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If you’re interested, my work with WKRN-TV is the subject of this week’s Business Week “Cutting Edge” podcast with Heather Green. Since I like to hear myself talk, I’ll probably give a listen too.
I’m on the road to Chicago again, so I’ll likely not be blogging much until Friday afternoon.
Meanwhile, there’s a House hearing tomorrow on a new bill that gives the Telcos what they want and will alter the way the internet is used by allowing them to divide bandwidth into a haves and have-nots system. By refusing to spell out net neutrality, this bill gives that authority to, of all people, the FCC and sticks a screw you finger in the eyes of small businesses and entrepreneurs in the U.S.
Declan McCullagh writes for CNet News:
A November draft of Barton’s (Republican Joe Barton of Texas) bill (click here for PDF) explicitly said broadband providers “may not block, or unreasonably impair or interfere with” Internet access. The final version (PDF), on the other hand, simply gives the Federal Communications Commission the authority to set rules and publish violations.
Barton released the text of the bill (the Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act) Monday and scheduled a hearing for tomorrow. A vote could come as early as next week. Why the hurry? Because that’s the way flimflammery works.
Despite all the nice rhetoric about the Telcos needing to recoup their costs, the reality is that this legislation has been bought and paid for by Telco profits, and the only thing it guarantees is the furtherance of that. Call or email your Representatives and tell them you want net neutrality spelled out in the bill.
Jeff Jarvis has a deep, thoughtful and biting analysis of the FCC’s decision on the word “bullshit” that ought to be required reading for every American. It’s so good, that I would do it a disservice by excerpting. Go over and read it. This is Jeff at his very best.
Memo to broadcast networks: Your brands are tied to the broadcasting industry. You have history and baggage, especially as it relates to younger people. You cannot expect people to think of you otherwise, no matter how hard you try to redefine yourselves. You’re broadcasters. That means yours are broadcasting brands. As such, they’ve served you well, but moving those brands to the web doesn’t somehow make you something different.
The MediaPost publications are carrying an article this morning quoting ABC’s Albert Cheng, executive vice president of digital media for the television group, and his speech at the OMMA conference in Los Angeles. In it, Cheng says all the right things and all the wrong things. Here’s a sample:
“We must build assets and a marketing platform to reach audiences wherever they are. We have to build franchises–we can’t limit ourselves as broadcast or cable. We have to define ourselves as an entertainment network regardless of technology, and based on individual consumer preferences.”…Cheng told attendees that ABC needs to have a branded programming presence everywhere–online, on cable, on cell phones, on TV, on a Nintendo GameBoy Advanced. “We plan to be everywhere our consumers are. But we must understand that the Internet gives us a direct two-way connection to consumers to deliver a personal, customized experience.”
…Cheng argued that ABC wants to cultivate direct relationships between its brands and consumers. “People use brands to navigate their options; we must sharpen our brands.”
Brand extension online is a necessary part of the redefinition that Cheng and all the networks seek, but to stop there is dangerously foolish. For example, everything ABC does as a broadcast network in an attempt to move its brand online can and will be duplicated by the other networks. Think reality shows. One network finds success, and everybody follows suit. This is part and parcel of being a television network. It comes with the territory, and we’re so used to it that we think nothing if the same thing happens online. If ABC tries something new, and it’s successful, bang! We’ll soon find the same thing with NBC, CBS, Fox, the CW and God knows who else.
Time is the new currency, folks. It’s one of the underlying forces driving disruptive technologies today. We cannot expect an industry accustomed to sucking time out of people’s lives to embrace technologies that do the opposite. We ARE talking television here!
Moreover, putting all of a network’s eggs in the brand basket misses what’s actually taking place online, where anybody can be anything they desire, and ingenuity and creativity are rewarded. We will reject a network television Website and flock to a youTube.com. TV networks would do well to honestly ask themselves why. Why? Because a network site is, well, television. It’s one-way, it promotes only its own programs, and it’s a big institution playing in “our” space. Remember that there are many networks — each with their own interests — and we don’t have time for bouncing from one to the other.
In trying to protect and expand its brands, network television is shooting itself in the foot with an all or nothing strategy involving those brands. They are playing right into the hands of the Googles and Yahoos of the world by painting themselves into the content-provider-only corner, a place that has limited value downstream.
You haven’t won.
The IRS hasn’t “found” an old refund that you’re due.
She won’t be overwhelmed (she’ll more likely be underwhelmed).
Your PayPal account is fine.
Your bank account is fine.
His family doesn’t really need your help.
You won’t have greater control.
Your stamina won’t be increased.
