Times Change
Howie Rose retires, CBS News Radio gets murdered, and Anderson Cooper cosplays
I find myself bemused by CNN this week. They have been cosplaying as podcasts for some reason. Now that podcasts being loosely defined as anything anyone wants it to, we’re doing this with something that is just Anderson Cooper On CNN, and not at all a podcast. This is just the 8pm hour on Cable News Network. But hey, sleeves rolled up, cool microphone on the desk, a laptop, coffee cup….we’re just podcasters like you!
What are we even doing? Pretending to be a podcast? Why? Podcasts are trying to become cheap TV shows, and now cheap TV shows are pretending to be podcasts.
Jake Tapper did the show from “his office.” Maybe this is actually his office and this is actually how his office normally looks. I don’t know, I have never been in his office. He has the prop microphone, but no visible headphones. Sure, let’s all pretend this is a podcast because….cool?
David Letterman did a show from his office 40 years ago guys. He was goofing around.
Speaking of the news, did you see CBS News Radio was murdered? As someone who cares about the history of broadcasting this makes me sad. Is there no version of “CBS News” (even in this horrible Bari Weiss era) that could have kept some sort of radio going?
On the other hand, I get it. Money. Also tech changes. There was a time when I was addicted to Newsradio 88 (sorry Frank, I’m never calling it Eight Eighty) specifically from 55 past the hour (Joe Connolly business!) through the TOH CBS News. But then super local weather on the phone came along, and Waze gave me personalized traffic, and some sloppy clock keeping by the anchors led to “Cheap Weather” (my term for the rushed version) a little too often, so I broke the habit.
Speaking of breaking habits…
Mets baseball announcer Howie Rose announced he will retire at the end of the season. He had previously announced he was only doing home games…and then he added on the retirement. Howie is only 72, which in Baseball Announcer Years normally means another ten years of work. Hopefully this is indeed about spending time with Mrs. Rose, and I won’t speculate further.
When Vin Scully retired, Howie became the best baseball broadcaster, no qualifier. The way he paints a picture on the radio by changing speeds is perfect. He will put some doubt into his voice if he isn’t sure an outfielder will get to a ball.
Like all the great announcers, he isn’t a screamer. He will punch a word, or go from slow to fast, but he doesn’t need to yell. I wish more of the current crop of announcers would be more like Howie….or Al Michaels….or Jim Nantz….or Mike Tirico….but then again I live on Old Man Mountain.
…what does that have to do with habits? Well, when WOR had the Mets, they would add this metallic drone to the broadcast. Why? Well, you see the People Meters don’t like silence. You can’t encode silence. So if Howie says “The two-two to Johnson……….away, 3-2 to Johnson……………………….” as a nice calm baseball announcer should…well, you can’t encode that. So, I forget what it was called, WOR added the drone to the broadcast. It gave me a headache and was annoying to listen to. So I stopped. I never went back. You break the habits with listeners, it’s hard to get back.
I was enjoying PWR this morning while driving up to my summer place that audio podcasting paid for (FLEX!!!!) and they started talking about the cost of video. James Cridland suggested that it 7x as expensive to host a video. Does that suggest some $20 hosting plans will become $140….so you can have HLS on Apple? Who is going to do that instead of just sticking with YouTube?
Another notion floated in the convo was charging by the download (for video). I believe I heard an estimated $30 per 1000 downloads….and then James said $30 CPM. Is there money in that for creators? I mean I guess you could run three ads and let the first one-and-change pay for your hosting.
Or you could just use you tube.
Or you could just make an audio podcast and enjoy your view of the lake. That’s what I am doing this morning.