HEY, YOU, GET ONTO MY CLOUD
KNIGHTS IN WHITE SPACES
OUTSOURCING THE NEWS
HOW BAD ARE J-SCHOOLS?
COCKTAIL CHATTER – FOR WRITERS
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 Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
HEY, YOU, GET ONTO MY CLOUD: It seems that Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer is singing his own variation of the Mick Jagger hit, along with Yahoo’s Jerry Yang and Google’s Eric Schmidt as they all battle like World War I fighter pilots in the clouds of computing. Once known as grid computing, utility computing or distributed computing, the much sexier sounding “cloud computing” is being heralded as the biggest thing since the Internet started. We’ve talked about it in previous MfM’s, but the difference is that this week Microsoft is jumping into the fray with a vengeance at its Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles. As usual Microsoft is late getting into the field but as always Microsoft is raising the stakes dramatically. Also, next month the first International Cloud Computing Conference will be held in San Jose. Sys-Con, which focuses on i-Technology media and actually produces a cloud computing journal, will host a cloud computing ‘boot camp.’ It probably tells you something that although there is agreement that cloud computing represents “an infrastructural paradigm shift,” there is no agreement on an exact definition. My untutored definition is that all your documents, all your storage, all your software, even all your applications are provided through a massive system of inter-connected servers so that you are no longer restricted by the size or speed of your computer. Amazon has its own version, EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) which provides “resizable compute capacity in the cloud,” making web-scale computing easier for developers. Earlier this year, Intel, Hewlett Packard and Yahoo joined forces with three international research institutions to develop six data centers to test the stability and security of cloud computing. And as noted before, Google is already providing a cloud of apps online which runs on an estimated 100,000 nodes – a fancy term for servers -- although the recent 24-hour outage of Google’s Gmail system has raised questions about just how reliable cloud computing can be.
If you want to follow Microsoft’s foray into the field, go to website microsoftpdc.com; if you want to follow the computing conference, go to cloudcomputingexpo.com. And if you just want to keep up with the concept, go to cloudcomputing.sys-con.com.
KNIGHTS IN WHITE SPACES: Okay, I know I’m pushing my luck with these headline variations of rock and roll hits. But like the knights of olde, TV and Internet groups are jousting over what to do with the so-called “white spaces” which are the unused radio waves in the VHF and UHF band of television transmission. On this issue at least, Microsoft, Google, HP, and Intel are all on the same side. They say they can use the white space to deliver high speed wireless broadband internet access, with speeds anywhere from 10Mbytes to 50 and 100 Mbytes, which is much powerful than the Wi-Fi spectrum. On the other side are all the major networks and the National Association of Broadcasters. They say that the use of the white spaces in the signals will interfere with television broadcasts if unlicensed devices operate in the same spectrum. Both sides have formed groups with cutesy, catchy names. The broadcasters have formed The Association for Maximum Service Television while the Internet groups have formed the Wireless Innovation Alliance. The Federal Communications Commission Office of Engineering and Technology submitted a report a year ago that said the devices did not reliably detect the presence of television transmission and so therefore could not be relied upon. But this month the same office issued another report that “tentatively concludes… that… AWS-3 devices could operate at a power level of up to 23 dBm/MHz equivalent isotropic radiated power (EIRP) and with out-of-band emissions (OOBE) attenuated… without a significant risk of harmful interference.” Don’t you love it when I talk like this? It just goes to show you the level of technical detail that goes into these arguments. It may sound esoteric, but it isn’t. This is going to be the next ‘net neutrality’ debate that you will be hearing more and more about.
Side Note: Another group that you may never have heard of, but that directly affects you (at least it does, if you listen to Internet Radio), is SoundExchange. It collects the fees for the use of the different recording labels’ music. The group had applied to the federal Copyright Royalty Board to set royalty fees at a rate that many Internet radio operations said would put them out of business. Now, Congress has stepped in, passing the Webcaster Settlement Act to allow radio webcasters to negotiate lower royalty fee.
OUTSOURCING THE NEWS: The head of a major American newspaper group, who is also chairman of the Associated Press, says newspaper publishers should look at outsourcing news, possibly overseas. The CEO of Media News Group which publishes 52 newspapers says most of the preproduction work for its newspapers in California is already done in India, but now he says the group is looking at creating one “media desk” for all its newspapers and even possibly locating it “offshore.” As reported in USA Today, CEO Dean Singleton who also chairs the A.P. says no final decision has been made about outsourcing editorial functions, but they were looking at consolidating all editing and design. Regular readers of MfM will remember that an online news operation in California, pasadenanow.com, has outsourced its news, by having people in India write stories based on webcasts of city council meetings and information provided by ‘citizen volunteers.’ The proposal is obviously a response to the troubled economic times, which the former executive editor of The Washington Post says could mean local television news will disappear as fast, or faster, than local newspapers. Talking to the Cronkite News Service, former editor Len Downie Jr. says newspapers may win out on the rapidly growing Web with their growing use of video for the simple reason that newspapers can out-gun local television. For example, the Post has around 100 reporters covering the Washington area while the largest TV station in the market has, at most, a dozen reporters. He says that while newspapers are being squeezed, local television is being squeezed even more.
HOW BAD ARE J-SCHOOLS? Pretty bad if you believe the scoring on media website TVSpy.com. Its offspring newsletter, Shoptalk, ran an article listing the top ten schools based on a poll of its readers. They were: Columbia, Northwestern, UNC-Chapel Hill, Missouri, Syracuse, Indiana, California, Illinois, Maryland (Philip Merrill College), Ohio. Curious I went to the site to see the actual numbers. On a scale of 0 to 100, the top ranked school, Columbia, got a whopping 12. Yes, 12. Number 2, Northwestern, got a 6. Even more interesting, of the 16 schools listed, only four got positive grades; the other 12 were in the negative column. And I thought I was a tough grader! A sampling of others: Syracuse (-1), UNC and the Cronkite School at Arizona (-4), Ohio (-7), California (-8). The lowest scores: Montana (-37), Nevada (-38), and lowest scorer, Michigan (-43), which may be some consolation to football rival Michigan (-15). It’s not much consolation to us at the Grady College/ University of Georgia that football rival Florida also was in the negative column (-18), since we weren’t even on the list. I should note the grades vary daily as people vote, but the overwhelming theme remains the same – three quarters of the schools got negative grades. So, the obvious question is – why. And the reader with the best answer to that question will get a free subscription to Message from Michael. Oh, never mind, it’s already free.
COCKTAIL CHATTER. The creator of Harry Potter and the one-time single mother on welfare, J.K. Rowling, is the best paid author in the world with a ‘jaw-dropping’ $300 Million, according to Forbes magazine. The money drops dramatically for second place winner James Patterson but still isn’t too shabby at $50 Million. The ‘king of horror’ Stephen King came in third with $45 Million, followed by the master of the political thriller, Tom Clancy ($35 Million) and the doyenne of romance novels, Danielle Steel ($30 Million.) The rest of the top ten list includes John Grisham and Dean Koontz (both tied at $25 Million) followed by -- as Forbes puts it, thanks to a little Oprah magic -- Ken Follett ($20 Million), Janet Evanovich ($17 Million) and Nicholas Sparks ($16 Million). The winner of this year’s Writer’s Digest Best Writer’s Website is claudialuiz.com, so named of course for its creator, Claudia Luiz, a writer, psychoanalyst, and mother of two who does a column for her hometown newspaper in Norwood, Massachusetts. And as long as I’m on a writing kick, a reminder that NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), in which you have one month to write a complete novel, kicks off November 1st.
Apropos of nothing in particular, except that I found it interesting… the Central Intelligence Agency took out a full-page ad in the New York Times magazine. In a special advertising section on diversity, the agency advertises for people who can “make a world of difference” working for the national clandestine service.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
Showing posts with label Internet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Internet. Show all posts
Monday, October 27, 2008
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Message From Michael -- October 20, 2008
RETURN TO SENDER; ADDRESS UNKNOWN.
WHAT GETS MEASURED GETS DONE
WE HAVE TO INNOVATE OUR WAY OUT OF THIS
COCKTAIL CHATTER -- MILESTONES
OF BRICK WALLS AND HEAD FAKES
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 Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
RETURN TO SENDER. ADDRESS UNKNOWN. The lyrics from the old Elvis Presley song may soon apply to the Internet. In the growing category of things I didn’t know -- In roughly two years time the last Internet address available on the original Internet naming system will be given out. That totals 4.3 Billion numbers. (Internet addresses are, of course, actual numbers.) Just for perspective, there are 6.7 Billion people in the world. Part of the problem, and the solution, according to research by computer scientists at University of Southern California, is the management of the original addressing system. They say there are whole blocks of numbers, maybe as much as half, that are only lightly used. Now you’ve probably heard about ICANN which stands for Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. They’re the ones who decide if you get a dot-com, dot-net, or dot-tv domain extension. Well, part of that group is another group – the IANA, which stands for the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. They’re the ones that actually give out the blocks of Internet address numbers. Starting today (Monday, October 20th) they’re all getting together for the Internet Measurement Conference in a seaside resort near Athens, Greece. To further share with you something you probably don’t need to know but that’s interesting to know… the original Internet Protocol number system (IPv4) was ‘deployed’ on January 1, 1983. That’s the one used by all of us and the one that’s about to run out. The next version (IPv6) was ‘deployed’ 16 years later in 1999. It has – get this – 51 Thousand Trillion Trillion addresses. So, there’s obviously more than enough, except that the move to that system is costly and complex. Several groups including the U.S. government have mandated users switch to IPv6, and for good reason. IANA figures that the last block of IPv4 addresses will be given out somewhere between 2010 and 2011.
WHAT GETS MEASURED GETS DONE. You’ve no doubt heard that old management maxim. Advertisers have a variation of that – what gets measured gets sold. The challenge is being able to measure all the various platforms people use. You will recall NBC’s TAMI (Total Audience Measurement Index) launched during the Olympics to measure its cross-platform delivery system. Now a small research firm called Integrated Media Measurement is trying to do that using cell phones. The company has embedded software into the cell phones of 4,900 panelists, to catch the audio from ads on TV, radio or the Internet. The audio is then coded with the company’s database, so that it can tell if a consumer who listened to a movie trailer or an ad for a TV show actually watch that movie or TV show. As the Wall Street Journal reports, the company is now working with a national grocery chain to see if it can use the same technology for shampoos and toothpaste. Meanwhile Federated Media has launched a beta version of its ‘measurement tool box’ to track ‘conversational media campaigns’ – aka, social networking. It pulls together standard metrics such as impressions and click-through-rates along with data points such as whether people post blogs, use widgets, and bookmark sites. Finally, before you jump all over the new forms of advertising, take note of a study by Montreal-based research firm iPerceptions which found that simple text ads work better than rich media ads. A survey found that a quarter (25%) of the 14,000 visitors to leading media sites clicked on text ads while one in five (20%) clicked on display ads on the right side of the page and only one in eight (12%) clicked on the top of the page banners. Rich media ads only snagged between 7% and 11% of the clicks.
WE HAVE TO INNOVATE OUR WAY OUT OF THIS. That’s what a consulting colleague of mine used to say when faced with a client challenge. And it’s what the young people on the M.I.T. Technology Review’s list of 35 innovators under 35 have done and are doing – on everything from the Internet to medicine, from biotechnology to nanotechnology. These are the people whose work is changing our world. So, besides Twitter (whose creator is on the list), be prepared to add to your lexicon -- synths, Drupal, FLOw, SRAM as well as DRAM, Graphene, Instructables and Xobni. That last one is Inbox spelled backwards and is the brain child of Adam Smith who, the Technology Review editors say, is helping to make sense out of “e-mail madness” by scanning every e-mail you receive, extracting information from phone numbers to files exchanged – translating it all into a sort of e-mail social networking display of the most relevant information. Drupal is Dutch for droplet and is the creation of Dries Buytaert. While the idea of publishing on a global scale seems to be inherent with the Internet, in actual fact all you have with the Internet is the ability to distribute globally. Actual publishing is much more and Buytaert has developed a system to do just that. Synths is short hand (I’m semi-assuming) for synthetics and are 3-D renderings of such things as the Rocky Mountains from photos you’ve taken. Creator Blaise Aquera Y Arcas who works for Microsoft created the Photosynth system which allows you to create full scale three dimensional worlds. FLOw is the creation of 26-year-old Jenova Chen who has been, according to the TR editors, playing video games for 20 years. It comes from a psychologist’s theory identifying “a state of focus that people find enjoyable and fulfilling.” The result is a Web-based ZEN game in which players control a sea creature that swims, eats… and evolves. You all know about Blinkx (because you read MfM) but innovator Xiang-Sheng Hua has taken online video search to a whole other level. The TR editors say Hua is “teaching computers” to recognize objects, scenes and elements of digital images using tags provided by experts but also descriptions written by grassroots Internet users which is then put through an automated filter.
Side Observations: Out of the 35 innovators named, three work for Microsoft. Most are associated with universities. Also interesting (as always – at least to me) only four had what you might call westernized or Americanized names. To state the obvious, I have barely touched the range of topics and ideas from these young innovators. I will do updates in later MfM reports. In the meantime, you can see them for yourself at http://www.technologyreview.com/TR35.
A TELEVISION MILESTONE: All right, that may be somewhat of an exaggeration but not if you’re the one doing it. The University Of Georgia’s Research Foundation officially took possession of former Media General-owned WNEG-TV. This will make it one of only three commercial television stations owned and operated by a university. The others are WVUA-TV owned by the University of Alabama and KOMU-TV owned by the University of Missouri-Columbia.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: Another milestone of sorts as Facebook reaches one petabyte of storage space and that’s just for photos alone. That translates into 10 Billion photos. A petabyte is the equivalent of 1000 terabytes and a terabyte is 1000 gigabytes. The latest ‘hot’ device hitting the market is a sort of poor man’s Blackberry called Peek, which does only e-mail, but does it well and does it everywhere. Maybe just to prove it isn’t an old line college, even though it is celebrating the 800th anniversary of its founding next year (makes some of our colleges seem like freshmen, doesn’t it?) the University of Cambridge is offering lectures on history, arts, and business free online at the iTunes store.
OF BRICK WALLS AND HEAD FAKES. Here are some thoughts to share: brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want something bad enough. The best way to teach somebody something is to make them think they’re learning something else. (That’s called a head fake.) Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want. When you’re screwing up and no-one says anything to you, that means they’ve given up on you. Your critics are the ones telling you they still love you and care for you. Wait long enough and people will surprise and impress you. The best gift an educator can give is to teach students to be self reflective. You don’t know where the bar is, so you do a disservice to students by putting it anywhere.
Okay, this has nothing to do with media, new or old, except that you can find it on YouTube and other video websites. It’s all from The Last Lecture by former Carnegie Mellon University professor Randy Pausch. The lecture was given in September of last year after Pausch had learned he had terminal pancreatic cancer and six months to live. But there is nothing maudlin about the lecture. This is a guy who tells the audience that after he learned of his situation, he did have a death bed conversion – he bought a Macintosh. The lecture is peppered with such jokes, along with witticisms and pointed observations. Normally, I give you a summary of longer reports so you don’t have to read, watch or listen to them. But in this case, do yourself a favor. Get up early one morning -- an hour and sixteen minutes early, to be exact -- and watch the lecture. Actually… there is another media element to this. Pausch was an expert in human-computer interactions and virtual worlds. Pausch who also worked with the Walt Disney Imagineering Team had created the Entertainment Technology Center and was working on an infinitely scalable technology teaching model for virtual worlds titled Alice. As he himself put it, like Moses, he got to see the Promised Land but he never got to set foot in it. He died on July 25, 2008.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
WHAT GETS MEASURED GETS DONE
WE HAVE TO INNOVATE OUR WAY OUT OF THIS
COCKTAIL CHATTER -- MILESTONES
OF BRICK WALLS AND HEAD FAKES
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 Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
RETURN TO SENDER. ADDRESS UNKNOWN. The lyrics from the old Elvis Presley song may soon apply to the Internet. In the growing category of things I didn’t know -- In roughly two years time the last Internet address available on the original Internet naming system will be given out. That totals 4.3 Billion numbers. (Internet addresses are, of course, actual numbers.) Just for perspective, there are 6.7 Billion people in the world. Part of the problem, and the solution, according to research by computer scientists at University of Southern California, is the management of the original addressing system. They say there are whole blocks of numbers, maybe as much as half, that are only lightly used. Now you’ve probably heard about ICANN which stands for Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. They’re the ones who decide if you get a dot-com, dot-net, or dot-tv domain extension. Well, part of that group is another group – the IANA, which stands for the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. They’re the ones that actually give out the blocks of Internet address numbers. Starting today (Monday, October 20th) they’re all getting together for the Internet Measurement Conference in a seaside resort near Athens, Greece. To further share with you something you probably don’t need to know but that’s interesting to know… the original Internet Protocol number system (IPv4) was ‘deployed’ on January 1, 1983. That’s the one used by all of us and the one that’s about to run out. The next version (IPv6) was ‘deployed’ 16 years later in 1999. It has – get this – 51 Thousand Trillion Trillion addresses. So, there’s obviously more than enough, except that the move to that system is costly and complex. Several groups including the U.S. government have mandated users switch to IPv6, and for good reason. IANA figures that the last block of IPv4 addresses will be given out somewhere between 2010 and 2011.
