Hollywood, ever cautious and cool to new technologies, is not liking what it sees with the Disney/ABC agreement to sell its shows for $1.99 on iTunes.
It seems they think the $1.99 is too low.
Media executives, however, said it costs very little for networks to repackage shows for downloading in what amounts to test marketing because the consumer appetite, costs and profits of those programs already have been realized in other arenas.
The networks can afford to experiment, but independent film and TV production companies, which the networks rely on to dream up shows, want hard facts before investing dollars in new
programming.
The Melbourne Age reports on the rapidly growing podcast market and notes that traditional broadcasters are starting to get nervous.
Podcasters are coming out of backrooms, offices, coffee shops and bedrooms. Some get ignored but thousands are drawing audiences many conventional broadcasters envy.
As a voice says at the opening of Curry’s podcasts: “Something remarkable is happening. Radio is springing free of the regulated gatekeepers who have managed what you can hear since radio was invented. It is jumping into the hands of anyone at all.”A Mexican-style voice intrudes: “We don’t need no stinkin’ transmitter.”
No, they have the internet, no national boundaries, no regulators and a potential audience of billions.
The VHS cassette is about to disappear from the nation’s largest retailer.
Check the interesting line at the end of this report on the Neflix quarterly financial report:
The company was on track to launch a modest Internet-based video-on-demand service by year’s end
Modest for now, but surely to replace DVDs at some point in the next few years. Netflix and iTunes will probably look like each other fairly soon.
Michelle Malkin covers a recent update on the NIV.
The feminists and post-modernists have gotten their hands on the New International Version of the Bible. Some of the results:
Out: “When God created Man, he made him in the likeness of God.”
In: “When God created human beings, he made them in the likeness of God.”
Out: “Saints” (deemed “too ecclesiastical”).
In: “God’s chosen people.”
Out: “with child.”
In: “pregnant.”
Reports indicate that Republican lawmakers are itching to regulate cable and satellite with the same decency standards as over-the-air TV and radio.
The “all are equal” fuse, if ignited, would likely restrict the content currently available on pay cable channels and satellite radio.
Such an explosion would certainly erase the decades-old definitions that separate Federal Communications Commission broadcast rules from those of satellite and cable — based on the distinction that over-the-airwaves broadcasting is “pervasive” and “free,” while citizens choose to pay to bring cable and satellite into their homes.
The problem is that the lawmakers are ignoring the fact that they are only able to regulate TV and radio because of a narrow exception to the First Amendment because airwaves were considered limited public property. The right to regulate had nothing to do with commerce; it was all about scarcity.
If Congress can begin to regulate cable and satellite, who thinks they’ll want to stop there?
A J.P. Morgan survey on satellite radio finds that people are more attracted to the new technology by the appeal of commercial-free music than by big names or special programming.
The survey of 1,600 consumers, which included subscribers as well as non-subscribers, found almost two-thirds of subscribers’ radio listening time is spent with satellite radio over traditional radio. Commercial-free programing is the biggest driver of demand, J.P. Morgan said.
“Unique content, on the other hand, appears to be the least important factor, which implies that the loss of Howard Stern and other programing should not have too negative an impact” on traditional radio, J.P. Morgan said in a report from analyst Spencer Wang.
Even so, satellite radio might have a problem expanding its existing customer base without giving them a quick lesson in media economics. While the lack of commercials is a reason to listen, many of the respondents didn’t want to pay the subscription fee.
Russian postal workers are being armed with pistols to help protect cash payments they’re delivering.
Most Russians receive their post from puffing grannies of uncertain age and the prospect of such “babushkas” being forced to carry pistols has shocked a country used to violent crime.
America’s high school students disagree with the first amendment.
When told of the exact text of the First Amendment, more than one in three high school students said it goes “too far” in the rights it guarantees. Only half of the students said newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories.
One of the characteristics of major movements in communication technology is that they generally move access to message production and distribution from elites to the common man.
The alphabet did it. The printing press did it. The Internet did it. And now it’s happening to film making.
This profile of a promising young conservative filmmaker provides an interesting contrast to Michael Moore, but also recognizes the possibilities that are offered by the rapidly diminishing barriers to the technology required to produce quality content.
The final version of the film will also answer the question about whether the technology used in making documentary films has become so inexpensive and accessible that anybody who can tell an interesting story has a chance of making it big.
Mr. Maloney works out of Starbucks or his tidy one-bedroom apartment. He has 100 hours of footage stored in what is called a Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks - a data-protection device that costs more than some cars. He edits raw footage with Apple Final Cut Pro software, using an Apple Power Mac Dual G5.
Kathryn Lopez, the editor of National Review Online, describes her ideal media landscape to the Columbia Journalism Review:
It would be fair. What does that mean? Simplest solution: They would all be opinion journalists — that’s what many of them are now; in my world, they would be honest about it. European countries do it. You have your right-wing paper and your left-wing paper and you read both — or you pick one, but you know what you’re picking — and decide what you believe, do some piecing together. In this day and age especially: You go to X website for your primary docs on whatever the issue is, you go to your favorite webzine (National Review Online, naturally) and blogs of all stripes for your analysis. Find your filter of choice if you are on the run. You listen to Rush or Sean or “Talk of the Nation” or Franken on the drive home.
There’s nothing new about this except the technology. The descibes American media before the Penny Press.
Howard Fineman’s obituary to the mainstream media party includes this survey of American media history:
Yes, I know: A purely objective viewpoint does not exist in the cosmos or in politics. Yes, I know: Today’s media foodfights are mild compared with the viciousness of pamphleteers and partisan newspapers of old, from colonial times forward. Yes, I know: The notion of a neutral “mainstream” national media gained a dominant following only in World War II and in its aftermath, when what turned out to be a temporary moderate consensus came to govern the country.
Howard Fineman of NSNBC, no great fan of the new media, writes that the mainstream media party ended with the CBS/Rather report.
A political party is dying before our eyes — and I don’t mean the Democrats. I’m talking about the “mainstream media,” which is being destroyed by the opposition (or worse, the casual disdain) of George Bush’s Republican Party; by competition from other news outlets (led by the internet and Fox’s canny Roger Ailes); and by its own fraying journalistic standards. At the height of its power, the AMMP (the American Mainstream Media Party) helped validate the civil rights movement, end a war and oust a power-mad president. But all that is ancient history.
Since their early use of government patronage, the American press has always walked arm in arm with politics. We forgot that between the world wars and now. All that’s new now is that we’re remembering that again.
New York Daily News - Business - Sirius , XM radio scale Yule heights
Both satellite contenders lured lots of new business this year with Sirius going from just 260,000 to 1 million customers and XM going from 1.3 million to 3.1 million.
It would be interesting to compare this growth to other new media like radio and TV.
Oliver Kamm: What is… Pajamahadeen?
Old-media arrogance is worn with pride by new media operatives. Pajamahadeen is a new label suggested by a CBS exec’s comparison between old and new:
You couldn’t have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of checks and balances (in television news) and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing.
Never mind that it was the bloggers who checked and balanced CBS’s documents story and CBS who acted like the unprofessional partisans.
Gallup: Online News Hasn’t Beaten Old Media — Yet
Two notable trends:
“Only news on the Internet gaining, from 15% going there every day two years ago to 20% doing so today.”
“Contrary to many assessments, young people do not consult Internet news more often than other sources, Gallup found. For those 18 to 29, only 21% said they looked at Web news daily, not much different than the 19% of those 50 to 64 who do so.”
Suggests that the medium does not affect young people’s interest in news, something that has been in a long decline.