Archive for March, 2004

Sadly, viewers are not TV’s “customers.”

Posted Monday, March 22nd, 2004

Sadly, viewers are not TV’s “customers.”
Dan Gillmor makes a great point this morning in a blog note from the PC Forum. He catches Google CEO Eric Schmidt claiming his company’s customers are end users, not advertisers. “This is not true,” says Dan. Good point. Business “customers” are those that bring money to the company’s revenue stream, and this includes television stations. A TV station’s “customers” are advertisers, not viewers. Like Google, it may be good business to make those viewers/users happy, but it’s misleading to refer to them as customers.

I once had a GM ask me if our business was to serve the public interest through information and entertainment programming or to make money. I naively said the former.

Nowadays, viewers are acutely aware that they aren’t why stations exist. Complaints about increases in commercials are built on that awareness, and it’s one of the reasons viewers have had enough. Alternative sources of information and entertainment are making it easy to turn the TV off and go elsewhere, which they’re doing in droves.

Don’t hate me for this analogy, but inadequately fed sheep will bolt to new pastures every time, but if you feed them, they’ll give you wool over and over again. The TV industry’s obsession with quarterly profits has killed the goose that laid the golden egg and, in so doing, accelerated the power of disruptive innovations that threaten to destroy the industry altogether.

Viewers may not be customers, but it’s foolish to treat them otherwise. This is an even more important lesson in the digital world. Will broadcasters figure it out?

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Starcom exec: Broadband is THE window to the future

Posted Monday, March 22nd, 2004

Starcom exec: Broadband is THE window to the future.
Writing for MediaDailyNews, Jeff Marshall, senior vice president-director, Starcom IP, the company’s digital business unit, notes that the 30-second television commercial may be dead, but it should become a part of everybody’s Internet advertising strategy.

With the breakneck increase in broadband access to the Internet, streaming and cached video have created a new period of evolution online: The Entertainment Age. We are now officially beyond the text heavy and simple graphics of information/news, communication (email and instant messaging), and commerce. The PC world can now lay claim to sight, sound, and motion in the context of reaching sizable audiences for advertising purposes.
Marshall says the analog communications world took 500 years to evolve — from the printing press to television — while digital has evolved in just nine short years. Citing a 30% broadband penetration by year’s end, he urges the advertising community to put their faith in online video advertising.
How will marketers adapt to the new world of ultimate consumer control and content/audience fragmentation? I argue that broadband is THE window to the future. Streaming/cached video online is essentially video-on-demand (VOD), which closely reflects the digital video recorder experience. No one knows for sure how the consumer will adapt to their new tools of control; however, lessons can be learned by paying attention to what works for marketers in broadband video. A glimpse into how we can create marketing success in a VOD and personal video recorder-controlled future can be found today. It is time for advertisers to buck up, because there is no better time than the present to look ahead.
Marshall is dead right in saying the Internet has moved beyond text, but even in the online VOD world, users will make a decision to view based on what’s presented to them in text or graphic form. Marshall is wrong, however, in advising us that the 30-second commercial is viable online. I agree that VOD (or VNOD, Video News on Demand) is the way of the future, but I can’t imagine the advertising community will lead us there. The Web is a finicky tool for them, because the consumer clearly is in charge. Interrupt them at your own risk, but give them the power to decide what to “watch,” and they’ll check it out, if they’re interested. This is the paradigm with which we all must work in the future. In our Postmodern, digital world, mass-marketing is dead, and the sooner we have the funeral, the sooner we’ll be free to develop real solutions.

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WiMax? What’s that?

Posted Friday, March 19th, 2004

WiMax? What’s that?
Wouldn’t you know that the day I blog (again) about the lack of 3G cellphones in the U.S., something comes down the pike that may outdo 3G anyway!! It’s called “WiMax,” a powerful wireless technology for fixed-line telecoms using the Internet. Reuters reports that it has big backer in Intel.

WiMAX, an industry standard that travels under the alternative name “802.16,” and is also backed by Finland’s mobile phones and networks vendor Nokia, offers lightning fast wireless data communications over distances as far as 50 kilometers.

