I think it was Wednesday night last week when I heard the first one. Christmas ad, that is. I can’t be sure, because I wasn’t paying close attention to the TV, which was on in the background, but I thought I heard an ad for Christmas shopping at Sears.
Thursday night, I actually saw it.
The line I thought I heard, and apparently did, on Wednesday night, was “Be the Santa you want to be, at Sears.” I yelled to my wife, who was in the kitchen at the time, that it was official…I’d actually seen my first Christmas ad, three days before Halloween. Although I’m sure it was the same ad that ran the night before, four days before Halloween.
The scent of fear pervades the merchant community, with one estimate this year saying people will likely spend only about 2% more this Christmas season than last year, which was a miserably bad year for the merchants. There was another ad I heard in the past few days (you can tell I don’t really pay a lot of attention to the ads when the TV is on), I think it was for Target, talking about Black Friday.
Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving, which is almost universally (and inaccurately) reported by the mass media as the “busiest shopping day of the year”, although the Saturday before Christmas has been the busiest shopping day of the year for decades. And with the escalating influence of broadband internet, the way we shop for Christmas is rapidly evolving, hence the term “Cyber Monday”, a recently-coined moniker, referring to the Monday after Thanksgiving when everybody goes back to work and uses the company’s broadband connection to surf the web and shop for Christmas stuff.
Now that broadband (high-speed) internet is available in so many homes, the term “Cyber Monday” will probably be short-lived. We can surf and shop to our heart’s content, in the comfort of our home.
When the merchants start running Christmas shopping and Black Friday ads before Halloween, you know there’s panic in the air. Hang on; we’re in for a bumpy ride with desperate Christmas ads soon replacing the horrible political ads which will die tomorrow.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Breast Cancer "Awareness"
Since this will be my last rant during Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the curmudgeonly cynic in me must come out for a final October appearance. I have a modest suggestion for the Komen Foundation and all the other excellent organizations that do so much to try and find a way to end this horrid disease which touches nearly every family on earth.
Stop talking about “breast cancer awareness” and change your pitch to “breast cancer research.”
If you stop and think about it, “awareness” campaigns are for things the general public isn’t familiar with. I’m willing to bet that if you stop a hundred people on the street, every one of them will know someone, either in their assortment of friends or family, that has been personally touched by breast cancer. We’re well “aware” of the disease, and how devastating it can be.
What we need is, in my opinion, more money for medical research and less for “awareness” campaigns. Every time I see or hear about a breast cancer awareness event, and there’ve been plenty in the past month, the cynic in me rears its peaked ears and horns. I saw some product at the entrance to the grocery check-out line last weekend and the packaging said something about a percentage of the proceeds going to help fund “breast cancer awareness.” I commented to my wife that it probably meant a tiny percentage, if anything, would go to a reputable breast cancer charity, and the lion’s share of it would go to put more pink ribbons on the company’s packaging and advertising, under the guise of “breast cancer awareness.”
You can easily make the case that by putting a pink ribbon on its products, a company is helping people be “aware” of breast cancer, when what we really need is a greater contribution to research rather than awareness. Decades of working in a business which is entirely supported by advertising (on-air broadcasting) has made me pay very close attention to what sort of claims are made by the manufacturers of every type of product, so don’t tell me “breast cancer awareness” and “breast cancer research” are interchangeable marketing terms. They’re not. Marketing experts are very careful about how they use words.
I’ve already ranted about the silly annual social media campaigns, like Facebook’s, where women post the color of their bra or where they like to keep their purse, under the guise of breast cancer awareness. It would be better if they’d just donate some money for research and post the dollar amount.
Stop talking about “breast cancer awareness” and change your pitch to “breast cancer research.”
If you stop and think about it, “awareness” campaigns are for things the general public isn’t familiar with. I’m willing to bet that if you stop a hundred people on the street, every one of them will know someone, either in their assortment of friends or family, that has been personally touched by breast cancer. We’re well “aware” of the disease, and how devastating it can be.
What we need is, in my opinion, more money for medical research and less for “awareness” campaigns. Every time I see or hear about a breast cancer awareness event, and there’ve been plenty in the past month, the cynic in me rears its peaked ears and horns. I saw some product at the entrance to the grocery check-out line last weekend and the packaging said something about a percentage of the proceeds going to help fund “breast cancer awareness.” I commented to my wife that it probably meant a tiny percentage, if anything, would go to a reputable breast cancer charity, and the lion’s share of it would go to put more pink ribbons on the company’s packaging and advertising, under the guise of “breast cancer awareness.”
