MOTHRA VERSUS GODZILLA
LET THE COMPETITION CONTINUE
NO LONGER A TWO WAY BATTLE
COCKTAIL CHATTER
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MOTHRA VERSUS GODZILLA: It’s the classic film, but did you know that Godzilla also went up against King Kong, and creatures known as Biollante, Destoroyah and King Ghidorah? Sometimes Godzilla was the hero and sometimes the anti-hero. Well, there are a similar series of contests going on, with the definition of who the hero is, depending on your point of view. The Toshiba developed HD-DVD and the Sony developed Blu-Ray are battling over who controls the home video sales market with releases of movies on the competing formats. Microsoft meanwhile has launched Silverlight to try and wrest the content creating crown from Adobe’s Flash multimedia authoring program. And, according to research call center Bridge Ratings, old media Radio may be facing a challenge from new media Cell Phones for news and sports info. Although radio remains the primary source by a two to one margin (65% versus 30%), the percentage of consumers picking radio for news and sports info dropped 11% while the percentage picking cell phones increased 11% in the last two years. But the big showdown pits traditional media Television against new media Broadband video. The odds are similar to the radio versus cell phone battle, but again it’s all a matter of perspective.
A study by ‘marketing research consultancy’ Ipsos Insight says even among consumers who ‘actively stream and download video content,’ three quarters of their video consumption (75%) is through a television set with only 11% being viewed on a PC. On the flip side, communications giant Motorola released a study of European broadband users which shows nearly half (45%) are watching some TV on the Internet. And even though the Ipsos report says Americans still are “entranced” by the increasing variety of content options available on their TV’s, a different study by media agency Publicis says the public is becoming blasé about TV’s offerings, in prime time in particular, with more than a third (38%) saying they’re less satisfied than in past years. The Washington Post reported that 2.5 Million fewer people tuned into the major networks this Spring season compared to last year, although the article says it is uncertain whether the change is a result of fewer TV viewers from Web use or time shifting. Nielsen Media Research released a report saying that the ‘decline’ in TV viewing is attributable to DVR usage and that people are actually watching as much as before. Meanwhile, the major networks have all gotten into the business of delivering program on the Internet. The biggest and latest player may be the British Broadcasting Corporation which unveiled a new streaming video player called iPlayer with its entire schedule soon available.
And even among the broadband video operations, there is a Godzilla like battle going on. Joost which was created by the Scandinavian duo who created Skype and Kazaa is quickly becoming the 600-pound gorilla of the broadband TV market, lining up major networks AND major advertisers. But it is not the only one, by any stretch of the imagination. Babelgum uses the same peer-to-peer technology (in which bits of data are shared among multiple computers instead of being housed on just one server) to distribute TV content. Even more unusual is Democracy Player, an open source TV video player created by a group called Participatory Culture Foundation which wants to build a “new, open mass medium of online television… (because) we think it’s a problem that a small number of corporations control mass media.”
As a side note to all this, a public thank you to Raycom CIO Dave Folsom for getting me an invite to beta test the Joost player. I’ll let you know what my admittedly semi-informed testing shows, after I’ve had a chance to kick the wheels for a while.
As a foot note to the declining viewership, reporter Paul Farhi reports in The Washington Post that the number of people watching Washington’s four leading news stations at 5pm and 6pm fell by about 8% overall from May 2006 to May 2007. But, he says if you go back to May of 1997, the change is even dramatic with a decline of 25% in the late news viewing and 37% in the 6pm viewing.
LET THE COMPETITION CONTINUE: As long as we’re on this battle theme, let’s look at some others. In social networking sites, the 16-hundred pound gorilla is, of course, MySpace with nearly 80% of the market, according to research firm Hitwise, while the 6-hundred pound monkey is Facebook with nearly 12% of the market. The chimpanzees of the social networking sites are Bebo and Imeem which get about one percent, focusing on music and video, and Black Planet which also gets about one percent focusing on the African American community. When it comes to virtual worlds, the 800-pound gorilla is Second Life which we’ve talked about in previous MfM’s. But a Swedish software company may soon make a monkey out of them with plans to build a massive virtual universe for China. The company, MindArk, says the Chinese virtual world will be able to handle 7 Million players at the same time and is aiming at 150 million users who are expected to generate $1 Billion in activity every year. For comparison’s sake, Second Life had 1.3 Million people log into the site in March, an increase of 46% since the beginning of the year, with most those visitors from Europe and only a fifth from North America. And in the war of the sexes, males account for nearly two thirds (63%) of the podcasting audience with only a third (37%) being female.
NO LONGER A TWO-WAY BATTLE: Let’s keep the theme going. Traditionally the battle for website NEWS and information users has been between television stations and newspapers. Regular readers of MfM will remember The Media Audit study of websites in 84 cities. A recent article in Editor and Publisher interprets the report as showing the television websites are getting stronger compared to newspaper websites. Four of the top websites are television sites (WRAL, KUSA, KENS and WVTM) and a fifth is a newspaper-TV combo (San Antonio Express News and KENS). The question, according to Bob Jordan, president of International Demographics, is whether TV stations can maintain that momentum. Now, there appears to be an even bigger question. Can TV and newspapers maintain their position against competition from what are called “pure play” media websites or multimedia websites? (That’s the Google, Yahoo, Digg sites of the world.)
That’s an especially critical question for newspapers, which accounted for more than a third (35.9%) of all local online advertising in 2006, according to research firm Borrell Associates. And the Newspaper Association of America noted that ad expenditures for newspaper websites increased 22.3% to $750 Million in the first quarter of this year compared to last year. TV sites get a meager 7.7% of local online advertising. The folks at Borrell Associates though say the spoilers are the pure play sites that are growing at the expense of local online advertising. Traditional media websites have gotten the “easy money” from existing advertisers, but the growth money will come from nontraditional advertisers, says Borrell. And if that doesn’t complicate the issue enough, another report by Hitwise US News and Media Report shows that the share of traffic leaving the News and Media industry for Multimedia sites doubled (196%) from April 2006 to March 2007. Part of the ‘problem’ is that news websites are increasingly dependent on search engines for traffic. What’s even more disturbing is that the folks at Hitwise say the market share of visits to the top 10 News and Media Websites declined 3.8% year to year, “indicating that news consumption is beginning to fragment.” Just to make sure that I don’t leave all my media friends completely depressed, the Online Publishers Association reports that nearly half (44%) of U.S. online video users watch online clips at least weekly and that three-quarters (73%) do so at least once a month. And the most popular genre for this viewing – news and current events.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: More than 71,000 people have registered to be monitored for health problems associated with the dust created in the aftermath of the 9/11 destruction in New York City, according to the New England Journal of Medicine. One in five people say they bring their laptop computer with them when they go on vacation while four out of five bring their cell phones so they can stay in the electronic loop, according to a poll released by AP-Ipsos. Nearly three quarters of Americans (73%) agree with the statement that “the rich get rich and the poor get poorer,” according to a survey by the Pew Research Group. That’s an 8-point increase since 2002. The same group did a different study which found that two-thirds (65%) of Americans believe corporate profits are too high. A survey by MasterCard found that three quarters of consumers in the Middle East have an Internet connection and half pay for their online purchases with credit cards, reflecting a steady gain in online shopping in the region. An elephant’s trunk has 150,000 muscles and a bird can fly a week without stopping, according to Animal Planet’s new show Fooled by Nature and reported in Cynopsis.
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, June 11, 2007
Message from Michael -- May 28, 2007
CHINA TO OWN AMERICAN MEDIA
THE TRILLION DOLLAR MEDIA MOVE
TV WATCHING INCOME
LIVING IN SPAMALOT
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.
CHINA TO OWN AMERICAN MEDIA: No cute headline this time. Just a statement. The Chinese state investment agency has made a $4 Billion investment in one of the top private equity firms in America – The Blackstone Group. You may have heard about that. However, what I haven’t heard reported is the fact that The Blackstone Group owns or has investments in many of the leading media companies in America. Everything from VNU and Nielsen to wireless and broadband providers, cable operators as well as Freedom Communications which owns nine television stations and more than two dozen daily newspapers. And recently Blackstone formed a new group with Cumulus Media called Cumulus Media Partners which owns 345 stations in 67 markets. Of course, the Chinese investment is in the form of “non-voting common units.” (I’m sure some of the smarter MfM readers know exactly what that means. I confess I don’t.) And because the Chinese investment is only 10% of Blackstone, that keeps it off the “radar screen” (as The Washington Post put it) of government scrutiny. Oh, and that $4 Billion. Chump Change. China has $1.2 TRILLION in “foreign exchange reserves.”
Now, I’m not trying to develop some kind of conspiracy theory, but the other partners in the Cumulus group are Thomas H. Lee Partners and Bain Capital Partners. These are the same two private equity groups that are “merging” with broadcast behemoth Clear Channel, owner of more than a thousand radio stations. Which brings me back to what started me on this thread – private equity firms buying media groups. In addition to the radio ‘merger,’ for example, Clear Channel has reached agreement to sell its 56 television stations to private equity firm Providence Equity Partners for $1.2 Billion. And that’s just the beginning. You heard about The New York Times selling its nine TV stations to private equity firm Oak Hill Capital Partners for $575 Million. And US Spanish language media network Univision is being acquired by a private equity consortium of Madison Deaborn Partners, Texas Pacific Group, Saban Capital Group AND Providence Equity Partners (yes, the same one that ‘acquired’ Clear Channel’s TV group) AND Thomas H Lee Partners (yes, the same one involved in the Cumulus purchase). And the private equity firms' interest in ‘old’ media isn’t limited to television either. Even ‘old-fashioned’ Reader’s Digest has ‘agreed to be taken private’ by a private equity consortium led by Ripplewood Holdings. So you’ve heard about those. But how about ProSiebenSat, the largest private German television broadcaster, being acquired for $7.6 Billion by the European private equity firm of Permira and the American private equity firm of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. (I was working for Miami TV station WTVJ when KKR bought it.) Or how about European media giant Bertelsmann selling part of its assets (Sony Music maybe) to private equity firms and then teaming up with private equity firms to raise more money.
So, if declining audiences, fragmenting audiences, the Internet and information overload, along with multiple sources over multiple platforms are raising economic concerns for traditional media… why are these savvy financial experts buying them? The other point being raised by many observers is what does this mean to the journalism of the future. I know what you’re saying -- I’m getting off my fact-based approach and straying into opinion, but I’m not. I’m just pointing out questions being raised by others in the many publications I read – from The New York Times, The Financial Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Economist and many others. Lastly, as a footnote, there have been several reports speculating that private equity firms may bid on Nexstar Broadcasting and Lin Broadcasting, both of whom were put on the auction block.
THE TRILLION DOLLAR MEDIA MOVE: Part of the reason the private equity firms are snatching up traditional media can be found in a report by media investment banker Veronis Suhler Stevenson which predicts that media spending will surpass $1.236 Trillion by 2010. The report says “growth will see-saw in coming years as traditional media outlets transition business models.” Even more interesting (to me, at least) is the report’s statement that consumers spent 3,543 hours per person per in 2005 but that by 2010, it will grow to 3,620 per person annually – meaning 10 hours a day. The report says the fastest growth in Internet and mobile services is actually coming from the ‘traditional’ media companies. The problem is that online platforms don’t generate the spending that traditional media generates, at least in the short term. Consumers spend less time with online and mobile media than they do with traditional media. For example, they read a few news stories on the Web but entire sections of a printed newspaper. Complicating the financial picture is the fact that consumers are accustomed to getting content for free on the Web and are reluctant to pay. Add to that, the report says, user generated content (such as blogs and podcasts) which are also free and the decline of many media formats such as VHS, PC games and CD’s.
As a footnote to the hours spent with media, another report by Media-Screen which bills itself as a market research and consulting firm for “the digital lifestyle” says BROADBAND online users spend nearly half of their spare time (48%) online on a typical weekday. According to the study, that amounts to an hour and 40 minutes daily. Nearly half (49%) of the broadband population (45 Million people) regularly visit sites decided to a personal hobby or interest. And the authors say sending e-mail and visiting web sites for personal reasons are more popular than television.
TV WATCHING INCOME: Only one program, Desperate Housewives, ranked in the top 20 in terms of ‘upscale’ income viewers in every part of the U.S. MAGNA Global, one of the world’s largest media services firm, did an analysis of Nielsen data to find out which programs drew the highest income viewers and in which areas of the country – Northeast, Southeast, Southwest, East Central, West Central and Pacific. Only Desperate Housewives scored in all six Nielsen regions. The other top 10 programs in terms of ‘upscale’ viewers was The Office (NBC), Andy Barker, P.I. (NBC), Grey’s Anatomy (ABC), Two and a Half Men (CBS), Sixty Minutes (CBS), Boston Legal (ABC) Friday Night Lights (NBC) and What About Brian (ABC). On the cable side of the equation, the Magna analysis showed the top five cable networks are Fox News, HGTV, NFL Network, ESPN and ESPN2.
The highest income prime time viewers are in the Northeast where the ‘average medium income’ is $68,000 and lowest income prime time viewers are in the Southwest where the ‘average medium income’ is $48,000. Steve Sternberg, Magna’s Executive Vice President for Audience Analysis, says the analysis isn’t completely on target because Nielsen only reports total household income, not individual income. To put those figures into some kind of perspective, I looked up national figures. According to the Federal Reserve’s survey of consumer finance, the average family income in 2004 (the last time surveyed) was $70,700. And, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the ‘real median income’ for an American household in 2005 was $46,326.
LIVING IN SPAMALOT: Despite an increase in Spam, American Internet users are less bothered about it, according to a study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. In 2003, when Pew first asked people about the affect of spam on their Internet life, one in four (25%) said spam was a big problem. In the latest survey just released, that number had dropped to less than one in five (18%). Part of the reason for that, according to the authors, may be that the amount of pornographic spam (which people find to be the most offensive) has dropped. Three years ago, nearly 3 out of 4 people (71%) reported receiving porn spam. In the last survey the number had dropped to half (52%). However, phishing spam (email designed to trick people into revealing financial information) is the same with one in three (36%) receiving this kind of spam. As a side note to this, I found it interesting that the survey showed more email users (88%) have a personal email account compared to those with a work account (49%).
COCKTAIL CHATTER: The big story in Europe is the disappearance of a three-year-old British girl named Madeline McCann while on vacation with her family in Portugal. To give you an idea of the extent of coverage, do a search for her name and you get 127,000-plus hits. Nearly a quarter of American adults (23%) say they mostly (14%) or completely (9%) agree that American lives are worth more than the lives of people in other countries, according to the most recent Pew Social Values Survey. A :30-second spot in the American Idol finale went for $1.3 Million – the same as last year, despite some ratings attrition. By way of comparison, a :30-second spot in the SuperBowl went for twice that -- $2.6 Million. But, of course, that’s a once a year event. The latest ‘sensation’ in online video is Justin.tv which is a 24/7 “lifecast” of some guy with a camera on his head. Literally, nothing happens for hours on end. But it has become so popular, that backers are offering to help other people start up their own “lifecast.” And despite all the focus on digital entertainment, the latest ‘sensation’ among male ‘tweens (boys aged 10 to 12) is The Dangerous Book for Boys which the Wall Street Journal calls a “retro-style adventure manual.”
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 TRILLION DOLLAR MEDIA MOVE
TV WATCHING INCOME
LIVING IN SPAMALOT
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.
CHINA TO OWN AMERICAN MEDIA: No cute headline this time. Just a statement. The Chinese state investment agency has made a $4 Billion investment in one of the top private equity firms in America – The Blackstone Group. You may have heard about that. However, what I haven’t heard reported is the fact that The Blackstone Group owns or has investments in many of the leading media companies in America. Everything from VNU and Nielsen to wireless and broadband providers, cable operators as well as Freedom Communications which owns nine television stations and more than two dozen daily newspapers. And recently Blackstone formed a new group with Cumulus Media called Cumulus Media Partners which owns 345 stations in 67 markets. Of course, the Chinese investment is in the form of “non-voting common units.” (I’m sure some of the smarter MfM readers know exactly what that means. I confess I don’t.) And because the Chinese investment is only 10% of Blackstone, that keeps it off the “radar screen” (as The Washington Post put it) of government scrutiny. Oh, and that $4 Billion. Chump Change. China has $1.2 TRILLION in “foreign exchange reserves.”
