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Media Merry-Go-Round

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The F.C.C. has opened a four month comment period on proposed rules for handling traffic on the internet. The debate will be about media and power and access and whether there should be a fast lane on the freeway of ideas.

Ultimately it is all part of the struggle to capture a moment of your attention.

This is nothing new, of course. In the years just before there was an internet the contestants for a piece of your mind were the printed word, radio, television, and any real flesh-and-blood person who might be standing in front of you at the moment. In a head-to-head face-off, television always won, of course. Print was too flat, radio too thin, and real people were not as shiny or attractive as whatever was on the screen.

Though raiding parties were sometimes sent from one camp into another.

In my online wanderings this week I tripped over this ancient TV clip about a quirky St. Paul based radio show. What seemed odd back in 1979 still feels like a weird and somewhat academic examination of a vanquished form of media. And aside from the strange calming effect of seeing an exceedingly smart man with a truly wonderful beard talk quietly into a large microphone, I was struck by the complete inability of a television program to capture the essence of the thing being examined. But then, maybe they didn’t really want to capture it.

And then there was this brave attempt to profile a different radio program that, as I hear about it now, seems impossibly dull!

My recollection of the reason why this report even happened is that TV at the time was trying to become a morning habit for people who were accustomed to turning on the radio when they woke up. The strategy was to flatter a wide selection of radio hosts through a series of live visits, hoping the “we’re on TV” giddiness of the DJ’s would send their listeners scrambling to the tube for a glimpse of their previously unseen heroes, possibly never again to return to that humble box of wires once it hit them that television stations were doing morning shows too!

I think it worked – a little bit at least. Morning television certainly took off, but nothing has been as good as the internet when it comes to getting attention. Neutral or not, it is grabbing increasing numbers of ears and eyeballs while TV and radio are losing their audiences.

How bad is it? Pretty much everything is online now, including the only remaining evidence of what radio sounded like when it was filtered through the perceptions of TV people who thought they were stealing the whole game, just before they found out that the game had changed, entirely.

What captures your attention?

38 thoughts on “Media Merry-Go-Round”

  1. How does one answer that question? And how it has changed for me.
    I think mostly I notice the things that show cultural patterns and cultural changes. I used to pay close attention to news. Now so much of it saddens me or overwhelms me. Just yesterday I was thinking how I tune out stories about global warming because I can only worry for my grandkids. I have done about as much as I can do and now it’s out of my hands. I used to like sports, mostly at the more local level, UMD and area high school. But I saw two bad patterns coming, which now are out of control. 1) in big time sports how money has destroyed it. It has no room for pure joy of great athletes facing each other and the relaxed purpose of entertainment. 2) HS sports are too important, the tail wagging the fog.
    Lots of patterns like that I have watched go to bad and few people care, indeed most either tune it out or love it this way.

    I promise this ends my rant for the rest of the. Onth.

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  2. my attention is a whore. it goes after this shiney object and that and is sidetracked at the distant calls of cardinals in the budding trees out behind my in need of attention yard while I email responses to the new companies I connected with last week while wandering around the hardware show in las vegas in search of new things to occupy my time. there is a new site called meet up where you’ve got a chance to meet people who discuss things of interest with people interested in the same thing. last wee I showed up at one and found anna to be hosting it. it was really interesting and i’ve used it 3 times since. having your temptress in your pocket is a challange. i used to worry about my kids sitting and playing video games on their phones. i called them vidiots, i turned in my crack berry when smart phones were first introduced and i realized my solitude would be gone forever if i kept it in my pocket. i have gotten my cigarette smoking under control my drinking is a non issue these days, now if just got control of this googlemonster in my pocket I could have my life back.

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    1. I can barely manage my cell phone. There is no googlemonster in my pocket. I am afraid I am not keeping up with the times. I suppose I should at least have a better phone that can do at least some of the things that smart phones can do. I haven’t even learn how to do texting. It will probably be a long time before I have to worry about the googlemonster in my pocket and I might never have to worry about that.

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    2. What? You have a life outside this blog on other websites? I had no idea, tim! But seriously, it sounds like you’re running into the limits of human attention. How can we be on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Linked In, and dozens of other social platforms while keeping up enough actual reading to stay reasonably informed about the news and also up to date on the latest viral video and hot cable drama?

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  3. Good morning. I guess each of the kinds of media have their strengths. The internet with it’s amazing digital and electronic technology certainly has a lot to offer. However, I do get tired of using a key board and staring into a screen.

    To me radio is a friendlier media than either TV or the internet. Of course, on the trail, I think we agree that the friendliest show of all was the Morning Show with Dale and Jim Ed.

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    1. Thanks for the compliment, Jim. But I’m not sure friendliness counts for much in the current environment. We were careful not to disparage anyone at a time when spirited ridicule of random people was a popular radio format. That strategy didn’t lead to a large audience, but I think it helped us keep many of the listeners we had.

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  4. sudden change will snap me into attention every time, although if I am honest with myself, very little change is really sudden.

    That part has been wearing thin for months, but only when it snaps off do I notice.

    Joni Mitchell says it best:

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    1. You would think that people today would be a little more aware of the changes that should snap us to attention. I think one of the problems with all the medias that Dale mentioned is their tendency to fail to put much effort into to bringing our attention many things that are important.

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  6. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    This blog post sure got my attention–two of my favorite shows in the glory days of developing Public Radio Systems. What great finds, Dale. Thanks so much.

