Global Entertainment Technology, Inc.

Global Entertainment Technology, Inc.
On The Air Everywhere

Thursday, November 17, 2016

Who's Zooming Who?


Before I wind up for the pitch, click on this link for background:


And here it comes… see if you handle it:

Having been in radio since 1968 and with a college degree in Commercial Music/Recording in the Seventies whereby I was then hereby qualified to work with a record label, I understand better than most the conflict here.  I also know that the record industry is a perfect example of what it looks like these days if pretty much everyone involved in it did too many recreational/industrial strength drugs for decades…

And that is the problem. 

The record industry did it’s damnedest over and over again to kill every kind of digital media it deemed dangerous to the on-going franchise it controlled by way of music everywhere… For decades, digital audio cassettes were effectively throttled; CDs survived only after the record industry figured out they could make a killing off of them for next to nothing; and Lord knows they tried everything to stave off the Internet and MP3 files…

But they failed at that completely and now karma follows them wherever they go.

So that is the crux of everything here.  Artists who should be in rest homes have to prop themselves up and go touring again still to make enough money to survive.  But that isn’t terrestrial radio’s fault.  It is the record industry’s.  Yes, every artist and band should have carefully considered what they signed that was in their contracts with the labels… but they didn’t and now both the artists and labels feel like it is terrestrial radio’s fault and all of the stations owe them big time.

They are mistaken, it is completely the opposite.  Without the decades of free radio airplay, the record industry would be for nothing and bands would still be playing in their garages for free…

But since the default reaction these days is to wet one’s pants, cry, scream and threaten to riot if someone or some group doesn’t get their way, both the artists and the labels look to the government to make things right for them without a second thought as to the damage that would wreak in broadcasting. 

Newsflash – that governmental action approach just left the station for four years at least on November 8th

Sound Exchange is the bane of Internet Radio’s existence.  They are a major reason why Internet Radio isn’t profitable right now.  And it won’t be in the future until some semblance of intelligence, rational behavior and true sense of fairness shows up…  but the labels just keep right on killing every goose that lay the golden eggs upon which everyone could enjoy and benefit…


And the biggest loser of all is you – the listener and the end-user.

She Caught the Katy to the Shanty

Monday, October 17, 2016

Flung Further....

The "Golden Age of Television" is Dead - What a Surprise!

Dain L. Schult, CEO, Global Entertainment Technology, Inc. www.dainschult.com

Before I get started, take a look at this link from the Guardian:


When Bruce Springsteen sang years ago about 57 channels and nothing on in the early Nineties, how could he possibly know that some day that number would actually be more 1,800 or over 2,000 channels?

And that's where we find ourselves.  Reality television started the ball rolling toward oblivion and then a channel for everybody and everything no matter how mundane, inane or insane it was, was created and here are.

More bundles are now being offered by cable and satellite companies while other groups are extolling the virtues of cutting the cables and blowing up the dishes and it has gone beyond Tower of Babel noisy...  it is beyond insanity and it is also beyond sustainability....

Reality television is like kudzu - it grows in the dark, takes over everything it touches, can grow in any environment and getting rid of it is a bitch.

There is no way now for anybody to successfully watch anything called television anymore with any ability to concentrate or enjoy what is being watched.  It is the ultimate in ADD for everyone...

Sometimes radio engineers refer to a radio station that is granted a higher power upon which to operate which increases its signal coverage area (like going from 3,000 watts to 100,000 watts) as "sh*t flung farther" or "further" if you think that was the right word to use instead.  

That phrase unfortunately also can now be used to describe the television landscape on every level. When every cable channel feels compelled to create its own new programming it further dilutes the talent pool for both actors and writers and that wasn't the deep end of the pool to begin with....

Just like Internet Radio may come to be, everyone will end up with their own television channel and then it will 330 million channels with nothing on...

Sweet Home London Werewolves

Thursday, September 29, 2016

I'm Not Wishing You Were Here

Life Is a Rock But Your Turned On Your Radio

Gimme Gimme Go Back - Crazy Elephant into Crabby Appleton

The Dixie Flyer Radio Hour Intro Presentation

Suisuisuidioing Like Hell

Stevie Nicks with a Really Imaginary Lover

Don't Worry Baby X3

Sunny Days For Daddy

Why a Funky Chicken, Why A No Disco Duck

Less Conversation and More Flash

Life Is a Rock But Your Turned On Your Radio

I'm Not Wishing You Were Here

Thursday, September 15, 2016

Where is Walter Cronkite When We Need Him?   

Dain L. Schult, CEO, Global Entertainment Technology, Inc.


