The mainstream payoff for listening
Sunday, July 31st, 2005Later this month, WKRN-TV in Nashville will mark 6-months of involvement in the local blogosphere, a model that mainstream media entities everywhere should be following. The station began with the simple acknowledgment that local bloggers presented newsworthy discussions that deserved attention, and they set about to facilitate a goal of supporting the blogging community. I think Mike Sechrist, Steve Sabato, Mike Tarrolly and Brittney Gilbert all deserve a round of applause for blazing a trail that I hope many others will follow.
Since I was involved in the effort, I’ve fielded lots questions from people throughout the industry about the concept, and the first one is always, “Where’s the money?” This is, of course, the Achilles’ Heel of broadcasters (and other media) when it comes to understanding and participating in the personal media revolution. It’s not about them; it’s about this growing community. If there is any one thing that is truly innovative about the WKRN approach from a business perspective, it is that the station believes the payback comes downstream, in the form of community image, a better news product, and eventually, news ratings.
Six months into the process, my company sent a simple questionnaire to Nashville area bloggers to test their feelings about the relationship with WKRN-TV. 46 people responded, and the results strongly suggest that the payoff envisioned by the station in the beginning is starting to materialize.
54% of the respondents said their opinion of News2 had gone up in the past year. Most attribute their feelings to the station’s participation in the local blogosphere.
My opinion became more favorable after I noticed their involvement in the blogging world. They are on the cutting edge in the local media. I’d venture to guess that they’re sticking their neck out a bit more than even major market newscasts.I see them as accepting innovation, willing to take risks, and putting new ideas into action.
I like how they’ve made themselves the hub of the local blogging community, and even when people made fun of it all, they kept their sense of humor about it and went along with it. Now they’ve established themselves and are building from that.
I am sure that the fact that they reached out to the blogging community has a lot to do with it.Seriously, having multiple interactions with WKRN (blogger meetups, video classes, visiting the weatherblog) helps solidify a relationship with the viewer that one doesn’t get with other stations.
Because you will get a better feel for the pulse of the community.By involving citizens, WKRN-TV will have more information and that information will be more relevant to a larger number of people.
Because they will actually know first hand what the people who live in the community care about.
First, you will have a broader variety of stories to choose from. You have, and will continue to, do stories that aren’t on other stations. Second, you have opened up clear lines of communication between viewers and the newsroom. Best of all, the communication runs both ways. No more calling the station to complain to a voice on the phone that can’t and won’t do anything to voice concerns. This certainly will allow WKRN to refine its coverage and make it more useful to viewers. Finally, WKRN has proven its commitment to viewers by making significant investments of time and money to set up its blog presence and drive traffic there.
47% disagreed that the station helps them find information they can’t get anywhere else. 35% agreed. This isn’t surprising, given that bloggers are extremely Internet-savvy people who generally know where to get the information they want and need.
61% agreed that the station values their opinion, and 76% said they trusted the station. This is remarkable coming from a group of people with a great distrust of the media.
The group was split 46-43 on whether it would be easy for another station in the market to do what WKRN-TV has done. Those who felt it wouldn’t be easy generally said the other stations would appear to be playing follow-the-leader, but those who felt otherwise said the Internet is so vast that there’s room for more.
63% of the respondents felt that the station wanted their participation in the development of its news products.
32% felt WKRN-TV was their favorite station, but nearly six in ten (57%) said they plan on watching more of the station in the future.
While I’m sure there will be naysayers who argue that the sample size is too small or whatever, these findings ought to open a few eyes. Mainstream media that play in this space need to first understand that the blogging community doesn’t need them, and that humbling reality is what needs to guide strategies and tactics as they work to get involved. The Nashville blogosphere is now five times larger than it was when the station first began its involvement, and I think it’s safe to say they’ve played a role in encouraging that growth.
How? Simply by listening. Who knew?
Along the way, station personnel have discovered something they didn’t expect: getting to know the local blogging community is a lot more fun than you can possibly imagine up front. And frankly, folks, fun isn’t a word that’s been associated with local media for a long, long time. How do you put a value on that?