You can easily make the case that by putting a pink ribbon on its products, a company is helping people be “aware” of breast cancer, when what we really need is a greater contribution to research rather than awareness. Decades of working in a business which is entirely supported by advertising (on-air broadcasting) has made me pay very close attention to what sort of claims are made by the manufacturers of every type of product, so don’t tell me “breast cancer awareness” and “breast cancer research” are interchangeable marketing terms. They’re not. Marketing experts are very careful about how they use words.
I’ve already ranted about the silly annual social media campaigns, like Facebook’s, where women post the color of their bra or where they like to keep their purse, under the guise of breast cancer awareness. It would be better if they’d just donate some money for research and post the dollar amount.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Windmeggadon Brings Thoughts Of Spring (Training)
We didn’t do it last year, but we’ve promised ourselves we’re going to this year. My wife and I, that is. And the topic is a warm-weather vacation when Wisconsin weather is crappy, which means essentially any time between Thanksgiving and Memorial Day. Thing is, we can’t decide if we want to go somewhere really warm…like Aruba or Cancun….in late January, or to Spring Training in Arizona the first week of March.
We went to Arizona for a week of Spring Training two years ago, and it was the best vacation EVER. We loved the high-angle sun, the warm, dry air, watching the ballplayers, doing some fine dining, lolling by the pool, and really unwinding. My fear is, of course, that since we agree it was our best vacation ever, another week at Spring Training might fall short by comparison.
The thing is, when we talk about what we want out of a vacation, we keep coming back to the way we worked the Spring Training visit of ’09. We slept in, had a leisurely breakfast at the hotel, spent time by the pool reading the morning papers, maybe did a bit of shopping, headed to the ball park a little after noon and grabbed some hot dogs and baseball until about 3:30, headed back to the hotel, hit the pool, hit the bar, went to dinner, had a nightcap, and then relaxed in the hotel room, balcony doors open with the great night-time desert breeze wafting into the room.
But going to Spring Training in the first week of March means we’ve got to slog through the very worst of the Wisconsin weather before we escape. And although escaping the snow and cold in late January or early February to Cancun or Aruba or Ixtapa or Cozumel or the Bahamas or Acapulco or Cabo is very tempting, neither one of us is the type to enjoy doing nothing but laying in the sun all day. The baseball aspect of Spring Training gives us a daily activity that we really enjoy.
Decisions, decisions.
If I were a bettin’ man, I’d say we’re gonna be at the Hyatt in Tempe the first week of March. It’s a pleasant thought after two days of roaring wind and chilly temperatures around here.
We went to Arizona for a week of Spring Training two years ago, and it was the best vacation EVER. We loved the high-angle sun, the warm, dry air, watching the ballplayers, doing some fine dining, lolling by the pool, and really unwinding. My fear is, of course, that since we agree it was our best vacation ever, another week at Spring Training might fall short by comparison.
The thing is, when we talk about what we want out of a vacation, we keep coming back to the way we worked the Spring Training visit of ’09. We slept in, had a leisurely breakfast at the hotel, spent time by the pool reading the morning papers, maybe did a bit of shopping, headed to the ball park a little after noon and grabbed some hot dogs and baseball until about 3:30, headed back to the hotel, hit the pool, hit the bar, went to dinner, had a nightcap, and then relaxed in the hotel room, balcony doors open with the great night-time desert breeze wafting into the room.
But going to Spring Training in the first week of March means we’ve got to slog through the very worst of the Wisconsin weather before we escape. And although escaping the snow and cold in late January or early February to Cancun or Aruba or Ixtapa or Cozumel or the Bahamas or Acapulco or Cabo is very tempting, neither one of us is the type to enjoy doing nothing but laying in the sun all day. The baseball aspect of Spring Training gives us a daily activity that we really enjoy.
Decisions, decisions.
If I were a bettin’ man, I’d say we’re gonna be at the Hyatt in Tempe the first week of March. It’s a pleasant thought after two days of roaring wind and chilly temperatures around here.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Wednesday Media Rant: How NOT To Fire Someone
Being fired from a broadcasting gig is something to which I can speak with great authority. It’s happened to me 8 times, most recently just a couple years ago. Some of the whackings were more classy than others; some, like my last one, were downright nasty. I’m sure Juan Williams knows the feeling.
Not only did Williams’ boss, NPR CEO Vivian Schiller fire him over the phone, she told the media hours later that Williams’ unacceptable behavior was between him and his conscience, or his psychiatrist. Real classy, that Schiller woman. A high-profile ten-year NPR veteran fired over the phone. Fox immediately hired him for a couple million bucks a year, and the pushback from NPR listeners began.