WHAT GETS MEASURED GETS DONE. You’ve no doubt heard that old management maxim. Advertisers have a variation of that – what gets measured gets sold. The challenge is being able to measure all the various platforms people use. You will recall NBC’s TAMI (Total Audience Measurement Index) launched during the Olympics to measure its cross-platform delivery system. Now a small research firm called Integrated Media Measurement is trying to do that using cell phones. The company has embedded software into the cell phones of 4,900 panelists, to catch the audio from ads on TV, radio or the Internet. The audio is then coded with the company’s database, so that it can tell if a consumer who listened to a movie trailer or an ad for a TV show actually watch that movie or TV show. As the Wall Street Journal reports, the company is now working with a national grocery chain to see if it can use the same technology for shampoos and toothpaste. Meanwhile Federated Media has launched a beta version of its ‘measurement tool box’ to track ‘conversational media campaigns’ – aka, social networking. It pulls together standard metrics such as impressions and click-through-rates along with data points such as whether people post blogs, use widgets, and bookmark sites. Finally, before you jump all over the new forms of advertising, take note of a study by Montreal-based research firm iPerceptions which found that simple text ads work better than rich media ads. A survey found that a quarter (25%) of the 14,000 visitors to leading media sites clicked on text ads while one in five (20%) clicked on display ads on the right side of the page and only one in eight (12%) clicked on the top of the page banners. Rich media ads only snagged between 7% and 11% of the clicks.
WE HAVE TO INNOVATE OUR WAY OUT OF THIS. That’s what a consulting colleague of mine used to say when faced with a client challenge. And it’s what the young people on the M.I.T. Technology Review’s list of 35 innovators under 35 have done and are doing – on everything from the Internet to medicine, from biotechnology to nanotechnology. These are the people whose work is changing our world. So, besides Twitter (whose creator is on the list), be prepared to add to your lexicon -- synths, Drupal, FLOw, SRAM as well as DRAM, Graphene, Instructables and Xobni. That last one is Inbox spelled backwards and is the brain child of Adam Smith who, the Technology Review editors say, is helping to make sense out of “e-mail madness” by scanning every e-mail you receive, extracting information from phone numbers to files exchanged – translating it all into a sort of e-mail social networking display of the most relevant information. Drupal is Dutch for droplet and is the creation of Dries Buytaert. While the idea of publishing on a global scale seems to be inherent with the Internet, in actual fact all you have with the Internet is the ability to distribute globally. Actual publishing is much more and Buytaert has developed a system to do just that. Synths is short hand (I’m semi-assuming) for synthetics and are 3-D renderings of such things as the Rocky Mountains from photos you’ve taken. Creator Blaise Aquera Y Arcas who works for Microsoft created the Photosynth system which allows you to create full scale three dimensional worlds. FLOw is the creation of 26-year-old Jenova Chen who has been, according to the TR editors, playing video games for 20 years. It comes from a psychologist’s theory identifying “a state of focus that people find enjoyable and fulfilling.” The result is a Web-based ZEN game in which players control a sea creature that swims, eats… and evolves. You all know about Blinkx (because you read MfM) but innovator Xiang-Sheng Hua has taken online video search to a whole other level. The TR editors say Hua is “teaching computers” to recognize objects, scenes and elements of digital images using tags provided by experts but also descriptions written by grassroots Internet users which is then put through an automated filter.
Side Observations: Out of the 35 innovators named, three work for Microsoft. Most are associated with universities. Also interesting (as always – at least to me) only four had what you might call westernized or Americanized names. To state the obvious, I have barely touched the range of topics and ideas from these young innovators. I will do updates in later MfM reports. In the meantime, you can see them for yourself at http://www.technologyreview.com/TR35.
A TELEVISION MILESTONE: All right, that may be somewhat of an exaggeration but not if you’re the one doing it. The University Of Georgia’s Research Foundation officially took possession of former Media General-owned WNEG-TV. This will make it one of only three commercial television stations owned and operated by a university. The others are WVUA-TV owned by the University of Alabama and KOMU-TV owned by the University of Missouri-Columbia.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: Another milestone of sorts as Facebook reaches one petabyte of storage space and that’s just for photos alone. That translates into 10 Billion photos. A petabyte is the equivalent of 1000 terabytes and a terabyte is 1000 gigabytes. The latest ‘hot’ device hitting the market is a sort of poor man’s Blackberry called Peek, which does only e-mail, but does it well and does it everywhere. Maybe just to prove it isn’t an old line college, even though it is celebrating the 800th anniversary of its founding next year (makes some of our colleges seem like freshmen, doesn’t it?) the University of Cambridge is offering lectures on history, arts, and business free online at the iTunes store.
OF BRICK WALLS AND HEAD FAKES. Here are some thoughts to share: brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want something bad enough. The best way to teach somebody something is to make them think they’re learning something else. (That’s called a head fake.) Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want. When you’re screwing up and no-one says anything to you, that means they’ve given up on you. Your critics are the ones telling you they still love you and care for you. Wait long enough and people will surprise and impress you. The best gift an educator can give is to teach students to be self reflective. You don’t know where the bar is, so you do a disservice to students by putting it anywhere.
Okay, this has nothing to do with media, new or old, except that you can find it on YouTube and other video websites. It’s all from The Last Lecture by former Carnegie Mellon University professor Randy Pausch. The lecture was given in September of last year after Pausch had learned he had terminal pancreatic cancer and six months to live. But there is nothing maudlin about the lecture. This is a guy who tells the audience that after he learned of his situation, he did have a death bed conversion – he bought a Macintosh. The lecture is peppered with such jokes, along with witticisms and pointed observations. Normally, I give you a summary of longer reports so you don’t have to read, watch or listen to them. But in this case, do yourself a favor. Get up early one morning -- an hour and sixteen minutes early, to be exact -- and watch the lecture. Actually… there is another media element to this. Pausch was an expert in human-computer interactions and virtual worlds. Pausch who also worked with the Walt Disney Imagineering Team had created the Entertainment Technology Center and was working on an infinitely scalable technology teaching model for virtual worlds titled Alice. As he himself put it, like Moses, he got to see the Promised Land but he never got to set foot in it. He died on July 25, 2008.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
Message From Michael -- October 13, 2008
VETTING THE VEXING VIDEO REVOLUTION
ADVENTURES IN VIDEO LAND
THE UNKNOWN INFLUENTIALS
LEADING MEDIA COMPANIES COMPARISON
COCKTAIL CHATTER – RICH AND RICHER
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 Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
VETTING THE VEXING VIDEO REVOLUTION. Whew… you know that headline caused some headaches to create. Anyway, you’ve all heard about the amazing growth in online video. Research firm, ABI Research, notes that while just under a third of online households had watched video streamed through a browser a year ago, now the ratio is more like six out of ten. Even with a recent downward revision, online video ad spending is expected to grow an incredible 55% this year, after jumping 74% last year. Now for a little perspective. That translates to $505 Million a year, and research firm eMarketer predicts that with an annual growth rate of between 50% and 70% that by 2012 online video ad spending will reach $3.4 Billion. Putting that figure into perspective, total Internet advertising is expected to reach $51.1 Billion in 2012, according to market intelligence firm IDC. U.S. Internet advertising will reach $23 Billion this year alone. Another note of perspective, the eMarketer firm notes that the TV market already hovers around $70 Billion a year.
Much of that growth is also dependent on growth in broadband access and broadband speeds. Which brings us to another piece of perspective. Internet network connectivity firm Cisco says that by 2012, Internet video will be – get this -- nearly 400 times the U.S. Internet backbone just eight years ago in 2000. The company says that even now, online video (PC and TV) accounts for a third (32.2%) of all consumer traffic worldwide. And, in a report that received a lot of press, research by Forrest Consulting for Veoh Networks shows heavy users and younger users of video account for much of that use. Consumers between the ages of 13 and 24 account for only 15% of the online population but represent 35% of active online video users. Add to that, says Veoh, consumers who watch more than an hour of video account for 40% of all viewers and three-quarters (75%) of ALL online video viewing. Research firm TeleGeography Research (which has a very cool submarine cable map showing all the under sea connections) says the amount of Internet bandwidth grew more than the Internet demand… at least this year. And a final footnote, Congress has passed the Broadband Data Improvement Act which promises to keep better track of who has access to the Internet and who does not, as well as better track the oft-criticized data standards.
ADVENTURES IN VIDEO LAND. The shoot-out at the Wild Wild Web’s version of the O.K. Corral may well be with video. Just keeping up with the proliferation of choices has produced a proliferation of sites. You know of course about NBC and Fox venture, Hulu, and regular readers will know about Joost which boasts 40,000 titles and a recent upgrade to work around plug-ins. Then there’s the Veoh networks which describes itself as an “Internet TV service” bringing together large TV and film studios with independent producers and user-generated content. But more keep coming: From the people who brought you the Slingbox comes video portal Sling.com. From the venerable TV guide group comes OVGuide, which really has an amazing list of video sites on everything from anime to wine, from Asian films to adult films, from fitness films to videos about pets. Then there’s the video search engine, Blinkx, which says it searches 26 Million hours of videos on everything from world news to travel, and then allows you to email it or embed it.
Then there’s the Holy Grail of PC to TV and vice versa video. The folks at Sling have created Slingcatcher which it describes as a “universal media player” which can access video from your Slingbox, PC or the Internet and put it on your TV. The folks at TiVo meanwhile have teamed up with Nero AG of Germany to actually replicate the TiVo recordable experience onto your PC. Of course, some versions of Microsoft Corp’s Vista operating system already have some of these same capabilities. Meanwhile, the growing user-generated video production capabilities continue to keep growing. There are the established sites like Photobucket. But they’re being joined by both established companies and up-starts. From established company Adobe comes Adobe AIR which allows you to develop rich Internet applications, including video, onto your desktop and across operating systems. From The Participatory Culture Foundation comes makeinternettv.org which provides, along with a Wiki, a simple six-step process to get your video polished and published on the Internet. And, to quote the old song… the beat goes on. There are too many options out there to list them all. So, we’ll have future video updates on MfM.
THE UNKNOWN INFLUENTIALS. A list compiled by BusinessWeek of the most influential people on the Web is a round-up of the usual suspects – Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, Mozilla’s Mitchell Baker, Craig Newmark, Steve Jobs, Jerry Yang and Jimmy Wales. You might even have picked Jon Stewart or Arianna Huffington. But how about Jonathan Kaplan, Maria Thomas, Loic Le Meur, Gabe Rivera or Jack Ma. Kaplan is the mastermind behind the Flip camera; Le Meur created Seesmic.com, a sort of video Twitter; Rivera created Techmeme, ‘the tech news source of record’; Thomas created Etsy, a site that buys and sells homemade arts and crafts but who is probably better known for her NPR connections; Ma is the CEO of China’s premier e-commerce player Alibaba. And then there are the ones you want to know – Joi Ito, an entrepreneur and angel investor in operations like Flickr and Six Apart who works with Creative Commons; or Peter Thiel, a PayPal alum whose The Founders Fund has helped startups Slide and Yammer.
LEADING MEDIA COMPANIES COMPARISON. The #1 media company, based on ‘total net U.S. media revenue’, is Time Warner with $35.6 Billion. Following up in second place is Comcast Corp with $26.9 Billion, Walt Disney Co. with $17.5 Billion, followed by News Corp. with $15.7 Billion and DirecTV Group at #5 with $15.5 Billion. No great surprises. You can check the list out for yourself by searching Advertising Age’s site. What is somewhat surprising is the number of companies that reach the top 100 list simply on the basis of search. Aside from Google and Yahoo, there’s Idearc (which oddly lists its home base as DFW Airport) and is the backer of Switchboard.com and Localsearch.com; Donnelley Corp which has a $2.7 Billion revenue stream based on yellow pages; and Yellow Book whose $2 Billion revenue is based on the obvious. Also somewhat surprising is the number of companies I’ve never heard of – Vallassis which has $2.3 Billion in revenue based primarily on newspaper inserts; or Bonnier, a Stockholm-based magazine company which made its foray into the U.S. after buying 18 magazine titles from Time Warner. Then there are the other surprises – like Major League Baseball which makes it into the top 100 media list based on $400 Million in net revenue.
But, for me at least, the surprise is the difference in revenue generated by some firms between their U.S. and their worldwide operations. For example, based on worldwide revenues, AT&T would be far and away the number one media company with a whopping $118.9 Billion. Second place would go to Sony Corp (which, interestingly, bills its address as both Tokyo and New York) with $75.2 Billion, and third would go to Microsoft Corp., with $60.4 Billion in worldwide revenue. And this is what I found particularly surprising. Of that $60 Billion, ‘only’ $1.9 Billion comes from its U.S. operations. Doesn’t that strike you as odd? In a similar, but somewhat less surprising vein, of number 12 Google’s $16.6 Billion in worldwide revenue, a mere $6 Billion comes from the U.S., while number 20 Yahoo gets ‘only’ $3.8 Billion from the U.S. of its $6.9 Billion in worldwide revenue. Both Disney and News Corp earn the same amount of revenue overseas as they do in the U.S. Even QVC/Expedia/DirecTV-owning Liberty Media Corp. made most of its money worldwide ($9.4 Billion) with the U.S. part accounting for ‘only’ $1.3 Billion.
COCKTAIL CHATTER. Okay, I’ll admit I’m on some kick about lists, but anyway, to carry on -- The richest member of Congress is Sen. John Kerry whose fortune of $231 Million includes his wife’s claim to the Heinz ketchup fortune and which Roll Call magazine says is probably under-stated. The magazine says the second wealthiest member of Congress is Democratic representative Jane Harman of California whose $226 Million in declared wealth comes from those JBL, Infinity and AKG Acoustics you buy. Third is Republican representative Darrell Issa of California whose $161 Million declared net worth is based on car alarms. And fourth at $81 Million is Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia. Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California comes in 8th at $52 Million and Senator Edward Kennedy comes in 9th at $47 Million. Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain comes in 13th at $20 Million. At 17th is Democratic representative Nancy Pelosi at $19 Million. New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton came in 29th at $10 Million. The Roll Call article only named the top 50 and did not include Sen. Barack Obama. On a semi-related note, thirty of America’s richest CEO’s lost more money in two minutes than most people earn in a year ($50,000), according to Forbes.com. And that was before the latest stock market free-fall. For example, News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch and Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett lost $63.38 a second last year. Of course that still left them with a net worth of $50 Billion for Buffett and $6.8 Billion for Murdoch.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
ADVENTURES IN VIDEO LAND
THE UNKNOWN INFLUENTIALS
LEADING MEDIA COMPANIES COMPARISON
COCKTAIL CHATTER – RICH AND RICHER
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 Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
VETTING THE VEXING VIDEO REVOLUTION. Whew… you know that headline caused some headaches to create. Anyway, you’ve all heard about the amazing growth in online video. Research firm, ABI Research, notes that while just under a third of online households had watched video streamed through a browser a year ago, now the ratio is more like six out of ten. Even with a recent downward revision, online video ad spending is expected to grow an incredible 55% this year, after jumping 74% last year. Now for a little perspective. That translates to $505 Million a year, and research firm eMarketer predicts that with an annual growth rate of between 50% and 70% that by 2012 online video ad spending will reach $3.4 Billion. Putting that figure into perspective, total Internet advertising is expected to reach $51.1 Billion in 2012, according to market intelligence firm IDC. U.S. Internet advertising will reach $23 Billion this year alone. Another note of perspective, the eMarketer firm notes that the TV market already hovers around $70 Billion a year.
Much of that growth is also dependent on growth in broadband access and broadband speeds. Which brings us to another piece of perspective. Internet network connectivity firm Cisco says that by 2012, Internet video will be – get this -- nearly 400 times the U.S. Internet backbone just eight years ago in 2000. The company says that even now, online video (PC and TV) accounts for a third (32.2%) of all consumer traffic worldwide. And, in a report that received a lot of press, research by Forrest Consulting for Veoh Networks shows heavy users and younger users of video account for much of that use. Consumers between the ages of 13 and 24 account for only 15% of the online population but represent 35% of active online video users. Add to that, says Veoh, consumers who watch more than an hour of video account for 40% of all viewers and three-quarters (75%) of ALL online video viewing. Research firm TeleGeography Research (which has a very cool submarine cable map showing all the under sea connections) says the amount of Internet bandwidth grew more than the Internet demand… at least this year. And a final footnote, Congress has passed the Broadband Data Improvement Act which promises to keep better track of who has access to the Internet and who does not, as well as better track the oft-criticized data standards.
ADVENTURES IN VIDEO LAND. The shoot-out at the Wild Wild Web’s version of the O.K. Corral may well be with video. Just keeping up with the proliferation of choices has produced a proliferation of sites. You know of course about NBC and Fox venture, Hulu, and regular readers will know about Joost which boasts 40,000 titles and a recent upgrade to work around plug-ins. Then there’s the Veoh networks which describes itself as an “Internet TV service” bringing together large TV and film studios with independent producers and user-generated content. But more keep coming: From the people who brought you the Slingbox comes video portal Sling.com. From the venerable TV guide group comes OVGuide, which really has an amazing list of video sites on everything from anime to wine, from Asian films to adult films, from fitness films to videos about pets. Then there’s the video search engine, Blinkx, which says it searches 26 Million hours of videos on everything from world news to travel, and then allows you to email it or embed it.
Then there’s the Holy Grail of PC to TV and vice versa video. The folks at Sling have created Slingcatcher which it describes as a “universal media player” which can access video from your Slingbox, PC or the Internet and put it on your TV. The folks at TiVo meanwhile have teamed up with Nero AG of Germany to actually replicate the TiVo recordable experience onto your PC. Of course, some versions of Microsoft Corp’s Vista operating system already have some of these same capabilities. Meanwhile, the growing user-generated video production capabilities continue to keep growing. There are the established sites like Photobucket. But they’re being joined by both established companies and up-starts. From established company Adobe comes Adobe AIR which allows you to develop rich Internet applications, including video, onto your desktop and across operating systems. From The Participatory Culture Foundation comes makeinternettv.org which provides, along with a Wiki, a simple six-step process to get your video polished and published on the Internet. And, to quote the old song… the beat goes on. There are too many options out there to list them all. So, we’ll have future video updates on MfM.
