Archive for September, 2006

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Tape-delayed sports: an insult to viewers

Saturday, September 30th, 2006

Okay. It’s Saturday morning and time for a rant.

I didn’t watch the Ryder Cup last weekend, because NBC chose to tape delay the event, which was played in Ireland. I would’ve gotten up early to watch it live, but instead, I had to do what I’m sure many, many people did — “watch” it via the live leaderboards available online.

Same thing this morning. Tiger Woods is on a roll, reminiscent of the 2000 season, and he leads the American Express World Golf Championship in England by five shots after two rounds. ESPN carried the first two days live, but ABC — on a college football afternoon — is tape delaying the event. This is a tired, old Media 1.0 strategy, and it begins with the foolish assumption that a.) more people will watch in the afternoon and b.) they can get away with it. If Tiger wins, it will be six-in-a-row in 72-hole events. That’s what’s called history, but history isn’t live on ABC. I mean, WTF?

Tape-delaying live events has never been okay. It’s programmers swinging their meat because they can, and this is at the heart of the consumer revolt against broadcasting. When will we ever learn?

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The future is in databases of local information (part 3,672)

Friday, September 29th, 2006

The American Press institute issued its long-awaited report on the future of the newspaper industry this week, and guess what? The key recommendation is something I’ve been touting for a long time: that the path to downstream profitability for all local media is in databases of local knowledge and information. Says USA Today:

Newspapers grappling with declining circulation and profit margins can turn themselves around if they quickly develop publications and affiliated websites packed with local information…

“The land rush to meet local information needs has barely begun,” says Newspaper Next: The Transformation Project…

For example, the report says that newspapers might assemble databases about parks, medical facilities and restaurants, information about schools, consumer-supplied ratings for restaurants, mechanics and contractors, as well as chat groups for parents and shoppers.

Remember that Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it easily accessible. That ought to be the core goal of any Media 2.0 business, because that’s where the eyeballs and the money will be. We can either be contributors to the knowledge/information base by supplying content (the expensive end of the value chain), be the aggregator of the local knowledge/information base, or we can do both. Let’s see, hmm. Which path should we take?

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Weather widgets seek the local weather franchise

Friday, September 29th, 2006

AccuWeather, a company that has been providing weather services to television stations for 40 years, has been slowly moving into a competitive position with stations by providing local information directly to consumers. This week, the company released a series of widgets for bloggers and other Website (or page) creators that will expand their reach exponentially. This includes MySpace pages. Here’s a reduced screen grab from the AccuWeather site:

Let me repeat myself: local stations need to get into the widget business — and especially in the weather space, because companies like AccuWeather and Weather.com are using this as a back door to steal the local weather franchise from local television stations. We’re so busy trying to “drive traffic” to our portals that we’re missing what’s really going on in the unbundled world.

In a Wall St. Journal article about the threat to cable by the internet, Comcast COO Steve Burke makes this remarkably insightful comment: “Whether the Internet is a friend or foe depends on what we do.” This is true for everybody in the Media 1.0 space. The web is a friend if you get in sync with it and explore the marvelous opportunities it presents. It is a powerful foe, however, if you cling to old business models or, worse yet, do nothing.

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Quotes of the week

Thursday, September 28th, 2006

Craig Newmark, Craigslist founder, on why he’s not interested in cashing out by selling his classifieds juggernaut.

“Who needs the money? We don’t really care…

…If you’re living comfortably, what’s the point of having more?

…We both know some people who own more than a billion (dollars) and they’re not any the happier. They also need bodyguards.”

Craig is one of the smartest and nicest people I’ve ever met, and these beliefs come from his heart. And isn’t it refreshing to hear somebody successful say things like this?

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Jupiter’s Card: TV loses $7 billion by 2011

Wednesday, September 27th, 2006

Disruptive innovations assailing the television industry will likely result in a loss of $7 billion by 2011, according to JupiterResearch analyst David Card and reported in MediaDailyNews. A new study by the company shows TV gaining $5 billion from new platforms but losing $12 billion due to ad-skipping by those with DVRs.

