THE NATPE OF NEW MEDIA
ONLINE OVERTAKES ON-AIR
IT’S THE ENVIRONMENT, STUPID
NO, NO, IT’S ALL ABOUT BEING ONLINE
MONOLOGUE VERSUS DIALOGUE IN 2008
CULTURAL CHANGE NEED FOR 2008
CONSULTING ADVICE FOR 2008
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.
TRENDS FOR 2008: Following up last week’s MfM on top trends of 2007, in this week’s edition we look at the projected top trends for 2008. But first there are a couple of developments we need to touch on first.
THE NATPE OF NEW MEDIA: In a way that’s what the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is. The New York Times calls it an “unabashed display of high technology gadgetry” and the “hope of the future.” TV Week in an editorial called it a “roadmap to the digital future.” Others call it the “Super Bowl” of electronic wonders. The Associated Press called it “a glitzy celebration of technology.” Here are some examples from the CES award winners:
The Yoggie, a key-sized device that plugs into your USB port and blocks Internet threats, hides your PC from hackers, and boosts your PC’s performance. The Zeppelin which converts your iPod into “an astonishingly capable yet highly compact” stereo system. A Waterproof hard drive which acts as an affordable security storage container for data. Sanyo has produced the world’s first waterproof camcorder, able to take video and still pictures above or below water. The Lightglove which is worn on the wrist like a watch but actually connects people to machines through light. SlingCatcher, which we’ve mentioned previously, lets you watch video from your PC or from virtually any video site on the Internet on your existing TV. Photoskins is a portable photo frame so thin it can fit in your wallet and can be connected to a computer to download widgets. Meanwhile Microsoft’s Bill Gates in his farewell speech to the convention talked about interfacing with computers through speech and screen touch, showed off a ‘mobile navigator’ that can be used to point at a person or place and get more information, and announced that Samsung will offer an adapter that lets flat-screen TVs act as Media Center extenders showing videos, pictures and music stored on a Vista PC.
However, in all that gadgetry, observers noted two things: the importance, still, of TV and the importance of content. Television Week’s Daisy Whitney writes that these days everyone is a partner, as advertisers and content providers “kick the tires” on a wide range of new media services. Technology companies are partnering with content companies, and vice versa, but all with the aim of ‘getting to the TV’ and the broadest reach possible. Writers for the New York Times also noted that TVs were ‘front and center’ at the convention and that while the show has always been a display for hardware, this year it was the software, information and entertainment content that ‘edged toward center stage.’
ONLINE OVERTAKES ON-AIR: But with a caveat – in the United Kingdom. Advertising giant WPP says Internet advertising is expected to hit 3.4 Billion English Pounds this year, just behind the 3.56 Billion English Pounds spent on TV advertising. By 2009, Britain is likely to become the world’s first major economy to, as The Independent newspaper put it, “witness the ascent of the Internet past one of its biggest rival mediums in the advertising arena.” The article points out the appeal of the Internet, especially to advertisers looking for pinpointed messages. The caveat, as pointed out in another article, is that the milestone comes in a country where the government-supported, non-advertiser-supported British Broadcasting Company is a dominant television player.
Okay, now back to the prognostications for 2008……
IT’S THE ENVIRONMENT, STUPID: If there was one consistent message from the various prognosticators, it was the emphasis on the environment in 2008. Advertising giant J Walter Thompson (JWT) says blue will be the new color of the green movement as the dwindling supply of clean water becomes the ‘eco-debate’ of the new year. The company also sees a rise in what it calls “cooperative consumption” in which people share resources. The Wall Street Journal in its review of the best of ads and worst of ads says, “green is the new black” as in being cool. Reporter Suzanne Vranica provides a long list of companies who tried to jump on the “eco-friendly bandwagon” by giving their products and brand “an environmental tint.” BrandKeys president Robert Passikoff, writing for Chief Marketer, says companies will have to move from saying they’re “green” to actually being “Emerald City Green” meaning that they won’t be able to get away with just saying they are eco-friendly, they’ll have to prove it by being (as he steals a line from the Wizard of Oz) “morally, ethically, spiritually, physically, positively, absolutely, undeniably and reliably” green.
Side note: It’s too interesting not to note the other two big trends the JWT group sees for this year. The second (there were actually ten) was headlined ‘outwitting disease’ because aging baby boomers will find they can live longer with chronic diseases such as diabetes. The third, and what some call the most interesting, is “the world is local” which argues that as global companies make products that are ubiquitous and common, because no matter where they are made they can be sold everywhere, the desire for distinctively local products will grow.
NO, NO, IT’S ALL ABOUT BEING ONLINE: At least that seems to be the other major theme for 2008. Also, from the Wall Street Journal, the same reporter mentioned earlier says the emergence of the Web is forcing ad executives to ‘succumb’ to marketers’ demands that they re-invent how ads are created and “forgo their TV-centric approach.” Online market research firm eMarketer predicts that marketing executives will continue to gravitate to the Internet because the ad formats are more measurable, and that online ad spending will remain “resilient” even if the country slides into a recession. The company does say though that the surge in online video growth will slow (if that’s the right word) from 89% growth last year to 74% growth this year; and that social network usage and advertising will continue to grow at 70-plus percent rate. In a similar vein, TNS Media Intelligence forecasts a 4.2% growth in overall ad spending in the U.S. bolstered partly by the elections, partly by the Olympics but primarily because of growth in online ad spending which it says will grow 14.4% this year. Banker JP Morgan joined in, predicting a boost in online display ad revenues, in part because of an increase in CPM rates.
Meanwhile, Mark Simon, vice president at search engine marketing firm Didit, predicts in an article in SearchEngine that the online ad business will ‘heat up to white-hot levels’ after the Federal Trade Commission approved the Google-Double Click deal, which he likens to playing Monopoly, but with real money. He also predicts that more once-promising web properties will expire in 2008 just as many did in 2007, saying a certain level of “carnage” is normal and healthy on the Web. Simon also notes that online ads have reverted to their old intrusive formats with pop-unders and pop-overs, a level of intrusiveness that will only get worse with the growth of widgets.
MONOLOGUE VERSUS DIALOGUE IN 2008: It’s something of a “reading between the lines” but one of the other trends one sees in all the discussion is the interaction between advertisers and consumers, between content providers and content creators. As several experts put it, instead of having a one-sided monologue with your customers/ viewers/ readers/ listeners/ consumers, businesses or content providers or advertisers (take your choice) will have to have a two-sided dialogue, in order to be successful. Writing in Business Week, Johnny Vulkan of marketing communications agency Anomaly says one of the future trends is an old-time concept – that the product or service should be good. He argues the idea that you advertise “at” people is gone with the new technology because they can answer back. So, if your product or service isn’t good, the world will soon know about it. That same technology creates a kind of “bionic” consumer, according to Passikoff writing for Chief Marketer. That’s why, he argues, there will be an increasing emphasis on measuring engagement, because a brand will have to at least meet and preferably exceed the customers’ demands.
CULTURAL CHANGE NEED FOR 2008: A survey of news executives by Editor and Publisher columnist Steve Outing found that the number one thing they say was needed in 2008 was a culture change in their companies and in their newsrooms to accept new media initiatives. Although writing for newspapers, the findings could well apply to all mainstream media. Outing says many of those surveyed believe the staff is still skeptical about the new media initiatives. Part of that is because new media initiatives aren’t being staffed properly, says DenverPost.com senior developer Joe Murphy, who wins the quote of the day award, arguing that it would help if there was “more space between us and the grindstone.” Outing urges all news people to take part in the digital media world, whether it’s social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace or their own blog, so they can better understand it.
CONSULTING ADVICE FOR 2008: And it’s not even from me. I have to give plaudits to Doug Drew of 602 Communications and his resolutions for producers and reporters, featured in last week’s Shoptalk. Much of it falls under what I call basic blocking and tackling: write to the video, use more natural sound, avoid wallpaper video, write conversationally, avoid cute-clever writing, write with immediacy, pick soundbites that are emotional not factual. But as famed coach Vince Lombardi who coined the original quote said about football, it’s that ‘blocking and tackling’ that gets the job done, and frankly, not many stations get the basics right. Of course, Lombardi is the same guy who said, “winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing” and “show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser.” Although the better one from him was: “it’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get up.”
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.
Showing posts with label new media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label new media. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Monday, December 17, 2007
Message From Michael -- December 10, 2007
FACTOIDS FORETELLING THE FUTURE
COMPUTERS DISAPPEARING INTO THE CLOUDS
HE KNOWS WHEN YOU’VE BEEN GOOD OR BEEN BAD
THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT
THE COUNTERINTUITIVE CHINESE STUDY
STEPPING INTO THE POLITICAL WAYBACK MACHINE
ANOTHER 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.
FACTOIDS FORETELLING THE FUTURE: Two of them, actually. The number of multimedia mobile phones being shipped worldwide will pass the number of television sets being sold, with more than 300 Million units being shipped next year, according to the firm MultiMedia Intelligence which specializes in ‘delivering IP-based video to the nth screen.’ And buried in an Associated Press article about the UBS Media Conference was a statement by the head of Gannett’s newspaper division, Sue Clark-Johnson, that they had trained 600 print journalists how to make video for their websites. The second factoid is a message to my TV brethren and speaks to the growing battle over the Internet; and is also why I take a holistic approach to reporting on media in all its facets in MfM. The first factoid also speaks to that holistic approach and is indicative of the battle between new media and traditional media.
MultiMedia Intelligence defines a multimedia handset as one with an image sensor, MP3 audio support and video playback. Based on that definition, three out of five handsets today have multimedia functionality. However, in three years time, by 2011, the report says almost 9 out of 10 handsets would qualify. The report says the number of handsets with touch screens will reach 200 million by 2011.
COMPUTERS DISAPPEARING INTO THE CLOUDS: Several of the world’s largest Internet and computer companies are trying to get rid of the computer as we know it. It’s a system called “cloud computing” in which not only are the data and content (documents, spreadsheets, presentations and emails) stored online but so are the applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.). Microsoft has Office Live; Google Calendar stores events; Google Docs stores spreadsheets and documents; Picasa stores pictures; and, of course, companies like Yahoo, Amazon and eBay have search, email, and e-commerce applications online. Google and I.B.M. are funding a major cloud computing research initiative to build large data centers that research universities can tap into in order to perform a kind of ‘supercomputing’ function – what they call ‘Internet-scale computing.’ The big concern, of course, is security. InformationWeek reports that the Sans Institute latest @Risk bulletin found 60 vulnerabilities in the online Web applications, compared to two for Windows, Internet Explorer and Mac OS, three for Linux, nine for third party Windows applications and 16 for cross-platform applications. However, the article points out the new Web applications are just that – new, while the other systems have been around for a long time and so they’ve been tried and tested more.
