A Book No One Has Read Can Make You Famous

Sarah Palin knocked Miss California's masturbation video off the page this week. (Both replaced the Fort Hood shooting, which arguably was another made for media event.)

It's interesting how similar both stories are and how they illustrate what's happening in the world of infotainment. Carrie Prejean didn't mean to distribute her act of self gratification. Sarah Palin did. And both went viral.

I'm not interested in being critical of either woman. I am interested in the phenomena. Both women scored a media knockout. Both women are in a position to capitalize on instant blazing fame. What will they do now? Will message trump substance?

In the case of Carrie Prejean she stands on a pile of the hottest 'keywords" out there and is sure to generate intense interest because of what she brings to the public square. Consider the words she conjures up: hot babe, boob job, California girl, bikini, conservative, anti gay, Christian, beauty pageant winner, sex videos, topless photos...

Let's face it she is guaranteed traffic - a major attraction. Now will someone please help her GET A GRIP. She's been given super powers. Time to be Wonder Woman.

And then there is the release of the "best seller" that no one has read. Advance orders propelled this book up the charts. So what. Who's actually going to read it? The real news is that Sarah is the talk of every media outlet and blogger in the America-centric universe and she did it by publishing a book about herself.

Like Carrie Prejean, Sarah Palin is a pile of keywords and contradictions that create the kind of dynamic tension and expectation that plays so well on camera. She's a walking sound byte. And she has published her own back story - consisting of just what she wants the public to see. It's brilliant. And her media fan-dance is working.

My point is that both these women have worked to create a public image and then have published (sometimes involuntarily) a narrative that people are eating up. Yes, their entry into the spotlight was big (Miss California, Republican VP candidate) but this is bigger. And now, they have to figure out how to keep publishing, promoting and profiting from the fact that they ARE the news.

Both are relative lightweights who are punching above their weight. They are giving the public the right combination of sex and searchable terminology. It makes them irresistible. But for how long. The question isn't, "Will Sarah Run?" The question is, "Will we still care if she does?" (Even money says Prejean gets interviewed about joining Sarah's team.)

In our current, "pop-culture as news" reality, where real news organizations are weak and wobbly, Carrie Prejean and Sarah Palin have the power to punch out the press. And who wouldn't pay to see that?

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Bundle This!

My good friend Dave called me a couple of days ago. After a moment of small talk he told me why he called.

Dave is an announcer at a local NPR affiliate. As you can imagine it's almost genetically against his nature to raise his voice above beautiful, precise and carefully modulated tones.

Dave was mad as hell (in an NPR kind of way) and wanted to know if he had to take it anymore.

The problem Dave outlined was with with our local cable provider.

Seems our local provider had decided to move a few of his favorite channels from basic cable to more expensive service packages. Bundling is a common term for these packages.

After assuring Dave that the best thing to do was cancel his monthly service agreement, I tried to soothe his savage (yet mellow) attitude with the idea that such pricing schemes were doomed in the face of broadband service and selectable on-line content. Happy was I to have such an excellent answer and poor Dave was resigned to pay more or lose his cable.

Did I give him the best answer?

While bundling free online content (like this blog) through free utilities is an easy way to aggregate your own "do it yourself" media menu, pay for play content is a stickier problem. The FCC did a consumer study a few years ago on this very issue. The conclusion? That un-bundling cable service and allowing customers to choose channels would actually add costs and raise the monthly rate to consumers. The report was supported by the cable industry and opposed by Consumers Union.

I'd be happy to dismiss the cable industry from the table and support the Consumers Union but for one fact: itunes.

For just .99 cents you get a song you want from itunes (with use restrictions). The problem? I don't know anybody who likes just one song. If you like hundreds of songs, that's hundreds of dollars in music that you pay for, but don't actually own.

If you have to pay a dollar each for three TV shows you like each day, that's about 90 dollars a month, plus the cost of your broadband service. And who wants to pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars a month for content, just to avoid paying for cable TV?

Especially when there is a better way.

In 1925, BBDO advertising aired it's first hour long radio program sponsored by Atwater Kent radios. This was possible because BBDO had obtained exclusive rights to broadcast Metropolitan Opera stars. A couple of years later and BBDO is the first advertising agency to have it's own radio department.

You know how the rest works. You tune in for free content, in exchange for allowing the sponsor to include their commercial message in the content.

It's simple, it's free, it makes content creation possible because the medium itself has value to sponsors who want to reach the mass market. And it makes the sponsor lots of money.

The cable industry and pay for play is based on an obsolete model. Cable was built because people wanted access to broadcasts they couldn't get over the air. The internet has solved that problem permanently by giving everyone who can connect to it access to selectable, unbundled content from millions of channels all of the time for a single low price.

And as far as monetizing content goes, well, look for the return of the Texaco Star Theater.