Tag: online media

Happy Birthday for two TV revolutions

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

March 19 marks two big media birthdays.  Though both are cable television networks, they are significant for different reasons.

The elder is C-SPAN, which was created on this date in the great year of 1979.  C-SPAN made news this week by making its entire video archive available online, which is a natural extension of the network’s mission: to shine sunlight on the workings of the American government.

The younger is eight years old today: the YES Network, or Yankees Entertainment and Sports (which has an excellent website in addition to an excellent television network).  YES was born because the New York Yankees were unsatisfied with annual $70 million payments for their television rights from Madison Square Garden Network, another New York City-based regional sports network (or RSN).  The Yankees figured they could do better, and built their own television network to play their games and satisfy the content needs of rabid Yankee fans, who would actually watch the Yankeeography of Danny Tartabull.

When you’re the most famous sports franchise in the world, building your own media empire is much easier than if you’re a grassroots activist organization.  But the principal is the same whether you’re launching a YouTube channel or a cable channel: the Yankees knew their audience was out there, and they found their own path to that audience.

Hey! iTunes! Leave our tracks alone!

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

If you’re buying Pink Floyd tracks online, you’ll have to buy the whole album, thanks to a ruling handed down this week in the band’s legal dispute against EMI.

The music media landscape is changing, and while bands like OK Go have proved masterful at taking advantage, there’s something to be said about Pink Floyd’s insistence that their music is sold the way it was made. (Ironically enough, OK Go had to fight EMI to execute their vision of social promotion.)

This is an artistic decision, not a business decision.  Albums like Dark Side of the Moon and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band are built differently than today’s albums, which are often a collection of singles.  Those albums are like movies – while isolated parts might be enjoyable, they only really make sense when taken as a whole.  Today’s music might be more akin to a episodes of a TV show – enjoyable and self-contained in smaller pieces.

The decision won’t help Pink Floyd sell music.  But that’s not the point.

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?”

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.

When the Superbowl isn’t the Superbowl

~ Jim Eltringham ~ 1 Comment

A few years back, the late Mark McCormack – a key figure in the sports marketing industry and, by some accounts, the basis for the character Jerry Maguire – wrote an excellent business book, Never Wrestle With a Pig.  It outlines various rules for succeeding in a professional career, one of which is to prepare for what McCormack calls “your Superbowl” – a key event which puts your talents on display.  For a campaign, that’s Election Day, for a conservative organization looking to make a splash, it might be CPAC.  In the big brand advertising world, the “Superbowl” was, well, the Superbowl for decades.

In what is a telling sign of the evolving media landscape, big brands like Pepsi and GM are sitting out the Superbowl this year.  Even as ad prices tick downward slightly, Pepsi chose to invest $20 million in a social media campaign instead.

In many ways, corporate advertising is becoming more like a political campaign.  Successful political operations use broad-based communication – like TV and radio ads – to raise name recognition, but as election day nears they focus on contact with individual voters with targeted messages (those solidly in a candidate’s camp are reminded to get to the polls on election day, while those identified as being on the fence are coaxed onto one side or the other).

Pepsi is the second-best selling soft drink in America.  That’s a great spot to be in – it means selling an awful lot of soda.  But it also means that there are plenty of people who, no matter what, aren’t going to buy your product.  Pepsi could get in front of millions upon millions of pairs of eyeballs with a Super Bowl ad, but would those eyeballs be attached to tongues which desire Pepsi?  Or would their entertaining commercials be laughed at and talked about by people who, at halftime, would still reach for a Coke?

Pepsi first claimed to be the choice of a new generation in commercials which approximately one generation ago, but more recent branding has labeled Pepsi as “forever young.” Their advertising strategy has evolved, too (though they surely hope the comparison of Will.i.am to Bob Dylan isn’t congruent to the comparison of their new strategy to their old one).

Sine we’re all wondering, there’s still no word yet on how all this affects Bud Bowl…

NPR’s (unnecessary) mea culpa

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

NPR has sort of apologized in a post by their ombudsman for the controversy drummed up by this cartoon:

The cartoon drew the venom of conservative commenters for both its use of the loaded term “tea-bagger” and the fact that it was summarily dismisssive of the tea party movement.  And though the cartoon has an undeniable ideological bent, the real problem here is not with NPR.  There are two issues at play.

First, conservatives in the Tea Party movement have not found a way to own the term “teabagging.”  There are ways to do so, but they require an attitude adjustment (or, some might say, an attitude problem) that many establishment conservative movement organizations are unlikely to accept.

Second – and more importantly – is an important aspect of all conservative cries of media bias.  Consider this reply from an NPR staffer:

“Would it be nice if there were other Web-original cartoons from other perspectives to run with Fiore?” said [NPR News Executive Editor Dick] Meyer. “Sure. We think there are and we’ve been looking for a while in fact. And I think criticism that we don’t have a conservative cartoon is certainly legitimate and reasonable.”

The problem isn’t really that Mark Fiore made a cartoon that skewers the right, it’s that the right isn’t in a position to skewer back.