Radio Killed the Video Star

Superman returned this week to a world in iconic upheaval. Bob Dylan delivers surprising coherence as a disc jockey spinning old cowboy and blues records, and failed radio star David Lee Roth sings bluegrass.

Dylan has been doing his radio gig on XM radio for about two months now. His legendary mumblings and aloofness have been replaced with a wry wit, impeccable taste, and a compelling muscial eclecticism (somehow, in one show, he managed to seamlessly include songs by Jimi Hendrix and Judy Garland). He's even a little silly, reciting the lyrics from the songs he plays and throwing off jokes that might have been discarded by Henny Youngman.

His hour-long shows focus on a single theme (weather, mothers and coffee, to name a few topics) that blend rock, country, folk, blues, gospel, and standards into a strange, but satisfying stew. In fact, his program on baseball, complete with a personal, a cappella rendition of Take Me Out to the Ballgame, was added to the archive of the Baseball Hall of Fame this week. Conveniently enough, he announced the next day his upcoming summer concert tour in minor league baseball parks around the U.S.

There are very few musical legends with the same eccentric genius to pull off a show like this. John Lennon, for instance, would have been a fascinating radio host, spinning alliteration after alliteration. John loved to show the world that he was a f***cking artist, you know.

Diamond Dave is a raconteur at heart, and surprisingly erudite, despite his bad boy, California surfer boy image (the guy is actually from Indiana). But the CBS programmers who thrust Roth on the radio failed to understand his deep passion for music, its nuisances, and its trivia. Stripped from being able to play music on his show, Dave rambled endlessly about music, throwing off unusual insights and turning off a generation of Howard Stern fans who preferred tasteless forays into sex and flatulance jokes.

In sum, Dave needed the same forum XM radio afforded Dylan, which in the ultimate irony, provided the radio talent (Opie & Anthony have been perfoming their own schtick on XM for years) that would eventually replace Roth. In an interview with CMT, he offered this observation:

"I think I've been voted most likely to be a diversion," he says. "Anybody who's gonna follow Howard is gonna take a beating. So what they needed was somebody with a great sense of humor and a real thick skin. They also needed somebody who could attract attention and kill a little time while they completed their contract with [air personalities] Opie & Anthony. I knew something was up when we didn't get any guests for the first two weeks--courtesy of my program director."

Roth was interviewed by CMT in the first place because of a new compilation CD released this month featuring bluegrass renditions of Van Halen classics (further accentuating the general weirdness may be the article's insistance of referring to Eddie Van Halen as "Edward.") Roth contributed two songs, including "Jump," which he performed on the Tonight show.

Sadly, the homogenized formats of terrestrial radio may not have a place for this bold musical experiment, but Dave can always hope that he catches the ear of Dylan when his next Theme Time Radio Hour chooses to focus on faded rock stars.

Release Me

I was manning the assignment desk at a TV station in Texas, when I received a call from a public relations agency in New York City. The woman on the phone asked me if I had planned to cover a local event described in a press release she had sent me. I pointed out that my news crew would have to travel 2,000 miles to cover the story. I also noted that I received the release through the mail the day after the event.

I do not think she ever called me again, and according to a recent article in Information Week, she and her PR colleagues may soon be able to ignore the news media all together.

Apparently, a California-based research firm, Outsell, surveyed 7,000 "knowledge workers" and found that they prefer receiving their information directly from news releases rather than the trade press.

When IW reporter Thomas Claburn asked Outsell VP Roger Strouse why press releases have become so popular, he offered this response:

"It may be that press releases are easier for people to get their hands on," he says. "It may be that press releases are shorter and pithier. It may be that they're often times free and come right into an RSS reader."

Claburn dutifully noted that while IW is a trade publication, its parent company, United Business Media, also owns PR Newswire.

Of course, Roger's answer is somewhat ridiculous. As trade news observer and blogger Paul Conley notes , the blame lies squarely on the trade press itself, which often finds itself taking press releases verbatim and passing them off as journalism. Greg Jarboe of SEO-PR blames cutbacks in staffing at trade pubs, which forces the editors there to rely more heavily on press releases than home-grown reporting. Either way, I track industry clips on a daily basis and find it amazing how often our company's press releases end up within the confines of a trade publication without source attribution.

In sum, going to news releases directly just cuts out the middle man.

At the same time, Roger's analysis misses another equally interesting phenomenon. People will choose to read press releases only if they offer value, and many corporate news sites have the potential of becoming primary informaton sources. During the 9/11 terrorist attack, traffic on airline websites spiked significantly as web users sought out real time information about the hijacked flights and the passenger lists of those who were on board.

As corporations aggressively adopt communications strategies that involve both online newsrooms and blogging, they may change the reading habits of some highly targeted online audiences, but probably not broader, more general news readers. As a recent study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project points out, even those Americans who rely heavily on the Internet for news favor sites managed by traditional media outlets by a wide margin.

The Outsell survey still offers a sobering reminder for journalists. If they fail to generate stories based upon their own ideas and observations, plenty of PR professionals are ready to fill the information vacuum themselves.