We're impressed. The Daves: Boze (KTTH m-f, 3-6p) and Ross (KIRO m-f, 9a-12p) live-blogged the debate Wednesday night.
(photo: Dave Ross: blogger for common sense)
They're online brothers of different mothers on sister stations, and like many brothers, they were competing on the blogging, according to Boze. Besides that, he and Ross are from opposing sides of the political fence. Hard right, and soft left, respectively.
Dunno if you know how hard live-blogging is, but at the very least, it's a heavy-duty piece of stenography -- especially the way these two did it: transcribing and making a separate post for each question posed by Tom
(photo: A new fur coat is a political statement for Dave Boze, a right-wing "hunter & blabberer").
Brokaw so readers could comment on each question. There were few comments, but these blogs aren't yet well visited.
Debates move fast with no commercials; this was a solid 90 minutes without much time for the stenography ... never mind the commentary.
We rarely live-blog -- we're too lazy and perfectionistic. Few read them anyway -- especially of big events like the debates which are on every radio station and teevee channel. But if you're witnessing a unique, unfolding event like a tsunami, or OJ's trial, or Sarah Palin gutting a hippy, you could throw breaking news to the hungry world... but -- even if you're Dave Ross -- why would someone read your frantically typed version when they can be hearing it or watching it directly? Probably wouldn't.
Not to denigrate the effort, and hard work they did -- gotta admit there's a challenge to it that's attractive. (Note Goldy's efforts: he typed wisecracks between bites of fish & chips, and pints of Manny's at Drinking Liberally, and still got over 10 comments. But thwen again he doesn't have a job at a radio station ...).
What we're happy to see is: Bonneville gets
it, and that these radio talents are using the Interweb to build an online community, and presence that's an extension of their
broadcasting. Nobody else is doing that in Seattle radio. (management at KUOW, the
establishment Seattle public radio station recently made staffers stop blogging last summer about their morning chat show, Weekday).
Ignoring new media is not a sustainable policy: Multimedia computers will be in cars sooner than later, and stations who don't put resources into developing this as Bonneville has, are doomed.
Dori Monson's (the pig) (m-f,12-3p) blog is doing well: we hear his traffic is the highest on the site, his comments, the most numerous -- he works it like a $2 hooker, as well as he should. Boze's right-wing show blog is extending the meager reach of his KTTH show which suffers from lack of marketing, even though it's the only live & local conservative show in the time slot. Ross and producer Libby do a fair job of keeping up with the blog, but maybe more on-air promotion of it would be in order. (puerile assholiness like Dori's might help, Dave).
photo: Jim Valley- wired.)
TBTL (m-f, 7-10p) has an active blog, but also worldwide live-stream, a massive podcast audience and a real internet strategy. They could eclipse just about everybody on the station eventually.
Other KIRO blogs don't have many comments, (don't judge a blog's
traffic success by the numbers of comments -- it can be
misleading). We're finding ourselves stopping into Tom Tangney's movie
blog, Behind the Screens -- he knows way more about film that he gets to say on his little radio spots, and he says it here. Jason Brooks' Money,
should be getting more traffic these days (if it isn't awready); we're not
gamers, but if we were, we'd certainly stop by Jim Valley's Getting Weird Wired,
which has energy brought by his obvious passion for the subject. To
post-hippies like ourselves with
(photo: Stephanie Furer, anthropological phenom)
an aversion to even fresh paint, radio decorator Tami Michaels' site might not have drawn us until we caught this post recently about the horrors of her 9-11 experience. Off-air Staffers such as Jamie Griswald and Stephanie Furer are allowed in Offmic to post tidbits of pop cultural and socio-anthropological interest.
We know that Dan Restione, as most newsies, hasn't much else to do, but we' wish he blogged the dining he does: he's a great writer and gets out a lot.
TBTL, and Ron & Don are making original video content for their blogs. Are live-cams far away? Radio teevee?
Blogs and fresh video are putting a personal face on these stations, and adding multimedia dimensions to their product and giving creative input to staffers whose work may not be so obvious otherwise.
All this is simply a more personal connection with their audience using the technology that isn't going away-- the money will follow eventually.
Bonneville gets it. Everyone in radio will... or they'll die, simple as that.
I have to wait for Duffman to comment before I will.
Posted by: Duffman | October 09, 2008 at 08:07 PM