Category: media

Rove, Rove, Rove your boat

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Despite some stirrings on the right, there’s nothing wrong with Matt Lauer’s interview with Karl Rove, part of which aired yesterday morning.  The Today Show host was a bit combative, but journalists are supposed to be that way when talking with political figures.  (And sparring with a Republican is at least better than recycling the same five stories every morning and pretending like something is new.)

Matt Lewis had Rove on his podcast yesterday and came at the interview from a different angle.  If you are a politics junkie, it’s a good interview to listen to.  (For instance, Rove shares a hilarious story of a then-college-aged Lee Atwater’s first meeting with George H.W. Bush.)  It’s definitely worth a listen.

Googlevision

~ Jim Eltringham ~ 1 Comment

This week, Google announced a partnership with Dish Network to launch a TV search service.  It’s not the first time Google has found its way into the living room – they’ve been working with TiVo to figure out what shows you watch and serve you ads when you pause a live show and measure ad performance.

Google is wise to move into TV advertising.  It may sound like they’re taking a step back; that they’re an internet company going back to traditional media.  But the line between various entertainment channels gets blurrier every day.  Online video and television video are no longer all that different.  If Google wants to be the gatekeeper for all the world’s information (and you can be sure they do), they have to watch your remote control as closely as they do your laptop keyboard.

We should have been ready – Jim Carrey predicted all this 14 years ago…

Hulu learns content is still king

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

The decision by Viacom to pull its content from Hulu – while still keeping that content online – shows exactly why Hulu is the #2 site for online video.

As Tech Crunch reported, a key factor was the share of the ad revenue – Viacom makes more money by selling ads for video content on its own websites because it doesn’t have to split that money.  At the same time, Viacom can still make clips of its shows sharable and embeddable.

It brings to light a significant problem for Hulu: what value do they really add as a third party service?

Hulu was born because founding parents Fox and NBC were rightly worried about their content being ripped off and posted on YouTube – and because they realized that online video was an entertainment medium that they needed to embrace in some way.  The Simpsons, SNL, Heroes, Family Guy, and other shows from those networks made it on the site, along with content from their cable and feature film properties.  Other media companies, like ABC/Disney and Viacom, signed on as well.

The reason Hulu has always played second fiddle to YouTube is in a distinct difference in their business model.  While Hulu has always been about the content, YouTube has served as the infrastructure for the advent of web video.  In the days before YouTube, putting video online meant thinking about managing huge files and possible paying exorbitant hosting fees.  YouTube’s value to the content provider was allowing people who otherwise could not have done so to share video – whether that meant a cat falling off a bed or an independent short film.

Hulu’s value proposition to its content provider partners appears to be the ability to give them space on a high-traffic website.  But like YouTube and any other online video site, traffic comes because of content.  In reality, high traffic numbers are content providers’ value to Hulu, rather than the other way around.

This doesn’t mean the end of Hulu, of course – after all, the site was started by content providers.  But it may mean that, eventually, NBC/Universal and Fox find that they are the only ones left on the playground.

Where do you get your news from?

~ Jim Eltringham ~ 2 Comments

Eighteen months ago, Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin was roundly criticized for being unable to answer Katie Couric’s question about what newspapers she read frequently to get her news.  Palin’s answer was “most of them.”

It’s actually a good answer poorly worded.  According to a report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 92% of American’s “graze” on news from multiple sources and on multiple platforms. Only 35% even have a “favorite” source.  So even if the dinosaurs of traditional media – such as the CBS Evening News – are losing viewers, it doesn’t mean the public is less informed.  Actually, it probably means the opposite.

Perhaps Palin should have responded to Couric’s ridiculous question with something like: “Well, Katie, even up here in Alaska it’s a digital age.   The morning newspaper and the evening news are important, but you can’t stop there, and we have access to news sources from all over the world.  I don’t limit myself to a single source or a small group of media outlets.  What well-informed person would?”

On the air for government health care

~ Jim Eltringham ~ 1 Comment

With Congressional Republicans and President Obama putting on a meeting that could make Bill Lumbergh ask you to go ahead and drop hemlock in his coffee, Organizing for America is pushing its supporters to talk radio to advocate the expanded government control of health care.

