Message from Michael - April 12, 2010

Message From Michael                                 

                                                                                                                        April 19, 2010                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

      THE RISE AND PHONE OF THE INNOVATION EMPIRE

      PAY PHONE AS YOU GO

      I WANT MY MTV

      SOCIETY’S SOCIAL SURGE

      COCKTAIL CHATTER – LOBBYISTS AND CARTOONISTS

 

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      THE RISE AND PHONE OF THE INNOVATION EMPIRE:  There are more people in the world with cell phones than there are people with clean toilets.  How’s that for a factoid?  It comes from a New York Times article by Anand Giridharadas which makes the point that while the U.S. is focused on innovation using new devices such as the iPad, much of the rest of the world is focused on finding innovative new uses for the basic cell phone.  Not only do other countries make much greater use of text messaging for everything from job hunting to voting, they use it as a flashlight, a television, a radio and even as a sort of credit card to pay bills and transfer money – something that hasn’t caught on in the U.S.  As to the cell – toilet comparison, the figures come from the International Telecommunication Union and the United Nations.  The I-T-C says the number of mobile subscriptions is expected to pass Five Billion this year.  Although Giridharadas does not go into the exact figures in his article, a little research shows not only is the comparison true, but that several other publications have also made the point.  A report by the United Nations University along with the World Health Organization says there are 2.7 Billion people without clean toilets in the world.  And I know this may fall into the category of too much 4-1-1 for some people, but the report says 1.1 Billion people defecate in the open.  And some 4-1-1 that everyone should note, more than 4.5 Million children under the age of five have died from diarrhea and other water-borne diseases in the past three years.  That’s roughly equivalent to the population of Ireland.

To put the numbers in perspective, the Central Intelligence Agency, which is the prime citing source for many of the numbers cited about the world, says there are more than 6.7 Billion people in the world today.  So, subtract 2.7 Billion people without clean toilets from that number, and you have Four Billion people with ‘clean’ toilets compared to Five Billion people with cell phones.  As a side note, the Internet World Stats put the number of people with Internet access at 1.8 Billion people, which represents more than one in every four (26.6%) persons in the world.  And for a little more perspective, another New York Times article profiled cell phone maker Nokia subsidiary Vertu which provides custom cell phones made of gold, platinum and titanium with price tags ranging from $5,000 to $25,000.  Or if you want, you can have a diamond encrusted version, starting at $80,000.

      PAY PHONE AS YOU GO:  Apparently more and more people are adopting that philosophy.  In an interesting twist on the cell phone discussion above, a new report by an independent technology and telecommunications think tank says more people are turning to pre-paid phones instead of the ‘traditional’ contract phones.  Two thirds of the 4.2 Million net subscribers added in the fourth quarter of this year were pre-paid phones, so that nearly one in every five cell phone users is talking on a pre-paid phone.  That translates into 54.4 Million out of the 285 Million wireless subscribers in the U.S. in the fourth quarter of last year.  Jose Guzman, the project coordinator with the group called New Millennium Research Council is quoted as saying, “the era of cell phone penny pinching is officially here.”  The report authors say the recession is primarily responsible for the movement, along with the fact that many of the pre-paid phones now offer an “all you can eat” variety of services not associated with pre-paid phones in the past.

      I WANT MY MTV:  They may want it, but they don’t need it, or at least not as much as they used to, according to a study released by Edison Research and Arbitron.  For the first time, the Internet has passed TV as the “most essential” medium in Americans’ lives.  More than two in five Americans surveyed (42%) cited the Internet as “most essential” just ahead of TV (37%), but way ahead of radio (14%) and way-er ahead of newspapers (5%).  Television is still the dominant medium for people over the age of 45, but for those between the ages of 12 and 44, it’s the Internet.  On a very much related note, the same two groups found in a different survey that nearly half of Americans (49%) believe that newspapers will cease to exist in the future.  What may be even more disturbing for my newspaper brethren is that number is a dramatic jump from just three years ago when ‘only’ a quarter (27%) agreed with the questionnaire statement:  in the future, there will be no more newspapers because everyone will be getting their news over the Internet.”   

      SOCIETY’S SOCIAL SURGE:   From the same two groups, yet another study shows the percentage of Americans with a profile on a social networking site has doubled in the past two years.  Nearly half (48%) of those aged 12 and over say they have a social profile online, compared to a quarter (24%) in 2008.  And although as you would expect, young people are more likely to have a social networking profile, it’s not just about them.  Three quarters of teens (78%) and 18 to 24 year olds (77%) have profiles, but so do two-thirds (65%) of those aged 25 to 34 and half (51%) of those 35 to 44. In keeping with other studies about where people get their news and information, the Edison/ Arbitron survey says that nearly a third (30%) of those people visit their social networking sites “several times a day” which is not quite double (18%) what it was only a year ago.  As one of the authors says in the report, social networking has now become “mainstream media behavior.”    

      COCKTAIL CHATTER:  According to The Center for Public Integrity, the health care legislation was the subject of the “most expensive and intense” lobbying battle in history.  More than 1,750 businesses and organizations spent more than $1.2 Billion, using more than 4,525 lobbyists – a record eight lobbyists for every member of Congress.  And the center notes that there is another, possibly even more expensive, lobbying battle coming up – financial regulatory reform.  Former vice presidential candidate and Alaska governor Sarah Palin’s Fox news special “Real American Stories” won its time slot, beating everything else on Cable TV at that hour combined.  However, the special which was run in the Greta van Susteren’s On The Record time period, was actually down 10% in viewers from van Susteren’s previous week’s show and down 28% in demo’s, according to website TVNewser.  And in the interest of keeping message readers on the cutting edge, visit the website streamys.org, to see the winners of the Streamy Awards recognizing the best of online ‘webisodes.’  Ironically, the online show was apparently a technical disaster, but you can watch the winners at the website.  The winner of the best news or politics site was the increasingly popular but somewhat tiresome Auto-Tune the News, which synthesizes newsmakers voices and inserts synthesized voice characters. 

      WORTH NOTING:  In what some free press advocates see as a canary in the media mine, Apple has rejected an app proposal from a political cartoonist who just won a Pulitzer Prize.  Satirist Mark Fiore’s application was rejected, according to the letter sent him and made public by the Nieman Journalism Lab, because it “ridicules public figures” which is a violation of Apple’s program license agreement.  Apple attached a screen grab to its rejection letter showing the White House gate crashers interrupting a Presidential news conference, as an example of the offending material.

      ALSO WORTH NOTING:  Although there has been extensive coverage, I would be remiss if I didn’t note the local television stations which won Peabody Awards:  WYFF/ Greenville won for its special following donated organs; KTVU/ Oakland for its coverage of the BART train station shooting; KHOU/ Houston for an investigation into discrimination in the Texas National Guard; WFLD/ Chicago for what the judges rightfully called the “horrifying video” of the beating death of an honor student at a high school, but more rightfully its follow-up coverage; and KCET/ Los Angeles for its ‘eye-opening coverage’ which showed there are more legal, medical-marijuana dispensaries in the city than Starbucks franchises.  And although I doubt seriously that my former colleague Steve Kroft will ever read this, a note of congratulations to him as well for his double – two Peabodys for his work with 60 Minutes.  And I also would be remiss if I didn’t also mention the Pulitzer Prize where two newspapers scored triples – The Washington Post and The New York Times.

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