June 19, 2006

Message From Michael                    
                                                  June 19, 2006                                                            

• ONLINE ADVERTISING IS AND ISN’T’S


• NIELSEN VERSUS GOOGLE


• NEWS YOU CAN CHOOSE          


• MORE CITIZEN JOURNALISM


• VIDEO FOR VIEWERS, BY VIEWERS


• COCKTAIL CHATTER

• ONLINE IS’S AND ISN’T’S:  The Internet is stealing advertising dollars away from television, especially local television, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal; but the American Advertising Federation says its survey of marketers show networks is not losing money to the web, according to an article in Broadcasting and Cable; though TNS Media Intelligence predicts online’s share of the marketplace will grow from 10% in 2005 to 12% in 2006, according to an article in MediaPost Communications.  Despite everything, the reports are not necessarily contradictory.  Just confusing.  TNS says total U.S. advertising is expected to increase 4.9% to $150.3 Billion in 2006.  This is off half a percent (from 5.4%) from the January prediction.  The research firm says the Internet shows the greatest growth year to year with a projected 13% increase, followed closely by Spanish media with a 12.9% growth, and spot TV in third place with an anticipated 8.9% increase.  Radio was expected to have only a Y2Y growth of 2.1% and newspapers a paltry two-tenths of a percent.  The advertising federation survey focused on online video with only 15% of the advertising executives saying they planned to move some of their broadcast dollars to on-line video.  Most (93%) say they see online video and ‘rich media’ more as creative opportunities for advertising.  


• NIELSEN VERSUS GOOGLE:  We couldn’t talk about advertising dollars without at least mentioning the latest developments from Nielsen, even though most of you may have heard about it already.  The company says it will do away with handwritten diaries in even the smallest markets within five years.  And it is committed to a system it dubs A2M2 which stands for “Anytime Anywhere Media Measurement” which it describes as an ‘all electronic measure system that will develop integrated ratings for television viewing regardless of the platform on which it is consumed.’  Even more interesting is a report carried on Webpronews.com and ZDNet.com that speculates Internet giant Google may get into the ratings business.  Reporter Jason Lee Miller says it shouldn’t come as a surprise since Google is in the business of information collection and research.  He quotes ZDNet expert Garrett Rogers who notes that the company has registered the domain names googledvr.net and googledvr.org along with googletv.com, googlehdtv.net.  


• NEWS YOU CAN CHOOSE:  Subtitle --  giving a whole new meaning to consumer news.  Along with their bread, milk and eggs, consumers can now shop for the latest news on the World Cup, Saddam’s trial or Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban’s marriage plans.  AOL is relaunching the Netscape.com website with its ‘anchors’ picking stories and the readers not only voting on the ‘hot’ stories of the day but submitting stories as well.  It’s still in the beta phase.  The grande dame of news, the BBC, has launched an addition to its website, listing out the most “popular” news of the day, both internationally and regionally.  These are the most viewed and most e-mailed stories of the day.  For example, this morning’s most popular stories included a woman who was jailed for giving her lover HIV and a man who was arrested for driving his BMW at 135 miles for over an hour after his accelerator became stuck.  An even more unusual version of this consumer news concept is the website trendio.com, which bills itself as “the stock exchange of news.”  You sign up, are given $10,000 in play money, and then you bet on what are the top search words used by more than 3,000 “Anglophone media websites.”


• MORE CITIZEN JOURNALISM:  In a somewhat similar vein, the Online Journalism Review is offering a concept in which “readers become reporters.”    The site authors offer the idea of ‘open-sourced reporting’ in which the reporter announces the topic they are delving into and readers submit leads, tips, sources and ideas.  Readers of MfM will remember previous online reporter training programs, most notably bbctraining.com, but the OJR version is more of a wikipedia form of reporting.  


• VIDEO FOR VIEWERS, BY VIEWERS:  In a related note, two other websites will actually sell your video to news organizations for you.  The website are scoopt.com and celljournalist.com.  As you can tell from the last one, many of the videos being sold are the ones that are caught by happenstance by someone with their cell phones.  For example, the scoopt website tells about rapper Snoop Dogg getting into a fight in the first class lounge at Heathrow Airport.  A scoopt member happened to be there just before the action started, snapped some pictures that were used worldwide and, as the site puts it, “earned a very tidy sum.” Meanwhile, the Al Gore-backed Current.tv which bills itself as the “tv network created by the people who watch it” is calling for video shorts that tell a story of tolerance.  The grand prize winner will get $100,000.On an oddly related note, cable channel Comedy Central which gained notoriety because of the Jon Stewart fake new show may be getting more notoriety because of another fake news show.  The show “Dog Bites Man” is supposed to be a ‘mockumentary’ about a dysfunctional local morning news show.  It features segments in which its fictional news team interviews people who think they’re being interviewed for a real documentary when in fact they’re being set up for the fake news show.  The show taped a segment at a media literacy class at Portland State University pretending that it was going to be part of a documentary and another segment at Chapman University under the same pretext.   Jean O. Pasco reports in the Los Angeles Times that the state attorney general’s office sent a letter complaining the video was acquired under false pretenses.


• COCKTAIL CHATTER:  The American Civil Liberties Union, the same group that advocated for the right of Nazis to protest in the streets in the name of freedom of speech, is considering a proposal that would penalize board members of the ACLU who criticize the board and staff in public.  You’ve no doubt heard that Dan Rather is being shown the door by CBS management.  It turns out that Rather may end up going to work at HDNet for Mark Cuban, the Dallas Mavericks owner who made his fortune on the Internet.  On a related note, Cuban is backing a journalism website sharesleuth.com which exposes securities fraud and corporate malfeasance.  Animal Planet’s new series on meerkats (a member of the Mongoose family that sort of looks like prairie dogs) living in the Kalahari desert scored the best debut for the cable network in the last three years. Italian directors have shot a 93-minute feature film/ documentary about love and sex using a standard cell phone camera.  Reviews say that because there is no microphone in the cell phone camera, most of the shots are close-ups and although the video is occasionally shaky, the image is clear overall.  Titled New Love Meetings, the film is based on a 1965 documentary which explored Italians views sex in postwar Italy.  More than 700 people were interviewed.  The new version showed not much has changed.I advise clients to use proof of performance/ testimonials to reinforce their image of coverage.  So, taking my own advice, the New York Times has picked up on a story carried in MfM about the numerous video sharing websites that help amateur film makers create their own videos.  A full list of the photo sharing and video sharing websites can be found in last week’s MfM.


• 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.