There is no secret to attracting beautiful women.
No account of yours anywhere has been suspended.
Your password hasn’t been updated.
You haven’t been randomly selected.
That hot stock is actually a dog.
Here is the latest in the ongoing series of essays, TV News in a Postmodern World. Those familiar with my work know that my deep concern in the midst of the enormous changes around us is for LOCAL broadcasters and LOCAL communities. My friends and contemporaries exist in this world, and most face an uncertain future. This essay looks at how well-funded internet start-up companies in the Media 2.0 space all deal from a global perspective, seeking to create communities outside geographic boundaries.
While this is good for the start-ups and their investors, it may not be so healthy for our local communities, because it moves advertising money from inside geographic markets to distant places. And that’s not good for local media companies.
I don’t have any easy answers for this, except to say that broadcast companies need to invest in 2.0 projects, only they need to take advantage of the local angles that the Google’s of the world can’t offer. I’d like to see the day when local venture capitalists and angel investors build such applications at the local level before scaling them through expansion — perhaps in franchise form — to other locations.
Time Magazine’s cover story this week, The Multitasking Generation (subscription required), takes a hard look at the extent to which teenagers in our culture are “wired” and what that’s doing to their brains (that’s right) and family life. There’s a lot of good information presented, but the whining with which the scientific and academic communities make their case is a sad commentary on institutional America. I can’t give you the quotes, because I don’t have access to the online article, but academia complains about kids multi-tasking during lectures (although some professors are engaging students with multimedia lectures), and scientists express fear about the “types” of people multitasking is presenting to the culture.
I think the skepticism is what gets me the most, and for institutions, that’s the sure path to irrelevance (after all, if there’s something wrong with “them,” then WE don’t have to change). Maybe we don’t need lectures anymore. I mean, lectures go back to the earliest forms of civilization — they’re the epitome of one-way, top-down communications. I talk; you listen. But what do people actually learn in lectures?
One scientist laments that multitaskers want black and white simplicity, as if everybody agrees that that’s a bad thing. Says who? Well, cough cough, that’s, cough cough, absurd, Terry. After all, cough cough, life is complex, cough cough, and people need to, cough cough, be exposed to that complexity.
Who’s made it so complex? Those intellectual elites who benefit from the, cough cough, complexities, because they think they’re the only ones who understand it.
Look, I’m not saying there’s nothing “wrong” with generation-M, as it’s called. But I challenge you to deconstruct your version of “wrong,” before assuming you’re “right.”
A new study from Forrester predicts that 2007 will be the year that the television industry experiences an actual full-year decline in ad revenues. This conclusion was reached by speaking with 133 major advertisers, people who control over $20 billion in annual ad purchases.
The study was done for the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and presented yesterday at the ANA’s TV Ad Forum in New York. Here are some pertinent paragraphs from a ClickZ story on the research:
…78 percent of these marketers feel the potency of their television advertising has declined in the last two years.…once DVR penetration grows to above 30 million households, 24 percent said they intend to cut their TV ad budgets by at least a quarter and reallocate that money to online advertising, product placement and other channels.
The Internet fared particularly well in major advertisers’ future plans. Eighty percent said they’ll invest more in Web advertising, and 68 percent singled out search marketing as a source of future spending. Smaller percentages said they’d pursue program sponsorships, product placement and online video ads.
…Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff, who authored the study, noted the argument put forth by many in television that increased spending on the Web will come out of marketers’ direct marketing budgets, leaving the traditional ad mix relatively unaffected. He said the results of the ANA study do not bear that out.
“I think advertisers are telling us, ‘No, that’s not how we think of it,’” said Bernoff. “They have a media mix, and it includes TV… and it includes Internet. They’re saying they’re going to take money out of television and put it into [online] advertising. They’re not going to take money out of direct marketing and put it into advertising.”
Meanwhile, streaming video guru Adam Gerber, CEO of Brightcove, offers an interesting read today in MediaDailyNews about what the video industry would look like if broadcast television had never been invented. Read the piece, and you’ll come away with a rather revealing picture of where we’re headed. Here’s the key paragraph:
If TV didn’t exist and someone just dreamed up the idea today, the concept would be much richer than just programmed video. It would include engagement elements that enable consumers to involve themselves with programming and advertising. We’d end up with an open video distribution model, driven by content and consumer needs. Most important, we’d have a model without the burden of legacy business issues: intrusive ad models, gated distribution arrangements, and prohibitive talent/rights fees.