Now, I’m not trying to develop some kind of conspiracy theory, but the other partners in the Cumulus group are Thomas H. Lee Partners and Bain Capital Partners. These are the same two private equity groups that are “merging” with broadcast behemoth Clear Channel, owner of more than a thousand radio stations. Which brings me back to what started me on this thread – private equity firms buying media groups. In addition to the radio ‘merger,’ for example, Clear Channel has reached agreement to sell its 56 television stations to private equity firm Providence Equity Partners for $1.2 Billion. And that’s just the beginning. You heard about The New York Times selling its nine TV stations to private equity firm Oak Hill Capital Partners for $575 Million. And US Spanish language media network Univision is being acquired by a private equity consortium of Madison Deaborn Partners, Texas Pacific Group, Saban Capital Group AND Providence Equity Partners (yes, the same one that ‘acquired’ Clear Channel’s TV group) AND Thomas H Lee Partners (yes, the same one involved in the Cumulus purchase). And the private equity firms' interest in ‘old’ media isn’t limited to television either. Even ‘old-fashioned’ Reader’s Digest has ‘agreed to be taken private’ by a private equity consortium led by Ripplewood Holdings. So you’ve heard about those. But how about ProSiebenSat, the largest private German television broadcaster, being acquired for $7.6 Billion by the European private equity firm of Permira and the American private equity firm of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. (I was working for Miami TV station WTVJ when KKR bought it.) Or how about European media giant Bertelsmann selling part of its assets (Sony Music maybe) to private equity firms and then teaming up with private equity firms to raise more money.
So, if declining audiences, fragmenting audiences, the Internet and information overload, along with multiple sources over multiple platforms are raising economic concerns for traditional media… why are these savvy financial experts buying them? The other point being raised by many observers is what does this mean to the journalism of the future. I know what you’re saying -- I’m getting off my fact-based approach and straying into opinion, but I’m not. I’m just pointing out questions being raised by others in the many publications I read – from The New York Times, The Financial Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Economist and many others. Lastly, as a footnote, there have been several reports speculating that private equity firms may bid on Nexstar Broadcasting and Lin Broadcasting, both of whom were put on the auction block.
THE TRILLION DOLLAR MEDIA MOVE: Part of the reason the private equity firms are snatching up traditional media can be found in a report by media investment banker Veronis Suhler Stevenson which predicts that media spending will surpass $1.236 Trillion by 2010. The report says “growth will see-saw in coming years as traditional media outlets transition business models.” Even more interesting (to me, at least) is the report’s statement that consumers spent 3,543 hours per person per in 2005 but that by 2010, it will grow to 3,620 per person annually – meaning 10 hours a day. The report says the fastest growth in Internet and mobile services is actually coming from the ‘traditional’ media companies. The problem is that online platforms don’t generate the spending that traditional media generates, at least in the short term. Consumers spend less time with online and mobile media than they do with traditional media. For example, they read a few news stories on the Web but entire sections of a printed newspaper. Complicating the financial picture is the fact that consumers are accustomed to getting content for free on the Web and are reluctant to pay. Add to that, the report says, user generated content (such as blogs and podcasts) which are also free and the decline of many media formats such as VHS, PC games and CD’s.
As a footnote to the hours spent with media, another report by Media-Screen which bills itself as a market research and consulting firm for “the digital lifestyle” says BROADBAND online users spend nearly half of their spare time (48%) online on a typical weekday. According to the study, that amounts to an hour and 40 minutes daily. Nearly half (49%) of the broadband population (45 Million people) regularly visit sites decided to a personal hobby or interest. And the authors say sending e-mail and visiting web sites for personal reasons are more popular than television.
TV WATCHING INCOME: Only one program, Desperate Housewives, ranked in the top 20 in terms of ‘upscale’ income viewers in every part of the U.S. MAGNA Global, one of the world’s largest media services firm, did an analysis of Nielsen data to find out which programs drew the highest income viewers and in which areas of the country – Northeast, Southeast, Southwest, East Central, West Central and Pacific. Only Desperate Housewives scored in all six Nielsen regions. The other top 10 programs in terms of ‘upscale’ viewers was The Office (NBC), Andy Barker, P.I. (NBC), Grey’s Anatomy (ABC), Two and a Half Men (CBS), Sixty Minutes (CBS), Boston Legal (ABC) Friday Night Lights (NBC) and What About Brian (ABC). On the cable side of the equation, the Magna analysis showed the top five cable networks are Fox News, HGTV, NFL Network, ESPN and ESPN2.
The highest income prime time viewers are in the Northeast where the ‘average medium income’ is $68,000 and lowest income prime time viewers are in the Southwest where the ‘average medium income’ is $48,000. Steve Sternberg, Magna’s Executive Vice President for Audience Analysis, says the analysis isn’t completely on target because Nielsen only reports total household income, not individual income. To put those figures into some kind of perspective, I looked up national figures. According to the Federal Reserve’s survey of consumer finance, the average family income in 2004 (the last time surveyed) was $70,700. And, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the ‘real median income’ for an American household in 2005 was $46,326.
LIVING IN SPAMALOT: Despite an increase in Spam, American Internet users are less bothered about it, according to a study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. In 2003, when Pew first asked people about the affect of spam on their Internet life, one in four (25%) said spam was a big problem. In the latest survey just released, that number had dropped to less than one in five (18%). Part of the reason for that, according to the authors, may be that the amount of pornographic spam (which people find to be the most offensive) has dropped. Three years ago, nearly 3 out of 4 people (71%) reported receiving porn spam. In the last survey the number had dropped to half (52%). However, phishing spam (email designed to trick people into revealing financial information) is the same with one in three (36%) receiving this kind of spam. As a side note to this, I found it interesting that the survey showed more email users (88%) have a personal email account compared to those with a work account (49%).
COCKTAIL CHATTER: The big story in Europe is the disappearance of a three-year-old British girl named Madeline McCann while on vacation with her family in Portugal. To give you an idea of the extent of coverage, do a search for her name and you get 127,000-plus hits. Nearly a quarter of American adults (23%) say they mostly (14%) or completely (9%) agree that American lives are worth more than the lives of people in other countries, according to the most recent Pew Social Values Survey. A :30-second spot in the American Idol finale went for $1.3 Million – the same as last year, despite some ratings attrition. By way of comparison, a :30-second spot in the SuperBowl went for twice that -- $2.6 Million. But, of course, that’s a once a year event. The latest ‘sensation’ in online video is Justin.tv which is a 24/7 “lifecast” of some guy with a camera on his head. Literally, nothing happens for hours on end. But it has become so popular, that backers are offering to help other people start up their own “lifecast.” And despite all the focus on digital entertainment, the latest ‘sensation’ among male ‘tweens (boys aged 10 to 12) is The Dangerous Book for Boys which the Wall Street Journal calls a “retro-style adventure manual.”
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.
Message From Michael -- May 14, 2007
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Public Domain License.
SWEEPS
THE PRESIDENT AND LOCAL TV
THE TWO SIDES OF THE TECHNOLOGY COIN
DROWNING IN DIGITAL VIDEO
DELIVER ON YOUR PROMISES
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: The countdown begins. Coming into the final week of sweeps. For those of you in diary markets, a reminder that your friends at Nielsen often over-sample the last two weeks to compensate for low returns in the first two weeks. And be prepared for the American Idol steamroller in the last two days of the book. Tuesday, May 22nd, will be the last performance show and Wednesday, May 23rd, will be the last results show. The other networks have pretty well given up trying to run anything against Fox those nights. That doesn’t mean you should, but you have to give those viewers a strong reason to come back to your late news.
THE PRESIDENT AND LOCAL TV: So, did you or your local television carry President Bush’s announcement that he was vetoing the Iraq War funding bill. I was curious after three out of the four news stations here in Atlanta carried the announcement. (Meredith-owned CBS affiliate WGCL-TV, did not.) You may recall the President took to the airwaves at the odd time of about 6:10 p.m. EST/ 5:10 p.m. CST—during local news time. So, I did a random check of more than two dozen stations around the country – different size markets, different groups and different time zones. Only a quarter (6) of the stations carried the announcement live. Three stations had stories about the impending announcement in their early newscast but not the actual live announcement. Another three stations had nothing, period, about the announcement in either their early evening or late newscasts. One station had a background package in its early evening newscast but nothing about the actual announcement in their late newscast. Only two stations led with the veto announcement in the late newscast. Six stations carried the story in their first block of news, but most carried it in the second block. Three stations carried the story in the second quarter hour. And most stations did it as a voice over-soundbite.
A couple of interesting side notes. The average length of the first block of all the newscasts was 10 minutes, with a low of 6 minutes and a high of 15 minutes. The median time was also about 10 minutes. About a quarter of the stations had image spots in their newscasts and a little more than a quarter had topicals for their special reports in their own newscasts.
THE TWO SIDES OF THE TECHNOLOGY COIN: A study by the Pew Internet and the American Life project shows (at least in my view) that there are more people who don’t care that much about information and communication technology (ICT) than there are people deeply involved in the technology. The research group identified ten groups of people based on a survey of 4,000 people and their technological attitudes, actions and assets. The ‘elite tech users’ consisted of four groups and accounted for nearly a third (31%) of the population. But there were four groups who fell into the ‘few tech assets’ category and they comprised nearly half (49%) of the population. The ‘middle of the road’ tech users accounted for 20%. On the high end were the so-called ‘omnivores’ who have lots of information gadgets and services which they use “voraciously” to take part in the Web 2.0 world. These are the you-tubing, myspacing, blogging, user-generating group, I guess. That’s only 8% of the population. On the low end are the ones ‘off the network’ who don’t have cell phones or Internet. These are mostly older people who are “content” with old media. That was double though the high end group, accounting for 15% of the population.
The next-to-the-top group are the ‘connectors’ who have feature-packed cell phones, go online frequently and have a high level of satisfaction with all the technology. That was only 7% though. On the flip side of that, just one up from the bottom of the scale, was the ‘indifferents’ group who had cell phones and online access, but used them only intermittently and with some annoyance. This group accounted for 11%. The other high end users were the ‘lackluster veterans’ (8%) and the ‘productivity enhancers’ (also 8%). The other low end users were the ‘light but satisfied’ (15%) and the ‘inexperienced experimenters” (8%). In the middle were the ‘mobile centrics’ and the ‘connected but hassled’, both at 10%.
Wondering which group you fall in? The good folks at Pew have provided the questionnaire online so you can test yourself and find out. Go to http://www.pewinternet.org/quiz/ and discover your ‘typology.’ I was a ‘connector’ – no surprise, no surprise.
DROWNING IN DIGITAL VIDEO: More than 60% of Internet traffic comes in the form of digital video, according to Cambridge, England, firm CacheLogic which sells Internet services. And a Carnegie Melon University computer scientist says he thinks that figure will reach 98% in a few short years. You think your downloading is slow now? Wait till then. However, scientist Hui Zhang says the solution may be peer-to-peer (P2P) networking. Most P2P technology is associated with places like Gnutella, Kazaa and BitTorrent known for pirating copyrighted material. But Zhang says he is close to figuring out a way to legitimize the P2P approach, which shares data by breaking up big blocks into little blocks that are stored on multiple computers so no one computer or broadband pipe becomes clogged. He calls his system “chunkyspread.”
Zhang’s proposal is one of ten emerging technologies cited by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Technology Review publication. Others include a ‘mobile augmented reality application’ being developed by the Finnish based Nokia Research Center. It basically puts a GPS sensor, a compass and what is called ‘accelerometers’ into cell phones so that you can point your cell phone camera at a building, for example, and it will tell you not only where you are but what businesses, restaurants and other attractions are nearby. Or, how about having that already small digital camera of yours become even smaller and faster. Two electrical and computer professors at Rice University have developed a camera that ‘reimagines’ digital imaging. Instead of, for example, a four megapixel digital camera using four million image sensors to catch a picture, their camera uses a single image sensor that reconstructs the image using a novel algorithm. Researchers at Harvard University have created light focusing antennas that could lead to DVD’s that hold hundreds of movies. They have figured out a way around what’s called the ‘diffraction limit’ in the law of physics which, as its name implies, limits the light beams used to record DVD images. So, it seems that while Zhang is figuring out how to cope with the growing digital video flood, these other scientists are figuring out how to add to the flood waters.
DELIVER ON YOUR PROMISES: A study by a professor at the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business appears to prove a marketing maxim, but with a twist. The maxim ‘promise what you can deliver and deliver what you promise’ is a warning against over-hyping. In a study in the Journal of Consumer Research, assistant professor Vanessa Patrick found that people notice it when they feel worse than they expected, but they don’t notice it when they feel better than they expected. She and her team have even coined a term for it – affective misforecasting. In brief, the team showed different sets of volunteers a film clip and a music clip. Some were told the clips got a five star rating and some were told the clips got a one star rating, although the clips were actually somewhere in the middle. The people told that the clips had a five-star rating noted that they were not as good as expected, but the people told the clips had only a one-star rating did not note that the clips were better than expected. Aside from warning about the dangers of over-selling, the study authors say business can help themselves by helping consumers take notice of when they feel better than expected. For example, grocery stores printing messages on their receipts telling consumers how much they saved.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: Even though it was created by Americans, nearly two-thirds (61%) of the people who are ‘active residents’ of virtual world Second Life are European. (A personal anecdote – when I explored the Second Life world on a recent visit, I was the only American. Everybody I ran into was from Europe or Asia.) There are now more cell phones than people in the 142 million population Russia, according to research firm eMarketer. Nearly a quarter (23%) of the American public believe “AIDS might be God’s punishment for immoral sexual behavior,” according to a survey by the Pew Research Center. That is actually down from when the question was first asked in 1987 when just under half (43%) agreed with that statement. The Miami Herald reports that Floridians can now be buried with their pets, thanks to a law sponsored by a state representative who wanted to be buried with the ashes of his Labrador retriever who died ten years ago. The total cost of all civil lawsuits (torts) in the U.S. in 2005 was $261 Billion, which averages out to $880 per person, according to a study by management consulting firm Towers-Perrin Tillinghast.
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
THE PRESIDENT AND LOCAL TV
THE TWO SIDES OF THE TECHNOLOGY COIN
DROWNING IN DIGITAL VIDEO
DELIVER ON YOUR PROMISES
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: The countdown begins. Coming into the final week of sweeps. For those of you in diary markets, a reminder that your friends at Nielsen often over-sample the last two weeks to compensate for low returns in the first two weeks. And be prepared for the American Idol steamroller in the last two days of the book. Tuesday, May 22nd, will be the last performance show and Wednesday, May 23rd, will be the last results show. The other networks have pretty well given up trying to run anything against Fox those nights. That doesn’t mean you should, but you have to give those viewers a strong reason to come back to your late news.
THE PRESIDENT AND LOCAL TV: So, did you or your local television carry President Bush’s announcement that he was vetoing the Iraq War funding bill. I was curious after three out of the four news stations here in Atlanta carried the announcement. (Meredith-owned CBS affiliate WGCL-TV, did not.) You may recall the President took to the airwaves at the odd time of about 6:10 p.m. EST/ 5:10 p.m. CST—during local news time. So, I did a random check of more than two dozen stations around the country – different size markets, different groups and different time zones. Only a quarter (6) of the stations carried the announcement live. Three stations had stories about the impending announcement in their early newscast but not the actual live announcement. Another three stations had nothing, period, about the announcement in either their early evening or late newscasts. One station had a background package in its early evening newscast but nothing about the actual announcement in their late newscast. Only two stations led with the veto announcement in the late newscast. Six stations carried the story in their first block of news, but most carried it in the second block. Three stations carried the story in the second quarter hour. And most stations did it as a voice over-soundbite.
A couple of interesting side notes. The average length of the first block of all the newscasts was 10 minutes, with a low of 6 minutes and a high of 15 minutes. The median time was also about 10 minutes. About a quarter of the stations had image spots in their newscasts and a little more than a quarter had topicals for their special reports in their own newscasts.
THE TWO SIDES OF THE TECHNOLOGY COIN: A study by the Pew Internet and the American Life project shows (at least in my view) that there are more people who don’t care that much about information and communication technology (ICT) than there are people deeply involved in the technology. The research group identified ten groups of people based on a survey of 4,000 people and their technological attitudes, actions and assets. The ‘elite tech users’ consisted of four groups and accounted for nearly a third (31%) of the population. But there were four groups who fell into the ‘few tech assets’ category and they comprised nearly half (49%) of the population. The ‘middle of the road’ tech users accounted for 20%. On the high end were the so-called ‘omnivores’ who have lots of information gadgets and services which they use “voraciously” to take part in the Web 2.0 world. These are the you-tubing, myspacing, blogging, user-generating group, I guess. That’s only 8% of the population. On the low end are the ones ‘off the network’ who don’t have cell phones or Internet. These are mostly older people who are “content” with old media. That was double though the high end group, accounting for 15% of the population.