Jupiter’s forecast is erring on the side of caution, according to Card; it doesn’t cut TV much slack. “We advise media planners not to cave in to TV and Nielsen’s talk about new live-plus ratings. If stuff is time-shifted, a lot of the ads will definitely be skipped.” He was careful to note that the $12 billion loss figure is a worst-case scenario. It was calculated by combining recent data on DVR subscription rates with surveys of American households when asked how often they skipped commercials.
Like all of these forecasts, any little thing can bump the numbers in one direction or the other, but Card’s insistence that the ad-skipping problem is big is a refreshing change from all the spin coming from the networks about it.

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Building a local ad network

Wednesday, September 27th, 2006

The Washington Post, more than any other mainstream media company, understands new media and how to make it work. Caroline Little is CEO and publisher of Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, and it was Caroline who first caught my attention with her quote, “Coming in through the home page is an old model and coming in sideways is the new method of arrival for most users.” Tom Kennedy and his VJs have won NPPA video awards, and that’s evidence of how newspapers can play in the broadcast video news space. And now comes The Blogroll, further evidence that Caroline and her people simply get it.

Similar to what we’re trying to do with AR&D client WKRN-TV in Nashville, this is building an ad network through bloggers, especially those whose work fits within specific advertiser needs. The premise is brilliant. If you’re a blogger, you submit your blog to the blogroll and if approved, you start running ads served by the washingtonpost.com and share in the revenue.

While nobody’s likely to get rich doing this, it expands the Post reach exponentially, gives them valuable user data, creates deep relationships outside their usual sphere of influence and helps monetize citizen media efforts.

A link to members’ blogs will be featured in our Sponsored Blogroll index, giving your writing promotional space on the washingtonpost.com home page and giving you an introduction to an audience of 8 million readers monthly. At the same time, our hardworking sales reps will help connect your signature musings with the huge number of advertisers we deal with every day who are looking for the next big, slightly-outside-the-mainstream idea.

As a Sponsored Blogroll member, you’ll maintain your independence. But you’ll get additional site traffic, a little buzz and maybe some additional income.

As with the WKRN project, underneath this all is the knowledge that ad networks are where the money is in reach/frequency internet advertising. Building local networks, therefore, is the next killer app for local media, but few understand this or are willing to tie their sacred brands to other websites in the community. This, as we say in Texas, is dumber than a bucket of hair.

The tools and techniques of Media 2.0 allow local media companies to be that which they currently are not, and it is precisely this that holds such opportunity for the mainstream in the years ahead. Caroline Little clearly gets that.

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Me and my beard

Wednesday, September 27th, 2006

I’ve grown a little goatee since moving to Dallas. I’m not sure I like it, but most people think it’s “me.” I’d like to think it makes me look a little more professorial, but Mike Sechrist says I look like a porn director (like, how would HE know anyway?). What do you think?

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Trib stations on the block?

Tuesday, September 26th, 2006

According to the Chicago Tribune, the board of the beleaguered Tribune Corporation has apparently come up with a solution that will please its biggest shareholder, California’s Chandler family. It involves selling most of its TV stations.

Sources with knowledge of the company’s thinking say management’s favored solution would be to spin off many of Tribune’s roughly two dozen television stations in a tax-advantaged transaction, unload several of the smaller papers and take the rest of the company private in a leveraged buyout.

One way to lower taxes in such a deal, said an executive at another media company, would be to take some or all of Tribune’s $4.9 billion in corporate debt and put it into the television transaction, thereby reducing the taxable gain. That would have the added benefit of unburdening the balance sheet of the remaining company so it could support the debt required for a buyout of the public shareholders–presumably including the Chandlers, who currently own a 19.6 percent stake in the company.

The key paragraph in the Tribune article, however, hits the nail on the head:
Whether Tribune can get a deal done during such a dismal time in the local media business is hard to predict, analysts said. They noted that buyers for local TV station groups aren’t plentiful. And sliding circulation and ad revenue make it difficult to determine how much newspaper assets are worth and how much debt they can support.
First the New York Times and now the Tribune. This agonizing slide in the value of local media companies is much further along that most people who work in the trenches of the business care to admit. Who’s going to buy all these TV stations, and what will they do with them? Google? Microsoft? Yahoo!? Who knows?