I’m with the writer at Broadcasting and Cable’s blog, BC Beat, about Burger King’s latest (wonderful) ad campaign (youTube). I wonder how long it’ll be before the Parent’s Television Council complains to the FCC that “Big Buckin’ Chicken” is just, well, too close to something else. The national nanny would then step in and rule that any word ending in U-C-K would be added to George Carlin’s list of the words you can’t say on TV.
Burger King pushes the viral envelope better than any company in the U.S., starting with the famous Subservient Chicken and continuing with the gossipy pictures and videos of the King, first with Brooke Burke and now on Spring Break. Big Buckin’ Chicken is sure to do the same, assuming those who’ve taken it upon themselves to protect our ears from such can leave it alone.
Stay tuned…
BONUS: Steve Hall at Adrants spins the tale of the bigbuckingchicken.com domain.
I’m off to Phoenix with my “unbundled media” dog-n-pony show. Back late Wednesday night. See you on the backside. I’m on the road a lot these days. Trips ahead include Tampa, New York, Boston, Orlando and possibly Oslo, Norway in June.
As I go about speaking with groups and broadcasting clients, the topic always eventually turns to advertising money and the struggle broadcast sales people have with turning the online corner. This is a complex matter, but the principal problem is that they are two entirely different animals. Broadcasting’s golden egg-laying goose is mass marketing; the internet is one-to-one. Push tactics rule mass marketing, because the audience is passive. Pull tactics work online, because the audience is involved and very much in control.
To the extent that media companies try to turn the web into a top-down distribution system, they run smack dab into this dichotomy, and therein lies the rub. Moreover, ad agencies like things the way they are, so there’s little energy at the local level for change. This is why the most successful online ad deals for local broadcasters are “convergence packages,” where the advertiser gets on-air ads in addition to online. These are actually broadcast sales contracts, regardless of how they’re written. And until account execs can come up with a more convincing story, advertisers (and especially agencies) will continue to demand reach/frequency evidence that their ads are exposed to a mass.
And online advertising, especially at the local level, will continue to flounder compared to over-the-air advertising.
This came up yesterday at a panel in New York hosted by the Advertising Research Foundation. The subject was the eventual melding of online and TV. According to MediaPost’s Online Media Daily, Joanne Bradford, corporate vice president of global sales and trade marketing and chief media revenue officer for Microsoft, said that TV isn’t likely to dominate the smaller, fledgling internet advertising market.
“The industry is not at a place where you can just turn over what we do to television,” she said, stressing that online ad sales are driven by data. “It’s a very different sell–it’s bought in a different way; the back-end reporting structure is different.”Still, Bradford noted that online agencies’ capacity to place premium inventory still lags far behind demand–meaning that a huge pot of ad dollars are being lost every year. “Until we’re at the place that we have operational scale and ease of use as an industry, we’re always going to be behind,” Bradford warned, concluding: “[TV’s] not as efficient as we are, but we don’t have the scale that they do.”
If a local television station is to truly reach its online ad potential, I think a couple of things are going to have to happen. One, the station must restructure its organizational chart to place its internet business efforts on the same line as its broadcast signal. This, I firmly believe, is the only way to “lift” the web above its second-class status inside the building. If people inside the station think the web is an adjunct or extension of the station, it can only result in frustration and missed opportunities.
Two, the onus is on the media company — not the advertising community — to educate advertisers about the differences between mass marketing and data-driven marketing. Right now, agencies are only looking for two things in the data that’s available: how many and how often — the twin gods of mass marketing. But page views and unique visitors are fool’s gold, because — as Ms. Bradford notes above — we just don’t have the scale to make the jump from on-air to online. We’ll never reach our potential with these, because smart agency people will look at them and simply shrug their shoulders.
Local ad agencies have a lot to lose with mass marketing on the wane, so they’re naturally going to be resistant to change. By falling into the page views and unique visitors trap, we’re playing their game instead of making a convincing case for our own. Local ad agencies stand in the way of progress, and account execs with a good story to tell are going to have to find a way to speak past them to the advertisers themselves. This is a significant challenge, but overcoming such is what sales is all about anyway.
It’s silly to think that businesses with products to sell don’t want to reach MORE customers or potential customers, so nobody is suggesting that the goals of reach and frequency are irrelevant to the new paradigm. The issue is in the quality of the reach and frequency, something the internet can deliver with far greater precision and at less cost than the scattergun approach of mass marketing. Local media companies that invest in data will find that this is the magic bullet they’ve been seeking in not only the setting of rates but also in helping them sell their story to advertisers.
