Olympic interest split geographically
I love Sports Nation on espn.com, and I’m finding this morning’s to be hilarious. The question is “Are you interested in the Winter Olympics?” Not surprisingly, it depends on where you live.
Who knew?
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New software for vloggers
The brilliant minds at Serious Magic have officially released Vlog It, a $49 piece of software that’ll turn your computer into a TV station. These are the same folks who brought us the higher end “Visual Communicator” and that staple yesterday, Video Toaster (remember Garth’s T-shirt from “Wayne’s World?”).
I predict this simple product will revolutionize Vlogs by making it easy for anybody to create real time production for television. Go to the Vlog It site and play the demo. You’ll be absolutely amazed. I am, and I’m an old TV guy! Here’s a portion of the press release:
“Text blogs have given people a great way to share their personal thoughts, opinions and news with others online,” said Mark Randall, president and Chief Magician of Serious Magic, a leading developer of next-generation video software and communications tools for business, consumer, educational and professional markets. “Vlog It adds a new dimension by letting bloggers share sights and sounds- instead of just text - with audiences.”
“Some day, your favorite television show will be made by you or someone you know.”
…the best looking source video will be produced by the same people who own the screens. Sony’s HD cameras make very pretty pictures, at 1080i. (Can they do 1080p yet? Need to check.)I already know of people whose main uses for big flat screens in their homes are personal photos and home movies. That’s probably what we’ll do too, when we move to our next house.
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Battle lines being drawn
The case of the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (a “fair housing” group) versus Craigslist is likely to produce a landmark decision as to whether the legal burdens are at all different for mainstream publications and those that are produced by end users. The lawyers are hauling out the same, tired language in suing Craigslist for publishing clearly discriminatory ads. The problem, of course, is that the ads are actually posted by users, not Craigslist, and the question is must Craigslist provide the same kind of vetting required by, for example, newspaper classifieds. In today’s politically correct world, I don’t think it takes a genius to figure out which way this suit will go. But it has ramifications that go way beyond a group of Chicago civil rights lawyers and this one site. Critics of new media are likely saying “attaboy” to the lawyers group, because there are a lot of things about the new that would be just fine with the old, as long as everybody had to play by the same rules.
This is nothing less that the modernist world pulling a collaborative postmodern effort back into its power structure, and it ought to send a chill down the spine of anybody in the web information business. I have argued previously that our legal system — which serves the best interests of itself (and the status quo) — would make a stand to restore control, and who better to attack than Craigslist, the poster child of a bottom-up business model.
Craigslist is arguing that it is not a publisher in the modern sense, and as such, not bound by the same rules. As Steve Outing asks in a commentary on the suit, “So, is Craigslist a publisher, or more of a common carrier? The outcome of this case will be interesting — and important.”
Hoo, boy, do I agree with that.
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More middleman mayhem
NBC has cut a deal with cable set-top box maker Aeon Digital to provide programs on-demand. From MediaDailyNews:
The deal…will allow consumers to access NBC Universal Television Distribution shows, “Blind Date,” “The 5th Wheel,” and a special uncensored episode of “Jerry Springer.”NBC Universal theatrical movies will also be available–”Ray” and “The Motorcycle Diaries,” “The Skeleton Key,” and “The Wedding Date,” as well as upcoming premieres of “The 40-Year Old Virgin” and “The Constant Gardener.”
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Lessons from Reuven Frank
Life gives heroes and takes them away. So it is with me this morning, as I mourn the passing of former NBC News president Reuven Frank. I have personal history with Mr. Frank, and so I thought I’d share a few memories with you. He died of complications from pneumonia at the age of 85.
He was a legend in the development of television news, the man behind Huntley-Brinkley and the guy who put Tom Brokaw on the anchor desk. He was an innovator and an outstanding news guy.
Three events stand out in my memories of him. I got to know him when he was running “Weekend,” a hip weekly news magazine show that ran on one Saturday night a month during the heyday of Saturday Night Live. SNL ran for three Saturdays; Weekend ran for one. The show was hosted by Lloyd Dobyns, who was later joined by Linda Ellerbee, who then stole Lloyd’s signature, “And so it goes,” for the title of her book.
I sold story ideas (neon dance floors, pet sharks, etc.) for the program to Mr. Frank, which brought a steady stream of short, but highly educational postcards from his desk. One was especially enlightening and ought to be taught to every TV news person in the business. “Some ideas,” he wrote, “are just pictures with captions.” How true.
