05/23

Apparently, there are about 16.2 million people with broadband connections now, and the pace of installation has slowed.  According to the Federal Computer Week report I read, only 50 percent of the nation's rural areas have a broadband provider while 99 percent of urban and suburban dwellers do.  The reason for that, of course, is telecommunications companies don't see much return in providing rural service, so they won't unless forced to do so.  This, by the way, was the same reason why electricity came late to rural communities.  There was no return in getting power to farms scattered about Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas.  That was why Rural Electric Cooperatives were created.  Rural communities may need the same thing to get broadband.

The variation from state to state is wide.  The report noted that North Carolina with 100 counties has broadband service in nearly all of them because it used Department of Agriculture and state money to provide it.  Other states are not so fortunate.  The states with the most subscribers are California, New York, Florida, Texas and New Jersey.   Massachusetts has the highest density of subscribers -- 239 per every 1000 households followed by New Jersey, California, Washington, D.C. and Alaska (!).  I guess if you live in Anchorage the service must be good.

About 9.2 million households use cable, 5.1 million Digital Subscriber Lines (DSL) and some 520,000 lucky souls have fiber to the home.  Another 221,000 use satellite or fixed wireless and other types of subscribers equal about 1.2 million. 

That's a pretty good picture of what is out there, and it tells me something.  There is still not enough broadband to make a difference yet.  The tipping point for the Web was about 50 million when it was first installed.  My guess is that it will be about the same for broadband.  When we hit the 50 million point, there will be an abundance of high-speed services, games, video and other high-density programs delivered down fast pipes.  These services exist now, but they don't have mass acceptance yet.

As for my office and home, both have been on broadband for several years.  I can't imagine working without it.
 

05/22

The excuse for this, according to the article, is that the airline learned that passengers only care about price and so to give them the lowest price, the airline will push in more seats and cram more people into the cabin.  I don't know about you, but this seems to be incredibly dumb PR.  People care about price, sure, but they also care whether they are shoved  into spaces that sardines wouldn't fit.  I mean, if you want to push American Airline's philosophy to the limit, why not just put in vertical slots and have people stand in them with belts on.  You could fit in a lot more people then and cut the price to rock-bottom rates.

I admit I am not a small fellow.  I'm 6 feet 2 inches, and I weigh north of 260 pounds.  I find airline seats to be instruments of torture even at 35 inches.   And now, I'm told that I don't care whether I have leg cramps or not.  Curious.  I wonder whether American Airlines surveyed anyone over 5 foot 9 inches tall.   After all, if no one cares about airline seating, why is there a site dedicated to it ( www.seatguru.com ).

What this sounds like is a marketer's excuse.  American Airlines is in deep trouble and has to get its cost per seat mile down -- and fast.  So, they seized survey results that say passengers care about price, and they used it to justify an economic move. 

The inanity of this decision is emphasized by the fact that the Federal Aviation Administration has just mandated new weight regulations in recognition that today's passengers are heavier than in the past.  Presumably, they are taller too. The FAA told the airlines to assume that the average passenger weighs 190 pounds in the summer and 195 pounds in the winter with all that extra gear on. 

So, even though the CEO of American Airlines says that he is simply giving passengers what they want, I'll try hard to avoid American Airlines in the future.  That's not just because passengers are crammed in.  It's also because American Airlines just doesn't get PR.
 

05/21

I'm reminded of this by stories coming out about what really happened in Iraq versus what we thought happened.  For example, we think it was the first high-tech war in which battle field communications were everywhere and GPS-guided bombs smashed precisely into targets.  Of course, that is not true.  There are several examples of bombs that went astray, including one that killed our own people.

Now journalists returning from the field are telling stories about troops getting lost, about soldiers using time-honored methods such as "liberating" goods and swapping to keep their machines and networks running and about soldiers who brought equipment with them purchased from store shelves in the US because they couldn't get military supplies.  The journalists saw these things because they were walking about with soldiers.  The generals might not have seen it because they were in tents running a war. 