The next-to-the-top group are the ‘connectors’ who have feature-packed cell phones, go online frequently and have a high level of satisfaction with all the technology. That was only 7% though. On the flip side of that, just one up from the bottom of the scale, was the ‘indifferents’ group who had cell phones and online access, but used them only intermittently and with some annoyance. This group accounted for 11%. The other high end users were the ‘lackluster veterans’ (8%) and the ‘productivity enhancers’ (also 8%). The other low end users were the ‘light but satisfied’ (15%) and the ‘inexperienced experimenters” (8%). In the middle were the ‘mobile centrics’ and the ‘connected but hassled’, both at 10%.
Wondering which group you fall in? The good folks at Pew have provided the questionnaire online so you can test yourself and find out. Go to http://www.pewinternet.org/quiz/ and discover your ‘typology.’ I was a ‘connector’ – no surprise, no surprise.
DROWNING IN DIGITAL VIDEO: More than 60% of Internet traffic comes in the form of digital video, according to Cambridge, England, firm CacheLogic which sells Internet services. And a Carnegie Melon University computer scientist says he thinks that figure will reach 98% in a few short years. You think your downloading is slow now? Wait till then. However, scientist Hui Zhang says the solution may be peer-to-peer (P2P) networking. Most P2P technology is associated with places like Gnutella, Kazaa and BitTorrent known for pirating copyrighted material. But Zhang says he is close to figuring out a way to legitimize the P2P approach, which shares data by breaking up big blocks into little blocks that are stored on multiple computers so no one computer or broadband pipe becomes clogged. He calls his system “chunkyspread.”
Zhang’s proposal is one of ten emerging technologies cited by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Technology Review publication. Others include a ‘mobile augmented reality application’ being developed by the Finnish based Nokia Research Center. It basically puts a GPS sensor, a compass and what is called ‘accelerometers’ into cell phones so that you can point your cell phone camera at a building, for example, and it will tell you not only where you are but what businesses, restaurants and other attractions are nearby. Or, how about having that already small digital camera of yours become even smaller and faster. Two electrical and computer professors at Rice University have developed a camera that ‘reimagines’ digital imaging. Instead of, for example, a four megapixel digital camera using four million image sensors to catch a picture, their camera uses a single image sensor that reconstructs the image using a novel algorithm. Researchers at Harvard University have created light focusing antennas that could lead to DVD’s that hold hundreds of movies. They have figured out a way around what’s called the ‘diffraction limit’ in the law of physics which, as its name implies, limits the light beams used to record DVD images. So, it seems that while Zhang is figuring out how to cope with the growing digital video flood, these other scientists are figuring out how to add to the flood waters.
DELIVER ON YOUR PROMISES: A study by a professor at the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business appears to prove a marketing maxim, but with a twist. The maxim ‘promise what you can deliver and deliver what you promise’ is a warning against over-hyping. In a study in the Journal of Consumer Research, assistant professor Vanessa Patrick found that people notice it when they feel worse than they expected, but they don’t notice it when they feel better than they expected. She and her team have even coined a term for it – affective misforecasting. In brief, the team showed different sets of volunteers a film clip and a music clip. Some were told the clips got a five star rating and some were told the clips got a one star rating, although the clips were actually somewhere in the middle. The people told that the clips had a five-star rating noted that they were not as good as expected, but the people told the clips had only a one-star rating did not note that the clips were better than expected. Aside from warning about the dangers of over-selling, the study authors say business can help themselves by helping consumers take notice of when they feel better than expected. For example, grocery stores printing messages on their receipts telling consumers how much they saved.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: Even though it was created by Americans, nearly two-thirds (61%) of the people who are ‘active residents’ of virtual world Second Life are European. (A personal anecdote – when I explored the Second Life world on a recent visit, I was the only American. Everybody I ran into was from Europe or Asia.) There are now more cell phones than people in the 142 million population Russia, according to research firm eMarketer. Nearly a quarter (23%) of the American public believe “AIDS might be God’s punishment for immoral sexual behavior,” according to a survey by the Pew Research Center. That is actually down from when the question was first asked in 1987 when just under half (43%) agreed with that statement. The Miami Herald reports that Floridians can now be buried with their pets, thanks to a law sponsored by a state representative who wanted to be buried with the ashes of his Labrador retriever who died ten years ago. The total cost of all civil lawsuits (torts) in the U.S. in 2005 was $261 Billion, which averages out to $880 per person, according to a study by management consulting firm Towers-Perrin Tillinghast.
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, May 07, 2007
Message From Michael --May 7, 2007
THE NEVER ENDING FRIENDING
THE OSCARS OF THE INTERNET
COMPUTERS VERSUS TELEVISION
MEGALITHIC MONSTERS
TRENDS OF NOTE – CD’S AND FARSI
COCKTAIL CHATTER -- BEER
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 NEVER ENDING FRIENDING: More than 70% of Americans aged 15 to 34 actively use online social networks, according to a study released at the News Corp’s Fox Interactive Media conference. (BTW, the conference is called The Never Ending Friending.) Now, we’ve dealt with the Social Networking phenomenon in previous MfM’s but the phenomenon, as this study shows, is growing at a phenomenal rate. You know about social networking sites built around music and user generated videos, but how about charitable causes, special interests, and your pet. There is a social networking site called dogster.com, but now a company called Snif (Social Networking In Fur) Labs has created special tags that dogs wear on their collar and which transmits and receives information from other dogs in the SNIF network that their owners can share online when they get home. The point is that social networking is become all pervasive. Radio giant Clear Channel is getting into the social networking business with a dozen station-branded social networks acting as a mini-MySpace for their local community. Technology company Onesite.com has developed the protocol. Television station WCAU-TV has launched DigPhilly.com, a social networking site featuring current events, nightlife, music, restaurant reviews for the Philadelphia area. Lost Remote’s Cory Bergman calls it “a great example of a TV station branching out into new audiences and local niches.”
A semi-related survey by Forrester Research of mainstream marketing agencies found that more and more are turning to social media to get their message across. Another study, this time by Jupiter Research, found that small businesses are turning to social media as a way to market. I won’t say anything about the fact that I recommended this to media operations in a previous MfM.
Anyway, back to the original study…The research showed that U.S. social networkers chose interacting on such sites as their favorite activity, whether online or offline. That was ahead of television viewing but on par with cell phone usage. Of those, more than two-thirds (69%) say they use social networks to connect with people who are already their friends and nearly half (41%) say they use it to connect with family members. And before you dismiss them as people without a life, nearly half (48%) say they are “having more fun in life in general” with more than half (52%) saying they feel more in tune with what’s happening socially in their lives due to social networking sites because (57%) said they’ve found more people with similar interests.
Back to some more unusual social networking examples… website PathConnect which labels itself as “social networking for the ambitious lifestyle” is backing websites with a social agenda, such as MTDN.com (Make The Difference Network) founded in part by Jessica Biel who starts in the WB’s 7th Heaven. Check out ElHood.com which is described in an Associated Press article as a sort of bi-lingual MySpace with a focus on Latin music. It is the latest example of social networking sites linking Hispanic youth across the U.S., Latin America and Spain. Lastly, my favorite is twitter.com which makes no bones about the fact that it is a cross between a social networking site and instant messaging program which focuses simply on what people are “doing right now.” And that ‘doing right now’ can be anything from listening to a favorite song, going to softball practice, to visiting the local Starbucks. Yes, it sounds inane, but it has become such a phenomenon (I’m sorry… there I go, using that word again) that people talk about “twittering.”
THE OSCARS OF THE INTERNET: Most often called The Webby Awards. Forget about David Bowie getting the Lifetime Achievement Award. Forget about eBay getting the other Lifetime Achievement Award. Forget about Steve Chen and Chad Hurley getting the Webby Person of the Year award. Instead, learn about Jonathon Yuen who won awards for animation, for best visual design and for best personal website (you really should visit his site -- jonathonyuen.com). Or how about the MGM Grand in Las Vegas for its incredible site which won for corporate communications. Or how about the unusual Clearification.com which uses webisodes and interactivity with a different approach to win the IT Hardware/Software category. Or how about website thatguy.com which won in the Health category with its interactive website about guys who drink too much. In short, if you want to see the future of broadband technology and creative gestalt, visit http://www.webbyawards.com.
COMPUTERS VERSUS TELEVISION: Or, more accurately, computers AND television. We’ve talked about broadband video provider Joost in previous MfM’s. It’s now inked deals with, it seems, half the universe – content providers like Sony, Turner Broadcasting Systems, the National Hockey League, CBS, Sports Illustrated and advertisers like Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, Nike, General Motors and Visa. Since several people have asked me about video providers besides Joost, here’s a partial list of sites that I have found: Brightcove, Splashcast, Blip.tv, Blinkx.tv, Revver, Flickr (which also won several Webby awards), Metacafe, MeTV, Nogoodtv, along with Microsoft’s new cross platform media player Silverlight, as well as Jumpcut which provides online editing tools and which is sponsoring an unusual online video contest called Filmyourissue.com, awarding prizes for short films.
MEGALITHIC MONSTERS: By now, you’ve no doubt heard about Rupert Murdoch’s bid for Dow Jones, publishers of the Wall Street Journal. I would like to claim prescience, considering my previous MfM. I think his desire to own a name brand and his ‘love’ – definitely in quotes, of newspapers played into it, but analysts say the reality is he is just working on synergies – a name brand Wall Street Journal to launch his television business channel, and a brand with a heavy investment in digital. The WSJ.com site is one of only two newspaper websites able to sustain a subscription-based, money-making online presence. The other is the Financial Times of London. Overlooked in the hoopla is the bid by Canadian newspaper giant Thomson for financial and news reporting agency Reuters and the take-over or partnership between Microsoft and Yahoo – all deals with enormous implications. A very interesting website that provides insight into these deals is newsvisual.com, which shows, graphically, the 6-degrees of connectivity (not separation) between major corporations and major players.
NEWS OF NOTE: If you listen to music on the Internet, (and, according to reports, 29 Million Americans do) here is a phrase you will be hearing more about – Net Radio Royalties. The Copyright Royalty Board has proposed a “per performance” fee for each time a song is webcast, payable to a subsidiary of the Recording Industry Association of America. Up to now, the board had given a special rate to small webcasters and public radio outlets streaming on the Internet. The Rocky Mountain News argues that the new rate structure would force many of the more “vibrant” entities to go dark because their royalty costs would actually exceed their revenue. The board has delayed imposition of the fees until June, after the public outcry.
TRENDS OF NOTE: The proportion of Americans who have purchased a CD in the past six months has dropped 15% since 2002, according to a study by Ipsos/ Tempo. The study indicates that Americans will still purchase CD’s by their favorite artists, but when it comes to sampling new and unfamiliar music, they’ll go the download route instead of buying CD’s.
The Farsi language has joined the list of top 10 languages being used by bloggers, behind the surprising (to me, at least) #1 – Japanese – which accounts for 37% of all blogs, followed by English (36%), Chinese (8%), Italian and Spanish (at 3% each), Russian, French and Portuguese (2%) and finally German and Farsi (1%), according to blog researcher Technorati. As a side note, the company says new blogs are being created at the rate of 1.4 new blogs per second, adding up to more than 70 Million blogs being tracked by the firm.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: Sweeps killer American Idol set a record for call-ins with more than 70 Million toll-free and AT&T sms votes during its charity telecasts. An average of 6.1% of Americans drink beer on a frequent basis – meaning six or more times in a two-week period, according to The Media Audit which regularly surveys 87 U.S. markets. The biggest beer drinkers are in Melbourne, Florida where 10.2% of adults consumer beer on a frequent basis, followed by Wilmington, North Carolina with 10.1%. And even though it’s the home of Anheuser Busch, St. Louis came in 9th with 8.6% just ahead of Columbia, South Carolina with 8.4%. Okay, I promise, one last Warren Buffett mention: two books he recommends are Poor Charlie’s Almanack written by Buffett business partner Charlie Munger and Where are the Customers’ Yachts written by Fred Schwed… in 1940!
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 OSCARS OF THE INTERNET
COMPUTERS VERSUS TELEVISION
MEGALITHIC MONSTERS
TRENDS OF NOTE – CD’S AND FARSI
COCKTAIL CHATTER -- BEER
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 NEVER ENDING FRIENDING: More than 70% of Americans aged 15 to 34 actively use online social networks, according to a study released at the News Corp’s Fox Interactive Media conference. (BTW, the conference is called The Never Ending Friending.) Now, we’ve dealt with the Social Networking phenomenon in previous MfM’s but the phenomenon, as this study shows, is growing at a phenomenal rate. You know about social networking sites built around music and user generated videos, but how about charitable causes, special interests, and your pet. There is a social networking site called dogster.com, but now a company called Snif (Social Networking In Fur) Labs has created special tags that dogs wear on their collar and which transmits and receives information from other dogs in the SNIF network that their owners can share online when they get home. The point is that social networking is become all pervasive. Radio giant Clear Channel is getting into the social networking business with a dozen station-branded social networks acting as a mini-MySpace for their local community. Technology company Onesite.com has developed the protocol. Television station WCAU-TV has launched DigPhilly.com, a social networking site featuring current events, nightlife, music, restaurant reviews for the Philadelphia area. Lost Remote’s Cory Bergman calls it “a great example of a TV station branching out into new audiences and local niches.”
A semi-related survey by Forrester Research of mainstream marketing agencies found that more and more are turning to social media to get their message across. Another study, this time by Jupiter Research, found that small businesses are turning to social media as a way to market. I won’t say anything about the fact that I recommended this to media operations in a previous MfM.
Anyway, back to the original study…The research showed that U.S. social networkers chose interacting on such sites as their favorite activity, whether online or offline. That was ahead of television viewing but on par with cell phone usage. Of those, more than two-thirds (69%) say they use social networks to connect with people who are already their friends and nearly half (41%) say they use it to connect with family members. And before you dismiss them as people without a life, nearly half (48%) say they are “having more fun in life in general” with more than half (52%) saying they feel more in tune with what’s happening socially in their lives due to social networking sites because (57%) said they’ve found more people with similar interests.
Back to some more unusual social networking examples… website PathConnect which labels itself as “social networking for the ambitious lifestyle” is backing websites with a social agenda, such as MTDN.com (Make The Difference Network) founded in part by Jessica Biel who starts in the WB’s 7th Heaven. Check out ElHood.com which is described in an Associated Press article as a sort of bi-lingual MySpace with a focus on Latin music. It is the latest example of social networking sites linking Hispanic youth across the U.S., Latin America and Spain. Lastly, my favorite is twitter.com which makes no bones about the fact that it is a cross between a social networking site and instant messaging program which focuses simply on what people are “doing right now.” And that ‘doing right now’ can be anything from listening to a favorite song, going to softball practice, to visiting the local Starbucks. Yes, it sounds inane, but it has become such a phenomenon (I’m sorry… there I go, using that word again) that people talk about “twittering.”
THE OSCARS OF THE INTERNET: Most often called The Webby Awards. Forget about David Bowie getting the Lifetime Achievement Award. Forget about eBay getting the other Lifetime Achievement Award. Forget about Steve Chen and Chad Hurley getting the Webby Person of the Year award. Instead, learn about Jonathon Yuen who won awards for animation, for best visual design and for best personal website (you really should visit his site -- jonathonyuen.com). Or how about the MGM Grand in Las Vegas for its incredible site which won for corporate communications. Or how about the unusual Clearification.com which uses webisodes and interactivity with a different approach to win the IT Hardware/Software category. Or how about website thatguy.com which won in the Health category with its interactive website about guys who drink too much. In short, if you want to see the future of broadband technology and creative gestalt, visit http://www.webbyawards.com.
COMPUTERS VERSUS TELEVISION: Or, more accurately, computers AND television. We’ve talked about broadband video provider Joost in previous MfM’s. It’s now inked deals with, it seems, half the universe – content providers like Sony, Turner Broadcasting Systems, the National Hockey League, CBS, Sports Illustrated and advertisers like Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, Nike, General Motors and Visa. Since several people have asked me about video providers besides Joost, here’s a partial list of sites that I have found: Brightcove, Splashcast, Blip.tv, Blinkx.tv, Revver, Flickr (which also won several Webby awards), Metacafe, MeTV, Nogoodtv, along with Microsoft’s new cross platform media player Silverlight, as well as Jumpcut which provides online editing tools and which is sponsoring an unusual online video contest called Filmyourissue.com, awarding prizes for short films.
