Technology360

Public TV meets deep linking

WCET, Cincinnati's public television station, has an excellent up-front video streaming implementation on its web site about which I posted back in March,  Its CEO is a good friend who wrote me earlier this month concerned that AOL was carrying WCET videos (old ones, not even on their new site) without an executed agreement. 

So I checked and found ours (KWSU) there, and so did WGBH.  Further digging, however, revealed that AOL (actually its Singingfish unit) had searched the web for video links and "deep linked" them on the AOL video page.   In other words, AOL did not upload the video from our sites to theirs, it just found publicly accessible links on and proceeded to link to them.  AOL provides a thumbnail, title, length, and the domain at which it found the link.  AOL also provides ads on the results page (Discover Card tonight), so it's making some money from these links to our content.

Since this communication, Microsoft quietly added video search to its Windows Live Beta search offering, so I checked it also.  In its current incarnation at least, Microsoft has no ads on the results pages.  It gives approximately the same results in a handful of tests I made, but gives a little less information about each piece.  For example, to find out the domain of the site on which it resides, you will need to hover your cursor over the link.

The ethics and even legality of deep linking has been controversial (e.g., Ticketmaster vs. Microsoft in 1997-99), though it's cooled down considerably since the advent of blogging.  Nearly all blogs (Technorati is tracking 52.6 million of them) practice deep linking.  In fact, several of the links in this post are "deep links."   Because of that, many site owners are finding  that it does more good (contributing to Google PageRank, for example) than harm (bypassing ads on a site's home page).  These major search engines will generate way more traffic for our content than its home page can bring in on its own.

Still, the desire to control content we produce runs deep within the television industry, so it's bound to stir things up as more people realize, as my friend and I did, how some video sites are accessing content (others, including Blinkx, Google, and Open Media Network require uploading video, so the producer retains control).  Another consideration is that, in the case of media files, deep linking also means direct linking.  So your bandwidth costs are going to be impacted by links you don't control.  But then, arguably for us public broadcasters, that's just a measure of the public service you're doing with our programming. 

I'd be really interested to hear how others feel about this?  Leave a comment below.  --Dennis

Day of the Longtail

Check out "Day of the Longtail" video on YouTube.  Closer to the truth than most of us would like.  --Dennis

WGUC begins surround sound broadcasting

Congratulations to Richard Eiswerth and Don Danko at WGUC.  Radio World reports:

WGUC(FM), a classical public station in Cincinnati, is broadcasting in surround sound on its main HD Radio and analog signal using Neural Audio’s 5.1 technology.  ¶  The station and the supplier say WGUC becomes the first station to go 5.1 on its main channel with commercially available 5.1 music.  ¶  The change began Aug. 10 with the broadcast of Debussy’s “La Mer,” performed by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra ...

Link:  Radio World.  Yahoo has the full press release.  --Dennis

USB-enabled DTV/HDTV receivers

The National Association of Broadcasters TV TechCheck newsletter yesterday featured a half dozen USB-enabled receivers for the U.S. ATSC DTV standard that work with your PC.  One is the size of a thumb drive.  Many use the 5th generation LG chip which is as close as we now have to a gold standard.  Link:  NAB [PDF].  --Dennis

Trusted Space - Public Radio - Ideastream

Rob Paterson writes:

Can it be a coincidence that some of the people that I respect the most in Public Radio have independently come to the same conclusion about the need to offer their communities a "Hosted Trusted Space" as do the new leaders of the Commons Movement? What does it mean when spontaneously and independently people move to the same idea?  ¶  Here are two examples in Chicago and in Cleveland.  ¶  In early July, WBEZ in Chicago announced that they would make a decisive shift to local engagement. Earlier this year, Tory Malatia had foretold of this shift when I interviewed him in the New Realities process. One of the questions I asked Torey then was, "What is your mission?". 

What it has always been - our job is to build a better community.  ¶  Chicago is an enormous city with many good things but with also many problems. Our hope is that if we can help more and more people get engaged with others here and how we all live, that we will make a difference.  I hope that we can offer some simple kind of place in people's personal lives.

In this context then, the issue is not only to be an effective radio station but also to be a moderator of community.  ¶ Here now is Kit Jensen of Ideastream in Cleveland - notice anything familiar? ...

Link:  Robert Paterson's Weblog.  This is the third really important post of Rob's that I've used in 24 hours, so if you're a public broadcaster and aren't reading his weblog directly, you're missing out.  --Dennis

What-Ifs of a Media Eclipse

Katharine Q. Seelye writes:

... The dismantling of Knight Ridder is a study of the hurdles facing publicly traded newspaper companies in a time of seismic change in the industry. The migration of readers and advertisers to the Internet, as well as rising costs and falling revenue, are threatening the financial well-being — even the very existence — of some of the industry’s most storied brand names.  ¶  A review of the dynamics behind the Knight Ridder sale and the aftermath of its breakup also offers a cautionary tale: that deep cuts in expenses to satisfy Wall Street will not necessarily save a newspaper company, and may not even bring financial gains to shareholders or buyers. ...

Link:  New York Times.

