I’m beyond irritated with the quality of news we get in the US. It seems their latest thing is trying to scare the crap out of everyone about the “Swine Flu.” This morning I even saw rumblings about the Swine Flu thwarting the economic recovery. If I’m not mistaken, the news agencies are funded by advertising and the amount companies spend on advertising is linked to how well the economy is doing. So … isn’t it best for the news agencies to have a good economy? It seems to me their deliberate drive to scare the crap out of everyone is very short-sighted. Sure panic and sensational headlines may grab eyeballs, but those eyeballs aren’t the ones paying media producers to deliver the news. I’m not saying that the news should only report good things — but what I’m suggesting is perhaps the news should get back into the business of delivering the news instead of opinion and tabloid sensationalism. A balance of good and bad news would be nice. Clearly separating the news from opinion and taking a serious look into what is news worthy and what is not would be nice. Seriously, does 40 confirmed cases of the Swine Flu, which so far has manifested itself as the normal flu, equal a pandemic and the precursor to global financial meltdown? And, seriously, do the media producers wish for global financial meltdown, because that would mean they would go extinct too. So media producers and news people out there, give the news some thought before you start spouting sensational headlines and spinning everyone up with apocalytic prophecies and crazy what-if-a-frog-had-a-glass-ass scenarios. Be responsible in your reporting and most importantly quit “driving” world events into the ground! It’s irritating. So irritating in fact, that I’ve limited my access to news to ~about 1-min/day to make sure the world still exists, while at the same time keeping myself from spiraling into mental depression.
Category Archives: Advertising
Fun Stuff Coming out of NAA Conference
I’ve been following the news coming out of the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) conference. Here’s a link to latest thread as Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt adds his 2-cents. Basically the newspapers have discovered that “free” isn’t a business model while, at the same time, they have no idea how to regain control of the distribution of their content from the millions of bloggers and aggregators out there in the world. The thing I don’t understand is why they object to bloggers and aggregators providing links to their content and why they are acting like the music industry folks and “hating” upon their customers. First of all links are the life’s blood of the internet. If you want people to find your content, then links to your content (along with quality content) will help put your content on top of the Google stack (links are the Internet’s “street cred”). What news agencies don’t want is bloggers and aggregators reprinting content in whole without crediting or linking back to the source.
Let’s take a look at my interaction with Ad Age. I pay a subscription to Ad Age because I find the content compelling. I ended up getting a subscription because of links from the CEA news aggregator. Some Ad Age articles are free, but not all of them. I wanted access to this news so I pay for it. What a concept! In my blogging I put links to Ad Age in them and if my readers want to read the Ad Age source they can choose to pay and read the source article. Mind blowing isn’t it? So what’s the secret? Um … it’s called compelling content!
So with respect to bloggers, news agencies want them to find their content. News agencies want bloggers to pay to read content and then repackage the headlines so they compel their readers to follow the links back to the source. Those readers, then, will be confronted with the choice to pay to read further. So my message to the news agencies is that they should show some love to bloggers rather than “hating” upon them. Most people like their news pre-digested and spoon fed to them. Get used to it! Understand who it is that wants to get beyond the headlines and serve that audience. Quit worrying about the masses for which the “cesspool” of the Internet and headlines are good enough. Let the bloggers and the aggregators have the close relationship with the masses — use them as envoys. I think Eric Schmidt got it right by telling the news agency execs and reps,
These are ultimately consumer businesses, and if you piss off enough of them, you ultimately won’t have any.
More Companies Jumping on the TV Everywhere Bandwagon
Here’s a link to an article that summarizes Disney’s Bob Iger’s thoughts on TV Everywhere. What I find entertaining about this article and Iger’s comments is that they act as though the music industry died. The music industry is alive and thriving under both the old and the new business models. TV will be the same way and fighting change with DRM or by trying to make people authenticate to watch their favorite shows will be pointless because it’s too easy for anyone to screen capture content and rebroadcast it.
When I think about this issue, my thoughts go to my husband’s behavior. He hates commercials and he hates waiting for episodes of a show to come out. Since he’s not one of those folks at the water cooler, it’s not a priority to him to watch a show while it’s current. Rather he waits until the season is over and then watches blocks of episodes on demand via Tivo. He believes this as safer than Bittorent (after all you don’t know if someone has put something malicious in one those free movie or TV show files — why doesn’t the entertainment industry scare the beejeebees out of people with this argument???) and it’s definitely less work and waiting than BitTorrent. He also feels there is value in being able to watch whatever he wants for $15.99/mo. We still have cable, but that’s because we have a legacy deal with our broadband service provider and we don’t want to upset that apple cart. My feeling is let the people view first run for free with commercials like they would on broadcast TV and then sell commercial free rebroadcasts or, heck let the rebroadcasts be free without commercials after a couple of weeks. The folks who are hooked on the show will watch the first run. As for the commericials, I will state this AGAIN: If you want people to watch commercials, make good commercials and keep them fresh! A TV ad campaign really should last more than 2-weeks or a month at most. I also think well integrated product placement is a good strategy (nothing would sell more items to ‘tween girls than Miley Cyrus actually using the product in her shows). Anyhow, I look forward to seeing if the TV and the movie execs can fight their way out of this paper sack. Hopefully, they will bring in some savvy folks in under the age of 45 to tell them how to do this properly.
