New Journalism and too many white dudes

March 12, 2014March 12, 2014 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Emily Bell notices a trend among the teams Nate Silver and Ezra Klein are putting together for their new, future-of-journalism companies: There are an awful lot of white guys:

Well, [Klein’s] project X may now be called Vox, but the great VC-backed media blitz of 2014 is staffed up and soft-launching, and it looks a lot more like Projects XY. Indeed, it’s impossible not to notice that in the Bitcoin rush to revolutionize journalism, the protagonists are almost exclusively – and increasingly – male and white.

Bell recoils from Silver’s comments that he hired partially based on “clubhouse chemistry”: “A clubhouse. Do we really still have to have one of those?” Silver probably does, since he works at ESPN. Since it’s a sports network, ESPN predominantly caters to men.

Yet Bell writes this from the authority of her dual posts at Guardian and Columbia University. This is not, apparently, the opening manifesto of her own journalism site. Her screed is merely a complaint from these established beachheads, pointing out that the do-ers aren’t doing enough.

She’s probably right: There might be room for newer, more diverse voices in the marketplace the Kleins and Silvers are trying to occupy. It’s just a shame she’s passing up such a great business opportunity.

An American Macaca in London

April 30, 2010April 30, 2010 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Just days away from an election, Gordon Brown pulled a George Allen.

The similarities go deeper than off-the-cuff comments caught on tape during a campaign.

In each case, the comments helped underscore the impressions opposing candidates wanted voters to have of the offending candidates. In 2006, Jim Webb and Co. would have loved for northern Virginia voters to think of their incumbent Senator as a southern”good ol’ boy” with questionable opinions on race. That’s not the type of charge a serious candidate can credibly level against a candidate without strong evidence; Allen made it easy when he unwittingly uttered a word that sounded like an ethnic slur.

Similarly, opponents of Brown’s Labour Party could have complained that the Prime Minister was out of touch with ordinary Americans (or however that argument goes over there), but Brown has made it exponentially easy by callously dismissing the concerns of a voter. The snide attitude and duplicitous nature make Brown the stereotypical career politician – aloof, self-aggrandizing, and contemptuous of the constituents underneath him.

The only thing going for Brown is that, at the very least, he didn’t know he was on tape.

3 Reasons why Conan made the right move

April 13, 2010April 13, 2010 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

The internets lit up as soon as the announcement hit (which, oddly enough, happened on Dave Letterman’s birthday): Conan O’Brien is headed to TBS as soon as his contractually obligated silence is up. The basic cable station won out over Fox, which was the place O’Brien was widely rumored to head since it was first announced that NBC was bumping him out of the 11:30 time slot. That led to some head scratching, though it makes a lot of sense for three big reasons:

1. Turner properties offer valuable opportunities for cross-promotion. O’Brien was always positioned as the host with the younger audience, and Turner is well positioned to reach that audience. Not only does TBS airs three hours of Family Guy on Monday nights (leading right into the time slot O’Brien will occupy), but Turner’s cable properties have been at the forefront of providing television-quality online video – first with the now-defunct website SuperDeluxe and now on both TBS.com and AdultSwim.com.

The real underrated asset in this deal isn’t online though – it’s the cross-promotional opportunity with Cartoon Network, whose Adult Swim shares some of the same audience as O’Brien. While it would appear that sets up a tough intra-company competition, that isn’t exactly the case because of the second reason TBS and O’Brien are a great fit.

2. TBS offers time slot flexibility no other network will. This isn’t just about getting a half-hour jump on Jay Leno and Dave Letterman; Fox could offer the 11:00 p.m. time slot, too. But after the 11:00 showing of O’Brien’s show, and the 12:00 airing of George Lopez’s program, TBS will have the 1:00 p.m. time slot to fill.

What’s going on at 1:00 a.m.? Jimmy Fallon’s Late Night show and Craig Ferguson’s Late Late Show have moved from comedy bits into guests. Comedy Central is replaying their 11:00-midnight programming (The Daily Show and the Colbert Report). Adult Swim is getting into its final hour, which features shorter cartoons that aren’t as popular as Family Guy and Robot Chicken – and, let’s be honest, really target the stoner market (have you ever tried to make sense of 12 oz. Mouse?). And remember those hypothetical college kids who media analysts claimed stayed out too late to catch O’Brien’s Tonight Show? The 1:00 a.m. slot is a lot closer to last call.

On TBS, O’Brien could wind up with two chances to rope in an audience – so even if more people watch Leno between 11:30 and midnight, O’Brien has a better chance to snag viewers from 11:00-11:30 p.m. and 1:00-2:00 a.m., rack up big viewership numbers, and claim victory on sheer volume even while Leno wins the 11:30 time slot.

3. TBS straddles the line between cable and network television. This is important because, for as edgy as O’Brien is credited as being, he’s quite traditional in many ways. With a pedigree in Saturday Night Live, the Tonight Show, the Simpsons, and even Late Night, O’Brien’s signature projects have counted their runs in decades rather than seasons.

TBS is pretty much a network television station in two important ways. First, its mix of original and syndicated programming mimic most Fox affiliates. The big difference is that TBS is still searching for signature, cornerstone shows to build a prime time schedule around as Fox found with Married with Children in the late 1980s and the Simpsons in the early 1990s. (Notably, Fox built a solid prime time audience but could never keep them around for late night; TBS seems to be building in the opposite direction.) Second, TBS is nearly ubiquitous – among the most basic of basic cable stations.

At the same time, cable (even basic cable) offers some level of freedom that escapes over-the-air network television. Being on cable at 11:00 may offer the same creative outlet as being on at 12:30 on network television, when O’Brien shined to begin with.

TBS offers these benefits with a final caveat: because it’s cable, measures of success will be different. It will be easier to become the top-rated original program in TBS’s history than to hold that same position with Fox. After all, the difference between victory or defeat is often a matter of expectations met or missed.

Bad Deeds

September 18, 2009September 18, 2009 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ 1 Comment

With his campaign seemingly obsessed with Bob McDonnell’s grad school thesis, Creigh Deeds was starting to sound like a one-trick-pony. As John McCain learned in 2008, defining your campaign is difficult if the race becomes a referendum on your opponent. But Deeds found a way to make it even harder on himself with his discussion on transportation:

Barring some scandal or monumental shift, this is the defining moment of the 2009 Virginia gubernatorial race. Bob McDonnell has been consistent, if unexciting. This clips makes it tough for Deeds to answer that consistency. And it’s tough to be exciting when you split policy hairs about raising one type of tax versus another.

Perhaps Deeds was trying to excite the Democratic base by channeling Ted Kennedy.