(Ongoing transparency: WKRN-TV is a client of mine)
Documentary crew launches blog
Saturday, July 30th, 2005Remember BlogNashville? The documentary crew that was there taping, well, a documentary on blogging has decided to join the blogosphere. Welcome, Andrew et al.
Gun control and Grokster
Wednesday, July 27th, 2005Politics, as I’ve said before, is all about the whacking of fatted calves, and there’s a sad, albeit humorous, bit of hypocrisy underway in the Senate. These guys are about to pass legislation that would prevent people from suing gun manufacturers when their weapons are used in the commission of crimes. I’m all for this bill — and not because I’m a member of the NRA. I think people kill people, not guns. But here’s the hypocrisy.
Just last month, the right won a victory when the Supreme Court ruled that the RIAA and the MPAA could sue Grokster and others when people used their software to download pirated products of the copyright industry.
So let’s see. It’s good thing to sue private companies whose products may be used by people in the commission of copyright theft but not murder. Somehow, that doesn’t make sense to me.
The values of politicians are determined by the fatted calves they represent and little else.
The OJR’s hatchet job on VJs
Wednesday, July 27th, 2005Mark Glaser’s normally astute and insightful series of articles for the Online Journalism Review (OJR) is interrupted this week by a hostile, opinionated, and outrageously inaccurate wiki treatment of the most divisive issue confronting TV newsrooms — the idea of using Video Journalists (VJs) instead of all two-person crews. This is beneath the quality of that publication, and I sure hope the finished product turns out to be a little more balanced than this hatchet job.
But, hey, it’s there, so here’s what I submitted in response to the ongoing saga:
In the BBC model, the newsrooms are hybrids with VJs and two-person crews. Why the either/or mentality exists is simply a matter of ignorance and fear.The term “one-man band” is exclusively pejorative when used by anybody at the worker level in TV newsrooms. It doesn’t belong in this discussion, because the baggage implied doesn’t apply.
The argument that two people can “do better” than one is specious and irrelevant. The same two people — WITH TWO CAMERAS — can outperform any crew with one. It’s a matter of splitting roles and teamwork.
The arguments about two-person crews working better in the current news environment presupposes that this is the way it “should” be. I would add to the argument that viewers have been voting with their remotes for the past decade that this ISN’T the way it “should” be. Talk to people who don’t watch anymore. Not only don’t they give a shit that you’re using two-person crews, they can’t stand what you’re doing with them. Everything about our systems is designed to create a consultant-driven homogeneity of a “scare the crap out of ‘em,” run and gun, spot news frenzy that people see right through for its marketing realities. Arguing that what we do is what a shrinking audience wants is ridiculous.
The argument that greedy management is obsessed with making money is a little like arguing that a robin is obsessed with worms. Like, welcome to the planet, man.
Finally, the people who shout the loudest about Michael Rosenblum have never met the man or heard his vision in its entirety. The vilification of this guy absolutely amazes me, especially coming from people in a newsroom, for crying out loud. If there is a place on earth where ideas can and should be discussed, it’s a newsroom. It’s truly sad.
And finally, I haven’t a clue as to the purpose of including the Travel Channel show in Mark’s original “story.” WTF does that have to do with the idea of VJs in a newsroom? Nothing. It’s just another vehicle for taking a cheap shot at Rosenblum, and he doesn’t deserve it.
(Ongoing disclosure: WKRN-TV is a client of mine.)
Attention readers
Monday, July 25th, 2005I’m knee deep in client stuff and travel this week and won’t be blogging much. I will have something pretty exciting to share in the next couple of days, so watch for that. TTFN
Kenealy repeats an old rant
Thursday, July 21st, 2005IDG’s CEO Pat Kenealy apparently got the ear of Adam L. Penenberg at Wired, and the result is an exercise in wishful thinking. Kenealy is saying that the “free” content that dominates the Web today will one day be gated, and that everybody will get used to paying for it.