MEGALITHIC MONSTERS: By now, you’ve no doubt heard about Rupert Murdoch’s bid for Dow Jones, publishers of the Wall Street Journal. I would like to claim prescience, considering my previous MfM. I think his desire to own a name brand and his ‘love’ – definitely in quotes, of newspapers played into it, but analysts say the reality is he is just working on synergies – a name brand Wall Street Journal to launch his television business channel, and a brand with a heavy investment in digital. The WSJ.com site is one of only two newspaper websites able to sustain a subscription-based, money-making online presence. The other is the Financial Times of London. Overlooked in the hoopla is the bid by Canadian newspaper giant Thomson for financial and news reporting agency Reuters and the take-over or partnership between Microsoft and Yahoo – all deals with enormous implications. A very interesting website that provides insight into these deals is newsvisual.com, which shows, graphically, the 6-degrees of connectivity (not separation) between major corporations and major players.
NEWS OF NOTE: If you listen to music on the Internet, (and, according to reports, 29 Million Americans do) here is a phrase you will be hearing more about – Net Radio Royalties. The Copyright Royalty Board has proposed a “per performance” fee for each time a song is webcast, payable to a subsidiary of the Recording Industry Association of America. Up to now, the board had given a special rate to small webcasters and public radio outlets streaming on the Internet. The Rocky Mountain News argues that the new rate structure would force many of the more “vibrant” entities to go dark because their royalty costs would actually exceed their revenue. The board has delayed imposition of the fees until June, after the public outcry.
TRENDS OF NOTE: The proportion of Americans who have purchased a CD in the past six months has dropped 15% since 2002, according to a study by Ipsos/ Tempo. The study indicates that Americans will still purchase CD’s by their favorite artists, but when it comes to sampling new and unfamiliar music, they’ll go the download route instead of buying CD’s.
The Farsi language has joined the list of top 10 languages being used by bloggers, behind the surprising (to me, at least) #1 – Japanese – which accounts for 37% of all blogs, followed by English (36%), Chinese (8%), Italian and Spanish (at 3% each), Russian, French and Portuguese (2%) and finally German and Farsi (1%), according to blog researcher Technorati. As a side note, the company says new blogs are being created at the rate of 1.4 new blogs per second, adding up to more than 70 Million blogs being tracked by the firm.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: Sweeps killer American Idol set a record for call-ins with more than 70 Million toll-free and AT&T sms votes during its charity telecasts. An average of 6.1% of Americans drink beer on a frequent basis – meaning six or more times in a two-week period, according to The Media Audit which regularly surveys 87 U.S. markets. The biggest beer drinkers are in Melbourne, Florida where 10.2% of adults consumer beer on a frequent basis, followed by Wilmington, North Carolina with 10.1%. And even though it’s the home of Anheuser Busch, St. Louis came in 9th with 8.6% just ahead of Columbia, South Carolina with 8.4%. Okay, I promise, one last Warren Buffett mention: two books he recommends are Poor Charlie’s Almanack written by Buffett business partner Charlie Munger and Where are the Customers’ Yachts written by Fred Schwed… in 1940!
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, April 30, 2007
Message From Michael -- April 30, 2007
THE TWO DIGITAL DIVIDES
THE WORLD’S MOST VALUABLE BRANDS
MEDIA VIOLENCE
MYSPACE NEWS FOLLOW UP
THE WORLD TRADE DIVIDE
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.
THE TWO DIGITAL DIVIDES: One is in the U.S. – between the rich and poor, the urban and rural, the have’s and have not’s. The other is between the U.S. and the rest of the world. That last one has become so touchy that the U.S. House of Representatives AND the U.S. Senate are holding committee hearings into why so many countries have jumped ahead of the U.S. in terms of broadband penetration. Using figures supplied by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the chairman of the committee, Senator Daniel Inouye says the U.S. has dropped from 4th in the world to 12th and now to 15th in terms of broadband penetration per 100 population. Denmark ranks #1 with 31.9 subscribers per 100 inhabitants, followed by the Netherlands, Iceland, Korea, Switzerland, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Canada, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Luxembourg, France, Japan and then the U.S. at 15, just ahead of Australia, Austria, Germany, Spain and Italy. Yet at the same time it should be noted that with 58 Million broadband subscribers, the U.S. alone accounts for nearly a third (29%) of the total broadband subscribers in the OECD. Japan with 25 Million is second.
The head of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association argued that it didn’t make sense to compare the larger and more dispersed U.S. to countries whose population density is so much higher and so much more concentrated, so that distribution by broadband is easier. And the OECD figures bear that out… to a degree. The U.S. has a population density of 32 people per square kilometer compared to Denmark’s 126 and the Netherlands 400 and Korea’s 485. Of course, that doesn’t quite explain why Norway with 14, or Finland with 16, Sweden with 20 or Canada with 3 inhabitants per square kilometer still beat the U.S.
As to that other digital divide, NCTA head Kyle McSlarrow testified in committee that broadband is available to 93% of households that could access cable TV service, but that for “economic, cultural and demographic” reasons, many did not. He told the committee that a quarter of Americans (26%) still do not own a computer and that one in five (21%) for some “inexplicable” reason still relied on dial-up even though broadband was available to them.
The head of the group Connected Nation says Kentucky is “on track” to be the first state with 100% broadband coverage. Using a public-private partnership, the group has increased broadband availability and adoption and the ownership of computers at home through programs like its so-called No Child Left Offline. Group head Brian Mefford told the committee that the economic impact has been enormous with an increase in the number of graduates who stay in Kentucky, an increase in the number of out of state graduates remaining in Kentucky and an increase in doctoral degree students staying in Kentucky.
THE WORLD’S MOST VALUABLE BRANDS: It’s official. Google has knocked off Microsoft to become King of the Mountain when it comes to brand rankings. Market research firm Millward Brown says Coca Cola was #2 with Microsoft now #3. Wal Mart came in #4. The top-ranked brand from a non U.S.-based company, according to the report carried on CNN Money, was China Mobile. Nope, me either. Never heard of it. But a visit to its website indicates its total subscriber base is 316 Million.
MEDIA VIOLENCE: I’m sorry but no cute headline on this one. Yes, I know you may have seen this already but I’m including it this week because I thought you might have been as confused as I was – that there was not just one but two reports by two federal agencies scolding the media for not doing more. The Federal Trade Commission found that while the movie, music and video game industries “generally complied with their own voluntary standards” when it come to ratings and label, they still were marketing the violent material on television shows with substantial teen audiences; but interestingly and more critically, the FCC was critical of the viral marketing through social networking sites like MySpace and YouTube.
Meanwhile the Federal Communication Commission re-asserted that exposure to violence in the media increases aggressive behavior and that the various industry efforts to reduce exposure have had “limited effectiveness.” The report says that by the time most children begin the first grade, they will have spent the equivalent of three school years in front of the television set. And the average American household has the television set turned on 8 hours and 11 minutes a day.
The commission said its mandate was to determine what negative effects on children are caused by the cumulative viewing of excessively violent program; what constitutional limits are there on the government’s ability to restrict such programming; and is it in the public interest for the government to adopt a definition of “excessively violent” programming harmful to children. And the answer, with some qualifications and disclaimers, appears to be – Yes, Yes and Yes. FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin notes that there is a big difference between “real life violence shown in a news story (and) fictional violence depicted for purposes of ‘entertainment.’” (He’s the one who put the word in quotes.) And, yes, this probably deserves more in-depth reporting for a possible later MfM.
MYSPACE NEWS FOLLOW UP: You’ve probably heard/ read that MySpace has adopted a news aggregation service with online users voting for their top story. Of course you have, because it was in last week’s MfM. Anyway, taking the same advice I give my clients – I followed up the story. Well, let’s just say the BBC, MSNBC, CNN or any other news organization for that matter, doesn’t have to worry. Nobody cares! I checked nearly a hundred of the news stories posted. Out of 20 different categories and more than 100 stories, ONLY ONE got a vote – a single vote. And that was the story about Elton John building an art gallery at home. Coalition forces kill 130 Taliban fighters – 0 votes. Iran to attend key meeting on stabilizing Iraq – 0 votes. Cardinals Hancock dies in truck crash – 0 votes. And so on and so on and so on. It may raise questions about MySpace’s plans to hold a so-called Presidential Primary online. Although as a further factoid, Barack Obama has more than 90,000 friends on MySpace, way ahead of John Edwards at 17,000, Hillary Clinton at nearly 8,000, John McCain at nearly 4,000 and Rudy Giuliani – no, sorry, his friend list is listed as private. You must be invited to see his profile.
IT’S NOT HARD BEING GREEN: Despite what Kermit the Frog says. Media trend letter Cynopsis reports more than a dozen “go green” efforts launched after last week’s Earth Day including The National Geographic, Hearst Magazines, the CW, and more. On a personal note, as I sat in the veterinary clinic, more than half a dozen of the magazines from Forbes to Outdoors to Atlantic all had front page articles on the environment. Which all seems to validate the MfM beginning of the year survey which indicated that the environment was going to be the hot topic (no pun intended) of the year.
THE WORLD TRADE DIVIDE: Okay, okay, I know what you’re saying – enough already with Billionaire Warren Buffett. However, considering the lead article in this week’s MfM, I thought his thoughts on world trade are apropos. The Billionaire says he is a “fervent” believer in what he calls REAL trade – “the more the better for both us and the world.” He defines Real Trade as purchases that are reciprocated by sales. In other words, the U.S. sells a Billion dollars in computers to China and China sells the U.S. a Billion dollars in cars. Buffett says we had $1.44 Trillion of this “honest-to-God” trade in 2006, but we had $0.76 Trillion in PSEUDO trade – purchases not reciprocated by sales. The result is that the U.S. is transferring ownership of its assets or I.O.U.’s to other countries. Adding to the problem is that for the first time since 1915, Buffett says, the “investment income” account of the U.S. turned negative in 2006. Foreigners now earn more on their U.S. investments than we do on our investments abroad. “In effect, we’ve used up our bank account and turned to our credit card,” he writes. We’re wealthy enough and have behaved responsibly in the past so that despite all this, Buffett says, Americans will live better ten or twenty years from now. But at some point in the future, he says U.S. workers and voters will find this annual “tribute” so onerous that there will be a severe political backlash and any idea of a “soft landing” out of this is “wishful thinking.”
COCKTAIL CHATTER: A report by research firm eMarketer says the average age of persons who download video from the Internet is 39.4. User generated videos made up 47% of the total online video market in the U.S. in 2006, according to media analyst firm Screen Digest. By 2010, the firm predicts more than half (55%) of all video content consumed online in the U.S. will be user generated, representing 44 Billion video streams. More than 70% of Americans 15 to 34 years old are active users of social networks, according to TNS Media Intelligence. The Fox network show House was the most watched broadcast prime-time show in DVR playback, according to Nielsen Media Research.
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 WORLD’S MOST VALUABLE BRANDS
MEDIA VIOLENCE
MYSPACE NEWS FOLLOW UP
THE WORLD TRADE DIVIDE
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.
THE TWO DIGITAL DIVIDES: One is in the U.S. – between the rich and poor, the urban and rural, the have’s and have not’s. The other is between the U.S. and the rest of the world. That last one has become so touchy that the U.S. House of Representatives AND the U.S. Senate are holding committee hearings into why so many countries have jumped ahead of the U.S. in terms of broadband penetration. Using figures supplied by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the chairman of the committee, Senator Daniel Inouye says the U.S. has dropped from 4th in the world to 12th and now to 15th in terms of broadband penetration per 100 population. Denmark ranks #1 with 31.9 subscribers per 100 inhabitants, followed by the Netherlands, Iceland, Korea, Switzerland, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Canada, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Luxembourg, France, Japan and then the U.S. at 15, just ahead of Australia, Austria, Germany, Spain and Italy. Yet at the same time it should be noted that with 58 Million broadband subscribers, the U.S. alone accounts for nearly a third (29%) of the total broadband subscribers in the OECD. Japan with 25 Million is second.
The head of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association argued that it didn’t make sense to compare the larger and more dispersed U.S. to countries whose population density is so much higher and so much more concentrated, so that distribution by broadband is easier. And the OECD figures bear that out… to a degree. The U.S. has a population density of 32 people per square kilometer compared to Denmark’s 126 and the Netherlands 400 and Korea’s 485. Of course, that doesn’t quite explain why Norway with 14, or Finland with 16, Sweden with 20 or Canada with 3 inhabitants per square kilometer still beat the U.S.
As to that other digital divide, NCTA head Kyle McSlarrow testified in committee that broadband is available to 93% of households that could access cable TV service, but that for “economic, cultural and demographic” reasons, many did not. He told the committee that a quarter of Americans (26%) still do not own a computer and that one in five (21%) for some “inexplicable” reason still relied on dial-up even though broadband was available to them.
The head of the group Connected Nation says Kentucky is “on track” to be the first state with 100% broadband coverage. Using a public-private partnership, the group has increased broadband availability and adoption and the ownership of computers at home through programs like its so-called No Child Left Offline. Group head Brian Mefford told the committee that the economic impact has been enormous with an increase in the number of graduates who stay in Kentucky, an increase in the number of out of state graduates remaining in Kentucky and an increase in doctoral degree students staying in Kentucky.
THE WORLD’S MOST VALUABLE BRANDS: It’s official. Google has knocked off Microsoft to become King of the Mountain when it comes to brand rankings. Market research firm Millward Brown says Coca Cola was #2 with Microsoft now #3. Wal Mart came in #4. The top-ranked brand from a non U.S.-based company, according to the report carried on CNN Money, was China Mobile. Nope, me either. Never heard of it. But a visit to its website indicates its total subscriber base is 316 Million.
MEDIA VIOLENCE: I’m sorry but no cute headline on this one. Yes, I know you may have seen this already but I’m including it this week because I thought you might have been as confused as I was – that there was not just one but two reports by two federal agencies scolding the media for not doing more. The Federal Trade Commission found that while the movie, music and video game industries “generally complied with their own voluntary standards” when it come to ratings and label, they still were marketing the violent material on television shows with substantial teen audiences; but interestingly and more critically, the FCC was critical of the viral marketing through social networking sites like MySpace and YouTube.
Meanwhile the Federal Communication Commission re-asserted that exposure to violence in the media increases aggressive behavior and that the various industry efforts to reduce exposure have had “limited effectiveness.” The report says that by the time most children begin the first grade, they will have spent the equivalent of three school years in front of the television set. And the average American household has the television set turned on 8 hours and 11 minutes a day.
The commission said its mandate was to determine what negative effects on children are caused by the cumulative viewing of excessively violent program; what constitutional limits are there on the government’s ability to restrict such programming; and is it in the public interest for the government to adopt a definition of “excessively violent” programming harmful to children. And the answer, with some qualifications and disclaimers, appears to be – Yes, Yes and Yes. FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin notes that there is a big difference between “real life violence shown in a news story (and) fictional violence depicted for purposes of ‘entertainment.’” (He’s the one who put the word in quotes.) And, yes, this probably deserves more in-depth reporting for a possible later MfM.
MYSPACE NEWS FOLLOW UP: You’ve probably heard/ read that MySpace has adopted a news aggregation service with online users voting for their top story. Of course you have, because it was in last week’s MfM. Anyway, taking the same advice I give my clients – I followed up the story. Well, let’s just say the BBC, MSNBC, CNN or any other news organization for that matter, doesn’t have to worry. Nobody cares! I checked nearly a hundred of the news stories posted. Out of 20 different categories and more than 100 stories, ONLY ONE got a vote – a single vote. And that was the story about Elton John building an art gallery at home. Coalition forces kill 130 Taliban fighters – 0 votes. Iran to attend key meeting on stabilizing Iraq – 0 votes. Cardinals Hancock dies in truck crash – 0 votes. And so on and so on and so on. It may raise questions about MySpace’s plans to hold a so-called Presidential Primary online. Although as a further factoid, Barack Obama has more than 90,000 friends on MySpace, way ahead of John Edwards at 17,000, Hillary Clinton at nearly 8,000, John McCain at nearly 4,000 and Rudy Giuliani – no, sorry, his friend list is listed as private. You must be invited to see his profile.
