billpalmer.net

It's about time the NFL did something intelligent with its own NFL Network. Unable to get most cable television carriers to offer the station to viewers, the league decided to start airing one or two games a week on its own network in the hopes that public outcry would force the cable companies to carry the station (not that it would do any good) or that millions of fans would ditch cable in favor of a satellite dish (which is a bigger deal than the NFL seems to realize). The league must have looked at how important fans consider the existing Sunday night and Monday night games (particularly Monday), and figured that if they put a game on Thursday and Saturday nights, the same thing would happen.

But what the league missed is that by virtue of so many games being simultaneously scheduled on Sunday afternoons each week, every fan is going to miss the majority of each week's games no matter what channel they're watching. Taking one of those Sunday afternoon games that most people weren't going to see anyway, moving it to Thursday night, and putting it on a station that almost no one gets, didn't change anything. Monday Night Football is important to fans because it's Monday Night Football. It's been important for decades, and you're not a real fan if you're not watching the Monday game, no matter who might be playing - even if it's two last-place teams with nothing to play for. But Thursday night doesn't have that tradition, and so putting a game on that night, and putting it on a channel that most folks couldn't tune in to, simply made the NFL Network the enemy at best and irrelevant at worst. After all, the only thing worse than having your fans mad at you is having your fans not caring one way or the other.

So here we are heading into one of the most culturally important regular season games in years, the one in which the Patriots try to match the '72 Dolphins by going undefeated, the one that everyone wants to see one way or the other. Even the Giants know how historically important this game is, vowing to play all of their starters despite the fact that the outcome of the game won't have any effect on their playoff status. And as luck would have it, that just happened to be the game that was scheduled to air this Saturday night on the station that almost no one can watch. No one planned it this way, it just happened to be the game that the league chose for its own network back before the season started.

And yesterday the NFL announces that instead of just tucking away one of its most important games on its own irrelevant network, they'll also be airing the game on not one but two major networks, NBC and CBS. Some are saying that the move was made because some members of Congress were hinting at revisiting the league's antitrust exemption, but for league's sake I hope they simply realized that this is an all-time great marketing opportunity.

One of the most tried and true axioms of launching something new, whether it's a new podcast or a new television station, is that you can't stand pat and hope that they magically come to you. Instead you've got to go where they are, win them over on their own turf, and then find a way to make sure they follow you home afterwards. And in this case that's exactly what the NFL is doing. Saturday night's game will be one big three-hour long informercial for the NFL Network, complete with their announcers, their programming notes, and any other bits of self-promotion they can cram into the game - and it'll all be airing on half of the nation's four non-cable network TV stations. For the first time ever, the irrelevant NFL Network will be placed on a very public pedestal, dressed up in the best light possible, and for perhaps the first time the public will finally get a taste of what they're missing out on.

As someone who's a much bigger fan of football fan than all other pro sports combined, I've always liked the NFL Network. Think of it as ESPN without having to sift through all the hours of other sports you don't care about. When I lived in one of the few places where I was able to get the NFL Network as part of a standard cable package, I left it on in the background all day while working. But when I moved to another location where it wasn't available on cable, I didn't harass the cable company, I didn't call my congressman, and I didn't switch to satellite. I just gave up on it and settled for ESPN News instead. But now with the NFL Network finally getting three hours of relevance this week by virtue of being simulcast on two other networks that people actually can and do watch, just maybe the NFL will be able to finally make its network relevant enough that someday soon I'll be able to watch it without taking drastic measures that just aren't worth it for most folks, even big NFL fans like me.

I'm not sure I could be much further away from Hollywood at the moment. It's not the three thousand miles. It's the night-and-day reverse in culture, landscape, well, pretty much everything. I'm in a sleepy little town in Florida this week for the holidays, and while the west coast may be nowhere near, echoes of the six months I've spent in Los Angeles have nonetheless echoed every day I've been away from it.

I walk into the grocery store and Macy Gray's "I Try" is playing over the loudspeaker, and I can't help but recall the fact that Macy was standing in line to buy her iPhone at the Grove with the rest of us back on June 29th. I turn on ESPN News and there's a commercial featuring a song from Rocco DeLuca, and I think back to his after-party on the roof of the Henry Fonda Theater on Hollywood Boulevard a few months ago. Flip past channel four and they're interviewing Joss Stone, whom I've never met but might eventually, considering she's a friend of a friend. I turn on a movie and it stars Robin Williams (who I met in California earlier this year) and features a song from KT Tunstall (who I met a few months ago thanks to Apple). Watch a repeat of Back to the Future Part III and there's Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers playing a high school punk. Isn't that the same Flea who was standing face to face with me while tuning his bass guitar before going on-stage, what, week before last?

It's not a matter of celebrity or name-dropping. It's just that when you realize that the people who have all this great effect on popular culture are in fact people you can meet, sit down with, talk to...they're just people...the world begins to feel cheerfully small. Why can't you or I have this kind of effect on culture? Well, we can. Doesn't mean you have to be a rock star or a movie star; I sure know I'll never be either. But I'll make my mark, and so will you if you keep thinking that you can.

