Asia: two differing views of the Internet
Friday, February 27th, 2004Asia: two differing views of the Internet.
China is having problems with Internet freedom. They’ll lose, of course, but the government’s efforts to put the cat back in the bag are sad. For all the talk about Iranian bloggers tackling the government there, the real story is in China, with nearly a third of the earth’s population.
AFP News reports that the cultural minister has called for tighter controls on the Internet including 24-hour surveillance and urging people to tell on each other.
During a recent national meeting on “rectifying” Internet bars or cafes, Sun Jiazheng hinted that the government’s efforts to manage soaring Internet use had not been sufficient, the Xinhua state news agency website said Friday.“Managing Internet bars requires centralized measures, the people’s prevention and monitoring and thorough control,” Sun was quoted as saying by Xinhua.
Sun also called for “using long-range computer surveillance systems to carry out 24-hour, real-time monitoring of the Internet bars,” Xinhua said.
He said Internet bars should be “standardized” by establishing chains, instead of the small, difficult-to-regulate, hole-in-the-wall cafes that have popped up all over China — even in remote reserves for giant pandas.
Illegal Internet cafes, those that allow minors to enter, and those that let people spread “harmful” information were the three most serious problems, Sun said.
Just take a look at South Korea, where the founder of the citizen journalist enterprise, OhMyNews, has announced expansion. (Note on the link: the Korean language download is not required to view the page.) Writing in the new English language International version, Oh Yeon Ho is now asking people of the world to participate in his prototype of citizen reporting.
OhmyNews International began operating on the occasion of our fourth anniversary, and this marks the beginning of the globalization of a native Korean product, OhmyNews. In March, OhmyNews International will begin translating five to six major articles daily, then gradually expand to allow the citizens of the world to participate by writing their own articles in English. Until now, “Every Citizen’s a Reporter” has been applied only to speakers of Korean. Now it will grow to include people everywhere.
OhmyNews was born with the motto “Every Citizen’s a Reporter,” and now will create an environment where “every citizen is a broadcasting reporter.” OhmyNews’ web broadcasting unit, OhmyTV, has been completely redone and made more prominent. “Citizen Anchor News” began last week, and is the first attempt anywhere to have regular citizens do the news. As always, OhmyNews will continue to provide our readers lively coverage of the news in action, and will gradually increase regular programming.
Daypart content: the new online metric
Thursday, February 26th, 2004Daypart content: the new online metric.
Newspapers, according to a report in MediaDailyNews, are leading the way in gradually converting their online content to reflect the audience that’s available. TV people will recognize this as daypart programming.
In its 2003 report, “Online Dayparting: Claiming the Day, Seizing the Night,” media research firm Minnesota Opinion Research Inc. discovered significant shifts in media consumption habits among online users of newspaper sites. Peak news reading time is 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. As the day goes on, mainly between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m., interest in the news genre dissipates, while interest in entertainment and event resources picks up the slack. At night, consumers switch gears again to concentrate on jobs, cars, homes, and shopping content.Michael Zimbalist, executive director of the Online Publishers Association, asserts: “The daytime part is still the largest daypart on the Internet.” As measured by the OPA and others, the bulk of these daytime Web users are at-work broadband users.
And so it goes…
The lizard is alive and well
Wednesday, February 25th, 2004The lizard is alive and well.
I wrote The Lizard on America’s Shoulder six years ago upon retiring from television news. The words were relevant then and even more so today, especially in the wake of reporting about the Carlie Brucia kidnapping and murder in Florida.
To summarize the original essay, local news is largely responsible for the spirit of fear that so dominates our culture today, the one from which Postmoderns are running, because they’re sick of it. It would be easy to place this blame on the press as a whole, but I think the burden of responsibility rests at the local level. After all, that’s where we’re told most people get their news, not from the so-called mainstream press.
