Archive for August, 2006

Another TV GM joins the blogosphere

Posted Thursday, August 31st, 2006

Don Lundy, General Manager of McGraw-Hill Broadcasting’s WRTV-TV in Indianapolis, has launched a blog, RTV6GM.com. He becomes the second commercial station GM that I know of (WKRN’s Mike Sechrist is the other) to offer a stand alone blog — with comments — to viewers and internet users. Don is another one of the growing number of television managers who are beginning to understand what all the internet fuss is about, and I’m happy to welcome him to the blogosphere.

I think it’s important that GM’s blog. One, it gives the top guy an up-close and personal view of the Personal Media Revolution, including the tools that everyday people are using. Don’s blog is done in Wordpress, and he wrote to me that it “seemed intuitive.” Yeah.

Two, if the GM is doing it, it’s pretty hard for everybody else to shy away. According to Borrell research, the top character trait of a successful local media web strategy is strong executive commitment. I’d say that’s true with all new media. The boss simply must lead the way.

So join me in welcoming Don. Drop on by his place (remodeling will occur over the next few days/weeks) and leave him a comment.

(Full disclosure: WRTV is a client of mine.)

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Revisiting a lofty J-school initiative

Posted Thursday, August 31st, 2006

Over at his MediaShift site, Mark Glaser continues to crank out quality online journalism, including today’s great piece on whatever happened to the experiment in “new” journalism that was launched a year ago by five major journalism grad schools. The schools put together $6 million to fund — over three years — the Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education.

Glaser does a masterful job of taking us through what the initiative has accomplished and concludes that it isn’t much in the way of “new.” And isn’t this always the case when institutional incumbents are threatened by a real disruption?

Here’s the money graph:

So why not take the $6 million and create real new-media incubator businesses? Stanford University helped create Yahoo and Google, but those companies didn’t come from the journalism school. Perhaps the journalism schools could team with computer programming departments to create hybrid sites that combine the best technology of sites such as Digg or YouTube with the editorial standards that come from journalism.
This is excellent thinking and something the initiative would be well advised to embrace, although it’s not likely. The “why not” that Mark poses really IS the question. Why not? Because institutional thinking doesn’t have a seat at the new table, that’s why. And rightly so, for at core, the disruption exists due to the failings of the institution, and who’s going to admit that when their salary and pension are at stake?

For all the good that J-schools do and all the wonderful people who’ve dedicated their lives to training the young people within the ivory walls, it simply isn’t enough in the face of what’s confronting the institution today. If the “professionalism” that these institutions wish to protect is really that important, then Mark’s advice ceases to be advice and becomes, instead, a mandate.

News IS a conversation, but who starts the conversation? That, I believe, is the role of the new “press” in our culture and where journalism education should really begin.

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Quality video files via WiFi?

Posted Thursday, August 31st, 2006

Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch writes of a new technology with rather interesting potential for television news. The company is MotionDSP, and the technology originated as a military application eight years ago.

The company compares multiple frames in a video to find and replace lost pixels in a given frame, significantly enhancing the experience with little increase in overall file size after compression. The service works best when a video is not moving rapidly or in a jerking fashion, but tends to improve just about any low quality video.
Take a look at the samples here and then let your mind wander about the challenge of boosting the quality of small video files for broadcast.

MotionDSP works as a video upload service and will be available for consumers later this year. The intent is to enhance the quality of the videos on user-upload sites like youTube. Frankly, the idea of tweaking the resolution at the receive end of the upload is brilliant, and it may well be the solution broadcasters need to transport video files from the field via the internet.

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It’s time to end the bullying

Posted Wednesday, August 30th, 2006

So the FCC Wants to Reconsider (its) Indecency Ruling, huh? This is typically what happens when you strike back at a bully, and I sure hope the broadcasters who are seeking their day in court over this runaway governmental interference keep applying the pressure.

The agency says it may have acted too hastily and wants to review the whole matter. I hope the court has balls and denies the request, for this has gone on too long. These rulings have been entirely political, brought about by a tiny number of individuals with clout on the extreme right.

Thank God for the separation of powers.

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Squirrel Wars, Episode I, Intruder Alert

Posted Tuesday, August 29th, 2006

Squirrel Wars, Episode I, Intruder Alert.