THE UNKNOWN INFLUENTIALS. A list compiled by BusinessWeek of the most influential people on the Web is a round-up of the usual suspects – Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, Mozilla’s Mitchell Baker, Craig Newmark, Steve Jobs, Jerry Yang and Jimmy Wales. You might even have picked Jon Stewart or Arianna Huffington. But how about Jonathan Kaplan, Maria Thomas, Loic Le Meur, Gabe Rivera or Jack Ma. Kaplan is the mastermind behind the Flip camera; Le Meur created Seesmic.com, a sort of video Twitter; Rivera created Techmeme, ‘the tech news source of record’; Thomas created Etsy, a site that buys and sells homemade arts and crafts but who is probably better known for her NPR connections; Ma is the CEO of China’s premier e-commerce player Alibaba. And then there are the ones you want to know – Joi Ito, an entrepreneur and angel investor in operations like Flickr and Six Apart who works with Creative Commons; or Peter Thiel, a PayPal alum whose The Founders Fund has helped startups Slide and Yammer.
LEADING MEDIA COMPANIES COMPARISON. The #1 media company, based on ‘total net U.S. media revenue’, is Time Warner with $35.6 Billion. Following up in second place is Comcast Corp with $26.9 Billion, Walt Disney Co. with $17.5 Billion, followed by News Corp. with $15.7 Billion and DirecTV Group at #5 with $15.5 Billion. No great surprises. You can check the list out for yourself by searching Advertising Age’s site. What is somewhat surprising is the number of companies that reach the top 100 list simply on the basis of search. Aside from Google and Yahoo, there’s Idearc (which oddly lists its home base as DFW Airport) and is the backer of Switchboard.com and Localsearch.com; Donnelley Corp which has a $2.7 Billion revenue stream based on yellow pages; and Yellow Book whose $2 Billion revenue is based on the obvious. Also somewhat surprising is the number of companies I’ve never heard of – Vallassis which has $2.3 Billion in revenue based primarily on newspaper inserts; or Bonnier, a Stockholm-based magazine company which made its foray into the U.S. after buying 18 magazine titles from Time Warner. Then there are the other surprises – like Major League Baseball which makes it into the top 100 media list based on $400 Million in net revenue.
But, for me at least, the surprise is the difference in revenue generated by some firms between their U.S. and their worldwide operations. For example, based on worldwide revenues, AT&T would be far and away the number one media company with a whopping $118.9 Billion. Second place would go to Sony Corp (which, interestingly, bills its address as both Tokyo and New York) with $75.2 Billion, and third would go to Microsoft Corp., with $60.4 Billion in worldwide revenue. And this is what I found particularly surprising. Of that $60 Billion, ‘only’ $1.9 Billion comes from its U.S. operations. Doesn’t that strike you as odd? In a similar, but somewhat less surprising vein, of number 12 Google’s $16.6 Billion in worldwide revenue, a mere $6 Billion comes from the U.S., while number 20 Yahoo gets ‘only’ $3.8 Billion from the U.S. of its $6.9 Billion in worldwide revenue. Both Disney and News Corp earn the same amount of revenue overseas as they do in the U.S. Even QVC/Expedia/DirecTV-owning Liberty Media Corp. made most of its money worldwide ($9.4 Billion) with the U.S. part accounting for ‘only’ $1.3 Billion.
COCKTAIL CHATTER. Okay, I’ll admit I’m on some kick about lists, but anyway, to carry on -- The richest member of Congress is Sen. John Kerry whose fortune of $231 Million includes his wife’s claim to the Heinz ketchup fortune and which Roll Call magazine says is probably under-stated. The magazine says the second wealthiest member of Congress is Democratic representative Jane Harman of California whose $226 Million in declared wealth comes from those JBL, Infinity and AKG Acoustics you buy. Third is Republican representative Darrell Issa of California whose $161 Million declared net worth is based on car alarms. And fourth at $81 Million is Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia. Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California comes in 8th at $52 Million and Senator Edward Kennedy comes in 9th at $47 Million. Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain comes in 13th at $20 Million. At 17th is Democratic representative Nancy Pelosi at $19 Million. New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton came in 29th at $10 Million. The Roll Call article only named the top 50 and did not include Sen. Barack Obama. On a semi-related note, thirty of America’s richest CEO’s lost more money in two minutes than most people earn in a year ($50,000), according to Forbes.com. And that was before the latest stock market free-fall. For example, News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch and Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett lost $63.38 a second last year. Of course that still left them with a net worth of $50 Billion for Buffett and $6.8 Billion for Murdoch.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Message From Michael -- November 19, 2007
SWEEPS – IN OR OUT
THE 51ST STATE
SHORT ATTENTION SPAN THEATER
BILLIONS AND BILLIONS
COCKTAIL CHATTER – VIRTUAL BEAUTY AND FAST COMPUTERS
A MARKETING CONUNDRUM
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 Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
SWEEPS – IN OR OUT: The Thanksgiving holiday (and Black Friday) falls in the sweeps period this year. So, do you keep it in or take it out? Most stations re-title the newscasts and take them out of the sweeps because viewership is so erratic and low. Just a heads up – something you should think about.
THE 51ST STATE: And no, I’m not talking about Puerto Rico. That’s what SEARCHER, the magazine for database professionals, calls the Internet in this upcoming election and says the Internet is ‘breathing down the neck of mainstream media’ when it comes to the elections and that 2008 will be the first true “Internet election.” Citing another study by iCrossing, the report says the Internet is the number two source for election information, after television, and tied with newspapers. However, before my mainstream media friends commit hara-kiri, the study notes that voters are not going to the candidates websites or to the candidates MySpace pages for information, but rather are turning to Web search engines and the online versions of the traditional media. However, political blogs like the dailykos.com, huffingtonpost.com and talkingpointsmemo.com are becoming increasingly influential. The report also notes that all of the candidates (except, for some reason, Rudolph Giuliani) have adopted social networking tools on their websites. By the 2012 election, the report says, the Internet will be so essential and mainstream to presidential politics that “it probably won’t even warrant an article like this.”
As a side note, the Democrats have two thirds of the Online Internet traffic. And of them, Barack Obama has the most Facebook contacts – 122,00 which is more than twice the combined total of all the Republican candidates combined. And John Edwards has the most social networking links – 23. And if you want to keep up with the presidential race online, the report recommends three sites: http://www.memeorandum.com, http://www.politicalwire.com, http://www.realclearpolitics.com.
And as a foot note, you may have heard or seen the study by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania which shows that the number of poltical “adwatch” stories run by the media has more than tripled from the 2000 election cycle to the 2006 election cycle. The head of the center, which by the way sends out a weekly newsletter (mentioned in previous MfM’s) examining political claims, says it is now a matter of “Caveat mendax – let the liar beware.”
SHORT ATTENTION SPAN THEATER: Half of those between the ages of 18 and 34 are watching less TV than they did a year ago, according to a survey by advertising rep agency Burst Media. And a ‘plurality’ of all respondents (42.4%) say they are watching less. The decline is even more noticeable among women, with nearly half (48.3%) of those 25-34 and almost the same number (46.7%) of those in the age group 35-44 saying they are watching less. Those figures are part of a survey released by the company showing that four out of five (82.4%) Internet users are doing something else – multitasking – while they’re online. The most common activity – watch television. Three-fourths (75.6%) of those watching television while online say they go to websites related to the programming. Jarvis Coffin, the CEO of Burst Media, says the “short attention span of consumers poses a challenge to marketers,” but he says the solution is to deliver ‘coordinated messages’ across different platforms to get the consumer’s attention.
On the flip side of that, a survey by The Conference Board and TNS Media Intelligence finds that even though three-quarters of ONLINE households report watching entertainment on the Internet every day, four-fifths of them say web viewing has NOT cut into their traditional TV viewing. As noted before, TV shows have replaced news as the most widely viewed content online. And as a further side note, a study by the Wharton School of Business found that YouTube use may actually increase TV viewing because the clips act as a tease to get the viewers to watch more. And as a side note to the side note, YouTube co-founder Steve Chen says the service may start providing higher quality videos, using a system that detects the speed capability of the user’s net connection.
And as a footnote, New York Times tech guru Stuart Elliott says fewer viewers are watching the new fall television series and raises the question that it may be because of online video opportunities. Most of the online videos are much shorter than TV programming and, curiously, he quotes the head of one advertising agency who also talks about “short attention span” of online viewers. Elliott also raises the question whether the writers strike will fuel the growth of online video.
BILLIONS AND BILLIONS: If you’re old enough, you probably re-played those words in your mind with a heavy accent reminiscent of Carl Sagan. The United Nations annual Internet Governance Forum says it’s official – there are 1 Billion Internet users worldwide. One Billion out of a total world population of 6 Billion. The question is how does the next Billion get online. The head of the U.N. forum says that the next Billion users will be decidedly poorer than the first Billion. Internet use is growing in what the forum organizers call the “less well off” nations that comprise three quarters of the world’s population. The forum debate focused on whether the Internet access should be government mandated, as a public service, or left to private enterprise. In areas like Africa where fewer than 4% have Internet access and basic electricity is an issue, the organizers say mobile phones may be the answer. This is also where the One Laptop Per Child program comes in to play.
As a side note, I should remind readers that a Harris Interactive poll found that four out of five people now access the Internet in the U.S. That’s up dramatically since 2000 when three out of five (57%) went online and even more dramatic is when you consider that eleven years ago in 1995 only 9% of the population went online. Equally interesting is the fact that the survey says the Online population now reflects more of the general population demographics.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: MTV has announced a super model contest with a difference. The network, along with Ford Models and Elizabeth Arden, is looking for the best looking avatar, a virtual world supermodel. The fastest computer in the world is IBM’s Blue Gene/L at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, with the ability to perform 478 Trillion calculations per second – what computer geeks would call 487 teraflops. The second fastest computer is IBM’s Blue Gene/P sister computer in Germany. The winner of the most awards for creative director in the Gunn Report which ranks advertising around the world was somebody you probably never heard of -- Thanonchai Sornsrivichai, based in Thailand. A survey by Clarity and The EAR Foundation found that senior citizens fear loss of independence (26%) and moving into a nursing home (13%) more than they fear death (3%). For those of you who rent cars all the time, a little item in FreePint which deals with research matters great and small says you can tell which side the gas cap is on by looking at which side the filler hose is on the icon on your dashboard. (Although for some reason, this applies to all cars but Japanese cars.)
A MARKETING CONUNDRUM: So, explain to me, dear readers, how four auto parts stores within 500 yards of each other can survive. Driving through Abbeville, South Carolina, there were two local auto parts stores, Logans and Sonny’s, almost side by side and less than a hundred yards further down was an Advanced Auto Parts store and across from it was an O’Reilly’s auto part store. And just to prove that it isn’t a South Carolina thing only (although it may be a southern thing), there were three auto parts stores within four blocks of each other in Elberton, Georgia. (I know, you’re jealous of all the cool places I travel to.)
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at my website MediaConsultant.tv.
THE 51ST STATE
SHORT ATTENTION SPAN THEATER
BILLIONS AND BILLIONS
COCKTAIL CHATTER – VIRTUAL BEAUTY AND FAST COMPUTERS
A MARKETING CONUNDRUM
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 Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
SWEEPS – IN OR OUT: The Thanksgiving holiday (and Black Friday) falls in the sweeps period this year. So, do you keep it in or take it out? Most stations re-title the newscasts and take them out of the sweeps because viewership is so erratic and low. Just a heads up – something you should think about.
THE 51ST STATE: And no, I’m not talking about Puerto Rico. That’s what SEARCHER, the magazine for database professionals, calls the Internet in this upcoming election and says the Internet is ‘breathing down the neck of mainstream media’ when it comes to the elections and that 2008 will be the first true “Internet election.” Citing another study by iCrossing, the report says the Internet is the number two source for election information, after television, and tied with newspapers. However, before my mainstream media friends commit hara-kiri, the study notes that voters are not going to the candidates websites or to the candidates MySpace pages for information, but rather are turning to Web search engines and the online versions of the traditional media. However, political blogs like the dailykos.com, huffingtonpost.com and talkingpointsmemo.com are becoming increasingly influential. The report also notes that all of the candidates (except, for some reason, Rudolph Giuliani) have adopted social networking tools on their websites. By the 2012 election, the report says, the Internet will be so essential and mainstream to presidential politics that “it probably won’t even warrant an article like this.”
As a side note, the Democrats have two thirds of the Online Internet traffic. And of them, Barack Obama has the most Facebook contacts – 122,00 which is more than twice the combined total of all the Republican candidates combined. And John Edwards has the most social networking links – 23. And if you want to keep up with the presidential race online, the report recommends three sites: http://www.memeorandum.com, http://www.politicalwire.com, http://www.realclearpolitics.com.
And as a foot note, you may have heard or seen the study by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania which shows that the number of poltical “adwatch” stories run by the media has more than tripled from the 2000 election cycle to the 2006 election cycle. The head of the center, which by the way sends out a weekly newsletter (mentioned in previous MfM’s) examining political claims, says it is now a matter of “Caveat mendax – let the liar beware.”
SHORT ATTENTION SPAN THEATER: Half of those between the ages of 18 and 34 are watching less TV than they did a year ago, according to a survey by advertising rep agency Burst Media. And a ‘plurality’ of all respondents (42.4%) say they are watching less. The decline is even more noticeable among women, with nearly half (48.3%) of those 25-34 and almost the same number (46.7%) of those in the age group 35-44 saying they are watching less. Those figures are part of a survey released by the company showing that four out of five (82.4%) Internet users are doing something else – multitasking – while they’re online. The most common activity – watch television. Three-fourths (75.6%) of those watching television while online say they go to websites related to the programming. Jarvis Coffin, the CEO of Burst Media, says the “short attention span of consumers poses a challenge to marketers,” but he says the solution is to deliver ‘coordinated messages’ across different platforms to get the consumer’s attention.
On the flip side of that, a survey by The Conference Board and TNS Media Intelligence finds that even though three-quarters of ONLINE households report watching entertainment on the Internet every day, four-fifths of them say web viewing has NOT cut into their traditional TV viewing. As noted before, TV shows have replaced news as the most widely viewed content online. And as a further side note, a study by the Wharton School of Business found that YouTube use may actually increase TV viewing because the clips act as a tease to get the viewers to watch more. And as a side note to the side note, YouTube co-founder Steve Chen says the service may start providing higher quality videos, using a system that detects the speed capability of the user’s net connection.
And as a footnote, New York Times tech guru Stuart Elliott says fewer viewers are watching the new fall television series and raises the question that it may be because of online video opportunities. Most of the online videos are much shorter than TV programming and, curiously, he quotes the head of one advertising agency who also talks about “short attention span” of online viewers. Elliott also raises the question whether the writers strike will fuel the growth of online video.
BILLIONS AND BILLIONS: If you’re old enough, you probably re-played those words in your mind with a heavy accent reminiscent of Carl Sagan. The United Nations annual Internet Governance Forum says it’s official – there are 1 Billion Internet users worldwide. One Billion out of a total world population of 6 Billion. The question is how does the next Billion get online. The head of the U.N. forum says that the next Billion users will be decidedly poorer than the first Billion. Internet use is growing in what the forum organizers call the “less well off” nations that comprise three quarters of the world’s population. The forum debate focused on whether the Internet access should be government mandated, as a public service, or left to private enterprise. In areas like Africa where fewer than 4% have Internet access and basic electricity is an issue, the organizers say mobile phones may be the answer. This is also where the One Laptop Per Child program comes in to play.
As a side note, I should remind readers that a Harris Interactive poll found that four out of five people now access the Internet in the U.S. That’s up dramatically since 2000 when three out of five (57%) went online and even more dramatic is when you consider that eleven years ago in 1995 only 9% of the population went online. Equally interesting is the fact that the survey says the Online population now reflects more of the general population demographics.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: MTV has announced a super model contest with a difference. The network, along with Ford Models and Elizabeth Arden, is looking for the best looking avatar, a virtual world supermodel. The fastest computer in the world is IBM’s Blue Gene/L at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, with the ability to perform 478 Trillion calculations per second – what computer geeks would call 487 teraflops. The second fastest computer is IBM’s Blue Gene/P sister computer in Germany. The winner of the most awards for creative director in the Gunn Report which ranks advertising around the world was somebody you probably never heard of -- Thanonchai Sornsrivichai, based in Thailand. A survey by Clarity and The EAR Foundation found that senior citizens fear loss of independence (26%) and moving into a nursing home (13%) more than they fear death (3%). For those of you who rent cars all the time, a little item in FreePint which deals with research matters great and small says you can tell which side the gas cap is on by looking at which side the filler hose is on the icon on your dashboard. (Although for some reason, this applies to all cars but Japanese cars.)
A MARKETING CONUNDRUM: So, explain to me, dear readers, how four auto parts stores within 500 yards of each other can survive. Driving through Abbeville, South Carolina, there were two local auto parts stores, Logans and Sonny’s, almost side by side and less than a hundred yards further down was an Advanced Auto Parts store and across from it was an O’Reilly’s auto part store. And just to prove that it isn’t a South Carolina thing only (although it may be a southern thing), there were three auto parts stores within four blocks of each other in Elberton, Georgia. (I know, you’re jealous of all the cool places I travel to.)
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at my website MediaConsultant.tv.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Message From Michael -- November 12, 2007
THE FACEBOOK RIFLE SHOT
IT’S NOT YOUR COLLEGE STUDENTS’ FACEBOOK ANY MORE
THE BLOGGING JOURNALISTS
STRANDED ON A BLOG DESERT ISLAND
THE BEAUTY OF AN INDEPENDENT PRESS
COCKTAIL CHATTER -- PERFECT PITCH
TRAVEL WEBSITES WEIRD AND WONDERFUL
CONTRIBUTORS NOTES – WINE AND CRIME
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 Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
THE FACEBOOK RIFLE SHOT: Depending on how you look at it, the new Facebook advertising strategy dubbed “social ads” is a rifle shot approach that targets consumers to a degree not seen before as opposed to the scattered shotgun approach of most advertisers, but it may backfire on them. The former Harvard college student who founded Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, describes the ad approach as “revolutionary targeting” in part because Facebook users supply so much real information about themselves in their profiles. Add to that the ability to track and filter their on-line movements and purchases, it makes the Amazon process of recommending books based on past purchases seem like child’s play. Facebook is able to whittle down the target audience for a specific brand from millions to thousands, even down to hundreds. You can almost hear the tone of incredulity in the overview Microsoft, which recently bought a stake in Facebook, gives in its sales pitch: Facebook users communicate details about their demographics, interests, photos and even their contact information.” The head of Fox Interactive Media is quoted in AdWeek as saying, “it changes everything.” It’s behavioral and contextual advertising on steroids, but it is also, as one article put it, “creepy.” The Facebook and MySpace ad programs have already drawn complaints from the Center for Digital Democracy and the U.S. Public Interest Research Groups. Yes, indeed, it will change everything.
