October 30, 2006

Message From Michael                    
                                                  October 30, 2006                                                                                                         

• SPOOKY SWEEPS


• THE FUTURE DUOPOLIES


• REACHING BEHIND THE WALLS


• THE SWEET SPOT


• THE GREAT UNWASHED MASSES OF TALENT


• COCKTAIL CHATTER

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• SPOOKY SWEEPS:  How appropriate is it that the ‘lead-in’ to sweeps is Halloween?  I’m not sure which is scarier – kids trying to coerce you to give them candy under threat of a trick; or stations, faced with the threat of tricky ratings, trying to coerce you with candy stories.  Okay, that’s probably a little too cute.  Actually there’s a triple whammy with this month’s sweeps.  Having Halloween at the start, which can actually be a good thing; Having an election during the first week of sweeps, which can be a bad thing; Having Thanksgiving during sweeps which can be either good or bad.  Let me explain:  Halloween gives you an opportunity to have special reports that you can promote ahead of the sweeps.  That builds awareness going into sweeps.  Elections are not ratings drivers, with few people either voting or interested in voting, even in this increasingly nasty election; but elections are important to your image because, despite their lack of interest, people expect you to provide coverage.  Thanksgiving and the day after (the proverbial biggest shopping day of the year) are a challenge because programming is disrupted and viewers’ lives are disrupted.  So you have to decide whether to keep it in the book or take it out.  


• THE FUTURE DUOPOLIES:  A series of recent reports show how much television and newspapers have in common.  One, both are experiencing declining viewership/ readership.  Two, both are facing increasing competition from the Internet, albeit in different ways.  Three, despite that, both are looking to the web for future growth.  Two studies stand out in particular.  The Media Audit released a report that says late news and the web together pack a powerful punch.  The study looked at ‘unduplicated’ (the key word in both studies) use of the two.  By adding the two together, the television stations’ reach was extended dramatically.  In a similar vein, Scarborough Research found that when the ‘unduplicated’ print version and online version of newspapers were combined, the reach (another key word) was extended anywhere from 2% to 15%.  By looking at the “integrated newspaper audience” of the two, the addition translated into ‘hundreds of thousands’ of additional readers in larger markets.  The Newspaper Association of America reported that online newspaper readership jumped by 31% in the first half of the year.  Also, both studies say the Internet offers television and newspapers their best opportunity to reach the 18-34 demographic.  And the web offers the best opportunity for both to grow future viewership/ readership.   As a report by research firm eMarketer shows, more than two thirds (67%) of U.S. children between ages of 8 and 11 are online while nearly three quarters (74%) of those between the ages of 12 and 14 are online.  However, on the flip side of the equation, other studies, notably one done by Merrill Lynch, note that the online ad revenues don’t match the ad revenue generated by the ‘mainstream mother media’ – a term I just made up.  Not just as a percentage of total dollars but in a pure quid pro quo analysis of cost per thousands.  Have I lost you yet?  The CPM charged for Internet does not match the CPM charged for television or newspapers.  The Merrill Lynch study makes a point for newspapers that could probably apply to television as well.  The point is that online revenue still accounts for only 6% to 7% of total ad revenue and despite the rapid growth, will probably not account for 50% of the total ad revenue for several decades.  The Merrill Lynch report says many newspapers may ‘fall by the wayside’ in this transition from print to online.  Research company Outsell makes the point that the challenge is to match the percentage of online audience to the percentage of online revenue derived.In short, the case could be made that the present-day duopolies between television station and television station, or between newspaper and television station, is a short-term revenue generator.  The long-term ‘duopoly’ is between the station/ newspaper and the web.


• REACHING BEHIND THE WALLS:  Both reports also noted that the website product also had an advantage in reaching the audience when the audience is in those hard to reach places – work.  Use of the websites reached their highest between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m.  This is especially true in larger markets.  At KUSA.com, for example, nearly three quarters of its users are online during that time, according to The Media Audit report.  The Scarborough Research report also noted that the online audience is more affluent, citing as an example, The Washington Post, where those with incomes over $75,000 account for 60% of the print audience but 73% of the online audience.  Both reports also cited several examples of stations and newspapers that are proving up the value of integrated and complementary products.  The Media Audit report gives kudos to Raycom-owned, NBC-affiliated WLBT-TV in Jackson, Mississippi, as the number one station in the country (out of the 84 markets surveyed).  The combination of the station’s late news audience for a week and a month of web-site visitors gave it an unduplicated net reach of 49.5% in adults 18-plus.  KOTV-TV in Tulsa also scored a 49.5% unduplicated net reach but fell slightly behind WLBT in terms of audience reach in the 18-34 demographic.  The Scarborough Research study noted both the Arizona Republic and the Tampa Tribune as examples of operations that have successfully combined the two products, along with The Washington Post and The Atlanta Journal Constitution. Filling out the rest of the top ten list in The Media Audit study were WOWT/ Omaha, KUSA/ Denver, WRAL/Raleigh-Durham, KETV/ Omaha, WIS/ Columbia, SC, WWL/ New Orleans, WTVF/ Nashville, and WGHP/ Greensboro.  According to the Newspaper Association of America, the top ‘online newspapers’ are the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Seattle Times/ Post-Intelligencer, Chicago Tribune and Houston Chronicle.