HE KNOWS WHEN YOU’VE BEEN GOOD OR BEEN BAD: And, no, I’m not talking about Santa Claus sitting around at the North Pole. Instead I’m talking about the CEO of a phone company in Monroe, Louisiana. The company, CenturyTel Inc., is using software called ‘deep packet inspection boxes’ that can track EVERY – repeat, EVERY – website you visit. Up to now, such tracking has been limited to cookies that are stored on your hard drive after you visit a website. Now, with the deep packet system, the tracking is done at the Internet Service Provider site so that your online travels are noted at the start. An article in the Wall Street Journal notes that the software developed by several companies including NebuAd, FrontPorch and Phorm is raising all kinds of privacy concerns. A lengthy article carried by the Associated Press raises similar concerns about what is called “behavioral targeting.” The AP report cites as an example how, based on weather reports and restaurant listings you check out online, Yahoo, for example, has a good idea where you live; then based on searches you have made online, the web portal also knows where you want to go. The result – next time you go online there’s an advertisement from United Airlines for flights between these two places.
THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT: Readers who are old enough will remember seeing a sign saying that behind the counter at the Country Store or Five and Ten store. Well, apparently it’s coming back, except that now it’s called “consumer generated reviews.” Two separate studies tout the importance and advantages of such reviews. Nielsen-owned comScore and ‘research and strategic analysis’ firm The Kelsey Group found that one in four Internet users rely on consumer generated reviews to make a decision; and of that group; three quarters said the review had a major impact on their decision to buy and nearly ALL of them say they found the reviews to be accurate. Not only that but the consumers surveyed said they were willing to pay more for products or services that got good ratings. In a similar vein, a study by social commerce site BazaarVoice and word of mouth research and consulting firm Keller Fay Group found that, despite the belief that the Internet caters to people with a gripe, more than half of such reviews are positive. Nine out of ten such reviewers said they were only trying to help other consumers make better decisions. The Internet Retailers Association says nearly a quarter of the Internet businesses have started customer reviews for this holiday buying season.
THE COUNTERINTUITIVE CHINESE STUDY: A study by interactive conglomerate IAC and advertising agency JWT finds that five times as many Chinese as American respondents (61% vs. 13%) say they have a parallel life online; Chinese youth are twice as likely as young Americans (25% vs. 12%) to say they would NOT feel okay going without Internet access for more than a day; More than twice as many Chinese youth admitted they sometimes feel ‘addicted’ to living online (42% vs. 18%); Chinese respondents were four times as likely as Americans to agree that things ONLINE feel more intense than things OFFLINE (48% vs. 12%); More than three quarters (77%) of the Chinese sample agreed that computer/console games are more fun when played online compared with a third of the Americans. And lastly, the folks at the two companies say the Chinese Internet is buzzing with “virtual pheromones – cybermones, if you will” with three times as many Chinese as Americans (32% vs. 11%) willing to admit that the Internet has broadened their sex life. As a side note to this, one of the hottest blogging sensations in China was a sex blog by a young woman who goes by the name Mu Zimei.
FOOTNOTE: Security software vendor MacAfee says that China accounts for four out of five major cyber attacks on governments. In a report carried by the Associated Press, the company says there were more attacks on ‘critical’ governmental infrastructures in 2007 than ever before. The company says 120 countries are developing “cyber attack strategies”, that there is a brewing “cyber cold war” and that the attacks could erupt into a worldwide conflict. China, almost needless to say, denies such involvement.
ADVERTISING REPORT FOLLOW-UP: In an earlier MfM, we reported on ZenithOptimedia’s worldwide projections for advertising in 2008. Another interesting factoid I found in the report: Between now and 2010, the ten fastest growing advertising markets will be Kazakhstan in first place, followed by Belarus, Serbia, Egypt, Russia, Moldova, Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, Ukraine, and what the agency refers to as “Pan Arab.”
STEPPING INTO THE POLITICAL WAYBACK MACHINE: The ‘most memorable’ political moment in American radio/television history, according to a survey of scholars, politicians and analysts by the Museum of Broadcast Communications, was the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the subsequent funeral coverage. The attack on the World Trade Center was second in the list of 125 moments, followed by the first Kennedy-Nixon Debate in 1960, Franklin Roosevelt’s Pearl Harbor speech in 1941, Neil Armstrong walking on the moon in 1969, the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968, Franklin Roosevelt, again, for his first inaugural address in 1933, Richard Nixon’s Checkers speech, Martin Luther King’s I have a dream speech in 1963 and Richard Nixon, again, for his farewell speech in 1974. Ronald Reagan leads in terms of mentions with 14 moments listed, followed by Richard Nixon with 12, John F. Kennedy with 10 and Franklin Roosevelt with 9. President George W. Bush gets five mentions, the same as his father and Bill Clinton and Lyndon Johnson, but one more than Jimmy Carter. The assassination of Robert Kennedy came in at 46 and the assassination of Martin Luther King came in at 50. You can view the full list at the museum’s website http://www.museum.tv.
ANOTHER MARKETING CONUNDRUM: Following a previous week’s MC (marketing conundrum) in MfM, I have another. Explain to me why the liquor store next to the Publix supermarket across the street from me carries $40 to $80 bottles of wine when they have surly 20-something clerks whose knowledge of wine is limited to ‘reds’ and ‘whites.’
FOOTNOTE/ DISCLAIMER: The weekly Message From Michael will be sent out on an intermittent basis over the holidays. As we find new research or studies that we find interesting and that haven’t been beaten to death in other media, we’ll bring them to you.
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.
COMPUTERS DISAPPEARING INTO THE CLOUDS
HE KNOWS WHEN YOU’VE BEEN GOOD OR BEEN BAD
THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT
THE COUNTERINTUITIVE CHINESE STUDY
STEPPING INTO THE POLITICAL WAYBACK MACHINE
ANOTHER 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.
FACTOIDS FORETELLING THE FUTURE: Two of them, actually. The number of multimedia mobile phones being shipped worldwide will pass the number of television sets being sold, with more than 300 Million units being shipped next year, according to the firm MultiMedia Intelligence which specializes in ‘delivering IP-based video to the nth screen.’ And buried in an Associated Press article about the UBS Media Conference was a statement by the head of Gannett’s newspaper division, Sue Clark-Johnson, that they had trained 600 print journalists how to make video for their websites. The second factoid is a message to my TV brethren and speaks to the growing battle over the Internet; and is also why I take a holistic approach to reporting on media in all its facets in MfM. The first factoid also speaks to that holistic approach and is indicative of the battle between new media and traditional media.
MultiMedia Intelligence defines a multimedia handset as one with an image sensor, MP3 audio support and video playback. Based on that definition, three out of five handsets today have multimedia functionality. However, in three years time, by 2011, the report says almost 9 out of 10 handsets would qualify. The report says the number of handsets with touch screens will reach 200 million by 2011.
COMPUTERS DISAPPEARING INTO THE CLOUDS: Several of the world’s largest Internet and computer companies are trying to get rid of the computer as we know it. It’s a system called “cloud computing” in which not only are the data and content (documents, spreadsheets, presentations and emails) stored online but so are the applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.). Microsoft has Office Live; Google Calendar stores events; Google Docs stores spreadsheets and documents; Picasa stores pictures; and, of course, companies like Yahoo, Amazon and eBay have search, email, and e-commerce applications online. Google and I.B.M. are funding a major cloud computing research initiative to build large data centers that research universities can tap into in order to perform a kind of ‘supercomputing’ function – what they call ‘Internet-scale computing.’ The big concern, of course, is security. InformationWeek reports that the Sans Institute latest @Risk bulletin found 60 vulnerabilities in the online Web applications, compared to two for Windows, Internet Explorer and Mac OS, three for Linux, nine for third party Windows applications and 16 for cross-platform applications. However, the article points out the new Web applications are just that – new, while the other systems have been around for a long time and so they’ve been tried and tested more.
HE KNOWS WHEN YOU’VE BEEN GOOD OR BEEN BAD: And, no, I’m not talking about Santa Claus sitting around at the North Pole. Instead I’m talking about the CEO of a phone company in Monroe, Louisiana. The company, CenturyTel Inc., is using software called ‘deep packet inspection boxes’ that can track EVERY – repeat, EVERY – website you visit. Up to now, such tracking has been limited to cookies that are stored on your hard drive after you visit a website. Now, with the deep packet system, the tracking is done at the Internet Service Provider site so that your online travels are noted at the start. An article in the Wall Street Journal notes that the software developed by several companies including NebuAd, FrontPorch and Phorm is raising all kinds of privacy concerns. A lengthy article carried by the Associated Press raises similar concerns about what is called “behavioral targeting.” The AP report cites as an example how, based on weather reports and restaurant listings you check out online, Yahoo, for example, has a good idea where you live; then based on searches you have made online, the web portal also knows where you want to go. The result – next time you go online there’s an advertisement from United Airlines for flights between these two places.
THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT: Readers who are old enough will remember seeing a sign saying that behind the counter at the Country Store or Five and Ten store. Well, apparently it’s coming back, except that now it’s called “consumer generated reviews.” Two separate studies tout the importance and advantages of such reviews. Nielsen-owned comScore and ‘research and strategic analysis’ firm The Kelsey Group found that one in four Internet users rely on consumer generated reviews to make a decision; and of that group; three quarters said the review had a major impact on their decision to buy and nearly ALL of them say they found the reviews to be accurate. Not only that but the consumers surveyed said they were willing to pay more for products or services that got good ratings. In a similar vein, a study by social commerce site BazaarVoice and word of mouth research and consulting firm Keller Fay Group found that, despite the belief that the Internet caters to people with a gripe, more than half of such reviews are positive. Nine out of ten such reviewers said they were only trying to help other consumers make better decisions. The Internet Retailers Association says nearly a quarter of the Internet businesses have started customer reviews for this holiday buying season.
