Technology360

Internet radio hits the mainstream

Citing some data on listening to podcasts from the UK, Jemima Kiss writes:

... Commissioned by the industry's audience research body Rajar, the Ipsos Mori survey last autumn found that more than 12 million people have listened to the radio online and 8.1 million listen every week either through live streaming or "listen again" services.  ¶  Ipsos Mori found that 75% of users do not listen to less live radio as a result of listening again online, with 50% tuning into new shows as a result.  ¶  The same was true of podcasting, with one-fifth of respondents saying they now listen to more live radio and nearly one-third saying they listen to new radio shows after sampling them via podcasts.  ¶  Only 8% of those surveyed said they listened to less radio because of the availability of podcasts.  ¶  Of the 4.3 million who have downloaded podcasts, around 1.87 million people listen to at least one podcast each week. ...

Link:  The Guardian.  Thanks to Mark Ramsey for the tip and some analysis.  --Dennis

Nationalizing the HD Radio stations

Larry Rosin of Edison Media Research writes:

... What can the radio industry do to get people to "want their HD?" ...

... I have a more radical proposal: Instead of marketing the local HD options, we should be nationalizing the HD radio stations.  ¶  Think about it. Right now, the overwhelming majority of HD stations are barely-produced, barely-tended jukeboxes. The HD Alliance worked to create a system to put formats on that were additive instead of duplicative, in most places. And that's great. But if there is no Alternative station in your market, what would be more compelling? A no-DJ Alternative jukebox? Or KROQ in Los Angeles? Yes, with the traffic updates, Lakers scores, and everything else. My instincts say: KROQ in a landslide. ...

Link:  The Infinite Dial (originally published in Radio & Records).  --Dennis

Goldmine of media econometric charts

Someone whose flickr handle is "have_a_cigar" (Adam Thierer?) has posted a goldmine of media econometric charts.  Here are the titles of some of the charts and direct links.

• Google Valuation vs. Newspaper Industry
• Changing Fortunes? Market Cap, Enterprise Value, & Revenues for Media Operators
• Google Valuation vs. Radio Industry (wow, is this one telling!)
• Internet Advertising Revenue 1997-2007
• Projected U.S. Social Networking Advertising Spending 2006-2011
• U.S. Online & Total Media Advertising 2006-2011
• Average Prices for Selected Technologies 2003-2008
• Household Penetration Rates for Various Technologies 1970-2008
• Number of Years It Took for Major Technologies to Reach 50% of Homes (the longest? telephones @ 71 years; 2nd longest? electricity @ 52 years)
• Year-to-Year Advertising Growth by Sector
• Percentage of Ad Dollars by Media 1980-2007
• The Media Environment Circa 1970
• The Media Environment Circa 2007
• Video Choices Exploding, But Vertical Integration Plummeting
• Cable & Satellite Channel Growth Exploding

Updated 2 February 2008:
Actually, I'm thinking this must be from Adam Thierer because he uses all these charts in four five posts worth reading titled:

• Media Metrics #1: Introduction & Analytical Framework
• Media Metrics #2: Household Access to Media Services & Technologies
• Media Metrics #3: Ad Wars
• Media Metrics #4: Changing Fortunes
• Media Metrics #5: The Competition for Our Ears

All from The Progress & Freedom Foundation blog.  --Dennis

Primer on Copyright Liability and Fair Use

David Ardia writes:

As a lead up to next week's launch of the Citizen Media Law Project's Legal Guide, we are putting up longer, substantive blog posts on various subjects covered in the guide. This post, which discusses copyright and fair use in the context of citizen media, is the second in our series of legal primers. The first addressed the subject of immunity and liability for third-party content under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. ...

