Archive for August 23rd, 2006
Hmmm, this will generate a little controversy. For the first half of the new Survivor season this fall, the teams (”tribes”) will be divided by race: African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanics and whites. “I know it’s going to be controversial. I’m not an idiot,” said producer Mark Burnett. “I really don’t believe there are many people who hate each other because of their race. But even though people may work together, they do tend in their private lives to divide along social and ethnic lines.”
August 23rd, 2006
New York City
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Thanks to everyone who’s posting job openings on the new Lost Remote jobs page. It’s quickly becoming the destination for digital media job openings, thanks to our quickly-growing audience of media techies. Full-time, part-time, or (ahem) consulting, post ‘em here.
August 23rd, 2006
LR Mentor-For-Life Terry Heaton consults for Nashville’s WKRN-TV. (I strongly recommend visiting their site: it is outstanding. The architecture is innovative. It differentiates itself from its competitors brilliantly.) His latest treatise, “The Changing Face(s) of Local News” examines what viewers think of local TV news these days (not much) and how a station like WKRN adapts to the reality. That Terry can write about the experience so openly is as good a sign as any that WKRN President & GM Mike Sechrist trusts the new media direction he is leading.
August 23rd, 2006
I’m just going to keep pointing to TV Guide as the model of new media reinvention. Always keeping in mind that it’s in the data and information business - not the magazine business - TV Guide continues to emerge as a forward-thinking operation. Its latest deal is with 4INFO, and it brings local TV listings to cellphones. Now we just need to hyperlink the TV Guide cellphone listings to our TiVo and then Slingbox the show back to our phone: DIY MMS VOD.
August 23rd, 2006
Proving what you’ve always known about quarterly earnings reports, Thomson Financial has started using a computer program that writes its own stories. Insert numbers and earnings data, out comes very boring and dry copy. But I love this line: “(Thomson is) using templates and “a rich thesaurus … so no two stories are exactly the same,” said Andrew Meagher, the company’s director of content development.” Just like when writers look for five different words for “fire” or “snow.” So instead of reporter bias, all we’ll have to worry about is computer BIOS. (Sorry.)
August 23rd, 2006
Nielsen has released its updated list of television markets ranked by population, and one market — as expected — took a big hit. New Orleans dropped 11 markets from 43 to 54 on a loss of 105,190 TV households. The next big mover, as always, is Las Vegas moving up 5 markets to 43. Other changes: San Francisco Bay Area climbs one to 5. Dallas moves up one to 6. And Boston slides down to 7. Phoenix (now 13) and Seattle (14) change positions. Same goes for Miami (now 16) and Cleveland (17). And Orlando (now 19) and Sacramento (20). Here’s the press release, then click on the link along the right column for an Excel file of the entire list.
August 23rd, 2006
TNT streamed web-exclusive live coverage of the PGA Championship on PGA.com last week — powered by CNN’s Pipeline technology — and the results are in. PGA.com says it served up one million streams, brought in two million unique users and saw an 18 percent jump in page views over last year’s peak. “PGA.com Pipeline’s success, both from a traffic and performance standpoint, coupled with our strong television ratings, indicates that our online product not only didn’t erode our television audience at all, but actually complemented it,” said David Levy, Turner Sports president.
August 23rd, 2006
ESPN is putting the Little League World Series on a five-second delay after one of the Staten Island kids swore. Mind you, after the kid swore, his manager “appeared to have then struck the player with his open hand, according to the Associated Press.” So now swearing is cause for panic, but apparently child abuse is not.
August 23rd, 2006
Martin Nisenholtz, the senior vice president for digital operations at the New York Times, is to be credited for his work already. The New York Times website is very good. And it is bringing in money. While the rest of the company’s revenue was flat last quarter, Business 2.0 writes:Internet revenue soared from $49 million to $66 million. Radiating pride, Nisenholtz declares, “We’re really in an amazing position…. We’re in the best shape we’ve ever been in.” We’d like to see the NY Times keep going in a 2.0 direction. In the article, he speaks of blogs as 2.0 - a topic of debate. Bring in the user content, video, and extend the conversation and the NY Times site will continue its roll. After all, who likes to talk about New York more than New Yorkers? (Via Cyberjournalist)
August 23rd, 2006
The first big media acquisition of a user created video site, Sony Pictures Entertainment has agreed to buy Grouper for $65 million. “Many people in the Grouper community use Sony cameras to create videos and Sony Vaio computers,” said Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton. “It makes sense to complete the circle by having Grouper be part of Sony.” Says Ben Bajarina, a consumer technology analyst, “What they are likely going to want is to capitalize on their own content and marry it with some user-generated content.” For context, Grouper makes up less than a one percent share of video shared on the web compared with YouTube’s 43 percent share. It will be very interesting to see how this shakes out, especially in light of Sony’s potential increased legal exposure.
August 23rd, 2006
My official favorite radio blog, Hear 2.0, interviews Seth Godin and gets his thoughts on the future of radio. It’s something we’ve long debated at LR - we love local content, remember - and Godin’s thoughts are right on the mark. “If I ran a media company today, I’d say, “How can I turn this group of 100,000 listeners into 1,000 groups of 100 people who wanna subscribe to a podcast? How can I deliver exactly what they want, anticipate it, offer them personal and relevant information that they need when they need it.” Godin is making the rounds, promoting his new book “Small Is the New Big“
August 23rd, 2006
Microsoft is suing people who take URLs designed to take advantage of a mistyped Microsoft URL. (And I’ve typed it as Microfost so many times, I’ve gone to these weasel sites before.) I wouldn’t have cared much about the story for LR - another MS lawsuit, yawn - but the portmanteau word in the headline caught my eye. As the longtime pusher of “viewsers,” I support any effort to coin a new word. In this case, people who squat on URLs designed to take avantage of bad typers are called “typosquatters.” I like it.
August 23rd, 2006
