When Land Lines Go Away: Check out My Appearance on NPR’s On Point

Yesterday, I was invited to appear as a a guest on NPR’s On Point show with host Tom Ashbrook to talk about disappearing phone lines in American households.

In 2006, just 11% of homes had cell phones only. By the first half of this year, that number was 23% and climbing. And 37% of households say they don’t answer land lines anymore.

I think this trend underscores some big new realities in communications technology, such as wireless substitution, the megawar between telecoms and cable companies and the increasing sophistication of cell phones.

Click here to listen to the segment.

The show also featured Scott Steinberg, publisher of the technology product review site Digital Trends; and Mimi Ito, a research scientist at the University of California, Irvine, who studies new media use, especially among young people in the U.S. and Japan. She’s the lead researcher on a recently completed three-year study of teens and the Internet by the Digital Youth Project, supported by the MacArthur Foundation.

Advertisement

Talking on NPR About First Time Shop Owners Facing Black Friday

This morning, at 6 am, while most of you were sleeping off turkey and gravy, I got up to appear on a new NPR show called The Takeaway. It’s hosted by the great journalist John Hockenberry and his co-host Celeste Headlee.

The subject of our segment was first time business owners and how they are dealing with the recession and Black Friday. Two small biz owners from the New York area were guests, including one guy from Brooklyn who runs a new store that sells skateboards and fresh cut flowers! I was invited to provide more of a big picture, as one of the show’s producers had recently read my story “Fertile Ground for Startups.”

Check it out by clicking here (see the “Listen” link). It’s only 8 minutes long. And it gave me another opportunity to harp on a growing theme of my work: The key role that small business plays in creating jobs during the aftermath of a recession.

I hope and predict that the Obama Admin. will make job creation its singular policy focus in 2010, and come up with innovative ways to help small business–not hurt it. If not, he and the Democrats will be in for a rude awakening come the mid-term 2010 elections, and the U.S economy will not be in much better shape than it is now.

Editor’s note: I apologize for not posting that much over the last week or two. With BusinessWeek’s acquisition by Bloomberg, life has been especially nutty. Now that the deal is scheduled to close on Dec. 1, I hope to resume posting on a more regular basis.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Hallelujah: Boston NPR Affiliate WBUR Broadcasts Interview

At long last, WBUR broadcast the interview I did with Bob Oakes. It’s about five minutes long. Here’s the Web version of the segment. The great thing about NPR is that they allow people tell stories, not soundbites. So my whole approach to the interview was to treat it more like a conversation than a traditional interview.

Lookee here: WBUR blogger Ken George, who mans the ConverStation, even makes fun of me!

Doh! Update on NPR Interview with WBUR

If anyone was wondering what happened to that interview with WBUR, the Boston NPR affiliate, it is been taped (with host Bob Oakes) and in the can but the broadast has been slightly pushed back. Producers from WBUR tell me it should hit the airwaves this week hopefully.  Here’s a link to a Web page announcing the interview.

Here’s a snippet from the page:

Pioneering “Creative Capital”
By Bob Oakes

“Creative Capital,” by Spencer Ante BOSTON, Mass. – May 20, 2008 – These days, most start-ups rely on venture capital funding. But before World War Two, investors had to use their own money or borrow from wealthy individuals.

That all changed in 1946, in Boston, where Frenchman Georges Doriot pioneered the high risk — potentially high-reward — venture capital industry.

He never graduated from college or graduate school, but Doriot became an eminent business professor at Harvard University and founded the first publicly traded venture capital firm.

He’s now the subject of a new book, ‘Creative Capital.’ It’s by Business Week journalist Spencer Ante … who joined WBUR’s Bob Oakes from New York.

Their first question: Why did Doriot think it was time to change things?

 

 

My First NPR Interview on Boston’s WBUR!

Last week Bob Oakes from the NPR affiliate in Boston interviewed me for about 20 minutes about Georges Doriot and Creative Capital. I taped the interview in the WYNC studios on 42nd street, which are pretty sweet. The microphones are so good you can hear yourself breathe. NPR’s Boston station is called WBUR and is at 90.9 on the left of the dial.

The interview is running on Monday morning, May 19, between 7:30am-8:30am. I thought Oakes asked some really good questions but one small warning: I sound a little stuffy since I was still fighting off a cold the day I taped the interview. Hope you Bostonians enjoy it.

For those of you who don’t live in Boston, I plan on publishing a Web-based version of the interview on my blog on Monday after it is posted on WBUR.ORG.