I Heard an Interesting thing About Newspapers
I live in a city where my newspaper is in danger of being no longer. I can’t say I’ll miss the city newspaper because I haven’t subscribed to it in over 5-years. So what happened with me and the newspaper? Well, I ordered the Sunday newspaper only because getting the newspaper 7-days a week was too much for me to read and created too much trash for me to deal with. Unfortunately, the newspaper, obsessed with selling advertisements, ignored my desire and sent me the newspaper 7 times a week. I then canceled because my house became filled with newspapers I didn’t read. Our house and garage used to be littered with stacks of unread papers. It’s a fire hazard and they attract bugs and vermin that like to hide in the folds. I really only wanted the front page, the Sunday comics, and the Sunday coupons. The newspaper, actually didn’t stop coming, though, because my Dad signed up for the newspaper using the same phone number I did and the newspaper came to me instead of him. Hahaha!!! It was a frustrating experience. Needless to say, it got straightened out and I have been newspaper-free for years.
My problem with the newspapers is that they come on a ridiculous amount of paper. That’s why I turned to the Internet once it became a valid source. The newspapers are kicking themselves for not selling the news online at the start. The big problem though is hyper-linking. I heard some guy on KPBS’ “Editor’s Round Table” mention this, but I don’t think he completely grasped what he was saying. The problem is even if a newspaper charges people to access the news, there are ways to grab information and rebroadcast it that can’t stopped. Sure people can link to the information and then those that follow the link can pay whatever is charged to read the full article. But as a blogger, I have found myself cutting and pasting content from paid content because somewhere in the back of my mind the idea of the news being property is absurd — sorta like paying for flowers, unprepared food, water, air, and health care. (BTW: I have stopped cutting and pasting entire articles and I cleaned my blog to link the articles). I imagine most people feel this way, so it happens all the time. Anyhow, to sum it all up, because print is giving away to the internet, the newspapers can no longer control the distribution of their content. Continue reading I Heard an Interesting thing About Newspapers
TV Everywhere
Here’s a link to an interesting article from Ad Age Magazine. The CEO of Time Warner, Jeff Bewkes, want users who access TV content online to prove that they are cable subscribers. Buwhahahaha!!! I guess he sees the writing on the wall as a middle man between customers and content producers. As usual, it’s a fight about how gets the ad and the subscription money — the content producer, the content provider, or the Internet Service Provider. Personally, I see no point for cable to do anything more than provide a content “pipe” into my house. I pay for that pipe just like any other utility and get what I want from it. As for paying specifically for content, I’m a little confused. We currently pay a subscription fee to Tivo and Netflix to watch content when we want to. My husband is currently watching “Jericho” as a video stream from Netflix. It’s convenient for him and he doesn’t have to deal with commercials. But that’s beside the point. I imagine, currently, many people get broadband access through their cable provider, so why add the extra layer of authentication? If a person drops their cable service but keeps broadband … so what? It just means that the cable companies are no longer “double dipping.” In theory, if cable providers only provided the pipe, then they could quit serving up cable tv in general and let the content producers figure out how they want to generate revenue. It seems to me to be a logical simplification.
On the other hand, let’s consider how many people are gonna give up cable in general to watch things on the small screen. Not everyone is tech savvy enough to pipe content from their computers to their big screen tv. I think for the most part, watching via a computer is a singular experience, whereas you watching the big tv in a group. Until the tv and computer become one with a simple interface to access content from the internet, I think Bewkes is barking up the wrong tree because people are gonna view via the both small screen and the large screen. The proper move to make is to develop that technology that joins TV, the PC, and Internet and to charge for that convenience to both the customer and the content provider — “TV Everywhere + Any Content.” With respect to Bittorrent … well, content providers should put out their own Bittorrents and high quality streams of a show in a convenient location and either charge a “reasonable” fee to watch the show or make people watch commercials (or maybe forward the trend of incorporating product placements into the shows). Either way, the only way to beat pirates is to join ’em ;p. I will say this though, as this economy tightens, and money tightens, the urge to kill cable and just go broadband is strong.
More Rambling 