Archive for May 30th, 2007
(This article originally appeared in the May 29 edition of the AR&D Media 2.0 Intel Report) Here’s a humbling exercise for you: go to Google, and enter the name of your city and then the word “weather.” I can promise you that your station won’t come up first. It probably won’t come up in the top ten and it likely won’t even be on the front page. And if you’re not on the front page of a Google results list - forget it. You won’t get the traffic. There is an easy and inexpensive solution to this, however: buy some Google (or Yahoo or other search engine) keywords.
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Beginning in a couple weeks, you’ll be able to browse, search and watch YouTube video on your TV set through Apple TV. “This is the first time users can easily browse, find and watch YouTube videos right from their living room couch, and it’s really, really fun,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. Sweet. Also, Apple said it will offer a build-to-order Apple TV unit with a 160GB hard drive — four times the capacity of the current model.
May 30th, 2007
San Francisco
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Days after management announced a 25 percent staff cut in the newsroom, Managing Editor Robert Rosenthal resigned. “I really want to be in a situation where I can build something rather than take it apart,” Rosenthal said. “It might be a newspaper or it might be a new kind of news organization. I think it’s time where the skills we have as journalists can be applied in a different way. The business model for newspapers is clearly broken.”
May 30th, 2007
KNTV’s NBC11.com has launched Reporters’ Notebook, a blog-style series of news updates posted by reporters in the field, mostly via email. As of this writing (5 p.m.), there are 15 updates for today alone — one of the most concerted contributions I’ve seen by TV reporters online to date.
May 30th, 2007
Portland, OR
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Virginia Beach, VA
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A major breakthough: You can now buy some songs from the iTunes store that don’t have copy protection. The tracks are in the section called “iTunes Plus,” which is launching with songs from the EMI Group. The DRM-free songs cost a little more - $1.29 instead of the usual 99 cents. But they are encoded at a higher quality and are compatible with non-iPod music players. Plenty of impressive acts here, too: Pink Floyd, Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones, The Beach Boys, Erasure, Joss Stone, Norah Jones, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and lots of acts I probably would know if I were hip. (The download requires a software upgrade to iTunes 7.2.) Why so huge? A few reasons. Apple benefits from selling songs to the non-iPod crowd, obviously. But also, it was running into trouble with European regulators who saw its DRM as a monopoly on downloadable music. EMI is just the first label - but this is clearly the direction in which Apple wants others to go.
May 30th, 2007
CBS has laid out $280 million in cash for the UK-based Last.fm, a music social network. Last.fm has 15 million active users, and has a search engine that analyzes what you listen to and then makes recommendations for playlists, creates personalized radio stations and connects you with members who share your tastes. (They call the tech “Scrobbling.”) But what about the debate over internet radio fees? From ZDNet:
… while CBS may have just acquired a social-media site that’s managed to stay clean in regards to copyright, the congressional debate over a scheduled increase in royalties paid by Internet radio sites will undoubtedly come into play soon. CBS has a big enough purse to pay those royalty fees, but such a situation would make Last.fm less profitable.
(Via TechCrunch)
May 30th, 2007