Compare that with the first 3G networks which, although much faster than today’s mobile phone networks, are 30 times slower than WiMAX, and one 3G radio mast covers an area 10 times smaller than WiMAX.

But mobile phone companies have shelled out 100 billion euros for radio frequency licenses to run 3G networks and are currently spending tens of billions on the networks. WiMAX radio spectrum can be free, and carriers need fewer base stations to operate it.

Operators who do not yet have a mobile network can start one at low cost, using their fully amortized fixed-line networks to connect the wireless traffic to the Internet, and start grabbing back revenues that have leaked away to mobile rivals.

Whoo boy, this is pretty significant! The article goes on to say that WiMax will likely begin in the U.S. and that consumers should have it in 3-4 years.
WiMAX is such a hot topic that Intel’s executive board discusses its progress as much as three times a week, and by 2006 plans to start building it into its chip platforms, which power around 80 percent of all personal computers.
Given the work of people like Drazen Pantic with WiFi, this is likely to have a profound impact on the local “television” world by the end of the decade. I mean, wireless data over 50 kilometers is enough to create lots of hyperlocal “broadcasting.”

And so it goes.

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Can you be local from afar?

Posted Friday, March 19th, 2004

Can you be local from afar?
There were two developments this week from companies trying to get into the local information business from a distance. The first is from those wacky innovators at Google, who’ve come out with a beta version of local search. It works well enough at the beta level that local directory companies ought to be concerned, and local Websites would be smart to include it on theirs. The people at Google proved long ago (to me) that they can do what they say they can do, and this is no exception. Next will come paid listings, and everybody else will be out of luck. The only thing I don’t like about this is it’s strictly Yellow Pages stuff. That’s where the money is, so I don’t blame them, but I’d like to see Google take it further.

Of greater interest to local news entities is the introduction of Topix.net, a California company that’s trying to provide local news from anywhere. Using spiders similar to Google, Topix searches local Websites and aggregates the local content. It isn’t perfect, but it works well enough that I think local stations should pay attention. One day somebody will do this with just video. What Topix is doing is aggregating news, and while I think it’s pretty cool, it can’t hold a candle to the ultimate wonder of RSS.

In both cases, zip code works a whole lot better than a city name.

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Newsgathering via cellphone

Posted Friday, March 19th, 2004

Newsgathering via cellphone.
In the world of television news gathering, the drift towards smaller continues, and this is important, because the 2-person crew is moving towards the tar pits. I’m a heretic, I know, but European newsrooms are rapidly adopting Michael Rosenblum’s “videojournalist” (VJ) concept, wherein everybody in the shop is a reporter.

The convergence in this space that has the most disruptive potential is in the world of mobile phones, where Europe and Asia are far ahead of the U.S., thanks to the proliferation of third-generation (3G) phones. You may think it silly, but the day is coming when both newspaper and TV station reporters will gather news via 3G phones. Siemens and Nokia are both coming out with megapixel camera phones, and Siemens’ new M65 (pictured here) is designed for rugged outdoor media use. It generates 640×480 video.

All the really cool developments in mobile phones are outside the U.S. For example, Sony has joined with other makers to provide streaming music for phones in Finland and other European countries. In addition to the lack of 3G service in the U.S. (the bandwidth is currently used by analog TV), the phone companies of these other countries offer something called “Calling Party Pays” (CPP). That’s why they can provide services like streaming music. We’re so 20th century in some ways, but I have to believe we’ll catch up.

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Internet now reaches 3/4 of US. Or not

Posted Friday, March 19th, 2004

Internet now reaches 3/4 of US. Or not.
That’s 200 million folks, according to Nielsen/Net Ratings. Ah, but there are naysayers, including rivals eMarketer and comScore. (My Internet’s bigger than yours.)