Local news is driven by what “works” in terms of getting and keeping viewers. News-as-a-profit-center is more about managing audience flow these days than actually covering the news. The switch happened during my lifetime in the biz. One day, a new concept casually drifted into the morning story (editorial) meetings — the idea that we ought to be planning stories that would help the promotion department carry viewers from one daypart to the next. It’s systemic and so commonplace today that news people don’t even give it a second thought. In fact, the very definition of news at the local level now includes that which can and will attract attention. It’s not even a dirty little secret, for the people in the business know what they’re doing, and while some object on anonymous Internet bulletin boards, the truth is everybody loves doing these stories, for they occasionally result in industry awards for excellence. To the public, they’re presented with drama and hyperbole under the self-important banner of “Investigative Reporting.” I’ve known some wonderful investigative reporters, and took part in some wonderful work. But the public service claims of much of what is passed as “investigative” today are specious at best.
No profit-making business on earth understands the idea that people turn their heads to see a traffic accident like local news. And the truth is we’re good at it, really good at it.
Carlie Brucia’s story is a tragic example of the lizard on America’s shoulder. What was a sad story to begin with was raised to the level of hysteria through one unique circumstance: video of the actual kidnapping. The video was played over and over and over again on broadcast, cable and Internet news outlets. The story certainly classifies as news but the video even more so, and therein lies the problem. The public service of eyeballing the kidnapper was a regional event at best, but that tape was played throughout the world. The public service of reminding children that they shouldn’t talk with strangers was applicable perhaps once. Beyond that, the story was simply a way to use compelling video to attract viewers.
Pro and con arguments of this were briefly played out in two op-ed pieces in The Poynter Institute’s poynter.org. Writing for the institute, Dr. Roy Peter Clark, Poynter Vice President and Senior Scholar, opined that the media had transformed Carlie “from a little girl with a backpack into an icon of the mortal dangers that stalk our children.”
“…a powerful danger hides inside all emblematic crimes, and especially those that produce the most expansive coverage. The dramatic and emotional coverage of such kidnaps and murders creates the impression that our children are more vulnerable to predatory strangers than they really are. Fear of strangers drives us crazy.I state this stark fact on behalf of living children and those who care for them. Stories like the Carlie Brucia kidnap and murder — magnified now by dramatic video — create the false impression that a primary danger to our children comes from monstrous strangers.
The truth is different. For every child kidnapped and murdered by strangers, there are thousands upon thousands who are snatched, sexually abused, raped, tortured, or murdered by people they know and trust.
That is true. I would not have argued for any less coverage of the Carlie Brucia case, especially in Sarasota, the city where she was kidnapped and murdered, and now deeply mourned.
I am, instead, arguing in favor of context. And then more context. We parents need journalists to help us understand such events, not just feel them. We need a true assessment of comparative risks. Without this, we may fear the thing that, in reality, poses little true risk, while more common dangers to our children remain invisible.
Once we did get the video, we aired it continually and aggressively in hopes that someone from the public would see something recognizable and step forward to help. We did so in the spirit of community service, and in hopes of saving a life.For one rare, shining moment, the Carlie story brought our community together like no other story in memory…Yes, the media certainly helped rally the community. Yes, the ratings show it was one of the highest-interest local stories we’ve ever covered, bar none. This is exploitation? On the contrary, it was a miracle of sorts.
Certainly, there is a time and a place to step back, assess the sober reality, and provide appropriate context and perspective. But there is also a time and place to be human…Without question, abduction and murder is a threat most children will never face. Statistics be damned. This story was about one little girl, and a community filled with breaking hearts.
Instead of chiding the media and the community for caring so deeply about this one child, we would all be well-served to embrace our humanity, and to capture that community spirit, keep it alive, and channel it to a good purpose.
In defending his judgment, Forrest gives us the modern definition of local news. It’s all about embracing humanity, capturing community spirit, keeping it alive, and channeling it to a good purpose. Nice, huh?
How pompous and how sad. And here’s the really interesting thing to me. The audience recognizes it for the manipulative crap that it is. They’re turning away in droves while the industry pats itself on the back for a job well done.
Most news markets consist of many different communities, each with their own police departments and their own problems with crime. When a station picks the most dreadful from each and assembles them together in a newscast, it paints a dangerously unrealistic portrait of the overall community it is licensed to serve. At an emotional level, viewers don’t distinguish between a rape in one community, a murder in another, and a kidnap/murder in Florida. It’s all just one blurred frenzy of horror.
