Archive for April 14th, 2008
Veteran correspondent Mike Boettcher is quitting NBC News to start a new website that will feature reporting from the soldiers’ perspective in Iraq. “We have 200,000 U.S. men and women in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf. The U.S. has seemed to have forgotten about them. We talk about the war, but we’ve forgotten the soldiers and what they are doing,” Boettcher said. Boettcher said he and his son will be embedded with the Fourth Infantry Division, and they’ll be posting blogs and video clips on NoIgnoring.com (which has yet to launch). TVNewser reports that Boetcher is here at NAB-RTNDA offering local TV stations free content from the site. He plans to leave in a month.
April 14th, 2008
Listings on Google maps can now include YouTube video, and that should make every local media company a little worried. “Now any local business can essentially put a television ad on Google Maps,” writes TechCrunch. “But the most effective videos will be the ones that don’t seem like ads at all, but rather show the real people behind the businesses that are listed.” Screen grab of a Google Maps search for the store, “I Dream of Cake” in SF…
April 14th, 2008
“A number of news executives tell me the main reason they’re here this year is to network with others in case they lose their jobs,” says Poynter’s Al Thompkins, who says most news directors told him that more layoffs are coming later this year. Watch his video here.
April 14th, 2008
The Tampa market has long been an example to those in the industry as a market where true convergence has been achieved through the combined properties of the Tampa Tribune, WFLA and tbo.com. Today the Florida Communications Group, a Media General-owned company, offered voluntary buyouts to half of the 1,326 employees, including those employees from sister-publications (Spanish-language Centro Tampa, Sunbelt Newspapers, Suncoast News, Hernando Today and Highlands Today).
FCG president John Schueler says this is part of a re-alignment of the company, but it sounds a bit like convergence to the next level.
From the St. Petersburg Times story:
For example, the president and publisher of the Tampa Tribune, Denise Palmer, is now responsible for content across all the FCG platforms. The president and general manager of WFLA, Mike Pumo, is now responsible for revenues across all platforms, and their operations at all platforms will also be centralized under a single vice president.
Also in the article, a bit of irony: “All this news comes as the Society of Professional Journalists announced a 2007 Sigma Delta Chi Award in deadline reporting, online, given to the staffs of TBO.com, WFLA and the Tampa Tribune for their joint ‘converged’ reporting on storms in central Florida.”
April 14th, 2008
Inside the vast reaches of NAB’s convention floors, not one, but three videobloggers were shooting at the same small booth at the same time (ok, so I’m counting myself as one of them.) The booth? Mogulus, where Andy Plesser from Beet.tv went live (on the web, natch) for 15 minutes, interviewing anyone within reach (including myself.) While he was on “the air” (what do we call it now, live on “the web?” or “the nets?”) the Channel 10 crew from Microsoft showed up and starting interviewing the Mogulus CEO (on tape.) Not to be outdone, I interviewed him, too.
(That’s Beet.tv on the left, Channel10 on the right.) I’ll post more later about Mogulus, which just did a white-label deal with Gannett’s newspapers.
April 14th, 2008
There are some interesting new video products Adobe unveiled here at NAB. With the official launch of Adobe’s Media Player 1.0 (review) — a hybrid desktop/internet application that lets you subscribe to video feeds via RSS (and even watch them offline) — the company is expanding outside the traditional realm of a software company. While many traditional media companies have pushed content to the Media Player, Adobe has opened its door for smaller publishers with an advertising revenue-share model. “We don’t make money if you don’t make money,” said Ashley Still, Adobe’s product manager for the video player, at an interview at NAB this afternoon. Still said the idea is to reduce the upfront cost for smaller publishers.
Adobe’s Mark Randall, who’s the company’s chief strategist for dynamic media, said that video metadata will fuel many innovations over the next several years. At NAB, Adobe announced a video-to-text application that works right in the editing workflow. “It literally builds a trascript while editing,” he said. “You can edit on the words and search for words.” Randall said Adobe is working on extending its XMP standard from print to video. Too much rich media is “opaque,” Randalls said, which limits its distribution, consumption and monetization. (Thanks to Beet.tv’s Andy Plesser for letting me muscle in on the Adobe interviews. You can see the video version on Beet.tv tomorrow, as well as Andy’s interview of me.)