• SWEET SPOT:  An interesting side note is that in reading several publications, I noticed several made reference to the “sweet spot,” being the point at which media plans, using the various platforms, are all integrated.


• THE GREAT UNWASHED MASSES OF TALENT:  And there’s lots of them.  On the Internet.  Writing stories.  Creating videos.  Getting hundreds of thousands of hits.  Millions of downloads.  And, according to one of the leading talent agencies in the country, “99.999 percent of which is probably not good enough to have a traditional film and television career.”  But it’s a different matter on the Internet where standards are different but the need for talent is not different.  Ad agencies can’t find people to develop new media strategies and mainstream media organizations can’t find people to help them with new media strategies.  For that reason, United Talent Agency, has opened an on-line talent division.  Other groups, notably International Creative Management, Endeavor and, what the New York Times in its article on the subject called, ‘the venerable’ William Morris Agency have digital media divisions. The point is that they’re all trying to find the Zuckerberg’s (Facebook),  Hurley’s and Chen’s (MySpace) and maybe even the lonelygirl15’s of the world.  


• COCKTAIL CHATTER:  Candy and gun ranked third among food categories in sales in 2005, according to the National Confectioners Association.  Milk was second and carbonated beverages were first.  Women are now the majority in colleges with 59% of all degrees granted in the 2004-2005 academic year going going to women, according to Dan Kindlon, author of the book “Understanding the new American girl and how she is changing the world.”  The Center for Responsive Politics says that, based on the $2.6 Billion being spent on the mid-term election, the votes in the U.S. Senate races will cost an average $59 per vote while the per vote cost in the House races will average $35 per vote.  According to an article in the New York Times, if the respective elections for each politician were held in MySpace, the leading candidates (based on the number of ‘friends’ listed on their site) would be, from lowest to highest:  Sen. John McCain with only 476 friends, Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich with 637 friends, Hilary Clinton with 12,880 friends, and Barack Obama with 14,995 friends.  But the leading vote getter based on friends would be Kinky Friedman, the independent candidate for governor of Texas with a whopping 33,173 ‘friends.’


• FOLLOW-UPS:  Research firm Hitwise reports that the number of U.S. Internet searches for Second Life shot up 73% last week and the number of visits more than doubled in the past two weeks.  No doubt the result of our report in last week’s MfM.  Since then, General Motors announced it’s opening a car racing site there, along with its Pontiac division.  A travel agency in Italy is offering travel packages, Synthtravel, through the Second Life world.  Several fashion companies have announced they are opening stores there.  On a semi-related Cocktail Chatter note -- the rock stars of South Korea are the video game players who have fan clubs that number more than half a million each.  There are more than 20,000 public “bangs” as they are called, which are the video game equivalent of our Cyber Cafes.  The government has even set up a department to encourage and oversee the video game players.


• CLARIFICATION:  In last week’s MfM about Second Life, we identified Edward Castranova as an associate professor of economics at California State University/ Fullerton.  He was at Fullerton; now he’s at Indiana.    


• SUBSCRIPTIONS:  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.  AND if you wish to reach Michael Castengera, you can e-mail me direct at Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.  

October 16th, 2006

Message From Michael                    (image placeholder)
                                                  October 16, 2006                                                                                                         

• THE ZOMBIE KILLING NEWS ANCHOR


• CONAN THE BARBARIAN IS BACK


• IN MAINSTREAM MEDIA WE TRUST


• FAKE NEWS IS NO JOKE


• COCKTAIL CHATTER  -- $100 LAPTOP AND 300 MILLION PEOPLE


• GOOGLE DISCLAIMER

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.  