One of my 2006 predictions was that we would see media companies attempt to take their businesses private again, because they can be much more flexible in so doing. I hope the Trib can pull it off, because their effort will likely be duplicated elsewhere. These are dangerous times for local media companies, and not all will survive.

(Tip to Lost Remote)

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More competition for local video news

Tuesday, September 26th, 2006

Michael Rosenblum, the father of the Video Journalist (VJ) movement, is launching a futuristic video news project with Verizon that ought to give the “trusted brand” crowd a shudder or three. He’s assembling news gathering units (what he terms “nodes”) in various cities that will make their content available via cellphone, web and cable, and he’s knee-deep in recruiting for the first node in Washington, D.C. The second node will be here in Dallas, and I’ll look forward to watching it up close.

A little background. When Al Gore first began researching the idea of Current TV, he sought the counsel of Rosenblum. Michael spent a year touring the U.S. on behalf of Current and encouraging young VJs to submit content to the project. His idea was to establish nodes in various markets that would feed the beast in addition to the on-going solicitation of user-submitted content. Current went in a different direction, but Michael’s vision lingered and in Verizon, he’s found a partner willing to test its viability.

I don’t know if this will sink or swim, but I’ve learned not to underestimate Michael or his vision. This will be news by and for young people, I’m sure, and it by-passes all the traditional routes. And the threat to the status quo is significant, for this is yet another option for eyeballs. Moreover, it adds to the redefinition of what is considered “news” and how that news is gathered and vetted.

His most pressing need now is for an Executive Producer for D.C. Here’s the ad:

Radical, experimental, cutting edge new hyperlocal news service pilot seeks EP for one year contract to run and manage local news ‘node’ in DC. Small bureau as ‘test of concept’. Cable/web/videophone. Partner with blue chip player. Must think way outside of box. Unique opportunity to get in on ground floor of revolutionary new approach to hyperlocal news/web casting. Must be video literate. High risk profile. Help create the future. This job is not for everyone. But for the right person, a once in a lifetime opportunity.
The pay isn’t much, especially for the market sizes where the test is being conducted, but that’s seldom the point for a start-up.

I will add that I’ve heard from a couple of other groups over the past two years who are investigating similar opportunities, but Rosenblum’s is the first to actually get started. What that tells me is that this concept is going to eventually expand, because there’s money to be made in video news, regardless of how one goes about gathering or presenting it. These other groups have had journalism backgrounds but, like Michael, they see the handwriting on the wall and the low barriers to entry. Units like these will be lightweight and flexible and not bound by the systems and institutional “weight” of mainstream players.

One final note. I told you so, three years ago.

Email Michael if you’re interested in the job.

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Why “yield” should matter to us

Monday, September 25th, 2006

Eric Picard, director of advertising strategy and emerging media planning at Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions, offers an important essay for television today in ClickZ. “How TV Is Killing Itself by Accident” takes issue with ABC’s decision to sell advertising at flat rates instead of the CPM model. His main issue is that television doesn’t understand the concept of “yield” as it relates to the internet.

Online publishers implicitly understand yield. In a world where the audience decides what and when to consume, all a publisher can control is the way it distributes advertising across that content. A smart publisher places ads into content by always running the ad that gives the publisher the highest return. Inventory efficiency — the amount of ROI for the publisher (not the advertiser) — is the yield. The more efficient the publisher is at placing its highest return ads in the ad calls, the more money it makes.
While the discussion is interesting, Picard comes from the world of massive impressions and users, and this doesn’t necessarily apply to local broadcasters who can’t achieve such scale on their own. In that sense, flat rates and sponsorships are a better deal for the publisher.

