Everybody’s a’twitter over podcasts these days, and why not? The announcement that iTunes will soon be podcast-friendly was a biggie. ABC and CBS have announced their plans to podcast, and the snowball effect is underway.
While I recommend that my clients podcast (It’s more “you can’t not.”), I have doubts about the long-term legs of the genre for broadcasters, unless it’s used to deliver different types of content. I’m just not convinced the concept has been fully thought through. The idea that Dave Winer and Adam Curry first innovated involved podcasting as a way anybody could record and distribute an audio file via the Internet for playback on an MP3 player. So if I wanted to, say, make a regular audio “letter” to family members, I could record it, put it on my server, and distribute it to family members via RSS. Same thing with a group of friends, or business, or church, or civic group, or social organization. If I had an offbeat niche, I could create a program and put it out there for anybody who might interested. Cool.
Then came the pros, and now we have Curry doing a satellite radio program with podcasts and a radio station in San Francisco programming their day with them. Podcasts are viewed — in these applications — as content for mass marketing. This is the same model that has traditional media outlets seeing dollar signs. After all, it’s easy to attach an ad or ads to my “radio” program. And I don’t have to do much work either. It’s just like the good old days — top/down mass media. It’s the perfect repurposing vehicle.
Or not.
The networks and local stations are offering newscasts, sportscasts, weathercasts and a host of other “casts” via the podcast format and technology. And the BIG question is who will download and listen to them? If you’re on the way to work and you want a newscast, well, we already have this thing called radio for that. If you’ve missed the evening news, but you sure wanted to see hear what Ken and Barbie had to say, well, we already have this thing called a DVR. Okay, so let’s say you’re sitting a work and you want to get caught up with the news or the weather or the sports, well, we have this thing called the Internet, and it’s very efficient.
So who wants to download an MP3 newscast? Nobody.
Terry, you’re being cynical again.
Alright, let’s say you’re smart enough to recognize the above, so you plan to create separate, more compelling pieces of content for this. But that means more work for people. There’s thinking and writing and music and production, to say nothing of uploading, labelling and promoting. If you’ve ever done radio, you’ll know what I mean.
So to television stations who are considering (or doing) this, I offer two pieces of advice. One, don’t expect a great return, if all you’re going to do with this is repurpose TV news or TV news segments. Original or expanded coverage is much more likely to be compelling to podcast users. Secondly, don’t let this fool you into thinking you’ve entered the new media/multimedia world. You haven’t. Just like your portal website, all you’ve done is find another way to do the same thing you already do. Repurposed content — regardless of the venue — is just same-o, same-o.
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Meanwhile, the personal conflict between Dave Winer and Adam Curry over authorship of podcasting has now gone public. Alex Beam, a columnist for The Boston Globe, has apparently made up his mind that the title should go to Curry. In a piece called, “Bickering among the ‘Pod squad,” he refers to Winer as a geek and “one who does not play well with others,” while calling Curry, among other things, a “supercool helicopter pilot and promoter extraordinaire.” Hmm.
The issue is a no-brainer to me. Here’s what I said in an entry dated October 7th of last year:
Let me add my voice to those of Jeff Jarvis, Doc Searls, Dave Winer (the father of RSS), Adam Curry (former MTV jock) and others who are touting podcasting as a major new media development. Curry and Winer are pioneering the concept, which is essentially a radio show that’s included in an RSS feed for downloading (it can be automatic) to your hard drive and then loaded into an iPod for listening whenever and wherever.
This entry was written shortly after Doc began counting Google references to the topic. The point is if it was being pioneered by Curry and Winer (read: TOGETHER), how is it that Adam Curry is now referred to as “The Podfather.” Sounds like it’s that “promoter extraordinaire” at work.
Dave and I have had words in the past, but I support him completely on this one.
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Wednesday, May 25th, 2005
I encourage my clients to get involved in their local blogging communities. I’ve arranged meet-ups and gotten to know some wonderful and talented people. Most observers — and especially those from the mainstream press — fail to understand the community aspect of blogging. This is a critical mistake, in my judgment, because it is the community that will outlive any other aspect of the personal media revolution.
Steve Rubel points to yet another commentary this morning that predicts the blogging bubble will burst. Steve agrees, in part, with USAToday’s Kevin Maney, who writes that blogs will become a part of the overall communications fabric.
So, yeah, blogs are cool. Anything that gives people a voice benefits society and makes us all better and smarter - and, as bloggers have proved, makes established information outlets more accountable. But blogs don’t seem to be the second coming of the printing press. They’re just another turn of the wheel in communications technology.
The problem with this perspective is that it dismisses the community that exists among bloggers, whether that community is defined by geography or common purpose. This is what makes blogging different than anything that has come before it, and it’s what will give it legs.
