20,000 comments and counting

ABCNews.com’s story on the debate has 19,355 comments as of 2 a.m. ET, and that number is rising fast. And what does Huffington Post say?

At least ABC News is reporting on its own backlash.

7 comments April 17th, 2008

NBCU forms brand placement unit

One of the big complaints of product placement is advertisers seem to be “jammed” into a storyline at the last minute. Well, the new NBC Universal Digital Studio in a partnership with Omnicom Media Group Digital will focus on creating branded content for digital platforms — a “co-developed process” for integrating advertiser brands from the beginning. “The idea here is to have brands in the storyline be the lead,” said OMG Digital CEO Matt Spiegel.

Add comment April 17th, 2008

CBS Interactive opens Silicon Valley office

CBS Interactive is opening a Silicon Valley office and reshuffling its management. Bryon Rubin is moving from CBS corporate to EVP/CFO of CBS Interactive. CBSSports.com GM Jason Kint will also oversee CBSNews.com. Other GM’s will manage entertainment, mobile and Last.fm. “The quick answer simply is more CBS corporate firepower focused on interactive, yes,” Quincy Smith, President of CBS Interactive, told PaidContent. Meanwhile, the new Silicon Valley office will focus on tech partnerships and possible acquisitions.

1 comment April 17th, 2008

Debriefing after NAB-RTNDA 2008

Back in Seattle. Thanks to RTNDA and Lane Beauchamp for scheduling more digital/web sessions than ever. Good stuff. (Maybe next year RTNDA will add web critiques to their TV resume tape critiques, which will send a powerful message to students and young reporters.) I was a little demoralized to hear many of the same questions from news managers — questions that illustrate that the web still comes in a very distant second to TV despite all the talk about being “platform agnostic local media companies.” Baby steps, I guess, but I fear the time is short for broadcasters to gain real financial traction online.

On the NAB side, the announcements were light. The focus was on the DTV transition, which is clearly a critically important change for the industry. But I was surprised to hear NAB President David Rehr talk about making the internet part of a broadcaster’s DNA, which is a 180-degree turnaround from years past. NAB’s focus on content this year (”Where content comes to life”), while noble, resulted in a dearth of heavy-hitting technology speakers, and as a result, less news. Technology companies (minus the big TV vendors like Sony and Panasonic) are focusing more on CES than NAB, which is quickly becoming NAB’s substitute in the interactive world.

While many will say that “content is king,” I believe that content and technology are king. One without the other will not succeed in the new world, yet technology has a slight advantage (for now) due to its distribution channels and the ability to organize/aggregate outside content. And that’s why I believe CES has become more important than NAB. You could certainly argue that content will regain the lead, but only if it’s tailored to the unique properties of new platforms while keeping costs under control.

1 comment April 17th, 2008

Building social profiles around television

I stopped by the Microsoft booth to get a demo of MediaRoom, interactive TV software that’s being marketed to telcos with IPTV services. At its core, MediaRoom manages a user’s shows, photos and songs, similar to MediaCenter, but on a more powerful level. But it’s the applications that are fascinating to watch. They showed NASCAR, for example, that gives viewers the ability to select different cameras, microphones and read driver and track profiles (the data is pulled via an XML feed from NASCAR’s site.)

The also showed a CNN Election demo, where you dig down for more information, vote in polls and even play video clips straight from CNN.com in a smaller “picture in picture” Windows Media player. All of these applications make much more sense, as Microsoft pointed out, than earlier ITV products that let you “click and buy Jennifer Aniston’s shirt.” But the most interesting feature was MediaRoom’s social functionality. The idea is that it would be integrated with an existing online social network, like Facebook. You can view your friends, check their status updates, etc.

You can also see (if they desire) what TV shows your friends are currently watching, either live or on DVR. This becomes interesting, because you can rate shows and recommend shows to your friends.

All of this “builds a social profile around television,” said the Microsoft exhibitor, which opens up a whole new world of targeted advertising. Also, when combined with chat, is a powerful promotional mechanism, especially for younger viewers who are watching less TV these days. Of course, for many of us, a product like this will take some time before it’s a reality, depending on how quickly IPTV is getting rolled out in your neighborhood.

2 comments April 17th, 2008

A new world of print 2.0

The New York Observer’s John Kolbin writes on how the Web is having a negative impact on print journalism. Sure, sure… heard it all before right? But this one has some pretty interesting stuff in it.

Essentially, weaker stories with little or no new information are getting stronger play in print by editors who don’t know what else to do. In an environment where news is always breaking and the pressure to break is increasing, the breaks are getting harder to find. Now everyone is trying to move copy like the AP. Wired’s Chris Anderson is quoted on how the relationship is changing:

“The role used to be that the way information was propagated was by the media, and it was the only way to get it out there. Now the role of the media is to add value to that kind of conversation and ask how much weight to give it. It’s not so much breaking news as much as legitimizing news.”

I’m not sure that new role is going to be a sustainable model for the future given the state of the art. The 2008 State of the Media report clearly finds that the public is past dissatisfied and is lashing back against the pack mentality in mainstream media by seeking new online alternatives. Old media types can’t just blame the new technology, the old content style is part of the problem. And it seems the reaction to the new mediascape has been floundering and doubling down on old bets. Copying your competition may have worked when media markets were geographic monopolies, but everyone has to work harder to distinguish themselves now and add value to the global conversation.

2 comments April 17th, 2008

Is dusk falling on the nightly news?

4-in-10 national journalists agree, the network nightly news has roughly a decade left before it signs off for good, according to a recent Pew survey. The respondents were less gloomy about newspapers, only 17% say the presses will stop a decade from now.

1 comment April 17th, 2008