What we do for fun is just as educational in its way as what we work with or study in the classroom. Video games, television shows and movies have become increasingly complex. Consumers are drawn specifically to those products that require the most mental engagement. Traditional Hollywood and traditional academia haven't yet tapped this vein.
The Good, the Bad, And the 'Web 2.0' July 18, 2007
The explosion of blogs, social networks and video-sharing sites has allowed any Internet user to become a journalist or filmmaker or music star. But is this democratization of information -- often called Web 2.0 -- the future of the Internet or a looming disaster?
The Wall Street Journal's Jamin Brophy-Warren invited the authors of two recent high-profile books on the subject to debate. Andrew Keen, who wrote "The Cult of the Amateur," argues the Web has become overwhelmed with useless noise. David Weinberger, author of "Everything is Miscellaneous," argues that Web 2.0 tools let users filter out irrelevant (or inaccurate) information. A condensed version of their discussion, carried out over email, is below. (You can read the full text here.)
Submitted by MapTheWay on November 5, 2006 - 11:48pm.
Networks looking to cut production costs are embracing game shows and are shifting away from disappointing and high-cost serialized dramas. In a recent instance, game show "1 vs 100" cost NBC $3.5 million in commitments and became the most-watched Friday-night show on network TV, while "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" cost NBC $39 million in an upfront investment and was seen by nearly 5 million fewer viewers than the quiz program. The Sun (Baltimore) (free registration) from NATPE
TV networks turn to game shows as they lose faith in high-cost serialized dramas
By David Zurawik Sun television critic November 1, 2006
The shift in the bedrock of primetime television is evident in the fortunes of NBC's no-frills game show 1 vs 100 and its lavish drama Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.
Last month, NBC added 1 vs 100, a quiz program featuring stunningly easy questions, a roster of talent that begins and ends with B-list comic Bob Saget, and contestants who compete in a stadium-like setting with 100 opponents at a time.
Instantly, it became the most-watched Friday-night show on network TV with 12.3 million viewers. The show costs Hollywood production company Endemol USA about $700,000 an episode to produce -- and NBC only had to commit to ordering five episodes -- for a total risk of $3.5 million.
Compare that with Aaron Sorkin's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, a new drama with a large ensemble cast that includes stars Matthew Perry, Bradley Whitford and Amanda Peet. Last week, Studio 60, which costs about $3 million an episode to make, was seen by 7.7 million viewers. And NBC is on the hook for at least 13 episodes -- an upfront investment of $39 million, more than 10 times that of 1 vs 100.
With network programmers losing faith in high-cost serialized storytelling, and boardroom bosses looking to cut prime-time production costs, game shows are the networks' new favorite flavor of the season. Three new ones are scheduled to debut this month -- with The Rich List, an English import featuring unlimited prize money, arriving tonight on Fox.
"Game shows are a great business model because the math just makes so much sense," says David Goldberg, president of Endemol USA, which has two game shows on NBC and two more on the way on ABC this month.
"We've heard of one-hour dramas typically costing between $3 [million] and $5 million, while these game shows can be produced at the network level in the $700,000-and-up range," Goldberg said. "Plus, a typical drama is shot over multiple days, while we can sometimes shoot two and three episodes of a game show in one day. You can do the math."
One of prime-time television's most dependable laws is that every few years a new series will become such a huge and unexpected hit that TV executives will do anything to emulate it.
In 2000, CBS struck gold with Survivor, spurring a rush to reality programming. This year, the NBC game show Deal or No Deal, featuring host Howie Mandel and suitcases full of money, is looking as if it is the hit to copycat.
Part of the explanation involves the way in which viewers seem to respond to shows about winning huge sums in an era of large personal debt. But the driving force in the rush to game-show programming is how cheap the shows are to produce -- a quality that has become increasingly important in a fall season filled with expensive dramas that have failed to strike a chord with viewers.
Using the most conservative estimates offered by producers and network executives, game shows cost one-quarter of the price and take one-tenth the time to produce as a weekly drama series. And so far this fall, they have been getting higher ratings than all but a few of the 14 new, highly publicized serialized dramas. The handful of serial successes include ABC's Brothers & Sisters, NBC's Heroes and CBS' Jericho, all of which have already been picked up for a full season by their networks.