Getting to the action at the bottom of the management pyramid is essential for generals and CEOs.  It is too easy to sit in one's office and assume what is happening on a battlefield or in a store.  It's quite another thing to walk the foxholes or store and notice that  major initiatives are out of whack or not started.

This is why PR practitioners should take time to get to the field regularly and see for themselves what is happening.  That helps them avoid obvious and embarrassing errors, such as a company claiming it is doing something when it isn't.  I understand this it is not always easy.  Many businesses are business-to-business and contracted in such a way that there is no moment when a transaction is completed or a service delivered.  Yet, the practitioner should strive to get as close to the bottom as possible and observe closely.  What the practitioner learns is as valuable to the CEO as to the practitioner. 

I had it happen to me.  Some years ago, I was in charge of a multi-office PR division.  I visited the offices that reported to me and knew the individuals who worked in them.  I didn't visit an office in Los Angeles that reported locally and had no direct relationship to me.  Sure enough, the L.A. office blew up disastrously because no one had been paying attention to the point where work was being done.  Suddenly, I was put in charge of the mess and told to clean it up.  I spent the next three months living bi-coastally trying to turn around a situation that was not going to improve.  Unfortunately,  the L.A. manager had not spent time on the shop floor.  He said the head of the office demanded his presence at the office. (I never found out whether this was true or not.)   Don't make the same mistake.
 

05/20

Unlike those who fear editorial diversity will decline with media conglomeration and convergence, I am not so concerned with some parts of it.  For example, why would each Web site need its own weather map when it all comes from the same place anyway?  One shared weather map is fine.  Why would two venues need to report sports scores from two separate sources?  Box scores are box scores.  Why would there need for two calendars of events.  It would be more efficient and probably more inclusive if there were one source.  So too with traffic coverage and Webcams pointing at freeways.

Where convergence gets worrisome is when it is substituted for diversity of coverage.  There should be competition in reporting city hall and the police department -- the more eyes the better.  There should be competition in editorial opinion, the more ideas the better.   Those who fear loss of editorial voices have a reason for concern. Two reporters do not report the same thing every day nor do they report in the same way.  In addition, the emphasis different reporters give in a story provides clues to the event itself. 

I have a case of that now.  I am monitoring Japanese business for a client and daily I get the same event reported by different services like Jiji Press, Agence France-Press, Reuters, Kyodo News and Financial Times.  Each one has a different cast.  Sometimes, it seems the reporters have not witnessed the same event.  It's important for me to pick up differences and to get them to the client who is interested in the details. 

Visualize a town with one city hall reporter, one police beat reporter, one education reporter.  That would be a town that knows little about what is really happening within its borders.  That would also be a town in which public relations could not flourish because if the reporter does not want to talk to you, there is no place else to go.

So share the weather map, but not reporters. 
 

05/19

Yesterday, I attended a graduation at a prestigious New England University.  It was a tedious three-hour affair that should have been boiled to one.  There was an academic parade with the president of the university carrying the mace of authority and all professors in robes of their doctoral schools.  There was a commencement address urging graduates dressed in gowns and mortarboards to break out of tradition, to ask why, to be curious.  There was an hour-long awarding of degrees with each candidate walking across the stage to receive a diploma.  There was the glee club singing an execrable school song, and a representative of the senior class giving a sophomoric speech.  Finally there was the academic parade out of the great tent where the ceremony was held and it was mercifully over. 

All through this, the crowd was wise.  At various times, the great tent was half-empty as people walked in and out while speakers droned in front.  At other times, people carried on conversations as if waiting for a ceremony to begin, which was already well underway.

But just try and change any of this.  All hell would break loose among parents and alumni.  It is wiser to go along and to make the best of it even though there are better ways to award degrees and more meaningful ones. 

Graduations are not the only venue where tradition reigns and attempts to tamper are dangerous.  Think of weddings.  No more need be said.   Or funerals.  It seems important steps in life are encrusted with traditions because we want it that way.  We need to rely on the comfortable at the same time we are dealing with the unknown.   I have no objection to that, but three hours?