IT’S NOT YOUR COLLEGE STUDENTS’ FACEBOOK ANY MORE: Since Facebook opened its doors to people outside education, the growth has been amazing. That part you know, but do you know where it’s grown the most? How about Turkey, where the growth rate is 280%, followed by Israel with 87%; and then Malaysia, Singapore, France and China all hovering around 50% while the U.S. has grown a mere 7.4%. Of course, the U.S. still makes up the mass of subscribers with 21.4 Million subscribers as of November 11th, compared to Turkey’s mere 1.24 Million and Israel’s even merer (yes, I know that’s not a word) 175 Thousand. According to figures from Facebook guru and blogger Jeff Pulver, the total Facebook subscription outside the U.S. is about 25 Million, and it includes places you might not expect such as Pakistan, India, Lebanon and Columbia. (Yes, I know, you didn’t expect Turkey either.)
THE BLOGGING JOURNALISTS: Four out of five business journalists (84%) use blogs as either primary or secondary sources of information while more than half (54%) say blogs help spark ideas for news stories and a quarter (25%) say blogs make their jobs easier. The survey by marketing and public relations consultancy Arketi Group out of Atlanta also shows that the majority of these journalists say that their online publication is allowed to “scoop” their print publication in what the group says is “a trend that continues to blur the line between print and online media.” Nine out of ten of these journalists turn to industry sources for story ideas, but the same number relies on news releases or public relations contacts. Not surprisingly the business journalists are heavy Internet users with all of them saying they use the Internet to do their work. The news release from the company quotes Professor Kaye Sweetser from our own Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication who says business journalists are embracing user-generated content like blogs, webinars and podcasts in their day-to-day reporting and that, “savvy companies know this and are looking for ways to legitimately increase their participation in creating and growing online content using Web 2.0 methods.”
STRANDED ON A BLOG DESERT ISLAND: You’re stranded on a desert island and you can have only one book, what would it be? Remember that old challenge? The modern day version is that you’re stranded on a digital desert island and you have only limited Internet access, what would that be? Five grad students at Carnegie Mellon University have answered that question using what else – an algorithm. They have developed a list, out of the 10-Million-plus blogs available, of the top 100 blogs which are the most up to date and which catch most of the stories that propagate over the blogosphere. And they found some “counterintuitive results” showing that the popular blogs might not be the most effective way to “catch information.” The sites range from well known ones like Instapundit to lesser known ones like BasicThinkingBlog – which, by the way, is in German and which, interestingly, to me at least, had only two English words that I could detect – Videos and YouTube. Many moons ago, I remember a report that said the three most popular blog topics are politics, technology and ‘mom’ issues. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the blogs on this list are disappointingly (my opinion) about politics. Still there are some interesting ones, including Pajamas Media and TheNoseOnYOurFace which bills itself as “news so fake you’ll swear it came from the mainstream media.”
Everything on the Internet is an algorithm, it seems. The algorithm used by the students for detecting the ‘best’ blogs is the same used to determine where to put sensors in a water distribution system to most quickly detect the spread of contaminants. The underlying concept is that the spread of information between blogs is an “information cascade” where the information pours over the blogosphere. They then examined a number of differing factors so that it wasn’t just PA (people affected) which would favor the bigger blogs or NP (number of posts) which would favor the summarizer blogs, but in-links, out-links, scalability and so-on to develop a “cost unit” model. By the way, the report did win “best student paper” award in the computer sciences. However, it may say something about the list that when I checked all 100, the links were broken on four of them. Also, it might raise questions about the validity of the system when the Austinist, Phillyist, DCist, Bostonist, Londonist, Shanghaiist, SFist and Seattlest all make the list. LINK: http://www.bloggersblog.com/cgi-bin/bloggersblog.pl?bblog=1024072
COCKTAIL CHATTER: People who speak Mandarin are more likely than the speakers of any other language to have the rare gift of perfect pitch, according to Oliver Sacks, author of the book Musicophilia. One of the stars of the NBC hit series Heroes has been named ‘global ambassador’ for the One Laptop Per Child program we’ve mentioned before in MfM. But this isn’t one of those celebrity spokesperson things. Masi Oka is a Brown University Math/Computer Science grad who is also an SFX guru with George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic company. A third of the American public (33%) believe that electing a woman President would be a good thing while only one in ten (9%) believe it would be a bad thing, but more than half (55%) say gender doesn’t matter, according to the Pew Research Center.
WEBSITES WEIRD AND WONDERFUL: There are numerous websites around the world which provide an actual real life look at the world today. Want to watch for the Loch Ness monster? Go to camvista.com. It will provide a link to a live camera focused on the lake, or you can pick out various sites around the British Isles and elsewhere. Want to see what Tutankhamen saw when he grew up? Visit pyramidcam.com and watch the sun set over the pyramids of Egypt. Planning a trip to Brisbane with a stopover in London? Visit trafficland.com and see what the traffic and weather is like. Or maybe you want to check on your cousin Minerva in Ponca City, Oklahoma. Visit http://www.wunderground.com/webcams/index.html and see what the weather is like.
CONTRIBUTOR NOTES: Crime and wine. I’m proud of the fact that MfM runs the gamut of interests and the readers reflect that variety of interests. From Nick Simonette, GM/ WAFB/ Baton Rouge, comes a conversation about “two buck chuck.” For those who haven’t heard of this, it is a California wine that originally cost $2, but has risen as the popularity has risen, but which can match wines ten times the price. Ask your local sommelier or liquor store. From Lee Brantley, GM/ WTVM/ Columbus, comes a link to a website that shows a world map of all the crime or disaster related incidents going on in the world. Visit globalincident.com for a fascinating snapshot look at your world.
CONGRATULATIONS: To Scott Libin. Scott takes over the reins of news director at CBS O-and-O WCCO, leaving his position of Managing Editor at the Poynter Institute but returning to adopted hometown Minneapolis where he was previously ND at WTSP.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at my website MediaConsultant.tv.
IT’S NOT YOUR COLLEGE STUDENTS’ FACEBOOK ANY MORE
THE BLOGGING JOURNALISTS
STRANDED ON A BLOG DESERT ISLAND
THE BEAUTY OF AN INDEPENDENT PRESS
COCKTAIL CHATTER -- PERFECT PITCH
TRAVEL WEBSITES WEIRD AND WONDERFUL
CONTRIBUTORS NOTES – WINE AND CRIME
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 Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
THE FACEBOOK RIFLE SHOT: Depending on how you look at it, the new Facebook advertising strategy dubbed “social ads” is a rifle shot approach that targets consumers to a degree not seen before as opposed to the scattered shotgun approach of most advertisers, but it may backfire on them. The former Harvard college student who founded Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, describes the ad approach as “revolutionary targeting” in part because Facebook users supply so much real information about themselves in their profiles. Add to that the ability to track and filter their on-line movements and purchases, it makes the Amazon process of recommending books based on past purchases seem like child’s play. Facebook is able to whittle down the target audience for a specific brand from millions to thousands, even down to hundreds. You can almost hear the tone of incredulity in the overview Microsoft, which recently bought a stake in Facebook, gives in its sales pitch: Facebook users communicate details about their demographics, interests, photos and even their contact information.” The head of Fox Interactive Media is quoted in AdWeek as saying, “it changes everything.” It’s behavioral and contextual advertising on steroids, but it is also, as one article put it, “creepy.” The Facebook and MySpace ad programs have already drawn complaints from the Center for Digital Democracy and the U.S. Public Interest Research Groups. Yes, indeed, it will change everything.
IT’S NOT YOUR COLLEGE STUDENTS’ FACEBOOK ANY MORE: Since Facebook opened its doors to people outside education, the growth has been amazing. That part you know, but do you know where it’s grown the most? How about Turkey, where the growth rate is 280%, followed by Israel with 87%; and then Malaysia, Singapore, France and China all hovering around 50% while the U.S. has grown a mere 7.4%. Of course, the U.S. still makes up the mass of subscribers with 21.4 Million subscribers as of November 11th, compared to Turkey’s mere 1.24 Million and Israel’s even merer (yes, I know that’s not a word) 175 Thousand. According to figures from Facebook guru and blogger Jeff Pulver, the total Facebook subscription outside the U.S. is about 25 Million, and it includes places you might not expect such as Pakistan, India, Lebanon and Columbia. (Yes, I know, you didn’t expect Turkey either.)
THE BLOGGING JOURNALISTS: Four out of five business journalists (84%) use blogs as either primary or secondary sources of information while more than half (54%) say blogs help spark ideas for news stories and a quarter (25%) say blogs make their jobs easier. The survey by marketing and public relations consultancy Arketi Group out of Atlanta also shows that the majority of these journalists say that their online publication is allowed to “scoop” their print publication in what the group says is “a trend that continues to blur the line between print and online media.” Nine out of ten of these journalists turn to industry sources for story ideas, but the same number relies on news releases or public relations contacts. Not surprisingly the business journalists are heavy Internet users with all of them saying they use the Internet to do their work. The news release from the company quotes Professor Kaye Sweetser from our own Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication who says business journalists are embracing user-generated content like blogs, webinars and podcasts in their day-to-day reporting and that, “savvy companies know this and are looking for ways to legitimately increase their participation in creating and growing online content using Web 2.0 methods.”
STRANDED ON A BLOG DESERT ISLAND: You’re stranded on a desert island and you can have only one book, what would it be? Remember that old challenge? The modern day version is that you’re stranded on a digital desert island and you have only limited Internet access, what would that be? Five grad students at Carnegie Mellon University have answered that question using what else – an algorithm. They have developed a list, out of the 10-Million-plus blogs available, of the top 100 blogs which are the most up to date and which catch most of the stories that propagate over the blogosphere. And they found some “counterintuitive results” showing that the popular blogs might not be the most effective way to “catch information.” The sites range from well known ones like Instapundit to lesser known ones like BasicThinkingBlog – which, by the way, is in German and which, interestingly, to me at least, had only two English words that I could detect – Videos and YouTube. Many moons ago, I remember a report that said the three most popular blog topics are politics, technology and ‘mom’ issues. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the blogs on this list are disappointingly (my opinion) about politics. Still there are some interesting ones, including Pajamas Media and TheNoseOnYOurFace which bills itself as “news so fake you’ll swear it came from the mainstream media.”
Everything on the Internet is an algorithm, it seems. The algorithm used by the students for detecting the ‘best’ blogs is the same used to determine where to put sensors in a water distribution system to most quickly detect the spread of contaminants. The underlying concept is that the spread of information between blogs is an “information cascade” where the information pours over the blogosphere. They then examined a number of differing factors so that it wasn’t just PA (people affected) which would favor the bigger blogs or NP (number of posts) which would favor the summarizer blogs, but in-links, out-links, scalability and so-on to develop a “cost unit” model. By the way, the report did win “best student paper” award in the computer sciences. However, it may say something about the list that when I checked all 100, the links were broken on four of them. Also, it might raise questions about the validity of the system when the Austinist, Phillyist, DCist, Bostonist, Londonist, Shanghaiist, SFist and Seattlest all make the list. LINK: http://www.bloggersblog.com/cgi-bin/bloggersblog.pl?bblog=1024072
COCKTAIL CHATTER: People who speak Mandarin are more likely than the speakers of any other language to have the rare gift of perfect pitch, according to Oliver Sacks, author of the book Musicophilia. One of the stars of the NBC hit series Heroes has been named ‘global ambassador’ for the One Laptop Per Child program we’ve mentioned before in MfM. But this isn’t one of those celebrity spokesperson things. Masi Oka is a Brown University Math/Computer Science grad who is also an SFX guru with George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic company. A third of the American public (33%) believe that electing a woman President would be a good thing while only one in ten (9%) believe it would be a bad thing, but more than half (55%) say gender doesn’t matter, according to the Pew Research Center.
WEBSITES WEIRD AND WONDERFUL: There are numerous websites around the world which provide an actual real life look at the world today. Want to watch for the Loch Ness monster? Go to camvista.com. It will provide a link to a live camera focused on the lake, or you can pick out various sites around the British Isles and elsewhere. Want to see what Tutankhamen saw when he grew up? Visit pyramidcam.com and watch the sun set over the pyramids of Egypt. Planning a trip to Brisbane with a stopover in London? Visit trafficland.com and see what the traffic and weather is like. Or maybe you want to check on your cousin Minerva in Ponca City, Oklahoma. Visit http://www.wunderground.com/webcams/index.html and see what the weather is like.
CONTRIBUTOR NOTES: Crime and wine. I’m proud of the fact that MfM runs the gamut of interests and the readers reflect that variety of interests. From Nick Simonette, GM/ WAFB/ Baton Rouge, comes a conversation about “two buck chuck.” For those who haven’t heard of this, it is a California wine that originally cost $2, but has risen as the popularity has risen, but which can match wines ten times the price. Ask your local sommelier or liquor store. From Lee Brantley, GM/ WTVM/ Columbus, comes a link to a website that shows a world map of all the crime or disaster related incidents going on in the world. Visit globalincident.com for a fascinating snapshot look at your world.
CONGRATULATIONS: To Scott Libin. Scott takes over the reins of news director at CBS O-and-O WCCO, leaving his position of Managing Editor at the Poynter Institute but returning to adopted hometown Minneapolis where he was previously ND at WTSP.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at my website MediaConsultant.tv.
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
Message From Michael -- October 29, 2007
THE EVENING NEWS RACE
THE OLD MEDIA’S NEW MEDIA TARGET
YOUR NEW MEDIA TARGET
THE MOST FAMOUS PERSON YOU DON’T KNOW
STEP INTO THE WAYBACK MACHINE -- WASTELAND
COCKTAIL CHATTER – NOVELS, THE LAST SUPPER AND CURRENT TV
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 Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
THE EVENING NEWS RACE: You all know of course about the race between ABC with Charles Gibson and NBC with Brian Williams for first place. According to Nielsen, on average only 34,000 viewers separate the two in the ratings season to date. With Sweeps coming up, I thought it would be interesting to take a historical look. For example, as tight as the present ratings battle seems, in the 1998-99 season, NBC took first place for the season with an average edge of only a thousand viewers, a look back through Nielsen’s records shows. The last time CBS held the #1 spot was in 1988-89, although only by the skin of its teeth, after dominating the ratings for nearly two decades starting in 1970. And in case, you’re wondering, because I know you are, Dan Rather took over the anchor chair from Walter Cronkite in March of 1981. So he was able to hold on to it for seven years. CBS lost the #1 spot to ABC which held on to that position for seven years from 1989-90 to 1995-96. Peter Jennings became sole anchor in 1983, after sharing the anchor duties for five years in the unusual three-anchor format with Frank Reynolds and Max Robinson and after an early disastrous stint as ABC’s evening news anchor in 1965 at the age of 26. NBC took over the #1 ranking in the 1996-97 season. Tom Brokaw had taken over the solo anchor duties 16 years earlier in 1983 after co-anchoring with Roger Mudd for two years. And, continuing to prove I am anal retentive, some last facts from the historic trends. The Networks combined had a 30-plus rating through the 70’s and halfway through the 80’s. In 1988-89, the ratings dropped for the first time below 30. The ratings declined steadily until 2002-03 when it dipped for the first time below 20. So far this season, the average is a 15.2 for the three networks combined.
THE OLD MEDIA’S NEW MEDIA TARGET: The folks at Standard & Poor’s predict that traditional media companies are going to go on a buying splurge for Blogs. As they say in their investing newsletter The Outlook – “they reach large, loyal audiences, they’re fairly cheap to run, and they can be lucrative.” What’s not to like? In classic understatement they say it’s “an attractive business model.” To put it in context, the S&P newsletter points out that the number one blog on the Internet is technology blog Boing Boing which attracts 7.5 Million page views a month. By way of comparison, technology magazine Wired has 1.9 Million print readers. As of September, 2007, blog monitor Technorati says it is indexing 106 Million blogs – 12 Million more than the month before. Newspapers in particular are predicted to turn to bloggers to augment their own strong Web presence. The Outlook report says the move is a recognition by ‘old media companies’ that “Internet users would rather participate in the news than simply consume it.”
A similar but slightly different view comes from former entertainment executive and IAC/ InterActive Corp CEO Barry Diller who says traditional media companies still ‘don’t get it’ when it comes to the ‘disruptive power’ of the Internet. He says they should invest more in research and development and build new things online from scratch.
To provide a little further perspective, the Television Bureau of Advertising projects spot television revenue to ‘surge’ 9% to 10% in 2008, because of the political races and Olympics. BUT it predicts that station web-site advertising will grow 40% to 50% and station wireless 50% to 70%.
YOUR NEW MEDIA TARGET: Looking for your own ‘attractive business model’ for investing? Research firm Hitwise picks five potential Internet Superstars that are getting the attention of the hip, techno savvy younger generation. KeepVid lets users capture and replay streaming video from various sites such as YouTube, Metacafe and iFilm. And there is an online talent show Bix where you can upload comedy videos and karaoke performances. WikiMedia Commons is a central repository for freely licensed photos, music and video. Stickam is a community-based Webcam which allows live video streaming and video conferencing. And, finally, Hitwise picks out Veoh, an online video destination that we’ve mentioned in previous MfM’s.
