|
|
BoingBoing TV is cranking out some amazing stuff, and this one has to be among the best. It’s by Stefan Nadelman and gives a history of war through the foods of the countries fighting. Don’t forget to stick around for Nadelman’s drunk dog at the end.
This is textbook web video, IMO, and the images will be with me for a long time. Well done.
(Hat tip to John Battelle for the video)
Your favorite network executive and mine, NBC’s Jeff Zucker, on print reporters:
“The thing they want is for the [TV-news] business to die faster [than the newspaper business], because that’s what makes them feel better.”
Yup. That’s what they want. Deep, huh? Now you know.
Chris Anderson is one of the most influential new media thinkers in the world. His book The Long Tail has transformed the way we look at the economics of media distribution, and now he’s working on a new book that will certainly get everybody’s attention: “Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business.” As he did with The Long Tail, Chris has begun this project with a 6,000-word article in the magazine he edits, Wired.
In addition to being a compelling title, it’s also another longtailesque concept that media companies everywhere need to understand. Anderson told me by email that media types certainly should.
I think the message to media executives should be clear: the business model you already understand better than anyone has become the dominant business model of the digital economy, from software to services. The world has come your way!
But do we really understand it? I’m not so sure.
If Viacom understood the concept, it would not be suing Google/YouTube. If NBC understood the concept, it would never have pulled its early content from YouTube. HBO announced this week that it is creating a YouTube channel. Confused yet?
If the networks understood it, they’d follow the advice of a new white paper from market research firm Parks Associates and the Entertainment Technology Center at USC titled “How Hollywood Can Out-Apple Apple.” The paper suggests that the studios and TV networks should offer free content for cell phones as a way to prime the pump for tomorrow. “In the end, ‘advertainment’ becomes content in and of itself,” the report says, “and a profitable way to provide consumers something to watch when they find themselves in situations where a little diversion is welcomed,”
Free is a strategy, not a business model.
The problem with “free” is when it runs into the bottom line, and this is especially true in the world of traditional media. Our content has value to us, but that value is directly tied to the economic laws of scarcity, whether we’re asking people to pay for it or using scarcity to create a mass that our advertisers seek. In the world about which Anderson writes, however, abundance replaces scarcity, so a business strategy based on the latter falls flat on its face. What is the real value of “content” in a world of abundance? This is what mass media executives can’t or won’t understand, because we automatically — and in an old media sense, rightly — assume that the only currency involving content is money.
So Anderson is right in saying that we “should” understand the new model, but the truth is we don’t. This has to change or we’re going to continue to fall behind smart people who really do understand.
(Originally published in this week’s newsletter)
Lin TV’s CEO Vincent Sadusky said on a conference call this week that he expects the networks will begin doing just that. According to Media Daily News, Sadusky referred to the NFL as the logical starting point:
“If you want the NFL or incremental NFL games, this is a pretty pricey thing for the network. We’d like you guys to help us out with that.”It may not be cash–a more typical type of reverse compensation–but requests for more spots in the game for the networks to sell themselves, he said.
Among others, I’ve been predicting this for years, and it’s been pretty obvious since ABC first started selling its programs online two years ago. The network/affiliate relationship — as we’ve known it from the beginning — is history.
Mike Butcher at TechCrunch writes that RSS reader fav.or.it has launched in beta. No big deal there, huh? Just another RSS reader (sung to the tune of “Just another manic Monday”).
Not so. Here’s Mike:
With Fav.or.it you can make comments on blog posts from within its reader - no need to click into a browser to the original post.
I’m guessing publishers will need to use a distributed commenting system for this to work, but that’s not the point.
Many traditional news outlets have been slow to adapt to RSS, because the concept itself is contrary to mass creation (they think) and control. I think it’s safe to say that most — if not all — mainstream news organizations use RSS as a way to drive traffic back to their “sites,” where users can be exposed to display advertising. I honestly can’t point to one publisher who distributes full content feeds via RSS.
So distributed commenting extends the disconnect to a publisher’s ad ecosystem by further separating readers/users. Hell, if I can’t even get people to commit to my “site” to leave comments, why should I even have comments in the first place?
The real problem here is the reluctance of institutional media to play in the world of RSS advertising, and this mystifies me. Whether we distribute ads as RSS items or embed ads in the feeds themselves, there’s money to be made in the distributed world.
Fav.or.it may or may not be a winner, but the idea of moving all media content to a user’s “home” is a horse that has already left the barn.