THE COUNTERINTUITIVE CHINESE STUDY: A study by interactive conglomerate IAC and advertising agency JWT finds that five times as many Chinese as American respondents (61% vs. 13%) say they have a parallel life online; Chinese youth are twice as likely as young Americans (25% vs. 12%) to say they would NOT feel okay going without Internet access for more than a day; More than twice as many Chinese youth admitted they sometimes feel ‘addicted’ to living online (42% vs. 18%); Chinese respondents were four times as likely as Americans to agree that things ONLINE feel more intense than things OFFLINE (48% vs. 12%); More than three quarters (77%) of the Chinese sample agreed that computer/console games are more fun when played online compared with a third of the Americans. And lastly, the folks at the two companies say the Chinese Internet is buzzing with “virtual pheromones – cybermones, if you will” with three times as many Chinese as Americans (32% vs. 11%) willing to admit that the Internet has broadened their sex life. As a side note to this, one of the hottest blogging sensations in China was a sex blog by a young woman who goes by the name Mu Zimei.
FOOTNOTE: Security software vendor MacAfee says that China accounts for four out of five major cyber attacks on governments. In a report carried by the Associated Press, the company says there were more attacks on ‘critical’ governmental infrastructures in 2007 than ever before. The company says 120 countries are developing “cyber attack strategies”, that there is a brewing “cyber cold war” and that the attacks could erupt into a worldwide conflict. China, almost needless to say, denies such involvement.
ADVERTISING REPORT FOLLOW-UP: In an earlier MfM, we reported on ZenithOptimedia’s worldwide projections for advertising in 2008. Another interesting factoid I found in the report: Between now and 2010, the ten fastest growing advertising markets will be Kazakhstan in first place, followed by Belarus, Serbia, Egypt, Russia, Moldova, Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, Ukraine, and what the agency refers to as “Pan Arab.”
STEPPING INTO THE POLITICAL WAYBACK MACHINE: The ‘most memorable’ political moment in American radio/television history, according to a survey of scholars, politicians and analysts by the Museum of Broadcast Communications, was the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the subsequent funeral coverage. The attack on the World Trade Center was second in the list of 125 moments, followed by the first Kennedy-Nixon Debate in 1960, Franklin Roosevelt’s Pearl Harbor speech in 1941, Neil Armstrong walking on the moon in 1969, the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968, Franklin Roosevelt, again, for his first inaugural address in 1933, Richard Nixon’s Checkers speech, Martin Luther King’s I have a dream speech in 1963 and Richard Nixon, again, for his farewell speech in 1974. Ronald Reagan leads in terms of mentions with 14 moments listed, followed by Richard Nixon with 12, John F. Kennedy with 10 and Franklin Roosevelt with 9. President George W. Bush gets five mentions, the same as his father and Bill Clinton and Lyndon Johnson, but one more than Jimmy Carter. The assassination of Robert Kennedy came in at 46 and the assassination of Martin Luther King came in at 50. You can view the full list at the museum’s website http://www.museum.tv.
ANOTHER MARKETING CONUNDRUM: Following a previous week’s MC (marketing conundrum) in MfM, I have another. Explain to me why the liquor store next to the Publix supermarket across the street from me carries $40 to $80 bottles of wine when they have surly 20-something clerks whose knowledge of wine is limited to ‘reds’ and ‘whites.’
FOOTNOTE/ DISCLAIMER: The weekly Message From Michael will be sent out on an intermittent basis over the holidays. As we find new research or studies that we find interesting and that haven’t been beaten to death in other media, we’ll bring them to you.
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.
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.
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.
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
We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael. But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to newsconsultant@aol.com with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
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
We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael. But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to newsconsultant@aol.com with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
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.
Message From Michael -- July 2, 2007
BASHING AMERICA
ROBBING PETER TO PAY PAUL
FACTS TO THINK ABOUT
POLITICIANS AND THE MEDIA
STEPPING INTO THE WAYBACK MACHINE
A MURROW MEA CULPA
We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael. But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to newsconsultant@aol.com with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
SWEEPS: Guess what? There is a sweeps period. It’s called July. Although most stations don’t pay much attention to it because of the low viewing. But I had to at least mention it.
BASHING AMERICA: Okay, not really. I wouldn’t want to do that, but a review of recently released studies and statistics draws a different picture of America the beautiful’s stance in the world. They show that other parts of the world are growing faster than the United States. Accounting and research consultancy Price Waterhouse Coopers says the U.S. remains the world’s largest but also slowest growing media market in the world, expanding at an estimated 5.3% compound annual growth rate, which is a half to a third of other countries’ growth rate. Leading forecaster Robert J. Coen, senior vice president at Universal McCann, says growth in overseas ad spending would continue to outpace the rate in the United States, as it has done every year for the last four years. He revised downward his projected ad spending for this year for the U.S., but revised upward his forecast for overseas spending because of “robust growth” in countries like Brazil, China and India. A report by the Communication Workers of America found that the U.S. lags far behind most other industrialized nations in terms of Internet speed. The median U.S. download speed is 1.7 megabits per second, compared to speed king Japan’s 61 megabits, South Korea’s 45 megabits, France at 17 megabits and even the Canadians beat us at 7 megabits. The report notes that the Federal Communication Commission defines “high speed” as 200 kilobits per second, a standard adopted more than a decade ago and now not even recognized as broadband in most countries. Mobile phone use is growing faster in other parts of the world than in the U.S., as well. Mobile phone use in Europe has reached the point that it is more than 100% of the actual population, according to U.K. based telecom analysis company The Mobile World. While ‘mobisodes’ (video for mobile phones) are just starting here in the U.S., in the Asia-Pacific region, distribution of TV programming on mobile phones is expected to reach $6.5 Billion in 2011, from the current spending of a mere $16 Million, a compound annual growth rate of 14.7%, compared to 5.5% for the rest of the world.
By the way, if you’re interested, you can find the relative Internet speeds for every state, listed on the website speedmatters.org, as well as a speed test for checking your own Internet connection speed.
NET NEUTRALITY: As a side note to the technology issues, it’s worth noting, even though it’s been in the news, that the Federal Trade Commission urged Congress to be cautious about any move to regular broadband Internet access. Or, put more simply – don’t enact any new laws on net neutrality. And, as blogger Declan McCullagh put it on the CNet blog site, this is coming from “the lifelong bureaucrats… (who) are hardly a bunch of Hayek-quoting, Ron Paul-voting libertarians.”
ROBBING PETER TO PAY PAUL: Internet advertising reached a record $16.9 Billion in the U.S. last year, a 35% increase over the year before, according to figures released by the Interactive Advertising Bureau. Sounds great, right? Wait, there’s more. In the first quarter of this year, Internet advertising revenues reached a new record of $4.9 Billion, a 26% increase over the first quarter of last year. Wait, there’s even more. The folks at Universal McCann predict that Internet advertising will be up 17% this year over last. And one more. The firm, Price Waterhouse Coopers, mentioned earlier, expects Internet advertising and ‘access spending’ to grow worldwide from an estimated $177 Billion last year to $332 Billion in 2011. Now, the other side of the story. Those same folks at Price Waterhouse Coopers predict that in two years, in 2009, spending on Internet advertising and access will pass spending on newspaper publishing. And forecasting guru Robert J. Coen, mentioned earlier, lowered his projections for advertising spending this year, in part because of a slowing in local dollar spending caused by a migration of local classified advertising from the HIGHER priced print ads of newspapers to the LOWER priced online ads of their websites.
SOME FACTS TO THINK ABOUT: Global mobile phone use will top 3.25 Billion in 2007. To put that in perspective, the world population is forecast to hit 6.6 Billion this month. In other worlds, mobile phone use is equivalent to half the world’s population. According to a survey by The Mobile World, mentioned above, more than 1,000 new customers are signing up for mobile phones every minute around the world. The median age of the American television viewing audience is 48. To put this number in perspective, the media age of the U.S. population is 37. According to a report by Magna/ Global, the ABC viewer is 48, the NBC viewer is 49, the CBS viewer 53, Fox is 42 and the CW viewer is 32. Again, for perspective, I checked last year’s figures. ABC was 46, NBC was 49, CBS was 52, Fox was 39 and the WB, (remember, a year ago) was 37 while the UPN was 32.
POLITICIANS AND THE MEDIA: I know you may have already seen this, but it’s interesting that two former politicians jumped on the media’s case recently. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair told a journalism think tank at Oxford University that technology has turned the media into a “feral beast” in which all that matter is “impact” – rising above the clamor, getting noticed, getting a competitive edge. And that accuracy is “often secondary.” Former U.S. President Bill Clinton called on marketers at a Promax convention to help politicians deliver complex messages without turning them into “two dimensional cartoons.” He says some political candidate’s messages don’t get covered because they don’t fit in with how parties and issues are “pre-branded” by the press.
STEPPING INTO THE WAYBACK MACHINE: A year ago, the name dominating the MfM news was Frank Maggio. He’s the Florida developer who tried to buy Nielsen Media Research and, when that failed, announced he was launching his own TV ratings service. Well, a check up since then shows that he did indeed launch a service called Erin Media, which promises a “new approach to the science of television audience analysis.” And he also writes a blog on Media Post’s TV Board. In the June 12 edition of MfM last year, we listed many of the photo and video sharing websites operating then. You can find the entire list by going to media-consultant.blogspot.com and look up that edition in the 2006 archives. And in keeping with the “bash America” theme above, a report released a year ago by Reporters Without Borders put the U.S. at 44th out of a list of 167 countries in terms of press freedom. Seven countries tied for first (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway and Switzerland). North Korea was last.
A MURROW MEA CULPA: My apologies to my good friends at the University of Missouri for failing to note that KBIA-FM, the National Public Radio affiliate staffed by students and managed by university faculty members, won a Murrow award for investigative reporting – its second Murrow in a row. Pretty embarrassing since I used to teach there.
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.
ROBBING PETER TO PAY PAUL
FACTS TO THINK ABOUT
POLITICIANS AND THE MEDIA
STEPPING INTO THE WAYBACK MACHINE
A MURROW MEA CULPA
We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael. But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to newsconsultant@aol.com with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
SWEEPS: Guess what? There is a sweeps period. It’s called July. Although most stations don’t pay much attention to it because of the low viewing. But I had to at least mention it.
