Watching TV on the train (or anywhere).
Watching TV on the train (or anywhere).
I love the BBC. They’re so far ahead of the New Media game that American TV will never catch up. They are actually doing many of the things that people like myself have been talking about for years. It makes me want to return to the motherland one day.
The latest is an experiment to provide TV programs via the Internet, so that people can watch what they want whenever and wherever they want. What I like most is their justification, as told to The Independent by Ashley Highfield, the BBC’s director of New Media and technology.
“If we don’t enter this market, then exactly what happened to the music industry could happen to us, where we ignore it, keep our heads in the sand and everybody starts posting the content up there and ripping us off.”
“We might get an over-positive response because I think a lot of BBC staff would love to be able to catch up on the programs they missed last night on the bus or on the train,” Mr Highfield said. “The quality is staggeringly good. It’s slightly better than you get on the seat-backs if you are in a plane, although PDAs have a slightly smaller screen.”After the BBC pilot, an external trial will be launched with 1,000 people selected from subscribers with the broadband service providers AOL, BT and Tiscali.
The trial will examine whether people watch more television with iMP and if they change their viewing patterns, such as “starting to watch EastEnders in the morning”, Mr Highfield said.
“If it seems that for a substantial part of the audience this is a very valuable way to consume media, then this is something we are going to have to take seriously,” he said. “We will have to take some punts but if the feedback is strongly positive we will have to look at how we clear bulk content and how we start to roll this out widely.”
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Truth matters, but whose?
Truth matters, but whose?
Former New York Times editor Gerald Boyd told a gathering in Kansas City Friday that the public perception of the media has become increasingly negative, partly because of the glut of information sources with varying standards and values. He also made this important statement:
“I don’t pretend to have all the answers. I don’t even pretend to know all the questions, but I know that truth matters. It is our currency, it is the foundation of our profession.”
(From the Lawrence Journal-World)
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Automakers to challenge networks on upfront
Automakers to challenge networks on upfront.
AdAge is reporting that major automobile makers plan to confront the networks over diminishing audiences and rising ad prices next month.
Several major car marketers are vowing to move ad dollars elsewhere if national broadcast networks seek double-digit rate hikes in the upcoming upfront ad-selling period. Some say they plan to decrease upfront spending no matter what happens as they strive for a more targeted reach.…Ford Motor Co.’s Richard Stoddart, marketing communications manager of the Ford division, says the automaker “has several scenarios for allocations” depending on what happens with rates sought in this spring’s upfront. However, no matter what the rates are, Mr. Stoddart already plans to increase his Internet and direct-mail spending as he prepares for several crucial launches this fall.
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I hate to seem cynical, but…
I hate to seem cynical, but…
Total ad spending on ABC, CBS and NBC jumped a surprising 10.6 percent in the first quarter, according to a study by the Broadcast Cable Financial Management Association and reported by MediaDailyNews. This, of course, is good news for beleaguered broadcasters. However, it flies in the face of expectations by observers and people in the ad industry, and it comes just a month before the important “upfront,” where big money is spent guaranteeing ad avails for the entire season.
And this gets me to thinking.
Who are/is the Broadcast Cable Financial Management Association? It’s the trade organization for financial management within the broadcast and cable industries. Their mission statement:
To be the premier source of education, networking, information, and signature products to meet the diverse needs of financial and business professionals in the broadcast, cable and electronic media industries.
Ernst & Young produced the study using “self-reported” data. That means numbers are provided by the people with the most to gain in a positive upfront, ABC, CBS and NBC. Again, I’m not suggesting anything untoward. It’s just all very convenient heading into the most debated upfront in memory.
Here are the findings, courtesy of MediaDailyNews
First Quarter ‘04 Network Ad Sales
---Q1 '04 Ad $--- Vs. Q1 '03 Primetime $1,796.6 million +10.9% Late Night $197.0 million +14.0% A.M. $237.8 million +21.5% Daytime $255.5 million +7.1% Kids $10.9 million +30.3% Sports $809.9 million +9.4% News $152.1 million +0.3% Total $3,459.8 million +10.6%
Source: Broadcast Cable Financial Management Association from self- reported data from ABC, CBS and NBC compiled by Ernst & Young LLP.