Variety has decided it wants in on the social network frenzy, so it has created “The Biz.” Puh-LEEZE.
You know, here’s the deal. Variety may provide a unique way for people in — I hate myself for this — “the biz” to connect, but I doubt it. We already have social sites aplenty, and I don’t know about you, but I’m getting sick of joining walled gardens.
The inevitable killer social app will be the one that allows me to put all of my connections in one place. There are many folks trying to do this, but they all fall short, because MySpace and Facebook don’t want to have anything to do with them.
But until there is such an animal, I’m just not going to join. Fair enough?
William F. Buckley has passed away at the age of 82. He was hard not to like, for me anyway. While most people considered him terribly stiff and boring (and oh so friggin’ conservative), I found his ability to extemporaneously deconstruct arguments to be inspiring. And he raised “leaning back” to an art form.
His position that abortion is not a legal issue and therefore should not be permitted or not-permitted by law impacted me on many levels, and I’ve more than once paused and appreciated him for that.
As I do today.
AOL CEO Randy Falco to the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s annual conference regarding his former business — television:
“You sit back and wonder ‘Why can’t these guys get out of their own way?’ [Because] they have all these legacy models and partnerships and its difficult for them to get past them. But at some point they’ll come to realize they have no growth. … Generally speaking that’ll bring about the change they so desperately need.”
Late February in Dallas.
Upper 70s. Light winds. Where are my clubs?
The opening line of this CNET story says it all: “For online advertising, the word is that portals are out, but search, entertainment, and social network sites are in.”
Are you paying attention, local media companies?
Minds much better than mine have examined this whole business with the New York Times and their allegations of hanky-panky involving Senator McCain and a female lobbyist. Jay Rosen brilliantly dissected the whole thing, and Jeff Jarvis expressed astonishment over Times Executive Editor Bill Keller being surprised at the negative reaction to the story.
I only wish to add a comment about the public reaction to the story that Keller finds so surprising.
The Modern Era is giving way to the Postmodern Era in Western culture. A foundational element of postmodernism is a practice called deconstruction, the systematic (or not) taking apart of an argument to examine its roots, many of which are assumptions based on the life and times of the author of the argument. This practice is facilitated — in fact, actually forced — by the structure of the World Wide Web, with its associated links to source documentation. If John Smith writes that the water in Lake Whatever is polluted, we ought to be able to determine why he thinks that by examining not only the lake but also John Smith and his background. We don’t have to take John’s word for it.
This concept of relentless deconstruction is a disaster for modern institutions built on “facts” of history and maintained by hierarchical systems of rule, order and especially tradition, for each — deconstructionists teach — is subject to examinations that reveal the subjective nature of humankind and its decisions, big and small.
It is in this light that I wish to state the argument that Bill Keller — and many, if not most people in such positions within the institution of modernist journalism — continue to function as if their access to knowledge is unique and justifies conclusions that can be used to manipulate culture, whether deliberately or otherwise. So deep is this belief, that Keller expresses shock when the Times’ conclusions are challenged.
The problem is that the public now has access to enough information — in most cases — to make up its own mind about issues and events, their causes and results. Moreover, the public now has enough knowledge to rightly question the assumptions and history that shape even the day-to-day decisions of the press, and with that knowledge, they also increasingly have the ability to make up their own minds. This will never return to the way it was, and in fact, will increasingly impact the culture as a whole.
So to me, Keller’s “surprise” is legitimate, but it’s based in the confusion of the era, especially for modernist, institutional thinkers. The public is a lot smarter and better informed than anybody in media gives them credit for being, and they are armed with simple tools to do their own investigating. And every time the curtain is pulled back on the editorial decision-making process within the institutional press, it gets easier and easier to find the natural biases and influences that drive the information gatekeepers of the culture.
So deconstructionism isn’t limited to a handful of far-out academic intellectuals in ivory towers; it’s being practiced every day at the ground level, and that has profound ramifications for the culture as a whole.
As I travel around the country meeting various people in the local media world, I continue to be amazed at the denial that exists towards the disruption of mass media’s business model. I think upper management certainly understands by now and middle-level managers are beginning to get the message. But at the street level, denial is the norm, which leads to ignoring reality, avoiding doing anything about it, and the ignorant assessing of blame.
A new blog popped up last week that bears watching, even if only for a short season. Young Broadcasting Laid Me Off is a place where former Young employees can post about themselves and hopefully find a job somewhere. It’s an interesting concept, but there aren’t a lot of posts so far.
It’s presented anonymously, but clearly the creator(s) had some connection with Young in the past.
