadcasting in an era when the public can broadcast.”

The no-barrier-to-entry of weblogs, podcasts, and videoblogs has caused an explosion in self-publishing. All produced independent of CPB funding. From this public is “created by the public” angle KYOU – a Clear Channel AM station – may actually be more public than NPR.

If I’m reading CPB’s site accurately, a full 26% of their funding comes from memberships. Less than 15% of their funding is from Congress – about $370 million dollars. If as Evol mentions, $370 million breaks down to $1.25 per year per American, then we need to find a way for each American to easily – and independently – invest $12.50 to continue supporting public broadcasting. Making it easier for citizens to become customers as Doc Searls states. Ideally on a per-production basis rather than at the network level. This will transform the “money sucks but we need to pay the electric bill” fund drives to an actual marketplace where Americans have direct control over what’s called “public broadcasting.”

With this, I challenge PBS to change the “take action now” link at PBS.org from “call your congressman” to “give us $12.50”. Same challenge for NPR. Hell, I’ll happily flag my $12.50 for experimental and new programs.

Otherwise next year, it’ll be deja vu all over again.

Anonymous Responses Are Useless

One of my current projects has a major survey component. The survey ends with:

“If you’d be open to follow up questions, enter your email address below.”

There’s about a 60 / 40 split on responses with emails and those without. The responses without email addresses have skipped questions, irrelevant answers, and are generally unusable. This is so much the case, that I’ve found it a better use of time to check for an email address first – then read the response.

It’s interesting that people comfortable with being contacted give useful answers, while those providing non-useful responses don’t provide a way to be contacted.

Conventional wisdom on requiring accountability has it backward. Accountable people want to be responsible for their actions. Those that aren’t don’t. Forcing it doesn’t change anything.

On a related note, perhaps my observation is related to Ben Hammersley’s explanation of why wikitorial died.

Customers are Cheaper than Ad Agencies

When people are sharing more and more with each other and strangers, when audiences are splintering, when the relationship between a company and it’s customers is far more measurable, spending millions of dollars on “brand awareness” would seem hilarious – if it wasn’t sad.

In other words:

“You don’t want the kind of high-production stories that come out of ad agencies- you want the kind of stories that ordinary people can tell.”

Thanks to Hugh for sharing.

Solving PowerBook Trackpad Dead Zones

For about a week, the half inch on the far left and far right of my Powerbook’s trackpad were completely dead. Basically, it turned my 17″ Powerbook trackpad down to a 12″ Powerbook trackpad. These dead zones caused extremely flakey and erratic cursor behavior not to mention my mental image of the trackpad’s size was all messed up.

I was using SideTrack to add trackpad scrolling and had grown accustomed to placing my finger on the far left border (I’m left-handed) of the trackpad to scroll. These dead zones rendered that action completely useless. Thinking it might be SideTrack freaking out, I installed iScroll2. I got scrolling back, but only when my fingers were in the exact center of the trackpad. Way to awkward to actually be useful.

James from the Foundation suggested I open up the Keyboard & Mouse System Preferences Pane and uncheck “Ignore accident trackpad input.” After un-checking, the entire trackpad became active again. Thanks James.

I think that option should be re-labeled “make trackpad smaller”.

How can Podcasting Help an Art Museum?

One of the exciting podcasting-related conversations I mentioned in an earlier post was with Brent Gustafson over at the Walker Art Center.

We grabbed a coffee at the newly renovated Loring Park Dunn Bros and discussed some podcast-related services the Walker Art Center could offer.

As expected, some interesting projects came out of our time together. Brent mentions one of them in a recent post at the Walker’s New Media Initiatives Blog:

“The other thing Garrick and I talked about was user tours. The idea is you could comment on an artwork after you hear about it when you dial Art on Call. It would save this as a voicemail, which automatically archives it to MP3, and we could pick the best comments to create user tours. This would allow people to choose multiple “versions” of the same tour. You could pick from the artists tour, the Teen remix, or the user tour of the same show, each having a different perspective on the work.”

To me, podcasting gets interesting after the part about it being an alternative to broadcast radio – where it starts to extend and enhance a business in a way radio can’t.

Theres Always More Than One Way

“Don’t ever allow yourself to believe that there is only one way to make ideas real.” – Scott Berkun

Stated more traditionally, “there’s more than one way to skin a cat.”