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Media’s biggest blind spot

Posted Tuesday, August 29th, 2006

Romenesko grabs a gem from PR Week:

“Suddenly, there are about 10 million more media critics than there were 10 years ago,” says National Journal media critic William Powers. “I find that exciting. It’s funny, there are all these bloggers and all these people who are instant media critics, and yet there are a lot of traditional news outlets that still don’t have anyone doing media criticism. …I think the conventional wisdom in journalism is that media criticism is an inside-the-business topic and it’s really just going to be read by other journalists. And I don’t think that’s true anymore.”
How very true this is. Media people generally don’t realize how important media is in the lives of everyday people and that media is news. News people especially want to view themselves as detached observers, and the idea that they are an integral part of everyday life for people is a little too scary.

Media news is BIG news, although media reporters are few and far between.

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It’s all in the language

Posted Tuesday, August 29th, 2006

I’ve learned a lot from Doc Searls about language and the way we use metaphor as a path to understanding. It is with that in mind, that I’m sitting here this morning pondering a changing understanding of the web that will become increasingly evident, I believe, in the years ahead. As crazy as it sounds, I’ve been thinking about my predictions for 2007. The December deadline looms in late summer when you write this kind of stuff.

I’ve already written about how it’s going to be a very rough year for broadcasters, but here’s something you can count on regarding the web. Growth will be on the video “side” of the web, and that, I think, will be good news for smart broadcasters who’ve heretofore been getting table scraps from a web that’s dominated by the print culture.

So let’s do a little review here this morning. Even the most basic language of the early web embraced a print paradigm. Why do we call URLs web “pages?” Because the early web was all about text, and text is the lifeblood of printed communications. Bandwidth was the issue back then, and text was the only way it could be viewed. We use “fonts.” That wasn’t an everyday word before the web, so who used it regularly? Print people, that’s who. Where do “banners” and other display ad types come from? Right, our brethren in the print industry. “Page views” is a decidedly print term, and look at the strategies employed by sites to get people to view more. Where does the “turn to page two” link come from anyway?

Look at a typical web “page,” and you’ll see the printed communications industry. But is the web really a print medium? And if not, what is it and how can those of us in the television industry bring our model to the forefront? Isn’t it time that broadcasters stopped wrapping in print terms what is “our” paradigm?

Print ads surround content. Broadcast ads interrupt content. Can the web truly be a broadcast medium?

I remember a discussion a few years ago with a broadcast digital VP type who said, “Video doesn’t drive the web — text does.” His point was that it was an issue of time, that I can read a headline and make a decision about digging further a whole lot faster than watching a video of somebody with the same information. There was buffering. There was connection speed. It was hard to argue that point.

But is that the case today and, more importantly, will it be the case tomorrow (which is where we need to be pointing our guns)?

Viacom cable properties like MTV and The Comedy Channel have created broadband “channels” for users. Even the use of that term is refreshing, because it doesn’t force what we do into the print model. With broadband “channels,” the expectations are different, and we are free to work within our core competencies.

This is not to even remotely suggest that broadband channels means the resurrection of the 30-second spot. That formula — with its insulting waste of time for viewers — is dead, may it rest in peace. But that doesn’t mean people won’t stand for brief disruptions of “their” streams, and in an unbundled paradigm, the opportunities for sponsorship are limitless.

I’ll write much more about this down-the-road, but I wanted to share where I’m headed. 2007 will be a watershed, make-it-or-break-it year for the industry, and if we are truly to experience a renaissance via the web, we’re going to have to start using our own language, and not that forced upon us by the print industry.

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HUGE Huge

Posted Monday, August 28th, 2006

According to today’s MediaDailyNews, Google and eBay have reached an agreement on a new way for advertisers to talk to consumers — an innovative use of online telephony that allows web users to speak directly with the advertiser. Folks, I cannot begin to describe how huge this is.

“The click-to-call capability will allow a user to click on a link or icon within a product or service advertisement to initiate an Internet voice call to participating eBay merchants or Google advertisers directly from either company’s respective sites,” the companies said in a statement issued early Monday morning. They described the approach as an “emerging e-commerce model” that would bring buyers and sellers together via the Web, and added that plan already are afoot to integrate Skype into Google’s toolbar and its Google Talk system.
So once again, the internet big boys are creating something that moves the whole advertising world in a new direction — a direction, I might add, that is as inevitable as the rain in springtime. And what will we do to get in on this action? We’ll play using their tools — for a price, of course.