We want to help. We’ll post your resume, a YouTube clip of your resume, whatever you like. We’ll break it into categories, and then publicize it so employers will have a one-stop shop. Why are we doing this? We started our careers at a station now owned by Young, and without those people, our careers wouldn’t be as rich as they are today. We want to help.
The company has cut its workforce by 11%, with much of the blame for sagging stock prices placed on its decision to play chicken with NBC over KRON-TV in San Francisco a few years back. There is a sense, I’m sure, among those employees laid off that Young was a particularly poorly run company, and so the tendency is to the blame management and complain all the way to the next job.
The company’s history and how it was and is run are irrelevant, however, for the forces that led to this reduction-in-staff will impact everybody in local media sooner or later. Young’s problems may have put them to the front of the line, but they are not the exception, as many would have us believe. My colleague Jerry Gumbert notes that we’ll probably be seeing a lot more of these kinds of sites in the months and years ahead, and I certainly agree with him.
If you are currently employed in local media — regardless of the format — now is not the time to point fingers or make the assumption that your job or responsibilities are safe, because your company is well-run. Local media is in a full-blown business disruption, and the handwriting is on the wall — diversify your skill set for a digital world or find another line of work. Do it now while you’re still employed. There is no “us versus them,” worker versus management conspiracy. That archaic notion is foolishness, because the disruption doesn’t care whether your company is well managed or not.
The two-person local TV team as the industry standard is dead. Actually, it’s been dead for a long time. Sooner or later (and later is actually sooner than you think), the preponderance of news gatherers — whether print or broadcast — will be fully-equipped, versatile multi-media journalists. That is not a guess; it’s an absolute certainty.
One of the most refreshing discussions I’ve had in recent years was with a publisher who had finally reached a point where he could say, “I don’t believe the money is coming back (using traditional media means and methods).” The numbers are headed in the wrong direction, friends, and they’re not coming back.
Deal with it.
Once you can turn the page on that, then you’ll see the insanity of insisting that the way it’s always been done is the way it will be done.
It’s not about “one-man bands” or insults to your professionalism or doing more with less or those idiot managers or anything else your mind can create as an excuse. You are either a part of the problem or a part of the solution, and when you’re in a lifeboat, it’s just not the right time to be moaning about how the ship would never have hit the iceberg if YOU had been in charge.
Acceptance is our quest, and once acceptance is gained, our eyes are opened to possibilities, we get excited, and coming to work becomes fun again. I have seen this with my own eyes, and it is happening in many places.
But as inspiring as that can be, the truth is that some — perhaps even many — in local media will not make the transition, whether it’s through an inability to adapt to new skill requirements or their own attitudes towards change. And I think we’ll begin to see managers confronting the reality that these people are a net liability in an environment of workflow change, so those who are shown the door are likely to be the most resistant and therefore angry and hostile.
So be it. If you can’t or won’t row, you’ll be a drag on those who are, and no smart business would keep such people around, regardless of how “important” they may be.
There may be some real “victims” in this — people who are actually incapable of making the switch, and to them I would say that Life has something else for you. The sooner you determine what that might be, the better off you and your family will be.
So let’s put together a couple of stories in the news and see what comes out.
According to the AP, Google co-founder Sergey Brin finds the Microsoft/Yahoo! deal “unnerving,” because it threatens innovation on the Internet.
“The Internet has evolved from open standards, having a diversity of companies,” Brin told The Associated Press after the event. “And when you start to have companies that control the operating system, control the browsers, they really tie up the top Web sites, and can be used to manipulate stuff in various ways. I think that’s unnerving.”
It may be unnerving, but here’s the other story.
As of this writing, Firefox had been downloaded 500,309,502 times, a significant milestone by anybody’s measure. If Sergey finds the MicroHoo deal unnerving, Microsoft must surely find this likewise scary.
Over at Market Share, where they keep track of such statistics, Firefox is spreading rapidly in global reach. Just two years ago, Firefox had an 11% market share. Today, that’s 17%. This ought to frighten Redmond and warm the heart of Sergey, because loss of browser control has major business ramifications for Microsoft.
The postmodern open source movement is the real enemy of modernist technological monopolies, and it’s representative of much of what’s happening in our culture today. I haven’t regularly used Internet Explorer for a couple of years, and I’m completely sold on Firefox. If you haven’t tried it, I encourage you to give it a whirl.
It’ll make Sergey feel better.
(Thanks to Michael Arrington for the Firefox tip.)