IT’S NOT HARD BEING GREEN: Despite what Kermit the Frog says. Media trend letter Cynopsis reports more than a dozen “go green” efforts launched after last week’s Earth Day including The National Geographic, Hearst Magazines, the CW, and more. On a personal note, as I sat in the veterinary clinic, more than half a dozen of the magazines from Forbes to Outdoors to Atlantic all had front page articles on the environment. Which all seems to validate the MfM beginning of the year survey which indicated that the environment was going to be the hot topic (no pun intended) of the year.
THE WORLD TRADE DIVIDE: Okay, okay, I know what you’re saying – enough already with Billionaire Warren Buffett. However, considering the lead article in this week’s MfM, I thought his thoughts on world trade are apropos. The Billionaire says he is a “fervent” believer in what he calls REAL trade – “the more the better for both us and the world.” He defines Real Trade as purchases that are reciprocated by sales. In other words, the U.S. sells a Billion dollars in computers to China and China sells the U.S. a Billion dollars in cars. Buffett says we had $1.44 Trillion of this “honest-to-God” trade in 2006, but we had $0.76 Trillion in PSEUDO trade – purchases not reciprocated by sales. The result is that the U.S. is transferring ownership of its assets or I.O.U.’s to other countries. Adding to the problem is that for the first time since 1915, Buffett says, the “investment income” account of the U.S. turned negative in 2006. Foreigners now earn more on their U.S. investments than we do on our investments abroad. “In effect, we’ve used up our bank account and turned to our credit card,” he writes. We’re wealthy enough and have behaved responsibly in the past so that despite all this, Buffett says, Americans will live better ten or twenty years from now. But at some point in the future, he says U.S. workers and voters will find this annual “tribute” so onerous that there will be a severe political backlash and any idea of a “soft landing” out of this is “wishful thinking.”
COCKTAIL CHATTER: A report by research firm eMarketer says the average age of persons who download video from the Internet is 39.4. User generated videos made up 47% of the total online video market in the U.S. in 2006, according to media analyst firm Screen Digest. By 2010, the firm predicts more than half (55%) of all video content consumed online in the U.S. will be user generated, representing 44 Billion video streams. More than 70% of Americans 15 to 34 years old are active users of social networks, according to TNS Media Intelligence. The Fox network show House was the most watched broadcast prime-time show in DVR playback, according to Nielsen Media Research.
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.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Message from Michael -- April 23, 2007
VIRGINIA TECH
SWEEPS
AN MFM MEDIA MATTERS MINUTE
BILLIONAIRES WANTED
BILLIONAIRE’S ADVICE ON NEWSPAPERS
THE BILLIONAIRE BUSINESSMAN’S PRINCIPLES
TAXPAYERS WANTED
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.
VIRGINIA TECH: Those two words are going to take on an added meaning after the events of last week, just like… 9-11… Columbine… and Oklahoma City. I am not going to add to the avalanche of words written, but I can’t and won’t ignore it. And neither should you. I would urge every news operation to do a self-examination to see if they would be ready to handle such a catastrophic event in their community, and I would urge every member of the media to do a self-examination to define the ethical and moral principles that would guide their coverage. And do it now, before it happens; it’s too late to sort these things out when it happens. Oooh, that’s very preachy of me. Sorry. Let’s go on.
SWEEPS: Yes, here it comes – the May sweeps, the most critical ratings period of the year, the one that will determine your sales department’s future, the most hotly contested time of the year, the… Okay, you get it. Don’t get nervous or anything.
AN MFM MEDIA MATTERS MINUTE: In last week’s MfM, I warned or promised that I would spend much of this week’s report on the world’s 2nd richest man -- Billionaire Warren Buffett’s annual letter to shareholders. There is a wealth of insights and ideas worth thinking about. And just to make it more interesting, I am also including remarks from Fox/ News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch’s letter to shareholders. But I didn’t want to ignore some of the media stories from the last week. So, here it is:
Coincidental to the incident in Virginia Tech, the Federal Trade Commission issued a report on media violence that shows ‘improvement’ but indicates the entertainment industry has more work to do. Despite the so-called information revolution, a study by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that today’s citizens’ know about the same as people 20 years about news leaders and major news events. Fewer people could name the vice president, their state’s governor, the president of Russia or knew that America has a trade deficit. More though rightly identified Arnold Schwarzenegger and Hillary Clinton and knew that the Democrats control Congress. MySpace has launched a new aggregation service that will rank news stories and headlines on the basis of user feedback. Controversial broadcaster Al Jazeera which has been unable to get clearance on any U.S. Cable operation, is launching an English-language news channel on YouTube. A survey by consulting firm Accenture found that more than half (57%) of people in the media identified ‘user generated content’ as one of the biggest threats to the global media and entertainment industry. A survey by research firm Zogby International found that more than half (53%) of Americans would replace their satellite or cable TV in their homes with broadband TV if the content were similar. Page views for newspaper websites increased 27% year to year during the second half of 2006, according to Newspaper Audience Data.
BILLIONAIRES WANTED: Buffett is looking for his replacement. Of course the person should have an impressive investment record, but he says they also need to be “genetically programmed” to recognize and avoid serious risks. Underlying this is “temperament” which Buffett says should include independent thinking, emotional stability and, “a keen understanding both human and institutional behavior (because it) is vital to long-term investment success.” Okay, maybe you don’t qualify, but you might qualify for a position on his board of directors which pay upwards of a quarter million dollars. The ‘long-standing’ criteria is that you be “owner oriented, business-savvy, interested and truly independent.” Buffett emphasizes the independence because he says too many directors become enamored of the salary and perks which have soared in recent years thanks to what Buffett jokingly says is corporate America’s favorite consultant – Ratchet, Ratchet and Bingo – which emphasizes things like being a woman… or a Hispanic… or from abroad… when what is needed is someone who thinks “like an intelligent owner.” Buffett facetiously notes that his cynicism about corporate compensation has meant that he has become the “Typhoid Mary” of compensation committees and has never been nominated for the compensation committee of any of the 19 boards he sits on.
To provide some perspective, here are the newest additions to their board. Buffett chose Susan Decker, the CFO of Yahoo, because, he says, she scores well on his four criteria, plus at age 44 is young – “an attribute, as you may have noticed, that your chairman has long lacked.” Murdoch on the other hand chose two: former U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige because of his insistence on system-wide accountability and because “his deep knowledge of education will be an asset for a company whose lifeblood is the literacy of its consumers;” and Jose Maria Aznar who, as President of Spain, “enacted a bold array of reforms that catapulted the Spanish economy to the forefront of Europe” and who showed “courage as a leader in the war on terror.”
BUFFETT ON NEWSPAPERS: The fundamentals of the business are eroding. The slide will continue. They’re losing ground in the ‘battle for eyeballs.’ The economic potential of newspaper Internet site is only a fraction of the past performance of newspapers. Yet Buffett says he has no intention of selling his ownership in the Buffalo News. (He also has an 18% stake in the Washington Post group.) And it isn’t because he reads five newspapers a day or that he believes, as he does, that a free press is key to a free democracy. No, it’s because of Principle #11 in his list of Business Principles – he doesn’t believe in “gin rummy managerial behavior” which he defines as discarding your least promising business at each turn. As long as there is a reasonable expectation of cash flow, good managers in place and good labor relations and barring an irreversible cash drain, he says he will hold on to a business. Besides he is hopeful that some combination of print and online activity will ward off an economic doomsday for papers. Interestingly, he predicts that wealthy local citizens – or, as he phrases it -- ‘non-economic individual buyers’ – will emerge as owners, just like the sports franchise owners.
MURDOCH ON NEWSPAPERS: Except for the fact that Murdoch makes no pretense of holding onto under-performing business, his comments about newspapers are remarkably similar to Buffett’s. Murdoch shows some of the same affection, calling the print business “the heart of this company” and he argues that it is much too early to pronounce the death of print media. But there are challenges, as he says, with survey after survey showing newspapers are less integral to people’s lives with each passing year and that younger people are prefer alternative means of getting the news. “Yet,” Murdoch writes, “the hunger for news and information – for content – is not fading. It is intensifying.”
As a side note, News Corporation chair Rupert Murdoch says sporting events – along with live news – are as close to “DVR-proof” as programming gets.
THE BUFFETT BUSINESS PRINCIPLES: In 1983, Buffett set down 13 principles to help shareholders understand his managerial approach. In addition to Principle #11 mentioned above, here are just a few to give you a flavor of his thinking: Our attitude is partnership and (we) think of our shareholders as owner partners… We eat our own cooking (as in he invests in the same companies he recommends)… We use debt sparingly… We will only do with your money what we would do with our own… We feel noble intentions should be checked periodically against results… We will be candid in our reporting to you… As a company with a major communications business, it would be inexcusable for us to apply lesser standards of accuracy, balance and incisiveness when reporting on ourselves than we would expect news people to apply when reporting on others… Despite our policy of candor, we will discuss our activities in marketable securities only to the extent legally required… Good investment ideas are rare, valuable and subject to competitive appropriation just as good product or business acquisition ideas are.
This year, Buffett added in the concept of Intrinsic Value. The simple definition is that it’s the discounted value of the cash that can be taken out of a business during its remaining life. But how to calculate intrinsic value is not so simple and two people looking at the same set of facts with come up with different figures.
THE MURDOCH BUSINESS PRINCIPLES: The principles are laid out during Murdoch’s examination of his cable business. Topping his list – be willing to ignore or even take on conventional wisdom. Just behind that is the admonition to “invest wisely and early in a new business.” Third, be patient as the new effort finds its footing. Fourth, enjoy the growth and profitability as the business matures but always be thinking about and building the next generation of new channel offerings. As Murdoch says, “the elements are simple to understand, if not always easy to implement.”
TAXPAYERS WANTED: To put Buffett’s wealth in perspective, consider this: his company Berkshire-Hathaway will pay about $4.4 Billion in federal income tax on its 2006 earnings. In its last fiscal year the U.S. government spent $2.6 Trillion – about $7 Billion a day. Thus, Buffett notes, his company picked up the tab for ALL federal expenditures (social security, medicare, the armed services) for more than half of one day. He notes that if there were 600 taxpayers like his company, no one else in American would need to pay ANY federal income or payroll taxes.
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
AN MFM MEDIA MATTERS MINUTE
BILLIONAIRES WANTED
BILLIONAIRE’S ADVICE ON NEWSPAPERS
THE BILLIONAIRE BUSINESSMAN’S PRINCIPLES
TAXPAYERS WANTED
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.
VIRGINIA TECH: Those two words are going to take on an added meaning after the events of last week, just like… 9-11… Columbine… and Oklahoma City. I am not going to add to the avalanche of words written, but I can’t and won’t ignore it. And neither should you. I would urge every news operation to do a self-examination to see if they would be ready to handle such a catastrophic event in their community, and I would urge every member of the media to do a self-examination to define the ethical and moral principles that would guide their coverage. And do it now, before it happens; it’s too late to sort these things out when it happens. Oooh, that’s very preachy of me. Sorry. Let’s go on.
SWEEPS: Yes, here it comes – the May sweeps, the most critical ratings period of the year, the one that will determine your sales department’s future, the most hotly contested time of the year, the… Okay, you get it. Don’t get nervous or anything.
AN MFM MEDIA MATTERS MINUTE: In last week’s MfM, I warned or promised that I would spend much of this week’s report on the world’s 2nd richest man -- Billionaire Warren Buffett’s annual letter to shareholders. There is a wealth of insights and ideas worth thinking about. And just to make it more interesting, I am also including remarks from Fox/ News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch’s letter to shareholders. But I didn’t want to ignore some of the media stories from the last week. So, here it is:
Coincidental to the incident in Virginia Tech, the Federal Trade Commission issued a report on media violence that shows ‘improvement’ but indicates the entertainment industry has more work to do. Despite the so-called information revolution, a study by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that today’s citizens’ know about the same as people 20 years about news leaders and major news events. Fewer people could name the vice president, their state’s governor, the president of Russia or knew that America has a trade deficit. More though rightly identified Arnold Schwarzenegger and Hillary Clinton and knew that the Democrats control Congress. MySpace has launched a new aggregation service that will rank news stories and headlines on the basis of user feedback. Controversial broadcaster Al Jazeera which has been unable to get clearance on any U.S. Cable operation, is launching an English-language news channel on YouTube. A survey by consulting firm Accenture found that more than half (57%) of people in the media identified ‘user generated content’ as one of the biggest threats to the global media and entertainment industry. A survey by research firm Zogby International found that more than half (53%) of Americans would replace their satellite or cable TV in their homes with broadband TV if the content were similar. Page views for newspaper websites increased 27% year to year during the second half of 2006, according to Newspaper Audience Data.
BILLIONAIRES WANTED: Buffett is looking for his replacement. Of course the person should have an impressive investment record, but he says they also need to be “genetically programmed” to recognize and avoid serious risks. Underlying this is “temperament” which Buffett says should include independent thinking, emotional stability and, “a keen understanding both human and institutional behavior (because it) is vital to long-term investment success.” Okay, maybe you don’t qualify, but you might qualify for a position on his board of directors which pay upwards of a quarter million dollars. The ‘long-standing’ criteria is that you be “owner oriented, business-savvy, interested and truly independent.” Buffett emphasizes the independence because he says too many directors become enamored of the salary and perks which have soared in recent years thanks to what Buffett jokingly says is corporate America’s favorite consultant – Ratchet, Ratchet and Bingo – which emphasizes things like being a woman… or a Hispanic… or from abroad… when what is needed is someone who thinks “like an intelligent owner.” Buffett facetiously notes that his cynicism about corporate compensation has meant that he has become the “Typhoid Mary” of compensation committees and has never been nominated for the compensation committee of any of the 19 boards he sits on.
To provide some perspective, here are the newest additions to their board. Buffett chose Susan Decker, the CFO of Yahoo, because, he says, she scores well on his four criteria, plus at age 44 is young – “an attribute, as you may have noticed, that your chairman has long lacked.” Murdoch on the other hand chose two: former U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige because of his insistence on system-wide accountability and because “his deep knowledge of education will be an asset for a company whose lifeblood is the literacy of its consumers;” and Jose Maria Aznar who, as President of Spain, “enacted a bold array of reforms that catapulted the Spanish economy to the forefront of Europe” and who showed “courage as a leader in the war on terror.”
BUFFETT ON NEWSPAPERS: The fundamentals of the business are eroding. The slide will continue. They’re losing ground in the ‘battle for eyeballs.’ The economic potential of newspaper Internet site is only a fraction of the past performance of newspapers. Yet Buffett says he has no intention of selling his ownership in the Buffalo News. (He also has an 18% stake in the Washington Post group.) And it isn’t because he reads five newspapers a day or that he believes, as he does, that a free press is key to a free democracy. No, it’s because of Principle #11 in his list of Business Principles – he doesn’t believe in “gin rummy managerial behavior” which he defines as discarding your least promising business at each turn. As long as there is a reasonable expectation of cash flow, good managers in place and good labor relations and barring an irreversible cash drain, he says he will hold on to a business. Besides he is hopeful that some combination of print and online activity will ward off an economic doomsday for papers. Interestingly, he predicts that wealthy local citizens – or, as he phrases it -- ‘non-economic individual buyers’ – will emerge as owners, just like the sports franchise owners.
MURDOCH ON NEWSPAPERS: Except for the fact that Murdoch makes no pretense of holding onto under-performing business, his comments about newspapers are remarkably similar to Buffett’s. Murdoch shows some of the same affection, calling the print business “the heart of this company” and he argues that it is much too early to pronounce the death of print media. But there are challenges, as he says, with survey after survey showing newspapers are less integral to people’s lives with each passing year and that younger people are prefer alternative means of getting the news. “Yet,” Murdoch writes, “the hunger for news and information – for content – is not fading. It is intensifying.”
As a side note, News Corporation chair Rupert Murdoch says sporting events – along with live news – are as close to “DVR-proof” as programming gets.
THE BUFFETT BUSINESS PRINCIPLES: In 1983, Buffett set down 13 principles to help shareholders understand his managerial approach. In addition to Principle #11 mentioned above, here are just a few to give you a flavor of his thinking: Our attitude is partnership and (we) think of our shareholders as owner partners… We eat our own cooking (as in he invests in the same companies he recommends)… We use debt sparingly… We will only do with your money what we would do with our own… We feel noble intentions should be checked periodically against results… We will be candid in our reporting to you… As a company with a major communications business, it would be inexcusable for us to apply lesser standards of accuracy, balance and incisiveness when reporting on ourselves than we would expect news people to apply when reporting on others… Despite our policy of candor, we will discuss our activities in marketable securities only to the extent legally required… Good investment ideas are rare, valuable and subject to competitive appropriation just as good product or business acquisition ideas are.
