Rarely does a business story elicit from me the type of visceral anger that followed my reading about a start-up called BusRadio.
From The Boston Globe story last week: “A Massachusetts company wants to beam commercial radio broadcasts into school buses . . . the latest mingling of education and commerce to spark outcry as the firm lobbies school districts across the state to sign contracts for the fall.”
The company claims to already have deals in place with school systems serving 100,000 youngsters in a handful of states. (I called my town’s school system and thankfully my kids won’t be among them.)
What specifically does BusRadio have in mind for your children as they sit captive in those rolling yellow cans? Here’s a description from the company’s Web site:
“Developed by the founders of Cover Concepts, one of the nation’s largest in-school marketing programs, BusRadio will take targeted student marketing to the next level. Every morning and every afternoon on their way to and from school, kids across the country will be listening to the dynamic programming of BusRadio, providing advertisers with a unique and effective way to reach the highly sought-after teen and tween market. Utilizing cutting-edge technology, BusRadio has developed a proprietary closed network of school buses that receive age-appropriate programming each day as students travel to and from school.”
That’s the pitch to potential advertisers. You need to dig a bit into the BusRadio Web site to learn there will be eight minutes of commercials per hour, which in one passage written for the consumption of school officials is sanitized as “corporate sponsorships.” The company even has the gall to suggest that its service will make school-bus transportation safer in that it offers a palliative effect on otherwise rambunctious passengers; you know, music soothes the savage child.
And it doesn’t take much imagination to envision where the next “next level” might lead. Think what GPS could do for such a marketing opportunity. We could have commercials linked to points of interest along bus routes. Pass Circuit City and an iPod ad airs; roll by the Golden Arches and hear a come-on from Ronald McDonald; see that Chuck E Cheese … listen up kiddies (you think they’ll stop at tweens?).
While I can sympathize with school officials and their budget woes, there comes a time when parents and taxpayers need to draw a line in sand about this stuff. . . .
Spreadsheet pioneer on ‘getting Googled’
When Dan Bricklin created the world’s first spreadsheet – VisiCalc debuted on the Apple II in 1979 – Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were 6 years old and presumably mastering the intricacies of first-grade fingerpainting.
So the question sprang to mind last week upon reading that Google is now offering a spreadsheet of its own, albeit an early beta version of limited function: What does Bricklin think of these young whippersnappers and their incursion onto the technology turf he defined? I looked for an answer on Bricklin’s blog:
“I’ve read some of the reports that Google is announcing a spreadsheet tomorrow,” he wrote. “Cool! It will be interesting to see another take on this genre though scary to be compared to the product of a huge company with billions of dollars. I wonder if they’ll make it open source like wikiCalc and let you run it on your own servers.”
Bricklin’s blog can bring you up to speed on wikiCalc, too.
And if you’re seeking more of an old-school experience than either Google or wikiCalc can provide, you might consider downloading the first version of VisiCalc built for the IBM PC, circa 1981. Bricklin insists it’ll still run on today’s machines and all 27,250 bytes can be downloaded here.
Anyone want to defend BusRadio? Buzz@nww.com is the address.