While one new successful drama a year is not a bad batting average in the big league of prime-time network programming, the failures this fall are especially galling to network executives. Enticed by the young demographics that big-budget dramas such as ABC's Lost attracted last year, officials broke the bank in going for more of the same.
And much of the money is already spent. Pilot episodes for network dramas are particularly costly because they involve the building of production infrastructure from scratch. Seven pilots for new network dramas this fall cost more than $6 million each to produce, according to a report published in the Los Angeles Times last month. Among that group was the pilot for Studio 60.
The longer a series runs, the more production costs are amortized. A quick cancellation like the one CBS gave Smith, a series starring Ray Liotta as the leader of a gang of high-stakes thieves, is especially painful to the network pocketbook. NBC is feeling the same pain with Kidnapped, a serialized drama about the abduction of a teenager from a wealthy Manhattan family, that was moved last month to a Saturday timeslot but will not continue beyond its original order of 13 episodes.
The numbers make it plain to see why NBC Chairman Bob Wright recently announced a shift from scripted dramas to reality programming during the 8 o'clock hour on weeknights.
"The audience just isn't there," he said, referring to expensive series such as Friday Night Lights, a critically acclaimed high school football drama that is drawing an even smaller audience than Studio 60.
The numbers also explain the rush by other networks to get a piece of the action. As Fox joins the fray tonight with The Rich List, which puts no limit on how much money contestants can win, ABC promises perhaps the strangest turn yet Nov. 22 with Show Me the Money. That series will combine the game show genre with the dance show format now running red-hot for the network on Dancing with the Stars.
Show Me the Money features William Shatner -- whose TV persona has shifted from the valiant Captain Kirk of Star Trek fame to the lascivious attorney Denny Crane of Boston Legal -- as host on a stage with contestants, flashing lights and 13 dancers. Like the models that hold suitcases of money on Deal or No Deal, each dancer represents a plus or minus dollar amount, and they will break into dance once they are picked -- sometimes with Shatner as their partner.
"What you're seeing from this most recent crop of game shows is that in order to connect with network audiences, the shows have to be cranked up a couple of notches -- it's not just about being the most cost-effective," said Goldberg, whose company also produces Show Me the Money and Deal or No Deal.
"With the added competition now, you have to make them bigger and sexier," he said. "We already used models in Deal, so we wanted to evolve things. And since Show Me the Money is at ABC, the network that brought us Dancing with the Stars, we thought that using dancers would be a nice tie-in with their brand."
The appeal of game shows extends beyond their cost-effectiveness, network programmers say. Particularly attractive is the fact that it is one of the few genres that families can watch together -- which helps drive younger demographics.
"When you look at the audience for these 8 o'clock game shows, what you see is that instead of everyone in the family going to their separate TV sets in the house, it's that one time when teenagers are watching with their younger brothers and sisters, and watching with their moms and dads," says Craig Plestis, executive vice president for alternative programming, development and specials at NBC.
The network will be targeting those families with holiday-themed editions of Deal and1 vs 100 on Thanksgiving and Christmas. "No one's ever programmed anything original on Christmas Day this way, but these shows lend themselves so well to such event programming for those times when the whole family is watching," Plestis said.
As much as the networks are committed to introducing more game shows in coming weeks, none of the programmers see them as more than a temporary solution to sagging audiences and rocketing production costs this fall.
"As terrific as game shows are in terms of cost-effectiveness and flexibility in scheduling, they also notoriously have a short shelf life," says Mike Darnell, executive vice president for alternative programming and specials at Fox.
"It remains to be seen where this latest cycle that started with Deal or No Deal will go," he said. "But every show that has come down the pike in the previous cycle -- Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, Weakest Link, Greed and 21 -- had a life cycle in prime time of a year and half at most. I love them. They're great. And I hope Rich List is a hit. But history says don't bet the whole bank on them." No-frills shows
Deal or No Deal
Host: Howie Mandel
Concept: Contestants choose among models holding suitcases full of money
Airs: 8 p.m. Mondays and 9 p.m. Thursdays on NBC
1 vs 100
Host: Bob Saget
Concept: Individual contestants compete against a panel of 100 persons in answering trivia questions
Airs: 9 p.m. Fridays on NBC
The Rich List
Host: Eamonn Holmes
Concept: Strangers are paired to complete pop culture lists. Winners continue to play with no limit on earnings
Debut: 9 tonight on Fox
Show Me the Money
Host: William Shatner
Concept: Dancing with the Stars meets the game show as contestants choose dancers who represent a plus or minus dollar amount
Debut: 8 p.m. Nov. 22 on ABC
Set for Life
Host: Jimmy Kimmel
Concept: Like a lottery, contestants can win a prize that will pay them monthly for the rest of their lives
Submitted by MapTheWay on September 9, 2006 - 8:53am.