But what is fascinating about this to me is the gap that exists between stations and the basic fundamentals of reach/frequency advertising on the web. This is due, at least in part, to reliance upon closed networks of television station websites, businesses that understand this but don’t necessarily share it with the network itself. If your inventory belongs to and is managed by somebody else, there’s no incentive to learn all this stuff.

This is why I advocate local stations doing this for themselves and forming their own alliances — within the communities they serve — to achieve scale. And this is especially critical in the Media 2.0 world, where a single, monolithic Website is the EZ Pass lane to the tar pits.

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The science of new media

Monday, September 25th, 2006

One of the joys of my life is observing the world of science as it attempts to cut and paste life into quantifiable bits that can be measured and studied. It’s this obsession that everything can (and needs to be) measured that provides the most enjoyment, for scientists can back themselves into some wonderful corners. So it is with scientists who are trying to determine (from a logical perspective) why the internet is such a powerful communications tool.

Enter the world of haptics (pertaining to the technology of touch. It is an emerging technology that promises to have wide reaching implications. — Wikipedia) and a fun, albeit weighty, article in today’s Online Journalism Review called It feels relevant: biological tactility in news media.

Here we have a journey through the history of how information is processed, the outdoor theater, “hallucinatory” dimensions, and tapping a mouse to conclude that the “new” in new media is very much a biological thing.

If a journalist deals with a 3D graphic, an immersive multimedia news environment or GIS mapping mashup, he or she has reached fundamentally new territory. Hansen (new media critic, Mark Hansen at The University of Chicago) and others, drawing from scientific research, conclude that the way a person receives and absorbs mediated digital information is a mind-body process. And the online multimedia experience is more complete, more biologically compelling than previous forms of media, including cinema. As Hansen puts it, the new media experience is “qualitatively different from “the ‘verisimilitude’ and ‘illusion’ of the cinematic image.”

This also differentiates online news video from broadcast TV news practices, as journalists who work with online video photography have found through trial and error. This difference becomes more pronounced with the use of panoramic cameras and immersive perspectives.

But whiz-bang devices are only the experimental edge or mega-toys of the Internet. The medium’s unique tactile experience can easily be appreciated by clicking a mouse, tapping the keys or interacting with audio-visual displays. This is another world from turning pages or flipping through channels.

Really now, can we trust anybody who uses a word like “verisimilitude” in a sentence? And what exactly is a “new media critic” anyway?

But I digress. This is a fascinating look at what I wrote about yesterday, modernism attempting to corral postmodernism, the most basic tenets of which are involvement, participation, and distrust of institutional authority. Why do we need to quantify that to “make sense” of what’s taking place around us and, more importantly, participate with the participators? Look, technology is providing the tools, but it is people that are providing the heat. Have people changed? Not a chance. Then what is it that’s driving this revolution? The same stuff that drove the pioneers westward, put humankind on the moon, and pushes us all to improve our lot in life. Add to that the very real sense that our institutional culture exists to protect the institutions, not the people they’re supposed to serve, and you have the ingredients for change.

I don’t doubt that YouTube, MySpace and SecondLife are visceral, tactile experiences for people, and that the study thereof is new and exciting. But please, people, let’s not overcomplicate something that’s really pretty simple. And let’s not try and use that information to further delude ourselves into thinking that this “participating” is somehow evil and that we can find ways to manipulate use it to maintain the status quo.

Long ago, I noted that the web engaged three senses — sight, sound and touch — and that the best that previous communications’ mediums could do was two (unless you count the smell of popcorn). This isn’t rocket science, folks.

Sex and eating occupy all five senses, but you knew that already.

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Understanding chaos is like weighing a vacuum

Sunday, September 24th, 2006

I’ve just finished a fascinating Forbes article on Google, Chaos by Design. While the information contained in the piece is interesting and worth the read, I was struck by the writer’s attempt to understand — as in quantify — a company management that embraces the word “chaos.” I think such “understanding” is an impossible task, and it forms one of my core beliefs in studying the cultural drift to postmodernism. If you close your eyes, for example, you can “be” anywhere; open them and you’re where you are. One needs to suspend some logic and reason to paradoxically “make sense” of such a big, five-letter word.

