Everybody Loves a Good Protest... I Mean List

In honor of Time magazine naming “The Protestor” as Person of the Year, I would like to announce that I am doing this year’s list under protest. Truth be told, I feel left out on all the fun protest action, so I want in. Nobody’s going to make me do a list this year… oh, that’s right. Nobody makes me do this anyway. So, um, 2011…

Ah, 2011… the year when Charlie Sheen gave new meaning to the term “winning”… and “tiger blood”… and “Adonis DNA.” The year when the first phase of Destiny finally opened, and great move by the Destiny folks putting Santa in the new section so that Carousel shoppers had to see the new portion if they wanted to get their kids’ pictures taken with ol’ Kris Kringle. The Jets underachieved, SU football underachieved, we found out that Jerry Sandusky and Bernie Fine underachieved as moral human beings (to put it mildly), and the Mets not only underachieved, but as of this point in the offseason, they seem to be aiming even lower for 2012. Speaking of low expectations, it was also the year of Rebecca Black… and the year that we reached the point where someone can put out a song universally acknowledged as bad, and it can still become a massive “hit”. Maybe we’re all more like hipsters than we thought we were… that had to be it, we were watching the “Friday” video ironically…

Meanwhile, a lot of evil people met their maker… Bin Laden, Gadhafi, Kim Jong Il. And the United States left Iraq… and only President Obama even framed this as anything approaching a success. I won’t even debate the use of the v-word (“victory”) in describing the ultimate result of the Iraq War, but I will say that there are a hell of a lot of people rushing to declare this war a failure and the lives lost as a waste. While I acknowledge that I was against the war when it started, you NEVER tell someone who lost a loved one in something like this that he/she died for a “mistake,” and that seems to be what the peacenik rhetoric tells us. Either that or they were “just following orders,” which of course lends itself to Nazi references. They fought and died for the cause (or the perceived cause) of Iraqi freedom, but no, we’re not going to have a parade to welcome them back, because we might end up getting more protestors than honored veterans. At least tell any veteran you know that you appreciate their sacrifice.

Oh, and because I’m a member of the media and I have to hit my mandated quota… Tebow Tebow Tebow Tebow Tebow. Hell, with “Tebowing” becoming an often-practiced verb, maybe that could have been a grammatically correct sentence, like the one where you use the word “buffalo” a bunch of times.

So what more is there to do than recap some of the highlights and lowlights of the year 2011, in list form…

Dumb PETA Protest of the Year: Usually when PETA pulls their dumbest stunt of the year, it doesn’t generate much attention… but you just don’t go after the biggest icon in video game history and expect it to go under the radar. PETA’s claims that Super Mario promotes killing animals for their fur with his “raccoon suit” ability (that he’s had since “Super Mario 3” 20 years ago) reached new levels of cuckoo-bananas, and opened them up to new levels of public ridicule.

Good 2011 Retro: The Cars’ new album, “Move Like This.” The lead single, “Sad Song” sounded like it could have fit easily on “Heartbeat City”, and the video looked retro-80s cool as well. It was a much-welcomed return for the synth-pop group from Boston. In a year where groups like Destroyer and M83 seemed to recreate New Wave, who better to show us how it’s done than one of the originals?

Bad 2011 Retro: The Beastie Boys new album, “Hot Sauce Committee, Part II.” This probably will sound a lot worse now since they just got voted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, but the first time I heard “Make Some Noise,” I couldn’t help thinking I had heard this song before. I had… on every album they’ve made since “Ill Communication.” While critics were praising how the Beasties were moving in new directions, my response was, “WHAT new directions?”

Good 2011 Retro TV: Welcome back, “Beavis & Butt-head!” We missed you, and the brilliance of the show now is that when the boys tear apart MTV reality shows, you realize that as dumb as people thought they were in the 1990s, they are WAY smarter than what passes for programming on the former “Music Television” these days.

Bad 2011 Retro TV: “Charlie’s Angels.” Nice try, ABC. I pretty much figured from the start that this reboot was only filling the 8pm Thursday time slot until they could get new episodes of “Wipeout” produced.

Dumb Lawsuit of the Year: When you lose an important game because of a blown call, it’s tough. It’s a good reminder that sometimes life is unfair. Unfortunately, in our litigious 21st century society, it’s also a golden opportunity for a lawsuit. Such was the case in New Mexico, where high school football referees accidentally started the clock with three seconds to go after a penalty, denying a team the chance to kick an otherwise-meaningless field goal that would have gotten them into the state playoffs on a point-differential tiebreaker. So the parents sued. The lawsuit was thrown out… perhaps the better protest would be getting rid of a tiebreaker method that forces teams to attempt meaningless last-second field goals.

