Technology360

Cable Ads Mark Switch to Digital TV

John Dunbar writes:

The cable television industry has launched a $200 million advertising campaign to assure customers they will still be able to watch their favorite programs after the transition to digital broadcasting.  ¶  The ad campaign includes four 30-second spots to be aired on both broadcast and cable networks. Ads began airing in the Washington, D.C., market this week.  ¶  The spots open with a graphic that reads: "By law TV stations will end analog broadcasts on February 17, 2009, and broadcast exclusively in digital." That's followed by cable customers assuring viewers that "every TV set you have that's hooked up to cable will work just fine." ...

Link:  Washington Post.  I'm trying to decide if this is good for broadcasters or not.  On the one hand, it will definitely raise viewer awareness about the transition.  On the other hand, any over-the-air viewers who move to cable because of this will be less reliant on broadcasters for their television than those who choose to stay with OTA.  And there's a potential of confusion between the cable messages and those from the upcoming NAB campaign.

Updated 7 September 2007:
Brooks Boliek has more on cable's campaign in The Hollywood Reporter.

Speaking of the NAB campaign, they've just announced the campaign will launch by the end of the month.  It appears that its timing was moved up in response to the cable effort.  See John Eggerton, NAB to Launch DTV-Education PSA Campaign This Month.  Link:  Broadcasting & Cable.  --Dennis

New Way to Count Listeners Shakes Up Radio

Sarah McBride has a good article on what's being found when Arbitron switched Philadelphia and Houston to the Portable People Meter measurement system.  Rock is back.  Link:  Wall Street Journal.  Click for larger image.  --Dennis

Interview with Ashley Highfield, Director, BBC Future Media & Technology

Robert Andrews has a very interesting interview with Ashley Highfield covering such subjects as the (excessive) time it takes to greenlight emerging media projects, the iPlayer and the various complaints it's attracted, and online advertising.  There's a summary at this link (paidContent.org), at the bottom of which are links to the complete transcript and an audio version.  --Dennis

11 video download stores compared

Interested in how a selection of paid video sites are operating?  Steve O'Hear has a useful comparison of 11 video download stores:  Movielink, Direct2Drive, BitTorrent, CinemaNow, Amazon Unbox, Xbox Live Video Marketplace, Jaman, Guba, iTunes Store, HungryFlix, and Streamburst.  Link:  last100.  --Dennis

Online advertising vs. radio advertising

Fred and Paul Jacobs look back at two eye-opening presentations from Gordon Borrell and Jason Calcanis at last year's Jacobs Media Summit 11.  They're linked here and highly recommended regardless of whether you're in commercial or public broadcasting:

Gordon Borrell shared the raw correlation between the size of dedicated digital sales staffs and revenue generation (watch his presentation here).  And unfortunately, radio lags behind other media (especially newspaper) in both metrics.  Maybe this new report will spur our industry to begin investing in dedicated digital sales people.

At that same Summit, Jason Calacanis simply told radio people, "Surrender!" - and develop an entirely new model based on the inherent strengths of the medium.  While his comments made some uncomfortable, they were painfully true (watch his presentation here). His message was that radio needs to accept the reality that it is being overtaken by digital media.  But at the same time, he saw radio as perfectly positioned to profitably participate in the digital space for three simple reasons:

1. We know how to create outstanding audio content (compared to the weakly produced podcasts that proliferate today),
2. We know how to sell it,
3. We have the raw cume to drive consumers to our content

Link:  JacoBLOG.  --Dennis

Jumpstarting Innovation: Using Disruption to Your Advantage

Lynda M. Applegate writes:

... Disruptions in the business environment cause economic shifts that destabilize industries, companies, and even countries.  They allow new entrants or forward-thinking established players to introduce innovations—in products, markets, or processes—that transform the way companies do business and consumers behave.  ¶   These disruptive innovations are not just novel inventions.  Successful innovators take ideas and turn them into opportunities by adding a business model that creates sustainable economic value for all stakeholders.  They then go one step further and exploit the opportunity by creating a sustainable business. ...

Link:  Harvard Business School Working Knowledge.

