I had been skipping the interview Rob Greenlee did with David Coursey every time it came up on the Shuffle because I just didn’t feel like tackling it. Today I finally listened, and now I think I now understand his column on podcasting I discussed earlier. My sense of his viewpoint after listening to him talk is that he is like a street whore expressing incredulity about and contempt for those who would have sex for fun. The thought that anyone could blog or podcast because they enjoy expressing themselves and communicating with others is foreign to him.
Insight
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Street whore? Sweet Jesus, here it comes now.
I expect the Johns will be coming out of the woodwork now.
How is it that Rob Greenlee keeps getting such moronic guests? Is that luck or by design? Things are working well now for David Coursey so it is obvious that he has a motive for trashing blogs and podcasts but from a consumers point of view, things have gone horribly wrong in the commercial media. Tons of choices but very little quality content and way too many ads. I see the internet as a way to opt out of corporate entertainment be it partially or in my case substantially. This is a trend that has been growing for over a decade and there is no end in sight.
Dave, I’ve been meaning to comment on how much I enjoy your podcasts, and this comment above finally got me to write something. Keep expressing yourself!
— Guy
That’s my job.
Guy, Thanks a lot. I appreciate it.
TE, Let’s give Rob some slack here, re guest choice. I think he deliberately strives to get guests that shake things up and much more than I do, gets people that disagree partially or totally with his views. Sometimes I’ll react to KJO articles and later soften on that opinion later on. Here, listening to him express what he did in his own voice, it confirmed to me that what I originally thought about him was slap on correct.
James, I figure as much. I’ll probably be disappointed if it doesn’t happen.
And just because I wasn’t clear on it the way I phrased it – in the last 2 sentences of paragraph 2 I’m talking about Coursey, not Rob. I shifted subjects yet kept using indefinite pronouns. Listening to Coursey’s delivery of those thoughts just cemented the opinion I already had.
lol – dave. what an incredibly cogent way to express the inner depth of being coursey – i actually find that i can’t listen all the way through a lot of rob’s alternate voice guests – the coursey’s, ramsey’s and katz’; there are so many good podcasts now and only so many hours in a commute to listen to them. i am glad though when you take the time to suffer through them in their entirety and then confirm what i thought i heard in the first few minutes before skipping to the next bundle of passion in my playlist 😉
Mike, I tend to listen not out of enjoyment but because I want to understand where these contrary opinions are coming from. I think your grouping there is off – I thought Katz was listenable and even if I don’t agree with everything I feel like he and I are on the same broadly defined side in this discussion. Coursey was tough sledding to listen to and Ramsey was almost impossible.
What I liked about Ramsey was his thumping the glories of radio without noting that all the trends are the opposite way that he implied – broadcast listenership is at a 30 year low and dropping. Most of what Ramsey said was, uhm, counterfactual. Even Doug Kaye, who is like the Swiss banker of these programs, felt compelled to chime in with disagreement on that one.
first, not sure how i screwed that trackback up (#9), it was meant for your barnako post – sorry (i feel shame)…
as for the groupings, yea you’re right – wasn’t fair to put katz, who’s trying to salvage his business model while at the same time listening to his customer’s desires (usually) – w/ coursey and ramsey who are simply living in alternate realities, one clueless and one delusional…
i actually have a hard time w/ all of rob greenlee’s interviews though – i think it’s a style thing…
Here’s your “John” post. LMAO.
Street-whorish? Delusional? Moronic? Clueless? These are really cogent expressions, alrighty.
You know, Dave, you are spot on correct about one thing. Podcasting for the sake of it is fun. That’s undeniable. But then again, we have our college eds and our Macs and our aggregators and our Starbucks on the corner and our pseudo-hip retro apartments. It’s fun to talk wine, music, tech, comedy, drugs with the chior. We got our blogs, man.
Podcasting is NOT the flip side of mass media as many would have us believe. It’s an ugly extention of the same sick American consumerist model cloaked in a new cheap suit.
Podcasting by the so-called “indies” is a rich white-boy/geek/vanity endeavor for the most part. Of course, there are exceptions, but pardon moi whilst I take a longer view here. Podcasting is a techno-culture toy urged into existance by a millionaire washed-up former VJ. The other original player in the game is talking today about re-locating to the Rockie Mountains where he can ski betwixt thinktank conferences. Where are the blacks, the poor, the bumpkins, the real “mass” who have no access or iPods? No Rockie Mountain software Labs? Where are the freaks and homeless? Where are our street-whores we so harshly criticize and categorize from our cute home-offices with all the latetest acoutrements? Perhaps they didn’t get the citizen-media memo. They sure as hell are not getting their fixed-wing papers between Virgin Air flights to San Francisco.
Any jackass with a little mad money can have a vanity book published for chrissake. Same’s true for podcasting. Whoopeee. But that hardly qualifies for empowerment now does it?
What I see developing is not a vehicle for the masses but rather a rich-boys’ technoculture more vehement, more radical, more close-minded, more narrow, more ugly and more vindictive than that which preceeded it. What’s really funny is that so many of these newmedia self proclaimed cutting edge pinheads are being scammed by their own ilk with promises of “You, too. can be a Star!” software products.
Sorry to be so forthright as I opine. It must have been the tea I drank.
Coursey is indeed an old school asshat. But truth be told, he does not come close to identifying the real nature of the Next Big Thing.
Podcasting is becoming so yesterday and Steve Jobs is so laughing up his sleeve tonight. Pardon me while I join the mirth.
I like you, Dave Slusher. I know you know what I am saying is true. I read your stuff. And I respect you.
I have been getting guests that take a big media perspective on podcasting as that area is not discussed as much as it needs to be.
The recent guests on my ITC interviews have challenged our thinking about the direction of podcasting and it’s future. While I do not generally agree with these guests. They do share a perspective about radio and podcasting that has shreds of truth. We all just need to think and open our minds as these guests have many years of experience in media. While it may be true that these guests are 50% or more incorrect and do not really understand what is really going on with podcasting. The fact remains that these are influential media people who many high level media decision makers trust with giving trend advise and have been doing it for many years.
My advise is to listen and learn as you just might be surprised in a couple of years to find out that some of what these guests said turned out to be completely or partially correct.
Rob Greenlee
WebTalk Radio
I think the thing Coursey is missing is the whole point of RSS—that you can subscribe to a very occasional blog or podcast very conveniently. He seems to think that, like radio, you have to put out 12 hours a day every day or else people will forget about you, and no one would do that by themselves for fun. I just wrote about this at some length on my blog.