Category Archives: Media & Culture

NY-based crews calling Olympics

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“The announcers are at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, nearly 7,000 miles from Beijing, sitting inside 14-foot-wide booths that are equipped with 24-inch HD monitors and headsets that pipe in the ambient sounds from the game sites in China. Every bit of 13 sports, and some of basketball, is called in this fashion on MSNBC, USA and CNBC.

The announcers never see anything more than what the viewers see. There is no deception afoot here. The announcers make it clear that they are in New York, as do the studio hosts.” — NYTimes.com

Makes me wonder if –in a pinch– one of our guys could “call” a game by watching it on TV? Yes, I know we’d lose all the good ambience from the booth. And much more. I’m just wondering.

News bureau redefined

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“CNN announced on Tuesday that it would assign journalists to 10 cities across the United States, a move that would double the number of domestic cities where the cable news network has outposts.

But in a reflection of the way television networks are reinventing the way they gather news, the journalists will not work from expensive bureaus — rather, they will borrow office space from local news organizations and use laptops to file articles for the Internet and TV. When news happens, they will use Internet connections and cellphone cameras to report live.

A new breed of reporter, sometimes called a “one-man band,” has become the new norm. Though the style of reporting has existed for years, it is being adopted more widely as these reporters act as their own producer, cameraman and editor, and sometimes even transmit live video.

Marcus Wilford, vice president for international digital at ABC News, recalled that when he was hired 20 years ago, the news division’s Paris bureau had three camera crews, three producers, two correspondents, drivers, and a chef in a house with a view of the Eiffel Tower. Today the ABC News presence in Paris consists of a lone staff producer.” — NYTimes.com

Public Access TV in a YouTube world

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If you watch any TV or cable news, you hear references to this or that video on YouTube. It reminds me of the days when the big three networks referred something on CNN. YouTube is starting to feel like another network. NBC doesn’t want to cover my speech? No problem. I’ll just post it to YouTube.

My next thought was the similarity to public access TV. Let the record show I know almost nothing about public access TV. I think it works something like this:

The local cable company (or someone) sets aside a channel for the public to produce programming. I assume there is a local board or committee that manages the channel and decides what programming to air and when.

Putting Tivo aside for a moment, the public access channel is limited to 24 hours of programming each days. And to keep the math simple, let’s say every program is an hour long and airs once a week. That’s 168 programs a week. And many of those would “air” in the middle of the night.

I think it would be difficult to fill that much time. And what if I had something that was only 5 or 10 minutes long?

Here’s my question: Why won’t YouTube (and similar services) make public access television obsolete? [This is where I show my ignorance of PATV] If local relevance is the raison d’etra of PATV, why not just invite the people of your community (or people who visit your community) to post their videos to YouTube and tag them with the name of the city/town?

But wait, what about our live coverage of the weekly city council meeting? It runs 2 hours or longer and YouTube limits videos to 10 minutes.

Hmm. I guess I’d stream it on Ustream and then pull “highlights” and post those on YouTube.

I expect the Big Question would be, “What about all the people who don’t have computers and access to the Internet?” For the answer, see: “What About People Who Don’t Have TV Sets?”

Don’t misunderstand. I’m not suggesting for a moment that public access TV isn’t a good or necessary thing. There must be people who watch it or it wouldn’t exist. It just feels like one of those things –like classified adds– that would work better and cheaper online.

My friend Jeff knows a LOT about public access TV and I encourage him to comment and help me understand how technology is evolving in this area.

The Onion: “Local Idiot To Post Comment On Internet”

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“After clicking the ‘submit’ button, I will immediately refresh the page so that I can view my own comment. I will then notice that my comment has not appeared because the server has not yet processed my request, become angry and confused, and re-post the same comment with unintentional variations on the original wording and misspellings, creating two slightly different yet equally moronic comments,” he said. “It is my hope that this will illustrate both my childlike level of impatience and my inability to replicate a simple string of letters and symbols 30 seconds after having composed it.”