• THE ZOMBIE KILLING NEWS ANCHOR:  The InfoLab at NorthWestern University has created a virtual news show with a system that collects both information and video on the web,”parses and edits” it, and then presents it through an artificial, computer-generated anchor.  Called the News At Seven, the computer-based system picks up national and international stories along with human interest stories and then presents it in a three-minute newscast.  Although it is somewhat of an exaggeration when the website calls it “compelling, cohesive,” it is nevertheless pretty interesting to watch.  The “newscast” I caught was from September 24th and lead with the decision by the African forces to remain in Darfur, followed by a ‘report’ from the blogosphere with another faux ‘person’ commenting about Darfur.  This was followed by the NASA decision to bring Atlantis back and ending with the story about the death of Anna Nicole Smith’s baby.  In the middle of this, the young, female faux anchor, dressed in military garb, stops to blast a zombie who comes out on set.  Visit infolab.northwestern.edu and click on the projects tab to see a summary of the project and a demo.


• CONAN THE BARBARIAN IS BACK:  While the news anchor was stiff and anything but human (like some anchors we’ve all known), a company in Santa Monica has created software that creates a virtual person who is so life-like and has so much personality that the creators call it “soul transference.”  The software duplicates the facial expressions of a real person through modeling and does it in one-tenth the time of previous software.  According to an article in the New York Times, the software was used to create a commercial using Fred and Ethel Mertz from the old I Love Lucy show to pitch the merits of a Medicare package.  Now, the company, Image Metrics, is looking at using the process to ‘revive’ dead actors. For example, creating a new Bruce Lee movie. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is reportedly using the system to create a political ad using his Conan the Barbarian character.


• IN MAINSTREAM MEDIA WE TRUST:  A survey by information company Lexis-Nexis shows that when consumers are faced with major events, they turn to and trust the mainstream media.  Or, put another way, when the going gets tough, the tough watch mainstream media.  More than half of those surveyed said that, if faced with a major event such as a hurricane, they would first turn to network television, followed by radio (42%), the daily newspaper and/or cable news (33%), with a quarter relying on the Internet sites of mainstream media.  Only one in 20 (6%) said they would use ‘emerging news.’  The mainstream media also won out when it came to general topics of interest.  Those top topics included entertainment, hobbies, weather and food/cooking, followed closely by sports.  The survey showed consumers are four to six times more likely to TRUST (the key word in the survey) you mainstream media mavens.  Looking into the future, the picture changes somewhat,with more than half (52%) still saying they will ‘mostly trust and rely’ on traditional news sources, but with a third (35%) saying they will rely on both.  But more than one in ten say they anticipate relying most on emerging media, which is a little scary since the Lexis Nexis folks defined emerging news media as ‘citizen journalists, pundits, and organizations who create alternative or Internet-only publications, blogs and podcasts, often with a personal or particular point of view.’


• FAKE NEWS IS NO JOKE:  At least when it comes to political information.  A study by Indiana professor Julia R. Fox found that even with all the bantering, there is “substantive dialogue going on” in the The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and she declares it a “legitimate source of news.”  Since so many young people say they rely on it for political information, Fox did a second-by-second analysis of the Daily Show’s audio and visual content and compared it with network coverage, using the 2004 Presidential election campaign as the base.  Not surprisingly, she found ‘considerably more humor than substance’ in the Daily Show.  BUT she also found ‘considerably more hype than substance in broadcast newscasts.’  And she found the broadcast news stories were significantly shorter than the Daily Show stories.  So, she argues, even though the network newscasts may have had proportionally more substance, the Daily Show had proportionally more stories devoted to the campaign.  In the end, she says the Daily Show is just as substantive as “the source that Americans have relied upon for decades.”  As a footnote, subscribers to MfM will recall that last week’s report on Future of News study found that most people still ranked the Daily Show low in comparison to other media in terms of ‘newsiness.’  As a further footnote, Julia is a regular subscriber to MfM, and interestingly, this is the second report of hers that has gotten national news coverage.SIDENOTE:  As long as I’m on a roll with universities, Ball State University which is the home of the RTNDA salary survey and the Middletown Media Studies has formed a News Research Insitute to “identify, explore and seek practical solutions to issues important to the future of the news industry and its consumers.”  The institute will form an ‘interdisciplinary group’ of students, faculty and professionals  who will “anticipate consumers’ future needs by creating interactive, multimedia content.”      