Link:  MediaShift Idea Lab @ PBS.org.  --Dennis

Open is King - The Future of Meida Beyond Control

... is the title of a lecture that Gerd Leonhard gave at the European Centre for the Experience Economy in Amsterdam earlier this month.  Lots of good stuff here.  Link:  Media Futurist [PDF].  --Dennis

Mapping Public Media: Inside and Out

The Center for Social Media at American University is out with a new downloadable report with this title by Jessica Clark.  Here's the executive summary:

The landscape of public media is shifting to accommodate an evolving, always-on digital media landscape shaped significantly by users as well as media-makers. Such a shift demands a remapping of the public media field, a project addressed by the Center for Social Media’s Future of Public Media project. This new territory, which comprises online, film, print and user-generated elements, demands new and interdisciplinary research approaches. This paper examines efforts to examine three public media projects—defined as projects that engage publics for the purpose of informing them and moving them to action—through two contrasting analytical approaches. Case studies by Center for Social Media researchers, with interviews and elements of market and online research, present an “inside” look at the projects under examination, while network and issue mapping tools designed by the Amsterdam-based Govcom.org provide a more distant “outside” assessment of the impact and reach of these projects.  ¶  Comparison of the case studies of the three projects — independent documentary film The War Tapes, PBS documentary and outreach project A Lion in the House, and international blogging site Global Voices—revealed commonalities among these projects, and more generally among contemporary media projects attempting to survive and thrive in the volatile online environment. Emerging public media projects are mission-driven, designed to engage multiple publics, enriched by strategic partnerships and forging new pathways and routines. They also share a number of challenges with both commercial and independent media-makers: spanning multiple platforms, navigating evolving roles for editors and producers, planning for multiple moments of connection and outreach with audiences, staying abreast of ever-shifting technologies and tactics, and grappling with questions of content ownership.  ¶  While the case studies provided a wealth of data—from media-makers’ personal anecdotes to audience statistics to accounts of complex outreach partnerships—the online analysis and mapping tools developed by Govcom.org provided a more quantitative analysis of the online reach of these media projects. The research team, led by University of Amsterdam’s Richard Rogers, has developed a method that “scrapes” data from Google and other online sources, analyzes that data to reveal networks of sites related to particular issues or projects, and then, after content analysis by researchers, displays the data as a series of network maps using a program called ReseauLu. The evolution and use of these tools is discussed below.  ¶  A very different picture of the publics served by the three media projects under examination emerged when the case study accounts were contrasted to the Govcom.org visualizations. This paper examines the differences in approach and results, conflicting accounts of how publics might be understood and quantified, and further directions for research that examines public media.

Link:  Center for Social Media.

Broadcast TV's Demise More Fiction Than Fact

Dan Rayburn, executive VP for StreamingMedia.com, writes:

... I have over 60 season passes in TiVo. Going through all of them yesterday, more than 90% of the shows I watch are not available online anywhere. And the ones that are, like content from CBS and NBC, do not show up right after they are broadcast and typically take days if not longer to appear on the web. And in the case of something like 60 Minutes, one story alone is chopped up into 10 different video segments on their website and encoded at a pretty low bitrate. And sports, well forget that. No NFL games are available on-demand the next day online and while the MLB games are, it requires a subscription.  ¶  The demise of the TV is overrated and many in the industry keep saying the same thing as if they have to say it just to be cool. I keep hearing people in our space says things like "I don't even need a TV anymore, I'll just watch all my video online". ...

Link: The Business Of Online Video.  --Dennis

Media economic woes

Diane Mermigas continues to write sobering posts about the media economy:

In Economic Woes Mean TV Ad Pullback, Media Shift, she writes:

The economic woes driving the stock market to new lows will impede spending by advertisers that are ambivalent about waning consumers and a transforming media market. The big unknown is TV ad dollars–how much will be held back and shifted to alternative media.  ¶  The answer will become evident in the coming months as formidable exceptional factors, from less original network programming and the continuing digital revolution to the paralyzing debt and credit crunch, play themselves out.  ¶  The four-month writers’ strike will wreak more havoc with broadcast television revenues in the first half of 2008 than it appears to have done in the fourth quarter.  Advertisers have been less likely to shift away from the broadcast networks or take a hard line on makegoods when the networks were running off their original series episodes last fall. ...