Think about it for a minute. Maney suggests that a/the purpose of blogging is to benefit society and make us all better and smarter. This is the assumption that “professional” journalists make of their own role, one that is rather quickly being proven false. Blogging IS community, and often at its very best. Most of the local bloggers I’ve met blog because it’s fun and a great way to meet other people. They’ll outlast — by a mile — those who are in it to benefit society and make us all better and smarter.
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Wednesday, May 25th, 2005
That’s San Francisco entrepreneur Alex Rowland’s neat explanation of the era in which we find ourselves online. In his continuing series of essays on open versus closed distribution networks, Alex explores the difficult question of how to make money when everything is free.
While time and attention is not itself liquid, there is already a group of people who specialize in converting time and attention into real dollars. They’re called advertisers…
…Once producers learn how to combine the inherent advantages of open networks with low-cost content development, the result can actually be greater profitability with less risk on smaller capital investments. But in order to realize these benefits, producers must learn to master the economics of time and attention. They must focus less effort on building walls and more on building community; less focus on the lecture and more focus on the conversation.
Most will fail. But some old media dinosaurs will make the leap from closed to open. In doing so, they will join an emerging global community of millions of producers, advertisers, and consumers, each striving to contribute something valuable to the conversation. The result will be a network defined by a staggering degree of diversity, but also rich in the possibility of profit.
The thing I like most about Alex’s writing is that it comes from the mind of an entrepreneur. He’s always thinking money, but his personality is packed with creativity and possibility. He’s right, of course, and I’ll add that the real explosion in all of this will take place when local advertisers jump into the pond. That is just around the corner.
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Wednesday, May 25th, 2005
Greensboro news photographer and blogger Stewart Pittman (a.k.a. “Lenslinger”) noticed an army of tiny cameras and citizen journalists at the implosion of a local building Monday and writes of feeling a bit like a dinosaur:
How long before my oversized fancy-cam looks like an early 80’s bag phone? About the same time the six o clock news begins looking like it was shot by a hopped-up junkie with a twitchy digital, I‘m guessing. The next ten years promise to feature a rapid breakdown of my chosen craft. Whatever new paradigm takes hold, it’s a safe bet the two-person news crew is an endangered species, driven to oblivion by technology and methods that are faster and cheaper, but not necessarily better.
Stewart laments the loss of quality that Betacams and two-person crews bring to television, and hopes he’ll be doing something else when these little cameras take over TV news. It’s an understandable position, but I was there for identical arguments when we moved from CP16a film cameras to videotape, and I firmly believe this is a similar situation. It’ll be different, but the question of whether it’ll be better or worse can’t be answered ahead of time.
Stewart is a terrific shooter and an excellent writer. If his blog isn’t on your regular reading list, I encourage you to make it so.
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Tuesday, May 24th, 2005
I sat down with Brian McLaren Saturday morning to talk with him about postmodernism, the church and the media, and the interview is presented here: 10 Questions for Brian McLaren.
For those of you who don’t follow this stuff (perhaps most of you), McLaren is a controversial Christian pastor and author. He’s a leader in the “Emergent Church” movement, and Time Magazine listed him in February as one of the 25 most influential Evangelicals in America. He’s controversial, because his postmodern perspective allows him to blend the best of mainstream and evangelical Protestantism and ignore the rest. He’s branded a heretic by some. His views on the Christian Right and the power of Christian broadcasters are insightful and provocative. And he believes “the church” and “the media” are both influencing the culture in very similar ways (and not necessarily for the good). Here’s an excerpt:
In the Christian media, I don’t know the exact number on this, but there are Christian radio stations and Christian-owned television stations, all of which I think are incredibly powerful. I think they get people elected. And they’re all owned by a small number of people with a very strong political agenda. Now they tend to complain that the mainstream media have a liberal bias, but of course, their solution to that isn’t to try to give something with more balance; it’s to have an opposite bias. Whenever everybody is trying to counter balance each other, it pretty much guarantees that everything we see veers toward Jerry Springer.
This is a very long interview, and I apologize for that. I just couldn’t bring myself to edit the thing. It is, however, a fascinating look inside the mind of one of the most original thinkers of our time, and I encourage you to take the time to read it.
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Monday, May 23rd, 2005
MediaPost commentator George Simpson writes so much satire that it’s hard to know when to take him seriously. I think he’s being serious this morning in The Bursting Blog Bubble, but I wish it was satire. That’s because I’ve written often here about my fondness for his writing. This time, I’m afraid, he’s out of touch with reality.
George takes some recent data from Pew and eMarketer to come to the conclusion that blog reading has crested. He needs to speak with Dave Silfry at Technorati.