It’s the lizard on America’s shoulder.
Internet passes cable for wired dominance
Tuesday, February 24th, 2004Internet passes cable for wired dominance.
MediaDailyNews is reporting that the Internet has surpassed the U.S. household penetration level of cable TV, according to Web researcher eMarketer and its CEO, Geoffrey Ramsey.
…based on his analysis of a variety of sets of research data ranging from comScore and Nielsen//NetRatings to the Pew Research Center, UCLA and Harris Interactive, eMarketer now estimates U.S. household Internet penetration is about 67.9 percent. That compares with a 65.8 percent U.S. household penetration level for cable, according to an eMarketer analysis of Nielsen Media Research and U.S. Census data.More significantly, Ramsey noted that while cable TV penetration has essentially been flat at about 66 percent of U.S. households, online penetration continues to expand.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m as pro-Internet as anybody out there, and I think this helps shine more light on the viability of Web advertising. Ad people love reach and frequency numbers, so bigger IS important to them. ‘Nuff said.
Calling the Fab-5: TV’s business model needs a makeover
Tuesday, February 24th, 2004Calling the Fab-5: TV’s business model needs a makeover.
Rance Crain, editor in chief of Advertising Age, did the television industry a disservice this week with a misleading and fact-defying commentary entitled, “WHAT COMCAST’S DISNEY BID SAYS ABOUT COMMERCIAL TV, The Traditional Business Model Is Not So Dead.” In it, Crain, whose family owns Advertising Age, Television Week and a host of other publications, suggests that because Comcast is willing to borrow $50 billion to buy Disney and ABC Television that it must mean they know something we don’t, “namely that TV will continue to be the most dominant and safest ad buy in spite of rhetoric to the contrary.” Whoa! Wait a minute, Mr. Crain. Your magazines have been at the forefront of studying and reporting on all the trends. You KNOW better.
Otherwise, what’s the point of Comcast’s trying to fix ABC if network TV’s time has come and gone? And don’t kid yourself into thinking the cable company is willing to borrow all that money for Disney’s movie business (except as fodder for TV) and theme parks. It wants TV content, to go along with its distribution facilities, so Comcast management must think commercial TV is still the best game in town.
Ironically it’s this very desperation that will eventually keep most marketers in TV. They are just getting to the point where their top management accepts that awareness, attentiveness, incremental volume per 100 GRPs of spending and the like can be used to measure the effectiveness of TV advertising. Why should they risk losing their credibility by not being able to prove the effectiveness of concerts in the park or product placements?
Redefining advertising
Monday, February 23rd, 2004Redefining advertising
In response to suggestions that the magazine should change its name, Advertising Age columnist Scott Donaton writes today “that the realities of the wider marketing world we already cover” suggest that the concept of advertising is what needs redefinition, not his magazine.
Even the word marketing, while broader and embracing more than media advertising, is inadequate to the task in its current definition. For too many people, marketing means advertising plus what some people stunningly still refer to as “below the line” disciplines, such as direct marketing and public relations.Forget above the line and below the line. Forget lines. Forget silos. Forget competing disciplines and the eternal scrap for what they view as their rightful share of the almighty dollar. It’s about consumer touch points, but for all the talk in the business, there hasn’t been enough action. The industry’s compensation systems, its measurement tools, its vocabulary is still constructed around a 30-second-spot-centric system. To truly move forward, many of those models will have to be torn down and rebuilt.
Maybe we need new words for a new world. More likely, we need to redefine those we already know.
Powell continues to give good quotes
Monday, February 23rd, 2004Powell continues to give good quotes.
FCC Chairman Michael Powell is a guy who gets it. He’s controversial, to be sure, but I like the guy, because he’s trying very hard to tell whoever will listen that we’re in the midst of an incredible change in the world of communications. According to an article in kansas.com, Powell told state and communications industry officials in Lawrence that technology will make high-speed Internet access universal and inexpensive and is likely to do so with local entrepreneurs operating in an unregulated market. Here’s a prophetic Powell quote:
“Think about broadband broadly. It is every possible platform.”
