I've been busy. Sorry about that.

Forgive my infrequent (that's an understatement) blogging . I hope to make it a habit to post quality updates on media entrepreneurs and media entrepreneurship.

In my research on media entrepreneurs, I've met a number of fascinating people. If these folks are typical of entrepreneurs who choose to start media companies, then the future of media and its ability to inform, entertain and engender civic engagement are in good hands. I'll introduce you to some of them on this blog. My focus is on how entrepreneurs discover or recognize a media opportunity and then exploit it.

Let me start with Bear Cahill and his media enterprise, Booples. See http://www.booples.com. Bear recently launched this animation business aimed at teaching children Bible stories through song. He got the idea at a child's birthday party -- learning and singing songs is something children do very naturally. He knew about the very successful product, Veggie Tales (see http://bigidea.com/index.aspx). He recognized a business opportunity: A dabbler in animation, an IT professional by day and evidently quite knowledgable about the Bible, he had all the inputs for a one-person enterprise in children's DVDs. He made his first videos and Booples was born. Bear has developed a low-cost promotion technique as well -- I found Booples mentioned at several blogs and sites targeting Christian audiences. I expect he is building a brand essentially for free.

Booples is a tiny business with a highly niched product. So what's important about Bear's entrepeneurship? He recognized and exploited an idea into a media business. That's one more "voice" out there in the media marketplace. If the economic census is to be believed, there are as many as 110,000 other similar small media entrepreneurs in the U.S. Imagine that on a global scale. In toto, that's a lot of voices to Rupert's single, albeit big, "voice."