Reading between the lines, it’s pretty easy to see where Simpson is coming from: he’s a mainstream journalist begging and praying for the moment that the disruptive innovations around him will go away. Denying the personal media revolution is extraordinarily foolish these days, but it’s what we’ve come to expect from the outside-looking-in viewpoint.
It could just be that folks are too filled up with news and opinions they get from elsewhere–that blogs are just one too many dishes on the info-smorgasbord. Isn’t that why we read newspapers and watch TV news, so that somebody with some professional judgment can search through all the chaff and find the grains of wheat?
No, George, this is exactly what people are trying to get away from, because they don’t trust that “professional judgment” anymore.
Simpson also takes a shot at my friend, Steve Rubel, in this piece. That’s crap, George. Steve responded this morning that it’s too bad MediaPost doesn’t include comments and trackback with Simpson’s pieces, so that we could engage him in a conversation. But that’s exactly what the lecture model of news can’t handle, and that’s really what’s behind Simpson’s commentary this morning. Besides, nobody in the blogging world is seriously suggesting that blogging will supplant the mainstream press. But the “all or nothing” meme is pressed by those whose fatted calf is under attack, because it helps sell their perspective.
He’s still a good writer. Misguided, perhaps, but a good writer.
Sigh.
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Monday, May 23rd, 2005
Dan Gillmor reports on last night’s announcement by Apple’s Steve Jobs that the newest version of iTunes will be podcast-friendly and rightly notes that the genre is about to explode.
This is potentially a big deal. Why? Because podcasting is still not the easiest thing for the listener; getting material from the Web takes some doing.
Apple will no doubt be followed in this move by other companies with music software. For podcasters, the bottom line is this: The market is about to grow in a serious way.
Jobs also talked about pay models for some podcasts, and that’s also good news.
The networks and some stations are getting into the podcasting world, but I’m not convinced a traditional “radio” newscast has legs. This is a(nother) time for us to think outside-the-box.
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Sunday, May 22nd, 2005
My youngest daughter, Larissa, graduated from the 8th grade Friday night, so I thought you might enjoy a photo and little personal note. Riss was born in Hawaii, where I was news director of KGMB-TV. That makes her a keiki o ka aina, a “child of the land.”
Everything is laid back in Hawaii, even childbirth. She was 2-weeks overdue, and our ob-gyn recommended acupuncture. She was born six hours later. The delivery room had a dark corner with a warm water bath, and it was my pleasure to bathe her immediately after she came into this world. She was calm-as-could-be, and I’ll never forget the way she looked at me.
And now she’s a little hottie that’s about to drive the boys crazy (If it’s not already happening!).
Way to go, Riss. I’m very proud of you.
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Friday, May 20th, 2005
Congratulations to Jeff Jarvis, who announced today that he’s leaving the Conde Nast Advance.net organization to strike out on his own. He’s going to work with the New York Times on their About.com purchase, do some consulting, write a book and birth a new citizens media project.
I will act as editor in chief of a new news start-up founded by Upendra Shardanand (ex Firefly, Microsoft Passport, AOL, and Time Warner) and a sterling team. More than a year ago, when Upendra first described his idea to me, I lurched at it. I was so determined to work on this that I gave up plans to start my own blog company. The start-up remains in stealth mode — this is the first public mention of it — but you’ll hear more about it soon. (And we are, of course, hiring engineers.)
Since Jeff is known in MSNBC land as “Blog Daddy,” one has to wonder if this new venture will be called “Blog Baby.” Or not.
Gee, now both Jarvis and Gillmor are off doing their own things. Who’s next?
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Friday, May 20th, 2005
I wasn’t going to comment about this, but I just can’t keep my mouth shut. If you haven’t heard by now, WCBS-TV in New York fired a reporter yesterday for an utterance of that most awful of words on the air. According to the New York Post and the industry gossip zines, reporter Arthur Chi’en was accosted by pranksters with a sign promoting radio shock jocks Opie & Anthony. This is apparently a fairly common occurrence in New York, and Chi’en apparently handled it well during his live shot. The two intruders even gave Chi’en’s camera the finger, but he kept his cool.
When the live shot was finished, however, Chi’en turned around and said, “What the f*ck is your problem, man?” He didn’t know he was still on the air.
WCBS-TV fired Chi’en, which is, of course, their prerogative. It is, however, the single most spineless act I’ve ever heard of involving a news organization. We assign people to meaningless, predictable live performances in places where they’re sitting ducks. In New York, these poor folks are fair game for every conceivable form of mischief — from getting soaked with a bucket of water to intruders promoting their own causes. Do we really expect that things like this won’t happen? Frankly, I think the guy deserved a pay raise, certainly not getting fired.
To the people in charge of WCBS-TV, what the f*ck is your problem, man? Get a spine!
