“National Nutrition Month”: See www.dieticians.ca
“National Kidney Month”: For info see www.kidney.ca.
“National Liver Health Month”: See www.liver.ca.
“National Social Work Month”: See www.casw-acts.ca
“Youth Science Festival Month”: For info see www.youthscience.ca.
“Employee Spirit Month”: This month seeks to inspire the most vital part of any organization: the employees. Motivate your employees – create employee spirit. For info and tips, call Harriet Meyerson 214-373-0080. email Harriet@ConfidenceCenter.com.
“National Epilepsy Month”: See www.epilepsy.ca for info.
“International Fraud Prevention Month”: See the Ontario Securities Commission for info www.osc.gov.on.ca.
“National Red Cross Month”: See www.redcross.ca.
“International Ideas Month”: Without constant new ideas, progress and people stagnate. Call Sylvia Henderson 301-260-1538, email sylvia@springboardtraining.com, see www.springboardtraining.com.
“International Listening Awareness Month”: Dedicated to learning more about the impact listening has on all human activity. Call Nanette Johnson-Curiskis 877-854-7836 or 952-594-5697, see www.listen.org
“International Mirth Month”: A time to show people how to use humor to deal with not-so-funny stuff. Call Alan Klein 415-431-1913, email humor@allenklein.com, see www.allenklein.com.
“Optimism Month”: Research proves optimists achieve more health, prosperity and happiness than pessimists. For a free tips sheet and to set up an interview with Dr Michael Mercer call 847-382-0690, email drmercer@mercersystems.com, www.DrMercer.com.
Mar 1“World Compliment Day”: Appreciate with words instead of gifts – brighten everyone’s day. For info, email hans@withcompliments.com. See www.worldcomplimentday.com.
Mar 4 “Courageous Follower Day”: To dispel the myth that followers are passive and to raise awareness that good followership is energetic and at times courageous. Call Ira Chaleff 301-933-3752, email ira.chaleff@exe-coach.com, see www.exe-coach.com.
Mar 4-10 “Celebrate Your Name Week”: Your name identifies you to the world. Make sure it isn’t an ignored part of your personhood. A different name-related theme each day at celebrateyournameweek@gmail.com. For info contact Jerry Hill by email. www.namesuniverse.com.
Mar 8 “International (Working) Women’s Day”: A day to honour women, especially working women. Widely adopted and observed in many nations. In Russia it is a national holiday and flowers or gifts are presented to women workers. www.swc-cfc.gc.ca
Mar 10 “Mario Day”: A day for all people named Mario to celebrate [Mar10 is the day and it spells out the name as well!] Call Mario Fascitelli 505-293-2634, email C21Allied@aol.com.
Mar 12 “Check Your Batteries Day”: Check the batteries in your smoke detector, carbon monoxide detector, HVAC thermostat, audio/visual remote controls and other electronic devices. Annually, the 2nd Sunday in March.
Mar 12 “Daylight Saving Time Begins”: From 2am on the second Sunday in March until 2am on the first Sunday in November.
Mar 14 “Organize Your Home Office Day”: Find files, purge papers and tackle to-do lists. Call Lisa Kanarek, HomeOfficeLife.com, 214-361-0556, email lisa@homeofficelife.com. See www.homeofficelife.com.
Mar 15 “Ides of March”: This was the day that Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC. In the Roman calendar the days of the month were not numbered sequentially. Instead, each month had three division days [Kalends, Nones and Ides]. Days were numbered from these divisions [IV for Nones and III for Ides]. The Ides occurred on the 15th of the month [or the 13th in the months that had less than 31 days].
Mar 17 “St Patrick’s Day”: National holiday in the Republic of Ireland, and a great excuse to drink green beer in most every other country in the world. It commemorates the patron saint of Ireland, Bishop Patrick [AD389-461] who in 432 introduced Christianity to Ireland.
March 20 “Snowman Burning”: Reading of poetry heralding the end of winter and the arrival of Spring, followed by sacrifice in effigy, toasts and cheers. Call Lake Superior State University 906-635-2315, www.lssu.edu/snowman.