April 14th, 2008
The AP announced today the launch of the Mobile News Network - which will “deliver news to smart phones, including Apple’s iPhone.” Several “digital cooperative” members are testing the service right now - and a wider launch is expected this summer. The announcement seems to be light on details of what exactly will be offered - except that AP “videos, photos and text” will be available. “The formation of the Mobile News Network positions members to capture opportunities on high-growth mobile platforms,” Curley said in his report via B&C. “The Mobile News Network will provide a national platform for smart-phone users to access local content from brands they trust.”
Cool. Can’t wait to get news on my iPhone.
April 14th, 2008
I missed the NAB’s Television luncheon this afternoon, but my wife Kate went to see TV legend Bob Barker be inducted into the NAB Broadcasting hall of fame. She said it was standing room only, and surprise… Barker brought three lucky people up on stage to play Plinko! One person won a HDTV, and another an Xbox 360.
April 14th, 2008
This is my first trip to NAB/RTNDA. The NAB convention floor is overwhelming - and there are probably dozens of blog items to be pulled out. The RTNDA exhibits - a short walk away at the Las Vegas Hilton took me about 5 minutes to walk through. Many of the two dozen or so exhibitors looked like they were ready to fall asleep - and they weren’t particularly engaging (maybe it’s because I look like a student with my flip flops and MacBook-carrying backpack…) The booths don’t really add anything about the companies that I couldn’t learn on their respective websites. The NAB side is packed with gadgets, gizmos, demonstrations and energy. Why not just push the two events together as one and do away with the distinction between them?
April 14th, 2008
Just last week, Cory noted how a broad spectrum of innovators are stealing the ball from broadcasters when it comes to traffic. I just watched a presentation from Navteq/Traffic.com that brings the point home. Though the demo was aimed at broadcasters - showing off the latest technology and interactive broadcast maps, it served more to drive home the point that the traffic franchise will leave TV - and fast. Traffic.com’s proprietary system of sensors, probes, reporting and other add-ons is an expensive proposition for the company — but it will increasingly own the space - leaving TV sites to beg for scraps and pay hefty license fees to get decent traffic data online. In many markets, the only thing more important than news and weather — is traffic…
April 14th, 2008
Live-blogging this RTNDA session. The description is, “Your customers are changing the way they get their news. So why does your newsroom still act and look as it did 10 or 20 years ago?” Steve Safran is moderating…
Read the full post April 14th, 2008
When I heard actor Tim Robbins was the keynote at the NAB opening session this year, I was skeptical. But he delivered a terrific, biting speech that urged broadcasters to “appeal to the better nature of our audience.” Meanwhile, NAB President David Rehr, who last year didn’t mention the internet until the end of his speech, started off by playing YouTube clips. “Is our model broken?” he asks, then staying broadcasting is still a vibrant business but NAB is moving aggressively to “move television beyond the family room.”
I live-blogged the speeches below (as always, my apologies for the usual “…” and misspellings as is typical on these sorts of things.)
Read the full post April 14th, 2008
We’ll be attending the NAB opening session here at 9 a.m. PT and then the RTNDA session, “Leading change in a digital newsroom” at 10:30 a.m. We’ll try to live blog both of these. After that, we’ll be hitting the floor to check out the new Grass Valley web video product (see below) and Adobe’s new video product announcements. Stay tuned…
April 14th, 2008
Google has been running a trial on Dish Network, but soon anyone will be able to buy TV ads via Google on Bravo, CNBC, CNN and any of the other 91 channels on Dish. “We want to open up the floodgates,” said Keval Desai, Google TV Ads product-management director. The actual launch date, while soon, is still not determined.
April 14th, 2008
