New York Magazine has something called “The Approval Matrix” which is their “deliberately oversimplified guide to who falls where on out taste hierarchies.” I particularly enjoyed a snippet from this week’s Approval Matrix: “Obama has the most badass Secret Service code name ever: Renegade. What’s up now, axis of evil?”

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Bear with me on this: (kottke.org) is, apparently, the most popular post on kottke. It’s not actually written by Jason Kottke. I didn’t understand it when I first read it, almost exactly 8 years ago. Today, I think it makes sense.

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I’m not a bit American Idol watcher, but Mykala just pointed me towards this fantastic cover of Lennon’s “Imagine.” It’s this 17 year old David Archuleta, and he’s just spot-on perfect with every note. I think we have a winner!

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Consider this: one month after only part of a song called “New Soul” by Yael Naim backed the first commercial for Apple’s Macbook Air, the song debuted at #9 on the Billboard Hot 100. Disregarding its precipitous tumble down the charts after that, it is easy to see that featuring music on TV can have a profound effect on sales. This brings me to my idea: illustrated radio.

I’m not talking music videos — not only has the culture around those been absolutely beat into the corporate cemetery by MTV/VH1, but the idea is tired. We need something simple and fresh. Here’s what you do (the details are very important):

• Once a week, secure a half hour pre-primetime network television spot — get a time when people might have the TV on in the background but are doing something else, such as preparing dinner.
• Then, get one true disk jockey with impeccable taste to pull great music that many people haven’t heard. This part is crucial: you need singularity of vision in the beginning, so you need just one dude/dudette with grrrreat taste. One. No committee, no focus group — just make one DJ’s dream come true by giving them a huge audience. Hint: look at a place like The Current.
• Don’t advertise it; let the facts of how stunningly different, unique, and daring this is speak for themselves.
• Read commercials by one voiceover person, with one graphic per product. This is illustrated radio, remember?
• In the beginning, don’t feature any “new media” tie-ins. (Secure a good URL, certainly, but sit on it at first.) See, you need to get everyone watching first.
• After a month or so of building interest, put together a brain-dead simple web page. I don’t want flash videos, I don’t want atrociously bold branding — give me a list of the artists and their songs played, followed by exactly three things: the artist’s website, an iTunes link, and an Amazon link. Sort reverse chronological by date. Don’t trash things up with 100s of links to the network’s other shows.

Finally, call the show “Music.” Do not call it anything else. You are promoting music, you are sharing good music. But don’t call the show “Good Music,” because that’s an opinion. The goal here is to take all the strengths and innovations of podcasting and combine them with the strengths of network TV.

KEEP IT SIMPLE. If you do that, this show will. Be. Awesome.

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Charles Apple provides great before and after comparisons between the old and new Saint Paul Pioneer Press designs. I could live with the Myriad (har) of typefaces used in the new design, if only they didn’t use the face Stainless. That one is driving be absolutely batty. Every time I look at it, I’m thinking Star-Trek type computer screen displays; it’s too sharp and computer-like.

Also, I realize they went for a USA Today style color coded section-type thing… but man did I prefer the whitespace employed before to identify a section. Graphic design is really difficult, especially on something like a newspaper — I just think that this design needed a few more revisions before going public.

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