by cameron | Dec 20, 2007 | Australian media, Podcast, TPN
There are a couple of stories about podcasting in Australia in The Age today. I chatted with both journalists at length over the last month for the stories but ended up with two lines out of a 2+ page story. Go figure. All of my journo and ex-journo friends (including Mrs R) this morning counseled me to just wear it on the chin. And perhaps they are right. But I’m pissed off about it anyway. And here’s why.
In the main story, by Andrew Bock, the ABC, Austereo (owner of Triple M and Fox FM) and even Salty Dog (congrats Dennis!) get their download figures trumpeted. Where are TPN’s figures? Omitted. Deliberate? I don’t know.
What I do know is that Fairfax, the owners of The Age, have a commercial relationship with Austereo. Fairfax hosts Austereo’s websites. Was that disclosed in the article? No, it was not. Accidental? Perhaps. According to the article, Austereo is doing more than 850,000 podcast downloads a month across all its stations. TPN is doing about the same (we spiked a few months back and hit about 800k, last month it was about 650K, which is where Austereo’s last annual report in July 2007 said they were at). TPN is a one-man, self-funded, three-year-old operation. Austereo is decades-old, publicly-listed company with revenues in excess of $255 million pa which has some of the biggest names in radio working on their shows.
Now if *you* were writing the story about podcasting, don’t you think this would have been an interesting comparison? Apparently someone at Fairfax didn’t think so.
Fairfax also now owns Southern Cross Broadcasting, owners of top radio stations 3AW and 2UE. Was that disclosed in the article? No, it wasn’t. If you take TPN’s listener numbers (450 – 500k per month) and compare those to, say, 3AW, I think we’re about the same size, perhaps even bigger.
Does Fairfax have a conflict of interest when it covers stories about radio and podcasting? What do you think?
By the way, I don’t blame the journo’s involved. They are both swell guys. I’m sure if their stories are being edited after they submit them, and important conflict of interest disclosures aren’t being made, then they would both be concerned. Is the paper interested in reporting news or in promoting a company they have a commercial interest in?
Luckily we now have alternative places we can get our news from, such as NORG. If you aren’t contributing to that already, I encourage you to. We have the tools now to report our own news. Of course, I’ll need to get my backside out of this chair so I know what’s going on the world before I’ll have much to contribute…
by cameron | Dec 13, 2007 | Podcast
Aussie Twitterati jjprojects (aka John Johnstone) joins me today to talk about my latest project Twittories and Twitter in general. Check out JJ’s website or add him to your Twitter if you haven’t already!
The track for today is:
The track on this episode is:
Ween
“Your Party” (mp3)
from “La Cucaracha”
(Rounder Records)
Buy at Rounder Store
More On This Album
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by cameron | Dec 10, 2007 | Podcast, Uncategorized
As many of you will know, blogger Marc Orchant died today from a cardiac infraction he suffered while working in his home office last week. Marc was one of the earliest hosts on TPN and a very early guest on G’Day World back in Feb 2005. A few weeks after that I got to hang out with him and his lovely wife Sue for a little bit at DEMO in Scottsdale Arizona. Marc and I also sat on a panel together for a video podcast wrap-up of the each day’s sessions which is the photo below. I haven’t spoken much to Marc over the last couple of years but I’ve always thought of him as a genuine gentleman and blogging pioneer. You’ll be missed mate.
L – R: Jason Calacanis, Cameron Reilly, Marc Orchant, Buzz Bruggeman, DEMO, Arizona, Feb 2005
by cameron | Dec 10, 2007 | Podcast, TPN
From our 2007 survey. I’m rather surprised at how old you all are. I wonder how much of this is a reflection of our content versus the general age of podcast listeners?
by cameron | Dec 7, 2007 | environment, free will, Podcast
We had a massive debate at TPN HQ last night (until my internet access dropped out at midnight and didn’t return) about the subject of free will which was kicked off in a massive twitter debate during the day.
My central postulate was this: if every decision you have is a thought: and if a thought is an autonomous electro-chemical process in the brain: then to claim to have free will, you have to be able to explain how you create a thought outside the process of causality.
The discussion got fairly heated at one point when I (probably wrongly) threatened to eject Dave from The Global Geek Podcast if he kept interrupting me. Sorry Dave, probably harsh. Belinda says I get like that during debates.
Anyway, nobody in the room was able to explain to me how they create a thought except to say “I think them”, which, in my opinion, is a circular argument, because the next question is “how did you decide to think that thought?”.
My other suggestion was that if you are in control of your thoughts, you should be able to stop having them. I suggested everyone in the room stop thinking for ten minutes, and when everyone agreed they couldn’t do that, I asked how they could claim to be in control of the creation of thoughts if they couldn’t stop them at will also? This lead to lots of angst and “but but but” retorts, none of which held any water.
Second Life is a pretty good environment for having discussions like this with people from around the world in real time, although you still suffer from the issue of having 20 people trying to talk at once at times. We need a virtual talking stick to pass around or something. Perhaps someone should create one.
by cameron | Dec 6, 2007 | Podcast, Uncategorized
I listened to a great podcast today. Episode #73 of the Skeptoid podcast. It’s called “Logical Fallacies”. I highly recommend it.
If you’ve ever had a conversation with anyone about their supernatural or pseudoscientific beliefs, you’ve almost certainly been slapped in the face with a logical fallacy or two. Non-scientific belief systems cannot be defended or supported by the scientific method, by definition, and so their advocates turn elsewhere for their support. In this episode, we’re going to examine a whole bunch of the most common logical fallacies that you hear in reference to various pseudosciences. When you hear one that you recognize, be sure to wave and say hello.