It got so heavy, this feedback or pushback or whatever you want to call it from the millions of NPR listeners (latest radio ratings say 34 million people listen to NPR every week, many of them spending six hours a day with NPR) that NPR’s e-mail servers and website crashed. There was genuine anger expressed from the NPR listeners. Many of the e-mails said something like “whether he deserved to be fired or not is one question, but there’s no question that the way you did it, stinks.”
To not have the common courtesy to ask Williams to come in for a face-to-face termination meeting is bad enough, but then to imply publicly that the man needs psychiatric help is WAY over-the-top. Williams, of course, had the last laugh here, and NPR finally did what it’s no doubt wanted to do for years: fire this insolent bastard who had the unmitigated gall to consort with Fox News, the antithesis of NPR. (Schiller claims NPR does not lean left at all; but then again, it’s a matter of perspective, since her formative years were with the New York Times.)
My last firing, which will have been two years ago next month, had similarities to Williams’. It was more about house politics than anything else, and for my 30 years of service to the company, I wasn’t even thanked. A couple days after I was whacked, the CEO (who was in hiding on the whacking day, on “legal advice”) went on the air and libeled me. I, too, had the last laugh, since my lawyer taught the company a very expensive lesson, and the person behind my demise met her own cosmic karma a few months after I was whacked.
As to what the real cost to NPR will be for so poorly handling the Williams termination, we’ll just have to wait and see. There’s a lot of sabre-rattling right now, and threats to cut NPR off the federal teat, but these things tend to blow over pretty quickly. I suspect it might just be a medium-sized public relations headache that will soon dissipate. Regardless, it was a classless act, and Williams –whether you agree with his sentiments about air travel or not – deserved better.
Not only did Williams’ boss, NPR CEO Vivian Schiller fire him over the phone, she told the media hours later that Williams’ unacceptable behavior was between him and his conscience, or his psychiatrist. Real classy, that Schiller woman. A high-profile ten-year NPR veteran fired over the phone. Fox immediately hired him for a couple million bucks a year, and the pushback from NPR listeners began.
It got so heavy, this feedback or pushback or whatever you want to call it from the millions of NPR listeners (latest radio ratings say 34 million people listen to NPR every week, many of them spending six hours a day with NPR) that NPR’s e-mail servers and website crashed. There was genuine anger expressed from the NPR listeners. Many of the e-mails said something like “whether he deserved to be fired or not is one question, but there’s no question that the way you did it, stinks.”
To not have the common courtesy to ask Williams to come in for a face-to-face termination meeting is bad enough, but then to imply publicly that the man needs psychiatric help is WAY over-the-top. Williams, of course, had the last laugh here, and NPR finally did what it’s no doubt wanted to do for years: fire this insolent bastard who had the unmitigated gall to consort with Fox News, the antithesis of NPR. (Schiller claims NPR does not lean left at all; but then again, it’s a matter of perspective, since her formative years were with the New York Times.)
My last firing, which will have been two years ago next month, had similarities to Williams’. It was more about house politics than anything else, and for my 30 years of service to the company, I wasn’t even thanked. A couple days after I was whacked, the CEO (who was in hiding on the whacking day, on “legal advice”) went on the air and libeled me. I, too, had the last laugh, since my lawyer taught the company a very expensive lesson, and the person behind my demise met her own cosmic karma a few months after I was whacked.
As to what the real cost to NPR will be for so poorly handling the Williams termination, we’ll just have to wait and see. There’s a lot of sabre-rattling right now, and threats to cut NPR off the federal teat, but these things tend to blow over pretty quickly. I suspect it might just be a medium-sized public relations headache that will soon dissipate. Regardless, it was a classless act, and Williams –whether you agree with his sentiments about air travel or not – deserved better.
Monday, October 25, 2010
One Week And Counting....
A week from today, presuming you're reading this on Tuesday, I’ll head to my township polling place, fill in the blanks (actually, connect the arrows), and heave a huge sigh of relief. It will mean that within a few hours, the damnable TV political ads will be done for a while, and the robo-calls will end.
I have no idea how Tom Barrett got my personal cell phone number, but he called me Saturday afternoon and asked me to vote for him. At least, it sounded like it really was him, when I listened to the voicemail message. I’m pretty careful with my personal cell phone number, so I suspect his people were using the “sequential dialing” method, where they call every single number in every single exchange, from XXX-0000 to XXX-9999.
I have a Facebook friend who announced Sunday night that now that the Packers had dispatched the Vikings, she and her husband were turning the TV off until the day after the election, and would only watch DVD’s. That’s the most extreme post I ‘ve read so far, but I’ve read scores of them from friends who are just disgusted with the stupid ads that get worse every time there’s an election.