• COCKTAIL CHATTER:  First, a little myth busting -- AARP says the number one myth about baby boomers is they’re so brand loyal, they’re not worth pursuing for advertisers.  In actual fact, 60% of them research various brands before making a choice and are more likely to make case-by-case decisions.  Myth #2:  Most online gamers are young men.  In actual fact, according to Nielsen Entertainment, women account for 64% of all online gamers.  And, yes, teenagers still account for the largest percentage (40%), but adults 45 years old and older account for 8%.  Videos of the Iraqi insurgency are making it on to video websites like YouTube and Google, and they’re not being posted by insurgents but by citizens in the U.S. and other countries who are picking them up off Jihadist sites.  The leaders of Kazakhstan have taken out a series of full page ads in the New York Times and other national publications to counter-balance the image created by a British comedian who created a satirical Kazakhstan journalist named Borat.  Singer, songwriter, novelist and general weirdo Kinky Friedman is running for governor of Texas.  And before you dismiss him, take note that his media manager is Bill Hillsman, the same guy who helped Jesse Ventura become governor and Ted Lamont’s campaign against Joe Lieberman.  And as long as I’m on a celebrity kick, British experts surveyed by TMZ.com named Kate Moss the most influential celebrity in the world ahead of Madonna, Bono and Brad Pitt, based on the number of times her name was mentioned in the media.  Okay, this part isn’t cocktail chatter, but it’s too important not to note and I wanted to get it in.  The folks at MIT’s Media Lab have created a prototype of the $100 laptop.  The idea is to make something not just low cost, but low power and durable for children in poor countries to use.  Countries, including Thailand, Brazil and Argentina are looking at buying the units.  This part does qualify as cocktail chatter.  Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte is the brother of John Negroponte, former ambassador to Iraq and now Director of National Intelligence.


• COCKTAIL CHATTER – U.S. POPULATION:  Sometime this morning (yes, this morning), the U.S.A. will officially pass the 300 Million mark in terms of population.  I know, you’re already read about that, but here are some additional facts to throw into the mix.  The way we reached that, according to the Census Bureau, is that we have one birth every 7 seconds, one death every 13 seconds and one international migrant added every 31 seconds resulting in a net gain of one person every 11 seconds.  As of this morning when I checked the ‘population clock,’ we were at 299, 999,230.  Yesterday, when I checked it, it was at 292 Million, give or take a thousand.  In case you, too, don’t have a life, you can check out the census bureau clock at http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html.  The world population, BTW, was 6,550,750,690.  The population growth will make the U.S. the third most populous country in the world, behind China and India.  Although the U.S. accounts for only 5% of the total world population, it accounts for 25% of the world energy use.  According to an analysis by the New York Times, married couples are now a minority in the U.S.  In 1930, 84% of Americans wer married.  By 1990, that figure dropped to 56%.  Last year, it was 49.7%.  There were 5.2 Million unmarried, opposite sex couples, 413,000 male couples and 363,000 female couples.


• GOOGLE DISCLAIMER:  Normally, I avoid stories that have received such widespread coverage that you all know about it, but I have to note the Google purchase of YouTube.  (If you want to watch something surreal, look up the video announcement on YouTube by the company founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen.)  But let me also note some other announcements about the search superstar site:  Several media sources report Google is moving “full steam ahead” with plans for print, broadcast and mobile advertising. Google has announced it has created an on-line equivalent of Microsoft Office with Word and Spreadsheet capabilities.  Google has announced that it’s adding hundreds of miniature programs to independent websites so that people don’t have to go to its site to download its programs.  Hitwise recently announced that Google was the top U.S. search engine responsible for 15% of all visits to shopping and classifieds.  Google has joined with the University of California-Berkeley to provide college courses, including ‘physics for future presidents’, online.  Google unveiled a literacy website at the Frankfurt Book Fair, allowing groups worldwide to upload and download multimedia teaching resources.  And several analysts are questioning what the merger means to competitor Yahoo’s future.  As a final note, Google recently held a massive think tank retreat which included not only top media executives but executives from some of the country’s most powerful companies.  (No, I wasn’t invited either.)   The host introducing the Google executives joked that there was a rumor that Google was going to consolidate with the United States.  The Google executive dismissed that and then, adding to the joke, coughed “China.”  


• SUBSCRIPTIONS:  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.  

