Phoenix stations to share chopper
Three Phoenix TV stations are going to share a single news helicopter — something we called for after a chopper accident in the area killed four people in 2007. Five helicopters were flying a pointless car chase the day of the accident. The agreement puts together an outside firm that will fly stories for KPHO, [...]
Rocky Mountain News presses silenced
Two months short of the 150th anniversary of the first run, the presses at Denver’s Rocky Mountain News are running for the last time tonight. E.W. Scripps CEO Rich Boehne and newspaper division leader Mark Contreras abruptly told employees this morning that Friday’s edition would be the last. Online editor Mike Noe is tweeting the [...]
Journalism’s fatal disconnect with business
With the Seattle Post-Intelligencer likely in its final days, I’ve been attending a few of the many panel discussions and meetups in town about the future of journalism. Here in Seattle, the home of Microsoft and hundreds of other technology companies, surely we can figure out a way to bring journalism back from the brink. [...]
Five things newspaper employees can do to help save their company
Usually we focus on ways to increase user engagement and sales, but there is nothing more frustrating then busting your butt to make your failing company a couple thousand dollars and then turning around to see the wasteful spending going on by so many employees. Here are five things you should really think about if [...]
ESPN to launch first local site
By combining resources from ESPN, its Disney owned-and-operated station and a radio station, ESPN will soon launch its first local site, ESPNChicago.com. Beyond sports coverage, the site will provide utility, such as a way for a local softball team to organize. And a social network. On the video front, ESPNChicago.com will feature a mini version [...]
Do page view goals hurt local sites
Most folks in newsrooms across the county seem to be measuring the success of their website in page views (some incorrectly use the term hits). While page views can be helpful and in the end sales typically sells page views (if their are three ads on a page and the page gets 10 page views, [...]
Watch as TV ends
When around 400 local TV stations turned off their analog signal most TV watchers were asleep, but Orlando performance artist Brian Feldman decided to make this moment into an event. Feldman setup a group of televisions in a downtown storefront as part of “The End of Television: Part II.†I didn’t see any coverage of [...]
Pirate Bay trial underway, many charges dropped in first day
While Matt Drudge is cautioning against banks following the feared “Swedish Model,” the Swedish megatorrent site The Pirate Bay is fending off the legal broadsides of the global entertainment industry in a long-awaited trial that got underway earlier this week. On the first day, prosecutors dropped half of the charges against the site: Prosecutors previously [...]
Ustream launches pay-as-you-go Watershed
Ustream.tv has just launched a new service for Web sites and businesses called Watershed. Targeting the market that seeks a branded player and more customization for live events, Watershed offers a ton of management options outside the scope of the usual ustream player experience. Techcrunch has a good write up with a comparison sheet on [...]
40 percent of stations are now DTV only
Today is the long-awaited, much-promoted, highly-debated DTV switchover date. Or it was until Congress moved the official date to June 12th to give Americans more time to prepare their TV sets. Regardless, about 40 percent of the nation’s TV stations — 681 of them — have made the switch to digital. Most of those are [...]
Public media feels the pinch
Pure advertising isn’t the only business model out there feeling pain. Membership and sponsorship models that sustain public broadcasting are also feeling the effects of the economic downturn, as this article on WAMU public radio shows.
Young Broadcasting files for Chapter 11
With its stock at $.04 (that’s 4 cents), Young Broadcasting has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. “It is important to note that we are restructuring our debt, not our operations,” said Young Chairman Vincent Young in a statement. “We believe that the Company will emerge from Chapter 11 better equipped to thrive in this [...]
Lessons in paid content from the digital broadcast transition
Washington Post staff writers Kim Hart and Peter Whoriskey dish out a wonderful narrative in their article on the Washington conundrum that has turned the digital broadcast transition into a comedy of errors: But with two federal agencies in charge, no clear idea of how many people would be affected and constant partisan disagreements over [...]
Making your Media Matter 09
American University’s Center for Social Media is hosting the 5th annual Making your Media Matter conference today. Established and aspiring filmmakers, non-profit communications leaders, funders, and students are gathered to discuss and share information around how media makers can connect their ethical and aesthetic values with their financial needs. While advocacy and social change are [...]
Paid news conversation rears ugly head once more, publishers and ad directors still absent
The conversation following in the wake of the Time article on saving newspapers has the feeling of a bad rerun to those of us who have been around – and around- this old block for a while. Poynter has a nice summary of some of the chatter, pegged to a post on an NYT blog. [...]
NYT: Internet dooms most media… but not TV
With all the doom and gloom about the end of the old-media world, the New York Times notes that there’s one media that is still thriving: TV. Newspapers are drying up — books aren’t selling — and people are spending more and more time online. But they’re also still watching TV — in record amounts [...]
WSJ: Local TV stations face fuzzy future
The Wall Street Journal has a big write-up (free link) this morning on the economic woes facing local TV stations. The numbers are staggering: some stations are seeing their ad revenue decline 30% this year, and TV execs are beginning to concede that the economics — even after the recession — may not keep so [...]
APIs fuel growth at Twitter, NYTimes, and everywhere else
Twitter has grown like crazy since it first debuted in 2007 at SXSW. The Internet hip and happening went gaga over the simple ease of the SMS to Web microblogging service, and journalists have jumped on with some successes and mishaps as we have reported here. I helped throw a little twitter party for the [...]