But the measurement that I think is going to change everything is engagement — the involvement of users with commercial information. When we create ways to tie the cost of ads to this, everybody will win. True engagement may only come through pull tactics, and that’s why it’s so important for local media companies to get into the unbundled media business of which I’ve written extensively.
UPDATE BONUS: Steve Hall over at Adrants defines “engagement” while the ad industry struggles for an official definition.
Well what do you know? Some Public Broadcasting people at the local level are getting the message. In a move that’s making noise in PBS circles, CET — the Public Broadcasting station in Cincinnati — has relaunched its website as an ad-supported Video on Demand portal.
“We anticipate the site to maintain its noncommercial feel and look,” said Susan Howarth, president and CEO of the 52-year-old CET. In light of this, Howarth added that the 501c3 nonprofit organization will be selective in its acceptance of ads on the new CETconnect.org site.…Unlike CET television, the Web site does not fall under Federal Communications Commission guidelines barring advertising. Reportedly, PBS.org is reconsidering running paid advertising on its site, which has raised the ire of public media purists.
(Thanks to PaidContent)
Must be my lucky day. I’m sitting here in green rejoicing that I’ve won The National Lottery of Holland three times already today. Gosh, I wonder what other internet prizes I’ll get today.
NBC’s head of research Alan Wertzel (one of my favorite foils) is at it again. He’s now telling advertisers that, well, DVRs aren’t as much of a threat as good old fashioned clickers. Wayne Friedman writes for MediaDailyNews:
Wurtzel said the loss in commercial effectiveness was currently just under 7 percent in non-DVR homes, as compared to about 3 percent in DVR homes. The explanation focuses on old technology–regular TV remote devices. Television viewers have used TV remotes for years to avoid commercials–changing channels, muting, etc.–and TV remotes are in many more homes than DVR machines.
You can’t make up stuff more entertaining than watching statistical analysts twist in the winds of change. Wertzel is the best; no lie.
Seriously, though, Jeff Jarvis has long said that the remote control was the biggest communications breakthrough of all time, because it put control into the hands of viewers. That disruption has spread far beyond clickers now, and it’s just humorous to watch the status quo try to convince the world that it really isn’t as bad as we think.
Jay Rosen has a thoughtful piece (what else is new?) today where he challenges the twelve former Knight-Ridder newspapers up for sale to actively get involved in their own futures. In it, he actually makes the suggestion that employees seek out local investors to buy the papers.
What a concept! Local ownership of papers!
Um, isn’t this the way it was before the big corporations got involved? Wouldn’t it be ironic if the collapse of corporate bean counter formulas actually led to a renaissance of real local media?
Here is an outstanding example of why people need to be free to create with material “protected” by stuffy Hollywood. This movie trailer — made with scenes from “Jaws” — is the kind of thing that’s competing for the eyeballs that the status quo used to own. Clever, clever, clever.
Thanks to Steve Hall and YouTube.
I’ve developed a new habit over the past few months that I want to share. It’s called Pandora, and I think it may be the most significant new concept to come down the pike in years. You may have heard of it — you may even be an experienced user — but Pandora is much more than it seems, and that’s what I want to share with you.
For the unenlightened, Pandora is a music application connected to what the founder calls the “Music Genome Project.” In a nutshell, the creators have listened to thousands of songs and coded each with “genes” — common attributes that enable users to find music they like. With Pandora, you build your own radio station, but you do it through defining your tastes, not selecting songs you already know. As the site feeds you tunes, you can tweak your tastes by telling the software whether you like or dislike a song. What comes out is a unique blend of music you’ve heard and a lot that you haven’t. You can add artists or song titles to further refine the stream of music. You cannot self-select tunes; that’s not what Pandora’s all about. It’s a brilliant effort to introduce you to new artists, and this is its power. When you hear a tune you like, you simply add it to your favorites list, which provides an RSS feed that makes acquiring new music easy.
I love Pandora and am thoroughly addicted.
And there are a couple of things about Pandora that those of us who follow media and the unbundling thereof need to understand, because they are enormously significant as we look to the future.
One, Pandora, while helping the music industry by directing people to purchase music they’ve found, completely destroys the command and control needs of the industry as a whole. When you listen to Pandora, you’re immediately taken by the sheer volume of music that’s available, people you’ve never heard of and styles you’ve never considered — all based on what you’ve described as your tastes. While this is fabulous for artists of all sorts, it undercuts the one-way marketing stream upon which the institutional music industry is built. I certainly view this as a good thing, but it’s further evidence of why we no longer need a handful of greedy executives determining what is or isn’t popular, and that is trouble for the status quo.
