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Thursday - March 30, 2006
Monday - March 27, 2006
Questions Worth Asking (Maybe)
Wednesday - March 22, 2006
- Historic Recordings Help Keep Clawhammer Banjo Music Alive
Recorded music is oftentimes accused (quite correctly) of bringing about the death of social music - i.e. the music we perform live for each other in social settings. Uncle Bob on the piano, your sisters singing duets, Marge on the harmonica. But NPR had a great story this week on how a series off three albums of clawhammer banjo music recorded in southwestern Virginia have inspired multiple generations to take up banjo playing. This link takes you to a page with a link to the audio of the radio story and several cuts from the recently re-released CDs of the recordings.
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Thursday - March 16, 2006
- Vroom Vroom Dept. - How Yamaha Handled a PR Crisis Perfectly
What's a crisis? Anything consumers or the media say is a crisis. Sometimes it's real, such as when an airplane crashes, an oil tanker leaks, or a product is tampered with. Sometimes something trivial becomes a crisis when a company dismisses a small problem as unimportant, such as Intel pooh-poohing the computational flaws in the initial Pentium processor.
Yamaha Motor Corp. showed this winter precisely how to handle one of the latter crises. This is a little complicated, but bear with me. A new Yamaha 600 cc motorcycle was advertised as having an engine redline of 17,500 RPM. This was significantly higher than any competing motorcycle. It turns out that the tachometer and the marketing department were both a little optimistic - actually about 9 percent optimistic because the motorcycles true redline was 16,200 RPM.
Does this discrepancy really matter? Probably not.
Motorcycles never weigh as little as the spec sheets claim (spec sheet weight is some mythical "dry" weight that includes no fuel, oil, battery, or maybe even tires), nor make as much horsepower or torque as the brochures claim (the companies give a theoretical figure that doesn't account for losses from the gearbox and chain). And I can tell you for certain that the speedometer on my motorcycle reads somewhere between 5 and 10 percent higher than the GPS measured speed.
And yet, Yamaha was selling the bike as having this unique property that had an undeniable objective measure not subject to debate.
So when the complaints about the discrepancy started surfacing on Internet discussion groups, Yamaha had to decide how to respond. They made a very simple decision to completely neutralize the crisis. The company sent a letter to everyone who had bought the motorcycle and offered to buy back the bike - including tax, setup, and interest. No questions asked.
Will Yamaha be forced to eat many bikes? The Motorcycle Daily web site doesn't think so. They say that the Yamaha R6 has received great reviews and is a very good sportbike regardless of its true redline.
What's the important lesson for PR professionals here? When your company messes up and creates a crisis for itself - deal with it. Honestly. Immediately. Openly. And generally the crisis will get better.
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Tuesday - March 14, 2006
- Keith Olbermann and Brian Lamb Chat
C-SPAN's Brian Lamb had MSNBC host Keith Olbermann on as his guest on Q&A Sunday. (Q&A is Lamb's replacement for the longtime Booknotes show. In practice, the show isn't that different from the old one except that he has a few more options for guests.)
Olbermann is the sometimes controversial host of MSNBC's even news and commentary show Countdown with Keith Olbermann. Olbermann is known for being outspoken, being critical of the current administration, and labeling Fox News' Bill O'Reilly as the "Worst Person in the World."
Some have charged that Olbermann is biased against the Bush administration. Olbermann gives a compelling response - he's critical of whoever is the current administration. As Olbermann points out, he did 228 consecutive shows when Clinton was president on the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
But overall, the interview is fascinating. Olbermann talks about knowing people on three of the planes that were crashed on Sept. 11, what it's like putting together a daily news show, what he thinks of Fox News (the words "flying monkey's" come up on occasion), and about working as a sports broadcaster. (BTW, one of the first guests on Q&A was Fox News chairman and CEO Roger Ailes)
What has always impressed me about the interview shows on C-SPAN vs. those everywhere else is that the guest is actually allowed to answer the questions. Watch the streaming video of the program (there's a link on the page), but take a peek at the transcript. For every 10 words Lamb uses, his guests use 200. (A quick check of a random interaction from this program has Lamb asking a 28-word question and getting a 227-word answer. Show me another host who gives his guest that much room.)
As an interesting follow up to the C-SPAN interview, Olbermann blogs about a Lloyd Grove column from the New York Daily News that he says seriously misrepresented what he said in the interview.
UPDATE: The Olbermann-O'Reilly Rap From OTM (MP3 Audio)
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Monday - March 13, 2006
Tuesday - March 7, 2006
Questions Worth Asking (Magazine Cover Edition)
- Why Has Only One Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue Featured A Woman of Color On The Cover?