Link: MediaPost.

Also see Nowhere To Run: Trickle-Down Theory Impacts Advertising:

Amid the chaos and panic created by Wall Street and the Federal Reserve, ad-dependent companies are scrambling to determine just how impaired their financial lifeline will be in a troubled economy. Three words: trickle-down effect.  ¶  The broad-scale tumult is filtering down into the crevices of all media and advertising companies. They are making adjustments in spending as their costs, revenues and credit tighten. They are watching their stocks get hammered, and their ability to leverage assets or do deals is drying up–for now. ...

Link: MediaPost.

And, Strike, Recession: 2009 Media Outlook Is Grim:

Media, tech and Internet companies, and the Wall Street analysts who cover them, are looking beyond the current tumult to the rest of this year and into 2009. Unfortunately, many don’t like what they see.

Link: MediaPost.

Finally (for this post), Bottom-Line: Media Cos. Must Restructure Or Face Consequences:

Media companies are in a valuation nightmare. Their problem: being valued almost exclusively on old models and metrics, while not yet reaping the balance-sheet benefits of an unfolding digital nirvana. Their challenge: to accurately assess their stagnating traditional businesses and rising revenue streams while shaping growth prospects.  ¶  This inevitable valuation quandary is underscored by a spate of grim earnings forecasts for media and entertainment companies from Wall Street analysts, who are also wrestling with the complex assessment challenge. It is an issue for investors and deal-makers trying to project beyond the single-digit, even negative growth expected for more traditional TV, film and print. It is also an issue for labor and management, which are struggling to construct plans for future income.  ¶  Over the past four years, that digital interactivity has exploded on the scene, and the S&P Media Index has underperformed the broader S&P 500 by more than 40% due to continuing structural concerns about future growth, according to Bernstein analyst Michael Nathanson. These include the adverse impact of technology (DVRs, time-shifting devices), the shift of ad dollars to the Web, and the pressing need to completely reinvent traditional media models. The negative impact of slower economic growth on advertising and discretionary media spending is becoming more assured. This lethal combination has pushed earnings multiples for media stocks to historic lows. ...

Link: MediaPost.

But wait, there's more!  This chart from Joe Mandese, Optimism Declines Among Ad Execs, All Media Impacted, Even Online.  Click for larger image.  Link:  MediaPost.  Thanks to Terry Heaton for the tip on this one.    --Dennis

 

Public Media Conference reminder

If you're in public broadcasting and haven't yet registered for the Public Media Conference 08 in L.A. -- the best use of your time this year -- get on the stick!  Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales is the welcome keynoter. And, not that this alone would get you there, but I'll be moderating a panel on "Technology and Trends" 2/21 with Rafat Ali (paidContent.org) and Diane Mermigas (MediaPost) and also doing some kind of presentation for that general session.  They've both forgotten more than I'll ever know about this stuff, so how do you spell entimi... intimm... intimidation?  --Dennis

Funnier now?

Is it just me or are Jon Stewart, Jay Leno and many of their colleagues funnier now than before the writers' strike?  I've learned in recent weeks that many plants send out blossoms when they "think" they're going to die from under-watering.  Some people even stab at their roots with a knife to create this distress.  Maybe the same thing is going on.  --Dennis

New WiMAX variation may make it more alluring to carriers

Eric Bangeman writes:

... WiMAX is poised to break out in 2008. But one of the things that could conceivably hold it back from even wider adoption is its confinement to a relatively small slice of spectrum. That may change, as the WiMAX Forum has begun work on a variation of the mobile WiMAX spec that will allow it to operate in spectrum currently used for 3G networks. ...

Link:  Ars Technica.  --Dennis

Get nostalgic and listen to good old FM radio!