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Sadly, reporters complain about email

Posted Wednesday, March 17th, 2004

Sadly, reporters complain about email.
The pedestal that is the press is showing today, thanks to reports of the debate over whether reporter email addresses should be made public on newspaper and news Websites. Mark Glaser continues a discussion that began with Jim Romenesko of Poynter. Glaser’s article in the Online Journalism Review asks the question, “Is a Reporter’s E-mail Address Really Anyone’s Business?”

You bet it is, if you work at one of the growing number of newspapers and their Web sites that are publishing the addresses with each story. Not all news organizations agree on their benefit, and some reporters are downright outraged by the amount of junk mail and spam they receive.
This is an important piece, because it reveals the reticence of many traditional media types to engage in dialogue with their readers/viewers. In Romenesko’s letters, Don Wycliff, public editor of the Chicago Tribune, noted that he was getting complaints from readers that they were unable to find the email addresses of reporters. Reporter complaints had apparently generated a much more difficult route through which readers had to navigate before getting to the contact page. Reporters who complain generally cite problems with junk mail and spam, but it goes further than that. As Dick Meyer, editorial director of CBSNews.com, noted in the article, “..reader feedback can counter the elitism that sometimes creeps into an editor’s thinking.”

One of the problems here is a lack of understanding in HTML code. Spammers send out little packets of data call “spiders” that search sites looking for valid email addresses. A typical link for an email address is coded this way:

The spider recognizes the structure “terry@donatacom.com” as an email address, captures it, and returns to its sender. Spiders are a fact of life with the Internet, but there are ways to overcome them. My favorite is a simple piece of JavaScript:

This assembles the email address by combining pieces, and the spiders can’t recognize it.

Spam and junk mail should not be a reason for reporters to avoid their in-boxes. Glaser’s conclusion is worth repeating here:

The e-mail avalanche will continue to cause headaches for overworked journalists. But as e-mail becomes an indispensable tool, it will likely become more ingrained in a reporter’s day-to-day life. Whether news organizations decide to include all e-mail addresses or some of them, the result will mean more tips and feedback for reporters, and a better understanding of the newsroom process for readers.
I couldn’t have said it better myself.

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Study reaction: Fear about opinionated news

Posted Tuesday, March 16th, 2004

Study reaction: Fear about opinionated news.
I came away from the Project for Excellence in Journalism inaugural “State of the News Media” study yesterday with a profound sense of hope. That’s probably because I’ve been writing about this stuff for so long that it’s gratifying to see others saying the same thing — especially from such a visible platform.

The study has been dissected and reported on in every major publication (and on most blogs). There’s been fear and trepidation expressed, but Dante Chinni, writing for the Christian Science Monitor, sees the changes as a threat to democracy itself:

…in 21st century America, …choice reigns even when it comes to what sort of news you are looking for. Don’t like what you’re hearing about the world on CNN? Try Fox. Is The Washington Post too conservative? Tune in Air America…

Opinion journalism is becoming less a way to round out the average American’s news meal and more its main course. We’ve been living in the world of instant spin for some time, but we’re now entering the world where the line between news and spin is vanishing. And of all the disquieting trends in journalism, this may be the most troubling because it touches on this country’s ability to make decisions as a people.

Everyone has opinions, but for those opinions to be worth something, they have to be based on facts so that we can come up with an accepted version of reality. That’s how democracy works. Some of the media are entering an age where facts are based upon opinion. And reality? Well, that all depends on whom you get your news from.

I think Chinni is dead wrong on this. “Accepted version of reality?” Says who? You mean, that’s what the “objective” press has been doing all these years? Oh, puh-leeze.

I don’t view any of this as a threat at all. In fact, I think it’s healthy that we’re losing the monolithic media machine in favor of those who are unafraid to mix argument with information. Opinion isn’t what’s happening in the epochal changes noted by the study; argument is the new ingredient. It’s actually taking us somewhat back to the future, because this country was built with a press that mixed argument with information. Chinni fears the loss of decision-making power, but I view it as just the opposite. Rather than be led along the primrose path by elites, argument helps empower people to govern themselves. Chinni is expressing the ultimate fear of the media status quo — that someday, they’ll be found out for not being as important as they think they are.