THE MOST FAMOUS PERSON YOU DON’T KNOW: Or maybe you do. After all she has 1,791,920 MySpace friends. Her name -- Tila Tequila. I’ve mentioned her before in MfM, but now she has her own MTV show which reportedly is #1 in its time period for the 18-34 demographic. Ms. Tequila (real name Nguyen) emigrated to MySpace from a Houston public housing project after her family emigrated from Vietnam. The only reason I mention her is that a) it is part of my never-ending quest to make sure the readers of MfM are ‘in the know’ even if, sometimes, it may be question whether it’s worth knowing and b) because of a great line in Sunday’s New York Times by writer Guy Trebay trying to explain the phenomenon: “When exactly in the Warholian arc of fame did we arrive at a point where we create celebrities of people so little accomplished that they make Paris Hilton look like Marie Curie?” Plus, even more interesting and worth knowing is a series of studies cited by write Jake Halpern in his book Fame Junkies that a third of American teenagers (31%) have the honest expectation that they will one day be famous and four out of five of them (80%) think of themselves as truly important.
STEP INTO THE WAYBACK MACHINE: On May 9, 1961, then Federal Communications Chairman Newton Minnow referred to television as a “vast wasteland.” Years afterward, he said he wished the two words that people remembered from his speech were “public interest.” Proving yet again that I need a life, I recently listened to the 40-minute speech. A couple of notes. He was only interrupted four times and then only with very light applause when he said the free enterprise system must be allowed to work and that he would fight any kind of censorship. Also, interestingly for the time, he urged stations to do editorials. And his quote about television being a vast wasteland was one of only several great quotes in his speech:
To networks – “tell your sponsors to be less concerned with costs per thousands and more concerned with understanding per millions… remind your stockholders than an investment in broadcasting is buying a share in public responsibility.” Public interest isn’t just what interests the public. Talking about his role as FCC chairman, “either one takes this job seriously – or one can be seriously taken.”
About ratings – He said the three great influences on a child were home, school and church, and that television was becoming the fourth. But that if the first three followed ratings, like television did, children would eat a steady diet of ice cream, there would be school holidays all the time and there would be no Sunday school. “If some of you persist in a relentless search for the highest rating and the lowest common denominator, you may very well lose your audience.”
And as an interesting footnote to all this, Minnow noted in his speech that broadcasters were in good financial health, noting that the gross broadcast revenues for all television in 1960 was roughly $1.2 Billion with a before taxes profit of $243 Million, yielding an average return on revenue of 19.2%. Just for perspective, BIA Financial Network reported television revenues in 2006 of $22.5 Billion.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: Besides the countdown to sweeps, there is another countdown – to NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. The idea is simple – write a 175-page, 50,000 word novel in a month. You can register at NaNoWriMo.org. You start writing November 1st and you have to have it finished by November 30th. A high resolution rendering (16-17 giga pixels) of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper has been posted on the Internet at the site www.haltadefinizione.com by digital imaging company Hal9000 for – as Reuters put it – art lovers and conspiracy theorists alike to study. More than half of the U.S. public (58%) believe that “as Americans we can always solve our problems and get what we want,” according to a survey by the folks at the Pew Research Center. Sounds pretty good until you read further on that the number is a 16 point drop from the three-quarters (74%) who believed that way five years ago. And I know you already have heard this, but it’s so amazing that it’s worth repeating: Microsoft has bought a 1.6% stake in Facebook for $240 Million which, when projected, values the company headed by a 23-year-old at $15 Billion. One you may not have heard comes from that same Forbes conference mentioned earlier – investment company Yucaipa founder Ron Burkle says one of his investments, Current TV, is worth up to $2 Billion after just a few years in existence.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at my website MediaConsultant.tv.
THE OLD MEDIA’S NEW MEDIA TARGET
YOUR NEW MEDIA TARGET
THE MOST FAMOUS PERSON YOU DON’T KNOW
STEP INTO THE WAYBACK MACHINE -- WASTELAND
COCKTAIL CHATTER – NOVELS, THE LAST SUPPER AND CURRENT TV
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 Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
THE EVENING NEWS RACE: You all know of course about the race between ABC with Charles Gibson and NBC with Brian Williams for first place. According to Nielsen, on average only 34,000 viewers separate the two in the ratings season to date. With Sweeps coming up, I thought it would be interesting to take a historical look. For example, as tight as the present ratings battle seems, in the 1998-99 season, NBC took first place for the season with an average edge of only a thousand viewers, a look back through Nielsen’s records shows. The last time CBS held the #1 spot was in 1988-89, although only by the skin of its teeth, after dominating the ratings for nearly two decades starting in 1970. And in case, you’re wondering, because I know you are, Dan Rather took over the anchor chair from Walter Cronkite in March of 1981. So he was able to hold on to it for seven years. CBS lost the #1 spot to ABC which held on to that position for seven years from 1989-90 to 1995-96. Peter Jennings became sole anchor in 1983, after sharing the anchor duties for five years in the unusual three-anchor format with Frank Reynolds and Max Robinson and after an early disastrous stint as ABC’s evening news anchor in 1965 at the age of 26. NBC took over the #1 ranking in the 1996-97 season. Tom Brokaw had taken over the solo anchor duties 16 years earlier in 1983 after co-anchoring with Roger Mudd for two years. And, continuing to prove I am anal retentive, some last facts from the historic trends. The Networks combined had a 30-plus rating through the 70’s and halfway through the 80’s. In 1988-89, the ratings dropped for the first time below 30. The ratings declined steadily until 2002-03 when it dipped for the first time below 20. So far this season, the average is a 15.2 for the three networks combined.
THE OLD MEDIA’S NEW MEDIA TARGET: The folks at Standard & Poor’s predict that traditional media companies are going to go on a buying splurge for Blogs. As they say in their investing newsletter The Outlook – “they reach large, loyal audiences, they’re fairly cheap to run, and they can be lucrative.” What’s not to like? In classic understatement they say it’s “an attractive business model.” To put it in context, the S&P newsletter points out that the number one blog on the Internet is technology blog Boing Boing which attracts 7.5 Million page views a month. By way of comparison, technology magazine Wired has 1.9 Million print readers. As of September, 2007, blog monitor Technorati says it is indexing 106 Million blogs – 12 Million more than the month before. Newspapers in particular are predicted to turn to bloggers to augment their own strong Web presence. The Outlook report says the move is a recognition by ‘old media companies’ that “Internet users would rather participate in the news than simply consume it.”
A similar but slightly different view comes from former entertainment executive and IAC/ InterActive Corp CEO Barry Diller who says traditional media companies still ‘don’t get it’ when it comes to the ‘disruptive power’ of the Internet. He says they should invest more in research and development and build new things online from scratch.
To provide a little further perspective, the Television Bureau of Advertising projects spot television revenue to ‘surge’ 9% to 10% in 2008, because of the political races and Olympics. BUT it predicts that station web-site advertising will grow 40% to 50% and station wireless 50% to 70%.
YOUR NEW MEDIA TARGET: Looking for your own ‘attractive business model’ for investing? Research firm Hitwise picks five potential Internet Superstars that are getting the attention of the hip, techno savvy younger generation. KeepVid lets users capture and replay streaming video from various sites such as YouTube, Metacafe and iFilm. And there is an online talent show Bix where you can upload comedy videos and karaoke performances. WikiMedia Commons is a central repository for freely licensed photos, music and video. Stickam is a community-based Webcam which allows live video streaming and video conferencing. And, finally, Hitwise picks out Veoh, an online video destination that we’ve mentioned in previous MfM’s.
THE MOST FAMOUS PERSON YOU DON’T KNOW: Or maybe you do. After all she has 1,791,920 MySpace friends. Her name -- Tila Tequila. I’ve mentioned her before in MfM, but now she has her own MTV show which reportedly is #1 in its time period for the 18-34 demographic. Ms. Tequila (real name Nguyen) emigrated to MySpace from a Houston public housing project after her family emigrated from Vietnam. The only reason I mention her is that a) it is part of my never-ending quest to make sure the readers of MfM are ‘in the know’ even if, sometimes, it may be question whether it’s worth knowing and b) because of a great line in Sunday’s New York Times by writer Guy Trebay trying to explain the phenomenon: “When exactly in the Warholian arc of fame did we arrive at a point where we create celebrities of people so little accomplished that they make Paris Hilton look like Marie Curie?” Plus, even more interesting and worth knowing is a series of studies cited by write Jake Halpern in his book Fame Junkies that a third of American teenagers (31%) have the honest expectation that they will one day be famous and four out of five of them (80%) think of themselves as truly important.
STEP INTO THE WAYBACK MACHINE: On May 9, 1961, then Federal Communications Chairman Newton Minnow referred to television as a “vast wasteland.” Years afterward, he said he wished the two words that people remembered from his speech were “public interest.” Proving yet again that I need a life, I recently listened to the 40-minute speech. A couple of notes. He was only interrupted four times and then only with very light applause when he said the free enterprise system must be allowed to work and that he would fight any kind of censorship. Also, interestingly for the time, he urged stations to do editorials. And his quote about television being a vast wasteland was one of only several great quotes in his speech:
To networks – “tell your sponsors to be less concerned with costs per thousands and more concerned with understanding per millions… remind your stockholders than an investment in broadcasting is buying a share in public responsibility.” Public interest isn’t just what interests the public. Talking about his role as FCC chairman, “either one takes this job seriously – or one can be seriously taken.”
About ratings – He said the three great influences on a child were home, school and church, and that television was becoming the fourth. But that if the first three followed ratings, like television did, children would eat a steady diet of ice cream, there would be school holidays all the time and there would be no Sunday school. “If some of you persist in a relentless search for the highest rating and the lowest common denominator, you may very well lose your audience.”
And as an interesting footnote to all this, Minnow noted in his speech that broadcasters were in good financial health, noting that the gross broadcast revenues for all television in 1960 was roughly $1.2 Billion with a before taxes profit of $243 Million, yielding an average return on revenue of 19.2%. Just for perspective, BIA Financial Network reported television revenues in 2006 of $22.5 Billion.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: Besides the countdown to sweeps, there is another countdown – to NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. The idea is simple – write a 175-page, 50,000 word novel in a month. You can register at NaNoWriMo.org. You start writing November 1st and you have to have it finished by November 30th. A high resolution rendering (16-17 giga pixels) of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper has been posted on the Internet at the site www.haltadefinizione.com by digital imaging company Hal9000 for – as Reuters put it – art lovers and conspiracy theorists alike to study. More than half of the U.S. public (58%) believe that “as Americans we can always solve our problems and get what we want,” according to a survey by the folks at the Pew Research Center. Sounds pretty good until you read further on that the number is a 16 point drop from the three-quarters (74%) who believed that way five years ago. And I know you already have heard this, but it’s so amazing that it’s worth repeating: Microsoft has bought a 1.6% stake in Facebook for $240 Million which, when projected, values the company headed by a 23-year-old at $15 Billion. One you may not have heard comes from that same Forbes conference mentioned earlier – investment company Yucaipa founder Ron Burkle says one of his investments, Current TV, is worth up to $2 Billion after just a few years in existence.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at my website MediaConsultant.tv.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Message From Michael -- October 15, 2007
THE INTERNET AND TV
OPPOSITE ENDS OF THE SPECTRUM
COCKTAIL CHATTER – PUZZLES AND BEAUTY AND GAMING
THE AWARD WINNERS DINNER
NOTEWORTHY EVENTS TODAY
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 Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
THE INTERNET AND TV: A study by networking giant Cisco Systems (the company that makes the routers used to connect computers) predicts that monthly Internet traffic in North America will increase 264% by 2011 to more than 7.8 Million Terabytes – again, MONTHLY. Just to remind you, a terabyte is a Million Megabytes or a Thousand Gigabytes. Much of that, of course, is coming in the form of video. Okay, I’m still wrestling with the fact that YouTube alone accounts for as much bandwidth today as the entire Internet did in 2000, according to Federal Communications Commissioner Robert McDowell. That was from a Wall Street Journal commentary. Now, another article from WSJ quotes Larry Roberts, the original creator of ARPAnet, the precursor to the Internet, as saying the Internet is ‘last-generation technology.’ In what may be one of the great quotes of the day, he says, “the Internet wasn’t designed for television… I know because I designed it.” He and former Cisco chief technology officer Len Bosack are trying to re-design the infrastructure of the Internet to cope with that 264% increase. One-time pirating website BitTorrent is doing the same thing, designing what it calls DNA (Delivery Network Accelerator) for your PC.
And they better work, because several recent studies indicate that, as one study put it, online video has gone mainstream. Microsoft’s digital agency Avenue A/ Razorfish reports that two-thirds of what it calls ‘connected customers’ (meaning people with broadband access) say they regularly watch video on YouTube and that nearly all of them (95%) report that they have watched an online video in the past three months. Further indication of the growing interest in online video comes from a study by Frank N. Magid and Associates which found that only a quarter (23%) of Millennial would rather watch video on TV instead of the Internet. More than a third (36%) of the 18-24 crowd say that the PC is “competing” for their entertainment time. Meanwhile Wayne Karrfalt reports on TVNewsday.com that most of the major TV groups now have a C-level executive dedicated to developing and monetizing online activities even though online activities only represent about 5% of the revenue pie for them.
And they’re not alone; BrightCove announced that it has launched a new service providing what it calls “broadcast quality online TV shows” using the BitTorrent technology mentioned above. Joost, as you will recall from last week’s MfM, has moved out of the beta stage and gone public. Vuze ‘Open Entertainment Platform’ which also promises high resolution video has opened up its platform to independent producers. Add to the expanding list Comcast’s Ziddio.com which focuses on consumer generated content. And, reportedly, today newly minted Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore is supposed to announce a major development to the CurrentTV site. Read Cynopsis and you will seek a weekly, but often daily, listing of new television series being released on either iTunes or UnBox.
And for good reason. The Interactive Advertising Bureau reports that Internet advertising in the second quarter of this year passed the $5 Billion mark for the first time. That’s the highest quarterly revenue reporting since 1996 and a 26% increase over the previous year. The first half of 2007 is more than $10 Billion with the yearly revenue expected to hit $21 Billion. The report tracks Internet advertising revenue starting in 1999 when the total for the year was $4.6 Billion. It nearly doubled the next year, 2000, but then declined for several years before starting its phenomenal growth in 2004. On the flip side (there’s always a flip side), a survey by Nielsen of 26,000 consumers in 47 markets worldwide found that advertising in old media scored much higher than advertising in new media. Nearly two thirds (63%) say they trust newspapers ads and more than half (56%) say they trust TV spots and magazine placements. But only a quarter (26%) trust banner ads and only a third (34%) trust search ads.
Indicative of the power of peer recommendations, the same study found the most trusted form of ‘advertising’ came from other consumer recommendations with more than three-quarters (78%) expressing confidence. And a warning to marketers everywhere, the Nielsen survey noted that some word-of-mouth experts report that bad experiences outnumber good ones by as many as five to one.
Just as an only semi-related side note, Raymond Kurzwell, the author of The Age of Intelligent Machines and The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, estimates that a human being’s functional memory is about 1.25 Terabytes.
OPPOSITE ENDS OF THE SPECTRUM: Two recent reports contain some interesting observations about Millennials and Baby Boomers. News Director Stacy Woefel of the University of Missouri’s KOMU-TV station writes about Millennials in the recent Radio Television News Directors’ Association magazine, The Communicator. In part, the story says Millennials want financial security, strong mentors and a feeling of being someone special. There is also a sense of entitlement along with unrealistic expectations. On the other end, a report by Mediamark Research Inc., found Baby Boomers are optimistic with four in ten (39%) saying they think their ‘households” will be better off financially a year from now and 90% of them saying they ‘themselves’ will be better off a year from now. More than half of Baby Boomers (55%) reported vote in an election, with a third (31%) undertaking a home remodeling project and less than half (41%) playing the lottery.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: U.S. consumers have lost more than $7 Billion to viruses, spyware and phishing, according to a survey by Consumer Reports. A group of M-I-T grads have designed a folding-wing plane, the Terrafugia, that they say will eventually be the prototype of a hybrid car-plane that would make George Jetson jealous. Makers of a puzzle called Eternity II, being sold at Toys R Us for $49.95, are offering $2 Million to someone who solves the puzzle which has 256 geometric shapes (sort of a successor to Rubic’s Cube) by December 31, 2007. And a study by researchers at the University of Toronto found that the “spatial gap” (the ability to process visual information from a wide variety of sources) between men and women can be closed if women spent time playing video games. According to Virtual Worlds Management (Yes, strange as it may seem, there is an organization aimed at managing virtual worlds), venture capital, technology and media firms have invested more than $1 Billion in 35 virtual worlds.
Okay, this one isn’t cocktail chatter, although it is, but it isn’t. Anyway, MfM readers who remember the Dove “Evolution” spot will want to see the newest one – Onslaught, which is a one-minute visual warning to mothers to “talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does.” You can find it on YouTube or the official website, campaignforrealbeauty.com.
THE AWARD WINNERS DINNER: It’s tonight in New York, when the national Edward R. Murrow award winners will be honored. I just wanted to add my own Mazel Tov to the friends and winners at WKYT/ Lexington (Continuing Coverage); KEYE/ Austin (News Series); WSLS/ Roanoke (Newscast); WTVQ/ Lexington (Spot News); WAFF/ Huntsville (Website); and news director Frank Volpicella at KVUE/ Austin which won for Overall Excellence.
ALSO OF NOTE TODAY: Media Mogul Rupert Murdoch launches the company’s new business channel today. And today is blog action day when bloggers around the world are supposed to join in solidarity for the environment. You can visit the website blogactionday.com.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at my website MediaConsultant.tv.