“In 1955, TV was free,” Kenealy said, “and two generations later most people pay for it. There was a built-in reluctance to pay for TV until it got so much better than broadcast. That’s what I think will happen with the internet.”
Secondly, people didn’t start paying for TV because it “got so much better.” They paid for the variety and choice that cable made available. That has evolved to digital and now we have broadband and telephone services combined. It’s just a poor analogy.
I don’t doubt that people will pay for restricted content that they can’t get anywhere else. That’s always been the case, but not in the broad, sweeping manner that Kenealy forecasts. Let’s all remember the Encyclopedia Britannica. They went to a free, advertisement-driven model before the bubble burst and saw their traffic skyrocket. When the market crashed, they returned to a paid model. And then along came Wikipedia.
People everywhere just gotta be free…
A blog is itself an ad
Thursday, July 21st, 2005This is an interesting piece of wisdom from Dave Winer in response to a Jeremy Zawodny post about when blogging will peak. Zawodny writes that the advertising bits are falling into place, to which Dave responds that blogs aren’t peaking but advertising is:
The distinction between blog sites that have ads and those that don’t is probably a bigger distinction than between magazines that have ads and blogs that have ads. A blog without ads is itself an ad, interesting to a small number of people. Blogs with ads, like their print counterparts, strive to be as broad as possible, to reach as many people, and in doing so, lose their value as an ad for the author.
VJ training reveals pain points
Thursday, July 21st, 2005
I dropped by WRKN-TV Wednesday for an update on the VJ training. I’m happy to report that no one has died yet, although anchor Neil Orne is sporting a few whiskers (apparently he’s facial follicle challenged).
The photo on the right shows GM Mike Sechrist and VJ guru Michael Rosenblum watching a piece done by VJ-in-training Todd Dunn. Nice stuff. Dunn is a photojournalist, so his challenge is the writing. Trust me, though, he’s doing just fine. With the reporters (”talent”) taking the training, the biggest hurdle is the editing, not the shooting. Everybody reports that the cameras are easy-to-use and make outstanding pictures. Todd noted that he’ll never again have to walk backwards to shoot a subject that’s moving (e.g. a “perp” walk), because the LCD screen flips. “I’ve yet to look through the viewfinder,” he told me.
They’re shooting and editing primarily feature stories, which is one of the fruits of the VJ concept — less emphasis on spot news and more emphasis on depth. The challenge will be to create shows that still have pace, but that’s why God made producers. The Pinnacle editing software is robust and complex, and it will be the biggest challenge for stations that move to the VJ model. However, once the learning curve is overcome, everybody in the newsroom will be capable of single-handedly putting material on-the-air, and that will dramatically alter the workflow.
(Disclosure: WKRN-TV is a client.)
Mobile video doesn’t mean quick bucks
Tuesday, July 19th, 2005Here’s a nice piece of wisdom from Ryan Block at Engadget about new stats that reveal only one in eight mobile phone users are interested in buying video for their devices. He warns that walled garden products like VCast will be marginalized by simple mobile broadband.
…what’s it going to take for them to realize that people don’t want to buy the same content over and over—they want to buy or obtain it once, and then disseminate it to all their devices by their own means?
Are bloggers a new “layer” of media?
Tuesday, July 19th, 2005Although he probably doesn’t realize it, Peter Johnson raises the issue of bloggers as a new “layer” of media in a USAToday column about how the blogosphere is bringing something new to the Supreme Court Justice selection process. It’s an interesting read and notes that the Web was in its infancy the last time a new high court judge was named (1994).
Gone are the days when it would usually take disparaging information from an insider to derail a judge’s nomination.“It used to be catch as catch can,” says Fordham University communications professor Paul Levinson. “But now with the Internet, we’re in an environment where all the world’s knowledge is available and can be brought to bear on an appointment. It democratizes the appointment process and brings the maximum number of human minds into the process.”
