Archive for November 19th, 2007
- NBC will launch Celebrity Apprentice with Tiffany Fallon, Jennie Finch, Tito Ortiz, Piers Morgan and Nely Galan. (OK, and Trace Adkins, Stephen Baldwin, Lennox Lewis and Omarosa). The show debuts January 3rd.
- NBC is joining CBS in looking to mixed martial arts to fill timeslots.
- CBC officials say that American networks have showed interest in several Canadian shows like… Little Mosque on the Prairie (no joke).
USA Today has the list of all the reality shows coming your way.
November 19th, 2007
The Seattle Times’ James Vesely turned in a must-read editorial Sunday.
So far, for newspapers, the Internet has not been monetized enough to carry the capital and human financials of the newspaper city room. The three-legged stool of newspaper profits — classified advertising, big circulation and low-cost paper — has been replaced by “Star Trek” Scotty’s single transporter beam of information, a single beam of narrow interests, now you see it, now you don’t. It can make a story appear out of thin air…. I see Craigslist as a negative-editorial product. Why? Because it claims the profits normally shifted to the newsroom…. Media companies, especially newspapers, are by default nearly the lone agents of the democratic form of government.
This is the burden of the newspaper model. People generally buy the paper for the news, but that news is made possible by the cash put off by the classifieds. The news product is subsidized by an unrelated part of the paper. TV hasn’t felt the same crunch (yet) because the ads in the 11pm news pay for the creation of the broadcast.
Vesely says papers don’t know “when profits are going to return, or how.” I’ll submit that the profits are probably gone for good. While a free media is essential - whether it be on TV, the Internet or on a printed piece of paper - organizations that hold onto an old model are destined for the trash bin along with the very paper they put words too. Those newspapers that are looking at other ways forward have a future - but with much smaller staff sizes and fewer layers of management and non-essential people, and probably by “printing” their content to something other than newsprint.
Adds Devin, in comments: “For all their complaints about craigslist eating their lunch, you would think that they would take a few moments to analyze what makes that site so popular and then copy it.”
November 19th, 2007
Current TV is just two years old, and it’s still growing. Al Gore told a group while receiving an award for the channel that the network will be expanding to reach a total of 57 million households next week, including some areas outside of the US. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Gore hailed the successes of his channel so far in attracting younger demos, calling it arguably the fastest growing cabler in the country. He put special emphasis on the popularity of viewer-generated content, and even viewer-generated ads, which make up some 30% of screen time on the service.
November 19th, 2007
With 81 percent of the vote, WGA East members of CBS News have voted to strike. The 300 or so employees work as writers, assignment editors, desk assistants and graphic designers for the CBS network as well as owned-and-operated stations in New York, LA, Chicago and DC. The group has been without a contract for two years. Now the strike has to be approved by the negotiating committee and the WGA before it can take place. CBS News, meanwhile, has said that a strike would not interrupt its broadcasts.
November 19th, 2007
We love redesigns here at Lost Remote (we even got motivated and did a little redesigning of our own over the weekend). Today’s new design comes to you from NYDailyNews.com with “more stories, more sections, more discussions, new videos and clearer navigation.” Pretty sharp, IMHO. (Thanks, DW!)
November 19th, 2007
First Second Life, now Twitter is featured on CSI on CBS. (Via Fimoculous)
November 19th, 2007
Howard Kurtz delves into culture and prospects of the San Jose Mercury News. With half the staff of a few years ago and more cuts looming, the paper has been sold and resold and still has to find a direction that will meet the goal to slash the print edition further and shift two-thirds of the remaining staff to the Merc’s Web site, where only 10 percent work now. Kurtz notes that every paper in America is playing some version of this tune, but the effort in San Jose “may be the most ambitious — or the most desperate” of them all.
November 19th, 2007
As advertised, Amazon’s new Kindle reader debuted today. It’s a wireless digital book with a paper-like display and a $399 price tag. So far, 8 newspapers are available for digital subscription ranging from $5.99 to $14.99 a month. You can also subscribe to magazines like TIME and Fortune. But wait, over 300 blogs are available, too — but for .99 a month each. Paying to read blogs on a black and white screen? Now Amazon is just getting silly. (And no, Lost Remote is not one of them.)
Adds Baker in comments: “I really like the reader technology, but I won’t buy one until it’s a $99 reader — it’s gotta hit a sweet spot price or I think it will continue to struggle for adoption — or until Apple starts to dominate this market with the Touch and iPhone, thereby forcing reader prices down.”
November 19th, 2007