OPPOSITE ENDS OF THE SPECTRUM
COCKTAIL CHATTER – PUZZLES AND BEAUTY AND GAMING
THE AWARD WINNERS DINNER
NOTEWORTHY EVENTS TODAY
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 Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
THE INTERNET AND TV: A study by networking giant Cisco Systems (the company that makes the routers used to connect computers) predicts that monthly Internet traffic in North America will increase 264% by 2011 to more than 7.8 Million Terabytes – again, MONTHLY. Just to remind you, a terabyte is a Million Megabytes or a Thousand Gigabytes. Much of that, of course, is coming in the form of video. Okay, I’m still wrestling with the fact that YouTube alone accounts for as much bandwidth today as the entire Internet did in 2000, according to Federal Communications Commissioner Robert McDowell. That was from a Wall Street Journal commentary. Now, another article from WSJ quotes Larry Roberts, the original creator of ARPAnet, the precursor to the Internet, as saying the Internet is ‘last-generation technology.’ In what may be one of the great quotes of the day, he says, “the Internet wasn’t designed for television… I know because I designed it.” He and former Cisco chief technology officer Len Bosack are trying to re-design the infrastructure of the Internet to cope with that 264% increase. One-time pirating website BitTorrent is doing the same thing, designing what it calls DNA (Delivery Network Accelerator) for your PC.
And they better work, because several recent studies indicate that, as one study put it, online video has gone mainstream. Microsoft’s digital agency Avenue A/ Razorfish reports that two-thirds of what it calls ‘connected customers’ (meaning people with broadband access) say they regularly watch video on YouTube and that nearly all of them (95%) report that they have watched an online video in the past three months. Further indication of the growing interest in online video comes from a study by Frank N. Magid and Associates which found that only a quarter (23%) of Millennial would rather watch video on TV instead of the Internet. More than a third (36%) of the 18-24 crowd say that the PC is “competing” for their entertainment time. Meanwhile Wayne Karrfalt reports on TVNewsday.com that most of the major TV groups now have a C-level executive dedicated to developing and monetizing online activities even though online activities only represent about 5% of the revenue pie for them.
And they’re not alone; BrightCove announced that it has launched a new service providing what it calls “broadcast quality online TV shows” using the BitTorrent technology mentioned above. Joost, as you will recall from last week’s MfM, has moved out of the beta stage and gone public. Vuze ‘Open Entertainment Platform’ which also promises high resolution video has opened up its platform to independent producers. Add to the expanding list Comcast’s Ziddio.com which focuses on consumer generated content. And, reportedly, today newly minted Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore is supposed to announce a major development to the CurrentTV site. Read Cynopsis and you will seek a weekly, but often daily, listing of new television series being released on either iTunes or UnBox.
And for good reason. The Interactive Advertising Bureau reports that Internet advertising in the second quarter of this year passed the $5 Billion mark for the first time. That’s the highest quarterly revenue reporting since 1996 and a 26% increase over the previous year. The first half of 2007 is more than $10 Billion with the yearly revenue expected to hit $21 Billion. The report tracks Internet advertising revenue starting in 1999 when the total for the year was $4.6 Billion. It nearly doubled the next year, 2000, but then declined for several years before starting its phenomenal growth in 2004. On the flip side (there’s always a flip side), a survey by Nielsen of 26,000 consumers in 47 markets worldwide found that advertising in old media scored much higher than advertising in new media. Nearly two thirds (63%) say they trust newspapers ads and more than half (56%) say they trust TV spots and magazine placements. But only a quarter (26%) trust banner ads and only a third (34%) trust search ads.
Indicative of the power of peer recommendations, the same study found the most trusted form of ‘advertising’ came from other consumer recommendations with more than three-quarters (78%) expressing confidence. And a warning to marketers everywhere, the Nielsen survey noted that some word-of-mouth experts report that bad experiences outnumber good ones by as many as five to one.
Just as an only semi-related side note, Raymond Kurzwell, the author of The Age of Intelligent Machines and The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, estimates that a human being’s functional memory is about 1.25 Terabytes.
OPPOSITE ENDS OF THE SPECTRUM: Two recent reports contain some interesting observations about Millennials and Baby Boomers. News Director Stacy Woefel of the University of Missouri’s KOMU-TV station writes about Millennials in the recent Radio Television News Directors’ Association magazine, The Communicator. In part, the story says Millennials want financial security, strong mentors and a feeling of being someone special. There is also a sense of entitlement along with unrealistic expectations. On the other end, a report by Mediamark Research Inc., found Baby Boomers are optimistic with four in ten (39%) saying they think their ‘households” will be better off financially a year from now and 90% of them saying they ‘themselves’ will be better off a year from now. More than half of Baby Boomers (55%) reported vote in an election, with a third (31%) undertaking a home remodeling project and less than half (41%) playing the lottery.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: U.S. consumers have lost more than $7 Billion to viruses, spyware and phishing, according to a survey by Consumer Reports. A group of M-I-T grads have designed a folding-wing plane, the Terrafugia, that they say will eventually be the prototype of a hybrid car-plane that would make George Jetson jealous. Makers of a puzzle called Eternity II, being sold at Toys R Us for $49.95, are offering $2 Million to someone who solves the puzzle which has 256 geometric shapes (sort of a successor to Rubic’s Cube) by December 31, 2007. And a study by researchers at the University of Toronto found that the “spatial gap” (the ability to process visual information from a wide variety of sources) between men and women can be closed if women spent time playing video games. According to Virtual Worlds Management (Yes, strange as it may seem, there is an organization aimed at managing virtual worlds), venture capital, technology and media firms have invested more than $1 Billion in 35 virtual worlds.
Okay, this one isn’t cocktail chatter, although it is, but it isn’t. Anyway, MfM readers who remember the Dove “Evolution” spot will want to see the newest one – Onslaught, which is a one-minute visual warning to mothers to “talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does.” You can find it on YouTube or the official website, campaignforrealbeauty.com.
THE AWARD WINNERS DINNER: It’s tonight in New York, when the national Edward R. Murrow award winners will be honored. I just wanted to add my own Mazel Tov to the friends and winners at WKYT/ Lexington (Continuing Coverage); KEYE/ Austin (News Series); WSLS/ Roanoke (Newscast); WTVQ/ Lexington (Spot News); WAFF/ Huntsville (Website); and news director Frank Volpicella at KVUE/ Austin which won for Overall Excellence.
ALSO OF NOTE TODAY: Media Mogul Rupert Murdoch launches the company’s new business channel today. And today is blog action day when bloggers around the world are supposed to join in solidarity for the environment. You can visit the website blogactionday.com.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at my website MediaConsultant.tv.
Message From Michael -- October 8, 2007
TRUST IS TO BE EARNED
THE SWEET SPOT
MOST EXPENSIVE ADS ON TV
MOST EXPENSIVE TV ON ADS
GOOD NEWS FOR NEWS
FOLLOW-UPS – JOOST AND LINKEDIN
COCKTAIL CHATTER – MALLS AND CUBA
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 Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
TRUST IS TO BE EARNED: And apparently the media hasn’t earned it, at least in developed countries. The Edelman public relations firm did a worldwide survey – what it called a Trust Barometer -- to find out what people thought of business, media, religion, government, and non-governmental organizations. The question was “how much do you trust each institution to do what’s right.” Interestingly, the media scored lower (37%) than any other institution in developed countries (defined as Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States). Yet the media scored the second highest level of trust (56%), just behind business (60%) in the developing countries (defined as Brazil, China, India, Poland, Mexico and Russia).
Just for the record, in developed countries the scores go like this: Non-governmental organizations, NGO’s, scored the highest (53%), followed by business (47%), government and religion (both at 38%) and media (37%). In developing countries, it goes like this: Business (60%), media (56%), NGO’s (53%), government and religion (both at 46%).
THE SWEET SPOT: The language is a little convoluted, but one of the many messages that I found particularly interesting from the report is this one: “the vertical axis – the top-down, one-way dissemination by an authoritative voice of precise, controlled messages – has been firmly intersected by a horizontal axis of a continuous, messy, powerful, peer-to-peer conversation.” Notice – not replaced, but augmented. According to company President and CEO Richard Edelman, it’s at the nexus of these “vertical and horizontal axes” that companies will find the ‘sweet spot’ of communications and trust.
The report also indicates, yet again, the power of Word of Mouth, which we have talked about before in MfM. In the European Union, North America and Latin America, “a person like me” is the most credible deliverer of information about a company. In Asia, “a person like me” is second only to physicians. And in many countries, a conversation with a friend or peer is as trusted a source of information about a company as an article in a newspaper or TV news coverage. However, newspapers, TV and radio remain more credible than new media sources like blogs or a company website. The report notes that it used to be that ‘a person like me’ was one of our neighbors or people in our social circle, but now the commonality is that they share our interests, regardless of geographic location.
Finally, and I shouldn’t say finally because there is so much in the report, the survey says the “new green” – that is, the new hot button issue – is how companies treat their employees. “Fair treatment of employees” is the most or second most important activity (behind the environment) for a socially responsible company to engage in.
MOST EXPENSIVE ADS ON TV: Last year, it was ABC’s Desperate Housewives that took the top spot. This year, according to Advertising Age, ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy at $419,000 per 30-second spot is the most expensive show on network TV. Followed by: NBC’s Sunday Night Football ($358K), Fox’s The Simpson’s ($315K), NBC’s Heroes ($296K), ABC’s Desperate Housewives ($270K), CBS’s CSI ($248K), CBS’s Two and Half Men ($231K), and tied for 9th place at $208,000 per spot was CBS’s Survivor: China and ABC’s Private Practice. Of course, reporter Brian Steinberg notes that all of them will be toppled by American Idol in the spring.
MOST EXPENSIVE TV ON ADS: I’ll admit it. Sometimes my headlines are a stretch. In this case, we’re talking about the top media companies. Two lists came out. Both reporting that Time Warner is the biggest media company in the world. The oddity is the ‘slight’ difference in numbers. Advertising Age puts TW’s gross revenues at just under $34 Billion. Fortune magazine puts it at just under $45 Billion. Both lists also put the Walt Disney Company at the top of their lists, but again there is a wide disparity in numbers, with Advertising Age putting Disney’s revenues in 2006 at $16.8 Billion while Fortune magazine puts Disney’s revenues at $34.2 Billion. The disparity (I think) is that Advertising Age lists only the net U.S. media revenues while Fortune is listing worldwide revenues. That doesn’t quite explain why Advertising Age puts Comcast in the number two spot with revenues of about $27.4 Billion, but Comcast doesn’t even make Fortune magazine’s list of top entertainment companies.
In any case, the lists do provide some interesting fodder. For example, Time Warner as the top media company in the world ‘only’ has one-tenth the revenues of the world’s largest company – Wal-Mart which had more than $351 Billion in revenue in 2006. Staggering, isn’t it? In fact, even based on the larger revenue figures, Time Warner only makes it to the 48th spot on the Fortune 500 list. However, even so, the revenue of Time Warner at the top spot in the Advertising Age list is 100 times the revenue of the media company occupying the final 100th spot on the media company list – Schurz Communications at $300 Million. The editors at Advertising Age also note that the cost of entry to the top 100 media list has grown significantly over the last two decades. In 1986, a ‘mere’ $100 Million would have gained a company entry into the top 100 list; in 1999, that figure rose to $200 Million; and now in this latest report, it’s $300 Million.
GOOD NEWS FOR NEWS: It was only one line in the Associated Press report, and it was buried at the end, but it’s too interesting not to report. According to a poll by the AP and survey research firm Ipsos (which has the somewhat insulting slogan – Nobody’s Unpredictable), more than a quarter (28%) of the American public would like to see more news on television. This is up significantly from two years ago when it was 17%. This is the same poll that found nearly two-thirds of the American public (62%) believe television is getting worse and that nearly three-quarters (71%) believe there are too many reality shows on TV.
FOLLOW-UPS: TV-on-computer/ video-streaming site Joost has gone public. Regular readers of MfM will remember that we were part of the Beta testing of the site which up to now had been by invite only. But now it’s all aboard. Al-Jazeera says it is close to inking a deal with a major distributor in America. The British Broadcasting Company has launched the Americanized version of its World Now television newscast at 7:00 p.m. EST. After a week of watching, what I noticed most was not just that the report had a much broader worldwide perspective, but the commercials which included a spot about Qatar as the financial center of the world, Turkish Airways as connecting the world, and tourist attractions in India. As long as I am making some personal observations, LinkedIn, a social networking site for the business community, which we’ve mentioned in previous MfM’s appears to be taking off. In the last month, I have had more requests to link up from former students, and others, than I can remember receiving in the last year.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: In what must signal the end of an era, the International Council of Shopping Centers reports that only one enclosed shopping mall (the one-time haven of teenagers everywhere) was built in 2006 and none are planned for this year. According to an article in The New York Times by Stanford journalism professor and technology writer G. Paschal Zachary, Internet behemoth Google uses at least 450,000 computers in its search operations.
There is a website, cubaheadlines.com, which, as you would expect, has news and editorials about Cuba. All fine and dandy. But the part I love is that the banner at the top of the page is a map of Cuba (to be expected) a picture of Havana harbor (to be expected) and emblazoned across all this, the true symbol of Cuba – what looks to me like a 1953 Packard, in mint condition of course.
And finally, website Entrepreneur.com named ten businesses facing possible (and that’s the debatable word) extinction in the next ten years: Record stores (no explanation needed), camera film manufacturing (again, no explanation needed), crop dusters (commercial airlines are taking over); gay bars (because of greater acceptance in society); newspapers (at least the printing press plant part, but not the Internet part); pay phones whose numbers have dropped by half over the last decade (not just because of cell phones, but because cities are eliminating them because they’re gathering points for drug dealers); used bookstores (you can find what you want on the Internet); piggy banks (as we go to a paperless society); coin operated arcades which have dropped from 10,000 to 3,000 in the last decade because of video games at home and online; and -- wishful thinking -- telemarketers whose sales have been stagnant because of the national Do Not Call list, but who still managed to bring in $393 Billion last year.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at my website MediaConsultant.tv.
THE SWEET SPOT
MOST EXPENSIVE ADS ON TV
MOST EXPENSIVE TV ON ADS
GOOD NEWS FOR NEWS
FOLLOW-UPS – JOOST AND LINKEDIN
COCKTAIL CHATTER – MALLS AND CUBA
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 Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
TRUST IS TO BE EARNED: And apparently the media hasn’t earned it, at least in developed countries. The Edelman public relations firm did a worldwide survey – what it called a Trust Barometer -- to find out what people thought of business, media, religion, government, and non-governmental organizations. The question was “how much do you trust each institution to do what’s right.” Interestingly, the media scored lower (37%) than any other institution in developed countries (defined as Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States). Yet the media scored the second highest level of trust (56%), just behind business (60%) in the developing countries (defined as Brazil, China, India, Poland, Mexico and Russia).
Just for the record, in developed countries the scores go like this: Non-governmental organizations, NGO’s, scored the highest (53%), followed by business (47%), government and religion (both at 38%) and media (37%). In developing countries, it goes like this: Business (60%), media (56%), NGO’s (53%), government and religion (both at 46%).
THE SWEET SPOT: The language is a little convoluted, but one of the many messages that I found particularly interesting from the report is this one: “the vertical axis – the top-down, one-way dissemination by an authoritative voice of precise, controlled messages – has been firmly intersected by a horizontal axis of a continuous, messy, powerful, peer-to-peer conversation.” Notice – not replaced, but augmented. According to company President and CEO Richard Edelman, it’s at the nexus of these “vertical and horizontal axes” that companies will find the ‘sweet spot’ of communications and trust.
The report also indicates, yet again, the power of Word of Mouth, which we have talked about before in MfM. In the European Union, North America and Latin America, “a person like me” is the most credible deliverer of information about a company. In Asia, “a person like me” is second only to physicians. And in many countries, a conversation with a friend or peer is as trusted a source of information about a company as an article in a newspaper or TV news coverage. However, newspapers, TV and radio remain more credible than new media sources like blogs or a company website. The report notes that it used to be that ‘a person like me’ was one of our neighbors or people in our social circle, but now the commonality is that they share our interests, regardless of geographic location.
Finally, and I shouldn’t say finally because there is so much in the report, the survey says the “new green” – that is, the new hot button issue – is how companies treat their employees. “Fair treatment of employees” is the most or second most important activity (behind the environment) for a socially responsible company to engage in.
MOST EXPENSIVE ADS ON TV: Last year, it was ABC’s Desperate Housewives that took the top spot. This year, according to Advertising Age, ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy at $419,000 per 30-second spot is the most expensive show on network TV. Followed by: NBC’s Sunday Night Football ($358K), Fox’s The Simpson’s ($315K), NBC’s Heroes ($296K), ABC’s Desperate Housewives ($270K), CBS’s CSI ($248K), CBS’s Two and Half Men ($231K), and tied for 9th place at $208,000 per spot was CBS’s Survivor: China and ABC’s Private Practice. Of course, reporter Brian Steinberg notes that all of them will be toppled by American Idol in the spring.
MOST EXPENSIVE TV ON ADS: I’ll admit it. Sometimes my headlines are a stretch. In this case, we’re talking about the top media companies. Two lists came out. Both reporting that Time Warner is the biggest media company in the world. The oddity is the ‘slight’ difference in numbers. Advertising Age puts TW’s gross revenues at just under $34 Billion. Fortune magazine puts it at just under $45 Billion. Both lists also put the Walt Disney Company at the top of their lists, but again there is a wide disparity in numbers, with Advertising Age putting Disney’s revenues in 2006 at $16.8 Billion while Fortune magazine puts Disney’s revenues at $34.2 Billion. The disparity (I think) is that Advertising Age lists only the net U.S. media revenues while Fortune is listing worldwide revenues. That doesn’t quite explain why Advertising Age puts Comcast in the number two spot with revenues of about $27.4 Billion, but Comcast doesn’t even make Fortune magazine’s list of top entertainment companies.
In any case, the lists do provide some interesting fodder. For example, Time Warner as the top media company in the world ‘only’ has one-tenth the revenues of the world’s largest company – Wal-Mart which had more than $351 Billion in revenue in 2006. Staggering, isn’t it? In fact, even based on the larger revenue figures, Time Warner only makes it to the 48th spot on the Fortune 500 list. However, even so, the revenue of Time Warner at the top spot in the Advertising Age list is 100 times the revenue of the media company occupying the final 100th spot on the media company list – Schurz Communications at $300 Million. The editors at Advertising Age also note that the cost of entry to the top 100 media list has grown significantly over the last two decades. In 1986, a ‘mere’ $100 Million would have gained a company entry into the top 100 list; in 1999, that figure rose to $200 Million; and now in this latest report, it’s $300 Million.