But much of the article is about the anticipated slime and cheap shots that partisan bloggers will sling, and included is the meme that the real press will have the job of winnowing all the arguments to help everybody make sense of it.
Tom Rosenstiel of the Project for Excellence in Journalism says that it will be up to “traditional media with the largest resources to knock down bad stuff that the bloggers put out” about whomever Bush nominates.
This idea bears examination, because it attempts to frame “roles” for both the blogosphere and the MSM — a suggestion that “you have your job, and I have mine.” As logical as this may seem to some, I think it’s suicide for the traditional press, for it clings to the gatekeeper pedestal that is at the root of everything that’s wrong with contemporary “professional” journalism — the same pedestal that helped create the energy behind the blogosphere in the first place. And, in so doing, I think it’s a de facto admission that the blogosphere is doing much of the real work of the press in our culture.
Blogging the transition
Tuesday, July 19th, 2005WKRN-TV morning anchor Neil Orne is blogging the transition from 2-person news crews to VJs. He’s in the first class to take the training. Neil’s a bright guy who gets the whole new media thing, and it’s fun to read his thoughts during this process.
UPDATE: Todd Dunn, a WKRN-TV news photojournalist, is also in the first class and is, like Neil, blogging the transition. Here’s his entry about yesterday. Nice perspective.
(Disclosure: WKRN-TV is a client.)
The mainstream struggles to co-opt citizens media
Monday, July 18th, 2005Things are heating up in what could become THE media battle in the months and years ahead. Will the mainstream succeed in efforts to co-opt the personal media revolution? Not a chance.
An article in today’s Washington Post helps explain my ambivalence about podcasting. The title itself ought to give pause to anybody following this technology: “Mainstream Media Is Tuning In to ‘Podcasting’ — Corporate America Overtakes a Popular Grass-Roots Digital Format.” Citing Apple’s move last month to include podcasts in the latest version of iTunes, thereby making it easier for novices to download and listen, the article tells it like it is:
Corporate media moved quickly to stake out podcasting as an avenue for reaching new listeners. While early podcasters offered talk radio-style shows with quirky titles such as “The Frat Pack Tribute” and “The Rock and Roll Geek Show,” big companies have elbowed in with condensed versions of popular broadcasts. Now, it’s “Queer Eye Hip Tips” and “ABC News” that dominate as the most popular podcasts on iTunes, making the one-person, in-house shows harder to spot in a sea of media logos.The result demonstrates how a new technology can remain part of an underground culture only for so long before corporations adopt it.
And once the stomping settles down, what’s next for podcasting? The article raises the $64,000 question:
It’s not clear that there is a mass audience for podcasting, or whether the phenomenon could turn out to be a fad.
But podcasting isn’t the only technology being pursued by the mainstream. The soul of the blogosphere itself is the prize in numerous attempts by the mainstream to re-frame and re-define the “sphere” in a way that suits their mass media goals. In Greensboro (Note: I sincerely admire and respect what John Robinson has done so far.), John Robinson, editor of the Greensboro News & Record, is recruiting citizen journalists for a new venture:
One of the goals of our citizen journalism initiative is to create community sites on the Web. Our community news editor, Betsi Robinson, describes the first such site. We’re starting in Summerfield.Soon we’ll be contacting churches, schools, civic groups and neighborhood associations in Summerfield to find people interested in becoming “community correspondents,” people willing to write short stories about what their groups are up to and snap photos at community events. You know, the civic club’s latest effort, the Little League championship, the church mission trip, the neighborhood park project, the school play. We figure you know more about what’s going on in your community than we could ever hope to.
…Most of what we’ll offer by way of news and photos will be posted first on the Web, with the best of what we get appearing in the printed News & Record each week.
We’re excited about the Web-to-print model. This is just the first. Want to participate? I hope you do.
In San Francisco, Current TV is trying to raise up a group of citizen video journalists to help them with their innovative network, and they are employing a version of the “create your own blogosphere” model. Jeff Jarvis doesn’t like it:
The big guys think it’s still about them. They don’t understand — and perhaps never will — that it’s not about speaking but listening, about blowing up their networks to take part in vastly bigger networks than they ever could have imagined.