BASHING AMERICA: Okay, not really. I wouldn’t want to do that, but a review of recently released studies and statistics draws a different picture of America the beautiful’s stance in the world. They show that other parts of the world are growing faster than the United States. Accounting and research consultancy Price Waterhouse Coopers says the U.S. remains the world’s largest but also slowest growing media market in the world, expanding at an estimated 5.3% compound annual growth rate, which is a half to a third of other countries’ growth rate. Leading forecaster Robert J. Coen, senior vice president at Universal McCann, says growth in overseas ad spending would continue to outpace the rate in the United States, as it has done every year for the last four years. He revised downward his projected ad spending for this year for the U.S., but revised upward his forecast for overseas spending because of “robust growth” in countries like Brazil, China and India. A report by the Communication Workers of America found that the U.S. lags far behind most other industrialized nations in terms of Internet speed. The median U.S. download speed is 1.7 megabits per second, compared to speed king Japan’s 61 megabits, South Korea’s 45 megabits, France at 17 megabits and even the Canadians beat us at 7 megabits. The report notes that the Federal Communication Commission defines “high speed” as 200 kilobits per second, a standard adopted more than a decade ago and now not even recognized as broadband in most countries. Mobile phone use is growing faster in other parts of the world than in the U.S., as well. Mobile phone use in Europe has reached the point that it is more than 100% of the actual population, according to U.K. based telecom analysis company The Mobile World. While ‘mobisodes’ (video for mobile phones) are just starting here in the U.S., in the Asia-Pacific region, distribution of TV programming on mobile phones is expected to reach $6.5 Billion in 2011, from the current spending of a mere $16 Million, a compound annual growth rate of 14.7%, compared to 5.5% for the rest of the world.
By the way, if you’re interested, you can find the relative Internet speeds for every state, listed on the website speedmatters.org, as well as a speed test for checking your own Internet connection speed.
NET NEUTRALITY: As a side note to the technology issues, it’s worth noting, even though it’s been in the news, that the Federal Trade Commission urged Congress to be cautious about any move to regular broadband Internet access. Or, put more simply – don’t enact any new laws on net neutrality. And, as blogger Declan McCullagh put it on the CNet blog site, this is coming from “the lifelong bureaucrats… (who) are hardly a bunch of Hayek-quoting, Ron Paul-voting libertarians.”
ROBBING PETER TO PAY PAUL: Internet advertising reached a record $16.9 Billion in the U.S. last year, a 35% increase over the year before, according to figures released by the Interactive Advertising Bureau. Sounds great, right? Wait, there’s more. In the first quarter of this year, Internet advertising revenues reached a new record of $4.9 Billion, a 26% increase over the first quarter of last year. Wait, there’s even more. The folks at Universal McCann predict that Internet advertising will be up 17% this year over last. And one more. The firm, Price Waterhouse Coopers, mentioned earlier, expects Internet advertising and ‘access spending’ to grow worldwide from an estimated $177 Billion last year to $332 Billion in 2011. Now, the other side of the story. Those same folks at Price Waterhouse Coopers predict that in two years, in 2009, spending on Internet advertising and access will pass spending on newspaper publishing. And forecasting guru Robert J. Coen, mentioned earlier, lowered his projections for advertising spending this year, in part because of a slowing in local dollar spending caused by a migration of local classified advertising from the HIGHER priced print ads of newspapers to the LOWER priced online ads of their websites.
SOME FACTS TO THINK ABOUT: Global mobile phone use will top 3.25 Billion in 2007. To put that in perspective, the world population is forecast to hit 6.6 Billion this month. In other worlds, mobile phone use is equivalent to half the world’s population. According to a survey by The Mobile World, mentioned above, more than 1,000 new customers are signing up for mobile phones every minute around the world. The median age of the American television viewing audience is 48. To put this number in perspective, the media age of the U.S. population is 37. According to a report by Magna/ Global, the ABC viewer is 48, the NBC viewer is 49, the CBS viewer 53, Fox is 42 and the CW viewer is 32. Again, for perspective, I checked last year’s figures. ABC was 46, NBC was 49, CBS was 52, Fox was 39 and the WB, (remember, a year ago) was 37 while the UPN was 32.
POLITICIANS AND THE MEDIA: I know you may have already seen this, but it’s interesting that two former politicians jumped on the media’s case recently. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair told a journalism think tank at Oxford University that technology has turned the media into a “feral beast” in which all that matter is “impact” – rising above the clamor, getting noticed, getting a competitive edge. And that accuracy is “often secondary.” Former U.S. President Bill Clinton called on marketers at a Promax convention to help politicians deliver complex messages without turning them into “two dimensional cartoons.” He says some political candidate’s messages don’t get covered because they don’t fit in with how parties and issues are “pre-branded” by the press.
STEPPING INTO THE WAYBACK MACHINE: A year ago, the name dominating the MfM news was Frank Maggio. He’s the Florida developer who tried to buy Nielsen Media Research and, when that failed, announced he was launching his own TV ratings service. Well, a check up since then shows that he did indeed launch a service called Erin Media, which promises a “new approach to the science of television audience analysis.” And he also writes a blog on Media Post’s TV Board. In the June 12 edition of MfM last year, we listed many of the photo and video sharing websites operating then. You can find the entire list by going to media-consultant.blogspot.com and look up that edition in the 2006 archives. And in keeping with the “bash America” theme above, a report released a year ago by Reporters Without Borders put the U.S. at 44th out of a list of 167 countries in terms of press freedom. Seven countries tied for first (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway and Switzerland). North Korea was last.
A MURROW MEA CULPA: My apologies to my good friends at the University of Missouri for failing to note that KBIA-FM, the National Public Radio affiliate staffed by students and managed by university faculty members, won a Murrow award for investigative reporting – its second Murrow in a row. Pretty embarrassing since I used to teach there.
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.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Message From Michael -- May 21, 2007
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.
SWEEPS AND WEBSITES
UPFRONT
TELEVISION’S FUTURE – A CQ REPORT
A MECHANICAL LOOK AT TELEVISION
OUTSOURCING JOURNALISM
COCKTAIL CHATTER
We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael. But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to newsconsultant@aol.com with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
SWEEPS: Theoretically you should be receiving this about 8:00 a.m. Monday morning. That means you have exactly 88 hours left in the May sweeps. Here is an interesting sidebar to the ratings race. According to Nielsen/ Net Ratings the leading network site (in April, so it’s a little old) was Fox with 8.5 Million unique visitors, up 39% from last year. Close behind was ABC with 8.3 Million, up 75% from last year and still close behind was NBC with 8.2 Million unique visitors, up 14% from last year. Trailing in definite last place was CBS with 4.5 Million unique visitors, up only 13% from last year.
UPFRONT: Just as I couldn’t produce this week’s MfM without mentioning sweeps, I couldn’t not mention (yes, I know, a double negative) the Network Upfront presentations for the Fall programming schedule. No comment. Just a mention. Newsletters like Cynopsis and The Programming Insider give better reports.
TELEVISION’S FUTURE – A CQ REPORT: A recently released special report by leading political journalism publication Congressional Quarterly raises the question – Will TV remain the dominant mass medium? Unfortunately, it never actually answers the question, although it provides a nice summary of the various issues. That’s not to say it doesn’t make some interesting points such as audience fragmentation. Then again, you already know about that. But how about the idea that fragmentation has disintegrated the concept of a common culture created by television with its mass audience. Everybody watched I Love Lucy and The Ed Sullivan Show or listened to Top 40 or read the Book-of-the-Month Club selection. No more. What the report does best though is provide some insightful, thought-provoking quotes which are worth repeating. And so I’m going to do just that:
“We’re gonna surround consumers with media. We’re not gonna let them cut us off and move away from our brand.” -- John Skipper, ESPN’s executive vice president for content, making the point that ESPN is no longer a television company, but instead is a ‘sports media company.’
“We’re in a moment in time when media power operates top down from corporate boardrooms and bottom up from teenagers’ bedrooms.” -- Henry Jenkins, director of the comparative media studies program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“The Internet has behaved like a serial killer. First, the print media suffered, and then the music industry suffered. Perhaps television is next.” -- Daniel Franklin, executive editor of The Economist.
“The barrier to entry – the once-formidable cost of shooting and editing footage – has almost disappeared. But what’s still in short supply, and always will rise to the top, is good ideas.” -- Jeffrey Cole, director of the University of Southern California’s Center for the Digital Future, talking about online video and user generated content.
“In 1991 when a bystander videotaped the beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles, the incident was almost unbelievable – not the violence but the recording of it. (But now) the distinction between amateur and professional photojournalists (is) wearing away.” -- James Poniewozik, media critic for Time magazine, talking about cell phone videos.
“The TV is actually growing to other devices… because of the programming.” -- Chris Pizzuro, vice president of digital and new media advertising sales and marketing for Turner Entertainment, making the point that computers and iPods are becoming, in effect, TV sets.
“Advertising is suffering because of the sheer amount of it, the lack of innovation within traditional advertising formats and the power that media fragmentation and technology give to consumers to tune out the noise.” -- Tom Himpe, author of Advertising is Dead: Long Live Advertising.
“It’s a case of the rich getting richer. If people are passionate about your programming, they will watch it and find ways of watching it.” -- Mark Loughney, vice president of sales and strategy research for ABC-TV.
“When we see that big box in the living room, we think of channels. There’s no reason for television to be divided by that, other than convention.” -- Andrew Kantor, technology reporter for the Roanoke Times and columnist for USAToday.com.
“The changes of the next five years will dwarf the changes of the last 50.” -- Jeff Zucker, chief executive of NBC Universal’s television group.
“It’s great to be given the keys to the Library of Congress, but if there’s no card catalog, it’s not much use.” -- Todd Herman, new media strategist for Microsoft, talking about the need for search engines.
“It is now possible – even common – to go about your day in America and consume only what you wish to see and hear.” -- Brian Williams, Anchor, NBC News.
“Ultimately the biggest story of the 21st Century will be the fracturing of the 20th Century audience.” -- Robert J. Thompson, founding director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television, Syracuse University.
“The common culture of my youth is gone for good… splintered beyond repair by the emergence of the Web-based technologies that so maximized and facilitated culture choice as to make the broad-based offerings of the old mass media look bland and unchallenging by comparison.” -- Terry Treachout, media critic.
“If I had to describe the future of TV in one word, it would be -- ‘more’.” -- Mike Bloxham, director of research at Ball State University’s Center for Media Design.
A MECHANICAL LOOK AT TELEVISION: Okay, if the exalted Congressional Quarterly won’t tell us about the future of television, who will? Popular Mechanics will. You remember Popular Mechanics. The magazine that showed your Dad how to put together a tube TV in the 50’s. The magazine’s Senior Technology Editor Glenn Derene makes the point that 70% of Americans go online according to the latest research while Televisions are in 98% of American homes. Anywhere from 15% to 30% of the U.S. population still does not use computers even though they’ve been around for 30 years. Televisions were in 70% of the U.S. homes within 10 years of being introduced and DVD players were in 82% of households within 9 years of introduction. And in case you think he’s being a technological Neanderthal, Derene makes no bones about the fact that PC’s are “far more useful” than TV’s. Instead he argues that PC’s have always been an “awkward consumer electronics” device while TV’s have been easier to understand and use. Of course he notes that will change as people grow up with the more complex computer and, ironically, as TV’s are made more complicated.