“I’m afraid the era of passive television is gone,” Michael Powell said. “You’ll get a lot of stuff you don’t want thrown at you if you’re not going to be partly willing to be an active consumer.”
He said he controls his children’s viewing with TiVo service, recording what he will allow them to watch and blocking other programming.“It takes a lot of work, by the way,” he said. “I don’t relish that I’ve got to come home and pay attention to what my children are doing and what they’re watching or not watching.”
“I know how to block shows on my cable television, but I’m the chairman of the FCC,” he said. “I bet a lot of Americans don’t, and I want to make sure the cable industry is out there teaching them how to do that.”
But I digress. Good stuff, Mr. Powell.
Powell continues to give good quotes
Monday, February 23rd, 2004Powell continues to give good quotes.
FCC Chairman Michael Powell is a guy who gets it. He’s controversial, to be sure, but I like the guy, because he’s trying very hard to tell whoever will listen that we’re in the midst of an incredible change in the world of communications. According to an article in kansas.com, Powell told state and communications industry officials in Lawrence that technology will make high-speed Internet access universal and inexpensive and is likely to do so with local entrepreneurs operating in an unregulated market. Here’s a prophetic Powell quote:
“Think about broadband broadly. It is every possible platform.”
“I’m afraid the era of passive television is gone,” Michael Powell said. “You’ll get a lot of stuff you don’t want thrown at you if you’re not going to be partly willing to be an active consumer.”
He said he controls his children’s viewing with TiVo service, recording what he will allow them to watch and blocking other programming.“It takes a lot of work, by the way,” he said. “I don’t relish that I’ve got to come home and pay attention to what my children are doing and what they’re watching or not watching.”
“I know how to block shows on my cable television, but I’m the chairman of the FCC,” he said. “I bet a lot of Americans don’t, and I want to make sure the cable industry is out there teaching them how to do that.”
But I digress. Good stuff, Mr. Powell.
The Times They Are A-Changin’
Friday, February 20th, 2004The Times They Are A-Changin’.
The conflict between music lovers and the recording industry is a story I follow. I do so because it’s a clear illustration of Postmodern economics, a war between people and the institutionalism of a Modernist culture. The end of this is already written. The people, the consumers of music, those who establish the market, will win. Moreover, the industry will be in chaos before artists come to their senses and start marketing directly to consumers.
This is the most exciting David and Goliath story since the original, and it’ll end the same way.
There have been a lot of interesting developments in this ongoing story this week. The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) filed another 500+ lawsuits against their customers for what they view as pirating music. I don’t disagree with that term, but I view the effort as a smokescreen for the real issues, which are homogenized, bad music and corporate greed in the form of price gouging.
The mother of a teenager in New Jersey has filed a counter suit against the RIAA under the RICO statute. The Register tells the story:
Michele Scimeca received a notice from the RIAA in December after her child used the Kazaa networks for a school project. She has countersued labels Sony, Universal and Motown by claiming that the demands for reimbursement of $150,000 per infringement falls foul of the 1970 Organized Crime and Control Act, better known as the RICO statute after Title IX of the Act: Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Statute.That’s certainly a description that many would argue fits the major labels like a glove. But can it stand up?
In another Register story, we learn of an act of “coordinated civil disobedience” next Tuesday:
Anti-RIAA activists at Downhill Battle are leading the charge for what they call “Grey Tuesday.” The Web site along with other as yet unnamed coconspirators will offer downloads of DJ Danger Mouse’s Grey Album for 24 hours. The groups pitch this as a protest against EMI’s attempts to stifle distribution of the album, which combines Jay-Z’s the Black Album and the Beatles’ White Album.EMI has served DJ Danger Mouse and record shops selling the Grey Album with cease and desist orders. The label releases Beatles’ records and doesn’t want its intellectual property abused.
The Grey Tuesday backers say EMI’s actions are a form of censorship against art.