This year, Buffett added in the concept of Intrinsic Value. The simple definition is that it’s the discounted value of the cash that can be taken out of a business during its remaining life. But how to calculate intrinsic value is not so simple and two people looking at the same set of facts with come up with different figures.
THE MURDOCH BUSINESS PRINCIPLES: The principles are laid out during Murdoch’s examination of his cable business. Topping his list – be willing to ignore or even take on conventional wisdom. Just behind that is the admonition to “invest wisely and early in a new business.” Third, be patient as the new effort finds its footing. Fourth, enjoy the growth and profitability as the business matures but always be thinking about and building the next generation of new channel offerings. As Murdoch says, “the elements are simple to understand, if not always easy to implement.”
TAXPAYERS WANTED: To put Buffett’s wealth in perspective, consider this: his company Berkshire-Hathaway will pay about $4.4 Billion in federal income tax on its 2006 earnings. In its last fiscal year the U.S. government spent $2.6 Trillion – about $7 Billion a day. Thus, Buffett notes, his company picked up the tab for ALL federal expenditures (social security, medicare, the armed services) for more than half of one day. He notes that if there were 600 taxpayers like his company, no one else in American would need to pay ANY federal income or payroll taxes.
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, April 18, 2007
Message From Michael -- April 16, 2007
The State of Corporate Media – A Special Report
Words of Wisdom From Warren
Don Imus and Katie Couric
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.
FOREWORD: What started out as a paragraph or two in my weekly newsletter has evolved into this special report. A friend and MfM reader, Steve Smith, gave me the annual report for the Gannett Corporation. That prompted me to look up another which prompted another, etc., until I ended up with this. As part of the annual reports filed by corporations around this time of year, the chairman and/or CEO usually writes a “letter to shareholders” outlining achievements, challenges and issues facing the group and the industry. What follows is a summary of the letters I read from the heads of GE/ NBC-U, Disney-ABC and Fox/ News Corporation, along with Gannett, Media General, Hearst Argyle, Meredith and others. For the record, I couldn’t find anything for some corporations on-line but the most surprising one missing was CBS Corporation.
DIGITIZING FOR DOLLARS: Okay, as a headline, it’s a bad variation of the old “dialing for dollars” but that’s the clear message that comes through from a reading of the letters written by the media titans. Digital. Digital. Digital. Hearst-Argyle says it is “aggressively advancing our efforts in digital media.” ABC-Disney talks about digital activity “expanding the market.” GE-NBCU talks about a $4 TRILLION investment in Infrastructure Technology; and under the heading “digital connections” in its list of six global trends, makes the understatement, “our customers are increasingly using the Internet.” But it follows that up with a sentence that says it all, “digitization facilitates rapid distribution and knowledge transfer to a fragmented customer base.” Gannett talks about the international digital business and has created “Gannett Digital” – “an entity empowered to take the necessary steps we need to grow and attract customers.” The Media General report focuses on the Internet aspects, and it probably tells you something that topping its list of “key internal initiatives” is “creating a dynamic Internet presence in all markets.” Indicative of the importance they attach to it, Company President and CEO Marshall N. Morton devotes the first four paragraphs of his letter to their Internet efforts. Meredith which recently launched the website version of Home and Garden amidst much ballyhoo touts its “extensive Internet presence” as a defining factor for them. Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corporation, says, “There is more to this revolution than just the Internet.” He calls it the “digital revolution” and, in his usual under-stated way, says it has the promise of “changing our world as fundamentally as the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions.”
INNOVATE THIS: Next to Digital and Internet, innovate or innovation may be the most popular word in the annual reports. In his letter, Disney CEO Robert A. Iger may be the most prolific user of the word, citing “innovation and imagination (as) essential components… to the company’s future growth,” talking about the employees “creative energy (and) openness to innovation” and says he wants the company to be known for “being contemporary, innovative and willing to take the intelligent risks necessary to carry us into the future.” In a very similar vein, GE CEO Jeffrey R. Immelt says innovation is one of the key factors to creating what he calls “organic growth.” Rupert Murdoch talks several times about the need for an “innovative, entrepreneurial spirit” and speaks glowingly of other innovators. Gannett chairman, president and CEO Craig A. Dubow says the need to “drive innovation throughout the company” is one of their three basic initiatives. The folks at Media General cite “introducing innovative products (that) will attract new readers, viewers and users” as the second most critical internal initiative.
THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT ON: Most – if not all – of the shareholder letters cited the changing customer paradigm. The customer is defining the terms under which they want to get the news media product. Gannett’s executives talk extensively about being “customer centric.” Media General execs talk about “customer focus” and put it in an even more interesting fashion when they talk about “staying close to the customer.” GE’s Jeffrey Immelt talks about “an enterprise approach to customers” and “improving customer value.” And this may fall into editorial comment more than factual analysis, but I would note that News Corp’s Murdoch may use the word “customer” more in his letter than anybody else, but not as a company focus so much as a revenue target. Also as I said at the start, I couldn’t find the latest CBS report but in its previous one, the company also talked about how “audiences have more ways to see, hear and participate… and receive news and information whenever, wherever and however they choose.”
THE EMPLOYEE IS ALSO RIGHT ON: The importance of good employees was another key theme throughout all the reports. In all candor, sometimes there was a question of how much of it was real and how much was ‘lip service.’ Hearst-Argyle chairman Victor F. Ganzi and president and CEO David J. Barrett actually lead off their letter talking about employees, saying, “yesterday, today and tomorrow, the success of our endeavors is determined by the work of our talented employees in news and content development.” Adding to his list of things he wants Disney to be known for, CEO Robert Iger says he wants Disney to be known for “the quality and integrity of our people and products.” Media General refers to its “7,200 employees who have shown themselves to be innovative (there’s that word, again) and able to respond effectively to a rapidly changing marketplace.”
OTHER THINGS I FOUND INTERESTING: Semi-related to the employee emphasis is a training program taught by… no kidding… GE CEO Jeffrey R. Immelt who puts it in a most interesting way – “this is how we transfer knowledge within GE.” And in what many might find more intimidating than interesting, he says he mandates team leaders to “return to work as a GE zealot or find another job.” He says it has never been more important for people to understand exactly why they work for a company and that’s why they created a team-based training course called Leadership Innovation (there’s that word, again) and Growth. Meredith Corporation puts enormous emphasis on the Hispanic market. It was on the front page of their annual report and it was in the lead paragraph of the letter to shareholders by Chairman William T. Kerr and President and CEO Stephen M. Lacy. Completely unrelated but also in the “interesting” category – to me at least – was the Meredith focus on EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization.) Both Gannett and Media General made a big point about Duopoly operations. Gannett chairman Dubow in his letter states it bluntly, “duopolies are smart investments.” Media General chiefs Bryan and Morton make a pitch, clearly directed at the Federal Communications Commission, about the “exploding technology” and – most specifically – the question of newspaper-broadcast cross ownership and convergence. Talking about exploding technology, Murdoch says he “hopes and expects” that in the near future the Internet business will be where the cable business is today. I have mentioned this before in MfM but it’s worth mentioning again: Gannett’s re-definition of newsrooms as “Information Centers.” Board chair Dubow, somewhat poetically and prosaically, describes it as a place, a process and a state of mind. (FYI -- Several of the company’s broadcast brethren have been enlisted to teach their newspaper neophytes how to use video as part of this re-definition.) Not surprisingly but very interestingly, the big companies (GE, News Corp and Disney) put a great deal of emphasis in their reports and letters on the global market while the American-focused corporations emphasized earnings.
THE CHUTZPAH AWARD: Of all the media CEO’s, who would you expect to get this award. Who else? Rupert Murdoch. Not once but twice in his letter, he refers to his company as – “the most innovative and fearless media company in the world today.” On the flip side of that is GE Board Chairman and CEO Jeffrey R. Immelt who took over the job as CEO on September 7, 2001 – four days before the tragic events of 9-11. GE stock went into a “free fall” after that, dropping to $34 a share. He bought 15,000 shares thinking – as he put it – “I love the company and when will it ever be this cheap again.” He answers his own question with a touch of self-deprecating sarcasm – “the answer turned out to be – in 2006.” However, he quickly adds, “this is a long-term investment. There are no short-term tricks.”
BRANDING LINES: As a side note, I thought you might find some of the branding lines used by the various companies interesting. For Media General – We’re long past being just a newspaper or broadcast television company. For Hearst-Argyle – The Next Generation of TV. For General Electric/ NBC-U – This is YOUR GE. For Fox/ News Corp: Imagine the Future… Today. For Gannett – The Information Company. For Meredith Corporation – Delivering Content Across Multiple Media Platforms.
WORDS OF WISDOM FROM WARREN: As in Warren Buffett, the 2nd richest man in the world (behind his friend Bill Gates). The other thing that started me down this road of a special edition look at annual reports was that every year I look forward to Buffett’s “Letter to Shareholders.” It is part of the Berkshire Hathaway annual report. And every year I find it well worth reading and reporting. Who else uses Shakespeare, Ronald Reagan, Winston Churchill, Indianapolis car drivers and slightly risqué jokes in their letter?
Talking about how huge Berkshire Hathaway has become and his concern that big companies tend to become slow and resistant to change, he quotes Winston Churchill, “we shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.” Describing his hands-off approach to delegating management responsibility semi-facetiously as taking the easy route, he says Ronald Reagan had it right when he said, “it’s probably true that hard work never killed anyone – but why take the chance?” And talking about his conservative approach to buying businesses without over-leveraging the balance sheet, he quotes an Indianapolis 500 winner who said, “To finish first, you must first finish.”
FOOTNOTE: I plan to devote a fair amount of next week’s MfM to Buffett’s letter to shareholders. Admittedly he is not a media titan (although he owns the Buffalo News and has an 18% holding in the Washington Post) but because I find what he says so fascinating and I think you will too. I will include some of Rupert Murdoch’s observations as well. Their two letters form a management treatise better than most management books.
COURIC AND IMUS: I would be remiss if I didn’t at least mention the dust-up over radio personality Don Imus’s racist and sexist remarks and the revelation that CBS Anchor Katie Couric’s so-called personal blog was not only not written by her but was plagiarized. As regular readers of MfM know, I try to keep my personal opinion out of these reports and keep them fact-based. However, I would offer an editorial thought, especially after reading Buffett’s Letter. I was struck by the fact that Buffett has some clear underlying personal principles and business principles by which he operates. So, how do these events fit into your personal and business principles? For example, could the Couric situation apply to your operation? And my compliments to Jill Geisler of the Poynter Institute who provided an interesting commentary about the Imus situation, raising the question -- at what point do you feel “uncomfortable.”
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.
Words of Wisdom From Warren
Don Imus and Katie Couric
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.
FOREWORD: What started out as a paragraph or two in my weekly newsletter has evolved into this special report. A friend and MfM reader, Steve Smith, gave me the annual report for the Gannett Corporation. That prompted me to look up another which prompted another, etc., until I ended up with this. As part of the annual reports filed by corporations around this time of year, the chairman and/or CEO usually writes a “letter to shareholders” outlining achievements, challenges and issues facing the group and the industry. What follows is a summary of the letters I read from the heads of GE/ NBC-U, Disney-ABC and Fox/ News Corporation, along with Gannett, Media General, Hearst Argyle, Meredith and others. For the record, I couldn’t find anything for some corporations on-line but the most surprising one missing was CBS Corporation.
DIGITIZING FOR DOLLARS: Okay, as a headline, it’s a bad variation of the old “dialing for dollars” but that’s the clear message that comes through from a reading of the letters written by the media titans. Digital. Digital. Digital. Hearst-Argyle says it is “aggressively advancing our efforts in digital media.” ABC-Disney talks about digital activity “expanding the market.” GE-NBCU talks about a $4 TRILLION investment in Infrastructure Technology; and under the heading “digital connections” in its list of six global trends, makes the understatement, “our customers are increasingly using the Internet.” But it follows that up with a sentence that says it all, “digitization facilitates rapid distribution and knowledge transfer to a fragmented customer base.” Gannett talks about the international digital business and has created “Gannett Digital” – “an entity empowered to take the necessary steps we need to grow and attract customers.” The Media General report focuses on the Internet aspects, and it probably tells you something that topping its list of “key internal initiatives” is “creating a dynamic Internet presence in all markets.” Indicative of the importance they attach to it, Company President and CEO Marshall N. Morton devotes the first four paragraphs of his letter to their Internet efforts. Meredith which recently launched the website version of Home and Garden amidst much ballyhoo touts its “extensive Internet presence” as a defining factor for them. Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corporation, says, “There is more to this revolution than just the Internet.” He calls it the “digital revolution” and, in his usual under-stated way, says it has the promise of “changing our world as fundamentally as the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions.”
INNOVATE THIS: Next to Digital and Internet, innovate or innovation may be the most popular word in the annual reports. In his letter, Disney CEO Robert A. Iger may be the most prolific user of the word, citing “innovation and imagination (as) essential components… to the company’s future growth,” talking about the employees “creative energy (and) openness to innovation” and says he wants the company to be known for “being contemporary, innovative and willing to take the intelligent risks necessary to carry us into the future.” In a very similar vein, GE CEO Jeffrey R. Immelt says innovation is one of the key factors to creating what he calls “organic growth.” Rupert Murdoch talks several times about the need for an “innovative, entrepreneurial spirit” and speaks glowingly of other innovators. Gannett chairman, president and CEO Craig A. Dubow says the need to “drive innovation throughout the company” is one of their three basic initiatives. The folks at Media General cite “introducing innovative products (that) will attract new readers, viewers and users” as the second most critical internal initiative.
THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT ON: Most – if not all – of the shareholder letters cited the changing customer paradigm. The customer is defining the terms under which they want to get the news media product. Gannett’s executives talk extensively about being “customer centric.” Media General execs talk about “customer focus” and put it in an even more interesting fashion when they talk about “staying close to the customer.” GE’s Jeffrey Immelt talks about “an enterprise approach to customers” and “improving customer value.” And this may fall into editorial comment more than factual analysis, but I would note that News Corp’s Murdoch may use the word “customer” more in his letter than anybody else, but not as a company focus so much as a revenue target. Also as I said at the start, I couldn’t find the latest CBS report but in its previous one, the company also talked about how “audiences have more ways to see, hear and participate… and receive news and information whenever, wherever and however they choose.”
THE EMPLOYEE IS ALSO RIGHT ON: The importance of good employees was another key theme throughout all the reports. In all candor, sometimes there was a question of how much of it was real and how much was ‘lip service.’ Hearst-Argyle chairman Victor F. Ganzi and president and CEO David J. Barrett actually lead off their letter talking about employees, saying, “yesterday, today and tomorrow, the success of our endeavors is determined by the work of our talented employees in news and content development.” Adding to his list of things he wants Disney to be known for, CEO Robert Iger says he wants Disney to be known for “the quality and integrity of our people and products.” Media General refers to its “7,200 employees who have shown themselves to be innovative (there’s that word, again) and able to respond effectively to a rapidly changing marketplace.”
OTHER THINGS I FOUND INTERESTING: Semi-related to the employee emphasis is a training program taught by… no kidding… GE CEO Jeffrey R. Immelt who puts it in a most interesting way – “this is how we transfer knowledge within GE.” And in what many might find more intimidating than interesting, he says he mandates team leaders to “return to work as a GE zealot or find another job.” He says it has never been more important for people to understand exactly why they work for a company and that’s why they created a team-based training course called Leadership Innovation (there’s that word, again) and Growth. Meredith Corporation puts enormous emphasis on the Hispanic market. It was on the front page of their annual report and it was in the lead paragraph of the letter to shareholders by Chairman William T. Kerr and President and CEO Stephen M. Lacy. Completely unrelated but also in the “interesting” category – to me at least – was the Meredith focus on EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization.) Both Gannett and Media General made a big point about Duopoly operations. Gannett chairman Dubow in his letter states it bluntly, “duopolies are smart investments.” Media General chiefs Bryan and Morton make a pitch, clearly directed at the Federal Communications Commission, about the “exploding technology” and – most specifically – the question of newspaper-broadcast cross ownership and convergence. Talking about exploding technology, Murdoch says he “hopes and expects” that in the near future the Internet business will be where the cable business is today. I have mentioned this before in MfM but it’s worth mentioning again: Gannett’s re-definition of newsrooms as “Information Centers.” Board chair Dubow, somewhat poetically and prosaically, describes it as a place, a process and a state of mind. (FYI -- Several of the company’s broadcast brethren have been enlisted to teach their newspaper neophytes how to use video as part of this re-definition.) Not surprisingly but very interestingly, the big companies (GE, News Corp and Disney) put a great deal of emphasis in their reports and letters on the global market while the American-focused corporations emphasized earnings.