If I wanted a TAPE machine that I have to fast forward or rewind and wait for the tape to finally get there I would have bought that. Instead I'm stuck with waiting for ff and rr with this amazingly poorly designed product. Ever hear of 30sec SKIP? Doesn't work on this box. The designers are stuck in the 80's!
I've had the DirecTV version of TIVO for HD installed for the past few weeks.
HR20 HD DVR Issues so far: 09/09/06
Update: 01/13/07 completely replaced box for a second new one. Currently having massive AUDIO and VIDEO digital noise hits. I hope it's fixed after it downloads all the programing in the next 24hours....
1) You can't switch from tuner to tuner on the fly like you can with TIVO. THIS TOTALLY SUCKS!! Let me reiterate this TOTALLY SUCKS!
2) HR20 locks up constantly 1-3 times each week. Requires unplugging unit and going through ENTIRE reboot cycle this takes about 10 minutes to reboot.
3) The interface BLOWS! it's horrible. For those who love your TIVO units there is NO comparison. Just try to easily select a SEASON PASS. Or better yet, try to delete a program that you've already recorded...or delete it as you're watching it...good luck!
4) What, I can't skip ahead... I must actually WATCH pictures in FF or RR... (is there a hidden tape inside this stupid box?).
5) update: now the audio is dropping out...picture stays on, but audio drops for about 1-2minutes..then magically i can hear it again.
I did call customer support, and they said the new software update will take place in October 06', but this will not address the poor HCI design of the interface. It's just NOT logical...
More later depending on the comments I receive here... Basically go buy a new TIVO. Sorry DirecTV,not only did you blow it, you blew it bad enough for me to blog about how bad it really is...stay away, FAR away!
Prepping for a consulting world tour with a number of Christian, Messianic, and Jewish Television companies. We seek to rebrand their online presence, reinvent religion's ideas about marketing, and introduce some serious structure for spiritual students.
We are looking at a number of software tools and individuals who understand OpenSource solutions.
You will be tested: Do you know how to finish this term "Ruby On _____," What else does Ajax do besides clean your sink?Are Adaptive Path and all things user interface design & HCI daily Googelations for you? Do you havea great deal of admin experience with Content Management Systems like Drupal, TextPattern, Wordpress, Typo3, Joomla. Artist? Coder? Christian? Blogger? Social Networking Expert? Open Source expert? Online Community Expert? RSS? XLM? CSS? DLA? Film, DVD, Video, Audio, Non-Linear Editing? Send me a note if you know of anyone that might want to catch this hit.
Where would the job be located? Actually we're open to discussing different physical and virtual options. The main facility is in the heart of Santa Monica, CA (Los Angeles area).
Drupal centric: Rethinking Social Networking which is clearly a major area within today's Web 2.0 environment. www.Ourmedia.org and the upcoming Digital Lifestyle Aggregators(DLAs)will expand Drupal's capabilities of handling relationships, groups, 'identity browsing' and bring together a comprehensive suite of modules.
CivicSpace Drupal developers also Host Bryght Drupal developers also Host
Follow it all up with a healthy dose of Marc Canter who is a leading Silicon Valley evangelist in DLAs and standard development for Digital Identities.
David Baron, Vice President of Digital Media at 20th Century Fox
Joey Tamer, Consultant
Wednesday, October 19, 6:00pm?10:00pm
How Does a Traditional Media Company Succeed in a Blogging and Podcasting World?
So far, there are no answers to this question, which we will explore in an open discussion.
We
are at a new turning point in media content, development and
distribution. ? The majority of web-enabled US homes now have broadband
connectivity. ? Consumers are developing new habits, demanding choice,
convenience and control over their media. ? Tangible shifts are
evolving in how consumers spend their time, how advertisers spend their
dollars, and how marketers sell their products. ? New markets and
marketplaces are evolving that offer the potential for ubiquitous
distribution of content on many devices. ? User-generated content
(blogs, podcasts, webpages, etc.) are occupying larger amounts of
consumer leisure time.