Welcome argument. Don’t run from it.

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Off-topic rant: SNL’s “Appalachian Emergency Room” skit

Posted Tuesday, March 16th, 2004

Off-topic rant: SNL’s “Appalachian Emergency Room” skit.
I live in Nashville and have been south of the Mason-Dixon line since 1979. They’ll never let me be a southerner down here, but that’s okay. In my mind, I have the t-shirt. A few weeks ago, I went after Bill Maher and what I felt was his very unfunny view of southerners, and now I have a few words for Saturday Night Live writers.

In “Appalachian Emergency Room” this weekend (a recurring sketch), we were taken into an obviously hicksville hospital where patients in stereotypical rural, redneck, southern garb had various afflictions. One man had a can of “Axe Bodyspray” stuck up his butt. Ben Affleck’s character had a ferret gripping his privates with its mouth. A woman had her hand stuck in a Tampax dispenser. But it wasn’t the situations that were intended to provide the humor. In dress, speech and mannerism, the laughs were provided by the hillbilly characters. Funny stuff, eh?

It would be easier for me to laugh at this kind of humor, if the concept was universally applied to all groups. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. What makes white, rural southerners immune from the laws of political correctness? These skits ridicule rural southerners in a way that would be viewed as ghastly to the moral rightness party, if they involved any other group of people. How about “Mo Bettah Emergency Room,” where we poke fun at urban blacks? Better yet, let’s do “Queers and Dears Emergency Room.” Or why not have a little good-natured ribbing with our Jewish friends in “Semite Emergency Room?” We could always do “Reservation Emergency Room,” couldn’t we? Or Chink, Spic, Wop, or Polack Emergency Room?

What makes the word “hillbilly” acceptable where “nigger” is the sin of all sins?

I lived and worked in Hawaii for two years, a place where racial humor is widely practiced and accepted. It was funny across-the-board, because there was no majority picking on minorities. Everybody was treated equally. If such an influential show as Saturday Night Live wishes to make a statement that ethnic or regional groups have funny quirks, then how about applying it equally? It’ll never happen.

From my perch here in the south, I am continually astounded at the pompous and arrogant manner in which educated northerners have fun at the expense of rural southerners, when they’ve never met one, much less found themselves in the midst of the rural south’s gracious hospitality, warmth, self-reliance and family ties. To broadbrush an entire population group by mocking its extreme is just sick, and it’s the kind of thing entertainment producers and writers avoid with every group except white, rural southerners.

We poke fun at ourselves down here, like all groups do, and redneck comedians are among the funniest on the planet. But — like Richard Pryor, who found wonderful humor in his own culture — they’re making fun of themselves. It’s very different when those outside the group do so, especially from a visible platform such as Saturday Night Live. Then, it comes off as dehumanizing.

It’s bigotry in its ugliest form, because it hides behind the mask of fun.

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Study: Local TV better off than most, but still threatened

Posted Monday, March 15th, 2004

Study: Local TV better off than most, but still threatened.
The Project for Excellence in Journalism report on local television makes a strong case for a major reinvention. Here are the conclusions as offered by the study:

In the end, the issue for local television is similar to that for newspapers. It is such a robust business that declining viewership has not hurt revenues. Yet even more than newspapers, local television news invests little in improving the product. Most of the investment going on is technological and has been mandated by the government in exchange for bandwidth.

Yet the product is getting thinner, and newsrooms are clearly being stretched. Now that local television news is losing viewers as fast as the networks, that basic business approach seems questionable. Television, moreover, appears to be hurt more by the Internet than print, and clearly the potential of local news Internet sites raises that threat even more. The Internet will allow a print outlet in a town to challenge the greatest assets of the local television station -immediacy, availability and the ability to update.

The answer would seem to be convergence and improving the product. The industry seems disposed to do the convergence, but there is too little evidence that it is committed to improvements. Indeed, most of the evidence would seem to suggest the opposite.