Americans' trust in the media has fallen to an all-time low, according to Gallup

 (An excerpt from a commentary by Dylan Byers - CNN Money)

"In a climate of bitter political partisanship, anti-media rhetoric and diversified media options, just 32% of Americans now say they trust the media "to report the news fully, accurately and fairly" -- the lowest level since 1972, when Gallup began polling. Now, only about a third of the U.S. has any trust in the Fourth Estate, a stunning development for an institution designed to inform the public," Gallup said in its press release. While Americans' faith in media has been in decline for over a decade, this year's findings represent a sharp drop from the previous eight years, when between 40 and 45 percent of Americans expressed trust."
Why should anyone be surprised by this turn of events?  The days of a reasonably impartial newscaster were buried with Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley's bones when they died.  At this rate and in no time flat the media can be at the same trust level of Congress and used car salesmen....

Decade after decade, the slow creep of interjection of personal opinions and shading news stories to benefit one group over another has continued - sometimes it seemed quite innocent and justified, but now is as heavy handed as ISIS "court" dispensing "justice."

Reality shows, infotainment shows, the blurring of real newscasters and reporters showing up in movies and on television dramas and sitcoms have only further eroded the element of trust and impartiality.  As Entertainment department budgets drew at all of the TV networks, the inevitable shrinking of the News department budgets has taken its effect.

Couple that with universities cranking out a glut of  millennial "journalists" who have been indoctrinated with years of liberal/socialist professors pounding a distorted view of history, social morays and the like into their heads and add in the "news" value of TMZ, Entertainment Tonight, The Daily Show, HLN or even CNN and you have a witch's brew that is the "news" these days.

Greatest invention of the 20th Century?   The Internet.

Greatest Detriment to Impartial News Reporting?  The Internet.

Don't forget to add in the risk factor of being a reporter covering a story anywhere in the world now where you are in constant danger for being there and being a reporter.  You probably think I'm talking about somewhere in the Middle East with all the upheaval going on - Baghdad or Kabul. Actually, I was talking about Baltimore, Maryland... either way, it has become a very dangerous job.

So what to do about this?  Good question without a good answer.

The genie, once escaped from the bottle of impartiality and moral journalism, is not bloody likely to go back into that bottle.  

Samuel F.B. Morse sent the first telegraphic message on May 24, 1844 and he was a prophet for what he sent in that telegram between Washington, DC and Baltimore that day:


"What hath God wrought?"

Indeed.  172 years later, my God, what have we wrought with the Internet?

Think about it.


(As an aside, GET will be involved in both Terrestrial and Internet radio operations in states across the country, including, but not limited to Georgia, Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Iowa and Wyoming.)

Thursday, September 8, 2016

Okay - running behind on fresh new commentary so I decided to "borrow" from myself two ways - one from LinkedIn and then again by lifting text out of two different books of mine...  creative, huh?

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/state-road-dain-l-schult-2?trk=hp-feed-article-title-publish







Dain Schult, CEO, Global Entertainment Technology, Inc.

www.globalentertainttechnology.com

www.dainschult.com



(As an aside, GET will be involved in both Terrestrial and Internet radio operations in states across the country, including, but not limited to Georgia, Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Iowa and Wyoming.)

Friday, September 2, 2016














Dain Schult, CEO, Global Entertainment Technology, Inc.
www.globalentertainmenttechnology.com
www.dainschult.com

What If Everybody Is Right and Nobody Is Wrong?

If there is anything I've gleaned from the tsunami of social media that makes me feel like I'm being swept out to sea, is that there is a preponderance of people who truly believe they're right about everything and anyone who dares disagree with them or not acknowledge their "rightness" must be executed at once - not with a sword or firing squad (at least not here...yet) but by digital denigration and condemnation.

When it comes to either politics or religion clearly we're into opinions that apparently no facts can penetrate.  No should they.  These should be third-rail topics that aren't touched by anyone and yet they are the driving forces for range everywhere.

But this even goes further where people take the position in technology there is only one true way forward and all things that have come before whatever it is they believe is the future must be ridiculed and discarded posthaste.

The march of forward progress can't really be stopped by anything and yes, there are people who probably feel foolish from years gone by of banking on Beta over VHS or laser discs for that matter.... or Blackberry as the gold standard when Android and Apple were eating it as a pie...

Where am I going with all of this?  Beats me.  Hopefully not in a circle but to simply state that everybody can be right with their digital choices, if even only for a short time, before the next big thing hits or happens.  When the new stuff shows up that doesn't make the old stuff wrong - just simply supplanted by a future that literally can't or won't slow down.

