Entries Tagged 'media world' ↓

Is it Olbermann vs. Matthews or Olbermann vs. Rupert Murdoch?

Gawker wants to know [but you'll need to click on the Gawker link to get the links embedded in this quote ---ed.]:

So the Post has posted the Page Six item Keith Olbermann was so worked up about yesterday, and it does indeed say Hardball host Chris Matthews “seemed” to be talking about a strategy for landing Tim Russert’s job at a memorial event for the NBC personality, and that Olbermann is threatening to quit if he doesn’t get Russert’s Meet The Press job. …

But the gossip item also quotes a source, ostensibly from the traditional broadcast side of NBC News, who claims that Russert himself wanted NBC News political director Chuck Todd as his own replacement, and that the network will never install someone from MSNBC on the show:

The insider said,

“They’re cable. They’re far too partisan. They have no gravitas. If gravitas is eight letters, they’re about seven letters short.”

I last wrote about Olbermann and the absurd notion that one of the MSNBC cablers would get to sit in Russert’s chair here and here.

But I reserve the right to hedge by saying that in the brave new media world, anything is possible.

I’m neither a futurist nor an interested party (except as a book lover and casual observer of trends who looks forward to a bright future for books when their content will be offered through many channels and via many platforms), but Evan Schnittman’s scenario about the pedestrian future of e-books [bottom line: they should and will, he predicts, be free] seems plausible to me:

My thinking was somewhat influenced by the events of the last couple of weeks. First Steve Jobs is quoted about the Kindle saying “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.” One week later, Don Katz sold Audible, his digital audio platform and online retail store that was to spoken word recording what iTunes is to digital music, to Amazon for $300mm. Audible licenses its platform to Apple for use on the iPod/iTunes.

In my mind a connection was made between these events as I started to wonder if Jobs, smarting over the loss of Audible’s platform, was lashing out at Amazon. Then I wondered if this was a classic Jobs line - deflecting any interest in something and then a year later releasing that very thing. However, this idle speculation ebbed and a more interesting connection took its place - a link established in my mind between ebooks and audiobooks.

I have evolved my thinking to see that a “thriving” ebook market will look much more like the audio book market than the print book market. (I should mention that I see the parallel only in size, scope, and type of audience, not in market factors, content delivery, cost of production, or experiential preference. Audio books are not about reading - ebooks are all about reading.)

If one looks closely at how people like me use ebooks, you will see that convenience and portability is what drives use. While ebooks have been around for nearly 10 years in fairly usable forms, the devices to read them have been terrible - until now with the recent generation of e-ink readers such as the Kindle. (Yes, there are plenty of people who are perfectly happy reading on their PDA, iphone, laptop, etc - but let’s be honest; they are a tiny and low revenue producing audience.)

The growth I see in ebooks mimics the audio book phenomenon- by connecting readers who commute or travel with the content they crave. Audiobooks have made a marketplace out of people getting book content when they cannot read and has taught people to enjoy being read to again. Similarly, Ebooks are a brilliant option when you can bring everything you are reading with you and an even better option when you can buy instantly wherever you happen to be - just as digital audio downloads onto an iPod have done for the folks who don’t want to schlep around CD’s or cassettes.

 Via Michael Cader at Publishers Marketplace [subscription required]:

Returning to the Free eBook with Purchase Idea
Oxford’s Evan Schnittman has a two-part post on Oxford blog asking “Do I Believe in Ebooks?” Ultimately, what he does believe is that “an ebook license be granted as part of the purchase price to anyone who buys a new print book.”

He writes: “I have come to this somewhat radical idea, not because I am one of the folks who believe all digital content should be free for the benefit of mankind. Nor did I come to this conclusion because I don’t believe there will ever be a place for ebooks. I came to this conclusion after becoming a fairly heavy user of ebooks and learning first hand what is best and worst about ebooks.

“The reality is that even if the current audience of ebook users were to grow by magnitudes over the next few years, the total market would only reach 3 to 4% of print. Therefore we must admit to ourselves as an industry that ebooks will always be a small niche player as a standalone platform and make them free with new book purchases.

“Making ebooks free with new print books will be an operational puzzle that most will scoff at. While there certainly are huge issues to overcome, there are already many initiatives and ventures in place that make such a notion feasible.

