If you haven’t heard of the site, well, you should. It’s a citizen news startup funded by Craig Newmark (yes, Craig from Craigslist) with Jeff Jarvis as editor-in-chief. “Daylife will gather, analyze, organize and create a new, distributed platform for the world’s news,” explains Jarvis, who won’t say much more about it (yet). The site is still in super-secret mode, and all you can glean from it is the fact they’re looking for a ton of engineer/dev types. Somehow, it will be linked to NewAssignment, a site under development that aims to encourage “smart mobs” of regular folks to submit ideas and cover the news.
A year and half ago, Bob Schieffer unexpectedly took over for Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News anchor desk. Nobody anticipated it, but Schieffer became an instant hit (and a personal favorite of mine) due to his honest, credible, warm and conversational manner. Fast forward to tonight, and Schieffer officially handed the baton to Katie Couric. While it could have been a very awkward moment, it actually was very well-produced and, well, seemingly real. At one moment during the interview with Couric, Schieffer fought back tears as he spoke of his family. Then, as the interview ended, Couric walked off the set and Schieffer said a few closing words. “This was totally an unexpected adventure for me, but I’ve loved every minute of it,” he said. “In March of last year, you invited me into your homes, but what made me feel good is that you were kind enough to invite me back. I will always remember that.” Then the closing music came up, and Les Moonves and Sean McManus shook his hand, followed by the embrace of his family. A class act. Of course, Schieffer is not going away — he’ll be reporting from Washington. Couric takes over the desk on Tuesday.
As you must know, some loser audio tech at CNN left Kyra Phillips’ microphone on as she went to the bathroom. And not for a split second, but for a good minute or so. The clip has been played on YouTube, like, a million times. The good sport that she is, Kyra went on Letterman to read her top 10 excuses. UPDATE: Read ‘em here, or watch the clip…
The UK’s Channel 4 has produced a movie that opens with the assassination of President Bush in front of a Chicago hotel. But what makes it even more interesting is the fact they’ve used CGI special effects to use Bush’s actual face. “We studied hours and hours of footage of Bush,” said director Gabriel Range. “The scenes are created by a mixture of special effects, stock footage and digitally compositing our actors onto the archive of Bush.” Range is shopping the movie to the US networks, which of course will turn it down. But wait until it hits YouTube. Publicity photo…
It has been a while since I have read an article that made me genuinely angry. This one did it. Same nonsense about how newspaper problems signify the end of journalism, different country. The Australian’s Mark Day hits the panic button this time. “If newspapers can no longer afford to underwrite the best journalism, it has a flow-on effect.” He then goes on to predict difficulty for radio news, television news and internet news as a result of newspaper losses. And in the same week that the website Porkbusters helped exposed Sen. “Tubes” Stevens as the pol blocking government accountability online, Day decries “the decline of watchdog journalism.”
The Canadian country music band The Road Hammers are coming to a very small screen very near to you. CMT has kicked off its made-for-mobile series featuring the group, featuring video of the band as they go out in search of a record deal. 28 episodes will be available through various mobile provider deals.
The CBS college sports channel, CSTV, launches a broadband site Friday that will stream games on a subscription basis. CSTVXXL.com will have channels for each of the schools it covers, and those schools will stream games that aren’t being shown on TV. Subscription is $14.95 a month or $99.95 a year. Mac users can forget about using it, though. CSTVXXL.com is only PC-compatible.
Some CBS affiliates are getting cold feet about re-airing the excellent documentary, “9/11″ in its scheduled 9 p.m. slot and are reportedly going to move the show to 10 p.m. to avoid any repercussions from the FCC. (”Indecent” speech is just fine after 10.) 9/11 has aired twice without resulting in fines, but in the $325,000 fine era, stations are simply too worried about FCC’s inscrutable anti-profanity rules. There are swears heard in the program from people on the ground during the chaos who didn’t have the simple courtesy to say “Darn, the buildings are collapsing. Holy moley! Oh shoot, thousands of people are dead. My gosh!”
Ah, the PR machines are in full motion. Today Lost Remote received an email from AOL with links to twoclips of Katie Couric behind the scenes at CBS gearing up for her debut next week. (The clips are highlighted on the AOL Television section.) Both are a glimpse into Couric’s hectic pre-launch life, and the second clip shows a few seconds of the new CBS Evening News set. There’s been plenty of talk about whether CBS is trying to morph Couric into a more serious newswoman, but these clips illustrate she’s not taking this too seriously. Very smart move to release the clips to AOL (and hence bloggers), and frankly, it’s refreshing to see a network news anchor who’s not uptight on camera.
It has been three months since Netscape relaunched as a Digg-like portal. The result? A huge drop in visitors, at least according to its Alexa ranking. Frank Barnako at MarketWatch reports Netscape has dropped from the 238th most-visited site to #438. (That’s per Alexa rankings, which are a little fuzzy - but still…) The new “channels” on the site are drawing next to no traffic, and as many as 15% of the visitors may not have even noticed the change - they just go there for email. Netscape’s Jason Calacanis, who oversaw the change, says the fault lies with Alexa’s data-gathering methods. UPDATE: LR poster Jason, who links to Jason Calacanis’s site, writes in our comment section: “The reason for the drop is that we moved the email users and one of our large computer/browser deals to AOL.COM and AIM.COM domains. The web traffic after you take that out is actually up, and being up in August is a good thing because this is the slowest month of the year.”
Much of the charm of the original “Star Trek” TV series was its low-budget look. Now it’s being re-released for its 40th anniversary with all new computer-generated graphics and an HD upgrade. John Eggerton at Broadcasting & Cable is right - this facelift is risking the Wrath of the Trekkies. Among the updates: new CG models will replace the old exterior shots of the Enterprise and other ships, planets will be “updated” and given more atmosphere, space itself will be redone (!) and the soundtrack will be digitally remastered. This tinkering with history has LR wondering: Is George Lucas taking over for the late Gene Roddenberry?
A year and half ago, Bob Schieffer unexpectedly took over for Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News anchor desk. Nobody anticipated it, but Schieffer became an instant hit (and a personal favorite of mine) due to his honest, credible, warm and conversational manner. Fast forward to tonight, and Schieffer officially 