But the most stunning piece of journalism about the whole issue this week comes from one of my favorite recording artists, Don Henley of the Eagles. Henley has written a marvelous op-ed piece for the Washington Post called Killing The Music that is must reading for anybody interested in this issue.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, the root problem is not the artists, the fans or even new Internet technology. The problem is the music industry itself. It’s systemic. The industry, which was once composed of hundreds of big and small record labels, is now controlled by just a handful of unregulated, multinational corporations determined to continue their mad rush toward further consolidation and merger. Sony and BMG announced their agreement to merge in November, and EMI and Time Warner may not be far behind. The industry may soon be dominated by only three multinational corporations.The executives who run these corporations believe that music is solely a commodity. Unlike their predecessors, they fail to recognize that music is as much a vital art form and social barometer as it is a way to make a profit. At one time artists actually developed meaningful, even if strained, relationships with their record labels. This was possible because labels were relatively small and accessible, and they had an incentive to join with the artists in marketing their music. Today such a relationship is practically impossible for most artists.
The Internet has empowered people like no communications medium ever has. Weblogs are the new journalistic voice, and every institution should shudder. There’s an interesting interview with Martin Nisenholtz, CEO, New York Times Digital in today’s MediaDailyNews in which he calls for the establishment of a “professional class” of blogger.
Some people regard the weblog as the first truly native form of Web content creation. And I said that might be true, but that weblogs hadn’t yet created a commercial engine underneath them. I said they were populated by a mostly passionate group of amateurs. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but in order for a medium to take off, it needs to have a group of professionals who are compensated and a business model underneath that can support that professional class.
Wake up, everybody. It’s a new day, and the (Modernist) status quo is crumbling. As Dylan wrote (and does anybody think he would make it in today’s music business?):
The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin’.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’.
Pew: Rural Americans less likely to use the Internet
Wednesday, February 18th, 2004Pew: Rural Americans less likely to use the Internet.
A new study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project shows that, despite gains, only 52 percent of rural Americans say they’re online, compared to two-thirds of those in urban and suburban households. Here’s how Reuters tells it:
Location alone has little effect on Internet usage, the Pew group said. But rural residents as a whole are less affluent, less educated and older than the population as a whole, factors that correlate with reduced Internet use, the report said.Rural users are more likely to look for religious information but are less likely to shop, bank or make travel reservations online, the report said.
Meanwhile, the European Commission is using public funds to help provide broadband Internet service to rural areas. It’s part of an effort over there to bridge the digital divide in Europe. The Register reports that the service is delivered through two-way satellite access for the backhaul, while those within each community are connected by Wi-Fi.
Food for thought.
Magid: offline brand feelings transfer to online
Wednesday, February 18th, 2004Magid: offline brand feelings transfer to online.
Internetnews.com is reporting that frequent visitors to media Web sites feel the same emotional connection with the online presence as they do with the offline property. The statement comes from a Magid study of Internet users on Websites of Online Publishers Association (OPA) members, like Knight Ridder Digital, Belo Interactive, Scripps Networks, Tribune Interactive, the Wall Street Journal Online, The Hearst Corporation, and Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive.
Seventy-two percent of those surveyed enjoy the media brand’s Web site; 71 percent trust it; 69 percent look forward to visiting it; 56 percent rely on it; and 47 percent miss it when they can’t access it. Related offline properties scored very similarly — a couple of points higher in some cases, a few lower in others.“This research has significant implications for advertisers,” said Michael Zimbalist, executive director of the OPA. “By developing effective cross-media messaging, advertisers can take advantage of the considerable overlap in online and offline media brand usage.”
The study also found usage of media Web sites is becoming part of people’s daily habits. Forty-four percent of consumers say they frequently visit national news sites out of habit, and 23 percent say their visits are geared toward fun or just to relax. Other uses for national news sites were more conventional. Sixty-eight percent go to such sites to get national news. Others go for breaking news (64 percent), and international news (52 percent).
Cisco’s video phone is TV quality
Wednesday, February 18th, 2004Cisco’s video phone is TV quality.
Cisco is about to unveil a new technology that works with Internet telephone services (VoIP) to provide video as well. And it’s not just any video; it’s 30-frames-per-second, the broadcast standard. According to the Reuters report, real-time videoconferencing with television-quality images will cost about $200 per user.
