Message from Michael - February 16, 2009

Message From Michael                                 

                                                                                                                        February 16, 2009                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

      RE-SETTING THE DIGITAL CLOCK

      MEASURE ME THIS, MEDIAMAN

      PIRACY OFF THE HIGH SEAS

      TRIVIAL COMMUNICATION AS AN ART FORM

      COCKTAIL CHATTER: DARWIN AND THE DEVIL

 

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      RE-SETTING THE DIGITAL CLOCK:  It has been covered extensively which means it usually isn’t MfM material, but the delay in the DTV switchover is too important not to lead with.  The network O&O’s have agreed to extend their analog coverage to the new June 12^th deadline.  An estimated 190 stations have already switched to digital.  Another 491 decided to stay with the February 17^th switchover.  Of those, 123 were questioned by the Federal Communications Commission.  Of those stations, 53 were allowed to go ahead after agreeing to a series of conditions while 43 agreed to continue transmitting in analog and ten are being reviewed.  And if you’re any good at math, you realize there are 17 missing, but I don’t know what’s happening to them.  Nielsen has “adjusted its plans… in this uncertain environment” to take into account the consumer confusion surrounding the original date, as well as the fact that there will be a period between March 4^th and June 11^th in which stations may opt for a gradual cut-off; and Nielsen says it expects the same scenario expected for the original February 17^th cut-off to happen on the extended June 12^th cut-off but with a “lower volume of activity.”  Meanwhile, stations in Wilmington, North Carolina, (including former client WECT) are feeling good that they were the Beta test site for the digital transition and are already done with all this confusion.  And, finally, in the interest of full disclosure, WNEG-TV, which is owned by the University of Georgia’ Research Foundation is staying with the February 17^th cut-off.          

      MEASURE ME THIS, MEDIAMAN:  What area of new media growth has spawned a series of new measurement efforts?  The answer – online video.  Well, that and user generated content… and advertising… and… oh, never mind.  The point is they’re all intertwined and nobody quite has a handle on it all.  The Interactive Advertising Bureau has released VPAID – Video Player-Ad Interface Definitions Guidelines – just kind of rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?  The point, according to the IAB website, is to build “a common language for buying, selling, creating and delivering digital video advertising.”  Talking about rolling off the tongue, the Association for Downloadable Media whose mission is to “monetize episodic consumer-downloaded content” has also issued a set of standards and guidelines to insure “a landscape favorable to the commercialization of web-delivered shows.”   Advertising giants Starcom Mediavest Group as well as Publicis Groupe’s Vivaki have pulled together some of their major advertisers to create something they call “The Pool” – also for the ostensible purpose of creating standards for digital video ads.  If that sounds like the same thing as the IAB, the folks involved in The Pool say, no, the IAB is about creating consistency in online video advertising, the pool is about creating more spending in online video advertising.  Meanwhile, online video ad network Tremor Media has announced a new measurement tool in conjunction with comScore to convert online video measurement into something similar to television measurement standards.  The group has created an online GRP (Gross Rating Points) system that breaks out the analytics into demographics, unique visitors and reach and frequency standards familiar to television executives. 

On a very much related note, the New America Foundation has created a website (measurementlab.net) to test your Internet connection speed.  Of course, there are several ways already to do this.  The difference is that this site determines if your ISP is specifically blocking or “throttling” online video delivery services such as BitTorrent.  Talking about which, there is a website which claims to be the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker.  Called thepiratebay.org, it was founded by a Swedish anti-copyright group to facilitate video file sharing.