I completely agree that the smartest option for local TV is to exploit the revenue flexibility offered by a multimedia platform. And I further concur that the fact that local TV is still making a lot of money is dangerously seductive, because it creates a false sense of security where there is none.

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A salute to television news photographers

Posted Monday, March 15th, 2004

A salute to television news photographers.
I was fortunate to learn the value of great photographers early in my career, and that’s why I’m happy to provide a link to this year’s winners of the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) Best of Television Photojournalism 2004. Among them is a local Nashville station, WTVF-TV, who won the large market “National Station of the Year” award — a biggie. You’ll need Flash 7 on your computer to view the files, but it’s time well spent.

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Study notes eight major trends

Posted Monday, March 15th, 2004

Study notes eight major trends.
The Project for Excellence in Journalism study was funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts. A download of the Executive Summary is available in PDF form. Here are the eight major trends noted in the study:

  • A growing number of news outlets are chasing relatively static or even shrinking audiences for news. One result of this is that most sectors of the news media are losing audience. That audience decline, in turn, is putting pressures on revenues and profits, which leads to a cascade of other implications. The only sectors seeing general audience growth today are online, ethnic and alternative media.
  • Much of the new investment in journalism today - much of the information revolution generally - is in disseminating the news, not in collecting it. Most sectors of the media are cutting back in the newsroom, both in terms of staff and in the time they have to gather and report the news. While there are exceptions, in general journalists face real pressures trying to maintain quality.
  • In many parts of the news media, we are increasingly getting the raw elements of news as the end product. This is particularly true in the newer, 24-hour media. In cable and online, there is a tendency toward a jumbled, chaotic, partial quality in some reports, without much synthesis or even the ordering of the information. There is also a great deal of effort, particularly on cable news, that is put into delivering essentially the same news repetitively without any meaningful updating.
  • Journalistic standards now vary even inside a single news organization. Companies are trying to reassemble and deliver to advertisers a mass audience for news not in one place, but across different programs, products and platforms. To do so, some are varying their news agenda, their rules on separating advertising from news and even their ethical standards. What will air on an MSNBC talk show on cable might not meet the standards of NBC News on broadcast, and the way that advertising intermingles with news stories on many newspaper Web sites would never be allowed in print. Even the way a television network treats news on a prime time magazine versus a morning show or evening newscast can vary widely. This makes projecting a consistent sense of identity and brand more difficult. It also may reinforce the public perception evident in various polls that the news media lack professionalism and are motivated by financial and self-aggrandizing motives rather than the public interest.
  • Without investing in building new audiences, the long-term outlook for many traditional news outlets seems problematic. Many traditional media are maintaining their profitability by focusing on costs, including cutting back in their newsrooms. Our study shows general increases in journalist workload, declines in numbers of reporters, shrinking space in newscasts to make more room for ads and promotions, and in various ways that are measurable, thinning the product. This raises questions about the long term. How long can news organizations keep increasing what they charge advertisers to reach a smaller audience? If they maintain profits by cutting costs, social science research on media suggests they will accelerate their audience loss.
  • Convergence seems more inevitable and potentially less threatening to journalists than it may have seemed a few years ago. At least for now, online journalism appears to be leading more to convergence with older media rather than replacement of it. When audience trends are examined closely, one cannot escape the sense that the nation is heading toward a situation, especially at the national level, in which institutions that were once in different media, such as CBS and The Washington Post, will be direct competitors on a single primary field of battle - online. The idea that the medium is the message increasingly will be passé. This is an exciting possibility that offers the potential of new audiences, new ways of storytelling, more immediacy and more citizen involvement.
  • The biggest question may not be technological but economic. While journalistically online appears to represent opportunity for old media rather than simply cannibalization, the bigger issue may be financial. If online proves to be a less useful medium for subscription fees or advertising, will it provide as strong an economic foundation for newsgathering as television and newspapers have? If not, the move to the Web may lead to a general decline in the scope and quality of American journalism, not because the medium isn’t suited for news, but because it isn’t suited to the kind of profits that underwrite newsgathering.
  • Those who would manipulate the press and public appear to be gaining leverage over the journalists who cover them. Several factors point in this direction. One is simple supply and demand. As more outlets compete for their information, it becomes a seller’s market for information. Another is workload. The content analysis of the 24-hour-news outlets suggests that their stories contain fewer sources. The increased leverage enjoyed by news sources has already encouraged a new kind of checkbook journalism, as seen in the television networks efforts to try to get interviews with Michael Jackson and Jessica Lynch, the soldier whose treatment while in captivity in Iraq was exaggerated in many accounts.