Check this out:“…Assignment: London
Okay: We want to put together a reflective piece on the London bombings and their implications. Get out a camera — a webcam will do — and start talking.”
Look, peer production is not about ordering prosumers around to meekly do your bidding. It’s about building a platform/community that does theirs.
Not to sound harsh, but perhaps Current has the whole dynamics of this stuff backwards.
In a sense, this is the same kind of mistake that 1.0 dot commers made - assuming that the www was just another distribution/mktg channel. Dot com 2.0 peer production plays like Current seem to be assuming more and more that the www is just another production channel (supply chain, if ya like). It’s emphatically not.
The citizens media movement or personal media revolution is a new thing and cannot be corraled by deep pockets. The sooner the mainstream accepts this, the sooner we can get on with the process of building new economic models. Meanwhile, however, we need to be fully exploring smart aggregators and software that helps people participate in their own media experience. That, my friends, is the future.
Conflict as marketing strategy
Friday, July 15th, 2005The Parents Television Council is at it again with complaints about an utterance of the F-word during the Live-8 broadcast on ABC. The PTC wants the FCC to fine the network, and so the usual suspects are doing the usual song and dance.
This is not news and should not be reported as such.
Let me explain. I’ve written here before about a revelation I had many years ago that has helped frame my thinking for many years. Here’s what I wrote about it 18 months ago:
I had a revelation 25 years ago that helped influence the way I view the media these days. I was running the assignment desk at WTMJ-TV in Milwaukee and was thumbing through a magazine by an animal rights group. There was an article on how to get the animal rights message in the press. It was written by a former TV news person, and it was very accurate. The article was “Media Manipulation 101,” and it was based on using our own rules against us. I never trusted anything from any “spokesperson” after that. The lesson was that people with things to gain understand the news business — in most cases — better than those IN the business. This is especially true in television news. We’re an open book for the PR industry.
But here is the most important paragraph in the whole report:
The PTC achieved dramatic success throughout 2004 with an aggressive earned-media publicity campaign, reaching tens of millions of Americans all across the country that the PTC never could have afforded to reach with paid advertisements. Through the non-stop efforts of a highly aggressive media-placement campaign, PTC spokespersons have been featured in scores of national TV shows, radio programs, and newspaper columns. With each appearance on a television or radio program, or in the print media, the voice of the PTC reaches out to directly touch millions of potential supporters. In 2004, the PTC was one of the most covered public policy organizations in America, having been featured on 40 nationally televised news programs, dozens of nationally syndicated radio broadcasts with thousands of affiliates, and over 200 local radio broadcasts reaching into nearly every American home. In addition, PTC research, campaigns, and spokespersons were highlighted in more than 900 distinct stories in over 350 newspapers in the U.S. and around the world (including India, Canada, Denmark, Great Britain, and Australia). The PTC has gained international recognition as a leader in the fight to clean up America’s airwaves. There is no advertising budget in the world big enough to pay for these placements.
I don’t like the PTC. The goal is fine, but I detest their methods, and I’m intimately familiar with the corruptive nature of political power on the right.
If the press ignored them, they would go away. That’s sad, but it’s a fruit of the “professional” news and PR industries that I’ve written about so often. You can’t cast aspersions at the PTC without doing likewise at the system that gives them their power.
Copyright insanity
Thursday, July 14th, 2005
This one takes the cake. It seems that the producers of the new “Bewitched” film — which is set in San Francisco — had to airbrush the Transamerica building from scenes of downtown, because the building itself is a registered trademark. The producers either could not or did not get the rights to use it.
Unbelievable.
(NOTE: I took the picture on the left last month. I am in violation of their trademark. Oh no!)