And as a side note to this, HDNet founder Mark Cuban and YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley argued before a Congressional subcommittee looking at new technology that online TV is not a threat to traditional TV. They see it as a complementary service, rather than a primary one. And as a side note to the side note, a study by Forrester Research shows that half of European broadband users (who have been earlier adopters than U.S. users) are watching at least some television on their computers.
OUTSOURCING JOURNALISM: All right, I try to avoid reporting on stories that have already been headlined elsewhere, but this is so weird that it’s worth repeating. A ‘news’ operation in California (I was going to say – where else – but that’s too sarcastic) is outsourcing coverage of its local city council meeting to two journalists in India. As I get it, the city council airs its meetings on the local cable channel. That channel is being sent by the folks at Pasadenanow.com over broadband pipes to India where two ‘journalists’ watch it and report on it. I should note that the two journalists were selected from an online ad, and they are both graduates of the UC-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. BTW, the editor and publisher of the Pasadena Now website used to run a clothing business with manufacturing help from Vietnam and India.
STTYWYAK: It’s time to revive an old MfM feature – Studies That Tell You What You Already Know. (BTW -- Pronounced Stee-Wee-Ak.) The latest is a report by eROI that nearly nine out of 10 email marketers (87%) say relevant content within the e-mail message is --- shock of shocks – “very important.” That stunning news is only matched by the fact that eight out of 10 marketers (81%) say deliverability is “very important.”
On the flip side of the relevance coin, a study by market research and consulting firm Focalyst found that – contrary to popular marketing opinion – older people, most notably Baby Boomers, are not as brand loyal as thought. Less than a quarter were loyal to a particular brand of television (22%) or computers (24%) or clothing (27%). The report which notes that adults over age 42 account for $3 Trillion in consumer spending annually ARE loyal when companies give customized service or more personalized attention.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: An enviromental website called zerofootprint.net has designed an online system that allows you to calculate your “carbon footprint” – as in how much carbon you personally generate. More than 12.8 Million new websites have been added to the net in the last five months, according to Netcraft LTD., an increase from 7.5 million in the same period last year. More than half of Americans (59%) say religion’s influence on life is waning, according to a Pew Research poll. And more than half (55%) of global executives say they use, or plan to use, blogs as a business tool, according to research firm Melcrum.
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.
SWEEPS AND WEBSITES
UPFRONT
TELEVISION’S FUTURE – A CQ REPORT
A MECHANICAL LOOK AT TELEVISION
OUTSOURCING JOURNALISM
COCKTAIL CHATTER
We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael. But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to newsconsultant@aol.com with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
SWEEPS: Theoretically you should be receiving this about 8:00 a.m. Monday morning. That means you have exactly 88 hours left in the May sweeps. Here is an interesting sidebar to the ratings race. According to Nielsen/ Net Ratings the leading network site (in April, so it’s a little old) was Fox with 8.5 Million unique visitors, up 39% from last year. Close behind was ABC with 8.3 Million, up 75% from last year and still close behind was NBC with 8.2 Million unique visitors, up 14% from last year. Trailing in definite last place was CBS with 4.5 Million unique visitors, up only 13% from last year.
UPFRONT: Just as I couldn’t produce this week’s MfM without mentioning sweeps, I couldn’t not mention (yes, I know, a double negative) the Network Upfront presentations for the Fall programming schedule. No comment. Just a mention. Newsletters like Cynopsis and The Programming Insider give better reports.
TELEVISION’S FUTURE – A CQ REPORT: A recently released special report by leading political journalism publication Congressional Quarterly raises the question – Will TV remain the dominant mass medium? Unfortunately, it never actually answers the question, although it provides a nice summary of the various issues. That’s not to say it doesn’t make some interesting points such as audience fragmentation. Then again, you already know about that. But how about the idea that fragmentation has disintegrated the concept of a common culture created by television with its mass audience. Everybody watched I Love Lucy and The Ed Sullivan Show or listened to Top 40 or read the Book-of-the-Month Club selection. No more. What the report does best though is provide some insightful, thought-provoking quotes which are worth repeating. And so I’m going to do just that:
“We’re gonna surround consumers with media. We’re not gonna let them cut us off and move away from our brand.” -- John Skipper, ESPN’s executive vice president for content, making the point that ESPN is no longer a television company, but instead is a ‘sports media company.’
“We’re in a moment in time when media power operates top down from corporate boardrooms and bottom up from teenagers’ bedrooms.” -- Henry Jenkins, director of the comparative media studies program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“The Internet has behaved like a serial killer. First, the print media suffered, and then the music industry suffered. Perhaps television is next.” -- Daniel Franklin, executive editor of The Economist.
“The barrier to entry – the once-formidable cost of shooting and editing footage – has almost disappeared. But what’s still in short supply, and always will rise to the top, is good ideas.” -- Jeffrey Cole, director of the University of Southern California’s Center for the Digital Future, talking about online video and user generated content.
“In 1991 when a bystander videotaped the beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles, the incident was almost unbelievable – not the violence but the recording of it. (But now) the distinction between amateur and professional photojournalists (is) wearing away.” -- James Poniewozik, media critic for Time magazine, talking about cell phone videos.
“The TV is actually growing to other devices… because of the programming.” -- Chris Pizzuro, vice president of digital and new media advertising sales and marketing for Turner Entertainment, making the point that computers and iPods are becoming, in effect, TV sets.
“Advertising is suffering because of the sheer amount of it, the lack of innovation within traditional advertising formats and the power that media fragmentation and technology give to consumers to tune out the noise.” -- Tom Himpe, author of Advertising is Dead: Long Live Advertising.
“It’s a case of the rich getting richer. If people are passionate about your programming, they will watch it and find ways of watching it.” -- Mark Loughney, vice president of sales and strategy research for ABC-TV.
“When we see that big box in the living room, we think of channels. There’s no reason for television to be divided by that, other than convention.” -- Andrew Kantor, technology reporter for the Roanoke Times and columnist for USAToday.com.
“The changes of the next five years will dwarf the changes of the last 50.” -- Jeff Zucker, chief executive of NBC Universal’s television group.
“It’s great to be given the keys to the Library of Congress, but if there’s no card catalog, it’s not much use.” -- Todd Herman, new media strategist for Microsoft, talking about the need for search engines.
“It is now possible – even common – to go about your day in America and consume only what you wish to see and hear.” -- Brian Williams, Anchor, NBC News.
“Ultimately the biggest story of the 21st Century will be the fracturing of the 20th Century audience.” -- Robert J. Thompson, founding director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television, Syracuse University.
“The common culture of my youth is gone for good… splintered beyond repair by the emergence of the Web-based technologies that so maximized and facilitated culture choice as to make the broad-based offerings of the old mass media look bland and unchallenging by comparison.” -- Terry Treachout, media critic.
“If I had to describe the future of TV in one word, it would be -- ‘more’.” -- Mike Bloxham, director of research at Ball State University’s Center for Media Design.
A MECHANICAL LOOK AT TELEVISION: Okay, if the exalted Congressional Quarterly won’t tell us about the future of television, who will? Popular Mechanics will. You remember Popular Mechanics. The magazine that showed your Dad how to put together a tube TV in the 50’s. The magazine’s Senior Technology Editor Glenn Derene makes the point that 70% of Americans go online according to the latest research while Televisions are in 98% of American homes. Anywhere from 15% to 30% of the U.S. population still does not use computers even though they’ve been around for 30 years. Televisions were in 70% of the U.S. homes within 10 years of being introduced and DVD players were in 82% of households within 9 years of introduction. And in case you think he’s being a technological Neanderthal, Derene makes no bones about the fact that PC’s are “far more useful” than TV’s. Instead he argues that PC’s have always been an “awkward consumer electronics” device while TV’s have been easier to understand and use. Of course he notes that will change as people grow up with the more complex computer and, ironically, as TV’s are made more complicated.
And as a side note to this, HDNet founder Mark Cuban and YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley argued before a Congressional subcommittee looking at new technology that online TV is not a threat to traditional TV. They see it as a complementary service, rather than a primary one. And as a side note to the side note, a study by Forrester Research shows that half of European broadband users (who have been earlier adopters than U.S. users) are watching at least some television on their computers.
OUTSOURCING JOURNALISM: All right, I try to avoid reporting on stories that have already been headlined elsewhere, but this is so weird that it’s worth repeating. A ‘news’ operation in California (I was going to say – where else – but that’s too sarcastic) is outsourcing coverage of its local city council meeting to two journalists in India. As I get it, the city council airs its meetings on the local cable channel. That channel is being sent by the folks at Pasadenanow.com over broadband pipes to India where two ‘journalists’ watch it and report on it. I should note that the two journalists were selected from an online ad, and they are both graduates of the UC-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. BTW, the editor and publisher of the Pasadena Now website used to run a clothing business with manufacturing help from Vietnam and India.
STTYWYAK: It’s time to revive an old MfM feature – Studies That Tell You What You Already Know. (BTW -- Pronounced Stee-Wee-Ak.) The latest is a report by eROI that nearly nine out of 10 email marketers (87%) say relevant content within the e-mail message is --- shock of shocks – “very important.” That stunning news is only matched by the fact that eight out of 10 marketers (81%) say deliverability is “very important.”
On the flip side of the relevance coin, a study by market research and consulting firm Focalyst found that – contrary to popular marketing opinion – older people, most notably Baby Boomers, are not as brand loyal as thought. Less than a quarter were loyal to a particular brand of television (22%) or computers (24%) or clothing (27%). The report which notes that adults over age 42 account for $3 Trillion in consumer spending annually ARE loyal when companies give customized service or more personalized attention.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: An enviromental website called zerofootprint.net has designed an online system that allows you to calculate your “carbon footprint” – as in how much carbon you personally generate. More than 12.8 Million new websites have been added to the net in the last five months, according to Netcraft LTD., an increase from 7.5 million in the same period last year. More than half of Americans (59%) say religion’s influence on life is waning, according to a Pew Research poll. And more than half (55%) of global executives say they use, or plan to use, blogs as a business tool, according to research firm Melcrum.
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.