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Nightline proves (again) the media’s self-deception
Nightline proves (again) the media’s self-deception.
I don’t do a lot of political commentary, only when events point to the rise in Postmodernism or the elitism practiced daily by the mainstream press. There is no more visible god of the media elite than Ted Koppel, and I just can’t keep my mouth shut about this one. The Nightline reading of the names of soldiers killed in Iraq, while denying the political nature of the broadcast, was among the most arrogant displays of media self-deception I’ve ever witnessed.
The weekend papers and blogs were filled with commentary about the Nightline commentary, and I won’t repeat everything that’s been written…just a couple. Jay Rosen (I want to be like him when I grow up) nails it in a lengthy piece titled “Of Course Ted Koppel Was Making a Political Statement. So What?”
The press in general, and Koppel in a painfully real way this week, have over the years learned to describe themselves as political innocents, people who are without a politics that enters into the news. (I have also called this general philosophy the View From Nowhere.)So I don’t disagree with Jeff Jarvis when he writes: “Koppel says he wasn’t making a political statement. That’s what’s dishonest about it.”
Political innocence is performed during controversies like this. The ceremony, conducted by journalists in their self explanations, presents a narrow and formulaic view of political life– and of statement making. You can hear it perfectly in one part of Koppel’s closing explanation Friday night. “The reading tonight of those 721 names was neither intended to provoke opposition to the war, nor was it meant as an endorsement.” The trouble with this kind of explanation, even when true, is that it only talks about the politics that isn’t going on– we’re neither this nor that.
” target=”_blank”>fascinating thought about presenting fallen soldiers as victims.
The device (reading names of the dead) presents those listed as victims. That is how the device has been used in print with the dead in Vietnam, from AIDS, from urban crime, 9/11 and other acts of terrorism, and so on. Victims.And where there are victims, there is a wrong done to them — by man or nature.
But these are not victims. They are soldiers who went to do a job and did so valiantly. But that is not how I saw them presented last night on Nightline. I did not see a tribute. I saw victims. And that is the problem I have with using that device now.
I’m more taken by Koppel’s demonstration of the pedestal upon which he believes he resides. The magnificence of this arrogance is surpassed only by its self-deception, and here’s the real problem. When Life Magazine did its thing, it did so from a position of trust. That gave the anti-war issue the weight that it carried. That trust may not have been merited, but it was there just the same. It’s a different world today, and the Nightline political agenda is transparent, regardless of what Koppel and ABC insist. The transparency is there, because people are just better informed and able to make their own decisions today. They know the game. They know the rules. They know what’s really going on. Have you seen the approval numbers for the press lately? They ain’t good. The emperor has no clothes.
Koppel and ABC are trying to defend getting caught masturbating in public. In so doing, they’re accelerating their own fall and splattering their goo on all of us.
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The world could use Bobby Jones today
The world could use Bobby Jones today.
Before Americans came to believe that life was about what you could get out of it, before greed was good, before cheating to get ahead was fashionable, before Enron and Exxon and Martha Stewart, before victim status became profitable, before baseball strikes and hockey lock-outs, before political correctness, before the assumption of guilt, before businesses sued their customers, before their customers stole from them, before Internet bubbles and pandemic selfishness, there was Bobby Jones.
I went to see the movie Bobby Jones: A Stroke of Genius this afternoon. It opened yesterday, and I wanted to see it, so my girlfriend and I went to the first matinee. I already knew the story, but the film was wonderful. Jim Caviezel’s performance as Jones is solid, but I really enjoyed Jeremy Northam as Walter Hagen and Malcolm McDowell as O.B. Keeler, sportswriter, mentor and friend.
But the sad thing was that there were perhaps 10 people in the theater. Revenge, action, sex and idiocy films were packed. Most reviewers have trashed the film, but I think they miss the point — probably because they’re not golfers. This film will die on the vine at a time when people need to hear its message…
…of a man who stood for things like honor, integrity and character.
Things we need a whole lot more of today.
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