Michael Castengera 

April 10, 2006

Message From Michael
April 10, 2006

• FAKE TV NEWS – WIDESPREAD AND UNDISCLOSED


• DVR’s AND THE 30-SECOND SPOT


• AGGREGATING OR AGGRAVATING LOCAL NEWS


• COCKTAIL CHATTER

• FAKE TV NEWS – WIDESPREAD AND UNDISCLOSED: That was the headline of a recent study by the Center for Media and Democracy looking at the use of video news releases by TV news operations. The study tracked 36 VNR’s and found 69 stations aired them, often times in full and word for word. The study also found that ten stations, including some of the VNR stations, used satellite media tours offered by corporations and public relation firms. The authors note, the situation wasn’t limited to small stations on shoe-string budgets. Nearly two-thirds of the VNR’s were aired in top 50 markets and thirteen of them were aired in the top ten markets – New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia and Boston. And the corporations also ran the gamut from the largest, traditionally strong journalistic operations to the smallest. Most of the stations cited in the report aired ‘only’ one VNR. The notable exception was the Sinclair-owned Fox affiliate in Oklahoma City, KOKH, which aired SIX VNR’s.From reading the write-up on the website prwatch.org, the study appears to have been prompted in part by a remark by RTNDA President Barbara Cochran that VNR’s were like the Loch Ness Monster, “everyone talks about it, but not many people have actually seen it.” So, to prove its point, the report shows the original VNR and the actual newscast. The report notes that the 36 VNR’s represent less than one percent of VNR’s offered to newsrooms each year. The headlines used by the Center also tell part of the story: Shopping Advice from a Store Bought Expert… A spitting image of genuine news… Journalism on loan… No accounting for ethics. The report urges people to write to the Federal Communication Commission and it calls for “Whistleblowers” -- asking people working in the media to contact the center if their station or news operation runs “fake news without disclosure.” The entire report, along with the video’s, can be seen at prwatch.org.


• DVR’S AND THE 30-SECOND SPOT: Three separate reports tell a great deal, and not much, about the impact of DVR’s on commercial viewing. First, a fact – DVR penetration is at 9% of U.S. television households and is expected to double to 18% by the end of the year. Now, on to the studies. One is a survey by the Association of National Advertisers which found that 70% of 133 national advertisers believe that DVR’s and Video-On-Demand will “reduce or destroy” the effectiveness of 30-second spots. When DVR’s reach a critical mass of 30 million homes, 60% of the advertisers say they will spend less on conventional TV advertising. They’re looking for alternative forms of advertising. Another study funded by the four major networks found that ad recognition and ad recall is virtually the same among DVR and non-DVR users. Their explanation is that many ads run frequently and that fast forwarding requires a certain amount of attentiveness. The report in Media Daily News does note that the study backs up earlier studies that show DVR users are heavy TV users. The third is an analysis of Nielsen’s minute-by-minute viewing. It shows, not surprisingly, that virtually no-one stops to view a commercial when watching in time-shifted mode. As the report, again in Media Daily News, says, the fact that people skips ads isn’t ground breaking, but the Nielsen figures do show more concrete evidence of the practice.


• AGGREGATING OR AGGRAVATING LOCAL NEWS: Internet giant Yahoo has announced it is getting into the local news business. At least in terms of aggregating news. The move is raising red flags among local news users. Not to dismiss the move in any way, but trying the site ended up being a frustrating experience. Looking for local news for Athens, Georgia, generated nothing. Of course, the site is still in its beta phase. By comparison, a search for local news for Athens using the topix.net site ended up with two stories out of the student-produced newspaper which were two days old.


• AGGREGATING OR AGGRAVATING CITIZEN JOURNALISM: A report carried by Agence France Presse quotes “media futurists” who say citizen journalists will be producing half of the world’s news by 2021. The report notes that many newspapers are trying to cash in on the move by creating blogs. Another report cites a website created in conjunction with several major newspapers trying to capitalize on the trend. The site yourhub.com is designed to provide a combination blog and social network for newspapers. The report cites Newspaper Association of America statistics that show only 51.6% of Americans read a newspaper in 2005 compared to the heyday of newspapers in the 1960’s when 80%-plus read newspapers. On a related note, several publications make note of the trend to ‘free’newspapers which are distributed at railroad stations and bus terminals in major cities and their impact on the daily, paid subscription newspapers.


