Television Strategy

Not that long ago, people were fond of saying "content is king" because media were dependent on content, not distribution.  Later, some (myself included) argued that the equation had shifted to those who controlled distribution, who simply acquired the content producers.

The time-zone lunacy of "safe harbor" has apparently slapped 52 ABC stations with the maximum $27,500 fine for indecent content. I remember watching the 2003 episode of NYPD Blue that contained a gratuitous nude scene, with the actress barely covering her naughty bits, but living in the Eastern time zone I witnessed the show at 10:03 p.m. Through no fault of their own (my opinion), the Central time zone ABC affiliates (all 52 of them) played the scene at 9:03, based on decades of precedent where primetime runs from 7-10 p.m. local time.

The lunacy stays with the policy-makers in Washington, DC who somehow believe that everyone has the same clock., that somehow a show that runs at 9 (outside the old family hour) will magically appear after 9 in the mid-section of the United States. Or that more adult content in primetime will run after 10, when virtually all affiliates in the CST are doing local news leading into their 10:30 Leno/Letterman/Nightline.

With the exception of live events, I guess the non-East Coast stations will have to be more careful about content. And the networks and Congress can go on pretending that everyone lives under the same clock.

Labels: time zone ABC television FCC

God bless http://www.drudgereport.com/ for opening my eyes to how mainstream media cover up or downplay stories embarrassing to politicians they support. If I had to rely just on CNN or MS-NBC, I would never know the shenanigans cut-and-pasted by Matt Drudge, often from the foreign press that has no ax to grind. My friends tend exclusively to the big three networks and usual newspaper axis (NYT, WAPO, AP) and act surprised when I reveal some scandal brewing about one of their beloved public figures. "Where did you read that?" they ask and after I mention "drudgereport," they sign, "Oh, that's not a real source!"

I beg to differ. It's true that his own unsourced stories seem suspicious, but when he posts valid items from the foreign press or non-mainstream journalist sources, it's hard to ignore. If it's true, who cares who reported it first? (Monica Lewinsky might...)

Apparently no major news organization ran Hillary's meltdown at a recent debate in its entirety. I had to watch it on youtube.com, thanks again to a tip-off from Matt Drudge. Why are top journalists protecting us from her angry performances? She has as much right to lose her cool as a man, but why do we not get to see it replayed on the networks? We certainly got to see her get emotional in a sympathetic way. But not when it makes her look unfriendly.

Addendum, two days later: On the other hand, Matt has much to learn about statistics. He reported a CNN poll on January 12th that showed a 50/48 split between Clinton and McCain and a 49/48 split between Obama and McCain, but the headline reads "either Clinton or Obama would beat any Republican" -- which is not true if you factor in the +/-3.5% margin of error. No one knows how the vote will go, or even if McCain will be nominated, but the margin of sampling error makes the poll outcome into a statistical tie!

If you live in a Comcast market, you have no doubt suffered through their commercials making fun of the "The Big Old Telephone Company" for its monopolistic abuses. This is the pot calling the kettle black: The big old monopolistic cable company has no business making fun of the phone company. For the most part, each is a virtual monopoly for standard service. Ignoring overbuilds, customers have a single choice for landline phones and combination cable/broadband, at least until fiber to the home is a reality.

Every three months or so, the Facebook social network website does something really intrusive or ill-advised, and then spends social capital apologizing and back-pedaling. Their latest brouhaha is over an opt-out feature (Beacon) that lets friends see what their friends are buying.

Moveon.org (one of the more ironic names of all time, as it derived from "moving on" about Clinton's problems, yet won't itself move on about Bush's problems) stirred up a protest as if some huge privacy issues were at stake. Facebook's bad idea was not to let strangers see what you're up to, or the government see what you're up to, but to let your FRIENDS learn what you're up to, as if that's not the raison d'etre for social networking. Apparently not all friends are really close enough to know that you just rented Superbad. It's fine if your pseudo-friends see you drinking from a plastic cup and acting foolish, but God forbid they know that you shop at the Gap.