The Onion

When nobody controls the cameras

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NYTimes.com: "When Congress adjourns, so do C-Span’s live broadcasts because the sole cameras that record the sessions of the Senate and the House of Representatives are controlled by the members of Congress.

On Friday, when several dozen Republicans decided to stay on the House floor and discuss energy legislation after the House adjourned for a five-week summer recess, the cameras and microphones were turned off. So the first source of video was a congressman who streamed live pictures to the Internet using his cellphone camera."

Just one more (small) example of how things are changing. If any feature prompts me to break down and buy a real mobile phone, it will be the ability to stream live video when there’s no wifi.

A screen that ships without a mouse ships broken

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I am part of the first TV generation. Thousands of hours of my life were spent watching. Just watching. These days, like many others, I spend many of my hours online, creating, sharing and consuming media. Clay Shirky explains why this “social surplus” is a very big deal:

“Here’s something four-year-olds know: A screen that ships without a mouse ships broken. Here’s something four-year-olds know: Media that’s targeted at you but doesn’t include you may not be worth sitting still for. Those are things that make me believe that this is a one-way change. Because four year olds, the people who are soaking most deeply in the current environment, who won’t have to go through the trauma that I have to go through of trying to unlearn a childhood spent watching Gilligan’s Island, they just assume that media includes consuming, producing and sharing.”

If you are in any way connected to the business of “media,” you need to read –and understand– what Mr. Shirky has to say.

This post is about technology and media, not politics.

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I "follow" Barack Obama’s Twitter feed. If you don’t know what that means, it’s okay (unless you happen to be a journalist). A few minutes ago the campaign "tweeted" that the senator was getting ready to speak in Springfield, Missouri and I could watch it live by clicking the included link.

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It took me to the "live" page on the Obama website where a USTREAM player was feeding live video. As I write this there are 830 viewers. Only a fraction of the number watching on the cable news channels that might be airing this speech.

I mention this only because no "traditional media" were necessary to make this happen. The Obama campaign has an email address for each of the millions (?) of people who have contributed to his campaign. We all got a ping that he was about to speak.

[901 viewers]

I think this is huge. Sure, a campaign still need MSM to get elected. Today. Will that be as true four years from now? Will it be true at all 8 years from now?

[1,045 viewers]

Of course it is not just the live stream. This speech –and all of the others– will be available from now until election day. And beyond?

[1,095 viewers]

Programming Tivo from web

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We’ve been DirecTV users since it began. When Tivo came along, that seemed like a natural extension. I frequently use the web to check the DirecTV listings but just discovered I can also program the Tivo via the web.

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Let’s say I’m sitting here in the Coffee Zone, surfin’ and slurpin’ and see that there’s some special on HBO tonight but I won’t be home to watch or record. Just log in, find the channel and program, click the Record to Receiver link and you’re set.

Will everyone need a web page?

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WSJ’s Jason Fry wonders if we’re getting closer to the day when everyone will need a web page. He starts with the question of how we’re to find each other in a rapidly evolving future.

“…landlines are disappearing, yet there’s no “white pages” for cellphones. And we don’t want one — the rise of email, IM and other forms of messaging have transformed the phone call into an intrusive way to communicate, best reserved for certain situations between people who already have a relationship. Which is fine, but raises the issue of how we’re supposed to get in touch with people we don’t already know. The most likely solution to the problem is a single point of contact, with additional levels of contact information unlocked by us as we deem appropriate. A Web page — whether it’s on an outpost such as Facebook or LinkedIn or a site built out with communications tools — can serve that function pretty well.

A personal Web page is an opportunity to tell your story and balance out other narratives that you can’t control.”

I found this piece very interesting. When I google “steve mays” I want this blog to show up on the first page of results. Ego? Sure, for now. And it will probably never have financial or business implications for me but that might not be true for a twenty-something.