Zero (Bleep)ing Tolerance Strikes Again: Liverpool high school basketball coach Jerry Wilcox, a Central New York Hall of Famer with well over 400 career wins in 30 years of coaching, got fired in late December or breaking a new Liverpool district policy against profanity. That’s right… in the heat of the moment during a game, Wilcox dropped a four-letter bomb on a referee, got a technical foul (the appropriate punishment), and days later was fired. But that’s what happens with zero-tolerance policies; the most seemingly innocuous things get kids suspended or well-respected coaches fired. As the late George Carlin said, “There are no bad words… bad thoughts, bad intentions… and words…” Of course, if next year the Supreme Court of the United States upholds the FCC throwing the book at people who use “fleeting expletives,” you may see the equivalent of a “zero-tolerance” profanity policy throughout the broadcast media.

Most Overplayed Song of 2011: Sometimes a song starts off as something you think sounds pretty good… not great, but pretty good. Then after you hear it a few times, you decide it’s something you can tolerate but only every so often… at which point, it goes into ultra-heavy rotation and gets used everywhere in pop culture. That is why I created this yearly award, and that is what describes “My Body” by Young the Giant. Nothing Katy Perry, Rihanna, or Lady Gaga did this year had the “dear god why the hell are they playing this again” quality of this particular song.

Most Overplayed Artist of 2011: I had to create this new “honor” specifically for Rihanna… because she never stops putting out new singles. Counting her collaborations, she had a staggering 7 singles getting Pop radio airplay at one point or another this year, and 14 since the fall of 2009. Considering that she just put out her third album in a little over 2 years, it’s not going to stop anytime soon, but based on the sales, nobody really seems to care. She just doesn’t reach the point where people get sick of hearing a new song from her every 2 months. However, I AM sick of her, soooo…

Who We Will Talk About in Music in 2012: Rihanna (duh), The Black Keys, Green Day, M83, John Mayer, Christina Aguilera, Florence & the Machine, and The Scarlet Ending (yeah, that last one was a little self-indulgent, but they are working on a new album right now).

Who Should Just Go Away in 2012: Almost every year I put Nickelback on this list, and every year they fail to just go away. But they’re on the list again, as well as Lil Wayne, Avenged Sevenfold, and any Alternative radio PD who puts Adele on his/her station.

Best New Album I Bought This Year: As much as I wanted to count Weezer’s deluxe edition of “Pinkerton,” which never left my CD player this summer, I cannot. Therefore, the honors go to the Foo Fighters’ “Wasting Light.” They really have never made a bad album, and this one just seemed to capture this particular time period in my life.

My Prediction Record for the Year: When I said that the Mets, Jets, and SU football underachieved, that was mostly according to what I predicted for them. When I said we would talk about Arcade Fire in 2011, I had no idea they would win for Best Album at the Grammys, although it was an honor well deserved (and had it come out in 2011, “The Suburbs” would have beaten the Foos for best new album I bought this year). I also hit the nail on the head for Grohl & co., Gaga, the reunited Blink-182, and Nicki Minaj. However, Bieber Fever failed to subside.

And Finally: If the Mayans really were right about the world ending next year, then at the very least, it means I won’t have to do another one of these year-end lists ever again. And with the presidential race kicking into high gear next week, I hope it doesn’t get to the point where we actually hope the cataclysm comes early…

Radio By the Numbers

Not too long ago, we had a guest speaker in the Radio class I help teach, a program director for a local radio station. He told us about the PPMs (Personal People Meters), the new way of measuring radio audiences. He said that the PPM numbers have proven that "nobody cares when you talk about your personal life".

No offense to this guy, but... what a load of bull.

There are plenty of success stories in radio that prove that people can be measured constantly on what they are listening and they still enjoy connecting with on-air personalities who are relatable. The problem today is twofold: 1) The radio industry does not give us much chance to establish a connection with relatable personalities anymore, and 2) Institutions everywhere (not just radio) rely WAY too much on statistics. They have all but forgotten the human element. Loyalty is not always measured in cold statistics. Much as social scientists try to measure emotional or affective responses, it's not the easiest thing in the world to do, is often unreliable, and let's face it, when you really like something, when you really feel a connection with something, can you really measure it in numbers?