      PIRACY OFF THE HIGH SEAS:  Of course, such ‘file sharing’ is often called something else by the content creators – piracy.  And it just doesn’t take place off the coast of Somalia either. According to a geo targeted map put together by the Pirate Bay group, the chief source of those video streams is China with a quarter (25.3%) of all those connections worldwide.  At any given minute, the map shows that there are more than 337,000 users making connections.  The U.S. accounted for about half that number (12.8%) with an average of 171,000 users online at any given minute.  Interestingly, despite its size, there were only 12,000 connections being made in India through BitTorrent, accounting for less than one percent of the world total.  Even mighty Russia only had 8,300 users.  Population-challenged Australia had twice the number of either.  The map is updated on the quarter hour, and when I last looked, there were more than 1.3 Million people on-line at the minute I checked.  There were 2,145 users online from Iceland, 279 in Kenya, and 53 from the Faroe Islands.  You can visit the site yourself and entertain yourself for hours at http://geo.keff.org.  And just to keep my facts and factoids stream of consciousness going, German based website Torrentfreak.com which tracks downloaded videos says the most downloaded video is NBC’s hit series Heroes with 5 Million downloads.  By way of comparison, the show averages 10 Million viewers.  The most pirated movie this week was Underwood, Rise of the Lycans with a Million downloads, followed by The Day the Earth Stood Still, Thick as Thieves, Changelings and Sex Drive.  Meanwhile, an article in the New York Times earlier this month argues that the studios may be losing the piracy battle.  The reporters say the studios may be having their “Napster moment” with DVD sales at their lowest in five years.  What is contributing to the surge is that people don’t have to download the entire video any more, they can just stream it.  While the battle over video clips seems to have eased with recent acquiescence by sites like YouTube, the full-length movie battle has just begun with sites like SuperNovaTube providing a repository and connections called “link farms” to movies.

      TRIVIAL COMMUNICATION AS AN ART FORM:  That’s how The Wall Street Journal described the recent Shorty Awards in which 30,000 twitterers competed for top honors, with an awards ceremony (No, I’m not making this up) in Brooklyn.  The ceremony will be hosted by CNN anchor Rick Sanchez with celebrity tweeters such as MC Hammer.  The winner of the hotly contested contest was a woman who tweets in character as Peggy Olson, one of the characters on the AMC hit series Mad Men. On the flip side of the twitter trivial, New York Times tech writer David Pogue has declared himself a twitter fan.  Pogue admitted to being a cynic but changed his mind when someone showed him the power of twitter crowdsourcing.  A fellow judge at a contest twittered a question and got a response that not only answered the question but provided links.  Pogue demonstrated the power of twittering in a speech to an audience in which he twittered the question – how to cure hiccups.  Numerous replies provided all kinds of fodder for discussion.  Of course, he got into ‘trouble’ with his fellow twitterers who didn’t appreciate being used as guinea pigs in the demonstration.  But that’s another story.  Meanwhile, several reports are circulating that the Twitter founders are trying to figure out a way to monetize the application which has proved popular but not profitable.  And, proving that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, several Twitter-like copies have sprouted up, sort of like knock-offs to popular TV series.  Twiddeo is a video version of Twitter and Wiggio is a college-based form of Twitter.        

      COCKTAIL CHATTER:  Slightly more people believe in Darwin’s theory of evolution (40%) than in creationism, according to a recent poll by Harris Interactive, which notes that the number of both is still a minority.  A re-analysis of earlier survey results but only recently released by the Pew Research Center in conjunction with the 200^th anniversary of Darwin’s birth confirms those numbers with Pew Research (at 42%) and Gallup (44%).  But the Pew Research finds more people believing in natural selection (26% vs. 14% for Gallup) while Gallup finds more people believing that a Supreme Being guided the evolutionary process (36% vs. 21% for Pew Research).  The re-analysis by research director Scott Keeter of the surveys (done in 2005 and 2006) makes the point that the reason for the difference may be that the Gallup survey referenced a belief in God while the Pew Research made no mention of God.       

Considering that four out of five adult Americans believe in God, the Harris pollsters note it may not be surprising that the poll (done in December of 2008) also found that more people believe in miracles (75%) angels (71%), hell (62%) and the devil (59%).  But what may be surprising is the sizable minorities who believe in ghosts (44%), UFO’s (36%) witches and astrology (31%), and reincarnation (24%).  Catholics are more likely than Protestants to believe in evolution (52% to 32%) and Protestants are more likely to believe in creationism (54% to 46%).   A majority of adults believe that all or most of the New Testament (54%) and the Old Testament (55%) are the “Word of God” but less than half that number (26%) believe the Torah is the word of God even though it is the same as the first five books of the Old Testament. 

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