Why "Good Enough" Is Good Enough

In an article that reinforces one of Clayton Christensen's observations, Stephen Baker writes:

... Are communications getting worse? Not by a long shot.  We're surrounded by miraculous machines and services, most of them calibrated to a level software engineers have long called "good enough."  In the right circumstances, good enough is great for the entire economy.  A marketplace that's not hung up on fail-safe standards is open to risk and innovation, and drives down prices. Ever since the dawn of the PC--the archetype for a good-enough machine--inventors have been freer than ever to piece together and launch their visions.  Some are brilliant, some are half-baked, many are a blend of the two. A precious few are up and running 99.999% of the time--Bell's old standard. But they cost far less to build.  ¶   The rise of good-enough technology raises different questions for do-it-yourselfers and major corporations alike.  It's no longer whether we can afford a technology, but more often whether we can afford the disruption if and when it fails.  Is it critical?  Do we have backup in place?  Many of us face this question every time we venture from our office with a cell phone.  We don't have "one machine that works all the time," says Dave Morgan, chairman of Tacoda Inc., a New York advertising company.  "We have lots of alternatives that work most of the time. ...

Link:  Business Week.  --Dennis

Vnunet: Digital Radio iPods expected on Wednesday

Iain Thomson writes:

... a reliable industry insider has told vnunet.com that the announcement will include plans to bring digital radio to the iPod along with an option to buy music using the device.  ¶  The source said that the new iPods will be able to receive digital radio, and will include a 'buy-now' function to allow the user to download and buy tracks as they are being played. ...

Link:  vnunet.com.

However, Nick DePlume cautions:

... While it is possible the new iPod will be the first to pack some sort of wireless capability, suggestions of digital radio playback should be taken with a grain of salt. ...

Link:  Think Secret.

Thanks to John Paczkowski for both these links from, And Lo, Jobs Appeared and Said 'No, This Is the Best iPod Ever,' and It Was, and There Was Much Rejoicing.  Link:  Digital Daily. 

Count me as one of the skeptics, though I'd be happy to be wrong on this one because of the lift it would give HD Radio -- if, indeed, that's what they mean by "digital radio."  However, it's my understanding that the existing chipsets for HD Radio receivers are quite power hungry -- hence the general lack of HDR portable models in the CE marketplace today.  So making that work in an iPod form factor seems like a real stretch to me unless there has been a breakthrough in power requirements for the HDR receiver chipsets. 

On the other hand, maybe what is meant is a WiFi digital radio with some sort of streaming addressability similar to the Torian Wireless Infusion that I own.  That just might fit into that form factor.  We'll see tomorrow, I guess.

Update 5 September 2007:
OK, it's tomorrow now and, indeed, it was a WiFi radio.  It will permit users to log into iTunes directly and buy music.  And its storage is strangely tiny -- only one-tenth the size of the new iPod Classic.  See Natali T. Del Conte's, Apple Announces iPod touch with Wi-Fi.  Link:  PC Magazine. --Dennis

Single-frequency network proposed for over-the-air transmission in New York City

ION Media Networks (formerly Paxson Communications Corp.) and Richland Towers have announced the completion of successful testing of a single-frequency network (SFN) for New York City.  In brief, a SFN uses multiple synchronized transmitters at different locations, operating on the same frequency, to replicate the coverage of a traditional "big stick" single-transmitter system.  At least one such system for digital television broadcasting is operating in an initial configuration for public television station WPSX at Pennsylvania State University.  From the ION press release:

... The Richland DTx single frequency network consists of a main, high-powered “hub” site in West Orange, N.J., providing coverage to most of the market area; and five low-power DTxT sites that serve the remainder of the area. Multiple rounds of testing were conducted at the main West Orange site and a transmitter site at 4 Times Square in Manhattan. The test teams obtained field measurements from the two sites and compared them to measurements taken from five stations transmitting from the Empire State Building. Field strength, signal quality, reception and all other parameters for the DTx network were comparable to or better than those from the Empire State stations. The test results are being made available to other interested broadcasters. ...

Link to the related article in Broadcast Engineering. 

Public television stations frequently operate with transmitters that are not located at the cluster of antennas used by commercial television stations in a market (my Pullman, Washington station is one such) and therefore operate at a disadvantage in terms of receive antenna orientation.  SFNs offer a solution to this problem.  --Dennis

Vint Cerf: Expect the Internet to radically change television

Few people have more Internet credibility than Vint Cerf, one of its inventors.  Daniel Langendorf writes:

... Cerf...spoke to television executives at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival this past weekend and told them how the Internet’s influence was radically altering their businesses and how it was imperative for them to view this golden opportunity to be exploited instead of a threat to their survival (The Guardian report). ...

And quotes him as saying:

“In Japan you can already download an hour’s worthy of video in 16 seconds. And we’re starting to see ways of mixing information together … imagine if you could pause a television program and use your mouse to click on different items on the screen and find out more about them.”

Link:  last100.  --Dennis