Technology360

Prisoners of "big craft"

Nine months ago, I wrote a post titled, Is our future held hostage to craft?, contrasting observations about contrasting television production paradigms on display at the PBS Showcase and the Beyond Broadcast conferences, which were held last year in close proximity. So I was particularly interested when I heard that Michael Rosenblum was going to keynote the Public Media 2007 conference now underway in Boston.  Over the past two decades, the Mr. Rosenblum has been a key originator of video journalism techniques that redefine what's economically possible in video production and have enabled video to go more places and hear from more voices than were possible using the typical multi-person production crew paradigm.

Unfortunately, circumstances kept me from going to Boston, but I did get up at 5:30 a.m. yesterday here in the Northwest and caught the webcast of his remarks.  The ebullient Mr. Rosenblum didn't disappoint, leaving behind a compelling vision of a "third way" of video production, far beyond cats swinging on a fan at YouTube but not the unsustainable economics of "big craft" television production, either.  More importantly, he eloquently made the point that the expansion of opportunities for creativity and expression are inherent in new low-cost video production technologies -- a Gutenberg transformation.  The conference sponsor, Integrated Media Association, has typically archived presentations and I presume that will happen with this one.  Be sure to check it out when it's posted.  Link:  IntegratedMedia.org. 

Update 24 Feb. 2007:
I'm told by KAKM's John Proffitt that Mr. Rosenblum agreed to let the video be posted.  He also gave me a temporary link, but think I'll wait until it's at its permanent location so late-comers to this post aren't led astray. 

Just for the record, since another correspondent seemed to question it, after over 37 years in the broadcasting business, I'm just as inculcated with the values of "big craft" as anyone.  I was just trying to make the point that we need to embrace a wide range of craft from citizen media to big crew HD productions if our mission is to survive a decade.  Relying only on "big craft" isn't sustainable and disenfranchises too many voices.  --Dennis

Public Media Conference 2007

If you're not able to attend the Integrated Media Association's Public Media Conference 2007 in Boston this week, here's where you can catch what's going on:

Click here for the conference schedule.  The general conference sessions begin tomorrow (Thursday) morning.

Update: All events that happen in the main hall are being streamed live in both audio (MP3) and video (Windows Media) versions (the official weblog below has links to Mac WM players).

There is a conference wiki that will enable you to post questions or comments for any of the speakers in any of the sessions.

Brendan Greeley is doing the official Public Media 2007 Conference Blog.  RSS feed.  RSS for comments.

Other bloggers are listed on the top page of the wiki, including HighTouch, Andy Carvin's Waste of Bandwidth, and Open Parenthesis.  I'd be surprised not to see Rob Paterson and Jake Shapiro write about the meeting as well.   I'll be adding some things in absentia.

Today Rob posted Public Media 2007 - Some Context.

This post will be revised and extended as appropriate.  --Dennis

NPR Social Media Forum

I've been collecting posts from a variety of participants at a meeting that NPR held last week about social media and public radio.  If you're an RSS subscriber to this blog, you'll get all the updates, but if you're a FeedBlitz email subscriber, you won't because (inexplicably) they don't re-feed updates.  So I wanted to be sure that as many of you found Andy Carvin's posting of two podcasts of the full audio from a two-hour social media forum within the larger meeting moderated by David Folkenflik.  Link:  Andy Carvin's Waste of Bandwidth, Part 1, Part 2.  --Dennis

While Others Struggle, Norwegian Newspaper Publisher Thrives on the Web

Eric Pfanner writes:

... E24 and VG (or Verdens Gang, which means “the way of the world”) are both owned by Schibsted, an Oslo newspaper publisher that does things differently on the Internet.  ¶  For starters, it makes lots of money.  ¶  At a time when other newspaper companies lament a loss of readers and advertisers, Schibsted is thriving. Its earnings rose 28 percent in the fourth quarter. Online operations will generate about 20 percent of the company’s revenue this year, according to analysts at Kaupthing, a bank based in Reykjavik, Iceland, even as many other big newspaper publishers struggle to reach the 10 percent mark.  ¶  Perhaps more important, at least for investors, online businesses will provide nearly 60 percent of the company’s operating earnings by next year, the Kaupthing analysts predict. Schibsted has become so emblematic of online success that Bharat N. Anand, a professor at Harvard Business School, is writing one of the institution’s well-known case studies on the company. ...

