Technology360

A Broadcaster's Christmas Carol

I've linked to it before, but Terry Heaton has "reprinted" his Christmas 2004 essay, a take-off on the Charles Dickens classic.  A sample:

... Ebenezer was a second generation Broadcaster, having built his empire from a small A.M. radio station his father owned in the 50s. With a penchant for squeezing every last penny from a dollar, Ebenezer Broadcaster had a reputation as a hostile and difficult employer. He boasted that many celebrities had come through his television stations on their way up the ladder, but the truth is he never paid anybody enough money to want to stick around. ...

Link:  Terry Heaton's PoMo Blog. If you're in broadcasting, don't miss it.  --Dennis

TV's Revenue Woes Reach Tipping Point

Diane Mermigas writes:

... Until now, flat-to-rising household TV usage was no real threat to earnings. “However, recent data points on TV viewing and HUT are more disturbing,” [Bear Stearns analyst Spencer] Wang said. In calendar 2007, HUT is down 1.2% from 2006 for the first time–without a change in the Nielsen measurement sample. TV’s core selling demographic (adults ages 18 to 49) has seen HUTs drop 2.5% from a year ago, even when adjusting for the new live, same-day and DVR ratings, that collectively underestimate the erosion. “We find it more than coincidental that declining TV usage is occurring in tandem with broadband Internet penetration reaching mass market levels” of more than half of U.S. homes, he said. ...

Link:  MediaPost.  --Dennis

Implications of the Writers' strike

Diane Mermigas has written three recent columns for MediaPost that are must-read analyses of the impact of the Writers' strike on television's economy:

TV Nets Stuck: Strike Ends With New Metrics, 12 December 2007

Strike Will Transfer Ad Power To Web, TV To Revamp, 18 December 2007

For TV, Crisis Is Catalyst For Change, 21 December 2007

Umair Haque looks at it in terms of how this relates to emerging business models for content:

... While writers and networks have been crippling each other with a simplistic - and totally obsolete - game of mutually assured destruction, Google is slowly but surely reinventing a better way for content to create value: one which doesn't need exactly the rigid contractual lockstep writers and networks are squabbling over.  ¶  See the point? Google is solving exactly the problem that core-focused players are paralyzed by; that's suddenly brought the existing value chain to a crashing, creaking halt. ...

Link:  Bubblegeneration.

Finally, read Paul Bond's article, [Bear Sterns] Report weighs ripple effect of writers strike on Street.  Link:  Hollywood Reporter.  --Dennis

Transition to Media Systems Engineering

It's a rare broadcast engineer who becomes a GM, and if the GM didn't come up by that route, the engineering department is pretty mysterious.  Still, most CEOs are aware of the sea change in broadcasting technology toward information technology.  In an interesting unsigned article in Broadcast Engineering, the author states that "neither broadcast engineering nor IT are absorbing the other; in reality a new engineering discipline is being born."

Still, the changes underway have a profound impact on the capabilities and capitalization requirements of an organization.  The author discusses how using the Capability Maturity Model and Six Sigma can help broadcasting management understand and manage this development.  The article ends with a half dozen links to resources on these two models.

Link:  Broadcast Engineering.  Thanks to Ralph Hogan for the tip.  --Dennis