Future Of News - Oct. 9th

Message From Michael                    
                                                  October 9, 2006

                                                                                

• The Future of News – A Special Report

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After a newspaper reported his death, Mark Twain is quoted as saying, “reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”  In a similar but not so eloquent vein, the Radio Television News Directors Foundation reports that “the imminent demise of traditional news media are premature.”  In a recently released survey of more than 1,000 people AND more than 250 television news directors, the foundation reports that the problem isn’t so much mass defection as “a splintering of traditional mass medium into fragments whose total is mass but whose parts are not.”  It’s not so much that new media is replacing old media so much as new media is “nibbling away at the edges.”  And the report questions whether new media has a ‘mass media’ future.  In any case, what follows is your favorite consultant’s analysis.  What I have done is break it out under three headings – overview, oddities and observations.  A disclaimer – translating a 50-plus page report into a 25-hundred word summary is… well, simplistic.  And, yes, this MfM is a little longer than usual, but it beats the hell out of reading all that.

OVERVIEW

Not surprisingly, and as already reported, the report says that, people overwhelmingly (65.5%), get most of their news from local TV.  Somewhat surprisingly the Internet scored fifth out of seven as a major source for news – well behind newspapers (28.4%), network news (28.3%) and local radio (14.7%). The Internet only beat out national newspapers which scored 3.8% and the nebulous ‘someplace else’ at 1.3%.  When asked the ‘bottom line’ question if you could get the same news whenever you wanted, the general public chose TV by a wide margin (63.3%), over newspapers (17.8%) while the Internet came in third (11.1%), radio fourth (5.8%) and handheld electronic devices at 2%.    

ODDITIES

• In the survey, the general public was asked to define the ‘newsiness’ of various programs on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being definitely not news and 5 being definitely is news.  On that basis, local TV news along with cable news and network news all scored a 4.4.  Think about that for a minute.  Shouldn’t they have been a 5, or at least a 4.9?  It’s not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison, but that means they all scored a B+ in newsiness.(FYI – Local radio newscasts scored a 4 on the scale, ahead of programs like 60 Minutes and Dateline (3.7), Sunday morning interview shows (3.5), weekday morning news shows (3.4).  Cable talk shows scored higher (2.9) in newsiness compared to radio talk shows (2.4).  Surprisingly, at least to me, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (at 2.1) actually fell behind programs like Inside Edition and Entertainment Tonight (2.3) and tied with talk shows like Oprah Winfrey and Ellen DeGeneres.)  Blogs, by the way, came in dead last at 1.9.Interestingly, Republicans, Democrats and Independents all seemed to agree on basic ‘newsiness’ when defining what constitutes a news program.


• Despite the billboards and sponsorships in newscasts, only one out of five people (21.5%) say they’ve ever seen a sponsored segment on news.  News directors, understandably, expected it to be four times as high as that with 81.7% saying they expected viewers to notice the sponsored segments.  Nobody tell the advertisers about that figure.


• Only a third (32.8%) of the public say they’ve seen a news story that seemed more like a commercial.  Again, even the news directors had to be shocked, when you consider that 85.7% of them thought the public would say they had seen that happen.  IF the public had seen a news story that seemed more like a commercial, nearly two thirds (60.7%) said their reaction would be negative while a third (34.5) said it doesn’t matter.


• Okay, this may just be me, but I found it odd that nearly one in ten news directors admitted they were considering either product endorsement by their anchors (7.2%) or product placement within their newscasts (8.8%).  Of course, the vast majority say they aren’t doing it or considering it.  And I should note the research has a +/- factor of 6%.


• Despite all the effort I see at stations behind marketing and promotion, only one in ten viewers (9.9%) say they’ve noticed “any new efforts to entice them to watch.”  More than three quarters (75.3%) said nope, hadn’t noticed anything new.  That’s even though more than two thirds of the news directors (69.7%) said they were doing new things to try to get people’s attention and get them to watch.  Of those who had noticed though, nearly half (46.2%) said it had worked and gotten them to watch, but that was only 4.6% of the total surveyed.  I should note that research I’ve seen shows anywhere from 30% to 35% of the public saying they tune in specifically because of promos.  I should also note that even in this research, nearly a fifth (19.7%) say they watch for something specific.


• And despite all the hoopla about blogs, more than half of the American public (52.3%) never even read them while one in six (16%) they don’t even know what they are.  Only 3.1% of the public say they read blogs every day while nearly one in five news directors (17.9%) read them every day.  Of course, one in five news directors (21.9%) never read them at all.


• Further evidence that new media hasn’t exactly taken over is that when asked, most people (77%) would prefer to read a newspaper in print rather than online (17.6%).  The younger crowd preferred the online version, but not by much (20.2%).  The higher the income, the more likely people will want to read news online (26.2% of the over $100K crowd).  And shock of shocks, most people (78.5) would not pay for the newspaper or news online. Even if they were forced to pay for information online, people say they would simply try to find another news site.