Jon Carroll of the San Francisco Chronicle writes that the whole thing seems silly, but it’s not:
I mean, there it is, big as sin and taller than Coit Tower. Do we have to pay Transamerica every time we glimpse it? Do I have to pay Transamerica every time I type “Transamerica Pyramid”? Here’s a more relevant question: What are the chances the Transamerica would use its high- priced lawyers to sue a major film studio over a skyline shot?Doesn’t matter. Filmmakers are required to carry “errors and omissions” insurance, which guarantees that the distributors and/or theater owners, DVD makers, television networks or whatever will not be liable for infringements of rights. Insurers, who want to cover their butts and have no particular investment in the quality of the film, set high and rigid barriers before they will issue such insurance.
Which means everything, everything, has to be cleared.
The copyright industry is this country’s largest export. Is it any wonder the America people are so hip to media, and why they/we want to do it ourselves? This whole rights business is out of control, and everybody knows it. And someday it’ll blow up in the face of the very people who perpetrate this nonsense.
Making it up as we go along
Thursday, July 14th, 2005WKRN-TV’s news department begins a transformation next week that will open a new era in local video news. Notice I use the term “video news” and not “television news.” That’s because the video news niche in any community is now up for grabs, as broadband connectivity grows and the technology gets more and more affordable. WKRN-TV will become the first local network affiliate in the U.S. to adopt the Video Journalist (VJ) model for its newsroom, and you can bet a lot of people in the industry will be watching. The station is a client of mine, and this concept is something I strongly support.
The VJ model goes beyond the technology, because newsroom systems and workflow are turned upside down as well. This is the main point that is missed by those to react to the idea with anger and fear. M.D. Smith IV had the right idea ten years ago when he tried this at WAAY-TV in Huntsville, Alabama, but the technology for editing wasn’t available yet, and the only thing management knew to do with all the extra material was cram it into the newscasts. M.D.’s VJs were given monetary incentives to produce more, more, more, but the strategy on what to do with it hadn’t been developed yet.
In the contemporary model, the idea isn’t necessarily to just get more; it’s to produce better programs by reducing the deadline pressures inherent in the old method of newsgathering. And where volume is increased, stations today have other vehicles for presenting that content.
So while most people look at this and talk about how it works in the field, the biggest change actually takes place in the newsroom and the day-to-day production. This is where observers should be paying the most attention, because the concept succeeds or fails based on what and how it’s used on-the-air.
Another wrong assumption that’s made about this is that it’s an all or nothing transformation. Not true. There will always be stories and situations that demand a 2-person crew, and live reporting (for now) will still require more than one person.
To be sure, there are winners and losers in the process of morphing a newsroom into the VJ model. Here are a couple:
The biggest loser is the industry process of cranking out community celebrities. This means the system of agents and “talent” (what on earth that word has to do with our business, I will never understand). The VJ model demands more of every newsroom employee, and it shines an enormous spotlight on those who’ve had a free ride based on cosmetics. It’s actually about news, folks. The “one potato, two potato, three potato, four” method of climbing the success ladder will evolve, and I think this will be a good thing. And as I wrote a couple of years ago, the sun is setting on the necessity of anchors anyway. Who needs them in a “build your own newscast,” video-on-demand world?
The biggest winners are the group of people who’ve carried local news since the beginning — the photographers. Shooters and editors make the easiest transition in the VJ model, and they finally get the recognition they’ve deserved for so long.
Another thing that I think is important for observers to realize is that — in many ways — the folks at WKRN will be making this up as they go along. The creative process tends to work that way, and that’s one of the things I love the most about the new media challenge. Our rules and systems have gotten us where we are today in the TV news business — a model that is broken and unresponsive to a dramatically changing marketplace. Clearly, our old ways won’t save us, so we need to be looking beyond that which is known and proven. WKRN understands this, and that, more than anything else, is driving this change.
Speaking of headlines…
Wednesday, July 13th, 2005Here’s one that says it all. It’s from today’s Online Media Daily: Marketers Intrigued By Blogs, Fear Their Power. Can I get an amen?
What marketers really fear is loss of control, something that’s hidden in this article by references to consumers (you and me) saying bad things about products.
