A warm “welcome back” to CBS News reporter Kimberly Dozier, who visited the New York newsroom today (Video), eight months after a car bomb nearly killed her in Iraq. Her co-workers Paul Douglas and James Brolan died in the May 29, 2006 attack, along with a U.S. soldier and an Iraqi translator. From CBSNews.com:
“It’s overwhelming,” said Dozier, as some 100 colleagues gathered around. “Last May we had Hell open on us. That’s when I found out what this place was really like. People I didn’t know reached out to me, to my family, and also reached out to the families of Paul and James. “Paul and James will always be in my memories … a final salute to them.”
While Dozier hasn’t returned to work just yet, she has been writing. Katie Couric posts her thoughts about Dozier’s return at Couric & Co.
CBS News President Sean McManus (right) welcomes Kimberly Dozier back to the New York newsroom, as colleagues give Dozier a standing ovation. (Video framegrab courtesy CBSNews.com)
Give ‘em this - it’s novel. The San Francisco Chronicle has started a podcast of reader feedback phonecalls. The ones from the tinfoil hat crowd are a little too easy, but the one that addresses a question of grammar is more interesting. (Is “pilotless drone” redundant?) The page posts a listener’s call, another listener’s response and, more fun, a music mashup of the discussion.
Pop quiz, students: What kind of rating does a show get if five million college students watch it in their dorms? Zero. At least, until now. Nielsen has begun to measure college students’ viewing habits, in a remarkably late effort to quantify what that obscure 18-22 audience is watching. It had been company policy not to have boxes in dorm rooms, leaving its study of that age group to non-college students or those home on vacation. Unsurprisingly, a pilot on November found that counting college students increased ratings by as much as 50 percent.
A survey of over 1,000 teachers found that 57 percent use national or international news websites as a source of news for teaching purposes, compared to 28 percent for daily newspapers and just 13 percent for local TV news. “Students do not relate to newspapers at all, any more than they would to vinyl records,” one teacher said in the study. Local papers “haven’t recognized how quickly this transition is taking place,” said the study’s author, Thomas Patterson, a professor at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. What about local TV sites? They weren’t even mentioned.
News Corp. has invested as much as 10 percent (approximately $12 million) in ROO Group, an online video technology provider that already powers the video behind FoxNews.com and other News Corp. sites. ROO competes with companies like Brightcove. Press release below…
This guy named Mark Erickson posted a video on YouTube which shows users how to crack into a so-called secret beta for “Google TV,” an upcoming product that would enable you to watch full-length TV shows with dynamic, targeted ads. But, Google says there’s no such thing, and nobody can replicate the hack demonstrated in the video (some people have tried dozens if not hundreds of times). So, in a nutshell, it’s an elaborate hoax. Watch the video — other than the dorky open, it’s surprisingly convincing…
Tribune Interactive has inked a deal with VMIX to power user-created content functionality — video, photos, blogs, ratings and polls — across the media company’s websites. More details in the release…
CBS is positioning 47 high-definition cameras in Miami’s Dolphin Stadium. “We’re plastered [with cameras],” said Ken Aagaard, SVP of operations and production for CBS Sports. “It’s the Super Bowl, so there is no stone unturned.” Here’s the gear rundown which includes a Phantom camera (pictured) that can capture 2,000 frames per second for super-duper-slo-mo.
Some 59 percent of Americans in a poll said parking in a fire lane is a more serious offense than illegally downloading a movie. “Most people perceive celebrities and studios to be rich already and as a result don’t think of movie downloading as a big deal,” said Kaan Yigit, study director at Solutions Research Group. If that’s the way Americans think about movie downloads, you can only imagine what they think about downloading torrents of TV shows, which originate from free television.
Good piece on 60 Minutes last night. Nominally, it was about the “Geek Squad,” an interesting story in itself. (Started by one guy, eventually bought out by Circuit City Best Buy. Also- why they wear those outfits.) But the excellent reporter Steve Kroft took the story a step beyond, to examine how computers are taking over our lives - and why they are so damned confusing. Best bit: Northwestern professor Dr. Donald Norman, who helped set HDTV’s technological standards, had to hire a geek to set up his own HDTV. “Someone complained to me, ‘You’d need a degree, an engineering degree from MIT, to work this damn thing’…Well, I have an engineering degree from MIT. And I couldn’t work it.” (Video is on story’s page.)
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, speaking at the World Economic Forum:
“I’m stunned how people aren’t seeing that with TV, in five years from now, people will laugh at what we’ve had…. Certain things like elections or the Olympics really point out how TV is terrible. You have to wait for the guy to talk about the thing you care about or you miss the event and want to go back and see it…. Internet presentation of these things is vastly superior.”
One of YouTube’s co-founders says the site is about to share the wealth with the people who make it possible. Chad Hurley spoke Saturday at the World Economic Conference in Davos, Switzerland. Hurley said the site will start sharing ad revenue with people who upload video. From the AP:
“We are getting an audience large enough where we have an opportunity to support creativity, to foster creativity through sharing revenue with our users,” Hurley said. “So in the coming months we are going to be opening that up.”
Hurley didn’t give specifics on how the rev share would work. YouTube pumps out about 70 million videos a day right now. (Thanks, LR Reader Don!) ALSO: If you haven’t checked out the Davos Conversation site, please do. Jeff Jarvis is one of the brains behind opening the Davos conversation to the world. AND: Video interview with Chad Hurley at Davos. (via Buzzmachine.)
Pop quiz, students: What kind of rating does a show get if five million college students watch it in their dorms? Zero. At least, until now. Nielsen has 
CBS is positioning 47 high-definition cameras in Miami’s Dolphin Stadium. “We’re plastered [with cameras],” said Ken Aagaard, SVP of operations and production for CBS Sports. “It’s the Super Bowl, so there is no stone unturned.” Here’s the 