The second memory involves the Milwaukee Press Club 1979 awards dinner. I produced the program and brought in Reuven to receive the Sacred Cat Award, the highest honor of the club. It was a proud moment for him. Dobyns and Ellerbee were there, and that was important, because Weekend had been cancelled earlier that week. It was a wonderful night, but the thing I remember most was his speech. We all expected some deep wisdom about the news business, but he talked instead about lawyers and the threat they are to our culture. It was unforgettable coming from him.
The final memory is the best, and it involves a discipline I still practice today. I went to visit him one day at his office high atop Rockefeller Plaza in downtown New York. The view was breathtaking, and along the length of one windowed wall was what can best be described as a drafting table covered with newspapers from everywhere. It must have been 20 feet long.
“You don’t actually read all of these,” I quipped.
“Of course I do,” he replied.
“Where do you find the time,” I asked.
To which he responded, “But, Terry, that’s my job.”
No matter how busy I find myself these (or any) days, since that encounter, I’ve always considered keeping up with things to be an important part of “my job.” This is especially true these days, as the world of media is being rebuilt before our eyes.
Reuven Frank was one of my heroes, and I miss him.
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Rocketboom ad auction update
The Rocketboom eBay ad auction has been stuck on $14,999.99 for several days now with the reserve still not met. There are three days left in the auction, and I suspect the real flurry will take place on Thursday morning, just before bidding closes.
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I predicted this (along with others)
The Weather Channel is now offering local RSS feeds for weather. The service appears to be glitchy, however, because I can’t get it to work for Nashville. Nevertheless, it’s an example of what I said below — that unless local media companies embrace Media 2.0 concepts, outside agencies will move in and do it for them.
My client in Nashville (WKRN-TV) has been running an RSS-delivered weather blog for the past year, and it consistently delivers quality posts and forecasts via RSS throughout the day.
Unbundle your media, folks. It’s counterintuitive, but there’s gold in them thar hills.
(thanks, Steve)
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Making our own media
Dave Silfry of Technorati has released the latest blog stats from the company, and the picture is the same as it’s always been.
- Technorati now tracks over 27.2 Million blogs
- The blogosphere is doubling in size every 5 and a half months
- It is now over 60 times bigger than it was 3 years ago
- On average, a new weblog is created every second of every day
- 13.7 million bloggers are still posting 3 months after their blogs are created
- Spings (Spam Pings) can sometimes account for as much as 60% of the total daily pings Technorati receives
- Sophisticated spam management tools eliminate the spings and find that about 9% of new blogs are spam or machine generated
- Technorati tracks about 1.2 Million new blog posts each day, about 50,000 per hour
- Over 81 Million posts with tags since January 2005, increasing by 400,000 per day
- Blog Finder has over 850,000 blogs, and over 2,500 popular categories have attracted a critical mass of topical bloggers
We track about 1.2 Million posts each day, which means that there are about 50,000 posts each hour. At that rate, it is literally impossible to read everything that is relevant to an issue or subject, and a new challenge has presented itself - how to make sense out of this monstrous conversation, and how to find the most interesting and authoritative information out there.
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Kudos to ABC
While the game didn’t live up to the hype, I thought the broadcast itself surpassed any previous Superbowl. The halftime show was super, and I even think ABC’s promotion department wins the prize for the best ad. The “Addicted to Lost” spot was brilliant in both conception and execution.
UPDATE: Here’s a link to the 3-minute version of “Addicted to Lost.” Very cool.
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Broadcasting fights back
WRAL-TV, owned by Capitol Broadcasting in Raleigh, has been pioneering new innovations in Media 1.0 distribution for decades. Capitol president and CEO Jim Goodmon prides himself in being first to market with any innovation that will further enhance the business reach of his company. It’s a gonzo station that delivers news in high definition and is widely recognized as a leader in the world of broadcasting.
That’s why the industry is all atwitter over last week’s announcement by Mr. Goodmon and Jack Perry, CEO of Decisionmark Corporation, that the two companies will work together to provide WRAL programming via the internet. They will use Decisionmark technology that restricts the “view” of the programming to only those within the station’s broadcast footprint. For those interested, I recommend viewing the press conference (about an hour) via WRAL’s Website.
The logic of this is understandable. Broadcast licenses are distributed based on a geographic reach and limited to certain transmitter power ranges so as not to interfere with the rights of other nearby broadcasters. The whole industry is built on this formula. The fact that the internet is not bound by the same restrictions has been problematic, because stations outside such a footprint would pitch a fit if the lines were crossed. WRAL, for example, is a CBS affiliate. If they were able to stream CBS programming outside their broadcast reach, other CBS affiliates would be hurt. Hence, the technology being provided by Decisionmark. And since they’re now able to provide their programming only to people they’re already licensed to “serve,” the company feels the networks will have no objection.