OBSERVATIONS

• Income and Education seemed a greater determinant of viewing variability than either age, gender or ethnicity.  Again, I should say emphasize that it seems that way to me.  For example, the higher the income the lower local TV scores as a source of news; the higher the education the lower local TV scores as a source of news.  Even more telling was that interest in crime stories and accidents fell as income and education rose while interest in national news and world news beat out the traditional number one interest – weather – as income and education rose.


• Young people, not surprisingly, are more familiar with, more comfortable with and more willing to use new media devices to get their news, BUT the numbers while dramatic are not overwhelmingly dramatic.  For example, only 4.4% of the general public say they have ever watched news on a mobile phone while 13.1% of the 18-24 year olds have done so.  Actually people making over $100K were more likely to have watched news on handheld devices.  And when asked if they were interested in watching news on small portable devices, 15.7% of the 18-34 year olds said yes, compared to 5.5% of those over 35.


• Despite the low general public interest in getting news on PDA’s, portable media players and mobile phones, news departments are moving more of their content to those delivery systems.  While only 7.5% of the public want news on their PDA’s, more than a fifth of the news directors (22.7%) said they were making news available on PDA’s; and while only 8.3% of the public want news on portable media players, 19.5% of the news directors said they were doing it on digital audio players; and while one in ten people (10.6%) say they want to get news on their mobile phones, nearly a third of the news directors (29.1%) said they were making news available on mobile phones.  


• The report, inadvertently, re-emphasized the growing phenomenon of what the Middletown Media Studies called Concurrent Media Exposure and what BigResearch called Simultaneous media use.  When asked what their major source of news was, people cited a number of sources so that the total actually added up to more than 160%.  A clear indication of the multiple use.


• I am not sure why I found it particularly interesting, but I did – Internet users make a very clear distinction between news and information.  When searching, they are usually looking for both (37.5%) but information (25.2%) trumps news (17.9%).  And they say that while information is part of news (48.1%), it is not as clear that news is part of information (28.9%).


• A surprising number of people (40%) said they would like to be able to put together their own newscasts.  Of course, on the flip side, more people (46%) said they weren’t interested, while one in ten (10.4%) say it doesn’t matter.  Here, education became a critical factor with the higher the education the higher the interest.  As the report puts it, there is a tipping point based on college graduation “where the balance goes from a plurality wanting others to do it to a plurality saying they want to do it themselves.”


• A very large proportion of the American public wants to interact with their TV, but not nearly as many as news directors thought.  A third (33.6%) of the public were ‘very interested’ in such interaction (defined as pressing a button to get more information on something you see in a newscast) while another third (27%) were somewhat interested.  More than 90% of the news directors expected people to be somewhat or very interested in interacting with TV news.  (Anybody remember the Belo Corporation’s Cue Cat interactive device?)

OVERVIEW – MORE SPECIFICS

• Although one in five people (19.7%) say they watch TV news in response to specific events (and, perhaps, news promos), most (58.5%) say they do it simply when they are able to do it.  In this situation, the 18-24 year olds had a slightly lower incidence (48.6%) saying they watch when they can.


• Nearly two thirds (60%) of the general public say TV newscasts look pretty much the same.  TV news directors thought the number was going to be even higher (85.7%).  Oddly, the most educated group were less likely to say newscasts looked the same.  The main reason cited by people for differences was the anchors (45.8%), with stories far behind (21.1%) and both factors coming into play for a third (30.4%).


• Fewer than half (47%) of the general public subscribe to newspapers, with young adults (18-34) considerably less likely (40%).


• Nearly half (45%) say they rely on more than one source for news – a fact which the report says “is potentially important as we move more and more into an on-demand world.”  Fewer (38.5%) say they skip a story once they’ve seen it in one place.


• People are most interested in urgent, breaking news, giving it a 4.5 in importance on a scale of 1 to 5.  Although the original reports on the study said “live” was a distant second, I don’t see it as that distant.  It scored a 4, just barely ahead of ‘regular news about the community (3.9).  Investigate scored a 3.6 while human interest features scored a 3.2.  The younger group scored live higher in second place while the over 35 crowd rated community news higher.


• Nine out of ten people say being “up to the minute” is important with 58.1% calling it very important and 33% calling it somewhat important.  News directors rated “up to the minute” higher in terms of very important. As education and income rose, the importance of being up to the minute dropped.