At Sprint, the public relations and branding departments were particularly wary of consumer complaints, (online marketing manager Makaela) Meadows said. “One of their largest fears was, ‘What if someone says something bad? What are we going to do?’”
I think this is a bigger question than just one for marketers, because it strikes at the heart of the ordered bullshit that is our culture. Nobody is perfect. Nobody. But we’ve built this comfortable illusion that perfection is normal — or should be — and that anything else can be ignored or sued.
What if somebody says something bad? Deal with it. How’s that?
And for marketers, you might try listening.
What’s in a headline? Everything!
Wednesday, July 13th, 2005The continuing evolution of subscriber-based (RSS) communications is shining a light on what I think will be the next required skill in our industry — the ability to write clever headlines. As the blogosphere grows, and more and more aggregators appear on the scene, the capacity of any organization to cut through the clutter is increasingly going to rest with the headlines of any feed.
Newspaper writers are generally not very good at headlines, although they’re the ones with all the practice. That’s because newspaper headlines tend to reflect the image of the paper, which is usually conservative in such things. The exception, of course, is the tabloids.
The Web has introduced TV folks to the concept, but few of these writers have any clue as to the real importance of their headlines. Assuming the only place people will read their headlines is ON their Website, they appear to apply the same conservative approach of their print counterparts. The problem with this thinking is that the future is subscriber feeds (RSS), and there you get only one chance to encourage readership — through the headline.
I find most bloggers are good headline writers. Firstly, bloggers understand the delivery mechanism of subscriber feeds, because they USE them every day for their own reading. Secondly, the bloggers I know tend to be on the creative side. Third, bloggers aren’t afraid of humor, and humor can make for some very good headlines.
Brittney Gilbert, the blogger WKRN-TV hired to write Nashville Is Talking, is a good example. In aggregating the thoughts of local bloggers about the Karl Rove controversy, here’s a headline she wrote:
I did not have sexual relations with that leak
I think this is brilliant. It reflects her personality. It’s hip. It uses humor. It tells the story. And it encourages further reading. Wouldn’t you want to read what follows that kind of tease? Wouldn’t you be drawn to further stories from a person who can write like this?
There’s a whole new industry waiting to be built upon the concept of teaching good headline writing, but the truth is — like so many other things — it’s a gift.
Cable by-pass also means broadcast by-pass
Wednesday, July 13th, 2005The big CBS announcement yesterday contains a bomb that ought to be getting a little attention the day after. The network is framing the broadband initiative as a “cable by-pass” strategy, and I think that’s terribly smart. Observers such as myself have been writing about this for years.
But here’s the deal. Any Internet strategy that by-passes cable also by-passes broadcast and, in fact, should be seen as a significant event in the evolution of the television network. If you can deliver news (video) directly to customers, why do you need a network to do it for you, and if you can deliver news (video), you can also deliver entertainment. If I was a CBS affiliate, I’d be asking my network rep some very hard questions today.
Observers are noting that, unlike its broadcast competitors, CBS doesn’t have a cable strategy, so this is being framed as an alternative. That’s true, but there are huge differences between broadband and cable. One, users pay for the connection, not the content, and even if that evolves one day, users will be able to select content à la carte. Two, everything online is on-demand. Three, distribution doesn’t require affiliation agreements. Four, CBS will control all the advertising and will — with precision — be able to create benchmarks and accurately measure growth. Five, it doesn’t require playing by any rules (at this time).
I think everything contained in the announcement is smart, smart, smart, and my hat’s off to Larry Kramer. To the television industry in general and CBS affiliates in particular, however, this is a significant stormcloud gathering on the horizon.
Dinosaurs at the door
Tuesday, July 12th, 2005It happens every year about this time. I find that if you just leave them alone, they eventually go away.
A video of Video 101
Tuesday, July 12th, 2005Paul Chenowith, Belmont University professor, blogger and Video 101 student, has produced an excellent video of the Saturday event at WKRN-TV. My fat belly is in it. Sigh.