Open to Government Control

Might that Amazon Kindle in your hand be a threat to your freedom? said Husna Haq in CSMonitor.com. That’s what Jonathan Franzen, the acclaimed author of The Corrections and Freedom, suggested at a book festival last week. Sounding a “battle cry against e-readers,” the best-selling novelist railed against digital books, saying they’re “not for serious readers” and that their impermanence might even open the door to Orwellian censorship. If books are on e-readers and not on paper, he said, their texts can be changed or deleted by some central authority—a situation “not compatible with responsible self-government.” It may sound paranoid, said E.D. Kain in Forbes​.com, but Franzen has a point. To ban or burn books, authoritarian governments have to hunt down every copy. But a digital text originating from some external source “simply has to be turned off.” Without ink on paper, it’s that much easier to make “Ray Bradbury’s nightmare” a reality. Read more at The Week

Radio Holds Steady For 2011

The tentative recovery in radio advertising sputtered to a standstill in the last part of 2011, with total ad revenues declining 2% to $4.5 billion, according to the Radio Advertising Bureau. This follows earlier year-over-year increases of 3%, 1%, and 2% in the first, second, and third quarters, respectively. Thanks to the earlier quarterly increases, the radio industry still saw an overall increase in full-year revenues, with annual growth of 1% to $17.4 billion. The fourth-quarter decline can be attributed, in large part, to the absence of political advertising associated with 2010’s midterm elections in November -- already cited by a number of broadcast radio groups as a factor in weak period earnings results. Read more here

Forbes Among 30 Clients Using Computer-Generated Stories Instead of Writers

Forbes has joined a group of 30 publishers using Narrative Science software to write computer-generated stories. The New York Times revealed last year that trade publisher Hanley Wood and sports journalism site The Big Ten Network also use the tool. The company has a long list of stories they can computerize: sports stories, financial reports, real estate analyses, local community content, polling & elections, advertising campaign summaries sales & operations reports and market research. Read more here

Ad Industry's Overall Favorite Media Brand

Facebook, Twitter and Google may dominate the trade press and the blogosphere, but one of the most traditional media brands -- ABC -- is the most powerful in the hearts and minds of advertisers and ad agency executives, according to an annual survey of Madison Avenue’s perceptions of the media they do business with. The study, which surveyed thousands of advertisers and agency executives, is conducted by Advertiser Perceptions, which is to the ad industry what J.D. Power’s annual awards are to the automotive industry. ABC’s ranking as the most dominant “overall” media brand is a composite of all of the individual attributes that AR surveys the ad industry about, and it replaces last year’s champ, Meredith. Not surprisingly, ABC ranked No. 1 in “brand strength” among broadcast network brands for the second year in a row. Among “digital” media brands, an ascendant Facebook toppled Google from the top position in “brand strength. Read more here