OFA’s radio site gives users everything they need to be good soldiers  the government health care army.   The site provides a link so advocates can listen into various programs and phone numbers to call in.  If they are having trouble getting through, the advocates can click through to another show’s information quickly.  A “Calling Tips” section prepares them for what to expect and how to deal with hosts that challenge their views; and a clear list of talking points helps them stay on message.

The site – and the tactic of calling in to radio shows – will likely not change a single person’s mind about government health care.  After all, most of the folks  listening to Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, or even news radio probably have their mind made up.  But there are two important possible results that could come of this:

  1. It’s important for any side in a political debate to have voices that come from outside of Washington.  If Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Barack Obama are the voices of government health care, it is hard for the average voter to identify with their side.  It’s much easier to identify with someone who calls into a news show; for government health care advocates, injecting their views into the debate through the grassroots is vital.
  2. Making the case for personal ownership of health care is not hard, but it’s much more difficult to make that case to someone who has a personal story to tell.  Further, a bombastic conservative talk radio host – with no electorate to answer to in pursuing the goal of entertaining radio – may slip up and insult an opposing caller.  Whether a conservative host is flummoxed by a personal testimonial or overly aggressive, it’s a clip of a voice from the right sounding stupid on health care.  Enough of those clips can indeed change people’s minds.

The key to the site’s success is the “Report your Call” function – something which allows OFA to at once track progress and people.  Remember, the next campaign is just around the corner.

Palin vs. Family Guy: IT’S A TRAP!

~ Jim Eltringham ~ 1 Comment

It’s old news, but the Sarah Palin v. Family Guy flap shows the danger of dabbling in pop culture references without doing some homework.

The former Governor of Alaska made headlines by smacking Family Guy for a Down Syndrome-afflicted character who claimed her mother was “the former governor of Alaska.”  And all of a sudden, it’s the early 1990s again, when Dan Quayle (a Republican who was named as a Vice Presidential candidate despite doubts about his readiness for prime time) took a swipe at the TV show Murphy Brown when the title character had a child out of wedlock.

Family Guy is a poor target for Palin’s ire, featuring frequent jokes about a wheelchair-bound main character and occasional cameos from a Greased-up Deaf Guy.  Why start hammering Seth MacFarlane and Company for making fun of the handicapped now?

Compounding the issue for Palin is the fact that the actress who claimed to be Palin’s daughter was voiced by an actor with Down syndrome.  Suddenly, the actress is in the position of authority on how to handle the issue and Palin is an outsider to the Down syndrome community.  If MacFarlane was looking to bait Palin into looking foolish, he could not have planned it better.

This also makes for another early 1990s parallel: one of the Fox Network’s first hits, In Living Color, featured a handicapped superhero played by Damon Wayans.  Wayans escaped criticism because he had, as a child, suffered from a club foot.

The loss of an American icon – literally

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

MTV will make a small but significant change in its logo.  The M, the T, and of course the V will remain, but the channel will no longer include the words “music television” underneath.   Those of us nostalgic for the early glory days – when one could actually catch the video for Glory Days on MTV – may complain about the death of music television, but will we really miss it?

When MTV first launched, shows like Yo MTV Raps and Headbanger’s Ball acted like radio on television – giving audiences a way to expand their music horizons and generating crossover appeal.  As videos evolved, they became more involved and independent of the music they presented – short films set to music.  There was always a reason to tune into MTV and watch hours of music programming: either you might find something new to listen to, or eventually you’re going to see your favorite funny or interesting mini-movie featuring some cool music.

Finding new music you like can be done on internet radio stations like Pandora.  And if you really want to see music videos, YouTube or a plethora of other sites can serve that purpose.  Music television has been erased not only from MTV’s logo, but from television.  It’s a wise programming move – an extended block of music videos just isn’t useful programming anymore, unless it’s overnight or early morning.  You can’t get money for nothing.

All that being said, there are some of us who latched onto our favorite bands, in part, because of interesting and innovative videos… like these:

This week’s buzz about Google

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

I joined Google Buzz this week.  It was easy – I didn’t have to do anything except log in to GMail.  Google had transformed my private email – including my contact list (which it automatically populates based on my email traffic) into a social networking experience, a hybrid of Facebook and Twitter.  After several privacy complaints, Google made opting out of certain features a bit easier.  It’s still a little creepy.

Tellingly, Buzz allows you to integrate your Twitter feed but not for Facebook profile – another sign of the coming Armageddon between Google and Facebook, which Google will likely get to right after their fight with Apple and possibly after their fight with Microsoft.