That's not the issue here. Just how does creator Mark Zuckerberger continually achieve foregiveness for Facebook.com? He's had plenty of gaffs that drew the ire of users.

My theory is that it's solely because he's 23 years old and so are the bulk of his Facebook's members. If he was 35 or 40, then Facebook members would leave the site in droves. But he gets a pass because he's young and foregivably impetuous.

How long will that last? Probably a while. Facebook.com can make more mistakes and as long as the decisions come from someone more likely to be holding a plastic cup and grinning on the beach than, say, Rupert Murdoch, the website will hold onto its core audience. If there's one thing that the 20-something crowd can forgive, it's poor choices.

Labels: facebook

Despite the lurid headline, this edition of The Blog That Nobody Reads deals with cable penetration, currently mired somewhere in the mid-60% range. I say mired, because it's been stuck there for decades and show no signs of growing, perhaps shrinking more.

The reason it matters is this story in the New York Times today about the FCC changing the cable program rules once penetration hits 70%. If you read far enough, as few ever do in a bite-size news sphere, the experts already know the 70/70 rule is dead on arrival.

So it's a moot point. With satellite TV as a competitor, cable is unlikely to ever break the 70 sound barrier. Even before direct satellites were even launched, cable peaked (and plateaued) at 68%.

For years people have been able to choose other activities that compete with primetime TV. My parents went bowling two or three times per week in the 50s and 60s. On a good night my dad might roll over 600 for a series of 3 games and get his name in the newspaper. Or roll a 287 game. It was a social event and I spent many an evening playing with the other little kids of bowlers.

Displacement is usually the effect of TV on normal life. Watching TV keeps you from other activites. In the case of bowling, TV was the activity being replaced. There were no TiVos or VCRs so whatever was on Monday night just never got watched.

Unlike my father, I socialize online. I'm a little old for Facebook, although I have an account, and not weird enough to spend much time on Second Life. My sport is poker (using fake money) and instead of playing face to face, I sit in virtual poker rooms at PokerStars.

The difference is that I can pull up Joost and watch old TV shows from my childhood in one part of my screen and, in another part of my screen, I can knock out strangers on the river (poker slang) as they play me from various cities in the world. The other night I entered a big freeroll tourney and simultaneously watched missed episodes of Big Bang Theory on Joost. Instead of displacing TV, I was time-shifting and instead of bowling I was place-shifting.

Miraculously I won the game, against 11,999 other opponents in the tournament. Too bad each hadn't paid a $1 entry fee, or even a penny, but it was a freeroll tourney so there was no cash prize. I played over six hours, held the chip lead most of the night, which began at 10:30 p.m. and ended after 5 a.m.

My placing on the final three tables won me a seat in a future tiny-cash-prize tourney with no assurance of victory. My winning the final table on this one, however, with the big blinds at $200,000 and the antes at $10,000, was a real rush. Playing heads-up with a guy from Stilwell was just like playing someone on TV or in a live poker room face-to-face.

It's hard to believe, but photographic evidence is plentiful. Screenshot 1 Screenshot 2 Screenshot 3

I wonder what my dad would say. It's a different world in which I need not rely on the local newspaper to chronicle my achievement. Then again, his small-town newspaper had regular subscribers and this blog reaches about 30,000 fewer readers.

Labels: pokerstars bowling

I knew about Ad Block Plus for the Firefox browser, but the new IE7Pro add-in for Internet Explorer is a great ad blocker, too. So how soon will ad skipping on the internet come, akin to TiVo ad-skipping on television? The naysayers will say "years" but I wonder. Isn't the intrusive nature of advertising the whole secret to its own success? Once people opt out, then how can advertising survive? And how will ad-supported media economics survive?

Get your copy at http://www.ie7pro.com/ and turn off/on the ad block with the tools menu. Then compare websites, with and without ads, and ask yourself why you'd want to view ads, and further, why any advertiser would pay for ads anymore if everyone learns to block, and even further, how can free media (ad-supported) survive without ads.