How does a traditional media
company create a business around end-user-developed content? How does a
content developer create a scalable business online without the backing
of a media company? How does a traditional media company remain
relevant in this changing market space?
David Baron, Vice President of Digital Media at 20th Century Fox (www.fox.com) will speak with Joey Tamer (www.joeytamer.com), uncovering these issues and more, in an open conversation.
David Baron
David
Baron is Vice President of Digital Media at Twentieth Century Fox where
he is developing new content distribution strategies for the Studio.
Prior to Fox, David was at Paramount Digital Entertainment, most
recently as Vice President of Programming and Production, overseeing
content development for online businesses at the studio. Before that,
he was Microsoft's first Entertainment Industry Liaison, where he
introduced numerous new technologies to artists, studio and record
label executives. He was also a Producer with the MSN group, where he
created (with Broadway Video) the first live, streaming late-night
comedy show on the internet.
Joey Tamer
Joey Tamer (www.joeytamer.com)
consults to Fortune 500 companies and capitalized start-ups to launch,
build, grow and exit technology companies. Her clients say she is "a
brilliant strategist and a practical, down-to-earth, get-it-done
person." Clients include J.P. Morgan Capital, Sony, IBM, Apple, Hearst,
Blockbuster, Technicolor, Harper Collins, NEC, Time-Warner, Agfa and
Scitex. Her work includes strategies and implementation on entry, exit,
capitalization, R.O.I., growth, positioning, pricing, distribution,
risk-assessment, new market and international expansion, due diligence,
and intellectual property.
I think search will be everywhere, on all things. In other words,
search will become the defacto navigational tool for your mobile phone,
your music player, your automobile, and of course your PC. We'll all be
getting - slowly - more sophisticated is using advanced search tools to
help us organize and find information, but not because we're trying
harder - but rather because search services themselves will be more
sophisticated, more likely to know who you are and what you are looking
for in context.
ABC said no a year ago but NBC, anxious to build some new hits, is saying yes to Deal or No Deal---the high-stakes game with an Australian origin. Endemol USA holds the American rights. For executive producer Scott St. John (Street Smarts), Deal or No Deal marks his biggest shot to date at a prime time network game show.
NBC senior vice president for alternative programming Craig Plestis made the announcement Friday.
The network did not announce a time slot, target premiere date, nor an emcee.
As reported earlier in TVgameshows.net, the production company is already soliciting contestants at dealcasting@lockandkey.tv. Contestant coordinators are asking for a recent photo via e-mail and contact information. "There are no physical stunts or trivia questions to answer. In order to claim a fortune, the winner will essentially have to know when to say 'when,'" said Plestis. ABC optioned the show more than a year ago and actually announced the game for a Wednesday-at-9 slot between cycles of The Bachelor. However, when Susan Lyne and Lloyd Braun were canned as ABC's chief programmers, the new regime scrapped the plans and allowed the option to lapse.
So the producers got paid twice for the same show... nice
New NBC Primetime Game Show "Deal or No Deal" Win $1,000,000
All contestants are guaranteed to win some amount of money!
No trivia questions and no physical challenges...just lots of fun and luck!
If you are interested in being America's next millionaire come to our Open Call at:
Hollywood Productions 1149 N. Gower St. Hollywood Ca. 90038 Sunday October 9,2005 from 11am-4pm For more information call 818-752-5557
Rafat says: Weblogs Inc, the blog media company founded by Jason Calacanis and Brian Alvey,
is being bought by America Online, www.paidContent.org has learned from
multiple sources. The deal is done and should be announced this week...
Among the other companies Weblogs Inc talked to included the usual suspects: News Corp, Yahoo and MSN...
BrightCove
Ready To Launch Early Next Year; Hybrid Service[by
rafat] : Some major NYT love for BrightCove,
the online video startup founded by Jeremy Allaire...two stories on it in a day,
which is kinda odd and unusual. BrightCove will offer three interrelated
services: It has tools that let TV producers load their video onto its servers,
arrange them into programs, and display them to Internet users. It will help the
producers charge fees for their video, if they choose, or it will sell
advertising on their behalf to insert into their programs. And it will broker
deals between video owners and Web sites that want to display their video,
arranging for the profit from such arrangements to be split in any of a number
of ways. Second NYT story
on BrightCove: Consciously modeled after Google, it is starting a network
that will sell video ads that will be associated with independent video
producers, much as Google sells ads on blogs. It has also signed up companies
like media giant Viacom, production companies and independents like Myrick...