GOOD NEWS FOR NEWS: It was only one line in the Associated Press report, and it was buried at the end, but it’s too interesting not to report. According to a poll by the AP and survey research firm Ipsos (which has the somewhat insulting slogan – Nobody’s Unpredictable), more than a quarter (28%) of the American public would like to see more news on television. This is up significantly from two years ago when it was 17%. This is the same poll that found nearly two-thirds of the American public (62%) believe television is getting worse and that nearly three-quarters (71%) believe there are too many reality shows on TV.
FOLLOW-UPS: TV-on-computer/ video-streaming site Joost has gone public. Regular readers of MfM will remember that we were part of the Beta testing of the site which up to now had been by invite only. But now it’s all aboard. Al-Jazeera says it is close to inking a deal with a major distributor in America. The British Broadcasting Company has launched the Americanized version of its World Now television newscast at 7:00 p.m. EST. After a week of watching, what I noticed most was not just that the report had a much broader worldwide perspective, but the commercials which included a spot about Qatar as the financial center of the world, Turkish Airways as connecting the world, and tourist attractions in India. As long as I am making some personal observations, LinkedIn, a social networking site for the business community, which we’ve mentioned in previous MfM’s appears to be taking off. In the last month, I have had more requests to link up from former students, and others, than I can remember receiving in the last year.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: In what must signal the end of an era, the International Council of Shopping Centers reports that only one enclosed shopping mall (the one-time haven of teenagers everywhere) was built in 2006 and none are planned for this year. According to an article in The New York Times by Stanford journalism professor and technology writer G. Paschal Zachary, Internet behemoth Google uses at least 450,000 computers in its search operations.
There is a website, cubaheadlines.com, which, as you would expect, has news and editorials about Cuba. All fine and dandy. But the part I love is that the banner at the top of the page is a map of Cuba (to be expected) a picture of Havana harbor (to be expected) and emblazoned across all this, the true symbol of Cuba – what looks to me like a 1953 Packard, in mint condition of course.
And finally, website Entrepreneur.com named ten businesses facing possible (and that’s the debatable word) extinction in the next ten years: Record stores (no explanation needed), camera film manufacturing (again, no explanation needed), crop dusters (commercial airlines are taking over); gay bars (because of greater acceptance in society); newspapers (at least the printing press plant part, but not the Internet part); pay phones whose numbers have dropped by half over the last decade (not just because of cell phones, but because cities are eliminating them because they’re gathering points for drug dealers); used bookstores (you can find what you want on the Internet); piggy banks (as we go to a paperless society); coin operated arcades which have dropped from 10,000 to 3,000 in the last decade because of video games at home and online; and -- wishful thinking -- telemarketers whose sales have been stagnant because of the national Do Not Call list, but who still managed to bring in $393 Billion last year.
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Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Message From Michael -- August 13, 2007
THE SEISMIC SHIFT IN THE MEDIA LANDSCAPE
NEWSPAPERS GETTING INTO THE ACT
NETWORKS GETTING INTO THE ACT
BROADBAND BALONEY
COCKTAIL CHATTER
THE SEISMIC SHIFT IN THE MEDIA LANDSCAPE: In four years time, Internet advertising will replace newspapers as the largest ad medium. Consumers are moving away from advertising-supported media to consumer-supported platforms. Spending on non-traditional media advertising such as blogs, podcasts and RSS is growing faster than any other media category. These are just some of the startling statistics and statements from the annual communications forecast study by media investment firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson. You may have read or heard about some the facts and factoids from other publications. For example, that media usage per person actually declined for the first time in ten years. But the big story isn’t so much the figures as it is the underlying theme of the report. For example, the drop in usage is explained by the simple fact that people are switching to digital alternatives for news, information and entertainment and these require less time investment than their traditional media counterparts. Or that while consumer media usage may have dropped, media usage by ‘institutional end-users’ (aka – business and government) actually grew.
Okay, we can’t go on without some facts and figures. First off, the firm says the average media usage per person last year was 3,530 hours – a drop of 0.5% from the year before. Of those hours spent with media, most of it (1,899 hours) was spent with ad-supported media, defined as broadcast television and magazines, while the rest (1,631 hours) was spent with consumer-supported media, defined as web and videogames. BUT… the time spent with ad-supported media was actually down 6.3% from five years ago while the time spent with consumer-supported media was up 19.8% from five years ago. Communications spending in the U.S. will top $1 Trillion for the first time next year, with such spending expected to reach $1.222 Trillion three years later in 2011.
Disclaimer: I don’t pretend to fully understand all the in’s and out’s of the study which covers 19 segments and more than 100 sub-segments of the U.S. media industry. (For example, I’m not sure I fully understand ‘branded entertainment.’) Plus, I can’t afford to pay the $2,495 for the full report. So, most of my information comes from a variety of sources. But, getting back to the point of overall theme, the clear message is the switch from old, analog media to new, digital media, in all its forms, is changing the media landscape dramatically and dynamically. As VSS Executive Vice President and Managing Director James Rutherford says, “time and place shifting (will) accelerate while consumers and businesses utilitize more digital media alternatives, strengthening the new media pull model at the expense of the traditional media push model.”
NEWSPAPERS GETTING INTO THE ACT: More evidence that newspapers may be leading broadcasters in Internet warfare is a study by The Bivings Report that says 92 of America’s top 100 newspapers now offer video on their websites. This is a huge jump from the year before when just 61 offered video. Even more interesting, while 26 of those newspapers use the Associated Press video streams, 13 of them offered video content from local news outlets while 39 newspapers offered original video content. The other 13 newspapers offered a conbination of video content options. In addition to the video, the report says 95 of the newspapers offered at least one reporter blog – up from 80 the year before. A third allow readers to comment on articles – up from 19 the year before. And nearly all of the newspaper websites (96) now use RSS technology.
Related Note: Internet giant, search engine and news aggregator Google is offering people or organizations mentioned in news stories the opportunity to submit their own comments which will run – unedited – alongside the Googe news links to those stories. There is no explanation yet how the Google editors will vet the comments to make sure they come from the claimed source. Regardless, many are upset, not just because of journalistic questions, but the feature will mean that Google will be offering its own version of original content.
NETWORKS GETTING INTO THE ACT: The private equity firm, Providence Equity Partners, has invested $100 Million for a 10% stake in the joint venture by NBC Universal and the News Corporation to bring their television shows and movies on the Internet. Now, I’m pretty good at Math, but it doesn’t take a mathematician to figure out that means the joint venture is valued at $1 Billion. And as an article in the New York Times points out, that’s even though the joint venture has no website, doesn’t even have a name, has no defined mission statement and is hoping to persuade skeptical observers that these two real-world rivals can cooperate online.
BROADBAND BALONEY: That was the headline on a Wall Street Journal commentary by Federal Communications Commissioner Robert M. McDowell on the recent analysis of broadband adoption rates around the world. As reported in last week’s MfM, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says the U.S. has dropped from 4th place to 15th place in the past five years. However, McDowell argues the OECD analysis is flawed because it is based on a pure per capita basis which doesn’t take into account several other factors, including household size (in the U.S., there are more people in each household) or the size of the country. The household penetration in the U.S. is 42% compared to 23% in the European Union. And McDowell argues that 13 of the 14 countries listed as ahead of the U.S. are significantly smaller than the U.S. Only Canada was similar in size. He also makes the point that the OECD data doesn’t take into account all the myriad ways Americans get high speed access to the Internet.
OR IS IT? A separate analysis of broadband adoption rates by UK-based broadband communications services company Point Topic actually has the U.S. even lower at 25th place in the world with a HOUSEHOLD broadband adoption of just over half. The #1 country in the world is South Korea where nine out of ten households (89%) have a broadband connection. McDowell’s argument about the size of the country does appear to be a factor in most instances. The #2 country in terms of broadband penetration is the tiny country of Monaco (82.92%), followed by Hong Kong (79.78%), Iceland (75.51%), Singapore (69.59%). But ahead of the U.S. are also Canada (63.02%), the UK (52.25%) and Australia (only slightly ahead of the U.S. at 50.18%).
SIDENOTE #1: Dr. Alan Albarran, of the University of North Texas, who pointed out the article to me after last week’s MfM, says he has been in 17 of the European countries and the Internet speed varies widely. The Scandinavian countries have high speed connections but others like Spain and Portugal are at a virtual crawl with Germany and the U.K. in the middle. (I have been trying to nail down exactly what the facts are, in a comparison of Broadband speed and adoption rates. Maybe some of my overseas MfM readers can help sort this out.)
SIDENOTE #2: One in five broadband homes will have the technology to watch Internet-based video on their TV sets by the end of this year, according to an analysis by Emerging Media Dynamics. And in ten years time, by 2017, more than 72 Million homes (representing two-thirds of the broadband marketplace) will have PC/TV devices.
FOOTNOTE: The most fascinating part of Commissioner McDowell’s article – to me, at least – was his statement (un-sourced, I’m afraid) that “YouTube alone uses as much bandwidth today as the entire Internet did in 2000.” Is that a WOW statement, or what?
COCKTAIL CHATTER: Keep an eye out for the latest Smirnoff “Tea Partay” video. We told you in a previous MfM about the original video which does a parody of hip hop and rap with some New England preppy types. Now they’re putting out a new version. And as long as I’m plugging things, take a look at Gloob.tv. It is a video aggregation service, picking out the ‘best’ videos in different categories, from sports to movies, music, games and TV. The group Public Knowledge is questioning a statement by AT&T that it mistakenly deleted lyrics critical of President George W. Bush from a Pearl Jam performance of “Another Brick in the Wall.” Dana Boyd, A researcher and “social network expert” at the University of California-Berkeley, has created a firestorm of controversy after writing an essay dubbing MySpace as a working class site dominated by “kids whose parents didn’t go to college, who are expected to get a job when they finish high school” and Facebook as a ‘suburbia’ site for “goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes and other ‘good’ kids.” You have a little more than two weeks to enter a contest sponsored by a Dutch ecology group, along with the Dutch national lottery, to dream up a greenhouse-gas-reducing product or service. The winner gets 500,000 Euro dollars. The deadline for the PICNIC Green Challenge is August 30th.
NEWSPAPERS GETTING INTO THE ACT
NETWORKS GETTING INTO THE ACT
BROADBAND BALONEY
COCKTAIL CHATTER
THE SEISMIC SHIFT IN THE MEDIA LANDSCAPE: In four years time, Internet advertising will replace newspapers as the largest ad medium. Consumers are moving away from advertising-supported media to consumer-supported platforms. Spending on non-traditional media advertising such as blogs, podcasts and RSS is growing faster than any other media category. These are just some of the startling statistics and statements from the annual communications forecast study by media investment firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson. You may have read or heard about some the facts and factoids from other publications. For example, that media usage per person actually declined for the first time in ten years. But the big story isn’t so much the figures as it is the underlying theme of the report. For example, the drop in usage is explained by the simple fact that people are switching to digital alternatives for news, information and entertainment and these require less time investment than their traditional media counterparts. Or that while consumer media usage may have dropped, media usage by ‘institutional end-users’ (aka – business and government) actually grew.
Okay, we can’t go on without some facts and figures. First off, the firm says the average media usage per person last year was 3,530 hours – a drop of 0.5% from the year before. Of those hours spent with media, most of it (1,899 hours) was spent with ad-supported media, defined as broadcast television and magazines, while the rest (1,631 hours) was spent with consumer-supported media, defined as web and videogames. BUT… the time spent with ad-supported media was actually down 6.3% from five years ago while the time spent with consumer-supported media was up 19.8% from five years ago. Communications spending in the U.S. will top $1 Trillion for the first time next year, with such spending expected to reach $1.222 Trillion three years later in 2011.
Disclaimer: I don’t pretend to fully understand all the in’s and out’s of the study which covers 19 segments and more than 100 sub-segments of the U.S. media industry. (For example, I’m not sure I fully understand ‘branded entertainment.’) Plus, I can’t afford to pay the $2,495 for the full report. So, most of my information comes from a variety of sources. But, getting back to the point of overall theme, the clear message is the switch from old, analog media to new, digital media, in all its forms, is changing the media landscape dramatically and dynamically. As VSS Executive Vice President and Managing Director James Rutherford says, “time and place shifting (will) accelerate while consumers and businesses utilitize more digital media alternatives, strengthening the new media pull model at the expense of the traditional media push model.”
NEWSPAPERS GETTING INTO THE ACT: More evidence that newspapers may be leading broadcasters in Internet warfare is a study by The Bivings Report that says 92 of America’s top 100 newspapers now offer video on their websites. This is a huge jump from the year before when just 61 offered video. Even more interesting, while 26 of those newspapers use the Associated Press video streams, 13 of them offered video content from local news outlets while 39 newspapers offered original video content. The other 13 newspapers offered a conbination of video content options. In addition to the video, the report says 95 of the newspapers offered at least one reporter blog – up from 80 the year before. A third allow readers to comment on articles – up from 19 the year before. And nearly all of the newspaper websites (96) now use RSS technology.
Related Note: Internet giant, search engine and news aggregator Google is offering people or organizations mentioned in news stories the opportunity to submit their own comments which will run – unedited – alongside the Googe news links to those stories. There is no explanation yet how the Google editors will vet the comments to make sure they come from the claimed source. Regardless, many are upset, not just because of journalistic questions, but the feature will mean that Google will be offering its own version of original content.
NETWORKS GETTING INTO THE ACT: The private equity firm, Providence Equity Partners, has invested $100 Million for a 10% stake in the joint venture by NBC Universal and the News Corporation to bring their television shows and movies on the Internet. Now, I’m pretty good at Math, but it doesn’t take a mathematician to figure out that means the joint venture is valued at $1 Billion. And as an article in the New York Times points out, that’s even though the joint venture has no website, doesn’t even have a name, has no defined mission statement and is hoping to persuade skeptical observers that these two real-world rivals can cooperate online.
BROADBAND BALONEY: That was the headline on a Wall Street Journal commentary by Federal Communications Commissioner Robert M. McDowell on the recent analysis of broadband adoption rates around the world. As reported in last week’s MfM, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says the U.S. has dropped from 4th place to 15th place in the past five years. However, McDowell argues the OECD analysis is flawed because it is based on a pure per capita basis which doesn’t take into account several other factors, including household size (in the U.S., there are more people in each household) or the size of the country. The household penetration in the U.S. is 42% compared to 23% in the European Union. And McDowell argues that 13 of the 14 countries listed as ahead of the U.S. are significantly smaller than the U.S. Only Canada was similar in size. He also makes the point that the OECD data doesn’t take into account all the myriad ways Americans get high speed access to the Internet.
OR IS IT? A separate analysis of broadband adoption rates by UK-based broadband communications services company Point Topic actually has the U.S. even lower at 25th place in the world with a HOUSEHOLD broadband adoption of just over half. The #1 country in the world is South Korea where nine out of ten households (89%) have a broadband connection. McDowell’s argument about the size of the country does appear to be a factor in most instances. The #2 country in terms of broadband penetration is the tiny country of Monaco (82.92%), followed by Hong Kong (79.78%), Iceland (75.51%), Singapore (69.59%). But ahead of the U.S. are also Canada (63.02%), the UK (52.25%) and Australia (only slightly ahead of the U.S. at 50.18%).
SIDENOTE #1: Dr. Alan Albarran, of the University of North Texas, who pointed out the article to me after last week’s MfM, says he has been in 17 of the European countries and the Internet speed varies widely. The Scandinavian countries have high speed connections but others like Spain and Portugal are at a virtual crawl with Germany and the U.K. in the middle. (I have been trying to nail down exactly what the facts are, in a comparison of Broadband speed and adoption rates. Maybe some of my overseas MfM readers can help sort this out.)
SIDENOTE #2: One in five broadband homes will have the technology to watch Internet-based video on their TV sets by the end of this year, according to an analysis by Emerging Media Dynamics. And in ten years time, by 2017, more than 72 Million homes (representing two-thirds of the broadband marketplace) will have PC/TV devices.
FOOTNOTE: The most fascinating part of Commissioner McDowell’s article – to me, at least – was his statement (un-sourced, I’m afraid) that “YouTube alone uses as much bandwidth today as the entire Internet did in 2000.” Is that a WOW statement, or what?
COCKTAIL CHATTER: Keep an eye out for the latest Smirnoff “Tea Partay” video. We told you in a previous MfM about the original video which does a parody of hip hop and rap with some New England preppy types. Now they’re putting out a new version. And as long as I’m plugging things, take a look at Gloob.tv. It is a video aggregation service, picking out the ‘best’ videos in different categories, from sports to movies, music, games and TV. The group Public Knowledge is questioning a statement by AT&T that it mistakenly deleted lyrics critical of President George W. Bush from a Pearl Jam performance of “Another Brick in the Wall.” Dana Boyd, A researcher and “social network expert” at the University of California-Berkeley, has created a firestorm of controversy after writing an essay dubbing MySpace as a working class site dominated by “kids whose parents didn’t go to college, who are expected to get a job when they finish high school” and Facebook as a ‘suburbia’ site for “goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes and other ‘good’ kids.” You have a little more than two weeks to enter a contest sponsored by a Dutch ecology group, along with the Dutch national lottery, to dream up a greenhouse-gas-reducing product or service. The winner gets 500,000 Euro dollars. The deadline for the PICNIC Green Challenge is August 30th.
Monday, July 23, 2007
Message From Michael -- July 16, 2007
DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY
THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS
TO BE JOURNALISM OR NOT TO BE JOURNALISM
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DISCLAIMER: This week’s edition of MfM is a little longer than usual, because there were three significant studies that came out and that I am going to attempt to summarize briefly. Which leads to disclaimer number two, they are so brief that they are subject to some distortion of interpretation.
DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY: And if you remember the line from the old Sam Cook song about teen love, you will remember that Sam also didn’t know much about biology, science, French and algebra. Well, now add to that – News. According to a survey by the Joan Shorenstein on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University, teenagers and young adults are paying less attention to news than their counterparts of two or three decades ago. No news there, but the DEGREE OF DISCONNECT is news – not just newspapers, but national and local television, radio and the Internet. One out of four teens (28%) and one out of four young adults (24%) paid almost no attention to news, whatever the source. And another third of the teens (32%) and another quarter of the young adults (24%) paid little or no attention to three of the mediums and made only ‘moderate’ use of the fourth. Simply put, “daily news is not an integral part of the daily lives of most teens and young adults.” The survey showed that while teenagers and young adults may say they watch, read or listen to the news (because it is the ‘socially desirable response’), in actual fact they ‘skim’ the newspaper, watch TV for a ‘short while,’ listen to news on radio when it ‘happens to come on’ and read news on the Internet when they ‘come across’ it.
HARD NEWS VERSUS SOFT NEWS: The Shorenstein report also found that the difference in familiarity between hard news stories (such as the 400-point plunge in the Dow at the time) and soft news stories (such as Anna Nicole Smith’s death) was “nothing short of extraordinary.” Three out of four (75%) of the respondents OF ALL AGES knew about the typical soft news story while less than half (45%) knew about the typical hard news story. And two thirds (68%) correctly identified the factual elements of a soft news story while less than half again (45%) did so for the hard news story. A “puzzling finding”, according to the survey, was that while other research shows older adults are more likely to discuss public affairs, younger adults were three times more likely to say they had heard about a story from another person – although, in most cases it was a soft news story. The report did note that many hard news stories “have a numbing sameness – another act of Congress or another presidential speech – that can block them from memory even when they get heavy coverage.”
THE NEW MEDIA ROLE: Yes, the Internet is an important source for news for teenagers and young adults, according to the report. But it is a matter of degree. Two out of five teens (41%) and young adults (47%) say they became aware of a story through TV while only one in five (18%) say they became aware of a story through the Internet. Interestingly, one in four teenagers (28%) and one in ten young adults (12%) say they found out about a story through ‘another person.’ The report says Radio is actually the most “underrated news medium” because of its large “inadvertent news audience.”
THE NEW NEWS MATRIX. In the “old days,” there was a correlation between news interest and news consumption regardless of the medium, says the report. Mom and Dad read the morning newspaper at the breakfast table and would watch the evening news. By default the kids acquired a news habit of their own, almost because they had no choice. The report says this “forced feeding” of the news habit came to an end in the 1980’s with the spread of cable television. Now the big question mark is whether the Internet will make news consumption greater because of its 24/7 availability or break down news consumption even more because of that same on-demand feature. The problem, say the researchers, is that online news exposure is less fixed by time, place and routine – elements that have a ritual ability to reinforce news habits. Now news consumption becomes more ‘inadvertent.’ And even though young people may say they are interested in news, their behavior says otherwise. It may be a matter of different medium for different needs. Newspapers for public affairs coverage; Television for entertainment programs; the Internet for gaming and social interaction. The report authors say media use today is largely a solitary affair that only reinforces existing preferences and doesn’t create news ones, like news use. They quote Aristotle who wrote, “We are what we repeatedly do.” The fact that young people don’t repeatedly ‘do news’ is “a basis for pessimism about the future of daily news and young adults.”
You can access the full report at: http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/presspol/carnegie_knight/young_news_web.pdf
THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS: Several recent reports cited a study by Edison Media Research that the Internet is close to beating television as “most essential” medium. In keeping with MfM’s focus on going behind the headlines, we can say -- WRONGO-GONGO. The Internet has beaten Television. At least, for people under the age of 44. Not only that, the Internet beats out television as the “most cool” and “exciting” medium for people under the age of 54 as well. Some consolation for my television brethren, on the flip side of the equation, more people (24%) deemed the Internet the “least essential” medium, compared to television (18%) and radio (18%). No consolation for my newspaper brethren, newspapers were deemed the “least essential” medium by more people (35%) than any other media. All this represents a fairly dramatic change from when the survey was taken five years ago in 2002.
Not surprisingly, the Internet beat out Television by a whopping 15 percentage points (46% to 31%) among the 12-17 crowd when it came to “most essential.” Somewhat surprisingly, the Internet also beat out Television by a substantial 12 percentage points (40% to 28%) among the 35-44 crowd in that arena. The race was much tighter among the 18-24 group (38% to 35%) and the 25-34 group (38% to 33%). It’s only when you get to the 45—plus crowd that Television beats out the Internet but by a mere 6 percentage points, but a substantial 16 percentage points in the 55-plus group and a whop-whopping 34% among the 65-plus.
And when it comes to being “most cool,” the figures for the Internet are even more staggering with the Internet beating Television by 20 percentage points in the 12-17 group; 19 percentage points in the 18-24’s; another 14 points in the 25-34; 17 points in the 35-44 group but a mere one point in the 45-54 group. Once you get to the 55-plus crowd (that Television doesn’t sell), Television beats out the Internet by 12 points and an incredible 35 points in the 65-plus crowd as “most cool.”
WHO’S STALE AND BORING: More consolation for my Television brethren, fewer people (24%) think Television is “stale and boring” in 2007 than thought so in 2002, when it was 36%. No consolation for my Newspaper brethren, more people (35%) now think they have become “stale and boring” than in 2002, when it was 30%. And for those radio readers of MfM, radio dropped 9 percentage points in terms of being “most essential,” increased 4 percentage points in being “least essential”; is flat over the five year period in terms of being “stale and boring”; but dropped dramatically in terms of being “used more.” The Internet (at 34%) beat radio (18%) and barely trailed Television (37%) when people were asked, “Are you using it more lately.”
THE KICKER: But here’s the kicker for you Television folks out there. When asked, “Who would you turn to first in the event of a major breaking news story,” Television dominates with 62% of the respondents picking TV, beating out the Internet (at 18%) by more than a three to one margin. The television figure is down from 2002 when it was 74% and the Internet is up from 2002 when it was a mere 8%. Radio is down, at 10% this year compared to 12% five years ago, and newspapers increased a tad, at 8% this year versus 6% five years ago.
(Okay, let me explain the headline. The Devil is in the Details can be translated a number of ways: you have to watch the details or they will trip you up; things are more difficult to accomplish because of the various details to be taken care of; or, the plan may appear simple but there is a lot of detail work to be done. The flip side of that is “God is in the Details” which some translate as meaning you can find big things in small packages, sort of along the line of ‘less is more’; or that whatever one does should be done thoroughly; details are important.)
You can access the full report at: http://www.edisonresearch.com/home/archives/Q3%20Media%20Perceptions%20-%20large%20slides%20_2_.pdf
TO BE JOURNALISM OR NOT TO BE JOURNALISM: A report by the University of Maryland’s J-Lab “Institute for Interactive Journalism” says four out of five “citizen media” websites consider what they do to be journalism and three out of four have pronounced their efforts a “success.” Of course, success has multiple definitions, including watch-dogging local government, providing news that couldn’t otherwise be had, helping their community to solve problems and nudging local media to improve. The Knight Citizen News Network (kcnn.org) has identified more than 450 “citizen media” sites in the United States. Both groups have adopted the term “citizen media” as their preferred definition of these sites, although both groups use the term interchangeably with “citizen journalism.” The J-Lab group identified several variations of the citizen media model – community cooperatives run by volunteers; trained citizen journalist sites using traditional journalism values and training to non-journalists; professional journalists who are operating for profit and not for profit sites; solo enterprise sites created by individuals, few of whom have journalism training; blog aggregators which act as one-stop community repositories; and legacy media sites launched by newspapers or broadcasters as places where the users dominate the content, as opposed to their own websites where journalists dominate the work. The report cites examples of each, and they run the gamut from people like Jonathon Weber, former editor of The Industry Standard (at newwest.net); former Boston Globe editor and now M-I-T Media Lab editor-in-residence Jack Driscoll (ryereflections.org); to “life and business partners” Christopher Grotke and Lise LePage who run a web design business in Brattleboro, Vermont (ibrattleboro.com)
J-Lab Director Jan Schaffer says her group believes citizen media sites “will become an enduring part of the emerging newscape” and urges legacy media groups to partner and support such sites instead of trying to compete with them. The report says ‘old media’ companies have launched such sites for a variety of reasons – to offset loss of editorial staff, to build community and thereby interest in local news coverage, and, candidly, to preserve or maybe expand market share among consumers and advertisers. Meanwhile, many ‘new media’ companies are struggling to harness citizen and advertising contributions to create profitable online revenue models. In short, both are looking for the right ‘business model.’ As a foot note, one of the larger, multiple citizen media sites, backfence.com, has gone out of business since the J-Lab report was issued.
You can access the full report at: http://www.kcnn.org/research/citizen_media_report/ and even have a hard copy sent to you.
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 are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS
TO BE JOURNALISM OR NOT TO BE JOURNALISM
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DISCLAIMER: This week’s edition of MfM is a little longer than usual, because there were three significant studies that came out and that I am going to attempt to summarize briefly. Which leads to disclaimer number two, they are so brief that they are subject to some distortion of interpretation.
DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY: And if you remember the line from the old Sam Cook song about teen love, you will remember that Sam also didn’t know much about biology, science, French and algebra. Well, now add to that – News. According to a survey by the Joan Shorenstein on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University, teenagers and young adults are paying less attention to news than their counterparts of two or three decades ago. No news there, but the DEGREE OF DISCONNECT is news – not just newspapers, but national and local television, radio and the Internet. One out of four teens (28%) and one out of four young adults (24%) paid almost no attention to news, whatever the source. And another third of the teens (32%) and another quarter of the young adults (24%) paid little or no attention to three of the mediums and made only ‘moderate’ use of the fourth. Simply put, “daily news is not an integral part of the daily lives of most teens and young adults.” The survey showed that while teenagers and young adults may say they watch, read or listen to the news (because it is the ‘socially desirable response’), in actual fact they ‘skim’ the newspaper, watch TV for a ‘short while,’ listen to news on radio when it ‘happens to come on’ and read news on the Internet when they ‘come across’ it.
HARD NEWS VERSUS SOFT NEWS: The Shorenstein report also found that the difference in familiarity between hard news stories (such as the 400-point plunge in the Dow at the time) and soft news stories (such as Anna Nicole Smith’s death) was “nothing short of extraordinary.” Three out of four (75%) of the respondents OF ALL AGES knew about the typical soft news story while less than half (45%) knew about the typical hard news story. And two thirds (68%) correctly identified the factual elements of a soft news story while less than half again (45%) did so for the hard news story. A “puzzling finding”, according to the survey, was that while other research shows older adults are more likely to discuss public affairs, younger adults were three times more likely to say they had heard about a story from another person – although, in most cases it was a soft news story. The report did note that many hard news stories “have a numbing sameness – another act of Congress or another presidential speech – that can block them from memory even when they get heavy coverage.”
THE NEW MEDIA ROLE: Yes, the Internet is an important source for news for teenagers and young adults, according to the report. But it is a matter of degree. Two out of five teens (41%) and young adults (47%) say they became aware of a story through TV while only one in five (18%) say they became aware of a story through the Internet. Interestingly, one in four teenagers (28%) and one in ten young adults (12%) say they found out about a story through ‘another person.’ The report says Radio is actually the most “underrated news medium” because of its large “inadvertent news audience.”
THE NEW NEWS MATRIX. In the “old days,” there was a correlation between news interest and news consumption regardless of the medium, says the report. Mom and Dad read the morning newspaper at the breakfast table and would watch the evening news. By default the kids acquired a news habit of their own, almost because they had no choice. The report says this “forced feeding” of the news habit came to an end in the 1980’s with the spread of cable television. Now the big question mark is whether the Internet will make news consumption greater because of its 24/7 availability or break down news consumption even more because of that same on-demand feature. The problem, say the researchers, is that online news exposure is less fixed by time, place and routine – elements that have a ritual ability to reinforce news habits. Now news consumption becomes more ‘inadvertent.’ And even though young people may say they are interested in news, their behavior says otherwise. It may be a matter of different medium for different needs. Newspapers for public affairs coverage; Television for entertainment programs; the Internet for gaming and social interaction. The report authors say media use today is largely a solitary affair that only reinforces existing preferences and doesn’t create news ones, like news use. They quote Aristotle who wrote, “We are what we repeatedly do.” The fact that young people don’t repeatedly ‘do news’ is “a basis for pessimism about the future of daily news and young adults.”
You can access the full report at: http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/presspol/carnegie_knight/young_news_web.pdf
THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS: Several recent reports cited a study by Edison Media Research that the Internet is close to beating television as “most essential” medium. In keeping with MfM’s focus on going behind the headlines, we can say -- WRONGO-GONGO. The Internet has beaten Television. At least, for people under the age of 44. Not only that, the Internet beats out television as the “most cool” and “exciting” medium for people under the age of 54 as well. Some consolation for my television brethren, on the flip side of the equation, more people (24%) deemed the Internet the “least essential” medium, compared to television (18%) and radio (18%). No consolation for my newspaper brethren, newspapers were deemed the “least essential” medium by more people (35%) than any other media. All this represents a fairly dramatic change from when the survey was taken five years ago in 2002.
Not surprisingly, the Internet beat out Television by a whopping 15 percentage points (46% to 31%) among the 12-17 crowd when it came to “most essential.” Somewhat surprisingly, the Internet also beat out Television by a substantial 12 percentage points (40% to 28%) among the 35-44 crowd in that arena. The race was much tighter among the 18-24 group (38% to 35%) and the 25-34 group (38% to 33%). It’s only when you get to the 45—plus crowd that Television beats out the Internet but by a mere 6 percentage points, but a substantial 16 percentage points in the 55-plus group and a whop-whopping 34% among the 65-plus.
And when it comes to being “most cool,” the figures for the Internet are even more staggering with the Internet beating Television by 20 percentage points in the 12-17 group; 19 percentage points in the 18-24’s; another 14 points in the 25-34; 17 points in the 35-44 group but a mere one point in the 45-54 group. Once you get to the 55-plus crowd (that Television doesn’t sell), Television beats out the Internet by 12 points and an incredible 35 points in the 65-plus crowd as “most cool.”
WHO’S STALE AND BORING: More consolation for my Television brethren, fewer people (24%) think Television is “stale and boring” in 2007 than thought so in 2002, when it was 36%. No consolation for my Newspaper brethren, more people (35%) now think they have become “stale and boring” than in 2002, when it was 30%. And for those radio readers of MfM, radio dropped 9 percentage points in terms of being “most essential,” increased 4 percentage points in being “least essential”; is flat over the five year period in terms of being “stale and boring”; but dropped dramatically in terms of being “used more.” The Internet (at 34%) beat radio (18%) and barely trailed Television (37%) when people were asked, “Are you using it more lately.”
THE KICKER: But here’s the kicker for you Television folks out there. When asked, “Who would you turn to first in the event of a major breaking news story,” Television dominates with 62% of the respondents picking TV, beating out the Internet (at 18%) by more than a three to one margin. The television figure is down from 2002 when it was 74% and the Internet is up from 2002 when it was a mere 8%. Radio is down, at 10% this year compared to 12% five years ago, and newspapers increased a tad, at 8% this year versus 6% five years ago.
(Okay, let me explain the headline. The Devil is in the Details can be translated a number of ways: you have to watch the details or they will trip you up; things are more difficult to accomplish because of the various details to be taken care of; or, the plan may appear simple but there is a lot of detail work to be done. The flip side of that is “God is in the Details” which some translate as meaning you can find big things in small packages, sort of along the line of ‘less is more’; or that whatever one does should be done thoroughly; details are important.)
You can access the full report at: http://www.edisonresearch.com/home/archives/Q3%20Media%20Perceptions%20-%20large%20slides%20_2_.pdf
TO BE JOURNALISM OR NOT TO BE JOURNALISM: A report by the University of Maryland’s J-Lab “Institute for Interactive Journalism” says four out of five “citizen media” websites consider what they do to be journalism and three out of four have pronounced their efforts a “success.” Of course, success has multiple definitions, including watch-dogging local government, providing news that couldn’t otherwise be had, helping their community to solve problems and nudging local media to improve. The Knight Citizen News Network (kcnn.org) has identified more than 450 “citizen media” sites in the United States. Both groups have adopted the term “citizen media” as their preferred definition of these sites, although both groups use the term interchangeably with “citizen journalism.” The J-Lab group identified several variations of the citizen media model – community cooperatives run by volunteers; trained citizen journalist sites using traditional journalism values and training to non-journalists; professional journalists who are operating for profit and not for profit sites; solo enterprise sites created by individuals, few of whom have journalism training; blog aggregators which act as one-stop community repositories; and legacy media sites launched by newspapers or broadcasters as places where the users dominate the content, as opposed to their own websites where journalists dominate the work. The report cites examples of each, and they run the gamut from people like Jonathon Weber, former editor of The Industry Standard (at newwest.net); former Boston Globe editor and now M-I-T Media Lab editor-in-residence Jack Driscoll (ryereflections.org); to “life and business partners” Christopher Grotke and Lise LePage who run a web design business in Brattleboro, Vermont (ibrattleboro.com)
J-Lab Director Jan Schaffer says her group believes citizen media sites “will become an enduring part of the emerging newscape” and urges legacy media groups to partner and support such sites instead of trying to compete with them. The report says ‘old media’ companies have launched such sites for a variety of reasons – to offset loss of editorial staff, to build community and thereby interest in local news coverage, and, candidly, to preserve or maybe expand market share among consumers and advertisers. Meanwhile, many ‘new media’ companies are struggling to harness citizen and advertising contributions to create profitable online revenue models. In short, both are looking for the right ‘business model.’ As a foot note, one of the larger, multiple citizen media sites, backfence.com, has gone out of business since the J-Lab report was issued.
You can access the full report at: http://www.kcnn.org/research/citizen_media_report/ and even have a hard copy sent to you.
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 are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
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