Damon Lindelof is the co-creator and head writer of the television series “Lost,” which means he’s a member of the WGA and currently on strike. It also means his NYTimes editorial about how “TV is dying” due to DVRs may be a bit over the top given current circumstances, but at least he’s honest: “I will probably be dragged through the streets and burned in effigy if fans have to wait another year for ‘Lost’ to come back. And who could blame them? Public sentiment may have swung toward the guild for now, but once the viewing audience has spent a month or so subsisting on ‘America’s Next Hottest Cop’ and ‘Celebrity Eating Contest,’ I have little doubt that the tide will turn against us.” True enough. He sums up the WGA’s argument in one paragraph: “If money is made off of my product through the Internet, then I am entitled to a small piece. The studios’ greed, on the other hand, is hidden behind cynical, disingenuous claims that they make nothing on the web — that the streaming and downloading of our shows is purely ‘promotional.’ Seriously?”
Adds Rocker in comments: “The studios are trying to make a business of it, but losing money right now online while also seeing their offline business downtrend. Meanwhile, the WGA is another snout at the trough, looking for $ before there are any profits. Problem with this is, IMHO, they have no skin in the game. Studios are investing $. Media professionals in other fields are being forced to adapt, learn new skills, take on new responsibilities, etc. The writers haven’t been asked to lift a finger… they just want more cash…”
CNN is hiring 15 to 16 new correspondents across the globe. “Owning the content we broadcast, publish and make available to affiliates and other platforms is the backbone of this business,” Tony Maddox, executive vice president of CNN International, said in a statement. Two months ago, CNN dropped its contract with Reuters, emphasizing that content ownership is key.
This is a test post for an upcoming feature on Lost Remote called Idea Feed. We’ll be highlighting some of the coolest ideas on media sites today. Besides the blog, you’ll also be able to receive the latest Idea Feed posts via email and a dedicated RSS feed. Plus, we’ll be encouraging you to submit your own favorite ideas. Stay tuned…
Earlier this week, Rupert Murdoch told reporters that he “expected” WSJ.com to switch to free access in the near future. “It is jumping the gun,” says Wall Street Journal SVP Michael Rooney. “We haven’t even closed the deal yet… Mr. Murdoch would like to have the largest, most robust site in business. Free is a way to look at that. But there is a lot of detail behind that. You have to work that out. You don’t just flip the switch.” That’s for sure.
With 8 million members across 26 countries and 9 languages, it’s… Xbox LIVE, which is celebrating its fifth birthday. Like I’ve mentioned before, wouldn’t it be cool if Xbox LIVE and Facebook converged somehow? (My wife, however, would think that’s a horrible idea. I thought she’d find this video funny, but I guess it struck a little too close to home.)
Jay Rosen, NYU professor and all-around-smart-guy has launched BeatBlogging.org today, the latest project to drop from NewAssignment.net. 13 reporters have opted in to help Rosen test his hypothesis that beat reporting with a social network is a viable pro-am concept.
Editor and Publisher has the latest newspaper site numbers from Nielsen (um, ’cause Nielsen owns E&P). NYTimes.com had a big surge and topped the list with more than 17.5 million unique monthly visitors, up from 14.6 million in September. Breaking into the top 30 for the first time is the recently-launched D.C. newspaper Politico. Also, the San Diego Union-Trib had high numbers, most likely due to great wildfire coverage. Interesting to note how much time people are spending on newspaper sites. The top dogs are now holding users for about half an hour.
Cranky and -ahem- “outspoken” yakker Don Imus has inked a five-year deal with RFD-TV to go back on the small screen when he returns to the radio waves in early December. Owned by Rural Media Group, Inc, RFD produces shows from its Nashvillle studios like “The Cattle Show,” “National Tractor Pulling” and the “Largent and Sons Hereford Cattle Auction” that reach 30 million homes via on-demand services. Imus will be doing a morning drive-time show from New York City on WABC-AM, RFD isn’t worried about the city slicker. “Don’s passion and understanding of rural America fits in so well with our ongoing effort to bridge city and country folks with this channel,” said Patrick Gottsch, Rural Media Group’s founder and president. If you could hear my mocking lisp, the tale of the City Mouse and the Country Mouse would sound like “City Mouth and the Country Mouth.”