And, once again, this new direction emphasizes functionality over form. “Click here to talk” isn’t sexy and won’t win all those Addy awards, but advertisers will love it. I mean, these folks don’t give a crap what Madison Avenue thinks. How ridiculous! I remember when Google’s Adwords first came along. They were simple pieces of text with a link. No flashing. No whirling. No pretty pictures. No “message.” Just straight selling. Who knew?

I think this is great news for the web and for commerce. These types of ads will demand a premium for those phone calls, and the metrics? Oh, my!

So while the incumbents of the media world are boasting in their new found ability to actually make money from the web through tired, old display advertising, reach-frequency models, the folks who REALLY understand what’s going on have reached a little deeper into their toy boxes in a way that makes what MSMers are doing look, well, like child’s play.

UPDATE: I now discover that this ad style has been around for awhile with certain Yellow Pages sites. That doesn’t change my opinion that this is pretty huge, because the Yellow Pages — for all their efforts — is still an incumbent business that’s being disrupted by the Googles, eBays and Yahoos of the world. And when they get together, we need to pay attention.

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Oh the life of a squirrel

Posted Sunday, August 27th, 2006

Redefining the term “lazy Sunday:”

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Niche culture and the web

Posted Sunday, August 27th, 2006

The internet is vastly more about culture than it is media, but the extent to which media IS culture these days has a way of blocking the cultural aspects. For people still grappling with the notion that the web is a place and not merely a set of pipes and content, this seems far too abstract to comprehend. Yet comprehend it we must (those of us in traditional media), for our future lies therein.

Witness the remarkable story — as published in today’s New York Times — of Korean guitarist Jeong-Hyun Lim, the creator of the “funtwo” version of Pachelbel’s Canon in D as viewed on youTube seven and a half million times. You need to see this video and read some of the comments to get a glimpse into the magnitude of what’s before us. You also need to read Virginia Heffernan’s wonderful account of how this came about and her insight into the why’s of posting something like this on youTube. The web, it turns out, is the gathering place of the hyper-niche, each being birthed at the bottom and using whatever tools the net provides to “be” what THEY want to be.

If you follow the leads, this Everest of electric-guitar virtuosity, like so many other online artifacts, turns out to be a portal into a worldwide microculture, this one involving hundreds of highly stylized solo guitar videos, of which funtwo’s is but the most famous. And though they seem esoteric, they have surprising implications: for YouTube, the dissemination of culture, online masquerade and even the future of classical music.
I think it goes far beyond that, but this story is a marvelous case study of one niche. And here’s the thing: for the bottom, it isn’t at all about money, and that’s what makes it so hard for traditional media and culture types to figure out. As Heffernan points out, if this was the music industry, the “funtwo” video would’ve been platinum many times over by now, based on the number of views of the video. And what does Jeong-Hyun Lim think about that?
Online guitar performances seem to carry a modesty clause, in the same way that hip-hop comes with a boast…

…Even as they burst onto the scene as fully-formed guitar gods, they hang back from heavy self-promotion. Neither JerryC nor funtwo has a big recording contract.

At a moment in pop history when it seems to take a phalanx of staff — producers, stylists, promoters, handlers, agents — to make a music star, I asked Mr. Lim about the huge response to the video he had made in his bedroom. What did he make of the tens of thousands of YouTube commenters, most of whom treat him as though he’s the second coming of Jimi Hendrix?

Mr. Lim wrote back quickly. “Some said my vibrato is quite sloppy,” he replied. “And I agree that so these days I’m doing my best to improve my vibrato skill.”

Go watch the video and see if you aren’t both amazed and entertained. Then ask yourself what this means for institutional music distribution.

People are endlessly inventive, and they know better than we do what they like. Granted, this story is heavily influenced by Asian culture, but look how far downstream they are in the uses and applications of the web and especially mobile technology.

