Archive for June, 2008
June 25, 2008 at 5:19 pm · Filed under content, media, syndication
There’s always been new media. McLuhan traced the rise and fall of the Roman Empire to shifts in adoption, usage and availability of papyrus. Gutenberg, to paraphrase David Cameron, was the future once. So simply hailing or blaming new media for your particular organization’s respective good or bad fortunes is a little lazy.
I mention this in relation to the ever continuing debate over the death of news journalism and the role of bloggers in the media. I’m not particularly interested right now in what future news rooms will look like, whether they’ll be staffed by editors, journalists, bloggers or algorithms. What I am interested in is what makes this blog infused new media “new”. It seems to me it’s the conversation. Yes I’ve said this before in relation to broadcasting, but lets look at it again in the context of the written word.
Greenslade mentions this today.
I say this as a preliminary to explaining why journalists, especially print veterans like me, are so suspicious of bloggers. We have spent our lives dominating conversations. No, that’s wrong of course. We did not converse at all. We lectured. We provided the information that people feasted on in order to hold their own conversations.
The King James Bible wasn’t meant as a conversation starter, it was a diktat on how to live your life. When the Sun asked the last remaining person in Britain to “turn off the lights if Kinnock and Labour won the ‘92 election it was telling its readers exactly what to do, not inviting them around for a considered debate on the single currency.
Further on, Greenslade really nails the crux of what I’m getting to here.
I think journalists are failing to grasp that truth. Blogging, though democratic in spirit, does threaten the established order of journalism. I was inspired to write this after reading a blog posting by Adam Tinworth (courtesy of a tip from Kristine Lowe. Many thanks). Tinworth writes: “Most media people don’t realise that blogging is a community strategy. They think of it as a publishing process… They certainly don’t think of it as a conversation.”
Yep, it’s the conversation. Never before has it been possible for all range of people to have global conversations they way they are now. That scares much of the news media. It shouldn’t. Because never before has it been possible for the news media to facilitate and host conversations at a global, 24/7 level. We should be enthused and excited by these possibilities.
It’s what Ballmer was getting at when he referred to IP advantages over TV. And if Steve Ballmer at Microsoft gets it then so should any high ranking executive in the news business.
Now for the really exciting bit. These conversations shouldn’t just be left to the tail end of blogs and the depths of Technorati. They should be taking place all around our news media, both written (by pros and amateurs alike) and video. Tools like Discqus, MyBlogLog, FriendFeed and for video in particular the Seesmic Wordpress plugin are starting on the edge of the blogosphere and moving in towards big media, but big media shouldn’t wait.
We have to start innovating around the conversation and that innovation should start with syndication.
Let’s wrap a the conversation around the content layer wherever that content is consumed and wherever there is a danger of the conversation breaking out. News organizations aren’t doing this quickly enough.
A practical example of what should be possible here is the Associated Press in the US.
The AP have been in the news over the past fortnight for trying to shut the convesation down, not allow people use their direct quotes as part of their everyday blog conversation. How stupid is this? Imagine the feds busting into your office and taking down the guys by the water cooler because they were quoting verbatim scenes from the Office. Ridiculous.
The AP actually should be embracing the conversation. Jeff Jarvis mentions that one way for the AP to move forward would be for it to stop homogenizing content and list the source news agency. Well how about this. How about it lets anyone take its stories, but as part of the deal you’ve got to take its simultneous conversation feed. And that’s an absolute must all newspapers and websites downstream of the original AP article. In one go this move brings in a huge amount of intellectual capital to the AP content eco-system. The AP ends up providing a centralized discussion engine, a virtual Speakers Corner.
All of a sudden we have an old media giant using its inherent advantages (relationships and distribution channels through all media) to enhance rather than shut down conversation. The challenge for the rest of us to how to do this without these advantages. We have our users and if our content is any good we have the conversation starters. That should be enough to get going.
Posted by:
Cian O'Donovan
June 7, 2008 at 6:45 pm · Filed under broadcasting, media
Looks like Steve Ballmer and Keepfakingit are pointing in the same direction on this broadcasters-treating-their-viewers-with-contempt theme we’ve been banging on about recently. Except Steveo is coming at it from a different angle. IP he says is the delivery method that will transform all media not just TV.
Ballmer notes to the Washington Post that kids playing XBox Live are interacting using TVs with people all over the world. Why? because they’re using an IP network that enables two way communication. He’s convinced that within ten years all media, TV, magazines, books, will be delivered this way. And once they are people can start talking to each other and back to big media.
