Author: John McDermott @mcdradio

Interesting stuff from Nielsen which says that the average American household receives 189 channels but consumers only tune to 17 of them.

One thing that strikes me is how I never watch anything live except for sports.  Even if I am home when one of my “big shows” is on, I will start it late so I can fast forward through the commercials.  These days it means starting my Game of Thrones – Mad Men twofer at about 9:20 so that I can zip through Mad Men.

I think back to all the random breaking news stories I used to catch just because I was surfing around (Flight 800 comes to mind) and how now it’s entirely possible that something would happen and I wouldn’t know.

Or maybe I just wouldn’t know from The Teevee.  Most of us keep our phone close and I’m likely to find out about something from twitter.

Anyways…17 channels seems about right.  Yes?

Slowly but surely the iTunes Radio giant is waking.

Billboard reports that the Blue Note will have a label-branded station on iTunes radio.  That’s important for a few reasons.

First, they are beginning to grow beyond being a record shuffler.  One of the problems on the consumer end is knowing what to listen to.  When offered too many choices it actually becomes overwhelming.  I personally love the iTunes radio Alt Top 50 station.  I can be cool without knowing what to look for.   Otherwise I’m just typing some band name into an engine….but what if I don’t even know the first band to type in to get the genome started.

Second, it’s a label station.  Streaming royalties are all kinds of complicated, but there is something you can do called a direct license which can keep your costs down.  I don’t know the financial arrangements of this deal but it would not surprise me if there is some sort of direct agreement here along those lines.

Also remember that iTunes is a record store and can help Blue Note move product by creating awareness via promotion and placement.

Now apply that logic to bigger labels, bigger artists.  Yep, there’s a business here that could be good for Apple, labels and consumers.  A win for all.

I keep wondering when iTunes Radio is going to go all-in.  Should be very interesting.

The below got me thinking….

Who, after all, has actually ever watched a digital video ad? Such interruptions — nearly everybody in the business sniffs at the most common form, pre-roll, that unrelated, often skippable ad before the video — fly in like mosquitoes and are as annoyingly swatted away. And, save for the promise of extreme silliness, cuteness, humiliation or gore, who really is an eager viewer of Internet videos?

via Wolff: Madison Avenue and digital video.

This morning I have been watching my own behavior.   A few ads have played in the sidebar of sites, completely ignored by me.  I let one run out while I tinkered in a separate twitter window on my Mac.  So yes the ad played, but was it seen?

Like many people I will click out of an ad after five seconds when that option is presented.

What I won’t sit through is the thirty second pre-roll.  I don’t care how excited I was to see the content, if you expect me to sit there for :30, I just won’t.  My life goes on.

Fifteen seconds seems more tolerable.  Probably because I can check twitter or my phone or scratch my nose and it is almost over.  Still ignored, but at least not X’d out.

Solutions?  Well, if I had that I would be a billionaire.  I know that on radio I felt we should bring things full circle and go back to having Title Sponsored shows.  Instead of The Bob Hope Show you had The Pepsodent Show, Starring Bob Hope. And the Pepsodent live reads would work their way into sketches.  Similarly, you haven’t lived until you have heard Bing Crosby sing about Chesterfield cigarettes.

I think this could work for television as well, at least with comedies.  I’m not sure there would be much of a difference between say The Patton Oswalt Show and The Sony Show starring Patton Oswalt,

I have almost nothing in common with Don Draper other than when I occasionally drop into what I call my “Fat Don Draper” speeches in a creative meeting.  However, as I have spent the last few months riding out some golden handcuffs, I have been strangely reacting to the parts of Mad Men where Don is sitting around his apartment with nothing to do.  That feeling I know.

Last night Don rolled up his sleeves and decided to do the work.

This morning I find myself a full “unrestricted free agent” as I like to say.  I am free and clear to run your radio station, your comedy offerings or whatever the future holds.

Ten years ago I found myself in this boat and a friend called and told me to get in touch with Jeremy Coleman who was looking for someone to run the comedy format on satellite radio.  The what on what?   What wound up attracting to me that gig, as I told Jeremy in that meeting, was that there was no “book” on how to do the format.  It hadn’t been done, thus there was no blueprint.  Ten years later it’s a format that is expected on all these services, and there is even a terrestrial radio version.

And like Don, it bugs me that someone else has my stations now.  I launched them all, and I always knew they would go on without me, but boy it makes me creatively itchy to get back in the game.

My ten years before that was in News-Talk, something that I still love.  I was waxing poetic last week about my adventures with Bob Grant.  Whatever you may think of Bob, I worked with him every day and I will tell you he was a master of his craft.  Lets have lunch some time and I will go on and on about working that show.

So here I am.  Unrestricted free agency.  Time to go do the work.