In the mean time I'll just continue to sit back here in this sleepy place for the holidays and be reminded that no matter where you go, you're only as far away from the action as you want to be.

1. Apparently there's another new unannounced iPod-related product arriving for me here on Monday. That would be Christmas Eve delivery, for those of you keeping score at home. They haven't told me what it is yet.

2. Based on the products I actually have seen, I'm getting progressively more excited about Macworld Expo by the day - some of which I'll be able to pre-announce to the world on January 3rd.

3. Anytime a company asks me to do something as ancient as print and fax a document, I automatically assume they're not ready for this decade.

4. I have yet to figure out whether they don't get NFL Network here or whether I just can't find it among the hundreds of channels they do get. Unfortunately, every TV listing service I've tried (Yahoo, TV Guide.com) has completely inaccurate listings for this town - something they haven't fixed going on about five years now.

5. Congrats to FAU, my alma mater or as close as I'll ever come to having one, for making it into a bowl game this season. I still remember attending their first painful loss a few years back, and the professor who pointed out that we'd someday get to take credit for being alumni.

1. Today would have been my grandmother's 93rd birthday. She's been gone four years. I could spend a lot of words on it, but the upshot always ends up being the same: I wish she were here.

2. The biggest challenge of doing business while visiting family isn't finding the time or the privacy to get your work done. It's not knowing where they keep something like a roll of tape.

3. Seems like every 1980's action movie could have been about fifteen minutes long if the protagonist had had a cellphone on him.

4. New rule: NFL Network games only count in the standings for those viewers who can watch them. you're on your own figuring out the playoffs

5. The iPhone's camera can take some really, really nice photos in the right lighting.

6. Ask to see a dog that snores while it's awake and I'll show you the one lying next to me.

7. I really don't know what the hiring of Bill Parcells as the new Miami Dolphins Vice President means for the future, but it's going to make being a fan much more interesting at least.

That's all I've got. I'm on vacation :-)

So it's five days before Christmas and I'm back in Florida visiting relatives, should be pretty quiet on the professional front, right? Yes and no. I'm sitting here watching episodic television for the first time in months, went out to dinner with the family this evening, walked down to the lake earlier, spent some quality time with the family dogs. But the world, and the industry, doesn't stop just because you decide to go on vacation. This morning a product review sample arrived that I don't believe anyone else anywhere has yet (yeah, they shipped it to my parents' house), tomorrow a prototype I've been toying with this week is being sent back, and I've just received an NDA I have to sign and fax in the morning so I can get a look at an upcoming product which doesn't yet officially exist. A few minutes ago one of the magazine's music writers called for directions on his way to a club opening in New York City owned by a musician I met in Los Angeles.

Is this a vacation? Sure, if you want to use that word. It mostly feels like one, and yet there have been constant reminders that this, this monster that's been created, isn't something I can get completely away from - even smack dab in the middle of the holiday season. And you know what? I wouldn't have it any other way.

So I'm on a plane to Florida tomorrow for the holidays. I wasn't expecting to lose four of my last five days in Los Angeles to a mild lingering flu bug, but that's the way it played out. Luckily we've parted ways in time for me to travel. This morning I had my first full meal since Thursday (when I said I wanted to lose ten pounds before the holidays this wasn't what I had in mind), and now for a full day of packing and tying down loose ends before I head to the airport Tuesday morning.

So it's eight days before Christmas and here's what I've noticed: the traditional long-established industries I cover have largely packed it in for the rest of the year, while the do-it-yourselfers are still cranking it into overtime.

The major-label music industry? Done. Trying to schedule an interview with a name-recognition artist, even last week, would have been a total non-starter. To be fair, most of these folks do their interviews from the road, and many of them have already wrapped their tours for the holidays. But even if the artists were up for an interview at this time of the calendar, the labels and publicists weren't. "Let's talk after the holidays" has been the typical response. Fair enough. It just means we get to have some fun in 2008.

People in charge of their own careers, however, seem to have all the time in the world this week. The two podcasters who are interviewing each other for iProng Magazine this month are getting with each other this week because they've finally cleared out their own shooting schedules. Nevermind that they're two of the better-known names in video podcasting; they're finding time during this holiday week. Same story with the indie musicians; it seems that if I've got time then they've got time.

Well, I've got my packing list completed and revised, which for me is the same as being packed (I'm a guy, what do you want from me?). Time for a metaphorical housekeeping day before heading home and, yes, probably doing at least four hours a day of magazine-related work during most of the days that I'll be gone. Hey, I'm in the indie camp. You think I'm going to be able to sit for two weeks with my feet up? Besides, the January issue comes out 1.03.08, in time for CES and Macworld Expo.

The real question of course is this: it's three thirty in the morning, what am I doing already awake, showered, and blogging? Looks like I'm ready for the east coast time zone already. See you on the other side of it.