While exciting for pure broadcasters, it’s a long way from being the answer to audience erosion via current disruptive innovations.
One, Mr. Goodmon says in the press conference that people want to be able to watch television on their computers, so that’s the demand they’re meeting. Well, that’s something you can already do quite easily, so this isn’t much of an argument. How many people really want to watch programming via an internet stream isn’t known.
Two, Decisionmark will require a credit card and e-mail address from users to determine if they live within the footprint. It’s wise not to underestimate the public’s unwillingness to share such information. Not only are there security implications, but it will feel — to many — that they’re walking into a situation where they’ll ultimately end up paying. Requiring an e-mail address isn’t a problem, because people can simply create a hotmail, yahoo or gmail account with which to receive the confirmation e-mail.
Three, WRAL can already stream any of its own content, so this is really about streaming network content. CBS hasn’t given its permission to WRAL to do this. In fact, the station hasn’t even talked with them about it yet. And assuming the networks gave the green light (a substantial assumption, imo), there are still significant copyright and other rights issues that would need to be hammered out before you can watch Survivor on WRAL.com.
So why have the press conference? Firstly, Capitol Broadcasting likes to be first, and this is another opportunity for them to do so. But they’ve also fired the opening volley in what is likely to be a difficult process in trying to extend their broadcast footprint to the internet. This puts the networks in a position of having to respond, which is a pretty smart move.
So while I think it’s a great play for pure broadcasters, I’m not sure how soon it’ll happen, if ever. The networks are drooling over new revenues from the on demand sale of programs via downloads, and the role of the middleman is shrinking, albeit slowly. While Mr. Goodmon makes a good argument that local stations should be a part of this, because they can drive sales, the question remains whether the networks will view the downside (sharing profit) as too great a liability to justify mollifying the affiliates in this way.
The plan announced last week, however, is for live streaming of programming. Won’t that interfere with network revenues in the download world? No, because you won’t be able to record this stuff, or if you do, you won’t be able to fast forward through the commercials, which is a key factor in the success of program downloads in the first place.
But the bigger issue to me is the potential of this to divert attention away from the realities of the Media 2.0 disruption. Broadcasters want so badly to find a way to defeat the disruption using their traditional revenue model, but it’s not going to work.
This plan is to show the commercials along with the programming, which theoretically will boost ratings and therefore justify higher ad prices. If this were still a 1.0 world, I’d agree that this is smart strategy, but the truth is top-down media distribution is headed for the tar pits, driven by the scent of food. Let’s look at how this plan runs contrary to Media 2.0.
- The user is not in charge.
- The user’s role is entirely passive.
- The user’s experience is hierarchical.
- The content is pre-bundled.
- The distribution is top-down, one-way.
(Disclosure: I’ve done work for WRAL.)
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Postmodern names
Google has been sending me articles with the word “postmodernism” in them for over two years. Since I write about the subject, it’s nice to be able to keep up with it this way. But I gotta tell ya, there’s very little of substance being written about the subject these days, and I want to take a moment this morning to talk about it a bit.
Firstly, let me repeat myself about how this writer views postmodernism. I think we’ve passed through the era of modernity, in which the worship of human intelligence, rationality and logic governed our culture. This was also the era of atheism, the ultimate fruit of such self worship.
Premodern: I believe, therefore I understand.
Modern: I think, therefore I understand.
Postmodern: I experience, therefore I understand.
One doesn’t “replace” the other. All three stages co-exist, but the newer influences the older in such a way that it tends to dominate trends of all sorts. Postmodernism, therefore, views things differently than the modern culture, including:
- Limits of science and logic
- Chaos can be as valid as order
- Anti-institution, elitism and authority
- Detests hierarchy
- The age of participation
- Everything is perishable
- Gravitate towards tribes
The others are divided between those discussing art and design, where postmodernism is already passé, and those who present the pejorative absence of truth in secular themes.
Academic postmodernists (super intellectuals) view postmodernism as a rejection of what’s called “grand narratives” — vast, interconnected, institutional and ideological forms of knowledge — the stories that make up the hows and whys of who we are. This, however, is of itself a grand narrative, so it’s a little hard for me to go down that path. Therefore, it’s not the postmodernism of which I speak, and perhaps I should just use another term. I won’t, because it’s real, and in the context with which I use it, it’s a helpful explanation of smaller events that are taking place within the whole.
“What,” I’m often asked, “is the best evidence that we’re into a postmodern culture?” The answer surprises most people, because it’s, well, so seemingly insignificant — how we’re spelling our names. The thirst for uniqueness as individuals is driving us down what I view as a ridiculous road, but then my age group values order a little more than younger folks.