The great thing about roadblocks is they force an evaluation of goals.

For example, you’d like to publish a book and are continually rejected by publishers. Is is that you want to have a physical book on Barnes & Noble’s shelves or that you want to share your ideas with the world?

One answer says mold yourself to what publishers want and wait for them to like you. The other says start a blog over lunch.

Exactly the Same Thing as a Treo from Earthlink

The reception on my T610 has been awful lately. A month or so back the signal was so clear people could hear the birds in my backyard. Last week, I’d be lucky to make out words under the tidal waves of static. On road trips, the T610 lost it’s signal the moment the “Wisconsin Welcomes You” sign was in view. While Jen’s Samsung E310 always kept at least one bar.

As I’ve mentioned before, the I’m heavily using Apple’s iSync and BluePhoneElite to keep my phone and Powerbook playing nice together. T-Mobile offered to replace the T610 with a comparable model. None of their current handsets support iSync via Bluetooth let alone match my ideal phone – the opposite of a Treo.

Bryce Howitson suggested an unlocked Nokia 7280. The 7280 fills all my requirements, though I’m not quite comfortable buying an unlock phone off eBay…yet. This left the Motorola RazR and the Treo 650 in the running. Emails with T-Mobile customer service confirmed neither are available through them.

It was OfficeMax’s $299 after rebate price on a Treo with Earthlink Wireless finally sold me. Eight hours after taking it out of the box, Earthlink had ported my number. During that time, I quickly remembered all the things I loved about Palm’s OS and the awkwardness of HotSync/Palm Desktop on the Mac. The Palm OS itself has matured quite a bit in the 3 years since I ditched my Visor, those two apps seem to be frozen in time.

I’ve bumped up against some oddness; Bluetooth polling seems to be more frequent than necessary – if only because it locks the Palm up completely, it’s not obvious how to record just audio, and the ‘@’ key an option-click. I’d rather it be a shift-click (like other QWERTY keyboards) or better – a key all it’s own.

Overall, I’m extremely happy with the Treo. Just as Christoper Mark Brooder said I would be.

Not only does the signal stretch well into Wisconsin, I discovered there’s something both wonderful and wrong about checking your email from a pontoon boat.

Also, if anyone wants my USB phone charger, make me an offer.

Is Closed a Cultural Benefit?

This weekend, I caught up with a college friend in central Wisconsin. Starbucks recently opened their first storefront in Wausau. Given Starbucks’ consistency and my lack of knowledge of other options, I suggested we meet there.

“How about something local, like Jeannie’s Cafe?”, Tom asked.

I’m always up for tasting the local flavor and we planned to meet there.

Neither of us were aware that Jeanie’s, like the majority of downtown Wausau, is closed on Sundays. This reminded me of my time in Germany. There the shops were also closed on Sundays. While I agree, closing at 6pm during the week, noon on Saturday, and all day Sunday, keeps a designated time for personal and preferably family-focused activities, it only works best when everyone plays along. And when the economy isn’t based on retail sales. Conversely, not playing along hurts everyone and can make actually getting things done a modern day, dual-income family a really hassle.

In Wausau, the ice cream shop, chocolate shop, gelato shop, and the downtown enclosed mall were all open – with a couple of patrons in each. With a handful of shops open and the majority closed, I imagine the traffic for the open shops is dramatically lower than what they see on Saturday. The open shops don’t get walk-in traffic from non-open shops.

In the end, Tom and I drove across town to Starbucks, it was packed.

To me, this felt like small-town American example of the EU’s economic issues.

P&G Cuts Network TV Ad Spending 5 Percent

In response to unconfirmed rumors Procter & Gamble Co is cutting TV ad buys, Mark Ramsey asks, “What do you think this says about advertising from the perspective of a company that knows as much about it as anybody?”

Exactly. When a company with a 130 year history of advertising says something isn’t working, it’s time we all rethink our marketing dollar.

A while back, I offered an argument on the benefits of interruption marketing (only the good stuff is worth interrupting).

I’m a far bigger fan of product placement. Sounds like Mark is also. I think it’s far more representative of real life. For example, from where you’re sitting right now, how many items can you see with a name on it; books, cans, boxes, photos, anything?

(I stopped counting at 10, when my eyes hit the bookshelf)

All of that’s product placement. Is it obnoxious, disingenuous, and annoying? I hope not.