The writer, Adam Lashinsky, is very fair in this task. Judgments are more subliminal than overt, but it’s still a case of logic versus chaos. For me, then, this isn’t so much a story about Google as it is a revealing story about culture and philosophy. There are plenty of people who want Google to fail, and most of them have a dog in the fight. Attempts to understand Google, therefore, are really an exercise in “figuring it out” so as to duplicate it or compete against it. This is pure modernism and the chasing of one’s tail.

From a purely modernist perspective, if Google ever collapses or is dismantled by the government, observers will point to various business (logical) reasons for its success or failure (success and failure are, after all, logical concepts). From a postmodernist perspective, however, Google’s success or failure is irrelevant. It has already dramatically altered culture, and the extent to which it is rewarded monetarily is proportional to its service to the culture. The company’s lofty mission, let us not forget, is to organize the world’s information and make it easily accessible. This gives it high status in a postmodern culture but makes it a horrific villain in a modernist world view, the institutions of which exist as a result of protected knowledge and information.

Success in chaos may, in fact, be a logical failure, and the important factor is which carries more real weight in the world we perceive. Postmodernism, for all its intellectual proponents and opponents, deals much more with the world of the human spirit than anyone cares to admit, and this is an unknown sphere. Logic and reason aren’t God (modernism) and neither is He an untouchable, anthropomorphized being sitting on some cosmic throne (premodernism). So what’s left? This question is what excites me so about the new era into which humankind is now entering, and it’s what gives me so much hope for tomorrow.

C. S. Lewis wrote that human beings are like amphibians — capable of living in two worlds at the same time. This belief challenges our senses and confounds logic and reason, because the only place these worlds come together is here, and the only time they come together is now. It’s the old “angels on the head of a pin” conundrum. We dismiss such problems as chaotic and move on with our modern lives.

And as I’ve said a hundred times, postmodernism won’t “replace” modernism anymore than modernism replaced premodernism. It’s more about the growth and maturation of the human experience, for we are all spiritual beings on this very human journey.

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Fear of technology evident in new Pew study

Sunday, September 24th, 2006

The people at Pew asked 742 “internet leaders, activists, and analysts” to gaze into their crystal balls and predict the future. Fun stuff. According to these prognosticators, by the year 2020…

  • A low-cost global network will be thriving and creating new opportunities in a “flattening” world.
  • Humans will remain in charge of technology, even as more activity is automated and “smart agents” proliferate. However, a significant 42% of survey respondents were pessimistic about humans’ ability to control the technology in the future. This significant majority agreed that dangers and dependencies will grow beyond our ability to stay in charge of technology. This was one of the major surprises in the survey.
  • Virtual reality will be compelling enough to enhance worker productivity and also spawn new addiction problems.
  • Tech “refuseniks” will emerge as a cultural group characterized by their choice to live off the network. Some will do this as a benign way to limit information overload, while others will commit acts of violence and terror against technology-inspired change.
  • People will wittingly and unwittingly disclose more about themselves, gaining some benefits in the process even as they lose some privacy.
  • English will be a universal language of global communications, but other languages will not be displaced. Indeed, many felt other languages such as Mandarin, would grow in prominence.
As a futurist, I always find these kinds of things fascinating, but you have to take them with a certain grain of salt. These are all important things to think about, especially the fears of technology, addiction and the widening digital divide. I view the future with a little more optimism, perhaps, but Pew didn’t ask me to participate. Hmm. Maybe I really do just have an audience of one.

Here’s the PDF

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And we wonder why…

Saturday, September 23rd, 2006

I went to the theater last night to see “The Illusionist.” Great flick. Highly recommend it.

But I was (again) struck by how the industry has turned movie-going into an insulting barrage of marketing to people who’ve actually paid for the experience. Just when I think that bottled water tops the list of “we’ll pay for anything,” I’m struck by the absurdity of paying $10 to watch commercials. And we wonder why people are abandoning theaters for DVDs or downloads.