The business of television is dying, and all we can do is repeat the behavior that got us where we are today. If this isn’t the definition of insanity, I don’t know what is.
I just got off the phone with an old friend and colleague who was discussing the terror that exists within the industry today as we look toward 2009. The disruption to media is very real, and everybody is frightened about tomorrow. And yet, it’s just same-o, same-o for many.
One potentially ominous sign is that a majority of marketers said that when DVR penetration tops 50%–Nielsen estimates the current universe at 23%–a majority of marketers say they will cut their TV ad spending by 12%.
So what’s the response to all this disruption? According to Broadcasting & Cable, “…almost half were experimenting with new types of TV advertising that would boost that effectiveness by working with the DVRs and VOD services that have given viewers more control over ads. Those include ads in online streams of TV shows, ads embedded in VOD programming, interactive TV ads, and ads placed in the set-top box menus.”
In other words, marketers are trying to find new ways to do the same old thing.
Well, guess what? Now that the strike is over, it’s back to normal for NBC (”normal” being the problem itself). They’ve announced that they WILL be holding an upfront. The big, bold move is that it will be more focused on NBCU than just NBC. Big deal.
David Goetzl wrote for MediaDailyNews that “there had been speculation that networks might use the turmoil brought on by the writers’ strike as a launching pad to save money and abandon the expensive presentations. But in the copycat television business, one network was unlikely to drop out unless its competitors all did.”
And so it goes.
Again, when you find yourself stuck in a hole that you’re digging, the first step in getting out is to STOP DIGGING! But the scent of food is strong near the tar pits, and these companies have shareholders who want their dividends. Insanity.
A member of my tribe, Stanford Law professor and free culture champion Lawrence Lessig, is “considering” running for Congress from his home state of California. Pay attention, please:
(Thanks, Duncan)
Broadcasting & Cable reports that “The FCC has given about 40 ABC affiliates two days–until Feb. 21–to pay their fine–$27,500 apiece–for airing a bare behind in an episode of NYPD Blue.” Really. A bare behind. Cover the children’s eyes, Mabel.
I find this to be so far out-of-touch with reality that it’s fair to ask how long the people of this country will stand for this kind of dictatorial nonsense. The episode was aired five friggin’ years ago, people! Five years ago (at a time when, perhaps, stations actually had money to pay for this kind of intellectual rape. “Thank you, sir. May I have another?”)! Was the episode repeated in cable syndication?
In my view, this action accomplishes three things:
The FCC has long outlived its usefulness, and it needs to go. The closer we get to a wired culture, the lesser the government can justify censorship in the name of ownership of the airwaves. Watch for efforts by the FCC to regulate the content of cable next.
Every once in awhile, a simple statement in an article leaps out and grabs the throat, hollering “truth!” I found one in an Ad Age article about why newspapers are shutting down their business news sections:
Said veteran newspaper-industry analyst Ed Atorino, of Benchmark Capital: “You do get a story once in awhile about a local storeowner or a closing or something, which you might miss, but most of what’s in those sections is rip and read [wireservice copy],” he said. “With all the business news on TV and the internet, the consumer is getting it someplace else.”
This is the nut of the problem for us in all forms of local media. Unless we’re a part of the “somewhere else,” we’ll simply continue the downward slide to irrelevance.
Romenesko: “In a blog post, Alan Mutter wondered if it’s time for newspapers to edit out some editors, then asked his readers how many editors they believe it takes to vet a story. Of the more than 400 respondents to his survey, 55.2% favored two editors per story, 21.9% advocated three or more editors per story, 20.4% said a single editor was sufficient and a mere 2.5% said reporters didn’t need anyone looking over their shoulders.”
Um, who knew? Alan’s read by editors and journalists who want to be editors. Kinda like asking lawyers if there’s a need for judges.
One of the most influential members of my tribe is Richard Adams, the British author of such works as Watership Down, Girl on a Swing, Maia and Shardik. One of his lesser works has had a great impact on me, not only on my writing but also on my philosophical leanings as it relates to the arts and especially life.
The book is “The Unbroken Web.” It is the author’s version of various folk tales from around the world. I’ve transcribed a few paragraphs from the opening chapter for you to ponder this winter weekend:
The weaving of emotion and experience into tales…is a spontaneous and involuntary phenomenon. We do it naturally, we can’t help doing it and of the ingenuity with which we find we have done it is startling……I see in fancy — I have a vision of — the world as the astronauts saw it — a shining globe, poised in space and rotating on its polar axis. Round it, enveloping it entirely, as one Chinese carved ivory ball encloses another within it, is a second, incorporeal, gossamer-like sphere — the unbroken web — rotating freely and independently of the rotation of the earth. It is something like a soap-bubble, for although it is in rotation, real things are reflected on its surface, which imparts to them glowing, lambent colours.