• COCKTAIL CHATTER: China has overtaken the U.S. in overall Internet usage. According to a report in Forbes.com, quoting Chinese website Sohu.com, China has between 150 and 200 million Internet users, who spend nearly 2 billion hours online. In comparison, the U.S. has 154 million ‘active’ Internet users who spend 129 million hours online. The latest Pew Internet and the American Public study shows the so-called digital divide is narrowing with nearly two thirds of blacks 18 and older (61%) now connected to the Internet. That’s nearly three times the number (23%) connected in 1998. Another report by Pew shows 77% of black teenagers are online. Nintendo is creating video games for the baby boomer generation. The games, called Brain Age and Big Brain Academy employ reading and math exercises designed to stimulate the brain. The latest procedure/ fad for people going to salons is Japanese ear cleaning. German media group Bertelsmann is creating a social networking operation a la facebook.com and myspace.com but aimed at older people. According to trend watching newsletter, Springwise.com, shops are popping up all over Tokyo with ‘professional ear cleaners’ cleaning out wax building and that it is expected to come to the U.S. It follows two other procedures (which I also wasn’t familiar with) Brazilian waxes and Indian eyebrow threading.


• SUBSCRIPTIONS: We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael. But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to newsconsultant@aol.com with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line. If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail newsconsultant@aol.com with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM from 2006 are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com.

April 3rd, 2006

Message From Michael (image placeholder)
April 3, 2006

• DEMANDING ON LINE VIDEO




• BILLION DOLLAR COLLEGE SOPHOMORES


• THE NEXT BILLION DOLLAR DEAL


• SEX, DRUGS, TAXES AND MORALITY


• COCKTAIL CHATTER

• DEMANDING ON LINE VIDEO: More are. At least according to a report by the Online Publishers Association which says that online video viewing is a routine practice for most web users. While humor gets the buzz, says the report, news and current events is the most frequently viewed online video. The study, done in partnership with Frank N. Magid and Associates, says one in four web users access video at least once a week and half at least once a month. Even better from the advertisers point of view, consumers are ‘spurred to action’ by online video. Two other developments worth noting in this area is that 68% of active Internet users had broadband as of February, according to Nielsen/ Net Ratings. That translates to 95.5 Million users, a 28% increase from a year ago. Even more critical Nielsen Media Research announced that by the end of the year it will begin measuring TV viewed on the Internet. (Anybody seen AOL.com’s In2TV?)On a related note, web researcher eMarketer projects that in three years time, more than 36 million people will be watching video on their phones. Right now ‘only’ 3 million do, and of those, about 300,000 to 400,000 have adopted paid services with premium content. The number of paid users is expected to max out at about 10 million. An article in Business Week predicts that mobile phone advertising will reach $600 million by 2009.


• BILLION DOLLAR COLLEGE SOPHOMORES: The owners of facebook.com have reportedly turned down an offer of $750 Million for the popular college-focused website. They want $2 Billion. Not bad for a couple of Harvard sophomores, as BusinessWeek points out. Meanwhile Fortune magazine notes that Rupert Murdoch’s purchase of Myspace.com for $580 Million last July may be one of the best buys ever, even though a year before the purchase it was only valued at $33 Million. As big as facebook.com is, myspace.com is even bigger with 66 million members and 250,000 new ones signing up each day. However, other articles have noted that both sites face problems. Myspace has been the subject of several reports about questionable content with advertisers expressing reluctance about being alongside some of the material. The same for facebook which colleges and high schools reportedly are monitoring for possible disciplinary actions. That said, here is a figure to keep in mind – the homepage for myspace which used to sell for a whopping $100,000 a day is now going up to a whop-whopping $750,000 a day.