• As expected from all the research we’ve seen, weather was the top interest item across the board, scoring 4.2 on the scale.  But a little unexpected, news from around the country scored equally high (4.2) and news from around the world almost as high (4.1).  Information about politics, education, health care and the environment also scored high (4.1).  Features about people scored in the mid range (3.5) as did stories about crime and accidents (3.4), information about money (3.3) and consumer information (3.2.)  Not surprisingly, sports was on the low end of the scale (2.7) barely beating out entertainment news (2.5) and restaurant and movie reviews (2.4).


• The general public likes their anchors with 58.6% saying the news is better with anchors, but with a substantial minority (28.4%) saying news would be better without anchors.  News Directors expected the anchor slant to be much greater.

A SIDENOTE

• People think businesses exert a lot of influence on television news (35%) or at least a little influence (36.9%).  Only a little more than one in five (22.3%) say business has no influence.  When asked if that would make a difference to them, nearly half (48.5%) said it would be a big difference while one in four (27.7%) say it would make a little difference.  The report warns that any blurring of the lines between news and commercials risks a backlash and that “the research suggests that stations should tread carefully in this area.”  As a side note to the side note, the number one thing the public said would improve local TV news was – fewer commercials.

FOOTNOTE

• Coincidentally, David Mindich, a professor at St. Mary’s College in Vermont and author of Tuned Out, about youth indifference to news, spoke to a conference here at the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia.  He made the point that the drop in news interest can not be simply labelled the fault of either young people or the news media.  Young people are not dumb and there is some great journalism being done.  The ‘culprit’ is the growing entertainment factor in media in general and when news tries to “out-entertain entertainment, it loses.”  He argues there are certain expectations people have of news.  The analogy he made was that if he offered ‘jello shots’ to his students, a) he would screw it up because he doesn’t know how to make them and b), students would be shocked by the offer and wouldn’t accept them.  He says news organizations need to avoid talking down to viewers, introduce more passion into the news and offer more “road maps” to the news because, as one student told him, following the news was like entering a math class halfway through the semester.


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October 3rd, 2006

Message From Michael                    (image placeholder)
                                                  October 3, 2006                                                            

• THE INTERNET WILL (FILL IN THE BLANK)