Last night’s extravaganza was brought to you by NBC. 20 minutes of backstage hype for the “can’t miss” hits of the new season. And that package, of course, contained various commercials too! When that ended, we were treated to another 10 minutes of commercials for upcoming movies. Why we call these things “trailers,” I’ll never know. They don’t “trail” a damned thing.

So a two-hour movie becomes a two and a half hour “experience,” and here’s the kicker. I could’ve entered the theater a half hour later, I suppose, but all the good seats would’ve been taken! Damned if you do; damned if you don’t.

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Amanda’s back

Friday, September 22nd, 2006

Former Rocketboom host Amanda Congdon is back with a video blog “Amanda Across America” funded by the NRDC, the Environmental Countdown and Ford. It’s typical Amanda, and I’m glad to see she’s back among the blogging. I viewed several segments, and it’s basically hit or miss — a little too much Amanda sometimes (like the old “forced” uppers we all know and love in the TV biz).

The interview with Josh Wolf is worth a lookie-loo, however.

Welcome back, Amanda.

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Television viewing isn’t broadcasting anymore

Friday, September 22nd, 2006

Wherever I go in the broadcast world these days, the conversation eventually drifts to the future, something I believe will be more net-centric than broadcast or mass market-centric. While most broadcasters can easily see what’s taking place around them, there remains a strong belief in the broadcast model. For me, it’s not an “either/or” future, and I think that’s important.

But something occurred to me this week that I thought I’d share with you. As every broadcaster knows, the first focus group they encounter is in their own homes, and generally television viewing is pretty strong. Mike Sechrist has a veritable theater in his house, with over-stuffed seating and an enormous HD projector screen (Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s in-home theater!).

But here’s the thing: there is a big difference between television viewing and the broadcast model. For us, television is basically what we have today. It comes via cable or satellite, for the most part, and we have difficulty imagining that it would ever be any different. What most folks don’t realize is that cable already uses Internet Protocol (IP). The Telcos are developing IPTV, an expensive way to turn copper wires into what the cable companies are already doing. TV over IP is a different animal. This is the streaming video technology — that which makes up the various broadband channels that are popping up everywhere. All of these sources will be available to Mike’s projector, and viewers will have choices about how and where they view them.

Maybe you’d rather watch ZeFrank and Rocketboom on your computer at work. Perhaps you like to surf YouTube in your home office or on a laptop in the kitchen. Maybe you choose the porch or your bedroom for Comedy Central’s Motherload, CNN’s Pipeline, MTV’s Overdrive, or CBS’s Innertube. Perhaps you download movies and play them back in your home theater? You might want to use Apple’s new iTV to transfer downloaded network shows from your iPod to the computer than runs your theater, so you can sit and watch them uninterrupted. And maybe you watch sports the old fashioned way.

It’s all television viewing, and this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of problems for the broadcasting model.

Like I said, it’s not “either/or” to me, because broadcast “signals” will always be around. When TV stations move to all-digital in 2009, people will enjoy HD offerings more easily, but they will still be just one pixel on the page that is television in the years ahead.

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Quote of the day

Thursday, September 21st, 2006

Via PaidContent.org from The Huffington Post comes this statement from Chris Ahearn, president of Reuters Media, in explaining $100,000 in grants to Jay Rosen’s citizen journalist project, NewAssignment.net.

“While encouraging good journalistic ideas is a worthy goal in itself, Reuters believes that supporting new and varied networks of creators with different perspectives is good for both journalism and business.”
So here we have big media funding this remarkable citizen journalist idea, and who’d have ever thought this possible a year ago?

Jay Rosen is brilliant, IMO, and this project bears watching.

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The real value of YouTube

Thursday, September 21st, 2006

I’ve spent the last couple of days with broadcasters, and as is often the case, the discussion eventually got around to YouTube. We all have our opinions about YouTube, don’t we? We marvel at their traffic, and yet we wonder how such a cultural phenomenon is ever going to make money. There’s also the legal ramifications of streaming copyrighted content, something Mark Cuban is currently harping on:

This so reminds me of the early days of Napster. They were the first to tell you it wasn’t illegal. They didn’t host anything but an index to link to all the illegal downloaders. YouTube doesn’t upload anything illegal and will take down whatever you ask them to. Sounds legit right ?