Tom Barrett is a wife-beater and closet flat-earth-society member. Scott Walker is a serial killer and secret member of the KKK. Russ Feingold wears Nazi SS uniforms when he thinks nobody is looking. Ron Johnson secretly blew up that I-35 bridge in Minnesota a couple years ago. Tom Nelson is actually a clever robot designed by Japanese spies to steal our government secrets. Becky Kleefisch secretly works in the porn video industry.
The more stupid it sounds, the more the stupid voters tend to believe it.
My daughter, who is now in Grad School in NYC, lived with us for a month this summer before she moved east, and every day she gets about five political pieces in the mail at our address. I guess she belonged to some state employee union when she worked at UW-Hospital, because most of the crap she gets is from Democrats. The stuff is transported from the mailbox at the end of our driveway to the wastebasket in my home office.
My wife baked some goodies for our son Sunday afternoon, and she called and asked if we could stop by around 3 to deliver them to his downtown home. We knocked on his front door several times at 3 but got no response. My wife opened the door and yelled his name, and he was just a few feet away in the living room, watching TV. He said “omigod I lost track of time…I don’t answer the door any more, because it’s just political people who want me to register to vote or listen to some spiel about their candidate.”
I’m tellin’ ya, this next week can’t pass too quickly to suit me.
I have no idea how Tom Barrett got my personal cell phone number, but he called me Saturday afternoon and asked me to vote for him. At least, it sounded like it really was him, when I listened to the voicemail message. I’m pretty careful with my personal cell phone number, so I suspect his people were using the “sequential dialing” method, where they call every single number in every single exchange, from XXX-0000 to XXX-9999.
I have a Facebook friend who announced Sunday night that now that the Packers had dispatched the Vikings, she and her husband were turning the TV off until the day after the election, and would only watch DVD’s. That’s the most extreme post I ‘ve read so far, but I’ve read scores of them from friends who are just disgusted with the stupid ads that get worse every time there’s an election.
Tom Barrett is a wife-beater and closet flat-earth-society member. Scott Walker is a serial killer and secret member of the KKK. Russ Feingold wears Nazi SS uniforms when he thinks nobody is looking. Ron Johnson secretly blew up that I-35 bridge in Minnesota a couple years ago. Tom Nelson is actually a clever robot designed by Japanese spies to steal our government secrets. Becky Kleefisch secretly works in the porn video industry.
The more stupid it sounds, the more the stupid voters tend to believe it.
My daughter, who is now in Grad School in NYC, lived with us for a month this summer before she moved east, and every day she gets about five political pieces in the mail at our address. I guess she belonged to some state employee union when she worked at UW-Hospital, because most of the crap she gets is from Democrats. The stuff is transported from the mailbox at the end of our driveway to the wastebasket in my home office.
My wife baked some goodies for our son Sunday afternoon, and she called and asked if we could stop by around 3 to deliver them to his downtown home. We knocked on his front door several times at 3 but got no response. My wife opened the door and yelled his name, and he was just a few feet away in the living room, watching TV. He said “omigod I lost track of time…I don’t answer the door any more, because it’s just political people who want me to register to vote or listen to some spiel about their candidate.”
I’m tellin’ ya, this next week can’t pass too quickly to suit me.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Numbers and The Madison Choo-Choo
While in the course of running a number of errands late last week, I heard a clip on WIBA-AM of Mayor Cieslewicz talking about the choo-choo. It’s no secret he’s a big fan of light rail, passenger rail, heavy rail, medium rail, trolley rail, and all the kinds of rail there are. But what he said stuck in my mind, and I spent a couple minutes with a calculator and the internet to try and figure out if what he said made any sense at all.
Mayor Dave said estimates are that there would be around 500 thousand (half a million) passenger boardings per year at the soon-to-be-built train passenger terminal in Madison, near the Monona Terrace Convention Center. Half a million a year.
Since most people don’t listen with a critical ear, this stuff just goes past them. But let’s break it down a bit. If there are to be half a million passenger boardings a year in Madison, simple division tells you that’s an average of 1,370 passengers per day. I know, some days would be heavier use days than others, but let’s just go with the straight average.
The average Greyhound bus carries 50 passengers. So according to the figures the Mayor is using, that would mean an average of 27 busloads of passengers would board the train in Madison daily. That, for those of you who aren’t good in math, means a busload full of people every hour on the hour, plus 3 “extra” busloads, on average, every single day of the year.
Really?