• THE NEXT BILLION DOLLAR DEAL: Okay, so you want to know where the next billion-dollar site will come from? Heck if I know, but here are a couple of places, that you may not have heard of, but that are making noise. Youtube.com, which we’ve mentioned before in MfM simply headlines itself as broadcast yourself. Many observers see the site which was created by two guys out of their garage in San Francisco challenging myspace.com, especially with those users into creating their own media. In fact it proved so popular that at one point myspace.com reportedly edited out references to it. Gather.com is described by one writer as myspace with an NPR edge, or as the site says, “where informed, engaged people share perspectives on everything from politics to parenting.” Heavy.com which offers animations, music, video games, grainy home videos and models in bikinis is aimed at men in the 18 to 34 demographic. Viacom-owned website, the-n.com, targets teenage and tween-age girls with stories about Paige and Liberty and Aubrey Graham (and no, I don’t know who they are either). Or try dave.tv which is a P2P site “facilitating the connection between producers and consumers of digital media in a way that benefits everyone.” Anyway, the point is… the dot-com bubble is re-inflating. BusinessWeek Online has a series of articles about the net’s new age at http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2006/tc20060313_860688.htm/


• SEX, DRUGS, TAXES AND MORALITY: Cheating on your taxes is almost as bad as cheating on your spouse. Having an abortion and homosexual behavior are equally wrong. Drinking excessively is worse than smoking marijuana. So says the American public, according to the Pew Research Center. The center listed ten issues and asked people whether the behavior was morally wrong, morally acceptable or not a moral issue at all. The worst of the ten was married people having an affair… deemed morally wrong by 88% of those surveyed with only 3% saying it was morally acceptable. To put the response in perspective, the Pew Center report notes a National Science Foundation survey that found 15% of married Americans admit having had sex outside marriage. In a similar vein, the survey says 79% believe that not reporting all income on your taxes is morally wrong, although 14% say it is not a moral issue. The Internal Revenue Service reports a non-compliance rate of 16%. A majority of Republicans say seven of the ten behaviors are morally wrong while a majority of Democrats say three of the behaviors are morally wrong. Southerners are more likely than people living in the Northeast or West and ‘slightly’ more likely than people living in the Midwest to describe the ten behaviors as morally wrong. So, in order, the third highest ‘morally wrong’ behavior was drinking excessively which was deemed morally wrong by 61%, with 5% saying it’s morally acceptable and 31% saying it is not a moral issue. Having an abortion was considered morally wrong by 52% with 12% saying it is morally acceptable and 23% saying it is not a moral issue. After that: Smoking marijuana (50% - wrong; 10% - acceptable; 35% - not an issue); homosexual behavior (50% - W, 12% - A, 33% - N); Telling a lie to spare someone’s feelings (43% - 23% - 26%); Sex between unmarried adults (35% - 22% - 37%); Gambling (35% - 17% - 42%). Overeating came in tenth with 32% saying it is morally wrong while 6% say it is morally acceptable and 58% saying it is not a moral issue.


• COCKTAIL CHATTER: Buena Vista Games (a subsidiary of Walt Disney Co., which also owns ABC) plans to release a PC video game based on the popular ABC TV program Desperate Housewives. (You know, sometimes you can’t even make this stuff up.) As long as we’re talking about Disney, former chairman Michael Eisner bombed as a talk show host. The debut of his CNBC show brought in just 95,000 viewers, according to Nielsen. And that was off a lead-in of 518,000 from a repeat of Deal Or No Deal. You may have heard about the website, firedavidgregory.com, which is an online petition drive to fire NBC’s Chief White House correspondent David Gregory after a confrontational exchange with White House press secretary Scott McClellan. Now, thanks to Washington Post reporter Howard Kurtz, we know who’s behind the move – Ian Schwarz, an 18-year-old college student in Baltimore whose other website is Expose The Left. A Virginia-based company (picturepaper.com) is offering personalized gift wrapping paper for those people who want their birthday, anniversary, baby shower or ‘whatever’ celebration a little different. You simply select a design, upload a picture and enter your order. For under $4,000, you can buy a modern-day windmill that will generate as much as a fifth of your home electrical needs. Global trendspotting site, SpringWise, says for a little under $40,000 you can buy one that will not only generate enough electricity for your home, but enough to actually sell back to your local electric company. Both are British companies – stealthgen.com and quietrevolution.co.uk. Finally, a follow-up to an earlier MfM report about Rolling Stone magazine debuting in China. It did. And it’s done. Chinese authorities have shut it down for “not following procedures.” Of course, as the Los Angeles Times points out, doing a story about a rock star associated with the Tiananmen Square protest was not exactly a smart idea.