I just bought a Nokia N810 "Internet tablet," a very cool under $500 device that I'm hoping will replace my HP PDA and my Sprint multimedia phone.  The device uses OS2008, an operating system that's essentially Maemo, which in turn is based on the Debian flavor of Linux.  Among the software offered is a software-defined FM radio.  Great, I thought before I learned it works only on the older N800. 

The software offer on the Nokia site carries the headline I used for this post plus this description (ouch!):

Before the internet and the digital revolution, music was analog and most of us listened to FM radio. You might remember fixing the antenna in the most perfect position, and the noise when tuning the channels. If you don't remember or you want re-experience it, download the FM radio application now!

Link:  Nokia. 

For its size (smaller than the HP PDA), the N810 has a great screen and ditto for its stereo speakers -- the first really listenable ones I've seen in a portable device -- and comes with its own "Internet radio" pre-programmed with a bunch of stations.  More and more I think we broadcasters need to figure out how to get on these lists.  The N810 connects to the 'Net by a user-friendly WiFi implementation and also has Bluetooth so you can connect through your phone.  Oh, and it has GPS, too.  --Dennis

BBC iPlayer puts rocky start behind...

Daniel Langendorf writes:

The BBC heavily promoted its iPlayer, an online TV catchup service, on TV, in the press, and online during the holiday season. The effort seems to have paid off. Sort of.   ¶  UK Internet traffic to the iPlayer Website increased “14-fold between the week ending 8 December 2007 and the week ending 5 January,” according to Hitwise, and the service ranked as the 80th most visited Website in the U.K., having peaked at No. 62 on New Year’s Day.  ¶  It appears that the BBC has recovered from its rocky online TV start. When the initial iPlayer was launched, it was not without controversy. The BBC was accused of being corrupt due to the player’s reliance on Microsoft technology and lack of Mac/Linux support. UK ISPs were also critical of the iPlayer’s use of peer-to-peer technology and potentially high bandwidth costs. ...

Link:  last100.  --Dennis

Key To Recession Survival: Master Consumer Media Habits

Diane Mermigas writes:

... According to the North American Technologies [Technographics®] Benchmark Survey published by Forrester Research, all adult consumers still devote more than twice as many hours in a typical week watching television as using the Internet.  Gen Yers 18-27 are moving toward parody [parity] in spending as many hours online as watching TV.  But they also spend nearly as much time watching DVDs–a hybrid activity on TVs, PCs and video-game consoles.  It suggests what other surveys also reflect: Young consumers move fluidly from one media-related activity to another (whether interactive or passive) because a screen is a screen is a screen.  ¶  However, as interactivity becomes more pervasive and all of television goes digital in a year, more Boomer consumers will follow suit.  So the increasing interactive attention and spending of consumers ages 42 to 62 is key.  These 78 million Boomers (the single largest demographic segment) already make a healthy showing in an array of interactive activities–from managing and printing personal photos to conducting finance and security checks.  The focus should be on how to increase maturing consumers’ routine use of interactive devises for potentially profitable social networking–e-commerce, entertainment and communications –not a comparison to younger early adopter habits. ...

Link:  MediaPost.  Link and corrections added.  --Dennis

Internet radio developments

Update 14 January 2008, correcting earlier post.

Here are a couple of reports on Internet radio developments, the fastest growing disruption of broadcasting to date.

In Radio's next evolution is on a tabletop now...and it's not HD, Mark Ramsey writes about RCA's "Infinite Radio."  The unit tunes standard AM and FM (not HD Radio), Internet radio, and Slacker radio, the latter a service that allows one to set up custom "radio" channels that customize and optimize music choices from user preferences and gestures.  Mark is a long-time critic of HD Radio, but there's no reason why HD Radios in the age of IP-to-the-dashboard (see Rob Patersonn post, The Last Web Frontier - The Car) can't also seamlessly do something very similar (see my post from March, A many-to-many radio using HD + IP).  Use your imagination.  Link:  hear2.0.  Thanks to Katy June-Friesen at Current Karen Everhart at Current for the tip.