This is an interesting survey: 45 percent of people said they rather watch college or pro football games on HDTV compared to 32 percent who said they’d rather see the game in person. Now, I’m a huge football fan, and I was just thinking the same thing the other night while watching the Seahawks play in the ice-cold rain on my high-def TV. Brrr. If it’s a critical match-up or a playoff game, I’d rather go. If not, I’d rather stay home. Also, I think this survey is a good reason for the NFL to consider doing away with old-fashioned blackout rules.
NYT’s Bits blog has some inside dirt on how Google and Yahoo are similar tracks to blend social networking functions into their Web mail products. While Facebook and the other Web 2.0 social service sites offer tools to import address lists so you can jumpstart your online friendliness, the big free-mail providers have already got it all going on, but navigation and transportation issues make things complicated. Brad Garlinghouse, who runs the communication and community products for Yahoo, offers this: “The inbox you have today is based on what people send you, not what you want to see.” Sounds nice, (wait for it…) BUT, social networking is based in living as an online extrovert, sharing bits and pieces of your life selectively with friends, friends-of-friends, and possibly, strangers. E-mail is a far more private affair, even considering the potential pitfalls of sneaky bccs or blind forwards. A little meditation on this reveals the value proposition inherent in social network sites that offer private messaging between members without revealing real e-mails. How the megaportals can balance this remains to be seen, but I still wish they’d turn their might against stopping spammers who abuse their systems and cost us all billions of dollars every day.
The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that Google co-founder Larry Page is set to marry his girlfriend, Lucinda Southworth, at an undisclosed location sometime during the weekend of December 8. Page, 34, and Google’s other founder, Sergey Brin, were co-ranked at No. 5 this year in Forbes’ 400 list of U.S. billionaires. Each is estimated to have a net worth of $18.5 billion. Brin married his longtime girlfriend, Anne Wojcicki, in May.
Seth McFarlane, the creator of Family Guy, is on strike with the WGA and, not surprisingly, openly defiant with his employers. Those employers, Fox, have decided to go ahead with production on new episodes of his show without him. The first one made without his sign-off has already been delivered. In addition to executive-producing the show, MacFarlane voices the characters of Peter, Brian and Stewie. If we had LR Polls, we could all make our “Suck” or “Not Suck” predictions, but instead, the new LR Circuit Board is a great place for a free range discussion on the war between the suits and the creatives.
Peter Wilson, who heads up Google’s 400-person engineering office in Seattle, just wrapped up speaking before a group of business leaders here. “I haven’t watched TV since ‘99,” he said. When asked about the last show he watched, Wilson added, “I remember Seinfeld was very popular.” If that wasn’t enough to confound the TV folks in the crowd, Wilson went on to explain how “most innovations and product definitions (at Google) come from the bottom up.” They hire smart engineers, empower them, provide a little structure around the edges, and let the chaotic process feed innovation. A little different than media companies, eh?
By the way, Seattle’s technology scene is rapidly expanding. Besides Google’s aggressive ramp-up in the area (they’ve built offices in two neighborhoods here), Yahoo is building an office complex for as many as 700 employees and Microsoft has kicked off a massive campus expansion with a potential capacity for 12,000 new employees. Whew.
In other Google union news, European regulators refused to approve Google’s $3.1 billion purchase of the Internet advertising company DoubleClick. The European Commission, the part of the European Union that oversees antitrust issues for the 27 member nations, said the merger raised concerns about competition and required a more thorough review of its effects on the Internet advertising business. Slightly ironic, while some residents on the west side of the Atlantic use “socialist” as a dirty word, the EU is doing the capitalist dance very well and is going way ahead in many areas of technology and new business. Some estimates say Google already has 70 to 80 percent of the paid-search advertising market locked up. No wonder old school ad-driven businesses like oh… television, newspapers, and magazines… are having a hard time making it online as they all scrap over the scraps.
No, News Corp. hasn’t snapped up Digg, but the social networking site has a new alliance with the (for now) pay-to-read WSJ.com. From Digg the Blog:
The Wall Street Journal Online is adding Digg buttons across the entire site, and you’ll now have full (free) access to the articles submitted to Digg. The Digg buttons have started appearing on WSJ.com articles tonight.
A Digg PR rep. added this note at News.com: “You’ll notice that it is the only button on their site.”
