Finding Clarity in a Car with a Broken Radio

David, by Donatello

I recently acquired (as in bought) a new used car. My Honda Pilot had reached the 200,000 mile zone and has some strange technical issues, no doubt due to sensors and all this new-fangled technology. So I picked up a Kia Soul for the price of a song, and though it has its own set of quirks, I like it. One thing it lacks, however, is a radio.

I still drive the Honda one day a week to keep it healthy (cars need exercise as much as humans do) and yesterday I ran errands in the Pilot. It's strange though. After driving a car without a radio for the last eight or ten weeks, I'm discovering how inane the radio is. I've clearly become accustomed to the silence. Or at least, the absence of radio noise. It's a pleasure to be accompanied by the diversions in my mind.

For more than two decades I listened to audiobooks, which ended when the Honda's CD player went kaput. For the past couple years I've been listening to radio, but after a couple months without it, I've come to relish its absence. 

This newfound appreciation for silence has been a revelation. Driving my Soul, with only the hum of the engine and the rhythms of the road, feels like a mental reset. My thoughts wander freely—often accompanied by an internal soundtrack as backdrop.

It’s as if the absence of radio chatter has unlocked a quieter, more introspective space. The Honda’s radio now feels like an intrusion, or worse. Boring. There's almost nothing new. NPR has its agenda and set of "approved" messaging, AM talk radio stations have theirs, but it's all melted down. I’ve started to wonder if the constant noise was drowning out something more valuable: the chance to just be with my thoughts.

Programs urge, "Listen to me so I can tell you how to think." Others compete for your attention in order to deliver their sponsors' advertising. (Radio is free so someone has to pay, and that's what the advertisers do.)

Disclaimer: I stopped watching television when I turned 16 in 1968. It seemed so artificial and superficial in light of more profound issues we as a nation (and I as an individual) were dealing with.

This shift has me rethinking how I engage with my drives. I've decided to skip the radio repair altogether. It’s funny how a car bought for a steal, quirks and all, has led to this unexpected clarity. Perhaps the Kia’s lack of a radio isn’t a flaw but a gift, nudging me toward a quieter, more mindful way of moving through the world.

Super Bowl Advertising: The Rules Have Changed

For more than two decades the one USA Today that I go out of my way to purchase is the Friday edition leading up to Super Bowl Sunday. Not because I'm trying to get acquainted with the teams and make predictions about the game, but because I’m an ad man and I pretty much live for those expensive commercials.

Don’t blink. At $3.5 million per 30-second spot, you’re missing $116,667 per second of ad space that was purchased for this weekend’s big game, Super Bowl XLVI.

But this year, something amazing has happened. The rules have changed. It used to be that commercials were kept under wraps until their very brief moment in the sun. Like a rare bird, you had to be paying attention in order to catch those Clydesdales or flying monkeys or those GoDaddy girls. This year things have been turned on their heads. The advertisers have been falling all over themselves to get us to see those super-expensive spots ahead of the game. Now wouldn’t it be funny if this actually turned out to be detrimental to NFL Football? How many millions who already saw the commercials skip the game itself?

As the New York Times put it, “The one thing missing from this year’s commercials: Surprise. That’s because advertisers are looking for Green in advance by taking advantage of social media to make their stories go viral.”

Most, if not all, the advertisers have been releasing their spots on YouTube well in advance of the coin toss. The Camaro spot was released on January 19, seventeen days before Sunday’s game. And Kia began showing its spot in 18,000 theaters around the country yesterday. Oof da.
I myself have watched several of the spots, and as usual they are not all Oscar winners. The Vampires spot by Audi was sort of clever even if a bit dark, but I never saw Ferris Bueller’s Day Off so I didn’t really fasten on to the parody by … who was it? Honda?

And this is what I don’t get. I owned a Honda, and the engineering is great. Tell me something about the car. How do you make such great cars? When you hire a movie star like Matthew Broderick, all you’re doing is saying, “We don’t have a story, so we will position ourselves like all the other car makers who don’t have a story.” What’s with that? But then again, Super Bowl commercials don't seem to be about educating customers. It's entertainment. The obligation seems to be to get people to talking about it afterwards. Well, that used to be the goal. Now it seems to be to get people talking about it before the game.

I liked the Seinfeld ad for Acura titled Transactions. It makes the car something desirable, something to crave.

You might say that all these pre-game ads are becoming the big story of the week… except there’s still another big story overshadowing even this. Where will Peyton Manning be playing when the 2012 season begins? He’s been a great QB, but you’d think he could walk on water the way the sports show talking heads are gobbling about him. He’s here, he’s there… he’s everywhere.

Meanwhile, in just over 48 hours we’ll see the only real showdown that matters. “Eli’s Coming” has to be the Manning anthem. We’ll soon see how quick and accurate Brady’s guns are.

Top right: The pundit, yours truly, ennyman.

GM Suffers Unhappy 100th

Armchair quarterbacking from the sidelines, things are not looking up in the U.S. economy any time soon. A year ago I had dinner with a publisher who predicted a bad year in 2008, and it looks like he weren’t a-kiddin’. Unfortunately, the shakeout that hit the housing and financial markets has not worked its way through the system yet. More fallout is clearly in the cards as the auto industry staggers to remain the viable, reliable heartbeat of America.

Since the end of 2004 General Motors, biggest of the Big Three, began losing money in great rivers of red ink… 73 billion dollars now, and still flowing. GM, which should be celebrating in this year’s 100th anniversary, is sweating, hands outstretched, seeking help from the rich uncle who just finished throwing gobs of money at the banking sector.

Third quarter losses for GM were $4.2 billion. GM shareholders have seen the value of their holdings fall 82% this year alone. Many industry watchers have said that without federal aid, the company could collapse resulting in a loss of 2.5 million jobs (after factoring in those many businesses that subsist on sales to the giant automaker.)

Dennis Virag, president of the Automotive Consulting Group in Ann Arbor, told Bloomberg Television yesterday that "either the federal government provides money for a bailout and lets the industry retool, restructure, and move ahead, or the industry dies.''

How did this happen and how bad is it really? Did GM put itself in a bind by making cars that consumers weren’t interested in? The top selling cars last year again were Hondas and Toyotas.

I remember the Ford slogan two decades back, “Have you driven a Ford lately?” My 2008 answer is, "Have you driven a Honda lately?" No offense, but “Buy American” is not going to fix our woes unless American manufacturers pull their heads out of the sand and start making quality cars that consumers want.

GMs woes, howwever, are not all their own making. The banking collapse has been a devil of a problem for all the automakers. In 2007, more than 80% of people wishing to buy a new car could get financing as opposed to 33% in September this year. Tight money has left an already languishing U.S. auto industry in dire straits.

Yesterday, the drums began beating for a bailout. Too many people have a vested interest in keeping GM alive. But where does this money come from? I’m not sure I really want to know.