Archive for September, 2003

Sports and Pomos

Posted Tuesday, September 23rd, 2003

Sports: Food for Pomos
The Hollywood Reporter says football viewing by young men (18-34) is up considerably this year. They ascribe this to a generation who grew up playing rock ‘em, sock ‘em video games now turning to the small screen. That may be, but I think there’s a more important principle involved. For Postmoderns, participating in life is what matters. Sporting events provide an element of experiencing history, of participating in a contest even if it’s vicariously. This is why TV News organizations find viewership up among young people during live coverage of wars, hostage situations and other breaking news events. But sports contests are all real, so there’s a purity to the drama that doesn’t exist with a lot of the forced live coverage we see in the news today. Gimme my Slam Ball!!

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The importance of being free

Posted Tuesday, September 23rd, 2003

TV Can Learn from Online Newspapers
News that isn’t free won’t last in a Postmodern world. Pomos label protected knowledge as elitist and turn away without any sense of loss. News Websites that charge for access do nothing more than drive people to sites that don’t. CNN tried it. The result was a bigger audience for Fox. Vlae Kershner is one of the people who realizes this. He’s news director of SFGate, the San Francisco combo newspaper/TV News Website. In an interview with Editor and Publisher, Kershner notes that subscriber-based news, such as that of newspapers and magazines, is justified only by cost. Web-based news is extremely efficient, and Kershner says, “Advertisers know that every reader has made a conscious decision to come to our site.”

The interview also provides some powerful insight for any media outlet that does news on the Internet. The audience is different than typical readers or viewers and must be treated accordingly. Kershner: “Some newsroom folks didn’t understand why our homepage stew, as we call it, wasn’t a mirror of the (San Francisco) Chronicle front page. We have to do different things to attract our own audience. If you look at the 10 stories that get the most page views on any weekday, maybe only four of them will be from that morning’s paper, three will be breaking news, and three will be Gate-originated columns or articles.”

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Another assault on local TV

Posted Monday, September 22nd, 2003

Oh oh! Another assault on local TV commercials
A major shift in local spot ad spending from local TV stations to local cable operators is occurring and will permanently reshape local TV economics, according to a client report by Merrill Lynch analyst Jessica Reif Cohen. She estimates cable operators will double their $4 billion in revenue in the next couple of years at the expense of local broadcasters. Cable viewing now accounts for half of all television viewing, but only those broadcasters who choose to deny reality have to suffer. Internet advertising is the new frontier [creative, out-of-the-box solutions], and local broadcasters with a commitment to the Web can more than offset losses in on-the-air revenues. We’ve entered a multi-media era in communications history, a time when local TV needs to reinvent itself.

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Wired High Schools

Posted Monday, September 22nd, 2003

High Schoolers and technology
Someone asked me recently, “What’s the age group for Pomos?” Good question, but very Modernist. Age doesn’t define the cultural shift, although nowhere is it more apparent than in High School. The A.P. reports that schools are struggling with issues of PDAs, cellphones and laptops every day. It seems youngsters want to message each other rather than pay attention in class. Yet some schools are content to experiment and see where it leads. I’m especially intrigued by Independence High School in San Jose, California, where the school has provided laptops to 1,000 Sophomores. They’re also switching to e-books instead of regular textbooks in some studies. This bears watching, for wired classrooms are simply a precursor of things to come in the real world. Modernists shrug their shoulders over the chaos of a roomfull of people with various methods of talking to each other. Meanwhile, my daughter can carry on simultaneous conversations with a dozen friends online.

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Advertising Faces Challenges

Posted Monday, September 22nd, 2003

Advertisers to agencies: Pay attention!
Postmodernism threatens every aspect of the modernist society in which we live. Whether you view it as “good” or not, depends entirely on your perspective, for when your fatted calf is getting whacked, it’s hard to think joyful thoughts about the whacker. Take the advertising industry, for example. The Ad Agency is a fine example of modernist thinking, spending somebody else’s money on their behalf in the name of order and special knowledge. But trying times bring true colors to the surface, and the American Advertising Federation’s latest study on trends in advertising is ablaze with hues of truth. What I like about this study is that it asks the same questions of advertisers that it does of agencies, and there are revealing differences in the responses.