-- via craigslist, and thanks for asking. Our engineers, though, tend to
come by more varied, and occasionally odder, routes. Some get recruited out of
grad school, or by friends or former colleagues. Others just send their resumes
to jobs@google.com. For a few engineers, though, the path has been more
interesting. Peter
Bradshaw, for instance, built ?a music playing system based on printed cards
with barcodes and webcams. Includes lego!
In the spirit of the Blog, I'll go ahead and blog this. Not like I want anyone else to see it because, well quite frankly I think this position's got my name on it. But then again, being the first to blog it could work in my favor. Amy?
To work in the same vein with Scoble and Zawodny is actually something I aspire to. I think these guys are not only intelligent but worth their 'marketing' weight in gold. The shift (and power) is electric. I especially enjoy the tension I feel reading Scoble knowing he's got to be cringing each time he hits 'save.' Wondering if the 'MSFT old guard' is going to light up his phone ...again. You GO SCOBLE!
Question: When is Yahoo Search moving from Pasadena to Burbank? The commute will be so much better Bubank side...which is certainly closer to the Santa Monica operation. The move makes sense.
What I really like about this "our team" sort of philosophy from Ning is its simplisity and dead on accuracy. This is by far the best outline I've seen. I'm already really impressed with the concepts of Ning (check out the Ning Blog) and after reading this I'm convinced these guys are going to be huge! The real question, how long can they go before the bidding wars begin? Wonder who will land them, Yahoo, Microsoft, Google... I have my ideas...what are yours?
"We have been around the start-up block enough times to have a very
clear idea of what kind of team we want to build. Here are some of the
things we believe in:
Run fast, fly low, and be cheap
Promote from within--quickly
Keep everyone informed, both on the good news and the bad news
Organize based on a cell structure for both technical and non-technical functions
3-5 person teams
Flat organization
Be transparent
Review projects every 2 weeks
Reward innovation, ingenuity, and hard work
Meritocracy
Evaluate and reward managers based on development of people
Top down reassignments of high achievers
Build a team with potential, drive, curiosity, intelligence and ambition
Don't have to have experience or a track record
We want people to build experience and track records with us
Conrad, E-mail me re DigitalSqueeze again we'll continue our discussion: "By
integrating TV, product placement and the Internet, you can measure results more
accurately. That is groundbreaking." -- Conrad Riggs, president of Mark
Burnett Productions, as quoted in the Hollywood Reporter
A study of consumers' daily use of media concluded the average person watches
television four hours a day and spends two hours a day on the PC. The Middletown
Media Studies II, conducted by researchers at Ball State University Center for
Media Design, found 96 percent of people spent a third of their day using two or
media at the same time, most often the Internet and television. Bob Papper, a
co-author of the study, said, "As a society, we are consumers of media. The
average person spends about nine hours a day using some type of media, which is
arguably in excess of anything we would have envisioned 10 years ago."
Television is still the 800-pound gorilla because of how much the average person
is exposed to it, Papper said. "However, that is quickly evolving. When we
combine time spent on the Web, using e-mail, instant messaging and software such
as word processing, the computer eclipses all other media with the single
exception of television." For
more information about the research. Source: MarketWatch
Marissa Mayer helps the search giant out-think its rivals
In late 1998, when Marissa Mayer first heard about a small outfit
called Google, she barely batted an eye. The Stanford University grad
student was urged by her adviser to pay a visit to two guys on the
computer science building's fourth floor who were developing ways to
analyze the World Wide Web.
- MySpace is adding 1 Million (yes, that is not a typo) users per week!
- MySpace is the 4th most trafficked site in the US
- MySpace is now serving up more pages than Google
- MySpace was responsible for 10.8 percent of online impressions, up from 7.9 percent in June and 6.3 percent in May.
Source: CraigsList
Those are some big numbers...REALLY big numbers. Did you know the former founder and CEO of Intermix Media, Brad Greenspan is on a campaign against the acquisition of the company by News Corp.?