Finally, this guitar world only scratches the surface of not only what’s to come but what’s already there. And isn’t it remarkable that nobody’s asking the permission of the mainstream to do any of this? The music industry, like so many other institutions, has wrapped itself in laws and rules, because it long ago stopped being about music. This internet niche is the opposite, and that’s a serious, serious threat to the status quo.

BONUS link: Cory Bergman writes at Lost Remote about the continued heavy-handed strategies of the music industry. Now they’re going after tablature writers, people who listen to music and write the notes and finger positions to enable others to play the tunes. The industry is claiming copyright infringement (what else?) and threatening the sites that post tabs. This is stupidity gone to seed. Talk about killing the goose that laid the golden egg!

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Memo to all businesses everywhere

Posted Friday, August 25th, 2006

Automatic voice answering systems DON’T WORK! Put a fork in the damned things and get real people to answer your phones! I mean, WTF? This is like the elephant in the room that nobody wants to acknowledge. We’ve moved to the age of consumer empowerment, boys and girls. Your attempts to “make it easy” for us out here do just the opposite.

What on earth makes you think I have the time to sit through your various “helpful” menus. You know, I wonder if the CEOs of these companies ever actually call the office.

Gone are the days when you can treat people this way, so who’s going to step up to the plate first? I’d like to know, because my business is going there.

Sheesh. (I’m in a fiesty mood this morning. Stay away!)

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Blowing the trumpet

Posted Friday, August 25th, 2006

Please permit a bit of passion (rant?) this Friday morning.

Sometimes I think about the task ahead for local media, and I just want to scream. I heard at a conference a couple of weeks ago the analogy of a media company being a mechanic trying to fix the car while driving it at the same time, and I think that’s pretty accurate. Surely a dual path strategy is the way to go, but the inherent problem is an inertia barrier, because who has the time to give attention to something that doesn’t immediately help the bottom line? All this does is make me want to scream louder.

My frustration reaches explosive levels when little bits and pieces of new information enter my mind and mix with what’s already there. KA-BOOM!

And so I get excited and worried at the same time. I want to tell the world what I see, but few want to listen. I come off as arrogant sometimes, because, well, I can get so far downstream that the language I use is off-putting. I use abbreviations generally accepted by cronies but meaningless to potential clients, and it can be frustrating beyond measure. Fortunately, I’m with people now who are very helpful at keeping me on point, and for that I’m grateful.

I don’t look down my nose on anybody. If you’re doing a sensational job with local news in your market, if you’re making money, if you’re winning awards and being a sensational community citizen, if your company is thriving, if the people in your shop are happy and fulfilled, and if everything is perfect in your world, I salute you. If, on the other hand, your staff is ready to revolt, your ratings are down, your community service sucks, problems make you dread coming to work, and your company is about to go under, I salute you too.

You know why? Because, this is hard shit we do. People who sit outside the ropes and lob grenades day-in-and-day-out at the industry fail to give due props to the sincere and monumental effort that goes into being purveyors of “the news” in any community and in any form of traditional media.

I’m well aware of that, and I think that I sometimes come off like I’m not. But you see, there is only so much time to warn people about what’s ahead. I’m out here and see minefields everywhere. I shout. I scream. I’ll do anything I can to (insert metaphor here) stop the disaster that awaits those who appear — through their behavior — blind to the dangers.

I suppose it’s viewed as presumptuous of me to forecast disaster, and that the real issue is who the hell am I? Okay. Fair enough. It’s not my responsibility for you to accept what I say; it’s only my responsibility to say it. Are you beginning to understand?

Why am I in this mood this morning?

A friend wrote to ask my opinion of projections that MySpace will take 20% of internet ad revenue. Here’s one of the graphs I wrote him:

And here’s the fun part for Murdoch. It’s all built by the users. THEY are the content, and this is a lesson local media companies simply refuse to accept (”Cough, cough. But what about all the LEGAL issues, Terry. And, I mean, if anybody can post anything, it’s a bloody minefield!). And so we just sit back and watch them eat our lunch, because it’s a short distance from myspace.com to sanfrancisco.myspace.com.
The best advice that I have for local television stations are things nobody in their Media 1.0 “right mind” could possibly accept — that to win in this new media war, you have to outthink the new media giants, like Google, Yahoo!, MSN, MySpace, and now youTube. That means entering the disruption instead of using it to prop up our fading mass market models. For example — and I truly believe this — the road to success in the local unbundled news video space is to work together (yes, with the other local stations in town) to build THE online destination for local video viewing. We simply must get into the aggregation business, because if we don’t, we’ll simply become content creators. Isn’t a portion of the ad revenue better than nothing?