How big is Google?  There were three separate stories about Google which made headlines this week.  That’s not three articles – but three separate issues which made news independent of each other.  First was the aforementioned Google Buzz; second was Google’s plan to become an internet service provider; and now comes news that Google is butting heads with the Department of Justice over intellectual property rights of authors as part of their ongoing effort  to become a latter-day, digital Library of Alexandria.

That these are all separate issues leads to them becoming one issue.  Google is seeking to define how you get to the internet, how you communicate with others, and what information/content you receive.  If this scenario continues on the same logical course, Google would become to the internet what AT&T was to the telephone networks before it was broken up by a federal antitrust suit in 1984.

Is Google at risk of an anti-trust lawsuit?  Possibly, but they have certainly done their best to make inroads with the government that would prevent that from happening.  The relationship between Google and the current administration is well-documented.

And if you believe the balance of power in Washington will tip back to Republicans in 2010 or 2012, Google is ready for that to – they are sponsoring TechRepublican’s Digital Boot Camp at CPAC this year.

REAL journalism on the right

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

The Daily Beast’s list of the top 25 conservative journalists makes one thing obvious: the Daily Beast either has little concept of what journalism actually is or felt the need to create a list with 25 names rather than, say, a dozen.  The list ranks the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity highly – and while they are influential commentators and entertainers, they are not journalists.

The list has several good picks such as Andrew Breitbart, Matt Drudge, and Michael Barone.  Like Limbaugh and Friends, they have opinions; but unlike the typical radio show host they illustrate their views with information.

Good opinion journalism was best summed up in a seminar given by a reporter who should have been on the list, Tim Carney: “Nothing convinces people like facts they didn’t know before.”

Case in point: in a recent blog post, Carney explored the reaction of Sen. Chuck Schumer to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United vs. FEC decision.  Schumer bemoaned that the decision “open[ed] the floodgates” for “special interest money” from large companies.  With a little bit of research, Carney discovered that Schumer was the top recipient of funds from three of the top five industries in terms of campaign giving.  He also found about a dozen former Schumer staffers working as lobbyists.  In other words, when Schumer defends campaign finance regulations, he’s defending a system that he has found very lucrative.

A talk radio host may get laughs by calling Sen. Schumer “Chuck the Schmuck” or joking about the New York political machine functions so comfortably in – and there’s certainly a place for that.  But real journalists like Tim Carney are the ones who find the factual nuggets of truth necessary for commentary and satire.

And because that job is so important, it’s equally important to get the job description right.

State of the Unions

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Washington, D.C. is under about eight feet of snow, the federal government has called it a week already, and the House has started their Presidents’ Day Recess a few days early.  Heck, the Metro isn’t even running trains to outdoor stations.  With no action on Capitol Hill, a Quinnipiac University poll showing that Republicans are gaining public trust has become the big political news of the day.  Analysts have pondered the falling support of the Obama administration among independents and speculated about what that means for the electoral chances among Democrats.

It’s a valid question, but Politico brings up an even more relevant issue: falling support of Congressional Democrats among their own Big Labor base:

Union leaders warn that the Democrats’ lackluster performance in power is sapping the morale of activists going into the midterm elections.

“Right now if we don’t get positive changes to the agenda, we’re going to have a hard time getting members out to work,” said United Steelworkers International President Leo W. Gerard, in an interview.

Please note that the term “work” in Gerard’s quote refers not to the members’ day jobs, but their efforts on the campaign trail.  As many jokes present themselves about this being the only time a hardcore union activist actually works, this is an important source of energy for a Democratic campaign.  These are the folks that make phone calls, knock on doors, march in parades, and do all the other things that are so important leading up to election day.  And even though many snide remarks could be added about using a blackjack as a get-out-the-vote program or a beat down rod as a debate strategy, the truth is that boots on the ground that know what they’re doing make those things unnecessary.

Now, Democrats have some tough choices.  Pushing the Big Labor agenda means things like removing secret ballots from union formation elections and other ways to drum up union membership – meaning more union dues are siphoned out of paychecks, meaning more money in the coffers of the AFL-CIO, UAW, and their fellow travelers.  After unsuccessfully trying to sell the health care overhaul as a matter of “the people” versus “special interests” how does a Congressman face his or her constituents with a vote to whip up union membership fresh on the voting record?