Greenspan, who was head of Intermix until October of 2003, has set up http://www.intermixedup.com to outline his reasons for voting against the acquisition of Intermix by News Corp.
The bulls eye? Advertising: Online, Print, and now Television...Google is brilliant!
I've spent the better part of the past three days envisioning the concepts of Internet TV and specifically GoogleTV. I have a few ideas that I'll develop later on.
"In this paper we study the problem of finding news articles on the web
relevant to the ongoing stream of TV broadcast news. Our approach is to
extract queries from the ongoing stream of closed captions, issue the
queries in real time to a news search engine on the web, and
postprocess the top results to determine the news articles that we show
to the user. We evaluated a variety of algorithms for this problem,
looking at the impact of inverse document frequency, stemming,
compounds, history, and query length on the relevance and coverage of
news articles returned in real time during a broadcast. We also
evaluated several postprocessing techniques for improving the
precision, including reranking using additional terms, reranking by
document similarity, and filtering on document similarity. The best
algorithm achieves a precision of 91% on one data set and 84% on a
second data set and finds a relevant article for at least 70% of the
topics in the data sets.
... The framework of the system is not limited to news, however; we
have considered simple methods of detecting other genres (such as
sports, weather, and "general" topics) and sending such queries to
appropriate web information sources. The genres could be identified by
using machine learning on a labelled corpus of television captions; an
even simpler way would be to use television schedules and their
associated metadata to categorize the current show into a genre.
Overall this will be a great move for Google, and in many ways a spear head into the heart of media...as they look deep into the eyes of the Yahoo media group in Santa Monica, CA and Fox Interactive Media (also said to be relocating to Santa Monica, CA).
There are also a few folks orbiting the Internet - TV universe. Recently I spoke with Suranga Chandratillake, co-founder of blinkx. I also met John Lee at a NATPE conference late last year where he caught me up to speed with iTV and what I assume will soon be seen as StimTV part of Npowr based in Oxnard, CA. At this same conference I spoke with Akimbo.
I just returned from a week in Redmond meeting with Microsoft. They are trying to recruit me. We discussed similar ideas including Microsoft's approach with HD but I signed their NDA so mums the word.
The difference between GoogleTV and their association with Google Current TV involves the direction of revenues. GoogleTV Google Makes money, Current TV Google is spending money (advertising Google).
NY TIMES Google Answers is one of several services creating an online commons for impromptu research. Ingenio.com,
for example, markets the services of traditional professionals like tax
lawyers and computer technicians. And some sites, like Wondir.com, maintain a no-fee exchange of questions and answers - though tipping is permitted.
New product: This November Roku, a California-based
digital media company, will launch its new SoundBridge Radio, a music
system that that uses WiFi technology to connect to the internet allowing users
to listen to internet radio streams and music files.? The SoundBridge Radio
plays MP3s, podcasts, and the company has added an AM/FM radio tuner and new
speakers.? Additionally, it has a SD/MMC card slot that lets users load their
MP3s and playlists from a PC.? The unit also features an alarm clock, which
updates via the internet, as well as buttons for presets, scan, and source
select.? The SoundBridge Radio looks basically like a traditional home radio,
but on the other hand has florescent display screen that shows the name of the
song and the artist performing.? SoundBridge Radio can locate iTunes and Windows
Media Player via WiFi, and supports digital copy-protected music from services
such as Musicmatch, Napster, and Walmart.com, through a deal with Microsoft's
PlaysForSure; and it will also work with Real Networks' Rhapsody music service.?
The drawback is that it has a hefty price-tag of $399.? Roku will continue to
offer and support the original SoundBridge unit. Source: Cynthia Turner
YAHOO INC. PULLED BACK the curtain Monday on the first production of
its media-empire-in-the-making in Santa Monica. It was (drumroll
please) ? a news program (rim shot).
If that sounds familiar,
that's because, well, it is. Online news sites proliferated during the
dot-com craze of the 1990s, although many that emphasized video sank
when the Internet bubble burst. Video news sites have made a resurgence
in recent years, both from commercial sources such as TV networks and
from amateurs doing video blogs.
