The real upshot of all this is... I give up. "They" win. My station will never stream again.
Truth is, everyone can sign all the petitions they want, send all the letters to Congress that they want, but at the end of the day it's still David & Goliath. And I don't like those odds, regardless of how that first David did. I just ran a radio station as a hobby, and it got damned popular for a small-scale, self-financed project. But it's over-regulated and too expensive now.
Fight "the man" you say? Why bother? I don't have the resources or time to do that. It was a fun hobby, that's all. Someone with money and power wants to kill my hobby? Let 'em have it. I've got better things to do with my time, and I damn sure have better things to do with my money. Let someone else fight it.
Stream indie content? Not my bag, man. Besides, there's lots of that already happening. Nobody streamed the content I had solely in the format I programmed - 50's & 60's oldies & nothing else. Groundbreaking? No, but fun? Oh, yeah. But it ain't as much fun as these fees and regulations. Keep it, I quit.
I'd say those aren't the only two scenarios for corporate blogging. But I maintain this is a bit of a fad, anuway.
At least in publicly held companies in the US, this isn't going to fly for long, if at all. Sure, there will be some exceptions, but there are issues here.
This requires a company willing to give up control of its corporate voice, and that just ain't going to happen without a lot of preconditions. Conditions such as censoring the blogs, "training" the bloggers in what can be disclosed and what can't, legal review, etc.
I think both the bloggers and the companies allowing it are going to pull back on the reins before this ever really takes off, because corporate America is just not this democratic. The first time a company is held liable for the misstatements of a corporate blogger, or for the public's misunderstanding of a blogger's seemingly innocent remarks, the party's over.
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The real upshot of all this is... I give up. "They" win. My station will never stream again.
Truth is, everyone can sign all the petitions they want, send all the letters to Congress that they want, but at the end of the day it's still David & Goliath. And I don't like those odds, regardless of how that first David did. I just ran a radio station as a hobby, and it got damned popular for a small-scale, self-financed project. But it's over-regulated and too expensive now.
Fight "the man" you say? Why bother? I don't have the resources or time to do that. It was a fun hobby, that's all. Someone with money and power wants to kill my hobby? Let 'em have it. I've got better things to do with my time, and I damn sure have better things to do with my money. Let someone else fight it.
Stream indie content? Not my bag, man. Besides, there's lots of that already happening. Nobody streamed the content I had solely in the format I programmed - 50's & 60's oldies & nothing else. Groundbreaking? No, but fun? Oh, yeah. But it ain't as much fun as these fees and regulations. Keep it, I quit.
That's what's going to happen to internet radio.
It was fun while it lasted. RIP, RockDoggy Radio.
Here's a reanscript of a Brian Regan bit with "Boxen" in it for y'all who were wondering: http://www.brian-regan.com/Regan/transcript.html
I'd say those aren't the only two scenarios for corporate blogging. But I maintain this is a bit of a fad, anuway. At least in publicly held companies in the US, this isn't going to fly for long, if at all. Sure, there will be some exceptions, but there are issues here. This requires a company willing to give up control of its corporate voice, and that just ain't going to happen without a lot of preconditions. Conditions such as censoring the blogs, "training" the bloggers in what can be disclosed and what can't, legal review, etc. I think both the bloggers and the companies allowing it are going to pull back on the reins before this ever really takes off, because corporate America is just not this democratic. The first time a company is held liable for the misstatements of a corporate blogger, or for the public's misunderstanding of a blogger's seemingly innocent remarks, the party's over.