    RIght now, business captures my attention. This summer I have to re-organize my business so that I can retire having sold it to some of the therapists I work with. All-consuming!

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      1. My actual retirement won’t occur for 5 years, but actual re-organizing and deal-making must happen now to facilitate this! Renee, congrats to husband.

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        1. congrats jacque, 5 years is enough to figure out the details. lou should be ready for a hoembody to join him by then

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    3. That’s a big, important step, Jacque. Congratulations! I sure admire a person who can execute a rational plan that leads to a desired outcome five years down the road. We are not all so clear-sighted.

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  7. For the most part I pay attention to simple curiosity, which with me is a huge factor. Curiosity might lead me to wonder about the name of a film I saw in 1969, and then I’m on the internet data base, reading about that film, and that will remind me of a book I heard about, so I’ll chase it for a while. As a pheasant hunter I had a dog named Brandy who did the real hunting. My role was to toss her in the weeds and then try to follow her. As an older guy in a modern world, my favorite hunting companion is a dog named Google, and I get great delight from figuring out what signals will send him into productive areas. And thus, with no external direction, my curiosity blunders from area to area, often getting distracted and rarely accomplishing anything of value.

    At another level, my attention is governed by fear. At any time in my life I’m afraid of something, or maybe three somethings, and this fear is likely to break in on my curiosity wanderings at odd moments. I try to live with curiosity as an organizing principle, but quite often fear is the thing that really calls the shots.

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  8. I just did a blog about how the arts are all supposed to fit in boxes. Same with TV and radio. Then when somebody breaks out and succeeds, their success gets copied. How rare it is to have a singular TV or radio show, such as LGMS or Garrison. In part is because they created shows so based on their unique set of skills and their unique personalities.
    I have the last LGMS on tape. Think I will listen to it soon.

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  9. That clip from the Prairie Home Companion Show looks suspiciously like the show at the Lake Harriet Bandshell that we attended in August of 1979 together with my parents. I was grasping at straws to show them a good time that didn’t cost an arm and a leg, and the show, being free, seemed to fit the bill. Unfortunately, neither of them found the show interesting or entertaining, I guess it just didn’t grab their attention. It’s difficult to show people a good time when they’re determined to dislike everything!

    A lot of different things capture my attention. Right now I relish the leaves that are popping out on trees all over, and the tulips that are putting on a breathtaking show in my garden. Yesterday I saw the season’s first Oriole in my yard; what a glorious feathered friend. Although these things happen every year, they never fail to surprise and delight me. Ah, spring!

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    2. Through the window next to my computer yesterday I watched a robin (or maybe more than one) put great attention into a three-cornered fork in a tree, the perfect place for a nest except for its very open exposure. It would hop from branch to branch to branch and then over again. Then flit up into a higher branch and look around. this would last 10 minutes or so; then it would fly off. 15 minutes later it or another one would repeat the process for a total of at least four visits. But it must have failed the test. No activity today. Dern it.

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  10. Oh man, does that ever make me miss TLGMS, Dale. Thanks for posting these two clips. (For any of you “newer folk” reading this, some of these acronyms are explained in the glossary at top of page.)

    I’m afraid the internet captures my attention more than I’d like, and I’d be in trouble if I had a smart phone or IPad – a main reason we bought a desktop model when we replaced the dead computer in the fall. But I do find myself wishing it was portable at times (mostly when traveling.) Print media still grabs my attention a lot. I prefer to read the Sunday paper, magazines, and my current book in paper form. Even for an internet story or a blog of, say, two pages, I will print it out to read in a comfortable chair with a cup of tea.

    I am working on letting my attention go to just one thing at a time – driving, for instance, instead of driving and eating. I do still like to cook while listening to Radio Heartland.

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  11. My life has been entwined with Garrison’s. I became a fan in 1965 when he edited and wrote for a publication called “The Ivory Tower.” When he had his first broadcast on public radio, I had read about it so I was there with the FM radio ready to catch those first words.

    The show that became PHC started as a bit of silliness called “The Freeport Show,” and I have some of that on tape.The first PHC show I attended was outside, probably on the Macallester campus. My daughter used to fall asleep with the help of tapes of Garrison’s monologues. It is not surprising that she now is a good storyteller.

    I’m convinced Garrison will be regarded by history as a major American writer, a figure a lot like Samuel Clemens. And, like Clemens, Garrrison has had to overcome a lot of frustrations and disappointments. He seems mighty mellow now.

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  12. Morel mushrooms at the St Peter co-op just grabbed my attention. Cheap at $39.99, but I resisted.

    What I really want is the thrill of finding them in the wild (and the leisure to go looking).

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  13. Apparently this is the right time go looking for morel mushrooms. We found a small one in our yard. At $39.99 per pound it is probably worth a dollar or two.

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  14. Things that make me rethink or ponder capture my attention – interesting articles or books, shows like Cosmos or Secrets of the Dead on TV, conversations with someone as curious as me…also…shiny! (or colorful or…squirrel!)

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  16. I often have a baseball game on the radio, but fail to follow it closely. The thing that catches my attention is the crack of a bat, followed by confusion – who’s at bat? Was that a Twins hit? People are cheering – is this a home game, or are they out of town? The peripatetic movements of players from team to team contributes to my disorientation, as a player that was with the Twins last year may very well be on the opposing team this year.

    I have been following just closely enough tonight to know that it’s been mostly good news.

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