“Blah, blah, blah, blah blah.” Sometimes I must sound like the adults in a Charlie Brown TV special.

“Why do we sit here until we die?” the Lepers said outside the city during a terrible famine in ancient Hebrew times. They reasoned that it was better for them to beg mercy of the attackers who were besieging the city than to simply starve to death. When they got there, they discovered an abandoned camp, one filled with bounty beyond anything they could’ve imagined.

If this makes me sound arrogant, then so be it. Like I said, I can only share the vision. It’s up to you to decide if I’m crazy.

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Real story of Katie’s debut

Posted Thursday, August 24th, 2006

Shelley Palmer is one of the new media commentators I read regularly, and he has an excellent article in today’s MediaDailyNews that I recommend. What Can We Learn From Katie? takes a thoughtful look at the history that’s about to be made, yet speaks little of Ms. Couric. Why? Because the real story is the combination broadcast/web aspects of her debut. Good stuff.

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“There’s somethin’ happ’nin’ here…”

Posted Thursday, August 24th, 2006

“…what it is ain’t exactly clear…”

Things are moving at lightning speed in the new media world, and it’s an increasing challenge to keep up and an even bigger challenge to separate the wheat from the chaff.

In some ways and in some segments, it reminds me of the bubble days, and there is, in fact, a sort of bubble world developing in the Web 2.0 space. Hundreds of new, VC-funded applications are coming down the pike — many duplicates of others — and we’re starting to see the old “start-ups advertising on start-ups” strategy that popped the bubble five years ago. Steve Rubel has a warning for those companies:

Quietly, an entire Web 2.0 economy has blossomed. The Web sites and blogs that cover Web 2.0 - sites that I really love - are largely supported by ads from startups that also are hoping to capitalize in the rising interest in online advertising.

…startups advertising on startups spells trouble. You can’t sustain momentum. If the economy hits a speed bump it will upset the apple cart enough to cause the Web 2.0 advertising economy to sink.

…The solution, just as with investing, is to diversify.

There are raised eyebrows over some of the transactions we’re seeing too. Here’s the headline graph of a story today from Online Media Daily:
Sony Entertainment Pictures is paying $65 million to acquire video-sharing site Grouper Networks. The site’s modest user base–around half a million visitors last month–led to raised eyebrows about the purchase price. “I think this one borders on the unreal,” said Tolman Geffs, managing director at media industry investment bank The Jordan, Edmiston Group.
“There’s a man with a gun over there…
…tellin’ me I got to beware…”

Meanwhile, there are some genuinely exciting things happening and one in particular that I think puts the others in perspective. As I wrote about yesterday, Dave Winer’s new passion has profound ramifications for the news business, because if you can far enough downstream on it, you’ll understand that it eliminates the need for a middlemanesque platform. No TV signal. No newspaper. No Website.

Doc Searls understands this and has written a MUST-READ entry on the subject. Please, folks, do yourself a favor and spend some time pondering the metaphors that Doc uses, for this is his gift (and he’s one HIGHLY gifted fellow). It’ll help you see beyond all the headlines about this and any other new development that comes down-the-pike. Here’s a sample:

“River of news” usefully combines three metaphorical frames: place, transport and publishing. Using all three, it proposes an approach to publishing that respects the fact that more and more people are going to want to get fresh newsy information on handheld Web devices.

The River of News metaphor not only speaks a new kind of sense to the NYTimes and BBCs of the world. It speaks to a new blog sensibility as well. I’m starting to think about how I might want to change my blog to be more Webphone-friendly. Can I live without all the junk on the left and right margins, for example? (Probably. They’re worse than useless to readers with Treos and Blackberries.) Alternatively, should I have a special feed just for Webphones?