“In the end this could be a marketer and merchandiser dream. I believe moving to free ebooks with the purchase of a new print title would cost or lose the industry nothing in sales as ebooks would still be available for individual purchase for those who don’t want to spend on print. What we would gain is that books - print books - would increase in value and utility.”

Recent post
First post

I await the bright future of a world awash with the cumulative information—and wisdom—of all mankind.

And I wish for every person access to the information and wisdom that can set him/her free.

It was in that spirit that I once wrote:

If you love books, set them free.

The NYT’s David Carr delivers grim news to “creatives”:

I’ve got some bad news for striking Hollywood writers: Election 2008 is a breakaway hit.

January was supposed to be the month when the writers’ strike took its toll, subjecting viewers to a menu of desiccated repeats and cheesy reality shows. Instead, the primary season is serving as the backdrop for one of the most compelling runs of event television in years, creating the kind of chatter network marketers would kill for and spectacular ratings for cable news.

Carr repeatedly tries to suggest that it’s the absence of appealing alternatives (like sports, late-night comedy, and scripted shows, for example) that accounts for the huge gains in audience numbers for “cable news” since 2004.

The Times’s Bill Keller disagrees:

“I think the level of interest in the presidential race would be intense even if writers were still churning out episodes of ‘24’ and ‘Grey’s Anatomy,’ ” he wrote. “It’s a defining race for both parties, with a cast of fascinating candidates, some of whom fall into the breakthrough category. There also seems to be a visceral national yearning to turn the page.”

Perhaps. But I’m more inclined to accept the explanation of Brian Grazer, who is not a gazillionaire producer for nothing [e.a.]:

“There is a new episode on almost every night,” said Brian Grazer, a Hollywood producer who is in what is left of the Oscar hunt with “American Gangster.” “It is very human to be constantly searching for new stories, and now that the traditional outlets of those stories are shutting down, people are finding their drama in these unfolding events.”

So, yes, I agree with Grazer and with Keller. But neither one of them will come out and say the bleeding obvious: that it is the manner of coverage of politics that is drawing in the audiences. The “drama” is being manufactured by the cable “news” networks. (In this case, it is helped along by the wide-open nature of the political race, but that only makes it easier for the networks to churn out stories with unpredictable endings.)

It is not news. It is infotainment—in other words, information (none of which is necessarily true) packaged as entertainment.  

Now do you believe me when I say that Infotainment Rules? Here’s what I wrote:

Television, however, delivers what sells, and what sells is entertainment—or stuff that is packaged like entertainment. Infotainment doesn’t have to be bad or stupid or crass. High-quality infotainment may in fact be superior to dry “news” as a vehicle for delivering information to audiences.

Once again: I do not endorse the hideous devolution of TV “news” into infotainment. I am merely trying to get people to understand that what they’re getting on TV is not “news.” It’s entertainment, and the goal of its producers is to get you to watch their channel.

They do it by hooking you on stories. If the stories are exciting and the ending isn’t known to anyone in advance (as in an election, or a sensational kidnapping, or some violent flare-up somewhere, for example), people tune in. That’s why cable “news” is addicted to horse-race coverage of the U.S. election that is ten months away and can barely turn away to give any attention to the visit of our president to the Middle East.

If you want to know the news, take advantage of the vast amount of information available on the Internet and read widely.

If you want fictional rather than reality-based (and reality-bending) entertainment on TV and you want our political process to be a little more serious and less unseemly … I don’t know how to advise you. All I do is call ‘em how I see ‘em.

No, not for Hillary, you sillies, though this is also for a woman (women are never be front-runners, dontcha know?).

This one is for New York’s own media darling (from a decade ago)—Tina Brown (from the Daily Intelligencer):

Late last week, we received a very nice invitation to a luncheon sponsored by the Magazine Publisher’s Association and the American Society of Magazine Editors. It was their annual lifetime achievement awards, and guess who is being honored? Tina Brown. Apparently the former editor of Tatler, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and the ill-fated Talk is at that point in her career when the final retrospective is in order. You know, the point in her career that comes at the end.

They’ve written her professional obituary before.