Yahoo's effort, called "Kevin
Sites in the Hot Zone," is a hybrid ? a professional journalist doing
something that looks suspiciously like a blog. Sites plans to offer
daily video, audio and text dispatches from war zones around the globe,
and he promises to participate in online chat sessions and
videoconferences. His program is most likely to appeal to people who
don't care much for TV news programs (read: young people); in that
sense, it's not competing with "World News Tonight" so much as with
Google News and the blogosphere.
Yahoo Chief Executive Terry
Semel, who used to run the Warner Bros. movie studio, and Lloyd Braun,
the former ABC television executive who leads Yahoo's media and
entertainment efforts, have been coy about what the Yahoo Media Group
will do in its massive new office complex. One of the few things Braun
has made clear is that Yahoo is not interested in merely producing and
transmitting news or entertainment like a network or a broadcaster. The
implication is that the Yahoo Media Group wants to complement the media
establishment rather than destroy it. Its products would add to the
array of choices presented to Web surfers who point their browsers at
Yahoo's site. Someone looking for Iraq news, for example, might find
Sites' reports alongside those from the wire services, the BBC, CNN CBS
and this newspaper, which provides news to Yahoo.
Yet the
so-called mainstream media (aka the MSM) can't take too much comfort
from Yahoo's strategy. The MSM has established more than just a
beachhead on the Web, of course, but few sites can match Yahoo's
ability to make a wide array of material available on demand, filter it
to suit a person's tastes, then allow for further refinement through
user feedback. If programs such as Sites' are compelling, they will
hasten the public's shift toward the interactivity of the Web and away
from more passive traditional sources of information and entertainment,
such as TV, magazines and (here we are again) this newspaper.
House
Party, Inc., a Web-based media and technology company, is the
people-powered media channel for launching new entertainment releases
at home and on the internet. The company partners with major
entertainment brands to promote a new CD, DVD, TV show or video game by
sponsoring a House Party.
PBS
is aggregating videos of interviews with tech innovators like Linux inventor
Linus Torvalds, Apple Computer co-founder Steve Wozniak and
Google CEO Eric Schmidt on a special section of its site called
NerdTV.
The thirteen interviews are available on demand, but
are being released once per week on Tuesdays. CNET
In Response to The DVR Drama: Denial
or Doomsday by Jill Davis:
What is this new word, "TiVo-Proof"?? I couldn't find it in the dictionary,
yet I keep hearing it.
And what is this insistence on retaining the old ways?? Playing games with
viewers by padding show times or adding contests just insults the intelligence
of public.? Face it, television has changed and we must change with it.
In the early days of radio, some record companies put a stern warning on
their labels saying, "NOT FOR RADIO PLAY."? The thinking of the time was that
people were not going to pay for records when they could hear them for free on
the radio.? Putting a warning like that on a recording today would be
laughable.? The radio industry has promoted the recording industry far more than
it has hurt it.
I see scripts in the near future where the characters talk about their
favorite products the way real people do around the water cooler.? I see
breakfast scenes where the character pours milk on his cereal from a real milk
container, with a real product label on it instead of a generic label that
simply says, "MILK."? I see cooking shows where they not only tell you to add
two tablespoons of butter, but they actually endorse a particular brand.
A little imagination will do a lot more good than a bunch of hand wringing.
Even though it sometimes may not seem that way, there are still not enough
reality TV shows to host ALL the consumers in this world who crave instant fame
and shame. To the rescue comes Reality Village, part of the Bravo Club in
Stintino (Sardinia), a new type of holiday village in Italy inspired by Big
Brother and numerous other reality TV shows. Bravo itself is owned by Alpitour,
the largest tour operator in Italy.
The 'adventure' begins upon arrival
at the village, where 180 guests go through a real casting session to form six
teams of each 30 people, facing a week of challenges, all captured by ubiquitous
cameras. Think putting together a naturist calendar, cooking a dish or taking
part in pool games. Every night, footage is shown and judges announce an
individual winner who gets to pick another contestant to take to a holiday suite
and spend the night with. The day's loser will be sent out on a raft together
with a person of his/her choice. Cost: EUR 1,000 to EUR 1,500 (USD
1,255-1,880/GBP 680-1,020) per person depending on the period; not surprisingly,
participants were mostly young singles and married couples.
The first Reality
Village 'experiment' lasted 12 weeks (June-August 2005); some footage may be
shown on national TV this month. Springspotter