Whatever the answers, I’m not thinking about my blog, or what it does, as a “site”. Meanwhile, that’s how most big publishers think about what they do on the Web. That’s why their sites are often so chock full of… stuff. They’re all about being sticky and holding your eyeballs inside the sitewalls. That might be fine on a computer screen, which is big and placelike in the sense that it usually isn’t moving around when you’re using it. But a Blackberry or a Treo or a Nokia 770 is different. It’s mobile. It’s going somewhere. You use it in a much different way.

So don’t be sucked into the argument that Dave’s new thing is really old. I mean, it is, but it isn’t. What’s new is where this will lead, because the more that minds like Doc’s examine Dave’s new passion, the clearer the disruptive force of the innovation becomes. We all need to stay tuned on this one.

“Stop, hey, what’s that sound?
Everybody look what’s going ’round.”

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Lounging Squirrel

Posted Wednesday, August 23rd, 2006

Just to keep everybody up-to-date with my new source of entertainment, the squirrel that Piffy wants to get at in the worst way has now taken to resting his weary bones on my deck. How can you not be entertained by this kind of stuff? I mean he lays there like a friggin’ bear rug! Then sometimes he slithers around on his belly like a snake.

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The Changing Face(s) of Local News

Posted Wednesday, August 23rd, 2006

Here is the latest in the ongoing series of essays, “TV News in a Postmodern World.” This one is called The Changing Face(s) of Local News, and it’s surely to cause a few raised eyebrows (what else is new?). It’s hard to write about something to which you’re so close, but I think it’s very important to tell the story of WKRN-TV and its VJ concept of creating local newscasts. I feel that way not so much because I was a part of its beginning but because of what’s coming out of the experiment, and how it’s changed day-to-day life in that shop.

To be sure, WKRN’s news programs can be better, but that’s not the point. I have confidence that they will get far better than most people think, because tweaking presentation is a manageable skill. What’s really important here is the back end of their newsgathering machine, the efficiencies they’re discovering, and, most importantly, the kinds of people it takes to do this. Substance and experience are pouring into that newsroom, and that alone is sufficient to overturn some of the basics of contemporary television newsgathering.

The Changing Face(s) of Local News

This essay is of special significance to those of you on this list who are involved in journalism or communications education, for if indeed WKRN-TV is blazing a trail to the future, then it will surely impact the “farm system” approach to employment and recruiting, and that means you.

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Pay attention to Dave’s newest thing

Posted Wednesday, August 23rd, 2006

Dave Winer has come up with a way to make mobile news feeds easy to access and read on portable media devices. He calls it “NewsRiver” and uses the device’s browser instead of an RSS aggregator. He’s using OPML technology to create a web page that’s readable in his River of News style (scrolling through text instead of clicking on headlines).

While this has been available for several months, it has moved to the front burner with Dave, because he recently purchased a Blackberry and is discovering what he likes and doesn’t like about the device.

A lot of people are going to say, “Big deal. We can already read news on a PDA.” But let’s all remember that this is Dave Winer, and when Dave gets excited about something, it’s time to stop what you’re doing and pay attention.

I wouldn’t be blogging if it wasn’t for Dave, and I think that’s true for most. I wouldn’t have an RSS feed if it wasn’t for Dave. Podcasting wouldn’t exist today if Dave hadn’t given his mind to it.

He has a unique way of getting downstream, having an “a-ha” moment, and bringing it back to the rest of us. We look at it and think he’s nuts, but that only lasts for a moment.

This discovery has pretty profound ramifications for local media companies, especially those who are currently paying outsider providers to do something similar for them. These companies will likely see their business model disrupted by this simple application.

I love Dave Winer.

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On the road today

Posted Monday, August 21st, 2006

In Florida. Had to get up at 4:30am to catch a plane. Ack! I had a terrible night’s sleep, because the ol’ body was reminding me that I had to get up early. Memo to self: don’t do this again. (ZZZzzzzzzzz)

I’ll be back tomorrow and will get back to serious writing then, including a new essay on the changing face(s) of local news.

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Snakes on a (MF) Plane (aka SoaP)

Posted Friday, August 18th, 2006

Everybody else is writing about it today, so why not join the fun? WARNING: bad language ahead.