Let me backtrack for a moment and explain exactly what the PPMs are. For decades, radio ratings were measured by giving listeners diaries and asking them to write down the stations they listened to over a one-week period. It wasn't the most reliable method in the world... listeners often wrote down what they could remember, not necessarily what they were listening to at the exact moment. The ratings companies could not rely on people sending the diaries back, either, and the meager compensation wasn't much of an incentive. By upgrading to the PPM, radio listening approaches the standard used by Nielsen with their TV set-top boxes that have recorded viewing instantly for decades. The PPM device is a pager-like thing that selected panelists wear and keep with them at all times. All radio stations put a code out with their signal, one that the PPM reads and translates into data. The end result? Any time you are within earshot of a radio (even if it's not necessarily yours), the PPM will record that you were "listening" to the station to which the radio is tuned.

What the PPM gains for radio in efficiency, however, it loses in other ways. For one thing, a typical listener of a well-liked on-air personality might change the station if he goes to commercials or puts on a song the listener doesn't like. Yes, he/she will switch back, but whereas that person might have previously written that the well-liked DJ was the only one he/she listened to, now it shows up in the PPM data as listening to said DJ for a shorter time, then flipping around. When ratings change like this, number-crunching managers want to start looking at EXACTLY what caused the change. And they can do just that... they have access to the PPM data not just shift by shift or hour by hour, but literally MINUTE BY MINUTE. Talk about a godsend for micro-managers. I'm sure this doesn't drive on-air personalities crazy at all.

The PPM numbers are just another way that people are overusing statistics to try to claim that they can control and micromanage their way to success. If the PPM numbers drop when someone says, "My kids did something silly yesterday," it does not necessarily mean that they will drop EVERY TIME the person on-air talks about his/her kids. But try telling that to someone who is under massive amounts of pressure to keep the numbers up so that they can keep sales numbers up so that the massive corporate owners can avert bankruptcy for another week. Just because you HAVE all this statistical data, it doesn't necessarily mean you should USE it. Industry, economists, climatologists, government... all pour money into getting all the statistical data they can overuse, and then some. And then what do they wind up doing with it? They spin it. And perhaps it was "spin" we were hearing from this program director, who wants us to listen to his station that is less reliant on engaging personalities that foster connections with the audience, and therefore wants us to believe that the PPMs say nobody cares when "Preston & Steve" or some other similar morning team talks about their personal lives.

All I know is that the PPMs have given corporate owners a new reason to further purge personality out of radio, using this line of BS as their excuse. Of course, the real reason is they are slashing payroll in order to please corporate types who have no idea how radio is supposed to work, or have maybe gotten so out of touch that they forgot (*cough* Bob Pittman *cough*). But when you have all this data you can spin, it's awfully handy.

Let's go back to my earlier question: When you feel a connection with an on-air personality, can that connection be expressed in raw statistics? It is possible, but it's not as readily convenient as just strapping a meter to someone and reading the results. You could measure coorientation between listener and personality, tracking the degree to which they both lock in on relatable topics... but it's not a proven method. I would love for station management to see the devotion of a station or personality's audience, the way they show up for live appearances and respond to calls for action, whether political, charitable, or just plain silly. But those things can only be observed and not measured, and when you have all these numbers, well, it's just so much easier to go to the statistics.

This is the same philosophy that results in people like Frank Luntz using perception analyzers to isolate what works about a politician's message... right down to specific words. I've actually used the perception analyzers in research... they're the dials that people use, sitting in focus groups, turning the dials to one side if they like something, the other way if they don't. That is the extreme of reliance on numbers. I certainly fancy myself as more of a qualitative researcher than one who goes the quantitative, statistical route, but I see the importance of using quantifiable concepts. However, I think radio should leave the social science to the social scientists, and take the ratings the way we always did... weekly/monthly/quarterly. And combine the ratings with good old-fashioned gut. That's really what it comes down to: management plays it too safe now, and with the hard numbers to point to (and spin), one needs not fear the ill results that may come from a gut decision. But when you use your gut, you actually have to understand the audience's needs and wants, not just what time or what word coincided with the push of a preset button.

God forbid we get to the point where radio personalities' careers are decided by a focus group full of people with dials...

Powering Through Writer's Block

I realize that I have written a grand total of ONE entry on here since Halloween. Now it's understandable that I often go for a time without writing because all of my creative energy is devoted to finishing work for the semester, and that can get quite hairy toward the end, as any grad student will tell you. However, I've been done with that for a week or two now, and still have not had the desire to write something here. I have the ideas, but they're just not coming out. So I figured that the only way I could stop this inability to write was... to write... about my inability to write.