• SUBSCRIPTIONS: We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael. But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to newsconsultant@aol.com with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line. If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail newsconsultant@aol.com with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM from 2006 are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com.

March 27th, 2006

Message From Michael (image placeholder)
March 27, 2006

• SWEEPS


• INTERNET SWEEPS THE NEWS


• INTERNET VACUUMS THE NEWS


• STATE OF THE NEWS MEDIA REDUX


• COCKTAIL CHATTER

• SWEEPS: Exactly one month from today, the fun begins. April 27th. The start of the May sweeps. THE most important sweeps period of the year. THE most enigmatic sweeps period of the year. THE most stressful sweeps period of the year. Good Lord, aren’t you glad you have me to remind you about this?


• INTERNET SWEEPS THE NEWS: No doubt you’ve seen the screaming headlines about the recent Pew Internet and the American Life study that showed the Internet has become THE source for news. Without discounting the enormity of the development, let’s try and clarify what the report actually said. First, 43% of BROADBAND users say they got their news ‘yesterday’ from the Internet. That’s six points higher than newspapers (37%) but considerably lower than local television (57%). And again, this is BROADBAND users. When ALL respondents are included, 23% say they got their news yesterday from the Internet. The difference, in brief, is that Broadband users are greater consumers of everything, including news. What is more disturbing, and lost in the headlines, is the news consumption among the ‘under 36’ age group. Not surprisingly, this age group is less likely to get their news from local TV, national TV or newspapers. But, as the report puts it, “this age group is generally less news hungry than older online users.”


• INTERNET VACUUMS THE NEWS: In actual fact, the Internet is becoming a part of people’s everyday lives, according to the State of the News Media 2006. The difference is that the universe of people using the web for news or anything else is not growing as fast any more, but the frequency with which people use the medium is increasing. People like the Web’s convenience, interactivity, diversity and control, but “the more people use the Web, the less they trust it.” The most trusted sites are the ‘old-legacy media’ sites. Online journalism is still an aggregator rather than an originator of news, especially when you look at sites like Yahoo and Google which are constantly changing but not necessarily really updating. Two local sites studied in the report are worth mentioning because of the contrast they offer. The study cited the Milwaukee Journal’s website, JSOnline.com, which it said clearly showed the newspaper’s connection to the community and which actually approached the Internet as a different medium, “developing a different personality.” The website of KPRC, Click2Houston, which is maintained by Internet Broadcasting Systems was more notable because of the mix of advertorial and editorial with more than half of the site paid content.Bottomline: Survey research from Consumer Reports shows that 11% of the American public get MOST of their news from the web. That’s up from 5% only four years ago. The report compares the Internet to an adolescent – learning what it can do, making a little money but not paying its own way, and unsure what it will be doing when it grows up.


• STATE OF THE NEWS MEDIA 2006: I know I covered this in last week’s MfM, but as I said then, there was so much info that it was probably going to mean more reports. And here they are. As part of our holistic approach to news media, I picked out some highlights from various parts of the report that I found interesting.


