On this page
- Lemonheads: It's a Shame About Ray
- Gmail and other Google services melting down today
- Are the Grits getting conned?
- Need to innovate? Turn your head 90 degrees
- Hell hath frozen over: Vancouver gets a decent modern music station
Lemonheads: It's a Shame About Ray
Posted by Michael Klassen on December 20, 2008 in Zeitgeist
A little video filler while I get my Christmas shopping done. I hope you enjoy these few minutes with Evan Dando & co.
Tagged: remember the nineties
Gmail and other Google services melting down today
Posted by Michael Klassen on December 9, 2008 in Zeitgeist
You only realize how much you depend upon something once it's gone. Take electricity, for example, or hot water.
It's not like camping out, but Gmail and many other critical tools such as Google Reader are all crippled by some kind of major meltdown making them slow and unusable. I only confirmed this was happening with many others by searching Twitter for realtime responses, and I found hundreds.
So far Google has not made any public statements about this, which is a shame. They may be offering services like these as "beta" or free (if you discount the constant presence of Adsense ads, which I don't), but they should be respectful enough of their customers to let them know when a problem exists.
Fortunately for me I have a back up email service, but the loss of Gmail will either cause a lot of people serious grief, or it might spark a mini-baby boom as people decide to shut off their damn computers for a while.
Tagged: birthrates, gmail, google
Are the Grits getting conned?
Posted by Michael Klassen on December 7, 2008 in Soapbox
Okay, conspiracy nuts, here's one for you. I think the Liberal Party of Canada is getting duped by the NDP into a merger, and if you blink the Natural Governing Party™ may go poof.
Money is the lifeblood of politics. The Liberals have none, and the NDP have a tap from big labour they can turn on any time. Stéphane Dion howled recently about the Conservative proposals to sell public assets during tough economic times, but he should be more concerned about his party being sold for scrap.
Seriously, if the Tories want their main adversaries to go away, they should just shut up and stop holding anti-coalition rallies. The Liberal Party will simply implode on its own, with Bob Rae and others lighting the fuse.
Never mind Rae's political pedigree as an NDP premier. Other leading figures within the party like Ujjal Dosanjh (Vancouver-South) get most of their political capital from local NDP supporters. Now I'm hearing about longstanding NDP operatives getting involved in Liberal leadership campaigns. If you were paying attention the other night at the pro-coalition rally, complete with newly minted coroplast signs, you'd note that it was bought and paid for by the BC Federation of Labour.
The final ingredients for their demise are a weak leader in Dion, and disaffected party stalwarts turning their backs on the party organization. You have the makings of a perfect storm for the Liberals, and a glorious opportunity for the NDP and its labour backers.
The guys with the money always call the tune. The Liberals bring nothing to the table except for the brand, which has been seriously damaged by the ineptitude of Dion's team. Whereas the Dippers have cold hard cash.
My prediction is that by the end of January the Liberal Party is in complete tatters. Iggy is too smug to get Canadians to support him, and Rae is far too shrill. Gerard Kennedy is too slick, Justin is too shallow.
In other words, they face a virtual dead end of their own making.
Meanwhile the NDP backed by union dough are revving their hogs telling Grits to climb aboard. The Conservatives only need to sit back now and smile.
Tagged: canadiana, favourite, liberals, ndp, politics
Need to innovate? Turn your head 90 degrees
Posted by Michael Klassen on November 29, 2008 in Zeitgeist
I've had a sickness for Shreddies for a generation. To me it is a marvel of science that they can stamp out those little neatly woven beds of whole wheat goodness. I could never expect that Shreddies could get better.
The marketing push on Diamond Shreddies is, to an old Shreddiholic like myself, a bit like the Classic Coke phenomenon. Don't mess with the formula, buddy. There is an online survey where consumers choose the "classic" square cereal, or the new diamond shaped. Diamond beats square 2 to 1.
It's time to change that! Everyone, make sure you vote square from now on, pleeez!
Then there is this propaganda below. Watch this video and ask yourself how long before they begin pulling classic square Shreddies off the shelf. Say it can't be so...
Tagged: breakfast, marketing stunts, shreddies
Hell hath frozen over: Vancouver gets a decent modern music station
Posted by Michael Klassen on November 28, 2008 in Vancouver
So many good radio stations have come and gone in the Cascadia corridor that I've practically given up the ghost on anything good happening in this tired old medium. Right now it's a Friday evening, I've got the laptop fired up after watching WALL-E with my daughter, who's off to bed now. I shut off the set and turned on 100.5 Peak FM, an entirely listenable radio station.
I was over at friends last weekend pouring wine down my gullet. They were old college radio vets like me and Stacey. They said you've got to check out this new station. Skeptical, I pulled out my iPhone to find out that in fact the Pattison media group had axed 600AM and upgraded to an FM license.
This was deja vu for me. I hustled for Coast 1040 in the early 90s as they tried to go FM without success. The Rogers group tried starting an "alternative" music station to compete with CFOX. It was terribly forced and frankly the music sucked.
No media company had any success in persuading the CRTC to license a company that might actually be good. Radio stations in order to receive their license from the government have to abide by a "Promise of Performance." Basically, this is a short (less than 2 year) covenant whereby the station owner promises the moon and stars, and forgoes profit to stay on the air.
PoPs often have conditions like supporting an arts group or some kind of charity that will favour a cultural society. After the covenant ends the station brings in the consultants, and whores itself silly to increase its market share.
A higher share (going from a lowly 1.5 share to a 3 share means big ad dollars, and happy sales people). I've not read Peak FM's PoP agreement with the CRTC, but it is a Pattison station after all. Jimmy may be nearly 90 years old, but the boy loves his cold hard cash. He won't run an alternative rock (AOR) station just to be nice. He wants to make more money than he did with the oldies station.
So, what does it mean? We'll see. I think the radio market has been turned upside down harder than any medium by the digital revolution. People just don't listen to radio except for something to do in their cars and brushing their teeth in the morning.
For now, The Peak is a very sweet mix of rich Canadian content and alternative faves, with no annoying over-the-top deejay histrionics.
Oh, and I know that stations always think that playing modern music means that their audiences are under 30 years old. The fact is that most people who might listen to The Peak might end up being people with kids, careers, RRSPs and big fat mortgages. In other words, the people radio has ignored for the past 20 years, who've held out hope for something worth listening to.
Radio stations must target niche audiences better and not stereotype them. The photo of the 20-something girl from their homepage with the headphones and the Yaletown backdrop might represent only be a fraction of whom is truly listening.
Stations must also accept that audience share is not the Holy Grail. Brand loyalty and recognition must factor in somewhere. A good station builds its fan base slowly. It goes up, and down sometimes over a couple of "books" (ratings periods).
Hold fast, Jimmy. The Peak has possibilities if you give it room to grow.
Tagged: jimmy pattison, radio, vancouver media