Do you believe that number? I sure don’t. It’s no wonder there’s so much to-do about this whole rail thing. I believe that the people who support rail are people who are not exactly fans of the automobile, nor the bus, since both burn fossil fuel (gee, I wonder what the train runs on…….) and use the roads, which leads to the evil URBAN SPRAWL and LOW POPULATION DENSITY and on and on.
But half a million passengers a year, boarding in Madison? Really???
Mayor Dave said estimates are that there would be around 500 thousand (half a million) passenger boardings per year at the soon-to-be-built train passenger terminal in Madison, near the Monona Terrace Convention Center. Half a million a year.
Since most people don’t listen with a critical ear, this stuff just goes past them. But let’s break it down a bit. If there are to be half a million passenger boardings a year in Madison, simple division tells you that’s an average of 1,370 passengers per day. I know, some days would be heavier use days than others, but let’s just go with the straight average.
The average Greyhound bus carries 50 passengers. So according to the figures the Mayor is using, that would mean an average of 27 busloads of passengers would board the train in Madison daily. That, for those of you who aren’t good in math, means a busload full of people every hour on the hour, plus 3 “extra” busloads, on average, every single day of the year.
Really?
Do you believe that number? I sure don’t. It’s no wonder there’s so much to-do about this whole rail thing. I believe that the people who support rail are people who are not exactly fans of the automobile, nor the bus, since both burn fossil fuel (gee, I wonder what the train runs on…….) and use the roads, which leads to the evil URBAN SPRAWL and LOW POPULATION DENSITY and on and on.
But half a million passengers a year, boarding in Madison? Really???
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Friday Media Rant: Decisions, Decisions...
Here’s an issue that I never faced in nearly four decades as a broadcaster: having a company official tell me to take down a post on a Facebook account. I didn’t join Facebook until after I was forcibly retired from the biz a couple years ago. But a friend of mine who’s a TV reporter had to deal with the issue earlier this week.
Seems this friend of mine is very well acquainted with one of the candidates for statewide office, having worked with this person in the past. In the course of doing reporting work, my friend read the biography/resume this candidate had put online, and on a Facebook post, my friend commented that the biography/resume was grossly “stretched”, and that this person was hugely exaggerating in a number of areas.
I’m being deliberately vague here to protect the identities of both, but I think you get the idea.
The powers-that-be at my friend’s TV station became aware of the post, and asked my friend to take it down. I can well imagine that conversation – an on-camera reporter making a social media post clearly derogatory to a candidate for state-wide office. Long story short, my friend removed the post, and replaced it with one saying management at the TV station had asked that it be removed.
I sent a message to my friend, saying it didn’t surprise me that the folks in carpet corridor (management) at the TV station asked that the post be removed. My friend’s response was interesting. My friend said unlike nearly everyone else who has an on-camera job at the station, there is absolutely no “promotion” of work things on the Facebook account. It’s a completely personal Facebook page, and my friend has a personal acquaintance with every single “friend” on the account. Only friends with personal connections are allowed access, no “fans from TV land” who don’t really know my friend. Therefore, my friend was annoyed that management intervened, because ALL of us have opinions.
I would have told “management” to jump in the lake, but that’s one reason I’ve been fired so many times. (Me and Juan Williams, I guess…) What would YOU do?
Seems this friend of mine is very well acquainted with one of the candidates for statewide office, having worked with this person in the past. In the course of doing reporting work, my friend read the biography/resume this candidate had put online, and on a Facebook post, my friend commented that the biography/resume was grossly “stretched”, and that this person was hugely exaggerating in a number of areas.
I’m being deliberately vague here to protect the identities of both, but I think you get the idea.
The powers-that-be at my friend’s TV station became aware of the post, and asked my friend to take it down. I can well imagine that conversation – an on-camera reporter making a social media post clearly derogatory to a candidate for state-wide office. Long story short, my friend removed the post, and replaced it with one saying management at the TV station had asked that it be removed.
I sent a message to my friend, saying it didn’t surprise me that the folks in carpet corridor (management) at the TV station asked that the post be removed. My friend’s response was interesting. My friend said unlike nearly everyone else who has an on-camera job at the station, there is absolutely no “promotion” of work things on the Facebook account. It’s a completely personal Facebook page, and my friend has a personal acquaintance with every single “friend” on the account. Only friends with personal connections are allowed access, no “fans from TV land” who don’t really know my friend. Therefore, my friend was annoyed that management intervened, because ALL of us have opinions.
I would have told “management” to jump in the lake, but that’s one reason I’ve been fired so many times. (Me and Juan Williams, I guess…) What would YOU do?
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