THE CHUTZPAH AWARD: Of all the media CEO’s, who would you expect to get this award. Who else? Rupert Murdoch. Not once but twice in his letter, he refers to his company as – “the most innovative and fearless media company in the world today.” On the flip side of that is GE Board Chairman and CEO Jeffrey R. Immelt who took over the job as CEO on September 7, 2001 – four days before the tragic events of 9-11. GE stock went into a “free fall” after that, dropping to $34 a share. He bought 15,000 shares thinking – as he put it – “I love the company and when will it ever be this cheap again.” He answers his own question with a touch of self-deprecating sarcasm – “the answer turned out to be – in 2006.” However, he quickly adds, “this is a long-term investment. There are no short-term tricks.”
BRANDING LINES: As a side note, I thought you might find some of the branding lines used by the various companies interesting. For Media General – We’re long past being just a newspaper or broadcast television company. For Hearst-Argyle – The Next Generation of TV. For General Electric/ NBC-U – This is YOUR GE. For Fox/ News Corp: Imagine the Future… Today. For Gannett – The Information Company. For Meredith Corporation – Delivering Content Across Multiple Media Platforms.
WORDS OF WISDOM FROM WARREN: As in Warren Buffett, the 2nd richest man in the world (behind his friend Bill Gates). The other thing that started me down this road of a special edition look at annual reports was that every year I look forward to Buffett’s “Letter to Shareholders.” It is part of the Berkshire Hathaway annual report. And every year I find it well worth reading and reporting. Who else uses Shakespeare, Ronald Reagan, Winston Churchill, Indianapolis car drivers and slightly risqué jokes in their letter?
Talking about how huge Berkshire Hathaway has become and his concern that big companies tend to become slow and resistant to change, he quotes Winston Churchill, “we shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.” Describing his hands-off approach to delegating management responsibility semi-facetiously as taking the easy route, he says Ronald Reagan had it right when he said, “it’s probably true that hard work never killed anyone – but why take the chance?” And talking about his conservative approach to buying businesses without over-leveraging the balance sheet, he quotes an Indianapolis 500 winner who said, “To finish first, you must first finish.”
FOOTNOTE: I plan to devote a fair amount of next week’s MfM to Buffett’s letter to shareholders. Admittedly he is not a media titan (although he owns the Buffalo News and has an 18% holding in the Washington Post) but because I find what he says so fascinating and I think you will too. I will include some of Rupert Murdoch’s observations as well. Their two letters form a management treatise better than most management books.
COURIC AND IMUS: I would be remiss if I didn’t at least mention the dust-up over radio personality Don Imus’s racist and sexist remarks and the revelation that CBS Anchor Katie Couric’s so-called personal blog was not only not written by her but was plagiarized. As regular readers of MfM know, I try to keep my personal opinion out of these reports and keep them fact-based. However, I would offer an editorial thought, especially after reading Buffett’s Letter. I was struck by the fact that Buffett has some clear underlying personal principles and business principles by which he operates. So, how do these events fit into your personal and business principles? For example, could the Couric situation apply to your operation? And my compliments to Jill Geisler of the Poynter Institute who provided an interesting commentary about the Imus situation, raising the question -- at what point do you feel “uncomfortable.”
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.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Message From Michael -- April 9, 2007
SWEEPS AND SOPRANOS
NOW YOU SEE IT
THE POWER OF AJAX
THE RACE IS ON
THE WORD IS EXCELLENCE
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 AND SOPRANOS: They have nothing to do with each other, but I thought it sounded like a good headline. The two big headlines for this week’s MfM – the critical May sweeps is fast approaching and the critically acclaimed Sopranos debuted its final season last night.
NOW YOU SEE IT: And now you see it again… and again… and again. At least, according to a series of reports about streaming video online, you are. Four different reports from four different groups have come dealing with streaming video. International research firm Ipsos, Online research firm comScore/ Video Metrix, marketing research firm eMarketer and one that you may never have heard of, online tracking firm Vidmeter.com. Ipsos reports that just under half (44%) of ALL Americans have streamed some form of video content online with six out of ten (58%) of those Americans with Internet access streaming video. Not surprisingly the numbers are higher for young people. Three in four of all teens 12 to 17 and young adults 18-24 having streamed video last year in 2006. And figures released by ComScore seem to indicate that the number is growing. While the Ipsos report was for 2006, comScore reported that in January of this year ‘unique streamers and downloaders’ totaled nearly 123 Million people or 70% of the total U.S. Internet audience. The comScore figures seem to verify the Ipsos finding that few people (roughly one in seven – 14%) watched full-length TV shows online. The comScore data shows that ‘streamers’ averaged 58.9 streams a month, averaging 151 minutes of online video watching but that meant they were only watching about 2.6 minutes each time. The most popular form of online video stream is news, commentary and sports clips, according to Ipsos, with more than half (51%) having streamed such videos in the past 30 days. Almost as popular are movie and TV trailers with nearly half (48%) streaming them and an almost equally large number (46%) watching amateur or homemade video clips. That last figure is particularly interesting in light of the study by vidmeter.com which says that despite all the hullabaloo about copyright issues on such sites as YouTube, those videos removed because of copyright questions accounted for only six percent of total video views on the site.
Ipsos Executive Vice President Brian Cruikshank says we could be witnessing a “tipping point” in the evolution of digital video offerings online with young people eschewing (I’m sorry, it’s the word that the press release used) more traditional ways to view and acquire video content and turning to digital video on their PC or portable device. Meanwhile, eMarketer reports far fewer women watch video online compared to men, but the numbers are still substantial. The report says ‘only’ two-thirds (66%) of female Internet users watch video online compared to three-quarters (78%) of male Internet users. The executive vice president for comScore, Erin Hunter, argues that marketers could double their primetime viewing by adopting a multi-channel strategy because while ‘primetime’ TV viewing is traditionally between the hours of 8:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m., the ‘primetime’ viewing of online video occurs during the preceding block of time between 5:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. (Okay, I know I spent a lot of time on this, but there were, after all, four studies involved.)
On a related note, online video distributor Azureus has launched a video-on-demand site in competition to Joost (mentioned in a previous MfM) utilizing peer-to-peer downloading technology to deliver high definition video from content partners A&E, Starz, BBC and Showtime. And on a further related note, if you ever wondered how to download those videos from YouTube and others, there is a website Keepvid.com which provides a technique to do that.
THE POWER OF AJAX: And I’m not referring to the Greek warrior or to the bleaching cleanser, but to a new Internet publishing technology which threatens or promises (your choice) to change Internet viewing. Ajax stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML and is a technique in which a web page or even e-mail can be updated automatically without requiring users to do anything. Publication Mediaweek argues that since the content is updated automatically, there will be less reason to go to other web pages, so therefore there will be fewer page views which is equated (rightfully or wrongfully) with ad impressions. The publication notes that Nielsen/ Net Ratings plans to publish a new “total time spent” metric which will place less emphasis on page views and more on how long is spent viewing. Well, comScore Media Metrix has already adopted a system to measure not only the total visits, but the average minutes per visit and the average visits per visitor. For example, popular website Facebook doesn’t even make it to the top ten when it comes to counting the number of ‘unique visitors.’ Yahoo with 128 Million, Time Warner Network with 118 Million and Google sites with 115 Million are the top three. But when you calculate the average number of visits by each visitor, Facebook jumps into the number two spot with 23.6 visits by each visitor, behind Yahoo with 28.6 visits. In fact the entire top ten list gets restructured with, for example, Weatherbug, which is 48th in terms of unique visitors ranking fifth when it comes to number of visits. I know this all may seem confusing, but the point goes back to an issue raised in previous MfM’s and even the State of the News Media report – measurement. Not just whether a consumer sees a report or advertisement but whether they actually become engaged with, and remember, the report or advertisement.
THE RACE IS ON: The U.S. is ahead, but China is running right behind in one race, but Canada leads in the other race, followed by Israel, South Korea and the United States in fourth place. The first race is the measurement of Internet penetration, arrived at by counting the number of unique visitors aged 15-plus. In this area, according to comScore World Metrix, the U.S. has an astounding 153 Million unique visitors. Think about that. Considering there are ‘only’ 300 Million people in the U.S., that means more than half have visited the Internet. China, which, at 1.3 Billion, has more than four times the population of the U.S., came in second by this measure with nearly 87 Million unique visitors. But there is little doubt the Chinese Internet population will surpass the American Internet population shortly with an annual growth of 20% a year compared to the U.S.’s 2%. The other population behemoth, India, which has a total population of just over One Billion, presently ranks eighth with 21 Million Internet users. India’s total population is growing much faster than China, and its Internet population is growing 33% a year. The next fastest growing Internet population is the Russian federation with just under 13 Million Internet users but with a growth rate of 21% a year. The other race is in average Monthly Hours spent online. Canadians are online 39.6 hours a month compared to Israel’s 37.4 hours, South Korea’s 34 hours and the United States’ 31.6 hours. The world Internet population, measuring those aged 15-plus, in January of this year was 747 Million, up 10% from a year ago.
ANOTHER RACE IS ON: This time between the Internet and other media. According to forecaster ZenithOptimedia, the Internet will overtake radio in terms of ad dollars worldwide by next year. Right now, according to their figures, the Internet is right behind with $31.3 Billion compared to radio’s $36.3 Billion. TV is the big kid on the advertising block with $167.8 Billion in ad spending compared to newspapers’ $126.2 Billion and magazines $56.4 Billion. The agency says the good news for TV is that demand has picked up and instead of its first-ever sustained period of market share loss, TV expenditure globally is forecast to go up. The even better news for the Internet, according to the report summarized in Advertising Age, is that the Internet will account for nearly 9% of global ad spending by 2009 and should reach double digits in the next decade.
THE WORD IS EXCELLENCE: No doubt you’ve heard about the Peabody Award winners, but I just wanted to send my compliments on to the local TV stations cited: WTNH in New Haven, KMOV in St. Louis and the unusual citation for two stations in the same market – WTHR and WISH in Indianapolis. I am proud to have been associated with two of the stations – KMOV where I worked and where I still have friends and WTHR, a former consulting client. The Peabody is awarded under the auspices of the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication which I am also proud to be associated with. And for what it’s worth, I would encourage other local TV stations to submit. The criteria is both simple and profound, and can be summed up in one word – Excellence.
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.
NOW YOU SEE IT
THE POWER OF AJAX
THE RACE IS ON
THE WORD IS EXCELLENCE
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 AND SOPRANOS: They have nothing to do with each other, but I thought it sounded like a good headline. The two big headlines for this week’s MfM – the critical May sweeps is fast approaching and the critically acclaimed Sopranos debuted its final season last night.
NOW YOU SEE IT: And now you see it again… and again… and again. At least, according to a series of reports about streaming video online, you are. Four different reports from four different groups have come dealing with streaming video. International research firm Ipsos, Online research firm comScore/ Video Metrix, marketing research firm eMarketer and one that you may never have heard of, online tracking firm Vidmeter.com. Ipsos reports that just under half (44%) of ALL Americans have streamed some form of video content online with six out of ten (58%) of those Americans with Internet access streaming video. Not surprisingly the numbers are higher for young people. Three in four of all teens 12 to 17 and young adults 18-24 having streamed video last year in 2006. And figures released by ComScore seem to indicate that the number is growing. While the Ipsos report was for 2006, comScore reported that in January of this year ‘unique streamers and downloaders’ totaled nearly 123 Million people or 70% of the total U.S. Internet audience. The comScore figures seem to verify the Ipsos finding that few people (roughly one in seven – 14%) watched full-length TV shows online. The comScore data shows that ‘streamers’ averaged 58.9 streams a month, averaging 151 minutes of online video watching but that meant they were only watching about 2.6 minutes each time. The most popular form of online video stream is news, commentary and sports clips, according to Ipsos, with more than half (51%) having streamed such videos in the past 30 days. Almost as popular are movie and TV trailers with nearly half (48%) streaming them and an almost equally large number (46%) watching amateur or homemade video clips. That last figure is particularly interesting in light of the study by vidmeter.com which says that despite all the hullabaloo about copyright issues on such sites as YouTube, those videos removed because of copyright questions accounted for only six percent of total video views on the site.
Ipsos Executive Vice President Brian Cruikshank says we could be witnessing a “tipping point” in the evolution of digital video offerings online with young people eschewing (I’m sorry, it’s the word that the press release used) more traditional ways to view and acquire video content and turning to digital video on their PC or portable device. Meanwhile, eMarketer reports far fewer women watch video online compared to men, but the numbers are still substantial. The report says ‘only’ two-thirds (66%) of female Internet users watch video online compared to three-quarters (78%) of male Internet users. The executive vice president for comScore, Erin Hunter, argues that marketers could double their primetime viewing by adopting a multi-channel strategy because while ‘primetime’ TV viewing is traditionally between the hours of 8:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m., the ‘primetime’ viewing of online video occurs during the preceding block of time between 5:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. (Okay, I know I spent a lot of time on this, but there were, after all, four studies involved.)
On a related note, online video distributor Azureus has launched a video-on-demand site in competition to Joost (mentioned in a previous MfM) utilizing peer-to-peer downloading technology to deliver high definition video from content partners A&E, Starz, BBC and Showtime. And on a further related note, if you ever wondered how to download those videos from YouTube and others, there is a website Keepvid.com which provides a technique to do that.
THE POWER OF AJAX: And I’m not referring to the Greek warrior or to the bleaching cleanser, but to a new Internet publishing technology which threatens or promises (your choice) to change Internet viewing. Ajax stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML and is a technique in which a web page or even e-mail can be updated automatically without requiring users to do anything. Publication Mediaweek argues that since the content is updated automatically, there will be less reason to go to other web pages, so therefore there will be fewer page views which is equated (rightfully or wrongfully) with ad impressions. The publication notes that Nielsen/ Net Ratings plans to publish a new “total time spent” metric which will place less emphasis on page views and more on how long is spent viewing. Well, comScore Media Metrix has already adopted a system to measure not only the total visits, but the average minutes per visit and the average visits per visitor. For example, popular website Facebook doesn’t even make it to the top ten when it comes to counting the number of ‘unique visitors.’ Yahoo with 128 Million, Time Warner Network with 118 Million and Google sites with 115 Million are the top three. But when you calculate the average number of visits by each visitor, Facebook jumps into the number two spot with 23.6 visits by each visitor, behind Yahoo with 28.6 visits. In fact the entire top ten list gets restructured with, for example, Weatherbug, which is 48th in terms of unique visitors ranking fifth when it comes to number of visits. I know this all may seem confusing, but the point goes back to an issue raised in previous MfM’s and even the State of the News Media report – measurement. Not just whether a consumer sees a report or advertisement but whether they actually become engaged with, and remember, the report or advertisement.
THE RACE IS ON: The U.S. is ahead, but China is running right behind in one race, but Canada leads in the other race, followed by Israel, South Korea and the United States in fourth place. The first race is the measurement of Internet penetration, arrived at by counting the number of unique visitors aged 15-plus. In this area, according to comScore World Metrix, the U.S. has an astounding 153 Million unique visitors. Think about that. Considering there are ‘only’ 300 Million people in the U.S., that means more than half have visited the Internet. China, which, at 1.3 Billion, has more than four times the population of the U.S., came in second by this measure with nearly 87 Million unique visitors. But there is little doubt the Chinese Internet population will surpass the American Internet population shortly with an annual growth of 20% a year compared to the U.S.’s 2%. The other population behemoth, India, which has a total population of just over One Billion, presently ranks eighth with 21 Million Internet users. India’s total population is growing much faster than China, and its Internet population is growing 33% a year. The next fastest growing Internet population is the Russian federation with just under 13 Million Internet users but with a growth rate of 21% a year. The other race is in average Monthly Hours spent online. Canadians are online 39.6 hours a month compared to Israel’s 37.4 hours, South Korea’s 34 hours and the United States’ 31.6 hours. The world Internet population, measuring those aged 15-plus, in January of this year was 747 Million, up 10% from a year ago.