…version 1.0 of the VT Advantage software ties together its Internet Protocol-based phones, a Web camera and a desktop or laptop PC to add video alongside calls.“By just making a regular phone call, you can now have video as well without hitting a single additional button,” Marthin De Beer, vice president and general manager of Cisco’s IP communications group, told Reuters.
While most commercial video phones offer jerky and distorted images, and many professional video conferencing systems take extensive setup to use, Cisco said video on its platform would run at 30 frames per second and launch instantly whenever the callers had VT Advantage installed.
Burning the demographic candle at both ends
Tuesday, February 17th, 2004Burning the demographic candle at both ends
My latest essay in the series, “TV News in a Postmodern World,” is available for reading. The Demographic Candle examines the conundrum of appealing to a single demographic in a mass marketing environment, and the problem this has created for television in a multimedia paradigm.
Long live New Media solutions!
The Web provides a voice for the little guy
Tuesday, February 17th, 2004The Web provides a voice for the little guy.
Thanks to Dan Gillmor for pointing to a pending (and fascinating) Supreme Court case.
The Fourth Amendment (What’s Left of It) on Trial
PapersPlease.org: Meet Dudley Hiibel. He’s a 59 year old cowboy who owns a small ranch outside of Winnemucca, Nevada. He lives a simple life, but he’s his own man. You probably never would have heard of Dudley Hiibel if it weren’t for his belief in the U.S. Constitution.
What’s remarkable here to me is that the video is available for anybody to view. We’re able to make up our own minds about what happened, to get it straight from the source. Unfiltered news is a new paradigm made possible by the Internet. If you don’t think that’s true, consider the record-setting downloads of the Janet Jackson Super Bowl incident. News outlets recognize that people want to see such things, but they get in trouble when applying that logic in a mass marketing environment. Such video becomes irritating after awhile, because it’s played over and over and over.
Sign of the times: Visa’s new ad campaign
Tuesday, February 17th, 2004Sign of the times: Visa’s new ad campaign.
This is the clearest example I’ve seen of the right way to do non-mass media marketing via the Web. MediaDailyNews reports that Visa USA has teamed up with Microsoft Corp.’s MSN on a new online campaign to promote its Visa Extras program to small businesses.
The custom program features a dedicated Web site for small businesses, and is promoted via ads throughout the MSN network.The Your Business site — http://yourbusiness.msn.com — was built to help Visa target small businesses of 10 or less employees, offering them relevant advice and tips. The Visa Extras program invites businesses to earn points toward a variety of rewards when they use an enrolled eligible Visa Business debit or credit card to make certain types of purchases. An on-screen “session strip” offers additional tips and news, and a link back to the Your Business site. The strip can remain at the top of the screen during visitors’ browsing sessions even after they leave the Your Business site.
Mass marketing is a dead horse, and this is the way of the future. The proof, of course, will be in the program’s success, but Visa is doing everything right here. Online-at-work is a rapidly growing subset of the Internet. The company has recognized that and is attacking the niche brilliantly.
Television can — and should — be doing the same thing.
Sign of the times: Visa’s new ad campaign
Tuesday, February 17th, 2004Sign of the times: Visa’s new ad campaign.
This is the clearest example I’ve seen of the right way to do non-mass media marketing via the Web. MediaDailyNews reports that Visa USA has teamed up with Microsoft Corp.’s MSN on a new online campaign to promote its Visa Extras program to small businesses.
The custom program features a dedicated Web site for small businesses, and is promoted via ads throughout the MSN network.The Your Business site — http://yourbusiness.msn.com — was built to help Visa target small businesses of 10 or less employees, offering them relevant advice and tips. The Visa Extras program invites businesses to earn points toward a variety of rewards when they use an enrolled eligible Visa Business debit or credit card to make certain types of purchases. An on-screen “session strip” offers additional tips and news, and a link back to the Your Business site. The strip can remain at the top of the screen during visitors’ browsing sessions even after they leave the Your Business site.
Mass marketing is a dead horse, and this is the way of the future. The proof, of course, will be in the program’s success, but Visa is doing everything right here. Online-at-work is a rapidly growing subset of the Internet. The company has recognized that and is attacking the niche brilliantly.