To begin with, I haven’t seen it yet, but I plan to go. Why? Because this film has defied the system all-the-way, and even in its release, the system doesn’t understand the phenomenon. The best review so far is from Pajiba publisher Dustin Rowles, who seems to recognize what’s going on better than most. While I’m here, let me once again put in a plug for Pajiba, one of the best contributors to my RSS reader.

Truthfully, SoaP defies everything I ever believed about filmmakers who actually set out with the intention of making a good-bad flick; I didn’t think it could be done. And maybe without the attendant hype, it couldn’t have, because damn near half of Snakes success comes from the spectacle of 75 college kids ripped to the tits chanting “Snakes on a Plane” and tossing toy planes around the theater. Indeed, Snakes absolutely demands an audience. It’s a participatory event. And it may be the only time you can ever watch a film and not hate everyone in the theater for yelling throughout, because hell if you don’t find yourself treating the whole experience like a college basketball game, just waiting for Samuel Jackson to drain the Snakes on a Mother Fucking Plane to win the game. I actually applauded. More than once. And I didn’t even shake my head in wonder when the audience gave it a standing ovation as the credits rolled.
Rowles dwells far too much on what he believes to be hype generated entirely through manipulation, and this is where I think he’s just plain wrong (and doesn’t understand the blogosphere). If people find something humorous and entertaining (the concept, the catch phrase), they’ll pass it along to their friends, and I hardly think that’s a new phenomenon. If this wasn’t truly entertaining, no hype machine in the world could have produced the kinds of in-theater reactions about which we’re reading today. So where does hype leave off and genuine enjoyment begin (and the wish to share that joy with others)? Mr. Rowles’ cynical view (”We got played by a subsidiary of Time Warner.”) is common among those who don’t understand the power of the snowball in the Media 2.0 world.

His view that the influence of bloggers can be gamed in such a way is fairly typical of people who don’t actually live in this world. From the outside looking in, he sees New Line Cinema “creating” hype — a purely Media 1.0 concept — when the reality is that the snowball they rolled was sufficiently substantive to gain momentum on its own. This is very different than manipulating results, because who has control over the snowball? Nobody. What it needs is sufficient weight to get it rolling in the first place.

I think Samuel L. Jackson recognized the end the moment he saw the title and, according to interviews, told his agent to get him in the film. Throw in the catch phrase, and you’ve got an instant classic. The quality of the film matters nothing. As Mr. Rowles noted, it’s a participatory event.

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Help Wanted

Posted Thursday, August 17th, 2006

McGraw-Hill Broadcasting (one of my clients) is seeking three top-notch individuals to run their new media planning and implementation. I’ve been a part of developing the job description below, and I want to tell you that these stations (KGTV-TV, San Diego/KERO-TV Bakersfield, KMGH-TV, Denver, and WRTV-TV, Indianapolis) are doing everything right in terms of preparing for the future. These are new positions that report directly to the GM (the way it has to be).

You don’t have to be a coder, per se, but you need to have a deep familiarity with how all this stuff works beneath the surface. A background in media may or may not be helpful; what is key is the vision and skill to create new businesses within a media environment. These are great opportunities for the right people, and I can tell you that the pay will be satisfactory.

If you’re interested, send an email and resume to the following:

Denver: Heidi Armstrong, HR Manager [heidi_armstrong@kmgh.com]
Indianapolis: Don Lundy, General Manager [don_lundy@wrtv.com]
San Diego: Derek Dalton, General Manager [derek_dalton@10News.com]

Digital Media Manager job description:

The Digital Media Manager has the primary responsibility for the strategic direction and implementation of the stations’ digital media initiative. To meet station goals, they develop, implement and market products that:

  • Reinforce the presence of the station in the local community online

  • Leverage new media (blogs, RSS, search etc.) to encourage the local community to interact with the station and each other

  • Provide a resource to empower the local community

  • Aggregate community information on a digital platform

  • Support and promote local broadcast content online

  • Utilize broadcast capabilities to create innovative local market content for the web

  • Facilitate the exchange of ideas and promote commerce within the local community.

They exhibit an entrepreneurial spirit with demonstrated leadership qualities. They have hands-on capabilities with current web technologies. They have an understanding of local advertising and local news media. They have the ability to communicate that knowledge into language that is understandable to all employees of the station.

They report directly to the General Manager.

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