• YOUTUBE VERSUS MYSPACE VERSUS GOOGLE VERSUS YAHOO


• LOCAL ONLINE SALES MOVES TO THE WIN COLUMN


• COCKTAIL CHATTER – COCAINE AND WHEELED SHOES

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• THE INTERNET WILL (FILL IN THE BLANK).  So, how would you respond?  By the year 2020, the Internet will… what?  Well, according to 742 “experts/ thought leaders/ futurists” surveyed by the Pew Research Center, the Internet will be perfected with smooth data flow and mobile wireless communications available to anyone anywhere on the globe at low cost; that national boundaries will be blurred and replaced by city-states and corporation-based cultural groupings as individuals collaborate and compete globally; BUT that while virtual reality on the Internet will allow more productivity, it will also means we will lose people who become addicted to those alternate realities; AND that there will be terrorist attacks against the technology as some refuseniks self-segregate from society to get away from the information overload.  Despite the belief by many that English will become the lingua franca of the world because of the Internet, most of the experts (57%) doubt that and many believe the Internet will preserve the different languages.  (There are 140 languages now used by at least one million people each.)  If anything, Chinese will become more dominant as that economy continues to expand.  And despite the worry about the Internet invoking a Big Brother situation, most of the experts (54%) believe that won’t happen.The survey done by Pew is part of an on-going project with Elon University titled Imagining the Internet.  Interestingly the previous survey in 2004 also predicted that there would be some sort of terrorist rebellion against the technology.  The 2004 survey predicted that news organizations and publishing would be impacted the most over the next ten years by the Internet, followed by education.  The 2006 survey painted seven complicated, multi-layered scenarios for the experts to react to and comment on.  (The complete report is available at elon.edu/predictions.)  I also have to put in a disclaimer here.  I didn’t realize it until I delved into the report but I am one of the 742 “experts” cited in the report.  Anyway, more than half of the experts (56%) agreed with Scenario One in which a “global, low-cost network thrives,” although as one expert said, the digital divide between the ‘have’ and ‘have not’ will continue.  In Scenario Two, more than half (57%) disagreed that English would displace other languages with networked communications leveling the world “into one big political, social and economic space.”   Instead, as one expert said, English peaked as the language of the Internet last year and as International domain names are introduced, it will decline.  In Scenario Three raising the question whether “autonomous technology is a danger,” more than half (54%) disagreed.  Although some experts warned about creating “Frankenstein” or the “golem,” others say machines will never quite be able to handle the ambiguities that humans handle.  In Scenario Four in which “transparency builds a better world at the expense of privacy,” the experts were pretty even split with 46% agreeing and 49% disagreeing.  That’s reflected in the quotes in the report with warnings that “privacy will become a luxury, not a right” and another saying we will be controlled by those who control the technology.  Or, as I was quoted, “the costs unseen will outweigh the benefits perceived.” In Scenario Five, in which virtual reality is cited as allowing more productivity but becoming a drain for some, more than half (56%) agreed.  As one expert put it, the real and virtual are converging, but, as another said, all human problems derived from problems the individual has with him/ her self.  In Scenario Six, only slightly more than half (52%) agreed with the statement that the Internet opens worldwide access to success and reconfigures human networks, but 44% disagreed.  The scenario cited the Thomas Friedman best seller “The World is Flat” in which the Internet is credited with helping people to collaborate and compete globally.  The experts talk about the balance of power between national boundaries and corporate groupings and say there may be a rebalancing but, as one said, it’s more likely to be 2120 than 2020.  Scenario Seven talking about Luddites/ Refuseniks committing acts of terror in protest against technology drew the largest amount of agreement with 58% agree, but a third (35%) disagreeing.  The comments seem to indicate more of them agree, but that the issue is more a question of what will drive the protests – technology or technology heightening the perception of poverty and the differences in religion.Finally, when asked what they would do if they were put in charge of setting priorities on spending money for developing information and communication technologies, slightly more than half (51%) favored building the capacity of the network and developing the technological knowledge for those not currently online.  Less than a third favored created a legal and operating environment for people to use the Internet.  Less than one in ten (8%) favored developing ‘an effective international watchdog organization’ or ‘establishing an easy-to-use, secure international microcredit systems.


• YOUTUBE VERSUS MYSPACE VERSUS GOOGLE VERSUS YAHOO:  And the winner of the most popular video site is… NOT YouTube.  According to an article in MarketWatch by Bambi Francisco, the number one video site is actually MySpace.  Citing a report by comScore Media Metrix, MySpace scored 37.4 Million unique individual who watched 1.4 Billion videos.  Not bad when you consider MySpace only jumped into the video streaming business six months ago.  In fact MySpace is so popular that it accounts for a fifth (20%) of all of the 7.2 Billion videos streamed on the web.  Another report by Reuters cites a financial analyst who says MySpace could soon be worth $15 Billion.  Yahoo actually scored higher in terms of unique individual ‘streamers’ but came in second in terms of actual videos streamed at 812 Million.  YouTube took third place with 649 Million video streams in July.   But a separate comScore Media Metrix report notes that YouTube continues to grow with a 19% increase from July to August, making it the 32nd most visited site on the web.    Just to put this in perspective, a report in Advertising Age quotes ad agency Leo Burnett Worldwide that the “magic number” to be considered successful in the viral video marketing arena is One Million viewings.


• LOCAL ONLINE SALES MAKES IT TO THE WIN COLUMN.  Research firm Borell Associates says next year will be a banner year for LOCAL online sales, with the firm predicting sales in excess of $7.7 Billion.  That is a jump of a third (31%) from this year.  To put that in perspective, last year (2005), local online advertising accounted for $4.8 Billion in sales.  That’s an increase of four-fold from five years before (2000) when sales were $1.17 Billion.  And it’s about half of where sales are expected to be by 2010 when Borrell projects sales to reach $9.3 Billion.  Equally interesting, the company says by next year, local video advertising will become a “trackable” advertising category.  


• COCKTAIL CHATTER:  The top five products people go on-line to search for, according to research firm Hitwise, are #1, Barbie (she’s still popular); #2, Ipods (no surprise); #3 Heelys (never heard of them but they’re a shoe with a wheel in the heel); #4 Crocs (semi-heard of them.  They’re a sort of rubberized beach sandal); and #5 Bratz (the latest doll craze). Negative publicity has helped propel the latest energy drink to sell-out cult status, all on the basis of a $37.50 marketing campaign.  The drink is named Cocaine, and the $37.50 was the amount it cost to have a courier deliver a case to the New York Post which promptly wrote it up.    publicknowledge.org


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