Television can — and should — be doing the same thing.
It’s all about consuming video, not watching TV
Monday, February 16th, 2004It’s all about consuming video, not watching TV.
It seems the whole industry that is television is beginning to wake up and discover that it isn’t at a crossroads anymore; it’s actually far down the wrong road. I’ll have a lot more to say about this in an essay later this week. Meanwhile, evidence of this surfaced Friday in Florida at an important gathering of TV executives from Nielsen Media Research, Scripps Networks, Masterfoods USA, TiVo, and Starcom MediaVest. MediaDailyNews reports that there was general agreement that TV advertising, the future of TV, and the media business must be called into question.
“TV today is less about watching TV than it is about consuming video in many different environments,” said Tim Hanlon, senior vice president-director of emerging contacts, Starcom Worldwide.Adam Gerber, senior vice president-strategy and innovation, MediaVest, who moderated the panel and framed the discussion (said) “We need a more measurable research model — consumer control is here to stay, and user control displaces advertising as we know it.”
Advertisers, media agencies, and marketers must confront the issue of consumer control immediately, according to Bob DeSena, director of relationship marketing, Masterfoods USA: “An attitude adjustment is needed. The consumer has moved — we are the ones who need to catch up.”
Postmodernism is neither left nor right
Monday, February 16th, 2004Postmodernism is neither left nor right.
To the left, Postmodernism is the understandable fruit of liberal thinking. To the right, it’s the antichrist. Neither is correct, but both are correct.
As I’ve previously written, Postmodernism inevitably produces a leftward tilt in the culture, because it guts the heart of conservativism’s demand for order and authority. And it’s true that those of the left are more willing to go with the Postmodern flow. Nevertheless, the lordship of chaos — as academic Postmodernism teaches — must be awash in conflicting views. Otherwise, where’s the chaos? In the marketplace of thought, Postmodernism recognizes no authority as absolute, and that includes the hierarchical self-establishment of allegedly open minds. I say “allegedly,” because my experience is that a mind that thinks of itself as open is usually quite closed — just like the phrase, “There’s no question about it,” usually means it’s time to start asking questions.
I say all this, because one of the more intriguing arguments underway in the land of academia these days is David Horowitz’s Academic Bill of Rights. A version has been introduced in the U.S. House, and it will likely find its way to the Senate as well sometime this year. It’s heavy stuff, and liberal educators are all over themselves with accusations of a right wing plot to bring conservative thought into college campuses under the weight of law. In an interesting piece called “In Defense of Intellectual Diversity” in FrontPage magazine.com, Horowitz argues that the left is caught in a web of its own creation.
The Academic Bill of Rights is based squarely on the almost 100-year-old tradition of academic freedom that the American Association of University Professors has established. The bill’s purposes are to codify that tradition; to emphasize the value of “intellectual diversity,” already implicit in the concept of academic freedom; and, most important, to enumerate the rights of students to not be indoctrinated or otherwise assaulted by political propagandists in the classroom or any educational setting.
Since the Academic Bill of Rights is designed to clarify and extend existing principles of academic freedom, its opponents have generally been unable to identify specific provisions that they find objectionable. Instead, they have tried to distort the plain meaning of the text. The AAUP itself has been part of that effort, suggesting in a formal statement that the bill’s intent is to introduce political criteria for judging intellectual diversity and, thus, to subvert scholarly standards. It contends that the bill of rights “proclaims that all opinions are equally valid,” which “negates an essential function of university education.” The AAUP singles out for attack a phrase that refers to “the uncertainty and unsettled character of all human knowledge” as the rationale for respecting diverse viewpoints in curricula and reading lists in the humanities and social sciences. The AAUP claims that “this premise … is anti-thetical to the basic scholarly enterprise of the university, which is to establish and transmit knowledge.”The association’s statements are incomprehensible. After all, major schools of thought in the contemporary academy — pragmatism, postmodernism, and deconstructionism, to name three — operate on the premise that knowledge is uncertain and, at times, relative. Even the hard sciences, which do not share such relativistic assumptions, are inspired to continue their research efforts by the incomplete state of received knowledge. The university’s mission is not only to transmit knowledge but to pursue it — and from all vantage points. What could be controversial about acknowledging that? Further, the AAUP’s contention that the Academic Bill of Rights threatens true academic standards by suggesting that all opinions are equally valid is a red herring, as the bill’s statement on intellectual diversity makes clear: “Exposing students to the spectrum of significant scholarly viewpoints on the subjects examined in their courses is a major responsibility of faculty.”