Since I have yet to run into the person who actually has that note from God saying they can run things in His absence, and I would need to see a notarized copy of it anyway, and I know I certainly don't have it, maybe the better thing to do here would be to slow down some, take a breath and remember we're all in this together no matter what.

(As an aside, GET will be involved in both Terrestrial and Internet radio operations in states across the country, including, but not limited to Georgia, Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Iowa and Wyoming.)




Tuesday, August 30, 2016

By Ken Levine: UnReal

By Ken Levine: UnReal















Dain Schult, CEO, Global Entertainment Technology, Inc.

www.globalentertainmenttechnology.com

www.dainschult.com


I have to cop from Kahlil Gibran to make a statement:



On Children - The Prophet -  Kahlil Gibran



Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.



You may give them your love but not your thoughts,

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,

which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them,

but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.



You're not out of touch Ken.  Your television children had children who then had children and here we are today.



The sitcoms and dramas of yours and my youth are quaint and Smithsonian worthy now.  What passes for comedy and drama now is so alien, it's a perpetual "Stranger in a Strange Land" song outtake.



When I was 25 I was thrust into managing a suburban Atlanta radio station - it was heady times.  I inherited this old geezer  who went by the nickname, "The Gator" who was my music consultant.  He was in his sixties and looked like he needed to be wheeled over to a rest home.  And yet when the record reps used to show up on Tuesdays to hawk their wares and drop a needle on the singles they were pushing, the Gator was amazing.  This guy somehow managed the impossible - his ear for music didn't age with his body.  He could pick the hits within 30 seconds or less of hearing a new song.  It astounded me.  I always said that I wanted to be like him when I was his age.



Now, I'm in my sixties and having stayed in management and ownership, my ability to pick a hit song now is so non-existent to not be remotely funny.  My kids are in their twenties and thirties now and what they listen to, I can't.  And their children's musical tastes are that much farther away from me now...



The quality of what you or I did in the past isn't denigrated - it's just the natural evolutionary process.  Most of what I see on television right now is straight up dreck and/or I don't get it.  But then again, I don't want to get it.

(As an aside, GET will be involved in both Terrestrial and Internet radio operations in states across the country, including, but not limited to Georgia, Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Iowa and Wyoming.)

Sunday, August 28, 2016

By Ken Levine: I hate Power Point

By Ken Levine: I hate Power Point














Dain Schult, CEO, Global Entertainment Technology, Inc.

www.globalentertainmenttechnology.com

www.dainschult.com

Amen, Testify!  Here's a novel thought - someone gives a talk, a presentation, an anything - without props of any kind.  They're engaging in their presentation and so practiced and nuanced in their delivery that they hold the audience in the palm of their hands with no visuals - just their voice as the Theater of the Mind...  nah, it'll never work - everybody has ADD now thanks to the Internet... 

Dain

(As an aside, GET will be involved in both Terrestrial and Internet radio operations in states across the country, including, but not limited to Georgia, Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Iowa and Wyoming.)
Is Terrestrial Radio Still the Cockroach of All Media?  by Dain Schult













Dain L. Schult, CEO, GET
www.globalentertainmenttechnology.com

Cockroaches can survive a direct nuclear warhead explosion. That was proven back in the Fifties when nuclear bomb tests were taking place all over the world.

Ironically the Fifties was a time when the original Golden Age of Radio was giving way to the first Golden Age of Television. All of the most famous radio show stars migrated to television with varying degrees of success. So that was the first test as to whether radio was washed up and ready to fade out like Vaudeville had in the Twenties when radio first appeared on the scene.

And just like the cockroaches running around after the bomb blew up, here came Allen Freed, Dick Clark and Top 40 Music Radio and the industry romped on merrily through the rest of the Fifties and all of the Sixties and Seventies with music radio supplanting the old days of soap operas, game shows, variety show and comedies that were all long gone to network television.

Then the Eighties hit and AM radio was gasping – FM had sucked all of the music off the AM dial for itself because it was stereo and AM wasn’t. Like Steely Dan sang – “no static at all…“

So who should appear to save AM but Rush Limbaugh (the greatest person to ever come out of Cape Girardeau, Missouri – just ask him) and with him came an army of other “talkers” who transformed the AM dial into a haven for every kind of talk, news and sports radio – all designed to engage and enrage you so that you would keep coming back for more. And the radio cockroaches kept right on scurrying about.