What you come away with is a completely different view of the music industry, one of breathtaking creativity, depth and opportunities for the future. Do you think everything coming from the record companies sounds the same these days? Take Pandora for a spin, and you’ll be blown away. I cannot possibly overstate the significance of this.
Pandora levels the playing field and decreases the need for middlemen in the music buying equation, and that means hope for the thousands of artists and musicians who live on the edges of an institution entrenched in formulas of what it believes will appeal to a mass audience. But music and the other arts were never intended for such. They belong to everybody, and Pandora helps me realize that creative energy is alive and well in our culture. It’s just been hidden in the name of the dollar.
Two, Pandora answers — from a technological perspective — the nagging Modernist question posed by mainstream media people as they stare at the disruption of personal technology. The thinking is that people will miss important information if they select only that which is important to them. “How,” I’m often asked, “will people find what they’re not looking for?” (The question actually means, “How will I be able to insert my own message in the stream that gets to most people.”) Pandora answers that question beautifully, and some day somebody will create a news-driven Pandora-type application. We have aggregators that come close, but this will be different, because it will require identifying news “genes” in the same way Pandora has done it for music.
We’ll have Pandoras for video and films, anything that entertains us. We’ll share what we like with our tribe members, and they’ll do the same with us. Remember, the application doesn’t compete with other distribution methods, because you can’t select specific titles to hear. This is how we’ll find things we’re not looking for. If you want to specifically program your own listening, well that’s called an iPod. 
Pandora’s business model is subscription or advertising. You make the choice when you create an account and start building your “radio station.” Don’t miss Pandora, but more importantly, don’t miss its significance in the landscape of Media 2.0.
And never underestimate what free people can come up with to meet their own needs.
There are a couple of worthwhile items to read today under the theme of “real life and journalism.” First up is a reality check column by Andrew Cassel of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Best line:
Freedom of the press may be guaranteed by the First Amendment, but there are no constitutional promises of stability or job security in the news business.
OK, fellow journalist, let’s both turn down the snarkometers and get down to business. Our goal should not be to save the newspaper or newsroom or jobs in it as they were. Our goal should be to take advantage of all these new tools to gather and share news in new ways because if we don’t do it, someone else will. Rather than ignoring change, figure out how to take advantage of it and get ahead of it. Lead, damnit, lead.
Stop complaining, folks. Get involved, and you’ll find the opportunities downstream are greater than the fear and disappointment of today.
Just as “the people” are leading sweeping changes in media and other aspects of our culture, so too will they lead significant changes in the political world in the near future. This is the inevitable end of the disconnect that people in the U.S. feel with their government and the political process that put it there.
Time and again, I’m reading how the empowerment of people is the central theme of technological advancements. As Joe Trippi said a couple of years ago, “If information is power, then the Internet, which distributes information democratically to anyone who has access to it, is no longer distributing just information — it’s distributing power. And in a top-down society, it’s empowering the bottom. Put more simply–in America, it’s empowering the American people.”
In my essay, Chaos at the Door, I wrote of what that power is doing to all of us.
And the paradox of power is that discontent increases with opportunities for acting on it. The more the bottom is given the tools to make and distribute their own media, the greater their power; the greater their power, the greater their discontent and, along with it, the opportunity for acting on that discontent. This bubbling caldron of energy is profoundly anti-elitist and anti-institution, because the more the bottom surveys the landscape these days, the more they realize that our culture has failed them, and this energy is palpable in the halls of power.
| “And how would you rate the job Republicans in Congress are doing — excellent, pretty good, only fair or poor?” | |||
| Date | Positive | Negative | |
| March 2006 | % | 27 | 68 |
| “And how would you rate the job Democrats in Congress are doing — excellent, pretty good, only fair or poor?” | |||
| March 2006 | % | 24 | 70 |
I’m a lifelong Democrat, but the Democratic Party doesn’t represent me in any way, shape or form. As I’ve written previously, my father wouldn’t recognize the party he supported his whole life. My mother is disgusted with both sides in our two-sided world, and the Harris Poll numbers show that she’s not alone.
So what’s going to happen? Will we see the rise of independents or a third party? Neither would surprise me. Look at what happened in South Korea when a motivated citizenry got involved.
Throughout this blog and my essays, I’ve tried to point to a direct connection between the “professional” press and the contemporary political process. Their relationship is more than symbiotic, for it’s hard to tell which is the host. Suffice it to say that one cannot exist without the other, and that’s why it’s so clear to me that we’re on the verge of something significant politically in the U.S. If it follows the media pattern, it’ll rise up from the bottom and, more importantly, it won’t give a rat’s ass about the status quo.