73% of advertisers agreed that new technologies such as TiVo may threaten traditional advertising formats compared to only 61% of ad agency reps. After all, the agencies need those traditional formats for their bread and butter. 68% of agency leaders viewed the convergence of content and marketing as a significant trend, while only 36% of advertisers agreed. In terms of challenges facing the industry, 36% of advertisers felt that developing compelling creative is the top challenge facing them. None, that’s zero, of the agency leaders rated that as tops. What’s tops for them? Demonstrating return on investment for clients (25%). *sigh*

There have always been differences of opinion between agencies and advertisers, and it’s been healthy in separating what works from what doesn’t work. It’s a bit different today, however, for industry leaders of every hue need to recognize that Postmoderns don’t and won’t abide by the rules of past. The advertisers seem to “get” that creative content has never been more important and that PVRs pose a huge threat to their ability to reach people. The agencies would do well to listen, or they may find their clients looking elsewhere.

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Forbes on PVRs

Posted Sunday, September 21st, 2003

Network heads in the sand (again)!
The digital threat is as real as it gets, folks, but not in the minds of execs at the networks. Forbes writer, Scott Woolley, quotes ad execs and network types in another chilling article about the onslaught of personal video recorders (PVRs). Postmoderns want what they want when they want it, and PVRs provide that. As such, PVRs fit perfectly into the cultural shift to a Postmodern world. But knowledge that PVR users fast-forward through 80% of the commercials is a serious threat to network and local television. My favorite quotes in this article are from Chuck B. Fruit, a senior vice president at Coca-Cola: “It is inevitable that technology will give consumers more choices, and that includes when and how many commercials they want to view. We want to move away from an exclusive reliance on 30-second commercials to talk to the consumer.” As ads become more voluntary, he says, “it puts a great obligation on the advertiser to be a part of the viewing experience and to add to the experience.” Otherwise, he warns, “they will risk being irrelevant or ignored.” Here’s an ad executive who understands that it’s all about the user’s experience. Pomos define themselves through their experiences.

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Email marketing

Posted Sunday, September 21st, 2003

Oh no! Bias over objectivity?
Internet users would rather get email newsletters from associations and corporations than independent news media or individual journalists, according to a study this week by Quris, the email marketing people. As a student of Postmodernism, this comes as no surprise, for Pomos want unfiltered information more than news from what they view as elitist journalists. If bias is present, so what? They see it as more honest than the artificial “professional” hegemony known as objectivity. Postmoderns define themselves through tribes without leaders, and they find their own personal tribe through experiences and direct participation. It just isn’t possible to emotionally participate in an issue when argument is lacking. It’s the age of participation, and traditional news outlets need to take notice.

This study is filled with great information, including some worthwhile tips for email marketers that can be applied in any communications format. “Interesting content is cited as the most important motivating factor for loyalty,” according to Quris, something all news people should note. It’s what produces relevancy, a word many news people seem to have forgotten in our ivory tower attempts to preach to the masses.

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AOL/Time Warner

Posted Saturday, September 20th, 2003

Losing AOL
It should come as a shock to no one that Time Warner executives finally came to the conclusion that the AOL name was a drag on the old empire. I was once an AOL member. But then I grew up. AOL has always been training wheels for the Internet, and it was incredibly foolish for Time Warner to sink all its marbles into what amounts to a closed ISP. But here’s the real lesson. The Internet is a postmodern communications medium. AOL is a modernist institution. You cannot promise freedom to Pomos and try to control them at the same time. Pomos detest elitism. They are anti-authority, and that includes the big business of AOL. In order for AOL to work, everybody has to do everything AOL’s way. That’s the antithesis of postmoderns, who (thank you very much) choose to do things their own way. A lot of people think broadband is killing AOL, but that’s just a symptom. The bigger issue is that the company’s core competency ran afoul of the cultural shift. It was destined for failure in the long term, and Time Warner figured that out.

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PVRs mean trouble

Posted Saturday, September 20th, 2003

Deep trouble ahead
Diane Mermigas, Editor of Television Week, is someone who really “gets it” when it comes to the trouble TV stations are facing. In this chilling article, she introduces Bernstein Research analyst Tom Wolzien’s idea that the TV industry needs legislation to curb the growth of Personal Video Recorders (PVR). PVRs are postmodern tools, because they empower the user and allow them to participate in their own viewing experience. I’ve written often that video news of the future will be “on demand” (VNOD), and devices like these enable that. The day will come, however, when TV and the Web will be one, and everybody will have their own PVR, of sorts.

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Oh My News!

Posted Saturday, September 20th, 2003

Participatory Journalism
Postmodernism is often referred to as “The Age of Participation.” Postmoderns (Pomos) find understanding through experience, and media outlets need to learn that lectures from pretty anchors just don’t cut it anymore. How this is all going to play out downstream is unknown, but this Japanese news outlet is onto something very interesting that somebody here is going to latch onto sooner or later. Domo for Pomos!

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