I recently stood in front of a secretary who was asking for my identity before taking me into the office of her boss.
“What’s your name, please?”
“Terry Heaton.”
“And how do you spell that?”
“It’s like you’re turning the ‘heat’ ‘on:’ heat on, heaton.”
“No, your first name.”
That floored me, because as I approach my seventh decade on the planet, nobody had ever asked me how to spell my first name. So I did a little research and found many ways to spell “Terry.” You can drop one of the Rs, change the E to an A, use I, IE, EE, or other assortments of vowels instead of the Y. As many ways as you can phonetically pronounce the word, you can create spellings to make it come out sounding like “Terry.”
I thought of this today while getting ready for tomorrow’s Superbowl. There’s been an ongoing chest pounding display between Joey Porter of the Steelers and Jerramy Stevens of the Seahawks. “Jerramy?” Where the heck did THAT come from? It came from parents who wanted their son to stand out from the crowd, to be different, unique, one of a kind. There are a lot of “Stevens” in the world, they thought, so let’s give him an out-of-the-box spelling for a first name. The problem is that everybody has the same wish, and so we have multiple spellings of multiple names, and guess what? If everybody stands out from the crowd in such a way, there is no crowd!
This is demonstrable postmodernism in its purest form.
Please, people, can we think about this for a minute? Do we really want to go through life asking people how to spell their first names? Of course, Marree, Joolea, Soosun, Jairee, and Toeknee probably feel otherwise.
There are things about postmodernism that I love, but this isn’t one of them.
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Ammunition: The HD future is in our hands
Doc Searls (one of my heroes) advances my latest essay with a thoughtful post about the realities of HD resolution and the transmission thereof. He notes that television stations will go all digital in 2009, a proposition that makes them “look to me like anachronisms at birth. Expensive ones, too.” The biggest use of the HD standard, he believes, will be home video, productions shot and edited by everyday people.
He offers a couple of important business ideas that fall under the category of “ammunition:”
Inevitably, some telco is going to discover that symmetrical broadband is the way to compete with cable. Why cant cable go symmetrical? Between DOCSIS, inertia and an inability to imagine any shape other than an asymmetrical one, the cable companies are sitting ducks for anybody coming along with a symmetrical alternative.The biggest need for symmetrical broadband will be video upload to offsite storage — another good business for the carriers, or anybody, to be in.
Get that, and the ammo market will get huge, fast.
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It’s gotta be free…
This won’t come as a shock to anybody whose been studying internet life and trends for awhile: free is the way to be (duh). That’s the conclusion of executives at a panel at the Software & Information Industry Association’s 2006 summit in New York this week. The event was reported in MediaDailyNews.
“On the Internet, it’s going to be very, very tough to get people to pay for things that are already available free,” said panelist Dennis Miller, a managing partner at Spark Capital, a venture capital firm focusing on media, entertainment, and technology.Miller cited illegal file-sharing and the early, easy availability of free news and entertainment content as creating a culture where netizens have from the beginning expected content for free.
And the culture is unlikely to change, said panelist Mike Kelly, president of AOL’s Media Networks–so content providers will have to find other ways to monetize. “Free is one of the concepts that’s here to stay,” he said. “Consumers like free, so you’d better find a way to monetize.”
While I think there will be increasing and viable options to pay down-the-road, I really do agree with this summary. The net is a dynamic place for advertising, and where the option is advertising versus pay, I’d go with advertising.
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The Ammunition Business
Here is the latest essay in my on-going series, TV News in a Postmodern World. The piece examines a powerful analogy from Gordon Borrell of Borrell Associates Inc.
“The deer now have guns,” he says, referring to the fact that our audiences are now in a form of the media business themselves. And what do you do when the deer have guns? “You get into the ammunition business.”
I cannot possibly overstate the wisdom of this concept, and I hope I’ve done it justice in this essay.
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Who needs TV anymore?
Steve Hall at Adrants has a nice commentary on the TV industry, TV Becoming Unnecessary Appliance for Advertising:
The NFL has announced it will place all Super Bowl ads airing this weekend on its video on demand NFL Network, on NFL.com and on Sprint phones. Budweiser will optimize its five minutes worth of ads for the iPod and make them downloadable from Budweiser.com. GoDaddy, of course, has been pushing its ads online for years. Pepsi will have BrownandBubbly.com. Burger King will have the Whopperettes. Who needs an actual television anymore?
Meanwhile, Heavy.com has the banned Superbowl ads. Of course, who wants to see THEM?
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