Media Orchard’s traffic is growing by leaps and bounds; since November, we’ve actually quadrupled in unique visitors.

So for all the newcomers, we’d like to call your attention to a couple of tools on the Idea Grove site:

1. PR Agency Assessment Quiz. This 20-question quiz helps corporate clients grade an ongoing agency relationship.

2. PR Agency Selection Score Sheet. This printable score sheet helps companies to compare and rank firms during an agency review process.

These tools are useful not only to PR clients, but to agencies as well. Several firms have e-mailed us to let us know that they use these tools as part of their business development efforts. They’re a great way to initiate a discussion with corporate decision-makers about their communications goals.

We invite your agency to use these tools freely — as long as we’re not competing for the same account!

Technorati tags: PR, Public Relations, Marketing

Ted Koppel has a thoughtful column in the NY Times today, with a great title: “And Now, a Word for Our Demographic.”

Excerpt:

When the Federal Communications Commission was still perceived to have teeth … network owners nurtured their news divisions, encouraged them to tackle serious issues, cultivated them as shields to be brandished before Congressional committees whenever questions were raised about the quality of entertainment programs and the vast sums earned by those programs…

The goal for the traditional broadcast networks now is to identify those segments of the audience considered most desirable by the advertising community and then to cater to them. Most television news programs are therefore designed to satisfy the perceived appetites of our audiences…

Indeed, in television news these days, the programs are being shaped to attract, most particularly, 18-to-34-year-old viewers. They, in turn, are presumed to be partly brain-dead — though not so insensible as to be unmoved by the blandishments of sponsors…

No television news executive is likely to acknowledge indifference to major events overseas or in our nation’s capital, but he may, on occasion, concede that the viewers don’t care, and therein lies the essential malignancy.

Ted is basically saying that the TV news business is attempting to sell ice to Eskimos — oh, we mean Inuits.

Which means that crushing the ice, or shaving the ice, or flavoring the ice, or otherwise screwing around with the ice will not necessarily make the ice something that Inuits want to buy.

What they really want is the fur coat of entertainment programming. And as long as news decisions are dictated by dollars, we’ll inevitably see “news” programming evolve into just another form of entertainment.

Technorati tags: Ted Koppel, Journalism, Media

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Originally uploaded by alexmuse.

Here’s Scott looking confused. He doesn’t understand most of what’s being said. That’s OK; he’s used to it.

He also had a great talk with Mike from Texas Gigs, although he hasn’t connected with John from Random Culture yet. Brian, Alex and the other organizers have done a terrific job.

Read more about the event here.

Technorati tags: BarCamp, Dallas, Marketing