Within this outer web we live. It soaks up, transmutes and is charged with human experience, exuded from the world within like steam or an aroma from cooking food. The story-teller is he who reaches up, grasps that part of the web which happens to be above his head at the moment and draws it down — it is, of course, elastic and unbreakable — to touch the earth. When he has told his story — its story — he releases it and it springs back and continues in rotation. The web moves continually above us, so that in time every point on its interior surface passes directly above every point on the surface of the world. This is why the same stories are found all over the world, among different people who can have had little or no communication with each other.
Both in folk-song and folk-tale there is a paradox. On the one hand they are not attributable to individual authors, but impersonal and universal. On the other, they lose much when they are depersonalized — the songs written down and played on the piano, the talks written down and made anonymous for reading in a book. A folk-song is best when sung by a flesh-and-blood singer to real listeners. A folk-tale is best when told aloud, spontaneously, at a particular time and place. This is like drinking wine or making love. That time is that time — unique and irrecoverable. The thing may be repeated, but that will be different — another occasion. Filming, printing and recording are inappropriate.
I believe the unbroken web is the source of creativity, something that belongs to all of humankind. When I interviewed Bill Monroe many years ago, I asked him to explain how he was able to write all of the songs he had written. He responded quickly, “I never wrote anything. I just heard ‘em first.” He was a frequent “toucher” of the unbroken web.
I believe the arts belong to everyone and that artists should be revered in culture. They are not, especially in a world run by anti-creative, left-brained bean counters. I’m not sure it’ll ever be any different, and for me personally, that’s okay. For no bean counter will ever experience the rush that is touching the unbroken web. That, my friends, is a form of currency more costly than gold.
Mike Allen wrote in The Politico this week that he doesn’t vote, because he’s a journalist.
I’m part of a minority school of thought among journalists that we owe it to the people we cover, and to our readers, to remain agnostic about elections, even in private. I figure that if the news media serve as an (imperfect) umpire, neither team wants us taking a few swings.
Where in the world do people get the idea that we’re “umpires,” imperfect or not? Umpires? Good grief! He quotes Leonard Downie Jr., executive editor of The Washington Post:
“I decided to stop voting when I became the ultimate gatekeeper for what is published in the newspaper. I wanted to keep a completely open mind about everything we covered and not make a decision, even in my own mind or the privacy of the voting booth, about who should be president or mayor, for example.”
This caught my attention, because the firing of Chez Pazienza by CNN follows this line of thinking. Many, many people have commented on Chez’s blog, and here’s the reasoning of one:
I’m sure he knows deep down as a professional–if he attended journalism school–that he couldn’t be writing what he was writing and be in the news business.
So let’s take a step waaaaaaay back and examine this position of neutrality vis-à-vis the news business, something I have done many times here and in my essays. If there exists in the mind of collective America the idea that the press should be “neutral,” it is there because we put it there. This idea is not and was not a part of the First Amendment; it grew out of largely economic necessity — the creation of a sterile environment within which to sell advertising. Moreover, it is the social engineering centerpiece of Walter Lippmann (the “father” of professional journalism), Edward Bernays (the “father” of professional public relations) and other members of the Creel Committee formed under Woodrow Wilson as a way to convince the public that the U.S. needed to be in World War I.
I hate to be so bloody cynical, but the objectivity concept is crap, and we owe it to ourselves and our trade to let it go. Why? Because it’s impossible, it is used by special interests to mold culture, the public doesn’t believe the holiness of the calling, and it’s turned our political process into predictable mush. Read Chris Lasch, for crying out loud. Investigate the Creel Committee and the writings of Lippmann and Bernays.
I’ve no clue how we get from where we are now to a more ardent and involved press, but the blogosphere seems to have taken up the call. I will say that firing writers like Chez Pazienza isn’t the path.
In Mr. Allen’s column, it’s pretty clear that one of the reasons some journalists don’t vote is that it would make their jobs harder in the halls of power if people knew they batted for one team over the other. The poor political reporters need to protect their sources, right? (”They like me. They really, really like me.” Jim Carrey in “The Mask.”)
When will we find the courage to point the light of our own brilliance back onto ourselves?
