September 11, 2006

Message From Michael                    
                                                       September 11, 2006                                                                                          

• 9-11


• KATIE COURIC


• IN THE YEAR 2020


• IN THE YEAR 2006


• FOLLOW THE YOUTUBE MONEY


• FACEBOOK LOSES FACE


• COCKTAIL CHATTER

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• 9/11:  Today’s the day.  And even though I believe every media organization should mark the day with special coverage, somehow the words from Lincoln’s Gettysburg address ring in my mind – “… in a large sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground.  The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.”    


• KATIE COURIC:  Okay, even though I don’t want to join in the free-for-all, it’s hard to ignore.  But rather than give a personal opinion… which counts for nothing, I take a cue from the people at Pew Research who did an analysis of the “TV punditocracy.”  Results – 21% declared her opening performance “boffo” as the Pew people put it while 46% declared it “so so” and 33% said “uh oh.”  No doubt you’ve already heard or read that the debut ratings were the best for CBS in eight years.  No surprise there.  By the third night, ratings had dropped to a still respectable and still #1 position of a 6.4 rating and 13 share, beating the tied 5.3 rating and 11 share posted by ABC and CBS.  As a side note, The Programming Insider noted that the CBS Special Five Years Later, How Safe Are We” was a bust, finishing in last place in its time slot with a 4.3/7.  As a final note, a poll (yes, unscientific) taken by AOL’s Daily Pulse found more than a quarter (27%) believe her presence will raise the ratings while nearly half (48%) believe her presence will not, leaving 25% who say it’s too early to tell.


• IN THE YEAR 2020:  We don’t have to wait for the year 2525 for some stunning developments in television, according to a panel report titled Future Vision.  According to the panelists assembled by U.K. digital TV and Internet company TeleWest, in the year 2020 there will be only one channel – yours.  A combination of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) along with high definition TV, holographic capabilities and high speed hook-ups means that people will be able to watch anything they want anywhere they want.  Your living room wall will be a TV that allows you and your mate to watch two different programs while your children watch videos on the back of their cereal box and your teenager accesses the Internet from the magazine she’s reading.  The report says there will be a “feminization of technology,” in which products will be much easier to use.  The home will be a hub with global connectivity.  With RFID, the colors of the wall, the scenery on the windows will change to match the mood of the person walking through the room.  With the continuing development of what the authors label “Generation C” (because they can create their own content), people will be able to change the actors and endings of films.  With everything now on the network, that means no CD and DVD shelves. The report says, as is already becoming apparent, “the future of TV is all about choice and control… (and) ‘there’s nothing on the box’ will cease to be uttered…”


• IN THE YEAR 2006:  In case you think those ideas are too far out, consider a report in Forbes magazine that Big Media companies NBC, Universal, Viacom and Time Warner are creating short shows for the tiny screens of iPods and cell phones.  NBC’s Sci Fi unit has ‘reimagined’ versions of the 1970’s series BattleShip Galatica for such use.  Viacom’s MTV unit has converted two floors of its New York city offices to digital media to create such films and has struck a deal with Google to distribute its video to hundreds of websites.  Magazines like Country Living as well as Sports Illustrated and newspapers like The Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal are hiring producers and directors to create videos that extend their content online.  Brewing giant Anheuser Busch has created Bud.tv to produce its own Internet video shows.  Global market research firm Ipsos reports that more than 10 million Americans have downloaded television shows from the Internet; 7 million in the last month alone.  The report says one out of every ten Americans aged 18 to 34 have downloaded television programs from the Internet.  And, my favorite, AOL has added Gilligan’s Island and old Godzilla movies to its In2TV website for anyone to download and watch free.      


• FOLLOW THE MONEY:  And if it doesn’t lead anywhere, then you have problems.  That is the story with both MySpace.com and YouTube.com.  We noted in a previous MfM that MySpace was still looking for a business plan.  Now, the same questions are being raised about YouTube.  Both are enormously popular.  Both have incredible traffic.  And both are living on VC’s or Angels (remember that term from the pre-Internet bust period).  The latest analysis comes from BusinessWeek which notes that despite all the excitement, the business plan so far amounts to “a whole lot of expenses, not much revenue and no profits.”   Part of the reason for YouTube’s questionable financial situation may be, as the Wall Street Journal pointed out, the fact that YouTube videos take up 45 terabytes (about 5,000 home computers worth) of storage and requires several million dollars of bandwidth a month to transmit; and part of it may be that 70% of its registered users are American and half of those are under the age of 20.  Even more critical to the question of whether he 19-month-old (seems longer, doesn’t it) YouTube will go down the tube is the fact that mega-monster Microsoft is developing its own service and not-so-mega-but-still-big Skype (eBay) and Kazaa are preparing to unveil a YouTube wannabe called the Venice Project.


• FACEBOOK LOSES FACE:  The social networking site for students (and teachers) had to do an about face after creating a RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feed that alerted members to changes in other members profiles.  The ‘news feeds’ and ‘mini feeds’ were supposed to help members keep up with each other, but there was one problem.  It meant members didn’t have control of their own information.  More than half a million of the 9 million members signed a protest message.  Founder Mark Zuckerberg admitted they’d made a mistake and posted a blog apologizing.  So, now they’ve gone the other way and coded in more privacy controls.      


• COCKTAIL CHATTER:  Also from the Wall Street Journal article about YouTube, the total time the people of the world spent watching YouTube videos since it debuted is 9,305 years.  The oldest active YouTube viewer is a 79 year old U.K. resident who sits at his PC in his study with headphones on and narrates memories of World War II.  According to a survey by VoiceQuilt, nearly half (47%) of all U.S. women buy gifts for 10 or more occasions each year while a quarter (25%) give gifts for 15 or more occasions and one in five (19%) give gifts for 20 or more occasions and 65% give gifts “just because.”  Spam appears to be on the rise, according to software company Ipswitch, which reported that 70% of ALL e-mail received in North America and Europe in the second quarter of this year was spam, up from 62% in the first quarter of the year.


• FOLLOW-UPS:  Two stories from previous MfM’s are making the news.  Several other mainstream media have picked up on the phenomenon of lonelygirl15, the video of a young girl talking about her life on camera.  It is pretty consistently one of the most watched videos on YouTube.  And the first adventurers in the Tribe Wanted social experiment have landed on the island in Fiji, starting the world’s only online and offline community.  Background – People pay for membership in the tribal community, get to know each other online and then travel to Fiji to test their survival skills.  


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