These are all wonderful points and worthy of much discussion in the days, weeks and months ahead. I salute Tom Rosenstiel and his entire staff for an outstanding piece of work and am especially pleased that this is the first of what promises to be an annual report. We all need it.

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Study: Internet offers the strengths of all media

Posted Monday, March 15th, 2004

Study: Internet offers the strengths of all media.
The online section of the Project for Excellence in Journalism report on the current state of American journalism concludes with a very positive outlook for Web-based news. Along the way, it touches on something I’ve been preaching for a long time — that in the future, there will be no difference between a television news operation and a newspaper operation.

What is most intriguing is the evidence that television rather than print is suffering most (from audience erosion). This is surprising because, at this point, the Web is still largely a text-based medium. One might have thought that the print media would thus be hurt by the greater convenience that the Web offers, in much the same way that cable seems to have eroded the appeal of network television. This is not the case.

What this means down the road is harder to figure. The future, say online professionals we have consulted, is an age in which the distinctions between media blur. Online, The Washington Post will not be a newspaper company but a text, picture and video news provider. CBS News will not be a broadcaster. It, too, will be a text, audio and video news organization. Nor will news just be consumed on computers, television or in print. News will be made to fit computers, PDAs, phones and perhaps more. Before too long, people riding the subway home from work may turn on their phones and watch a network anchor delivers the news, not because the anchor happens to be on but because he or she is “on,” on demand.

Let me repeat my concern for local broadcasters. If you don’t fully embrace this technology — with resources and energy, including sales — you’re going to be in a very difficult position in a very short period of time. After all, a community cannot and will not support an unlimited number of these “text, audio and video news organizations.”

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Study: The Web might have a negative impact on American journalism

Posted Monday, March 15th, 2004

Study: The Web might have a negative impact on American journalism.
The Project for Excellence in Journalism study of online news makes some interesting points, but misses the mark on others. The report rightly notes that the Internet is becoming a major source of news in America, but it grossly understates the importance of blogs — citing Pew data from the beginning of the Iraq war 12 months ago. As mentioned earlier, the study notes that the biggest problem for the Web is its inability to provide a “robust” revenue source for journalism and concludes that this might make the Web a net liability.

The Web is the only part of the mainstream news business that generally is seeing audiences grow, especially among the young. People like the convenience of the Web, its availability at work, its speed for delivering breaking news, and increasingly they are coming to trust the accuracy of the information they receive there. The problem is an economic one. How will Web journalism begin to pay its own way? If people increasingly substitute the Web for their old media before a robust economic model for the Web evolves, the economic effect could be devastating for journalism. Companies might begin to cut back significantly on their newsgathering abilities, as audiences abandon profitable old platforms in favor of less profitable new ones. The net in this case might weaken, not strengthen, the economic vitality of news organizations and the quality of American journalism.
I think that’s defensive and misleading. It’s only negative for the status quo, and who needs more of that?

While the online media is dominated by big media companies, the study also notes that: “There are also a myriad of local Internet news sites, whose goals are not to compete for the nationwide audience but rather to appeal to the local community.” This strikes at the core of why I’m trying so hard to help local television figure this out. The eyes of most Web observers are fixed on macro movements, when the real action is in the trenches, where people meet and discuss via this wonderful, two-way communications medium. This is where profit will be found, not with the easy money scheme for which everybody keeps searching.