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Message From Michael --March 12, 2007
TAKE A BYTE OUT OF TIME
CITIZEN JOURNALISM ADDS TO THE MIX
IT’S NOT WHAT YOU KNOW; IT’S WHO YOU KNOW
MORE SOCIALIZING AND NICHE NETWORKING
R.E.M. TO THE RESCUE
COCKTAIL CHATTER – BIG BYTES
We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael. But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to newsconsultant@aol.com with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
TAKE A BYTE OUT OF TIME: The amount of digital information generated in the world last year alone was equal to 3 million times the amount of information in all the books ever written, according to research firm IDC. An article in MIT’s Technology Review says that’s like 12 stack of books that each reach from the Earth to the Sun. In tech talk, that’s 161 exabytes of data. (An Exabyte is a billion gigabytes.) A study three years earlier in 2003 by researchers at the University of California-Berkeley totaled the global information production that year at 5 exabytes. That’s the equivalent of 37,000 libraries of Congress. By the year 2010, three years from now, there will be more data generated than there will be places to put it. Technically speaking. A report by research firm IDC says last year the world had 185 exabytes of storage available and by 2010 it will have 601 exabytes. But the amount of ‘stuff’ generated will jump from 161 exabytes last year to 988 exabytes in 2010. (And if you want another techie word to throw around in cocktail conversation, 1,000 exabytes equal one zettabyte.) Luckily, the report cited in MIT’s Technology Review notes that much of the data does get deleted and the methods of storage continue to improve. Even so, the article notes that the amount of information being generated will put pressure on developing better technologies to find, sort and secure the material. One last interesting factoid in this age of YouTube and MySpace from the report – by the year 2010, 70% of the world’s digital data will be created by individuals not corporations.
CITIZEN JOURNALISM ADDS TO THE MIX: Starting this week, several broadcast groups are joining in the citizen journalism movement. Television stations owned by Fisher Communications, Journal Broadcast Group and Granite Broadcasting will invite citizen journalists’ to produce anything from online news footage to complete reports. The groups plan to start airing pieces later this month in the different markets under the umbrella name of YouNewsTV. Regular readers of MfM know that several national and international news organizations, including MSNBC, Reuters and The Weather Channel, have already started similar programs. And although the Broadcasting and Cable magazine article emphasizes that this is a local effort, I should note it is not the first. Pappas Telecasting has its own citizen journalism website called communitycorrespondent.com. The president and CEO of Broadcast Interactive Media which put together the three group plan emphasized that it is a “revenue-driving initiative (and) if the video is not suitable to have advertising or is copyrighted material, it is not going up.”In a very much related note, BusinessWeek’s Jackie Coyle reports that TV networks and advertisers are increasingly adopting the YouTube model of viewer created content for a simple reason – they know a good trend when they see it. She makes the interesting point that those people creating videos for the web want to be on TV because it’s “the big leagues.” On the flip side, with traditional media in something of a free-fall, executives are looking for anything to stop it. Coyle scores the quote of the week, from Current TV co-creator Joel Hyatt who says, “this is not a genie that’s going back in the bottle.”
IT’S NOT WHAT YOU KNOW; IT’S WHO YOU KNOW: Remember that old saw? Well, here are some people you should know. It’s PC World’s list of the most important people on the web. Now, some you know, or at least know of – Larry Page, Sergey Brin who founded Google and Eric Schmidt who runs it; Steve Jobs whose name is synonymous with Apple; Bram Cohen, co-founder of BitTorrent; Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia; Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist; Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, co-founders of YouTube; Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, co-founders of Skype and KaZaA. What I liked about the PC World article is the semi debunking note that Time magazine’s Person of the Year – You – would not be making all those viral videos and doing all that social networking without these people. What I found particularly interesting was the people I don’t know but would like to know. People like John Doerr, a Venture Capitalist with the firm of Kleiner, Perkins, Caulfield & Byers, whose investing in tech businesses, the magazine says, puts him at “the center of gravity in the Internet.” Or how about Paul Graham, Trevor Blackwell, Robert Morris and Jessica Livingston, co-founders of Y-Combinator, which the magazine says doles out smaller amounts of money, instead of huge chunks, to ‘potential mini-Googles.’ Then there’s the people I vaguely know but would like to know. For example, if you want to understand the war in Iraq, Mohammed and Omar Fadhill are Iraqis living in Baghdad whose blog, Iraq the Model, shows you the war from the citizen journalist power of view. If you really want to keep up with the best of the best in news, you have to keep up with Gabe Rivera, who created website Techmeme, which, as the magazine puts it, harnesses the blogosphere’s investigative power. After writing a news story headlined, “Anna Nicole Smith’s condition downgraded to dead,” how could you not want to read about Drew Curtis, founder of Fark.com where current news is dissected. And if you want to know if you’re in with the in crowd, then you need to know Tila Tequila. The singer/ model/ actress has redefined the word ‘friend’ with – count them – 1.6 Million MySpace user-friends, 56 million page views and 1,734,374 comments
MORE SOCIALIZING: You may remember a previous MfM talked about the social networking or social media revolution (which is the word all the studies used) coming to the digital and business world. Well, as further proof, add all these companies to the list. – Reuters, Netscape, Cisco, USA Today, Royal Dutch Airlines and Velvet Puffin. Now, if you just went, “huh?” on that last name, I understand. Velvet Puffin is a Singapore-based firm that has joined the long list of companies jumping on the social networking bandwagon, with networking software for use on mobile devices. Reuters is building a social networking site for fund managers and traders; Royal Dutch Airlines is building a social networking site for entrepreneurs with special interests in China and Africa; Cisco which is better known for development of the Internet technical backbone has bought Tribe.net, an also-ran in social networking websites overshadowed by YouTube and MySpace; and USA Today has revamped its website to add in social networking features. All of which seems to confirm the prediction by Netscape co-founder Marc Andreesen in an article in The New York Times that social networks will be everywhere, becoming more specialized and personalized niche websites. His Ning.com website is designed to provide the interface and bandwidth for people interested in starting their own social networks. Marketing website Marketingprofs.com says social networks are part of a “democratization of content creation.”
NICHE NETWORKING: A sort of variation on the specialized social networking movement noted in the previous article is the announcement that startup webcompany Next New Networks plans to launch 101 ‘micro-networks’ over the next five years. The websites will target small, different communities and brands. For example, the first ones to launch include channelfederator.com which are cartoons sent in by users, pulpsecret.com which focuses on comic book news, and threadbanger.com which looks at fashion designers.
R.E.M. TO THE RESCUE: Athens-based band R.E.M. will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame tonight. Now, aside from the fact that I live in Athens, why is this worth noting? The event tonight (March 12th) will be carried Live – not just on television (on VH1) but also on-line (on AOL). Remember the worldwide on-line live presentation of the Live Concert? The move marks another milestone in the merging, converging, diverging digital and analog world.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: Presidential candidate John Edwards opened up a campaign headquarters on virtual world Second Life. Okay, that’s weird enough, but what’s even weirder is a group of “anarchist hippies” attacked his virtual world headquarters. On a semi-related note, Sony has announced it is planning to launch virtual worlds as part of its Game 3.0 push. China has launched a successful anti-satellite weapons test, knocking out one of its own weather satellites with a ballistic missile. Okay, that’s bad enough because it raises concerns the Chinese could do the same to an American or other nation’s satellite; but what’s been missed is that this is the largest debris-generating event in earth orbit ever recorded, with 917 pieces of debris recorded – debris which can hit other satellites.
SELF-SERVING PLUG: But a good one nevertheless. We here at the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication are offering an all-day Bluejeans Workshop which is “short on philosophy but long on helpful, practical information.” The workshop is actually four concurrent workshops on reporting, shooting and editing but all with one theme – good storytelling. Presenters include Wayne Freedman, storyteller extraordinaire from KGO-TV and author of the book – It Takes More Than Good Looks; WYFF-TV photographer John Hendon who has won more videography awards than just about anybody; former NBC editor and NPPA video editing instructor James ‘Butch” Townsley; and CNN ‘digital news gatherer’ Bryan Pearson. The workshop on Saturday, March 31, costs all of $25, (and that includes lunch) thanks in part to corporate partner, CNN. For more info, go to http://www.grady.uga.edu/Bluejeans/.
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.
CITIZEN JOURNALISM ADDS TO THE MIX
IT’S NOT WHAT YOU KNOW; IT’S WHO YOU KNOW
MORE SOCIALIZING AND NICHE NETWORKING
R.E.M. TO THE RESCUE
COCKTAIL CHATTER – BIG BYTES
We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael. But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to newsconsultant@aol.com with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
TAKE A BYTE OUT OF TIME: The amount of digital information generated in the world last year alone was equal to 3 million times the amount of information in all the books ever written, according to research firm IDC. An article in MIT’s Technology Review says that’s like 12 stack of books that each reach from the Earth to the Sun. In tech talk, that’s 161 exabytes of data. (An Exabyte is a billion gigabytes.) A study three years earlier in 2003 by researchers at the University of California-Berkeley totaled the global information production that year at 5 exabytes. That’s the equivalent of 37,000 libraries of Congress. By the year 2010, three years from now, there will be more data generated than there will be places to put it. Technically speaking. A report by research firm IDC says last year the world had 185 exabytes of storage available and by 2010 it will have 601 exabytes. But the amount of ‘stuff’ generated will jump from 161 exabytes last year to 988 exabytes in 2010. (And if you want another techie word to throw around in cocktail conversation, 1,000 exabytes equal one zettabyte.) Luckily, the report cited in MIT’s Technology Review notes that much of the data does get deleted and the methods of storage continue to improve. Even so, the article notes that the amount of information being generated will put pressure on developing better technologies to find, sort and secure the material. One last interesting factoid in this age of YouTube and MySpace from the report – by the year 2010, 70% of the world’s digital data will be created by individuals not corporations.
CITIZEN JOURNALISM ADDS TO THE MIX: Starting this week, several broadcast groups are joining in the citizen journalism movement. Television stations owned by Fisher Communications, Journal Broadcast Group and Granite Broadcasting will invite citizen journalists’ to produce anything from online news footage to complete reports. The groups plan to start airing pieces later this month in the different markets under the umbrella name of YouNewsTV. Regular readers of MfM know that several national and international news organizations, including MSNBC, Reuters and The Weather Channel, have already started similar programs. And although the Broadcasting and Cable magazine article emphasizes that this is a local effort, I should note it is not the first. Pappas Telecasting has its own citizen journalism website called communitycorrespondent.com. The president and CEO of Broadcast Interactive Media which put together the three group plan emphasized that it is a “revenue-driving initiative (and) if the video is not suitable to have advertising or is copyrighted material, it is not going up.”In a very much related note, BusinessWeek’s Jackie Coyle reports that TV networks and advertisers are increasingly adopting the YouTube model of viewer created content for a simple reason – they know a good trend when they see it. She makes the interesting point that those people creating videos for the web want to be on TV because it’s “the big leagues.” On the flip side, with traditional media in something of a free-fall, executives are looking for anything to stop it. Coyle scores the quote of the week, from Current TV co-creator Joel Hyatt who says, “this is not a genie that’s going back in the bottle.”