The writing team behind CBS’ Late Show with David Letterman have started an “interwebblognetwebblog.” It features video, strike observations - even what food the writers would like to see from celebs (Meat Loaf from Meat Loaf, of course). And this:
The NBC owned-and-operated stations (also known as TVSD) now have a new name to reflect the changing times: NBC Local Media Division. With the renaming comes two new digital appointments: Brian Buchwald has been named SVP, Local Digital Media and Multiplatform, and Mark French has been named SVP and GM of NBC Everywhere, a new unit focusing on the company’s growing digital place-based network. (Thanks, Ian for the tip!) Press release below…
Soon to be TruTV, the cable network Court TV is moving its trial coverage to CNN.com/crime (which was previously CNN.com/law). In the process, it’s letting go 16 of the 31 people working online. CNN.com has no plans to staff up to handle the change, which takes place on January 1st. Meanwhile, the plan is to build TruTV.com with “an abundance of video content and materials exclusive to the web.”
Yahoo has been having a little PR meltdown on Capitol Hill after lawmakers accused the company of collaborating with an oppressive regime for illegally helping the Chinese government jail and torture two journalists. Yahoo settled the lawsuit agreeing to pay the attorneys fees of Shi Tao and Wang Xiaoning and the family member who sued on their behalf. Yahoo also said it would “provide financial, humanitarian and legal support to these families.”
Not surprised, are you? Rupert Murdoch says plans are underway to make WSJ.com a free site. “We are studying it and we expect to make that free, and instead of having one million (subscribers), having at least 10 million-15 million in every corner of the earth,” Murdoch said. The idea is that the increased traffic will yield more incremental ad dollars than the $50 million the site is taking in now in user fees. As far as a timeline, Murdoch’s News Corp. is holding a special shareholders meeting on Dec. 13th.
Alright Lost Remote readers, where do you come down on this?
Whoa, in the recent excitement, this one slipped by me.
The [FCC] is preparing to impose significant new regulations to open the cable television market to independent programmers and rival video services after determining that cable companies have become too dominant in the industry, senior commission officials said.
Also expected is yet another plan to relax ownership requirements of newspapers and television stations in the same markets. All of this and more may happen before the month is out.
Update: Chairman Kevin Martin just held a conference call to propose a “modest” reform of the media cross-ownership rule. “The rule changes would go some way to removing the regulatory obstacles to the completion of the sale of the Tribune Co. to real estate magnate Sam Zell,” explains Dow Jones.
As we previewed earlier, CNN’s I-Report hub in Second Life is up and running, and they also started a blog about it. Here’s their own coverage of it. The first in-world training session is today at 5 p.m. ET.
Update:Crowd forms at CNN’s new virtual hangout (Thanks, Rob!)
The toolkit is out, now “the Google” is offering big bucks to crafty coders who get creative with it. As part of the Android Developer Challenge, a panel of judges will pick 50 winners from people who submit original software to enhance the company’s upcoming cell phone operating system. Those winners will each get $25,000 and be eligible for ten awards of $100,000 and another ten $275,000 awards.
Last Friday, Cory Bergman announced that Steve Safran is stepping down from Lost Remote. The following are excerpts from Mr. Safran’s three-hour farewell speech to the employees at One Lost Remote Plaza, delivered on Monday. Because he insisted on holding the address outdoors in the Boston-Seattle cold, several staffers came down with pneumonia and had to be hospitalized. Others quit and went to work for PaidContent. The full speech included histrionics which cannot properly be captured in text, nor can his 37 minutes of whining. We have also left out the names of the people he slandered, insulted or just plain called “dorks.” Here, instead, are some of the printable, intelligible passages. The editors apologize for this as they do for most of his career.
Sleepless nights and sweat-equity are the hallmarks of the new breed of online startups, according to this article that profiles a young entrepreneur working day and night out of her small studio apartment to launch a mobile coupon service. Even though they keep costs low and try to be realistic about projections, venture funding still seems necessary to break out to the next level.
CNN 
This is an 
Seth McFarlane, the creator of Family Guy, is on strike with the WGA and, not surprisingly, openly defiant with his employers. Those employers, Fox, have 
No, News Corp. hasn’t snapped up Digg, but the social networking site has a new alliance with the (for now) pay-to-read WSJ.com. From 
Not surprised, are you? Rupert Murdoch says 
Last Friday, Cory Bergman announced that Steve Safran is 