|
|
- Colbert’s pres. might raise FEC issues
- TV networks quietly shrinking primetime schedules
- Moonves’ new deal tied to CBS’ performance
- AT&T to offer mobile Napster downloads
4 comments October 21st, 2007
In June, we told you about the Minisode Network - which cuts down classic sit-coms from their original 22-minute or so length to less than five minutes. Now, Sony is getting ready to expand the network beyond its original MySpace home, to AOL, Joost and Crackle, according to Reuters.
Add comment October 21st, 2007
TV Guide Network has narrowed down six stations for the next season of Making News. So who would do such a thing? Well, KOSA in Midland, TX was featured last season (pictured), and GM Barry Marks said it was a good experience. “I think the emotional connection between the newsroom and the buyer brought in extra dollars,” he says. “It showed national clients a personality when we usually just do telephone deals.” But not everything was positive. “For some viewers, reporters lost some of the mystique they carry with them,” he says. “Some had the perception that reporters are perfect and polished all the time.”
8 comments October 21st, 2007
NYTimes.com has a good story on the continuing conundrum behind accurately measuring online traffic. For example, Style.com says 1.8 million unique users visited the site last month. Comscore said it was 421,000. And Nielsen-Netratings say it was 497,000. “It’s interesting that people keep talking about (the internet) as much more accountable than other media, but we’re not finding that to be the case yet because there’s no agreement on metrics or accounting methods,” said Jack Wakshlag, chief research officer at Turner Broadcasting System. Well, that’s not really true — the internet is much more accountable than TV, even with the metrics issues, because it’s an interactive medium — but the industry needs to come together on a solution. (Meanwhile, I think it’s a little funny that the NYTimes.com story uses the word “hit” in the headline.)
5 comments October 21st, 2007
The official NBC YouTube channel is missing, and bets are it’s because Hulu.com is about to launch. Hulu, the joint online video site from NBC Universal and News Corp, is scheduled to launch in October, according to their homepage. Well, there isn’t much time left. (Via Valleywag)
5 comments October 21st, 2007
A little side topic here - but something I found funny. Execs for the new Fox Business Network have been talking about how CNBC was loaded with infomercials. References to the heavy paid programming load of the older business network have appeared in Broadcasting & Cable, the NY Times and on TVNewser. I was interested to see how FBN would fill weekends and overnights without tons of paid programming avails. Quick answer? They aren’t. According to the Fox Business schedule, the network runs 46 hours of paid programming per week - including five hours each weekday (midnight to 5am) and 21 total on the weekend. CNBC runs 35 hours per week - two hours each weekday (midnight to 2am) and 25 hours per weekend.
5 comments October 20th, 2007
The winners have just been announced at the Online News Association conference in Toronto, and the revamped USAToday.com won the Online Journalism Award for general excellence, large site. The judges “decided to honor a site that made a huge leap in the last year who made a commitment to put the readers at the center of the news, not just at the receiving end,” emcee Ruth Gersh said. DenverPost.com won general excellence for medium site, and the VenturaCountyStar won for small site (edging out my own KING5.com, shucks.) The WashingtonPost.com’s OnBeing project won a special OJA for innovation, and ABCNews.com’s Brian Ross won an award in the investigative journalism category for their Mark Foley story. Lots more winners here, and congrats everyone!
1 comment October 19th, 2007
I didn’t care for the title of the panel on which I sat, but don’t bite the hand that feeds you, eh? (Sorry - Canada.) As it was, ONA’s “Broadcast Strategies for the Web” provided ideas for all sites, whether they are “broadcast,” “print” or “other.” Emily Hanlon has a fine writeup on the ONA’s site. I will say that I thought the audience beat up too much on CNN.com’s Manuel Perez, who presented CNN’s I-Reporter concept. I thought we had gone through the “how do you know they’re real videos?”/”Is that really journalism?” argument four years ago. I suppose if you want to go to the trouble of staging your own bridge collapse on the day a bridge collapses, you may sneak something through. But why is it that journalists so often go to the worst case scenario when faced with a new breakthrough?
7 comments October 19th, 2007
Through testing, the AP has confirmed that Comcast “actively interferes with attempts by some of its high-speed Internet subscribers to share files online.” AP calls it “the most drastic example yet of data discrimination by a U.S. Internet service provide” and “if widely applied by other ISPs, the technology Comcast is using would be a crippling blow to the BitTorrent, eDonkey and Gnutella file-sharing networks.”
It’s high time for a net neutrality law, don’t you think? (Thanks, Rob for the link!)
4 comments October 19th, 2007
It’s kind of unfair to have a panel on which Daniel Lyons, better known right now as “Fake Steve Jobs” is one of the panelists. Who do you think is going to draw all the attention? Friday morning, Lyons talked about what inspired him to fakeblog in the voice of Steve Jobs. Writes Raechal Leone:
“My idea was ‘What if the CEO really did a blog and then went off the rails?’”… Lyons said he knew the blog had caught on before that, though, when a friend at a software company, who didn’t know Lyons was Fake Steve, asked him if he read the blog and told him, “Fake Steve rocks!”
Fake Steve’s Book, “oPtion$: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs, A Parody” comes out October 22nd.