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New study: We’re too busy disseminating news to actually gather it

Posted Monday, March 15th, 2004

New study: We’re too busy disseminating news to actually gather it.
We’ve all known that cutbacks in staff are turning news products into a soggy, homogeneous mass, but now comes empirical evidence thereof. The folks at the Project For Excellence in Journalism are releasing the study today, but an advance look provided by MediaDailyNews skims the surface and (hopefully) opens eyes.

Fragmentation has fractured audiences among onetime news media leaders, with the circulation of daily newspapers falling 11 percent since 1990 and TV ratings for evening news and late local news dropping double digits since the 1990s. Growth has occurred in other places, however, particularly among cable and Internet outlets. Today, the study said, too many outlets are chasing a shrinking or at best flat audience with more resources going toward the dissemination of news than collecting or carefully analyzing it. Personnel cutbacks have left their mark on newsgathering, the study said.
The article notes that while news is moving to the Web — and that means easy access and lots of reporting — nobody has figured out how to make money off of it yet. Sigh. We’re so accustomed, in our Modernist world, to think that formulas and logic will produce happiness and wealth. Not so, in a Postmodern world. Nobody is going to “figure out” how to manipulate the Web into a giant cash cow. That’s what caused the original bubble of the late 1990s. The Internet is a bottom-up cultural phenomenon. I think the days of big money journalism are on the wane, and I say, “Thank God.” People will make a living downstream as journalists — and some may make a very good living — but it won’t come from any formula. It’ll be through creativity, hard work, and inviting people into the dance. They will determine who makes money and, most importantly, how.

Update: Here’s the actual report. I’ll write more as I read it. Good stuff.

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Blending the old and the new seems like a good idea

Posted Saturday, March 13th, 2004

Blending the old and the new seems like a good idea.
Being the lazy sort that I am, I don’t usually blog on Saturday, but there’s something in the works that requires comment today. I think this is potentially very significant in the evolution of media planning, and that means it could have profound implications for television downstream.

MediaPost, the folks who bring us the online MediaDailyNews and a host of other wonderful online media resources, also publishes Media Magazine. They produce two different versions, one for traditional media, the other for interactive (online). These two advertising silos have existed since the earlier days of the web, and there has always been talk about merging the two. The idea seems to make sense, but does it really?

David Cohen, senior-VP and interactive media director at Universal McCann Interactive, raised the issue again on Friday in a MediaPost guest commentary. Judging by the reaction of readers, there’s a lot of energy behind Cohen’s suggestion that MediaPost combine both editions into one. In introducing his piece, the editors noted, “While he is an online media practitioner, Cohen often has a seat at the table with the “grownups” — his traditional media brethren.”

The fact that Media Magazine continues to publish a “traditional media” edition and an “online media” edition, perpetuates the “silo” mentality that our industry has been working so hard to eliminate. Digital media should be viewed as a valuable part of an overall communications plan, not a stand- alone entity. The longer that we keep our industry shrouded in a cloak of complexity and exclusivity, the longer we’ll remain the 3% solution.

As interactive media practitioners, we must have a vested interest in the news, issues, and developments taking place in the traditional media and marketing world. Online media and marketing does not exist in a vacuum. It is important for online and traditional media practitioners to understand the overall context within which we all operate. Insights into the challenges facing marketers from an overall media perspective can give us a better sense of which areas we can complement an overall communications program (i.e., “Having some trouble in the upfront? Hey, did you know that there are millions of video streams available online?”).

Conversely, I speak to traditional planners and buyers all the time who are looking for the best resources to stay on top of the rapidly changing interactive landscape. Anyone who lives in the world of advertising and marketing understands that there are shifts of epic proportions occurring in the way that media is consumed. It is a seamless blend of platforms and content, which regularly cross the analog-digital border.

Like it or not, our worlds are inextricably linked and rushing closer and closer each day.

Let’s assume for a moment that this were to happen and then let’s further assume that what follows is one happy family of traditional and interactive marketers. Who runs things? The traditionalists who are already entrenched in power? Or the newbies that the article assumes are just dying to dine at the table of the adults?