And I think that the very idea of this discussion is healthy. Everybody needs their assumptions challenged every once in awhile — everybody except me, that is. There’s no question about it.
Advance look at UCLA study
Wednesday, February 11th, 2004Advance look at UCLA study.
The UCLA Center for Communications Policy’s annual Internet study is widely regarded as the definitive measurement of how the Web is impacting culture. In its fourth year, the report is due out next month, but an advance peek in an AdAge article doesn’t disappoint. The study covers 16 countries and over 10,000 young people.
Of the 11.8 hours the average Internet user spends online weekly, more than half is coming from TV viewing and almost none from sleep or socialization, Mr. Cole (Jeffrey Cole, director of the UCLA Center for Communication Policy) said. The Internet caused the number of hours children 14 and under spend watching TV to decline for the first time in 1998, a trend that has continued in recent years, he said. But only in 2002 did Internet usage begin to affect time spent with print media, and then only modestly.“Internet users watch 28% less TV than non-Internet users,” Mr. Cole said, “though Internet users still spend more time watching TV than they spend on the Internet.”
Growing penetration of broadband, which UCLA has found was used by 36.8% of Internet users last year, is at first blush good news for TV advertisers, because broadband users are more likely to go online in short 2- to 3-minute bursts rather than the 30 minutes common among modem users, he said. But the 2- to 3-minute bursts tend to come during TV commercial breaks, he said. “It’s becoming the thing people do during the commercials.”
Is Digital Democracy only for the left?
Tuesday, February 10th, 2004Is Digital Democracy only for the left?
One of the biggest triumphs of the Internet is that one can attend important gatherings without actually being there. A case in point was the Digital Democracy Teach-In yesterday in San Diego. The Webcast was outstanding and well worth the time.
In a nutshell, this event was a gathering of some of the top minds in the U.S. on the subject of the Internet and politics. Joe Trippi’s session was fascinating, but I especially enjoyed the panel with Jay Rosen, Jeff Jarvis and Dan Gilmor. The subject was “Gatekeepers No More? The Grassroots Challenges the Journalist Priesthood.”
Rosen was his usual brilliant self, and he nailed the subject repeatedly.
The production of silence has been a role of the mass media.Op-ed argument by journalists is not at the same level as bloggers.
The model of professionalism is coming undone. People view journalists themselves as insiders and that erodes their authority. They’re going to have to find a way to more legitimize their authority in ways that are more transparent, interactive, and open. Pointing to information will become an essential journalistic act.
Bloggers do it for love, which is a very powerful thing. Professionals may love their work, but they do it for pay. Amateurs are a threat, not because they’re going to take over, but because they have a different motivation.
The second thing that bugged me was the inane questions and commentary from the floor. Many people used the occasion to make speeches or hawk their own wares. Putting these types of people together with microphones is an incredible service to the world, but the whole thing comes crashing to the ground when some jerk decides it’s time for his opinion. During the aforementioned panel, for example, one questioner droned on for six minutes with his take on the subject. Who cares? His perspective was shallow and he never really asked a question. Granted, this is the stuff of blog comments, but in this format, it was inappropriate.
One interesting aside in all of this. The event was held at the Westin Horton Plaza San Diego, a very nice hotel/conference center. The hotel has a T-1 line, but this event overwhelmed the bandwidth at times. The audience was filled with bloggers who were writing and posting through the sessions via the hotel’s WiFi connectivity. The folks running the audio stream were smart enough to avoid WiFi, but the stream was constantly competing with the bloggers for bandwidth. This is only going to get worse downstream, something of which the hotel business is likely well aware.