Bill Cooke, writing on the Romenesko Forum, notes that only once has SI put a non-white model on the cover of it's infamous swimsuit issue. (Actually, this year they put 8 models on the cover, all white...) Interestingly enough, this matches findings from a study done by the New York Times a couple of years ago that couple of years ago that found that except for youth oriented magazines, women of color rarely found themselves on magazine covers. (In researching this item, I came up with this story from NPR on 40 Years of Stunning Magazine Covers. Lots of examples of classic covers, including the John and Yoko Rolling Stone and the Demi Moore Vanity Fair.)
- Do Magazines Make You Fat?
According to gossip site Gawker (the shallower cousin of Wonkette), an anti-obesity advocate is trashing Redbook magazine for running a cover story on "WE LOVE YOUR BODY! from size 2 to 20, YOU'RE IN THIS ISSUE."
- Have Magazine Covers Always Been Vacuous?
A serious look at magazine cover history from PopCult Magazine.
- How Do Models Get "Improved" With Photoshop?
An interesting interactive feature that lets you see how a model's image gets changed through digital editing. I'm not sure what the original source of this simulation is. It takes a long time to load on my computer and buttons don't quite work the way one would expect, but it's worth taking a look at.
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Monday - March 6, 2006
Everyone's Gone To The Movies Dept. - Post-Oscar Edition
- Being Spontaneous Takes a Lot of Work!
And the Oscar for best choreography goes to... the hordes or people it takes to get the stars into the theater! A behind the scenes look at the whole "red carpet" dance from Sunday's Washington Post. (Also, photos from the ceremony.)
- What Makes A Great Movie Score?
As I write this, the Oscars are on the air; by the time you read this, they will be so last night. But Andy Trudeau's annual multi-part analysis of the five Oscar-nominated movie scores on Weekend Edition is worth listening to no matter who wins. (Actually, I couldn't have posted them till Sunday because the last installment of the series ran Sunday morning.
Friday - March 3, 2006
Support Our Reporters Dept. - Updates On The Dangers Of Covering The Middle East
- ABC Anchor Woodruff Making "Good" Progress
Bob Woodruff is slowly recovering from the injuries he suffered from a IED attack in Iraq on January 29. Cameraman Doug Vogt, who was injured in the same attack, has recovered sufficiently to return to his home in France. (Newsday)
- Free Press Continues To Be Under Attack in Middle East
A round up on free press limits in the Middle East from USA Today. Includes news from Iraq, Damascus, and the UAE.
- Three Al-Arabiya Journalists Killed in Iraq
It's not just Western journalists who are being killed covering the war in Iraq. The bodies of Al-Arabiya correspondent Atwar Bahjat, cameraman Khaled Mahmoud al-Falahi, and engineer Adnan Khairallah were found on Feb. 23, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. The journalists were covering the bombing of the Golden Mosque shrine.
- OTM On Covering The War
NPR's On The Media ran several stories on the challenges of reporting on the Middle East last week. They include an interview with Susanne Fischer, the Iraq Country Director for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting; an interview with Wall Street Journal reporter Farnaz Fassihi, who wrote a widely circulated e-mail back in 2004 the dangers and frustrations of trying to cover the war in Iraq; and a story about the launch of Al-Jazeera International, an English-language edition of the largest Arab satellite news network.
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Thursday - March 2, 2006
- Everyone's Gone To The Movies Dept. - Why Did Hollywood Had a Bad Year?
With the Oscars coming up this weekend, there’s been lots of talk about what a disastrous year Hollywood had in 2005. Why disastrous? The 2005 box office was down six percent from the year before. According to the web site Box Office Mojo, this is the first time since 1991 that there’s been a dip in revenue from one year to the next.
There have been a lot of explanations of what’s wrong with the movie business. Conservative critics say that Hollywood is too liberal and is making movies that don’t appeal to the American public. I don’t know. The raunchy comedy The Wedding Crashers, which emphatically earned its “R” rating, brought in $209 million. On the other hand, the Christian themed The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe brought in $288 million. Call it a tie when it comes to political morality. (For the record, I have not seen Wedding Crashers; I did see and like Narnia.)
Others have claimed that the problems are too many sequels and remakes. A quick look at the top grossing movies of 2005 shows that the sixth installment of Star Wars brought in $380 million, the fourth outing of Harry Potter grossed $288 million, the remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory took in $206 million, and the latest Batman flick made more than $200 million. On the other hand, the remakes or sequels of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, The Love Bug, and Miss Congeniality all did pretty tepid business, with each grossing somewhere between $48 and $68 million.
One clear problem was that there were some very expensive movies that either lost money or barely made back their initial cost of production. Take Peter Jackson’s overly long King Kong. It looks like a hit with $216 million in box office, until you consider the fact that it cost $207 million to produce. Now I realize that it has taken in untold millions more from overseas sales, product tie ins, and eventual DVD sales. But while it had a decent overall box office, the domestic return on investment is not impressive.
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