Last night we contended that it would take all viewers having a device, a laptop, iPhone or some other wi-fi gadget (note all IP), on their lap before broadcasters were willing and able to respect their audience. Well here’s the other option. Deliver the broadcast to the device, whether that’s the gadget, or a set-top box.
Once that happens we can get on with building all sorts of interesting communities around the content. This surely is a better way of driving extra revenues for broadcasters than fleecing their viewers using premium sms and phone charges.
Posted by:
Cian O'Donovan
June 6, 2008 at 11:47 pm · Filed under broadcasting, media, social media, tv
Summing up keepfakingit’s previous post: Broadcasters have for years in the UK shown nothing but contempt for their audience. Despite their audience paying their wages, the corporations have insisted that the AUDIENCE PAYS (through SMS, premium rate calls etc.) every time they communicate with the broadcaster. This is ridiculous.
Let’s examine a few facts here. I recently wrote about Clay Shirky’s assertion that people are clawing back some of the time they spend with their TVs and putting that into more creative endevours. Shirky calls this Social Surplus. As someone who works for a broadcaster and sees far too much TV, keepfakingit calls this common sense.
Now let’s look at a trend that’s on a huge upward curve in the US and is following suit in Europe, the simultaneous usage of PC and television. TV ownership per household is somewhere north of 3 right now (can’t find a reference so you’ll just have to trust me on this one) PC ownership is over two and rising fast. Something’s got to give right? According to Shirky there are only so many hours in the day we can consume (or create) media. Well not really. In ever increasing numbers people are watching TV whilst warming their knees with their 15″ Latitudes. IMing and Facebooking whilst contemplating which buffoon to vote out of Big Brother, by text of course.
Right now I don’t see any major broadcasters attempting to tap this in a meaningful way. Yes the news channels ask and use UGC in ever increasing amounts, but live TV has not yet embraced IM, Twitter or even simple commenting and ratings systems.
Dual users are still in the minority but there’s one breakthrough coming that’s about to push dual usage into the ascendancy. Usable, affordable mobile internet. When everyone’s got virtually free bandwidth in their pocket thanks to wi-fi devices, all of a sudden everyone has a conduit to shout abuse at Davina McCall.
And they won’t have to pay for doing it.
All of a sudden Soccer AM’s MySpace profile or Facebook group can have a meaningful roll before, during, and after each show.
It’s time for the producers and creatives involved in mainstream television to start listening at their viewers level, and maybe even start listening where their viewers are talking. With SMS and premium line voting now almost untouchable in the UK, what have broadcasters got to lose?
Posted by:
Cian O'Donovan
June 4, 2008 at 10:54 pm · Filed under broadcasting, media
The BBC are in trouble again today over what is essentially information flows and how they communicate with their paying public. The Daily Mail and other fine institutions of British journalism are claiming that the Match of the Day “Goal of the Season” result has been rigged. Their evidence, a ton of cash has been laid on a Emmanuel Adebayor, Arsenal’s Togolese hitman. True, it’s a great goal, but it had been only third favourite until yesterday. Something stinks.
Whether or not the BBC is in the manure for real on this one or not is irrelevant. The episode serves only to illustrate that at this juncture the public simply don’t trust either the BBC, ITV or any other national broadcaster in the UK. Thanks to stealing their viewers money by way of rigged phone-in and SMS quizzes the broadcasters have only themselves to blame.
Much has been made of live TV shows who kept asking for more audience responses after they’d already decided the result. Or production teams to asked for competition entrants from any part of the country when it was already decided that only those in a certain region would win. But these underhand tactics by producers and APs belie an ignorance and contempt of their audience by short sighted layers of management from top to bottom.
Let’s look at the facts, even if Ant and Dec hadn’t been taking the piss, and oh yes, taking the piss they were.
First, what the hell were BBC and ITV doing asking their audience to pay the relevant broadcaster so that said audience was “allowed” talk to them. Seriously. We pay expensive TV licenses in the UK that fund the BBC. And ITV is no bleeding heart charity. So why should I have to pay to tell Ant or Dec which crappy Cher rip-off I think deserves another shot next week. I shouldn’t. They should be honoured and thrilled that I want to interact with them.
Second thing, if I do find programming that is so compelling I want to communicate with it, or shout at it or whatever, surely there’s a better way than automated switchboards and text messages. These methods of communication, certainly in the context they are employed by the broadcasters do nothing but atomize an audience. They are one way missives that become detached and decontextualized from the viewer as soon as the send button is hit.
There’s got to be a better way.
There is a better way, and I’m going to list some tomorrow, so Grade, Thompson and Duncan, listen up guys.
Posted by:
Cian O'Donovan