Thanks and Happy Holidays,
Bill

I continue to be amazed at the people coming out the woodwork who not only want to be a part of iProng Magazine, but have specific ideas on how to improve it. Good ideas, too. I mention something off-hand on Twitter, a new potential writer direct messages me. I go to a meetup, someone approaches me with a great idea. It's twelve days til Christmas, kids - don't you know you're supposed to be making yourselves fashionably unavailable until after the new year?

Also interesting of late have been some of the conversations with record labels and publicists. Specific talk of what we can do together in the magazine in 2008. Because so many of the major artists have rightfully packed it in from a media standpoint for the rest of the year, a lot of those conversations can't be completed until after the first of the year when some of the blanks have been filled in. But this is going to be fun January for more reasons than just the Macworld/CES goodies.

As for me, I'm heading home for the holidays early next week. I haven't exactly shut things down here in LA quite yet, but aside from a final pair of phone interviews that I'll get wrapped this week, it's more or less all housekeeping stuff between now and the time I head to the airport.

January 2008 will go down as the issue that gets assembled from the road. I'll be remaining in Florida right up until the day I get on a plane and head directly from Florida to CES in Las Vegas (my press credentials arrived today, the first to bear the "iProng Magazine" moniker), then back to Los Angeles for a whopping 72 hours before heading to San Francisco for Macworld Expo. So that's more than a full month spent almost entirely on the road, but most of it spent at places I've referred to as "home" at one time or another.

If not for a few more days of loose ends that need tying up here in LA before I shut down the west coast and head east, I think I'd change my flight and head out tomorrow. But a little bit more work to be done first...

Sometimes my occasional preposterous deadpan lines get me a reputation such that I can't people to take me seriously when I actually mean something - and sometimes my deadpans get me in trouble because people actually take them seriously.

This evening, after a ridiculous day of one football coach resigning hours after a nationally televised game to become the coach of a different team the next afternoon, and another coach repeatedly denying that he's jumping to another school and now claims to be helping the other school to find a new coach instead, I decided to sum up my distaste for such nonsense in less than 140 characters on Twitter:

"I'm resigning as publisher of iProng Magazine and being announced as Michigan's new head coach tomorrow. Keep an eye out for me on ESPN!"

Oops. Sure, most people following me on Twitter are at least vaguely aware that one way or another I'm about as likely to become Michigan's next football coach (or anyone's next anything coach) as I am to become the next CEO of Microsoft. But among those who don't follow sports, don't know much about me, or some combination thereof, I received actual notes of congratulation. And I'm not talking about those who pretending to play along, as there were plenty of them as well. I mean that there were some people on Twitter who actually believed that I was announcing the fact that I was about to become the next head coach of the Michigan football team.

And that's pretty cool.

Just announced: the January cover of iProng Magazine will feature Raine Maida, lead singer of Our Lady Peace, the multi-million selling Canadian alt-rock band. In the cover story Raine will be discussing his new solo album as well as the next Our Lady Peace album and more.

Also included: Macworld Expo and CES SuperGuide - interview with Tim Reynolds, guitarist for Dave Matthews Band - feature stories on notable podcasters - too much more to list here!

The January issue will be released on 1/03/08. Can't wait? Here's the December issue if you missed it.

This weekend I started page layout for the January issue, which is kind of odd because I don't yet have most of the articles and half the photos. So basically it's a series of title pages with stub photos and fake text, which looks beyond silly. But this time around I wanted to have the template for the issue in place before the content starts coming in, instead of the other way around. Someone emails me a picture for their article? I can just drop it into the appropriate page, instead of sitting on the photo and then trying to remember how far back into my iPhoto library it might be residing.

The beauty of using Pages, of course, is the ease with which you can turn a two page article into a four page article without interfering with the rest of the content, the ease of dragging various pages (or clusters of pages) around within the document when you decide to start re-ordering the magazine once you've got all your content in-house for the month. There were a couple of "are you kidding me?" moments with Pages while I was creating the December issue, but for the most part it was not only smooth sailing, but a full of pleasant surprises.

I now know who's going to be on the January cover, and you'll know in a couple of days. It's something I'm really, really happy about. Don't mean to leave you hanging, just can't reveal it quite yet. This issue's going to rock, though. We'll see what percentage of it manages to get produced before I head home for the holidays and how much of it will have to wait til just after Christmas, but we'll be releasing it on January 3rd one way or the other.

It was nearly two months in the making, and I had no idea that today was going to be the day until...well, today...but Tommy Shaw (Styx / Damn Yankees / Shaw-Blades) called me up a few hours ago to do an interview for iProng Magazine. Incredible. This week has had too much musical goodness. I need to go take a nap or something :-)

...and here it is.

At one point this evening I was at a Denny's with members of Slightly Stoopid and Fishbone. These things I do not understand. The backstage interview with the guys from Slightly Stoopid will appear in the January issue of iProng Magazine. I'm the guy in the picture who doesn't belong...



In the mean time, back to the grind on the December issue. I am so pleased. Just a few more finishing touches.