Mar 20 “Proposal Day”: Vernal Equinox – a day for single people to find the courage to propose to the one they love. But if you’re not ready for the big leap, use this day to send a gift to the one you love. The list of the world’s ten most eligible celebrity singles is available any time after March 1 at www.proposalday.com. Call John O’Loughlin 972-258-4996, email lldjohn@aol.com.
Mar 20 “Spring”: In the Northern Hemisphere Spring begins today.
Mar 21 “World Down Syndrome Day”: see www.worlddownsyndromeday.org.
Mar 25 “Earth Hour”: Communities, businesses and governments around the world are invited to switch off lights for one hour at 8:30pm local time. See www.earthhour.org.
Mar 27 “World Theatre Day”: For info go to www.world-theatre-day.org.
Mar 29 “National Mom and Pop Business Owners Day”: A day recognizing those very special husband-and-wife business owner teams that work and commune together. Call Rick/Margie Segel 781-272-9995, email rick@ricksegel.com.
Mar 30 “Doctors’ Day”: To honour physicians on the anniversary of the occasion when Dr. Crawford W. Long became the first acclaimed physician to use ether as an anesthetic agent in a surgical technique, Mar 30, 1842. The red carnation has been designated the official flower of Doctors’ Day.
Sharon Taylor – ByrnesMedia
I have a confession. I don’t like the way “mentoring” has been bandied about in the last few years. If you’re a professional woman, just try telling anyone that you’re not keen on the overall “mentoring” thing and they will look at you like you hate kittens.
People can teach, coach, manage, consult or advise, but I say mentoring is different from all of those.
The dictionary defines a mentor as “someone who teaches or gives help and advice to a less experienced and often younger person”. Nothing wrong with that. I used to be one of those less experienced, younger people, and mentors helped shape the professional I became.
Part of my hang up with “mentor” is that you can’t just be one. It shouldn’t be on a business card. No one is a mentor unless the mentee says so. I contend that being called a mentor is subject to the same rules as nicknames. Nobody gets to choose their own nickname – it’s picked for you by others. You’re not a mentor until someone else calls you one.
I can clearly see through the rear view mirror the mentors in my career. The very first one, Sandy Davis, helped guide me, counsel me, teach me and gave me the infamous “attitude adjustments” whenever I unfortunately required them. I looked up to him, he was the smartest radio person I knew, and he had lots of time (and work) for me. However, back then he would never have called himself a “mentor”, and conversely, I would not have thought of myself as a “mentee”. He was my boss, my friend, and the things that he did for me he did for many others as well. He was a Program Director and helping his staff figure out the who, what and how of radio was part of the job. It was our chemistry that made our relationship different. I was an eager student, and my teacher appeared.
Since then I have had other colleagues who became mentors. Almost all of them were bosses and all of them wonderful men. The dynamic developed organically, with shared values and a genuine respect and regard for each other.
Over the past number of years, many professional women’s groups have promoted and assisted the mentoring exchange. Women are urged to have a mentor, preferably a female one, or at the very least join a women’s group that has mentoring as part of their core values. Women with a few years’ experience under their belt are asked to mentor younger females. Mentoring has really become a business – a business targeting women.
I wonder if in fact women created mentoring. It’s our kind of thing, right? It’s about nurturing and being supportive and at it’s very core it’s maternal and social and about giving back as well as paying it forward. But I digress. While mentoring is certainly meaningful and worthwhile, I don’t believe that organized mentoring has moved the needle for women in our industry one little bit.
Women are not showing up enough in our studios, offices and boardrooms because there is a lack of mentoring. Mentoring is icing, and we’re still trying to source ingredients for the cake.
It should be clear. Women are not the weaker sex so therefore they need more support, women are the underrepresented sex because of gender bias and inequitable pay.
Time and energy could go into lobbying broadcast companies to create programs that assure women get more “at bats”. For example, quotas suck but they get the job done. What might happen if a company had quotas on hiring women, as well as incentives for any manager (male or female) who champion women in their department and tangibly assist in their growth/promotion? What might happen if the pay for women was more than the pay for men?