Add comment October 19th, 2007
TVByTheNumbers.com has a fascinating chart that shows historical TV viewing by year from 1952 through the 2006-2007 season according to Nielsen. The average time spent in front of the tube started at about 4 hours 30 minutes per day in the early 50s to about 8:20 in 2005-2006. For the first time in since 1996, viewing was flat from 2005-06 to 2006-07. With the fracturing media landscape smashing into more pieces every day - could this be the top of the peak of TV viewing?
4 comments October 18th, 2007
Two big websites launched today for Comedy Central hosts. One is run by Viacom to make money, while the other is run by a political campaign. The important thing to note? Both are awesome. I like politics, so let’s start with Stephen Colbert’s run for the White House. The “campaign” launched Colbert08.org so that those in South Carolina can download a petition and sign it so that he may appear on the ballot. To our loyal readers in South Carolina, you’re welcome for me helping you find out how you can save our nation.
In other news, I will no longer need to use YouTube since every episode of The Daily Show since 1999 is now online at thedailyshow.com. As we reported last month, Viacom is launching several stand alone sites for their shows. There will be over 13,000 videos on this site when it is fully loaded, and more being added after every show. What a great way for a company to monetize their history and provide on-demand entertainment for users. Also today came the announcement that Jon Stewart has signed a deal to stay on Comedy Central until 2010.
Busy day for Comedy Central, huh?
2 comments October 18th, 2007
News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch has big plans for the Wall Street Journal once he lands control of the paper in coming months. He wants to amp up non-financial news coverage, including national, international, arts and culture. A reporter asked if he wanted to kill the New York Times. As the headline alludes, he simply answered “that would be nice.”
3 comments October 18th, 2007
Newsweek.com has left the MSNBC.com nest, and is now going it alone. The new site is clean, easy-to-navigate and a much better fit for the newsmagazine content type than the more daily news-focused MSNBC framework. The magazine’s popular Conventional Wisdom Watch is now up front and above the fold, with arrows to switch between items. The content is smartly organized by theme, and video, photos and audio are given big play.
The Top Ten strip along the bottom of the site features the most popular items, and a simple slider allows you to change the metric from past 12 hours to past 7 days. Throughout the site, a “clip this” icon appears, allowing you to embed or link the material to a variety of platforms - including Google, Facebook, MySpace etc (image at right). A flash flipper lets you go back to covers for the past 2 years or so - and click to read the cover story.
Overall, the site is packed full of new ideas and widgets - and is now easily one of my favorite national news site designs.
Newsweek and MSNBC.com are still working together - but the ties aren’t nearly as obvious as they once were. If you enter the magazine’s site via a link off MSNBC.com, you’re given a blue MSNBC tab along the tab, but if you enter any other way, the MSNBC tab isn’t there.
Add comment October 18th, 2007
Amy Webb blogs this evening’s session on “blogging ethics” (there are ethics?) and it’s a topic that will raise some eyebrows. From Amy’s notes:
Very proud to announce that we’re developing a set of working blogging guidelines here at ONA that we’re hoping newsrooms will take and adapt for their own use.
Says someone from Bloomberg (I think - can’t hear): We’re all professional. We should never want to be accused of being not fair or not credible if we’re professional journalists. Why would we “spout uninformed opinion?” Journos shouldn’t blog. Employers shouldn’t necessarily allow blogging… It’s not “freedom of speech.” If you want total freedom, then don’t work for a large news organization.
Says me (Amy): Oddly, no one seems miffed by this statement. I think she’s missing the point here, and taking things to extreme levels.
Really? How did that get by without someone taking a swing? As it is, any discussion of a blogger code of ethics gets the ol’ one-two punch. But someone making a blanket statement like “journos shouldn’t blog” without being challenged by a room full of journalists?
1 comment October 18th, 2007
Google beat analysts’ expectations yet again with a 46 percent surge in quarterly profits.
Add comment October 18th, 2007
Roanoke.com’s excellent TimesCast webcast — a well-produced, daily, short-form newscast — has received much praise across the industry, including those of us here at Lost Remote. But they’ve decided to call it quits. Why? “We averaged between 200 and 400 page views per webcast,” online editor John Jackson said in an interview with Terry Heaton. Many TV stations are also coming to the same reality when they see the small audience numbers for their daily news webcasts (and I experienced the same with an experiment here in Seattle.) First, users go online in part because they want to select their own stories, not have them bundled for them. And second, such webcasts have a very short shelf life. But Roanoke.com isn’t bearish on all webcasts — they’re emphasizing niche video efforts that aren’t so expensive to produce yet tap into long tail effects. Smart move.
9 comments October 18th, 2007
Get a sample of what others are saying here at ONA… Dan Gillmor at the Center for Citizen Media Blog notes the description of his panel, “Becoming a Community Evangelist”: Learn how to harness the passion and creativity of your community to become a local sensation and a meaningful online gathering place. Dan takes issue with that:
With respect to the writer of that description, what hokum. The word “harness” is singularly inappropriate in this context. It reflects traditional media’s belief that the audience — the community — wants or needs to be treated like a herd of horses.
JD Lasica attended last night’s forum at the CBC news center, which was carried live on the CBC. Check out his recap of the event and this morning’s keynote by Yahoo! Executive VP, Global Partner Solutions Division, Hilary Schneider.
BlogTalkRadio is broadcasting live interviews from the conference.
And students are doing their own writeups at the ONA’s official site, journalists.org/2007conference.
Add comment October 18th, 2007
| M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| « Sep | Nov » | |||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
| 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 |
| 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 |
| 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 |
| 29 | 30 | 31 | ||||
