Over the past six weeks, I have criss-crossed the country working with Tanner Friedman clients nationally. My travels have included personal views of scenery as varied as the Mississippi River, Manhattan skyscrapers, the woods of Western Indiana, the hills of West Michigan and even an armadillo race in Oklahoma (true story).
From city to city, our country can feel much the same (chain stores and restaurants) and different (regional accents and terrain) at the same time. But here are a few common communications themes I noticed in my travels:
-It’s not just where you live. If you just judged a community – any community – by the content of its late, local news, you would be afraid to leave your hotel room. From market #1 to market #151, crime news of all sorts took up most of the first segment of every newscast, every night.
-Newspapers are getting smaller. Everywhere.
-“The economy” is on the minds of everyone, everywhere I went, not just in Michigan. At the least, it’s home values. At most, it’s job loss and exodus. But, it’s not just a concern where you live.
-Cell phone coverage was remarkably consistent from town to town. The worst coverage? At the international airport in America’s largest city. Ironically, I had more dropped or shaky calls at JFK Airport than even in rural Indiana.