Link:  New York Times.  Thanks to KAKM's John Proffitt for the tip.  Some information about VG in English.  --Dennis

Merger Would End Satellite Radio's Rivalry

Lot's of stories today on the proposed merger between Sirius and XM.  Here's one by Richard Siklos and Andrew Ross Sorkin.  They write:

... Questioned last month about a possible Sirius-XM merger, the F.C.C. chairman, Kevin J. Martin, initially appeared to be skeptical, but later said that if such a deal were proposed, the agency would consider it.  ¶  In a statement yesterday, Mr. Martin acknowledged that the F.C.C. rule could complicate a merger but said the commission would evaluate the proposal. “The hurdle here, however, would be high,” he said. ...

Link:  New York Times. 

Doc Searls points out some other difficulties: antitrust, program quality, monoculture, obsolescence, costs and revenues.  Link:  Doc Searls Weblog.  Thanks to Rob Paterson for the tip.  --Dennis

Digital Distribution Consortium 2007

Jake Shapiro has posted a helpful update about the work of public radio's Digital Distribution Consortium Working Group in the past year.  Link:  Jake Shapiro blogs sometimes.  --Dennis

The Ties That Bind: Connection Beats Page Views

Trying to figure out how the web economy works?  Here's a good start.  Catherine P. Taylor writes:

... Measured by statistics such as page views, the biggest social-networking sites certainly rival the longtime biggest sites on the Web. But a closer look at their traffic shows that, in fact, they differ markedly from their older competitors. Unique audiences are smaller, and the number of page views per person—especially among the youth demographic that accounts for most of the traffic on sites such as MySpace and Facebook—tends to be much higher. So, while social media rewrites rules of content creation and distribution, it is also poised to revise the analysis around which metrics are important when evaluating advertising properties, as well as what constitutes a successful ad unit. ...

Link:  Adweek.  Thanks to KAKM's John Proffitt and PRX's Jake Shapiro for the tip.  --Dennis

Report: Local TV web revenue up 41 percent

Cory Bergman writes:

A TVB-Borrell Associates survey found that local TV stations’ online revenue rose an average of 41 percent to $399 million last year. The report found that TV stations were able to increase their share of online dollars by a full point over the last year to 7 percent, “no small feat in the high-growth environment of local online advertising.” Newspaper sites, meanwhile, dropped an average of 16 percent in local revenue. The highest growth areas are real estate, health, automotive and high-tech. The report’s recommendations, which jive with recommendations Lost Remote has recently published:

1. Rethink the mass-media mentality. Think of the internet as a mass of niches.
2. Hire a dedicated online sales force.
3. Give strong consideration to launching a real estate section.
4. Consider spin-off sites that may not be branded to the station. ...

Link:  Lost Remote.

Why is local TV so far behind in video? ...

... Cory Bergman asks.  He writes:

Remember the early days of TV when local stations were the innovators in video? The first color TV, the first live shot, the first live chopper… the list goes on and on. How are local TV stations doing now as we face the biggest and most important revolution in the history of video? Terribly. YouTube, MSN Video, Revver, Veoh are just a few of the online video sites leading the way in technology, advertiser experience, community functionality and new business models. Promising startups are combining video with classifieds. Newspapers are pulling in more revenue in online video than local TV sites. ...

Link:  Lost Remote.  --Dennis

Radio's Future - "The Disruption is Ready to Happen" - Q&A with futurist Watts Wacker

Mark Ramsey has a great interview on the subject of radio with futurist Watts Wacker, author (with Jim Taylor) of The 500 Year Delta: What Happens After What Comes Next and other books.  Link:  Hear 2.0.