Rafe Needleman has a report from CES on FlyTunes, an Internet radio aggregator that makes your iPhone or iPod touch into an Internet radio.  Pretty cool.  The article also has a picture of a tabletop Internet radio from Asus.  Link:  CNET CES 2008.  --Dennis

Steve Jobs' Video Dreams

Peter Burrows and Ronald Glover write:

... While Apple's dramatic comeback thanks to digital music and the iPod reads like a Hollywood screenplay, Jobs' efforts in video-land won't follow the same script. Indeed, two years after Apple added video capability to its iPod line and began selling a smattering of shows and movies on the iTunes Music Store, its share in video remains minuscule.  ¶  Jobs is planning a major offensive to try to change all that, with at least some of the details to be announced at Macworld on Jan. 15. Most important, he plans to launch a movie rental service on iTunes for the first time. Apple is in furious negotiations with top studios to make their new releases available for the service, as well as for sale. BusinessWeek has learned that Apple is nearing deals with Warner Bros. ... and Paramount ..., and has already secured deals with Disney ... and 20th Century Fox. Apple is also planning a major upgrade of the slow-selling Apple TV set-top box. ...

Link:  BusinessWeek.  --Dennis

Learning from CES and the music industry

Mark Ramsey has two must-read posts.  Here's one on what we should be learning from this year's CES, including:

... The fundamental problem in our industry is, frankly, that we have so little content unique to us and so little content bigger than us.  ¶  If you're all about the music then you're about nothing unique at all. And it has taken the obliteration of radio's monopoly over listeners' ears for this to be made apparent.  ¶  Get this straight: It doesn't matter that you have a tower. It doesn't matter how many HD sub-channels you have. We have been borrowing the attention of millions of listeners all this time and now we must earn it. ...

Link:  hear2.0.

And this is from one about music industry trends:

... the transitional nature of all - ALL - recorded technology that distributes music to consumers. That is, one technology shrinks as another expands, ad infinitum. Radio, too, is a technology, a very well established and popular one. The erosion we're currently seeing in radio usage - especially among the young - is not a hiccup. It is part of a long-term trend we are only beginning to experience. The more we face competitive alternatives which substitute for radio's core benefits, the more this trend will accelerate. ...

Link:  hear2.0. 

Update 10 January 2008:
Mark's writing about lessons for radio.  Marketing guru/writer Seth Godin has also posted about lessons from the music business, but targets all purveyors of digital distribution with his advice, starting with this gem:

The first rule is so important, it’s rule 0:

0. The new thing is never as good as the old thing, at least right now.
Soon, the new thing will be better than the old thing will be. But if you wait until then, it’s going to be too late.  Feel free to wax nostalgic about the old thing, but don’t fool yourself into believing it’s going to be here forever. It won’t.

Link:  Seth Godin's Blog.  Thanks to Paul Maloney for the tip in Kurt Hanson's Radio and Internet Newsletter.  --Dennis

Horowitz Assoc.: news video has top online usage

Horowitz Associates has released a study of broadband video consumption on multiple platforms.  It's the first I've seen that gives information about the relative popularity of what people are using.  And it's good news for those of us in public media.  News video segments top the list, moving from 22% to 36% online weekly usage, 2006 to 2007.  That beats "non-professional online videos," which doubled from 15% to 30%.  The report overview says this about motivation:

... While consumption of broadband video has grown, the study shows that television is still the preferred platform for traditional TV content.  The vast majority (70%) of Internet users who watch TV online say do so because they missed the episode on TV.  About two out of ten (18%) of these respondents say they watch TV shows online to watch them a second time (after having watched them on TV), or that they watch TV shows online just when they happen to find them or when someone else tells them about them (20%).  Conversely, one out of ten (13%) Internet users who watch TV shows online say they watch them directly online, and not on regular TV. ...

Link:  Horowitz Associates.  Thanks to Craig Birkmaier on the OpenDTV mail list.  --Dennis