ANOTHER RACE IS ON: This time between the Internet and other media. According to forecaster ZenithOptimedia, the Internet will overtake radio in terms of ad dollars worldwide by next year. Right now, according to their figures, the Internet is right behind with $31.3 Billion compared to radio’s $36.3 Billion. TV is the big kid on the advertising block with $167.8 Billion in ad spending compared to newspapers’ $126.2 Billion and magazines $56.4 Billion. The agency says the good news for TV is that demand has picked up and instead of its first-ever sustained period of market share loss, TV expenditure globally is forecast to go up. The even better news for the Internet, according to the report summarized in Advertising Age, is that the Internet will account for nearly 9% of global ad spending by 2009 and should reach double digits in the next decade.
THE WORD IS EXCELLENCE: No doubt you’ve heard about the Peabody Award winners, but I just wanted to send my compliments on to the local TV stations cited: WTNH in New Haven, KMOV in St. Louis and the unusual citation for two stations in the same market – WTHR and WISH in Indianapolis. I am proud to have been associated with two of the stations – KMOV where I worked and where I still have friends and WTHR, a former consulting client. The Peabody is awarded under the auspices of the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication which I am also proud to be associated with. And for what it’s worth, I would encourage other local TV stations to submit. The criteria is both simple and profound, and can be summed up in one word – Excellence.
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, April 02, 2007
Message From Michael -- April 2, 2007
IT’S ALL A MATTER OF SEMANTICS
WEB VERSUS PRINT – ROUND TWO
WEB VERSUS TV
YOUTUBE AWARD WINNERS
A LIST OF LISTS
A LIST OF PEOPLE
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.
IT’S ALL A MATTER OF SEMANTICS: Except that it’s not. The experts call it the Semantic Web, but we would probably call it Web 3.0. In my never-ending effort to keep you not just one or two steps ahead of the curve but three and four, I think this is something you should know about. You’ve already heard about Web 2.0, a term coined by Webmaster Tim O’Reilly. It’s the next generation of the web and is defined as the social networking, wiki’ing (if that’s a word, and it isn’t) and collaboration which takes place on the Internet and which turns the Internet into a new platform and business model. (The big word for this is folksonomy.) But Web 2.0 isn’t a change or update to the Web, although many people seem to confuse it with that; it is simply a change in the use of the Internet. Semantic Web is an update. If I haven’t lost you yet, let me use one name – Tim Berners-Lee. The person credited with inventing the Web says the Semantic Web has the potential of creating a sea change even greater than the original Web. Now, let me see if I can explain it. The magic of the Web as it exists now is the hypertext linking where you can go from point A to B to C and even to Z to the Nth degree. But all those links are to documents and websites. The Semantic Web will actually correlate data and cut across documents and websites to the actual data. So, instead of a web of documents there will be a web of data, as Berners Lee explained it. All data linked and correlated to establish patterns. Okay, I know this is all a little heavy, but what the heck… A year from now you’ll be able to say you heard it here first.
Completely un-related but I couldn’t figure where else to put it, one of the founders of Wikipedia has created a new Wiki project titled Citizendium. They’re calling it a “citizens compendium of everything” – like Wikipedia, but the difference is that this time there will be “gentle expert oversight” with contributors using their actual name. This comes after the revelation that a Wiki editor who claimed to be a professor of classics was a hoax.
WEB VERSUS PRINT – ROUND TWO: And the winner is the web. And I’m not talking about the well-known development in which online news use is growing while print news use is shrinking. A study by the Poynter Institute has implications for anybody producing for the Web. Contrary to the popular belief that people online have short attention spans, the study shows that people read more much more of a story when it’s online than they do when it’s in print. Readers will actually read 77% of an article when it’s online, but ‘only’ 62% when it’s published in the classic broadsheet newspaper format and even less (57%) when in a tabloid format. The researchers at Poynter used software which actually tracks eye movement when someone is reading. It showed that while three-quarters of print readers are methodical readers, online readers are evenly split 50-50 between those who read in a methodical fashion and those who scan articles. Regardless of which type they are though, once they fix on an article online more people read it all the way through. The study also showed that people understood a story better when it was broken out into elements, like Q&A sections, timelines, sidebars and lists. Online readers also liked navigation bars and teases. Not surprisingly, readers paid more attention to ‘documentary’ news photos – real people doing real things – than staged photos; and color photos got more attention than black and white photos while mugshots got relatively little attention.
WEB VERSUS TV: On-air the ratings race between the big broadcast networks has Fox in first place in the season to date, followed by CBS, then ABC and NBC. But on-line it is a different story, according to reporter James Hibberd writing in TVWeek.com. On-line ABC.com and NBC.com are in a dead heat for first place with 9 million unique visitors a month, according to Nielsen/ Net Ratings. They’re followed by a distant CBS.com at 5.6 million and an even more distant Fox.com at 3.7 million. The CW which launched in September and did not have a measurable website until October averages 1 million. But in a separate article, Hibberd notes that all of the networks are planning to ramp up their online offerings dramatically.
YOUTUBE AWARD WINNERS: Just in case you missed it, here’s the list of the first YouTube award winners. They range from the weird to the wonderful. You should be able to control-click or copy and paste them in your browser: Most Creative - OK Go: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv5zWaTEVkI Most Inspirational - Free Hugs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr3x_RRJdd4 Best Series - Ask a Ninja: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEmss2lg-ug Best Comedy - Smosh: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCd_i7wW87Q Best Music- Terranaomi: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARHyRI9_NB4 Best Commentary - The Winekone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-rcjaBWvx0 Most Adorable Video - Kiwi!: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdUUx5FdySs .
On a related note, two video websites: First is theointment.com which is the online video version of the news parody website The Onion, and veryfunnyads.com which, as its name implies, has some funny, very funny and not so funny ads. And don’t let your general manager see you visiting these sites, although I guess we could make the argument that news people and marketing people should watch them… just to keep up with trends.
A LIST OF LISTS: The magazine Wired in its latest issue talks about how we have become a bite-sized entertainment culture. In particular it notes how we all seem to want things shortened and in lists. It humorously refers to the Ten Commandments as the “Biblical PowerPoint.” Here are five websites cited by the magazine as some of the best list of lists websites: Tenspotting.com, which lets you compare your top ten list to other people’s top ten choices for everything from movies to TV shows to (showing its origins) Japanese female celebrities; Allconsuming.net, which lists what books/music you should consume next; Tadalist.com, which allows you to create a to-do list that you can share online; list of bests.com, which bills itself as ‘what you need, when you need it’ for everything from public records to airline tickets to ‘things to do before you die’; and finally, 43things.com which asks what you want to do with your life (your 43 things) and shows how that compares to, at last check, 947,327 people in 12,113 cities.
A LIST OF PEOPLE: As long as we’re talking about magazine articles, in a previous we showed a partial list of most influential people on the Internet from PC World magazine. Here are a few others from that list: Lawrence Lessig described as the ‘Elvis of Cyberlaw’ because of his ‘kinglike status in the field’ is a professor at Stanford University Law School. He is also CEO of Creative Commons, a nonprofit aimed at promoting an alternative form of copyrighting which allows greater use and distribution for online works. David Farber started Interesting-People.org as an e-mail mailing list for friends and colleagues and turned it into “the mother lode of online mailing lists” with commentary from influential people. Farber is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and former chief technologist for the Federal Communications Commission. Robert Scoble is the guy who got into trouble for blogging about the Microsoft Empire but whose blogs eventually convinced the company to make blogs part of the company’s communication with users. He now heads PodTech.net. On the legislative side, PC World says Oregon Senator Ron Wyden is one of Capitol Hill’s “most influential voices on technology issues.”
COCKTAIL CHATTER: Tiny Holland has the tallest people in the world at an average 6 ft., 1 in., according to a report on ABCNews.com, which says Americans at an average 5ft., 10 in., haven’t been the tallest people in the world for 50 years. An adult-oriented business on virtual world Second Life was sold on e-Bay (where else) for $50,000, according to Information Week. ICANN, the agency which oversees the Internet and domain names, turned down a request (for the third time) to create a XXX domain extension for porno sites after both the adult entertainment industry and religious groups objected. Nearly half of Americans (48%) say they are more likely to vote for a candidate if they had military service while just slightly less, four out of ten (39%), say they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who is ‘Christian,” according to a Pew Research Project poll. The Pew Research groups weekly list of top news items of interest found that Iraq was the dominant story of interest to the public (29%) and got the most coverage (21%). The missing boy scout was cited by 12% of the public as a story they followed closely even though only 2% of the news coverage was devoted to the story. And the story about the firing of the U.S. Attorneys got 18% of the news coverage but only 8% of the public were following the story closely.
PERSONAL NOTE OF CONGRATULATIONS: To friend (and MfM reader) Russ Mitchell, anchor and reporter for CBS News who has been named anchor for CBS This Morning and who will be filling in all this week for Katie Couric on the CBS Evening News.
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.
WEB VERSUS PRINT – ROUND TWO
WEB VERSUS TV
YOUTUBE AWARD WINNERS
A LIST OF LISTS
A LIST OF PEOPLE
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.
IT’S ALL A MATTER OF SEMANTICS: Except that it’s not. The experts call it the Semantic Web, but we would probably call it Web 3.0. In my never-ending effort to keep you not just one or two steps ahead of the curve but three and four, I think this is something you should know about. You’ve already heard about Web 2.0, a term coined by Webmaster Tim O’Reilly. It’s the next generation of the web and is defined as the social networking, wiki’ing (if that’s a word, and it isn’t) and collaboration which takes place on the Internet and which turns the Internet into a new platform and business model. (The big word for this is folksonomy.) But Web 2.0 isn’t a change or update to the Web, although many people seem to confuse it with that; it is simply a change in the use of the Internet. Semantic Web is an update. If I haven’t lost you yet, let me use one name – Tim Berners-Lee. The person credited with inventing the Web says the Semantic Web has the potential of creating a sea change even greater than the original Web. Now, let me see if I can explain it. The magic of the Web as it exists now is the hypertext linking where you can go from point A to B to C and even to Z to the Nth degree. But all those links are to documents and websites. The Semantic Web will actually correlate data and cut across documents and websites to the actual data. So, instead of a web of documents there will be a web of data, as Berners Lee explained it. All data linked and correlated to establish patterns. Okay, I know this is all a little heavy, but what the heck… A year from now you’ll be able to say you heard it here first.
Completely un-related but I couldn’t figure where else to put it, one of the founders of Wikipedia has created a new Wiki project titled Citizendium. They’re calling it a “citizens compendium of everything” – like Wikipedia, but the difference is that this time there will be “gentle expert oversight” with contributors using their actual name. This comes after the revelation that a Wiki editor who claimed to be a professor of classics was a hoax.
WEB VERSUS PRINT – ROUND TWO: And the winner is the web. And I’m not talking about the well-known development in which online news use is growing while print news use is shrinking. A study by the Poynter Institute has implications for anybody producing for the Web. Contrary to the popular belief that people online have short attention spans, the study shows that people read more much more of a story when it’s online than they do when it’s in print. Readers will actually read 77% of an article when it’s online, but ‘only’ 62% when it’s published in the classic broadsheet newspaper format and even less (57%) when in a tabloid format. The researchers at Poynter used software which actually tracks eye movement when someone is reading. It showed that while three-quarters of print readers are methodical readers, online readers are evenly split 50-50 between those who read in a methodical fashion and those who scan articles. Regardless of which type they are though, once they fix on an article online more people read it all the way through. The study also showed that people understood a story better when it was broken out into elements, like Q&A sections, timelines, sidebars and lists. Online readers also liked navigation bars and teases. Not surprisingly, readers paid more attention to ‘documentary’ news photos – real people doing real things – than staged photos; and color photos got more attention than black and white photos while mugshots got relatively little attention.
WEB VERSUS TV: On-air the ratings race between the big broadcast networks has Fox in first place in the season to date, followed by CBS, then ABC and NBC. But on-line it is a different story, according to reporter James Hibberd writing in TVWeek.com. On-line ABC.com and NBC.com are in a dead heat for first place with 9 million unique visitors a month, according to Nielsen/ Net Ratings. They’re followed by a distant CBS.com at 5.6 million and an even more distant Fox.com at 3.7 million. The CW which launched in September and did not have a measurable website until October averages 1 million. But in a separate article, Hibberd notes that all of the networks are planning to ramp up their online offerings dramatically.
YOUTUBE AWARD WINNERS: Just in case you missed it, here’s the list of the first YouTube award winners. They range from the weird to the wonderful. You should be able to control-click or copy and paste them in your browser: Most Creative - OK Go: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv5zWaTEVkI Most Inspirational - Free Hugs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr3x_RRJdd4 Best Series - Ask a Ninja: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEmss2lg-ug Best Comedy - Smosh: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCd_i7wW87Q Best Music- Terranaomi: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARHyRI9_NB4 Best Commentary - The Winekone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-rcjaBWvx0 Most Adorable Video - Kiwi!: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdUUx5FdySs .
On a related note, two video websites: First is theointment.com which is the online video version of the news parody website The Onion, and veryfunnyads.com which, as its name implies, has some funny, very funny and not so funny ads. And don’t let your general manager see you visiting these sites, although I guess we could make the argument that news people and marketing people should watch them… just to keep up with trends.
A LIST OF LISTS: The magazine Wired in its latest issue talks about how we have become a bite-sized entertainment culture. In particular it notes how we all seem to want things shortened and in lists. It humorously refers to the Ten Commandments as the “Biblical PowerPoint.” Here are five websites cited by the magazine as some of the best list of lists websites: Tenspotting.com, which lets you compare your top ten list to other people’s top ten choices for everything from movies to TV shows to (showing its origins) Japanese female celebrities; Allconsuming.net, which lists what books/music you should consume next; Tadalist.com, which allows you to create a to-do list that you can share online; list of bests.com, which bills itself as ‘what you need, when you need it’ for everything from public records to airline tickets to ‘things to do before you die’; and finally, 43things.com which asks what you want to do with your life (your 43 things) and shows how that compares to, at last check, 947,327 people in 12,113 cities.
A LIST OF PEOPLE: As long as we’re talking about magazine articles, in a previous we showed a partial list of most influential people on the Internet from PC World magazine. Here are a few others from that list: Lawrence Lessig described as the ‘Elvis of Cyberlaw’ because of his ‘kinglike status in the field’ is a professor at Stanford University Law School. He is also CEO of Creative Commons, a nonprofit aimed at promoting an alternative form of copyrighting which allows greater use and distribution for online works. David Farber started Interesting-People.org as an e-mail mailing list for friends and colleagues and turned it into “the mother lode of online mailing lists” with commentary from influential people. Farber is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and former chief technologist for the Federal Communications Commission. Robert Scoble is the guy who got into trouble for blogging about the Microsoft Empire but whose blogs eventually convinced the company to make blogs part of the company’s communication with users. He now heads PodTech.net. On the legislative side, PC World says Oregon Senator Ron Wyden is one of Capitol Hill’s “most influential voices on technology issues.”
COCKTAIL CHATTER: Tiny Holland has the tallest people in the world at an average 6 ft., 1 in., according to a report on ABCNews.com, which says Americans at an average 5ft., 10 in., haven’t been the tallest people in the world for 50 years. An adult-oriented business on virtual world Second Life was sold on e-Bay (where else) for $50,000, according to Information Week. ICANN, the agency which oversees the Internet and domain names, turned down a request (for the third time) to create a XXX domain extension for porno sites after both the adult entertainment industry and religious groups objected. Nearly half of Americans (48%) say they are more likely to vote for a candidate if they had military service while just slightly less, four out of ten (39%), say they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who is ‘Christian,” according to a Pew Research Project poll. The Pew Research groups weekly list of top news items of interest found that Iraq was the dominant story of interest to the public (29%) and got the most coverage (21%). The missing boy scout was cited by 12% of the public as a story they followed closely even though only 2% of the news coverage was devoted to the story. And the story about the firing of the U.S. Attorneys got 18% of the news coverage but only 8% of the public were following the story closely.
PERSONAL NOTE OF CONGRATULATIONS: To friend (and MfM reader) Russ Mitchell, anchor and reporter for CBS News who has been named anchor for CBS This Morning and who will be filling in all this week for Katie Couric on the CBS Evening News.
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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