IT’S NOT WHAT YOU KNOW; IT’S WHO YOU KNOW: Remember that old saw? Well, here are some people you should know. It’s PC World’s list of the most important people on the web. Now, some you know, or at least know of – Larry Page, Sergey Brin who founded Google and Eric Schmidt who runs it; Steve Jobs whose name is synonymous with Apple; Bram Cohen, co-founder of BitTorrent; Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia; Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist; Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, co-founders of YouTube; Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, co-founders of Skype and KaZaA. What I liked about the PC World article is the semi debunking note that Time magazine’s Person of the Year – You – would not be making all those viral videos and doing all that social networking without these people. What I found particularly interesting was the people I don’t know but would like to know. People like John Doerr, a Venture Capitalist with the firm of Kleiner, Perkins, Caulfield & Byers, whose investing in tech businesses, the magazine says, puts him at “the center of gravity in the Internet.” Or how about Paul Graham, Trevor Blackwell, Robert Morris and Jessica Livingston, co-founders of Y-Combinator, which the magazine says doles out smaller amounts of money, instead of huge chunks, to ‘potential mini-Googles.’ Then there’s the people I vaguely know but would like to know. For example, if you want to understand the war in Iraq, Mohammed and Omar Fadhill are Iraqis living in Baghdad whose blog, Iraq the Model, shows you the war from the citizen journalist power of view. If you really want to keep up with the best of the best in news, you have to keep up with Gabe Rivera, who created website Techmeme, which, as the magazine puts it, harnesses the blogosphere’s investigative power. After writing a news story headlined, “Anna Nicole Smith’s condition downgraded to dead,” how could you not want to read about Drew Curtis, founder of Fark.com where current news is dissected. And if you want to know if you’re in with the in crowd, then you need to know Tila Tequila. The singer/ model/ actress has redefined the word ‘friend’ with – count them – 1.6 Million MySpace user-friends, 56 million page views and 1,734,374 comments
MORE SOCIALIZING: You may remember a previous MfM talked about the social networking or social media revolution (which is the word all the studies used) coming to the digital and business world. Well, as further proof, add all these companies to the list. – Reuters, Netscape, Cisco, USA Today, Royal Dutch Airlines and Velvet Puffin. Now, if you just went, “huh?” on that last name, I understand. Velvet Puffin is a Singapore-based firm that has joined the long list of companies jumping on the social networking bandwagon, with networking software for use on mobile devices. Reuters is building a social networking site for fund managers and traders; Royal Dutch Airlines is building a social networking site for entrepreneurs with special interests in China and Africa; Cisco which is better known for development of the Internet technical backbone has bought Tribe.net, an also-ran in social networking websites overshadowed by YouTube and MySpace; and USA Today has revamped its website to add in social networking features. All of which seems to confirm the prediction by Netscape co-founder Marc Andreesen in an article in The New York Times that social networks will be everywhere, becoming more specialized and personalized niche websites. His Ning.com website is designed to provide the interface and bandwidth for people interested in starting their own social networks. Marketing website Marketingprofs.com says social networks are part of a “democratization of content creation.”
NICHE NETWORKING: A sort of variation on the specialized social networking movement noted in the previous article is the announcement that startup webcompany Next New Networks plans to launch 101 ‘micro-networks’ over the next five years. The websites will target small, different communities and brands. For example, the first ones to launch include channelfederator.com which are cartoons sent in by users, pulpsecret.com which focuses on comic book news, and threadbanger.com which looks at fashion designers.
R.E.M. TO THE RESCUE: Athens-based band R.E.M. will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame tonight. Now, aside from the fact that I live in Athens, why is this worth noting? The event tonight (March 12th) will be carried Live – not just on television (on VH1) but also on-line (on AOL). Remember the worldwide on-line live presentation of the Live Concert? The move marks another milestone in the merging, converging, diverging digital and analog world.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: Presidential candidate John Edwards opened up a campaign headquarters on virtual world Second Life. Okay, that’s weird enough, but what’s even weirder is a group of “anarchist hippies” attacked his virtual world headquarters. On a semi-related note, Sony has announced it is planning to launch virtual worlds as part of its Game 3.0 push. China has launched a successful anti-satellite weapons test, knocking out one of its own weather satellites with a ballistic missile. Okay, that’s bad enough because it raises concerns the Chinese could do the same to an American or other nation’s satellite; but what’s been missed is that this is the largest debris-generating event in earth orbit ever recorded, with 917 pieces of debris recorded – debris which can hit other satellites.
SELF-SERVING PLUG: But a good one nevertheless. We here at the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication are offering an all-day Bluejeans Workshop which is “short on philosophy but long on helpful, practical information.” The workshop is actually four concurrent workshops on reporting, shooting and editing but all with one theme – good storytelling. Presenters include Wayne Freedman, storyteller extraordinaire from KGO-TV and author of the book – It Takes More Than Good Looks; WYFF-TV photographer John Hendon who has won more videography awards than just about anybody; former NBC editor and NPPA video editing instructor James ‘Butch” Townsley; and CNN ‘digital news gatherer’ Bryan Pearson. The workshop on Saturday, March 31, costs all of $25, (and that includes lunch) thanks in part to corporate partner, CNN. For more info, go to http://www.grady.uga.edu/Bluejeans/.
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.
Monday, March 05, 2007
Message from Michael -- March 5, 2007
THE TWO SIDES OF THE ONLINE VIDEO COIN
SING IT – THAT’S COM-MUN-I-TAIN-MENT
THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER
FACT OF THE WEEK
THINGS TO LOOK OUT FOR
COCKTAIL CHATTER – RAZZIES, ESTONIA AND HALAL
A FOOTNOTE – THE NEWS WARS
We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael. But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to newsconsultant@aol.com with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
THE TWO SIDES OF THE ONLINE VIDEO COIN: The Online Publishers’ Association reports that nearly a fourth of U.S. consumers with web access watch online videos at least once a week, while 70% have viewed an online video ad and, of those who have viewed an online ad, a third have gone to the advertiser’s website. A survey by the Leichtman Research Group has a similar but slightly different take, reporting that 4% of ALL adults over the age of 18 in the United States watch video online every day and that an additional 14% watch online video once a week. By way of comparison, the report notes that 93% of all adults spend at least one hour A DAY, on average, watching TV. The survey of what it called ‘non-TV video services’ (meaning not just broadband, but iPods and cell phones) found that men 18-34 accounted for 41% of all online video viewing, although the demographic accounted for only 14% of the sample. What I found particularly interesting, and somewhat buried, was the statement that while total online video usage has increased in the past year, the percentage of adults watching online video remains relatively unchanged. I take that to mean that a small minority are just watching more. Yet, the survey reports that only 8% of those who watch video online ‘strongly agree’ that they watch less TV.
In fact, the researchers at Knowledge Network, which uses a web-based consumer panel, says its study shows that broadband streaming of TV programs is good for the networks AND good for the advertisers. On the network side, the study says three-quarters (78%) of TV network website viewers report that being able to watch online “increases their involvement with a program,” and that a quarter (25%) report they are watching the actual TV program more often because of the availability of the Internet version. On the advertiser side, the study says nearly half (49%) of THOSE viewers say they would give more consideration to sponsors who support such streaming videos, and THOSE viewers (30%) are more likely than Internet users overall (22%) to buy from companies that advertise on their favorite programs. The head of research for Knowledge Network says it all builds equity for the network and advertisers.
SING IT – THAT’S COM-MUN-I-TAIN MENT: Not even Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire could make it sound right. (I’m referring, of course, to the movie That’s Entertainment. Now, when I say That’s Entertainment, the younger people in the MfM crowd will think of Jam while the older crowd will say, “jam who?” Anyway… ). Research firm Piper Jaffray coined the term “Communitainment” which it says is the collision of community, communication and entertainment on the Internet. In a report titled “The User Revolution,” the group says global online advertising revenue is expected to reach $81.1 Billion by 2011 and that “communitainment is taking time away from other, traditional types of content consumption on the Internet.” The firm was on a word coinage binge and created another, ‘usites,’ to refer to user generated sites which are drawing from traditional sites. The report also warns -- or counsels, depending on how you look at it – about the growth of user generated brands with consumers taking control of content consumption and branding; media fragmentation with advertisers having to buy more inventory to have the desired impact; and the ‘golden search’ where search has become the new portal.Coincidentally, and somewhat oddly, Hitwise, which describes itself as a ‘competitive intelligence service,’ also reports that its research confirms the growth of consumer generated media (CGM) which it says is causing mainstream media to “scramble.” (I say ‘oddly’ because the report is only recently making news, although when I investigated it, I found the report was originally released in November of last year.) The report focuses on social networking sites, with the top 20 sites doubling their market share of visits year to year; photo sharing websites which include not just Flickr (which you will have heard about from MfM) but also Photobucket which is described as the clear leader in ‘image hosting’ as well as Imageshack and Slide; and user generated video which the report says has seen “a drastic increase” in the past year with user generated videos like TMX Elmo and Pokemon Theme Music Video rivaling established names like Weird Al Yankovic’s White and Nerdy.
THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER: Proof that beauty, and perceptions, are all in the eye of the beholder. The Piper Jaffray report says ad networks are experiencing increased demand because of Internet fragmentation and the need for targeted inventory while ad agencies are evolving into more sophisticated, technology-savvy entities. Yet a survey by Forrester Research finds that clients believe ad agencies are unprepared for the way consumers use media and technology, and warned that the bigger agencies must integrate with smaller media outfits if they want to remain relevant. Not surprisingly, the majority of ad agency executives in the survey think they’re well prepared and well positioned to deal with the changes. AdAge did a similar survey to find out whether traditional media felt ready to use digital media to reach consumers, or as the article put it – are they ready to deliver their clients’ message to wired customers. In any case, the article says, the upshot was – “could you repeat the question.” And for those journalists, broadcasters and other traditional media types, wondering what advertising has to do with them, the point is – ask yourself the same question. Are you really ready?