As a part of Universal McCann, Mr. Cohen’s opinion springs from the top of the marketing heap, and the view from there is multi-directional and includes the status quo. I’m one of those who believes the age of mass marketing is drawing to a close, and the Internet is making that happen. The status quo has a great deal to gain in a Borg-esque assimilation of the new into the old, and I’m just not sure that’s in the best interests of the baby. I could be convinced otherwise, but the idea gives me pause. Sitting with the grown-ups is fine, but there comes a time when the children become the grownups.

This is one of those times, an era of epochal change in our culture. Marketing isn’t changing it. People are, everyday folks who are tired of being manipulated and herded for the sake of somebody else’s economic gain. Markets are conversations, and therein lies the power of the Web. Do the traditionalists have to come along? Absolutely not! The 3 percent solution of today is tomorrow’s 5 percent solution, and so on. The point is that the future is interactive. It is the engine driving the change, and only if a combined magazine approached it from that perspective would it get my vote.

Whether there becomes a blended marketing universe or not, it has implications for television. If it were to happen, I think the downward spiral of ad dollars for TV would rapidly accelerate, because more traditionalists would embrace the power of the Web at the agency level. If the Interactive marketing world remained an independent silo, the erosion will still continue, but it would be driven at the advertiser level, not from the agencies. The latter is trouble for the traditional marketing industry, and that’s what Mr. Cohen’s suggestion is really all about anyway.

This is an interesting issue to watch.

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TV’s Measurement Conundrum

Posted Friday, March 12th, 2004

The Internet’s precision is a problem for Nielsen.
Here is the latest essay in my series, TV News in a Postmodern World. This one examines the acrimony between the television and advertising industries over Nielsen methodology and why advertisers are moving money from TV to the Internet. It’s called, “TV’s Measurement Conundrum.”

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Holiday humbug from my dog

Posted Thursday, March 11th, 2004

Holiday humbug from my dog.
Here we have Piffers, once again
asking the question, “Why Me?”

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

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A creative argument

Posted Thursday, March 11th, 2004

A creative argument.
I love The Register, the offbeat British tabloid with an eye on technology and the like. If you’ve not become a fan already, you will be with just one reading. They’re now embroiled in an argument with a New York Times writer over who created the T-shirt, “My job went to India and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.” The Register claims they coined the phrase. The Times says it came from a T-shirt company in Palo Alto. The Register offers a daily email, which is regular reading for me. Their articles on the war between the recording industry and its customers have been fact-filled and hilarious at the same time, and it was through The Register that I learned of the downsides of Britain’s technological war on speeders, when one of their radar cameras clocked a Volvo going in excess of 400mph. If only we could have such fun with the news.

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The issue isn’t freedom; it’s time!

Posted Wednesday, March 10th, 2004

The issue isn’t freedom; it’s time!
The ad industry is meeting in New York today to discuss the state of TV advertising, but a study to be released at the gathering suggests that consumers have already moved past the issue. The study, by Knowledge Networks/SRI and reported in MediaDailyNews, shows that while consumers generally agree that watching ads is a fair price for free television, they don’t want to be the ones paying the price.

Asked about a host of features associated with new TV technologies, the vast majority of consumers — 74 percent — said they considered the ability to skip TV commercials the most important to them, and they’d even be willing to sacrifice the convenience of such services as video-on-demand, and the frugality of “free” TV to have that capability.

(David) Tice (director of the Home Technology Monitor at Knowledge Networks/SRI) said the findings reveal a disconnect between how industry players are looking at the TV advertising model and how consumers see it.

“The bottom line that consumers understand how the TV advertising model works. They don’t see it as their responsibility to make TV work the way it works today,” explained Tice.

This is an important piece of research for the advertising and television industries to consider as they look at the future. In a Postmodern world, consumers are fully in charge, and technology serves their need to manage their lives. As I have said often, time is the real issue with skipping commercials. I’ve heard lots of arguments about the quality and repetition of the ads, but the most important point is that people don’t have time to sit through an hour of commercial and promotional announcements in a typical 3-hour prime time television viewing.

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