react Radio Open Conference Call - 9 p.m. Wednesday, May 11

React Radio is hosting an open conference call tomorrow night @ 9 p.m. to discuss the latest developments and opportunities.  For aspiring programmers, it's especially important that you participate in the phone conference if you're available, for we will announce our orientation period. 

The conference call is open to all who have expressed their support for react Radio and progressive radio art & culture in the Nation's Capitol.  We welcome your participation as a member, shareholder, and/or sponsor, and will discuss those alternatives during the conference call.  We ask that you R.S.V.P. with an e-mail reply if you can't participate tomorrow night so that we may keep you informed.

The phone number is (305) 848-8888; the conference code will be posted here and to our Facebook group, React Radio WPWC 1480 AM, tomorrow.

Radio Wars, Episode II: Radio Narcissus

Just the other day I weighed in on Facebook link to a blog thread about new media.  The blog, Darryl Williams' Full Cirkle Media Group, features various news and issues about radio as it promotes Williams' media consulting services.  What piqued my interest was Williams' comments on streaming, podcasts, and Internet radio.

Apparently, Williams sees himself as some sort of patron saint-gatekeeper for reconciling traditional radio with today's technologies.  A Stanley Crouch for radio, as it were.  In his essay New Media , Williams distinguishes between Internet radio and podcasting as streaming versus prerecorded content, insinuating podcasts shouldn't be recognized as Internet radio programs because they aren't 'live'.

I responded on the Facebook thread with a more complete presentation of streaming and podcasting, explaining them as separate, but complimentary technologies: podcasts are digital media files which may be downloaded onto media players and other devices but are ultimately streamed when played back.  I went on to note podcasts can be 'live' or prerecorded, and cited BlogTalkRadio as an example whereby a general consensus of both media and IT industry pros, and laypersons consider audio-only podcasts Internet radio. 

April Sims -- provider of the link on Facebook and proprietor of WAGTIradio.com -- then Williams replied to my post with crypto-insults of varying acerbity.  Sims asked if my intention was to "flex" my knowledge (suggesting me as intellectual bully) or solicit Williams' services; Williams attacked my credibility on the account of not having foresight about Internet radio's future.... before backpeddling away from his own definitions as those of, "... all major recording platforms regarding digital media".  At least Sims had the presence of mind to stumble and trip through a half-apology after reading my motivation for adding in my two cents.  (Which leads me to ask -- with my tongue planted firmly in my cheek -- why is it so many bloggers to sites like Facebook reflexively attack dissenting opinions that, hypothetically, they're eliciting with their commentaries?)

I suppose Williams also experienced a subsequent moment of clarity, for he invited me to link up with him on Facebook.  Accepting his invitation, I took the opportunity to expound on my earlier point and get to the root of his objection to podcasts as Internet radio.  Williams dismissed the technical explanations as sophistry, alternately posing himself and the aforementioned secret cabal of media people as reliable sources.  He didn't want to get into a battle of wits or "so-called expertise" over semantics, to let him tell it, as if his semantics and so-called expertise was sufficient authority to ignore the evidence.  It was at this point when I thought qualifying my credentials as a fellow professional in media and information technology would calm the rising current of umbrage I sensed coming from Williams.  I had peed in his cornflakes you see, by deconstructing his psuedo-technical rhetoric, and nothing short of me sacrificing myself on the Altar of Political Correctness would exonerate me as a radio/new media heretic. 

I ended my exchange with Williams by asking the practical value in defining Internet radio so narrowly.  He sent a message, again demurring from a war of words with a (suggested) radio/new media dilettante and would-be agent provocateur while resurrecting an opaque defense on behalf of the radio industry.  And then, in the passive-aggressive tradition of intellectual frauds/roadside montebanks like Professor Marvel, he 'defriended' me while providing his phone number to talk further.

If I hadn't yet become fully skeptical about engaging Williams as a peer, imagine my attitude upon discovering my defriending his post-mortem: "Why some people feel the need to appear to have the corner on technology and understanding is beyond me".  To which I say, pot, meet kettle.  Good luck protecting the future of radio from innovation.

Radio Wars, Episode I: Attack of the Drones

I know several people who are podcasting through the social networking outlet, BlogTalkRadio.com.  Frankly, I don't know what to make of it.

I'm a huge advocate of podcasting.  Podcasting has unlimited potential and jells with my beliefs about technology's value to society.  Podcasting, in practice, empowers a lot of people, just as I imagine Gutenberg's invention of the printing press empowered a lot of people centuries ago.  I'm not as much sold on social networking sites, i.e.; Yahoo! 360, MySpace, Facebook, etc., even though I have accounts with eight (?!?!) different sites.  I'm inactive on two of these sites -- Ning and Multiply -- and rarely active on BlackPlanet.  I'll deactivate my accounts on those sites shortly.

The remaining sites I visit with varying frequency, each for a slightly different purpose from the others.  I've been on Yahoo!360 the longest.  I kept a blog there as a public sketch pad of sorts on various ideas.  I use LinkedIn for professional contacts; prospecting and referrals.  Over at MySpace, I maintain a page for r.e.a.c.t. (the Death Star's radio network), and correspond directly with performing artists and music industry professionals.  On Meetup, I participate in groups representing specific interests of mine.  I meet a lot of individuals in the process of building up r.e.a.c.t. and as best as I can tell, not many are immune from the novelty appeal of each new social networking site as it launches.  They migrate like a herd of cattle to sign up with whichever site that's currently anointed as The New Hotness.

One such site is BlogTalkRadio, which combines the conventional features of social networking sites with audio podcasting.  With BlogTalkRadio, anyone with just a computer and broadband access can host an Internet talk radio show.  No microphone, studio equipment, or podcasting software is needed.  Best of all, you can podcast on a limited basis for free.  At this point, I must emphasize again that I believe the technology of podcasting is great and holds a tremendous amount of potential for users.  In practice, though...

BlogTalkRadio has enabled a virtual wave (no pun intended) of self-promoting Oprah wannabes, most of whom are looking to establish themselves as name brands using the 21st century equivalent of playing 45s on the family record player with a few of your best friends in the den.  I do understand the appeal of amateur broadcasting, but unlike ham radio operators, BlogTalkRadio members appear to be focused on a higher goal, e.g.; MAKING MONEY.  I don't begrudge anyone from making an honest buck, but a lot of the BlogTalkRadio crowd will have you believe differently, as if they're a) promoting a charitable cause or, b) really providing you with an outstanding advertising opportunity.   Another of my best friends who happens to be a professional journalist has been so seduced by the BlogTalkRadio craze, he dutifully reports for weekly debates on another member's podcast (!) like he's getting paid.  (He's not.)

I've attempted to network with several BlogTalkRadio podcasters under the assumption they would welcome the opportunities to leverage r.e.a.c.t. as a conventional media resource.  Silly me.  I have my doubts as whether they recognize n-e-t-w-o-r-k-i-n-g is a two-way ('interactive', for you nerds) endeavor that requires users to cede something in consideration of the resource.  I am regularly spammed on Facebook by four different individuals to this end, and I find it a bit annoying, if not all out hypocritical, because they aren't about returning the love.  When you throw a dance, you gotta pay the band, right?

I'm content with feeling BlogTalkRadio's podcasters aren't much different from those who ran out and bought CB radios in the 70s, only to waste the bandwidth blabbing on and on about their various personal melodramas.  The people serious about radio, music, and/or webcasting are on a different frequency.