FACT OF THE WEEK: Nearly 18,000 media employees lost their jobs last year, and that, according to an article in Broadcasting and Cable, is the biggest group of layoffs since the dotcom bubble burst in 2001. The figures from New York based global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas for 2006 are 88% higher than the year before. Reporter Anne Becker writes that the ‘grim reality’ for the media giants is that “staying ahead often means cutting heads” and that while some jobs were ‘obsolesced’ by new technology, other cuts have come from units that “were once sexy but are now less so compared with shiny, new digital products.” And the factoid of the week is a line from her article talking about the rush to introduce new digital products. It reads, “revenue from these products remains a fraction of the advertising revenue from good old linear TV and will probably stay that way forever.” If you would like to read the full article, it’s at: http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6419245.html&referral=supp.
THINGS TO LOOK OUT FOR: You may have heard that the Fox News Channel has started its own news satire show on Sunday nights called 1D2 Hour News Show as a counter to Jon Stewart’s Daily Show. Well, now, Fox is following that up with a half-hour of stories derived from the blogosphere and titled “It’s Out There.” And later this month, satirical weekly and website The Onion is taking on broadcast journalism with its own streaming video ‘news’ network. The paper which is known for such stories as “expert too lazy for TV” and “scientists discover new cable channel” has established its own production unit to create the viral videos. And if you can’t wait until the end of the month, try “hipster magazine” Vice’s website VBS.TV which produces comedic, satirical and some amazingly biting citizen journalism videos on everything from traveling across the America to visiting the largest gun market in the world.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: The alternative to the Academy Awards is the Razzies, the “golden raspberry awards” for the worst in film-making. “Winners,” if that’s the right word are Basic Instinct 2, for worst picture, Marlon and Shawn Wayans for worst actors in Little Man, and Sharon Stone for worst actress in Basic Instinct 2. The little country of Estonia has successfully introduced e-voting, online voting, with nearly 30,000 votes cast online out of 104,000. Coca-Cola plans to launch a diet coke with vitamins and minerals while Pepsi is planning to introduce a higher-caffeine diet cola. And if your tastes run to something stronger, Jack Daniels is running a sweepstake in which the prizes are whiskey barrels, valued at $96 – empty, of course. Two British companies are introducing Halal prepared baby food. Halal food is prepared according to Islamic religious rules. This is actually fairly serious issue because the World Health Organization reports that iron deficiency is a problem in several countries because of the lack of such prepared foods.
A FOOTNOTE: The PBS program Frontline is doing a four-part series on the News Wars. This should be, and will be, a whole MfM of its own. However, on the briefest of reviews, I have to say that there was little in the program that is new to anybody following media trends. Even so, one of the points made in the program is so basic, yet so important, that I thought it was worth noting. And that is the idea that ‘new media’ is dependent on ‘old media’ in the sense that most of the new media does not do original reporting. Somewhere, some how, somebody must initiate, inquire, investigate. That has been the job of ‘old media.’ Much of the new media simply aggregates that information, and inasmuch as it does so, the program notes, it fails to stimulate original thought. And therein lies the challenge and questions about citizen journalism and consumer generated media.
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.
SING IT – THAT’S COM-MUN-I-TAIN-MENT
THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER
FACT OF THE WEEK
THINGS TO LOOK OUT FOR
COCKTAIL CHATTER – RAZZIES, ESTONIA AND HALAL
A FOOTNOTE – THE NEWS WARS
We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael. But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to newsconsultant@aol.com with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
THE TWO SIDES OF THE ONLINE VIDEO COIN: The Online Publishers’ Association reports that nearly a fourth of U.S. consumers with web access watch online videos at least once a week, while 70% have viewed an online video ad and, of those who have viewed an online ad, a third have gone to the advertiser’s website. A survey by the Leichtman Research Group has a similar but slightly different take, reporting that 4% of ALL adults over the age of 18 in the United States watch video online every day and that an additional 14% watch online video once a week. By way of comparison, the report notes that 93% of all adults spend at least one hour A DAY, on average, watching TV. The survey of what it called ‘non-TV video services’ (meaning not just broadband, but iPods and cell phones) found that men 18-34 accounted for 41% of all online video viewing, although the demographic accounted for only 14% of the sample. What I found particularly interesting, and somewhat buried, was the statement that while total online video usage has increased in the past year, the percentage of adults watching online video remains relatively unchanged. I take that to mean that a small minority are just watching more. Yet, the survey reports that only 8% of those who watch video online ‘strongly agree’ that they watch less TV.
In fact, the researchers at Knowledge Network, which uses a web-based consumer panel, says its study shows that broadband streaming of TV programs is good for the networks AND good for the advertisers. On the network side, the study says three-quarters (78%) of TV network website viewers report that being able to watch online “increases their involvement with a program,” and that a quarter (25%) report they are watching the actual TV program more often because of the availability of the Internet version. On the advertiser side, the study says nearly half (49%) of THOSE viewers say they would give more consideration to sponsors who support such streaming videos, and THOSE viewers (30%) are more likely than Internet users overall (22%) to buy from companies that advertise on their favorite programs. The head of research for Knowledge Network says it all builds equity for the network and advertisers.
SING IT – THAT’S COM-MUN-I-TAIN MENT: Not even Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire could make it sound right. (I’m referring, of course, to the movie That’s Entertainment. Now, when I say That’s Entertainment, the younger people in the MfM crowd will think of Jam while the older crowd will say, “jam who?” Anyway… ). Research firm Piper Jaffray coined the term “Communitainment” which it says is the collision of community, communication and entertainment on the Internet. In a report titled “The User Revolution,” the group says global online advertising revenue is expected to reach $81.1 Billion by 2011 and that “communitainment is taking time away from other, traditional types of content consumption on the Internet.” The firm was on a word coinage binge and created another, ‘usites,’ to refer to user generated sites which are drawing from traditional sites. The report also warns -- or counsels, depending on how you look at it – about the growth of user generated brands with consumers taking control of content consumption and branding; media fragmentation with advertisers having to buy more inventory to have the desired impact; and the ‘golden search’ where search has become the new portal.Coincidentally, and somewhat oddly, Hitwise, which describes itself as a ‘competitive intelligence service,’ also reports that its research confirms the growth of consumer generated media (CGM) which it says is causing mainstream media to “scramble.” (I say ‘oddly’ because the report is only recently making news, although when I investigated it, I found the report was originally released in November of last year.) The report focuses on social networking sites, with the top 20 sites doubling their market share of visits year to year; photo sharing websites which include not just Flickr (which you will have heard about from MfM) but also Photobucket which is described as the clear leader in ‘image hosting’ as well as Imageshack and Slide; and user generated video which the report says has seen “a drastic increase” in the past year with user generated videos like TMX Elmo and Pokemon Theme Music Video rivaling established names like Weird Al Yankovic’s White and Nerdy.
THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER: Proof that beauty, and perceptions, are all in the eye of the beholder. The Piper Jaffray report says ad networks are experiencing increased demand because of Internet fragmentation and the need for targeted inventory while ad agencies are evolving into more sophisticated, technology-savvy entities. Yet a survey by Forrester Research finds that clients believe ad agencies are unprepared for the way consumers use media and technology, and warned that the bigger agencies must integrate with smaller media outfits if they want to remain relevant. Not surprisingly, the majority of ad agency executives in the survey think they’re well prepared and well positioned to deal with the changes. AdAge did a similar survey to find out whether traditional media felt ready to use digital media to reach consumers, or as the article put it – are they ready to deliver their clients’ message to wired customers. In any case, the article says, the upshot was – “could you repeat the question.” And for those journalists, broadcasters and other traditional media types, wondering what advertising has to do with them, the point is – ask yourself the same question. Are you really ready?
FACT OF THE WEEK: Nearly 18,000 media employees lost their jobs last year, and that, according to an article in Broadcasting and Cable, is the biggest group of layoffs since the dotcom bubble burst in 2001. The figures from New York based global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas for 2006 are 88% higher than the year before. Reporter Anne Becker writes that the ‘grim reality’ for the media giants is that “staying ahead often means cutting heads” and that while some jobs were ‘obsolesced’ by new technology, other cuts have come from units that “were once sexy but are now less so compared with shiny, new digital products.” And the factoid of the week is a line from her article talking about the rush to introduce new digital products. It reads, “revenue from these products remains a fraction of the advertising revenue from good old linear TV and will probably stay that way forever.” If you would like to read the full article, it’s at: http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6419245.html&referral=supp.
THINGS TO LOOK OUT FOR: You may have heard that the Fox News Channel has started its own news satire show on Sunday nights called 1D2 Hour News Show as a counter to Jon Stewart’s Daily Show. Well, now, Fox is following that up with a half-hour of stories derived from the blogosphere and titled “It’s Out There.” And later this month, satirical weekly and website The Onion is taking on broadcast journalism with its own streaming video ‘news’ network. The paper which is known for such stories as “expert too lazy for TV” and “scientists discover new cable channel” has established its own production unit to create the viral videos. And if you can’t wait until the end of the month, try “hipster magazine” Vice’s website VBS.TV which produces comedic, satirical and some amazingly biting citizen journalism videos on everything from traveling across the America to visiting the largest gun market in the world.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: The alternative to the Academy Awards is the Razzies, the “golden raspberry awards” for the worst in film-making. “Winners,” if that’s the right word are Basic Instinct 2, for worst picture, Marlon and Shawn Wayans for worst actors in Little Man, and Sharon Stone for worst actress in Basic Instinct 2. The little country of Estonia has successfully introduced e-voting, online voting, with nearly 30,000 votes cast online out of 104,000. Coca-Cola plans to launch a diet coke with vitamins and minerals while Pepsi is planning to introduce a higher-caffeine diet cola. And if your tastes run to something stronger, Jack Daniels is running a sweepstake in which the prizes are whiskey barrels, valued at $96 – empty, of course. Two British companies are introducing Halal prepared baby food. Halal food is prepared according to Islamic religious rules. This is actually fairly serious issue because the World Health Organization reports that iron deficiency is a problem in several countries because of the lack of such prepared foods.
A FOOTNOTE: The PBS program Frontline is doing a four-part series on the News Wars. This should be, and will be, a whole MfM of its own. However, on the briefest of reviews, I have to say that there was little in the program that is new to anybody following media trends. Even so, one of the points made in the program is so basic, yet so important, that I thought it was worth noting. And that is the idea that ‘new media’ is dependent on ‘old media’ in the sense that most of the new media does not do original reporting. Somewhere, some how, somebody must initiate, inquire, investigate. That has been the job of ‘old media.’ Much of the new media simply aggregates that information, and inasmuch as it does so, the program notes, it fails to stimulate original thought. And therein lies the challenge and questions about citizen journalism and consumer generated media.
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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