“The reason you’ve heard of podcasting is because no one first “demo’d” it at a conference and no corporate marketers were involved. But, when something is going to be big. Really big. You rarely see it demo’d. Usually, when something is big, it’s, well, boring and obvious…and, at first, not cool.”
Tag Archives: Early Net Culture
Mainstream media suffers from “freedom envy”
Peggy Noonan (WSJ.com) wonders if mainstream media suffers from “freedom envy” where bloggers are concerned:
Bloggers have an institutional advantage in terms of technology and form. They can post immediately. The items they post can be as long or short as they judge to be necessary. Breaking news can be one sentence long: “Malkin gets Barney Frank earwitness report.” In newspapers you have to go to the editor, explain to him why the paper should have another piece on the Eason Jordan affair, spend a day reporting it, only to find that all that’s new today is that reporter Michelle Malkin got an interview with Barney Frank. That’s not enough to merit 10 inches of newspaper space, so the Times doesn’t carry what the blogosphere had 24 hours ago.
This is a really good piece on blogging that –once upon a time– I might have forwarded to the reporters working in our newsrooms. I’ve stopped doing that. With one or two execeptions, our reporters are clueless and/or threatened by the whole notion of blogging. Don’t get it. Don’t want to get it.
The wireless Super Bowl
“On the consumer side, the league sees big revenue potential in wireless. The league is moving content from its NFL Network cable channel and Sirius Satellite network to the Internet to bring more dimensions to stories. It’s the first year the Super Bowl is on satellite radio, and the league plans to make audio of the radio calls for the Pats and Eagles available for fans to download to their MP3 players for $10. And when someone calls their wireless phone, Eagles fans can hear defensive end Jevon Kearse tell them “This is Jevon Kearse. It’s time for you to pick up the phone.” [via RAIN]
BostonHerald.com
“My Very Own Radio Station”
Michael Bazeley, writing in the Mercury News (My Very Own Radio Station), does the best job of ‘splaining the podcasting thing I’ve come across:
“Thanks to a new technology called podcasting, I’ve turned my iPod into a personalized radio station, loading it with talk shows and cutting edge music that I’d never be able hear on traditional radio stations. It’s transformed my listening habits overnight. Although it’s new, I’m convinced podcasting will transform the way many people consume media, just as blogging and TiVo have. When you can program your own radio station, carry it with you anywhere and pause and restart it at will, who needs mainstream, advertising-supported broadcast radio?”
His piece quotes Doc Searls who believes:
“Podcasting will shift much of our time away from an old medium where we wait for what we might want to hear to a new medium where we choose what we want to hear, when we want to hear it, and how we want to give everybody else the option to listen to it as well.”
Hey, I’m just posting this shit so I can say I told you so.
March Madness on Demand.
CSTV.com will offer live and on-demand streaming video of up to the first 56 NCAA Tournament games through the Regional semifinals as well as streaming video of interviews, pre-and post-game press conferences, and video highlights. Local-market webcasts of games broadcast by CBS will be blacked out. [More at E-Media Tidbits]
“Radio, as we’ve known it, is dead”
Won’t someone please point me to a positive story about (what we’ve started calling) “terrestrial” radio? Mabye it’s just media dog-piling but everytime I click my mouse, someone is predicting (or declaring) the death of radio. Alyce Lomax (The Motley Fool) is pissed and sad at the passing of (Thursday) of Washington D.C. radio station WHFS.
“Radio, as we’ve known it, is dead. The news about HFS obviously struck a chord with me, but with satellite radio, Internet radio, and things like Apple’s iTunes (or even the iPod Shuffle!) revolutionizing music and giving listeners more options than ever before, chances are it won’t be missed.”
Okay, Alyce is entitled to her opinion. Now, where are those positive stories about radio?
Clear Channel’s Internet plan
“Radio analysts say Clear Channel, along with other broadcast radio stations, is being pushed online and toward new technologies by a fragmentation of its own market and by growing competition from satellite radio. Mix the power of Internet radio with those new delivery tools, and terrestrial radio begins to look increasingly fragile, unless it’s online too, some observers worry.” — CNET
Blog explosion.
Jeff Jarvis summarizes some amazing stats on the growth of blogs, from the latest Pew Internet and American Life study:
* 7% of the 120 million U.S. adults who use the internet say they have created a blog or web-based diary. That represents more than 8 million people.
* 27% of internet users say they read blogs, a 58% jump from the 17% who told us they were blog readers in February. This means that by the end of 2004 32 million Americans were blog readers.
The same study reports only 38% of all internet users know what a blog is. The rest are not sure what the term blog means. That 62% is in daily contact with me.
Concrete TV
“Concrete Ron describes himself as “perhaps the greatest video editor of all time”, and anyone who’s ever caught Concrete TV on Manhattan public access television over the last decade or so probably wouldn’t argue: a typical episode incorporates vintage porn movies, 80s aerobics videos, car crash footage, Hong Kong shoot-em-ups, old commercials, beefcake reels, pro wrestling smackdowns, cheesy B-movie moments, sex education films, random explosions, wet t-shirt contests, and plenty of “raw emotion, euphoria, physical collision, glee, fantasy, despair, and discomfort” in one noisy, violent, sexy, and brilliantly edited pop culture/infoporn mashup.”
Edward Wasserman: “The Next Rebirth of the Media”
Edward Wasserman titled his piece “The Next Rebirth of the Media” but I came away wondering about the future relavence of networks as we know them. Wasserman is a professor of Journalism and Mass Communications at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, VA.
“TV will migrate to the Net, and if networks can reach a national audience online, why bother with costly affiliation contracts? By cutting out the needless re-transmitters they keep the entire advertising dollar. But what becomes of broadcast affiliates once theyre no longer affiliates indeed, once theyre no longer broadcasters either, since their audiences wont be getting them over-the-air either? When you click on to your online news and entertainment options, why will you choose your local ex-ABC affiliate? You wont, unless it has something unique to offer namely, the very content that has been most sorely neglected in the current era of non-regulation: local programming.”
Four our five years ago I described the Web as a meteor, far out in space, headed toward earth. We don’t know how big it is… when it’s going to get here… or whether it will miss our little planet or smash ut so bits. But we better start building spaceships. Just in case. Don’t know how to build a spaceship? Better start learning. The meteor is big…and it’s close.