Thanks to Rob Paterson for the link and for an insightful "disruptive innovations" analysis of this story in The Future of Media & Public Radio - What Perspective?  Link:  Robert Paterson's Weblog.  --Dennis

Not A Secret Anymore

Fred Paul Jacobs has a revealing post about how important public radio's audience is today.  Arbitron will be including it in the ratings books in the coming "people meter" markets (perhaps in the diary markets also?), and it's been publishing some useful reports [PDF] on public radio listening.  Jacobs writes:

Like a lot of commercial radio broadcasters, he never saw it coming.  Public Radio has become a major listening force.  Now a new Ipsos study ranks Public Radio an impressive fourth in weekly audience, ahead of some format stalwarts:

[snip]

How is Public Radio pulling this off - without marketing, without Harley giveaways, and without two guys in the morning talking about Mel Gibson?  They're about quality programming and a value system that comes through loud and clear day in and day out.  NPR programming, in particular, has become the paragon of credibility in a media world that is filled with hype or "traffic and weather on the 8's." ...

Link:  JacoBlog.  I have a methodological problem with calling "NPR" a format (e.g., aren't some NPR stations really news-talk stations?), but its use here is interesting nevertheless.  Thanks to Rob Paterson, who provided this link as a reinforcing article to the post of his to which I linked immediately below this one.  And he got it from Mike at Current, who beat both of us to Paul's Fred's blog, which, like Rob's and Mike's, is on my blogroll.  And to think some people call the blogosphere an echo chamber.  I call it multicasting.  ;-)  --Dennis (who adds an apology to the brothers Jacobs for the mix-up in names).

Reviewing the Commons

An essay by Rob Paterson, writing about the Centre for Social Innovation in Toronto, evolves into an excellent statement about the importance of public media:

... The context for the future of Public Radio is not merely technology but society. Many I have talked to have told me that they see that America has been drifting from its roots of civic community, independence and tolerance. They note that the market and the trivial, that dogma and posturing rather than the "can-do" and the "self-sufficient" are at the forefront of much of American life today.  ¶  Kennedy's call for service is all but forgotten as many either grab what they can or give up.  ¶  In this context of social breakdown and inertia, it is becoming clear to me, and to many that I have talked to, that Public Radio is the last bastion of the "Voice" of civic discourse. As America's mainstream has lurched to the trivial and to dogma, Public Radio's audience has doubled to 30 million in the last 10 years. There is underneath this breakdown, a yearning for the real and the true. Public Radio has become the redoubt where Jeffersonian values and the idea of public service remain alive. ...

Link:  Robert Paterson's Weblog.  Don't miss this one if you're a public broadcasting professional or user. 

Update, 8/29/06:
In a comment below, Rob adds a link to a reinforcing article by Fred Paul Jacobs.  It deserves its own post, which I'll do immediately above this one.  See Not A Secret Anymore.  --Dennis

Will Listeners Voluntarily Support Web-based Services?

I read the weblogs of both Jake Shapiro and John Sutton approximately weekly, but somehow missed a post on the application of the public broadcasting membership model to podcasting that Jake made nearly a month ago.  John has followed up with a post inviting consideration of "The Stairway to Given" as an analysis model in this case.  First read Jake's post, Membership, then John's, Will Listeners Voluntarily Support Web-based Services?  Both are thoughtful and recommended.  --Dennis

Protecting Local Broadcasters - Why?

Several years ago, I chaired the PBS board's New Technologies Committee at a time stations were seeking protection from distribution of the PBS signal (the fact it was named "Schedule X" didn't help much) over the death stars, ...er, DirecTV and Echostar.  One of those classic spear-catcher roles.  Nothing gets local broadcasters blood boiling faster than the thought of being bypassed by the network or by big market superstations.  The issues are very complicated, and perhaps that's why they continue.  This time, it's the commercial stations who are fighting the distant signal battle in court vs. EchoStar.

Gigi Sohn writes (the headline on this post is from her article):

Last Friday, a District Court Judge in Florida denied the request of the National Association of Broadcasters and Echostar Communications to stay a decision of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals that requires Echostar to stop providing “distant” network TV signals to hundreds of thousands of subscribers nationwide.  Several broadcast networks had sued Echostar, claiming that it had violated 17 USC Section 119, which gives satellite companies such as Echostar a compulsory license to import network TV signals from outside a household’s viewing area if that household is deemed to be “unserved” by a local TV station. The law basically has two purposes: 1) to ensure that those viewers who cannot receive good network TV signals can receive them and 2) to protect local broadcasters (and their advertisers) from the competition distant signals might provide.

Link:  Public Knowledge.

Kim Hart at the Washington Post says some 800,000 subscribers are effected.

I know how broadcasters feel, "cuz-I-are-one," but, friends, bypass is everywhere in the producer/aggregator/station/user value chain.  While we keep doing our version of the old Smothers Brothers "looking up in the air gag," the important long-term bypass is happening under the ground.  And it's not just the four principal satellite companies (two TV, two radio) doing it, even our viewers (e.g., YouTube) and listeners (podcasts) are bypassing us.  Check out the first graphic in this post.  --Dennis