No, but that’s not the thing. The thing is the shock that until Universal Music Group apparently started to put the pressure on them, no one had sued them. Considering the RIAA will sue your grandma or a 12 year old at the drop of a hat, the fact that YouTube is building a traffic juggernaut around copyrighted audio and video without being sued is like…. well Napster at the beginning as the labels were trying to figure out what it meant to them. With the MGM vs Grokster ruling, its just a question of when YouTube will be hit with a charge of inducing millions of people to break copyright laws , not if.

Cuban has a pretty significant dog in this fight in the Dallas Mavericks, and that’s evident in reading his diatribe. Alex Rowland (glad you’re back blogging again, Alex) disagrees with Cuban and makes a pretty insightful case that YouTube is vastly more than Napster could ever have hoped to be.
YouTube hosts and streams copyrighted content. No argument. But unlike the Napster days in which there was no evidence that this type of large scale ‘piracy’ actually helped distribution, today the signs are everywhere. Even the marketing departments of most major studios understand this when they upload their own copyrighted material to the site. But YouTube is, in its essence, a massive syndication platform for content. YouTube is not about monetizing this content directly; it’s about getting tons of people to watch a video clip at the lowest cost possible.

This type of massive low-cost syndication of low-quality streamed content is less than a year away from becoming the de facto launch strategy of professional and amateur content alike. While the lawyers may not understand this yet, the marketing guys certainly do. When content owners begin taking down copyrighted materials from YouTube, they become less culturally relevant. Has Jon Stewart’s relevance and consequent profitability to the studio declined as a result of his frequent free appearances on YouTube?

Alex goes on to note that YouTube is where cultural memes are born and raised, which makes it a very valuable place to be.

I think this analysis is spot on and something all of us in the broadcasting world need to accept. The “how they make money” question pales in comparison to how they are — and more importantly will be — making money for others, and that’s where the real value of this kind of portal exists. The laws of the land are there to protect the institutions that form the status quo, but what we’re witnessing is a revolution — JD Lasica’s “personal media revolution” — and it will ultimately result in new laws to serve the people. YouTube is in many ways a visible battleground in the conflict between modernism and postmodernism, and just as the printing press proved the turning point between premodernism and modernism, YouTube stands in the gap between the people and “the church” of modern times.

We need to be exploring what we can learn from YouTube, not trying to figure out how to shut it down.

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It’s very different today

Wednesday, September 20th, 2006

In the months since Alicia’s death, I’ve found myself extremely sensitive to the emotional pain of others. I guess this comes with the territory in the wake of loss.

So I felt myself near tears this morning at the airport in Minneapolis as a soldier bid goodbye to his wife and three children. It was a gut wrenching scene, and I had to actually look away.

A friend asked me recently if I thought Iraq was this generation’s Vietnam, and I immediately said, “no.” I have my Vietnam-era service medal, and there is a huge difference between this war and that one. On the flight up to Minneapolis, we had two soldiers who were going home on leave. The flight attendant announced this over the intercom, and the entire plane applauded. No, this war is very different than Vietnam, when the American public took out its distaste on the servicemen and women who made the same sacrifices as those who are fighting today. We were the bad guys, and that was the real shame of Vietnam.

So when I witness scenes like this morning, I remember. I remember leaving my family and coming home to the silence and to the sense that I had somehow betrayed the culture I swore to protect. I remember traveling in “civies,” stuffing the uniform into the duffel bag that gave me away anyway.

It’s very different today.

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On the road…

Monday, September 18th, 2006

I’m bound for Minneapolis and a series of client meetings. I get to see my old friend Reid Johnson, and I’m looking forward to that. Reid was a big help to me with some solid career advice when I was at one of those crossroads many years ago, and I owe him more than I’ve given him in the past. Blogging will likely be light until I get back midweek.

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