That made a ton of sense, didn't it?

I admit that there are times when I don't have anything to write about, or I feel that it's kinda pointless to do so. Believe me, I know I'm not alone when I say that I'm growing so frustrated and apathetic about our political process that I feel like anything I say will fall on deaf ears when it comes to those who value ideology and hyperpartisanship above all else. Now the latest turn is liberals calling Republicans and their supporters "anti-intellectuals," which of course is the nice way of saying that they have the IQ of cabbage. Of course, the problem is that the people the Republican Party runs out there as candidates are easy fodder for such charges. Rick Perry can't remember lists that have more than 2 items, Michelle Bachmann constantly says things that are just factually wrong, Newt Gingrich thinks that 10-year olds should be school janitors, and Ron Paul clearly didn't exercise editorial control over his newsletters back in the day. And Mitt Romney is still flip-flopping Mitt Romney.

It's far too easy to oversimplify an argument down to here's what we think, and we're the good guys, and if you think the other side's argument has any merit, then you must be some kind of community college dropout. Rhetorical hyperbole rules the day... if you agree with anything the Right says, you're a corporate-coddling fascist. If you agree with anything the Left says, you're a communist. Pepper spraying someone has become okay because it's "a food product"; conversely, we live in a police state if any protestor decides to break the law, lays down in the middle of a busy street somewhere, and gets arrested for it. Neither side in Congress wants to truly solve our problems because it would erase their political raison de etrê, so they instead engage in brinksmanship on every issue, then at the last minute they pass a stopgap measure that means they can go right back at it again in two months. And with next year being a presidential and congressional election, don't think it's going to get any better.

So yeah, writing about politics can seem downright pointless these days... and anyone who wants to know how I feel about most issues can always refer back to past entries, because my views haven't changed much these last few years, and if you go all the way back to 2000 when this blog began, my opinions haven't changed as much as the ruling ideologies have. Not to mention the many outlets people have for them, most notably social media. A lot of the rhetorical hyperbole I see these days comes from people posting on social media, or people posting links to similar hyperbole. That's great that a left-wing publication put out a list of the "10 biggest blowhards" of 2011. Let me guess... A) they didn't have a single person from THEIR publication on that list, and B) everyone who did make the list was a right-winger. Oh, and C) a right-wing publication probably has a similar list, made up entirely of left-wingers. How'd I do?

As for music and pop culture, well... I want to blame Chuck Klosterman.

I started reading his stuff over the summer, and have been reading his latest book, "Eating the Dinosaur" during my break, and whereas reading other pop culture writers inspires me to want to write, reading Klosterman makes me want to quit doing this FOREVER. Because he is such a brilliant writer that I feel like anything I want to write about he has already written, and far better than I ever could. Then again, I don't do this to sell books.

I will ask one question though, speaking of pop culture and politics: Why the hell did we care so much about what Hank Williams Jr. thinks of President Obama? And I don't necessarily mean the furor that followed his appearance on Fox News, I mean the wisdom of booking Williams on a cable news channel in the first place. I mean I know they have 24 hours to fill each day, and they can't possibly fill it with nonstop hyperpartisan bloviating (although they certainly try), but I really don't care what a celebrity thinks of politics unless he/she is thinking of running for office. As I have said so many times, yes they have the right to say what they want, but they don't have a right to an audience, and I for one want no part of said audience. I guess when you put someone like Hank on TV, you expect him to say something that will provide grist for your viewers... which simultaneously provides grist for Media Matters or the Media Research Center or whatever partisan watchdog is waiting for something to exploit. It's great fun and games for them, but like just about everything that comes out of the partisan media, it does NOTHING to solve our problems. And unless he/she was also a Rhodes Scholar in political science or economics, whatever a celebrity says about politics probably isn't going to help much in that area.

So there you go... one nice rant that at least breaks the logjam in my mind and gets me writing again. Perhaps the feeling of accomplishment that comes from clicking on the "Publish Post" button will help get me going. Suffice to say, you may be hearing from me on a less frequent basis in the weeks and months to come, as I devote my time and energy to those final hurdles between me and a Ph.D, but when I brought this blog back over 5 years ago, I said I wasn't going to operate by a self-perceived need to post every week. That worked pretty well for 230-plus entries over those 5 years, so if my production slows, just know that it's because if I write something, it's going to be about quality and not quantity. There are still things I care passionately about, and when the mood arises, I'll get on here and say my piece.

Unless Chuck Klosterman starts regularly writing about the Mets and SU and radio... in which case, this blog is doomed...