Before you scream UNFAIR and look up the extension for HR, tell me please what we are supposed to call the current state of affairs – you know – paying women less?
When we disrupt the status quo in a way that attracts more women into our industry, when we are truthful about the shameful double standards that exist and then change them, when we challenge “I just want to hire the best person” then maybe all of us can have both the cake along with the delicious icing, and eat it too.
Has mentoring made a difference to you? Have you had opportunities that would not have occurred without a mentor? Although I’m critical of the results, I love mentoring and want to write about some of the success stories!
Sharon Taylor is a radio consultant at ByrnesMedia. She’s been bringing home the bacon and cookin it up in a pan for more years than she’s willing to count. sharon@byrnesmedia.com
The FCC is appealing to smartphone-makers to activate the FM receiver chips that come standard in most U.S. devices, but which remain turned off in more than half. Newly appointed chairman Ajit Pai told audiences at last week’s North American Broadcasters’ Association symposium in Washington DC (17/2/2017) the untapped technology offers a host of benefits to consumers and content-producers alike.
This is what he said ” That brings me to the issue of FM chips in smartphones. Simply put, the world is going wireless. And if you’re in the content business, you need to be exploring every way possible to make your content available on people’s smartphones. I know my remarks are being followed by an hour-long panel on the benefits of FM chips in smartphones, so I won’t spend too much time on this topic, but allow me to offer some high-level thoughts. As you know, the vast majority of smartphones sold in the United States do, in fact, contain FM chips. The problem is that most of them aren’t activated. As of last fall, only about 44% of the topselling smartphones in the United States have activated FM chips, and the percentage is lower in Canada. By comparison, in Mexico that number is about 80%. So it’s not just that the United States and Canada could be doing better. We could be doing a lot better. It seems odd that every day we hear about a new smartphone app that lets you do something innovative, yet these modern-day mobile miracles don’t enable a key function offered by a 1982 Sony Walkman. You could make a case for activating chips on public safety grounds alone. The former head of our Federal Emergency Management Administration has spoken out in support of this proposal. The FCC has an expert advisory panel on public safety issues that has also advocated enabling FM radio chips on smartphones. It pointed out that, “[h]aving access to terrestrial FM radio broadcasts, as opposed to streaming audio services, may enable smartphone users to receive broadcast-based EAS alerts and other vital information in emergency situations—particularly when the wireless network is down or overloaded.” Moreover, most consumers would love to access some of their favorite content over-the-air, while using one-sixth of the battery life and less data. As more and more Americans use activated FM chips in their smartphones, consumer demand for smartphones with activated FM chips should continue to increase. I’ll keep speaking out about the benefits of activating FM chips. Having said that, as a believer in free markets and the rule of law, I cannot support a government mandate requiring activation of these chips. I don’t believe the FCC has the power to issue a mandate like that, and more generally I believe it’s best to sort this issue out in the marketplace. For despite the low numbers, we are seeing progress; in the last two years, the percentage of top-selling smartphones in the United States that have activated FM chips has risen from less than 25% to 44%.”
Wouldn’t it be great if our regulators stepped up and also pushed for the same thing!
You can read his full speech here.
TORONTO, ON (February 10, 2017) Canada’s National Campus and Community Radio Association (NCRA/ANREC) has joined a growing consortium of premier radio broadcasters representing more than 400 stations who have come together to launch the Radioplayer Canada app and desktop streaming player technology in Canada.
Announced earlier this fall, Radioplayer Canada’s free app will give radio listeners access to nearly every style of music, news, talk, and entertainment content on any connected device, at any time of day, from anywhere. This now includes many of Canada’s vibrant campus and essential community stations.
“The opportunity to display the amazing talents of close to 10,000 broadcaster/contributors in the campus and community sector is so important for the radio sector, let alone the non-profit portion of the Canadian market,” said Barry Rooke, Executive Director, NCRA/ANREC. “We are thrilled to work with our partners across the industry to facilitate discovery of all types of radio, and that’s what Radioplayer Canada does. It gives listeners the chance to find something new to fall in love with.”
