Technology360

GoogTube deal shifts paradigm on-demand

Diane Mermigas writes:

The potent combination of Google's search savvy and YouTube's handle on Internet video will yield the first viable new-media successor to broadcast and cable television, which for decades have squandered the ad-supported critical mass they have enjoyed in what was once the only home screen.  ¶  If you believe that there is no going back from a future of on-demand digital TV programs, movies, music, data and communications, then the new Google-YouTube union offers the interactive infrastructure and tools needed to manage and monetize Web-based digital video that is for now unmatched by broadcast, cable, satellite and telephone platforms. Even such other Internet content aggregators as Yahoo!, AOL, MySpace and Microsoft's MSN are playing catch-up with varying degrees of content creation, organization and utilization. ...

Link:  Hollywood Reporter.

NBC Universal reductions

In what certainly won't be the last such announcement from a major television company, NBC Universal today announced significant reductions in its legacy operations.  It will be interesting to see how much of this gets redeployed into Internet-based activities, which the company says will form   by 2009.  Here are some different takes on the story:

Anne Becker, NBC 2.0--Staffers Get 'Sugarcoated' Pitch.  Link: Broadcasting & Cable.
Michele Gershberg, NBC Universal plans job cuts.  Link: Washington Post.
Paul J. Gough and Nellie Andreeva, New reality for NBC Uni.  Link: Hollywood Reporter.
Michele Greppi, NBC Universal to Cut 700 Jobs, Slash Spending.  Link: Television Week.
Terry Heaton, NBC  Universal's break with the past.  Link: PoMo Blog.  Analysis.
Jacques Steinberg, NBC Says Viewers Won't Notice Cuts in News Staff.  Link: New York Times.

--Dennis

Media 2.Uh-Oh Part 4: Go Wide

Andy Kessler has posted all four parts of his Media 2.Uh-Oh essay plus an introduction.  Links to all follow.

Media 2.Uh-Oh: Intro
Media 2.Uh-Oh Part 1: Pipe
Media 2.Uh-Oh Part 2: Layer Cake
Media 2.Uh-Oh Part 3: Virtual Pipes
Media 2.Uh-Oh Part 4: Go Wide

Update 11/4/2006:
He's now posted them all together in one file.  Link:  Andy Kessler.  --Dennis

Microcasting

My favorite author, the Icelandic Nobel laureate Halldór Laxness, once wrote, "Man finds in the eyes of a dog the things he looks for."  So true, but I also feel that way when I look into the peaty bliss of my monthly snifter of Islay malt whisky.  Now us single malt Scotch fans have our own linear channel on the Internet, SingleMalt.TV.  So do lots of other "micro" interests thanks to inexpensive services that enable real-time narrowcasting on the Web.  Robert Marich writes about this phenomenon in Kagan Insights.  --Dennis

Negroponte in 1994

I was researching Nicholas Negroponte's "tell me more" idea for the Skip Pizzi post immediately below this one and came across a 1994 interview that Dale Cripps of the HDTV Newsletter made with Nicholas Negroponte at the dawn of the Internet age (and DTV age, for that matter).  Very interesting reading.  Negroponte gives this as part of his response to Cripps' request to "paint a vision of the world in ten years."

... The FCC is reviewing 20 Mb/s solutions right now. Let's say they select one and give you as a broadcaster a 20 Mb/s license. What are you going to do with that license? You are not going to broadcast HDTV. You are going to broadcast 3 or 4 channels of NTSC. Then if you are clever you are going to broadcast 3 channels of NTSC, one radio program, two pagers, digital newspaper and some other unknown data broadcast service. Then all of a sudden on a Saturday afternoon in your local area there is an important college football game you might devote 8 Mb/s to the football game, discontinue one of your NTSC channels (may be not run the newspaper). Then in the middle of the night you might be broadcasting 6 or 7 newspapers. In other words all of a sudden you with your 20 Mb/s space be your own micro FCC allocating your spectrum as you see fit. From the broadcaster's point of view that is really very, very interesting business opportunities. ...

Link:  HDTV Magazine.  NB: Negroponte's name is misspelled in the article.  --Dennis

To Ride the Radio Comet

Skip Pizzi does a review of Chris Anderson's The Long Tail concept and writes about its applicability to radio:

... Consider NPR's recent redesign of its Web site, and its frequent on-air encouragements to listeners to check its site for more on a particular story. A visitor to that story's page may find (besides the story as it aired, presented in streaming media forms) some photos taken by the reporter, extended interview excerpts or other audio material that did not appear on the air, plus links to other stories about the subject, other pieces by the same reporter, etc. - like a library's (or Amazon's) cross references.  ¶   In other words, the long web tail is thus appended to the on-air head. This is simply the latest incarnation of Nicholas Negroponte's and the MIT Media Lab's "tell me more" vision of the 1970s, now quantified with a new conceptual model. ...

Link:  Radio World.  --Dennis

The Reith Lectures

The following has nothing to do with new media technology, but is rather a treat for the readers of this weblog because of that technology.  Last night I rediscovered that the BBC has archived some of the lectures which are available online from BBC Radio 4.  I'd suggest the first one given by Bertrand Russell in 1948 and the most recent one in 2006 by Daniel Barenboim.  There has been one every year since 1948 except for 1992.  The lectures are named after John Reith, a Scottish engineer (1889-1971) who became the first general manager of the BBC in 1922.  Enjoy.  --Dennis

The State of Public Radio

Tom Ashbrook of WBUR, Joanne Church from the Radio Research Consortium, Mark Ramsey from Mercury Radio Research, Paul  Jacobs of Jacobs Media, and Tom Thomas of the Station Resource Group formed the opening session panel of the recent Public Radio Program Directors conference.  Other sessions are also available online.   Thanks to Mark Ramsey at hear 2.0.  --Dennis

Media 2.Uh-Oh Part 3: Virtual Pipes

In the last few days, I posted Andy Kessler's Media 2.Uh-Oh Part 1: Pipe essay along with some related commentary, then Media 2.Uh-Oh Part 2: Layer Cake and an earlier introduction, Media 2.Uh-Oh: Intro.  He's now posted Media 2.Uh-Oh Part 3: Virtual Pipes.  Another one is promised.  --Dennis

Faulhaber and Farber on spectrum ownership

Tim Lee has some interesting comments on Yochai Benkler's argument for a spectrum commons and points to a paper by Gerald Faulhaber and David Farber, two University of Pennsylvania professors and former FCC Chief Economist and CTO, respectively, that Benkler cites.  When I read Benkler's book, the Wharton link was down, but Lee provides it here and that 25-pp paper is worth reading along with Lee's post if you're interested in spectrum management.  Lee writes:

... If Benkler is right that new technologies will allow costless sharing of spectrum, then adopting a property regime will simply mean that society bears some unnecessary transaction costs as the manufacturers of equipment have to purchase spectrum rights for their products. The market value of a non-scarce resource tends toward zero, so we would expect the price of obtaining such a license to fall rapidly once efficient sharing technologies came onto the scene. You would still be able to do everything under a property regime that you would under a commons regime, the costs of administering the system would just be somewhat higher.  ¶  In contrast, converting the entire spectrum to a commons rules out many traditional uses, such as traditional radio and television broadcasting. If we adopted a commons regime all at once, and commons-based wireless technologies turn out to be inferior to exclusive uses for some purposes, there will be no easy way to reintroduce exclusive uses. Our only alternative will be to lobby Congress to change the rules. ...

Link:  Technology Liberation Front.  --Dennis