Meanwhile MTV and then VH1 were doing their damnedest to steal FM radio’s music audience away but could never assault radio where it mattered the most – in car listening – and besides, when the music industry really started tanking and the money for new music videos dried up MTV was the one having to reinvent itself. And yes, the radio cockroaches were alive and well and running around in everyone’s cars…

The late Nineties brought on satellite radio – XM and Sirius before the shotgun marriage that became SiriusXM and its own assault on radio. Like a mutant derivative of terrestrial radio, it has confounded all the experts by continuing to not just survive but actually show a steady stock price – something iHeart Media or Cumulus can’t do apparently. Satellite is a factor in cars – not so much really anywhere else.

And then there was Internet Radio. The next logical evolutionary step in media and the very thing that neither the record industry nor terrestrial radio could kill though the music industry tried as hard as they could – when 10 Billion+ songs are being downloaded off of YouTube every year and converted to MP3 files without having to pay anybody anything for the music, you’d want to destroy it too, but I digress…

Old head terrestrial types used to think that just taking the on-air programming feed and shoving it on-line as well as “Internet Radio” and learned over time that wasn’t the answer.

The Next Radio crowd is banking on all of the phone manufacturers to put their FM chip in all the new smartphones they sell and while that is having some success it hasn’t taken the market by storm yet at all.


So while some people will argue over whether Pandora or Spotify is “radio” or not, it appears more now that Internet Radio is the future so the real questions are how much of the future is here right now in front of us or actually in our ears? And how much is yet to come?

With 700,000+ Internet Radio stations coming and going every day, it sure looks like the future even if it’s totally jumbled and a version of the Tower of Babel at any given moment. This will be a totally different breed of cockroaches, to be sure.

The older cockroaches are still running around but they tend to be congregating in smaller towns and rural areas now – places where major market radio hasn’t killed everything and where a local DJ at their local station really still means something. So small town/rural radio will be the last to fade off the air.

Everything changes. Life is change. Business cycles come and go. The baby today is tomorrow’s old man waiting to die. And yet, there will still be cockroaches running around listening to radio – in one form or another.

What do you think?


(As an aside, GET will be involved in both Terrestrial and Internet radio operations in states across the country, including, but not limited to Georgia, Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Iowa and Wyoming.)

Friday, August 26, 2016

What If There is No There There?














Dain Schult
Chief Executive Officer of Global Entertainment Technology, Inc.
www.globalentertainmenttechnology.com


What If There is No There There?

Anybody out there who remember Gertrude Stein?  Of course not, but you're probably googling her name right now.  She was a character before being a character was fashionable.  She was her era's Lena Dunham without the social media buzz to create celebrity.

Ms. Stein is best known for her pronouncement, "There's no there, there" which is interesting because she was deriding her hometown of Oakland, California.  I would have to disagree with her if only because the Tower of Power came from Oakland so something good did originate there and the band did put the city on the map culturally if nothing else.

Yes, we've all been places in our life where there was no there where we were there - does that make any sense?  I spent year one afternoon in Chunky, Mississippi, so I have some clue to all this, but that really isn't the point of this.

This is.  What if there really isn't a there in the Frankenstein monster that is the mixing of a gazillion forms of social media with raging, never stopping digital technology development?

Then what?  Instead of just changing underwear every day, we'll be needing to swap out smartphones or notebooks every day too?

What about how one gets musical entertainment now?  

With somewhere north of 700,000 Internet radio stations and digital outlets screaming for attention along with YouTube and everything else on the net plus terrestrial radio and (here's something novel) vinyl records, it comes to the point of how many songs can you listen to at once?  Like how many watches can you wear at one time? Or pairs of shoes?  Or anything else?

So when you get "there" it's not that there isn't something there - it's too much of everything there, so, in essence, there is no there then.

Gertrude Stein was right.


With the Push of a Button - Dain Schult





Being in radio for what seems like forever, the thought was that when a listener driving in a car didn't like a song or a commercial, the easiest way to get rid of it was to push another button on the car radio and try another station (unfortunately the competitors).

These days with ad blockers for both computers and smartphones you don't even have to push a button anywhere to make the commercial or pop up ad go away.

Making a song go away and switching from one Internet Radio station to another is a different animal, to be sure, but all in all, it appears that it has gotten easier than ever to ignore the very thing any advertiser wants - to have their ad listened to or viewed and then acted upon.

What are your thoughts on this?

If you have any experience in dealing with this in marketing, I'd like to hear your thoughts. The Internet is the ultimate Tower of Babel already but there has to be a way to provide advertisers a path to success in marketing their services and products.


(As an aside, GET will be involved in both Terrestrial and Internet radio operations in states across the country, including, but not limited to Georgia, Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Iowa and Wyoming.)