Radioplayer Canada will allow Canadians immediate access their favourite English and French entertainment, news, sports, and talk radio stations – all in one place.
“Community and campus stations are a vital part of any country’s radio sector,” says Michael Hill, Managing Director, Radioplayer Worldwide. “They’re training-grounds for industry innovators, which is why it’s great that Radioplayer Canada has decided to support them with this initiative. It’s inclusive, collaborative, and egalitarian – values which are at the heart of both Canada, and Radioplayer.”
Listeners will be able to access live and past radio broadcasts across the country through Radioplayer Canada’s browser-player, and on connected devices through the iOS or Android app, including integrations with Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, Chromecast, and smartwatches.
Radioplayer Canada brings campus and community stations together with those of Bayshore Broadcasting, Blackburn Radio, Blackgold Radio, Byrnes Communications, CAB-K Broadcasting, Central Ontario Broadcasting, Clear Sky Radio, Cogeco, Corus Entertainment, Durham Radio, Fabmar Communications, Golden West Broadcasting, Harvard Broadcasting, Larche Communications, Newcap Radio, Jim Pattison Broadcast Group, Rogers Media, Rawlco Radio, RNC Media, Saskatoon Media Group, Vista Radio, and Westman Communications Group, among others. For additional business opportunities, please visit radioplayer.
About Radioplayer Canada
Radioplayer Canada is a highly collaborative partnership among many of Canada’s finest radio broadcasters to provide listeners with a world class streaming experience across a variety of platforms and connected devices, on mobile, tablet, desktop and in-car. Radioplayer Canada unites broadcasters, fosters competition on content, and allows radio to compete with other digital forms of audio. For more, see radioplayer follow @radioplayercanada on Twitter.
About Radioplayer Worldwide
Radioplayer Worldwide is a partnership between UK Radioplayer, 7digital, and the countries that have rolled out Radioplayer in their territories. Radioplayer originated in the UK where BBC as well as commercial radio joined together to explore technical collaboration across the industry. Radioplayer UK now attracts an audience of 7 million unique users a month. Radioplayer is now operating in countries around the world. For more, see www.radioplayerworldwide.com or follow @rpworldwide on Twitter.
Media Contacts:
Shawn Smith, Momentum, 604.872.8900 ext. 300, shawn@momentummediamarketing.com
from www.nabpilot.org
Here’s some good news for broadcasters, at least in the USA. Last year, according to the NAB site Pilot, nearly 50% of all smart phones sold had the FM chip installed.
PILOT has observed the activation of FM reception capabilities in popular smartphones since 2012, and has reported its findings throughout the period. When our analysis began, the percentage of smartphones with FM reception capability was in the single digits. In its most recent report, however, PILOT announces that an important milestone has been reached.
In the third quarter of 2016, PILOT’s analysis shows that the number of top-selling smartphones sold with FM reception capability enabled by at least one carrier has for the first time matched those sold without FM capability.
Our analysis further indicates that almost all of the Android smartphones sold during this period had FM reception capability enabled, and that nearly all (94%) of the smartphones sold without FM capability were Apple iPhones.
It is important to keep in mind that virtually all smartphones (including iPhones) include the necessary hardware to receive FM, and so smartphones that do not include the activation of FM reception are purposely designed as such, in that they disable an inherently available capability due to a choice made by the devices’ manufacturer, platform manager or wireless carrier.
Users of smartphones equipped with FM reception capability can enjoy the benefits of “hybrid radio,” via smartphone apps like NextRadio, which provide audio content via FM radio, without the impact that streaming audio has on a smartphone’s data plan or its battery life. (Online audio streaming requires up to 6 times the battery power of FM radio reception.) Hybrid radio also provides visual enhancements to the audio via the smartphone’s data connection, allowing the user to enjoy a richer experience.
The steady growth of FM reception capability in smartphones that PILOT has observed is shown in the year-to-year comparison below.