• TELEVISION: The study says the early evening newscasts continue to lose audience but now, even the early morning newscasts may be in trouble. This is a major departure, if it proves true, from what we consultants and researchers have been preaching about morning news being the battle ground. On the flip side, the study says there are indications that the late evening newscasts may be improving their audience appeal. Interestingly, the TV section overview gives some good advice on morning news saying it should be formatted to “help people with their lives” by offering a snapshot of headlines, late-breaking stories, how to get to work and what to expect in the weather. With its emphasis on weather, the report says, “in the entire media landscape, probably no source offers coverage of the weather outlook with the depth and sophistication of this industry.”As the authors put it in the content analysis section, “local TV news remains America’s beloved but disrespected middle child.” As reported last week, the report notes that, after weather, traffic and sports, that crime and accidents dominate the coverage. Although it is getting ‘harder and harder to pin down,’ TV journalists continue to be stretched thin, with TV reports only slightly better than local radio in terms of sourcing and reporting. The report does say, on the positive side, that the reporting was straightforward and ‘strictly factual’ (in contrast, it says to cable news and morning network news) and that it is more likely to portray regular people instead of officials. “Yet despite the problems, people like local news, partly for the simple reason that it is local.”


• NEWSPAPERS: A good part of the overall theme of the report focused on newspapers, in large part because of the sale of the Knight Ridder group, and that was, in large part, because K-R was the nation’s second largest newspaper chain by circulation. The thinking was if it could happen to ‘them,’ it could happen to anyone. But as the report authors say, the future is still ‘ambiguous.’ Either newspapers are in a transitional phase to online or they are in a changing, lesser mode. Two figures cited in the report point out that ambiguity. One is that online revenues grew by 30% in 2005; the other is that online revenues only account for 3% to 5% of total ad revenue. Lastly the report cites several analysts who point out that print only takes in 20 to 30 cents on the dollar when it goes online compared to print. Journalistically, the newspapers scored higher than television mainly, as the report notes, because of the additional time which allowed the newspapers to add ‘new dimensions’ to the reporting, including ‘exclusives.’


• MAGAZINES: The report calls news magazines an ‘anomaly’ in the media world with some evolution of content but the same basic format with general news magazines losing circulation while celebrity magazines “which seemed so full they had no room to grow” growing. However, some niche news magazines like the Economist and the New Yorker gained circulation. Meanwhile, the slow drift toward lighter fare at other news magazines continues with some growing emphasis on ‘culture’ reporting. But the big story, according to the report is the magazine, The Week which basically aggregates content from other magazines, although the report calls it ‘culling.’ The magazine (which I should note I subscribe to) melds significant topics into a short space with a balanced presentation of left and right. “Data indicate that this approach may be catching fire.”


• RADIO: The report says technology is changing the definition of radio to something broader – listening. And listening over a wide range of devices. The report says that in the various debates about the state of journalism, the area about which the least is known is local news radio. On the positive side, the report noted that despite what many think, news radio isn’t all national syndicated material. At least half of the radio surveyed had a local perspective and another 16% took a regional perspective. However, the report cited three cities as an example of the state of news radio. In Houston, population 2 million, there were two stations identified as news/talk, two all talk, and one public radio station. In Milwaukee, with a population of 600,000, there were eight – three news/talk, two talk and three public radio. In Bend, Oregon, population 52,000, news radio listeners had occasional headlines.


• COCKTAIL CHATTER: Nearly seven years, Madison Avenue television time buyer TeleVest changed its named to MediaVest. Now they have changed again, this time to VIA units – Video Investment and Activation. CBS has picked agency Initiative Media to handle its media buying and planning which is a… $130 Million account. A start-up, so-called ‘media network’ has beaten the business audience reach of business bruiser The Wall Street Journal. The CEO of Captivate claims that by delivering business news in the elevators of buildings housing major corporations, the company delivers 100% coverage of the business audience that business advertisers are trying to reach. According to a study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Michigan, some TV health reports contained not only ‘egregious’ errors but sometimes “potentially deadly” errors. In most cases though, the authors say the stories “were not useful, but not overly harmful.” The study reported in the March issue of the American Journal of Managed Care says out of 2,795 news broadcasts examined, 1,800 featured health stories. Health stories accounted for 11% of the news hole for late evening newscasts. Only 27% of the reports relied on interviews from health professionals but part of the problem, say the authors, is that health professionals don’t know how to talk to the media.

• SUBSCRIPTIONS: We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael. But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to newsconsultant@aol.com with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line. If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail newsconsultant@aol.com with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM from 2006 are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com.