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Friday, May 20th, 2005
If last year was the year of the blog, 2005 is rapidly becoming the year of the aggregator. This is a good thing, I think, but I’m not sure mainstream media companies will get this one right. The whole personal media revolution is built on the idea that the media playing field is level, something broadcasters and the print media are fighting with every ounce of their being. In so doing, the chance to create new business models are set aside in favor of the tried and true, reach/frequency game. This could be a significant waste of time, and I urge the industry to think very carefully before heading down this path.
Here is the latest in my ongoing series of essays, TV News in a Postmodern World, “A Wolf in Aggregator Clothing.”
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Thursday, May 19th, 2005
From citizens media guru Dan Gillmor: “Citizen journalism can do many valuable things. It can’t substitute, not yet and maybe never, for the hard-nosed reporting we must have inside the institutions of power.”
Read the whole post, “Hypocrisy on Newsweek.”
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Thursday, May 19th, 2005
The Wal-Mart/Netflix deal is bigger than it may first appear, because it underscores an important new business reality. It’s billed as a joint promotional deal, but Wal-Mart is also closing its video rental business and turning it over to Netflix. In so doing, it is acknowledging that a smaller company can do it better (and cheaper) and likely make more money for Wal-Mart in the long run.
This new paradigm is important for media companies to consider, because local Web-based news entities are and will be springing up all over the place. The bigger-is-better meme doesn’t transfer to the level playing field that is the Web, and I think you’ll be seeing many more “partnerships” like this in the near future.
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Wednesday, May 18th, 2005
This is nuts! The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is seeking feedback on new guidelines for advertising in and adjacent to online streaming video (among other things).
They recommend, get ready, 15 & 30 second spots before and during streams with fast forward disabled.
Anybody who adopts these as guidelines for video stream advertising will have a tough time meeting their goals, because users will simply vote with their clicks NOT to watch. It’s hard to get a decent CPM (cost per thousand) when you don’t have the M.
Repeat after me: the internet is not TV, the internet is not TV, the internet is not TV, the internet is not TV.
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Wednesday, May 18th, 2005
…or maybe we’ve already lost it. Cory Treffiletti from today’s MediaPost Online Spin:
We are losing the battle for ownership of the media we create. The consumer is becoming a partner in its development by demanding what they want, how they want it, and when they want it. Sooner or later, it’s inevitable that the consumer will completely own the relationship. The iPod ad, the Nike ad, the Volkswagen ad… these will be examples of the future. This year might be recognized as the year when the consumer overthrew the throne. A virtual coup, if you will.
Great stuff, Cory. Thanks for saying it so well.
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Wednesday, May 18th, 2005
The blogosphere continues to pound the New York Times decision to put its opinion op-ed columnists behind a $50-a-year pay firewall starting in September. I’ve already stated that I think it’s dumber than a bucket of hair, because it’ll destroy the paper’s position as influence leader in the new media world. And when all is said and done, power and influence are the purposes of a paper like the Times.
Last month, I wrote an essay called The Web’s Paradox of Power, and I thought it would be useful to republish a section of that here, for it provides real evidence as to why I believe this move by the Times is a mistake.
Take a look at this graph prepared by Technorati founder, Dave Silfry. It ranks inbound links to mainstream media (MSM) and bloggers. The blue bars represent mainstream online news outlets. The red lines equal blogs. At first glance, the MSM is more influential, but some blogs are also well-placed. Remember, though, that this graph represents inbound links, not reach or frequency.
Click to enlarge
Here’s where the paradox comes in. One doesn’t find influence in the URL world without providing a service to others, for it is the linkers (the bottom) who provide the influence, not those receiving the links. Size doesn’t matter. Only inbound links. In Silfry’s graph, the New York Times online is the most influential. What makes them influential? The bloggers and others who are creating the links. This is not a measure of readership or revenue. It’s a measure of other people thinking enough of what’s being produced (one way or the other) to create a link to it.
The New York Times gives material freely to the bloggers, and the bloggers reward them with influence. This is why the people who run The Times should think very carefully before charging fees or otherwise locking up their content. This is why logical (Modernist) attempts to force demand by restricting access are playing a dangerous game with their online futures. And this is why online media companies need to make their archives freely available as well. Free is the operative word here. Influence is the currency.
Free online access to content is also good business, because money follows influence, even online.
The newspaper will be giving up this position by putting their op-ed writers behind a pay wall. I mean, it’s their op-ed writers, for crying out loud — the people who spell out the issues in which the paper wishes to lead. You couldn’t shoot yourself more in the foot if you were aiming!
UPDATE: The New York Daily News reports that Matt Drudge has dropped his links to columnists at the New York Post, due to the paper’s new online registration. Says Drudge, “My first concern is that readers have access.”
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