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October 20, 2004

Confidential

: NY Times editor Bill Keller and LA Times editorial page editor Michael Kinsley spar and spit over protecting reporters' confidential sources. (Sadly, they don't link to Kinsley's original column.)

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Control

: Last week, I quoted reports from the Association of National Advertisers confab, in which many realized that they're not in control anymore; the shift of control that has happened to the rest of media is now coming to advertising. This week, Ad Age Editor Scott Donaton says, Amen. (And, of course, the online editor over there puts the boss' column online!):

General Motors' Roger Adams... said, "The consumer wants to be in control, and we want to put them in control." Echoed Saatchi & Saatchi chief Kevin Roberts, "The consumer now has absolute power."

"It is not your goddamn brand," he told marketers.

This consumer empowerment is at the heart of everything. End users are now in control of how, whether and where they consume information and entertainment. Whatever they don't want to interact with is gone. That upends the intrusive model the advertising business has been sustained by for decades.

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Podcasting goes primetime

: I had the pleasure of appearing on Brian Lehrer's show on WNYC today (which makes me feel like I'm visiting Harvard, rubbing elbows with the smart kids) and besides having fun talking about Jon Stewart, I got to push Brian and the station's programming director -- who was sitting there to make pledge pitches -- to put up all their shows online as MP3s so their audience can distribute them. Brian properly takes credit for putting up all their shows in archives and nuggetized archives at that. But I said they should be putting them out there as MP3s so the audience can distribute the great stuff -- with underwriter or pledge spiels attached. They were both shaking their heads. I think it may just happen.

Brian also talked about podcasting -- and they're planning on doing a segment on it -- which is damned nice to see the new radio on the old radio.

: Separately, AdAge (again, and again without links!) has a cover story this week on "The iPod Economy." They miss entirely podcasting and the idea that the iPod is a new platform for a new medium of anything/anywhere/anytime programming. But even so....

They say that the iPod now supports an industry of 1,000 peripherals.

...but big marketers with their own histories of ingenuity are lining up to ally themselves with the product, basking in the iPod's marketing glow...

"The iPod is not just a consumer-electronics device, it's a cultural icon," said Michael Gartenberg, director of research at Jupiter Research. "...By making strong associations with other very strong brands, it establishes the iPod as a way to get the iPod experience into consumers' hands." ...

"Apple doesn't sell an MP3 player, they sell a lifestyle," said Andrew Green, VP-marketing and design at Griffin. "Buyers of iPods are buying into a club."

They're also buying into a new medium, man.

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Money makes ze 'sphere go around

: Wow. Just got my AdAge this week and I see a major story about bloggers making money via BlogAds, listing the top draws with their weekly rates: Kos at $13,250, Josh Marshall at $10k, Atrios at $6k, Sullivan at $5,600, Wonkette at $4k (which, of course, doesn't include the ads Denton sells first). Note that Instapundit is not on that list -- because his rates are too low (and he's holding down the rates others can charge as a result... hint, hint). Damn AdAge for not putting the story online for all to see.....

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Exploding TV

: I was lucky to join a lunch Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham held to ask some folks how TV is going to be disrupted with the advent of TV programming that will be directly addressable (as opposed to hose-fed by networks over wires).

Fred writes about it here. He says that some are enthusiastic about VOD, others by streaming. Predictably, I donned the video alterego of my Blogboy persona to become BitTorrentBoy. A few of my thoughts (including some remix of the conversation):

: The way to make big money in the longrun in the explosion of TV is to go around the present players. The current networks can't act subversively because cable MSOs have them by the balls (and won't let them put content out there on the internet to compete with cable) and rights-holders and lawyers have them by the neck (and will stop them from distributing content) and they're addicted to big money -- big expenses, big revenue, constant growth.

So learn lessons from the explosion of the print industry thanks to the advent of online:

Many of the big players will be new players -- video Googles, Yahoos, Netscapes (RIP), eBays, Amazons, CraigsLists, and so on. Oh, there'll be money made by the old guys in addressable video; they'll make it sooner. But eventually, the subsversive companies will do to video what, for example, CraigsList has done to papers.

Walled gardens (AOL = cable MSOs; Pathfinder = oldstyle networks) will not prevail. Open, distributed, ad hoc networks will win.

Interactivity won't mean pushing a button to get "more about this" while you watch a TV show (as ITV is now defined, insultingly and boringly). Interactivity will mean recommending TV shows to the rest of the world, remixing TV shows, making TV shows: citizens' TV.

New tools and citizen producers will reduce the cost of producing TV to a comparative nil and there goes the barrier to entry to video.

: What excites me most is that reduced cost of production. That's really what drove weblogs: history's cheapest publishing tool reduced the barrier to entry to media and allowed anyone to produce and distribute text content. Now this will come to video. I've said it before (warning: I'll say it again) ... A half-hour of how-to TV that now costs X hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce can be done quite respectably -- and probably with more life and immediacy -- for a few thousand dollars. New content producers will pop up all over (just as they did in blogs) and now they can distribute their content freely (thanks to BitTorrent). That is where I want to play.

At the same time, networks will no longer be able to continually raise their rates even as their audiences shrink and so they'll have to find profitability in reducing costs. These new content producers will show the way and even eventually start producing content for the big boys.

: There will be new tools to produce audio and video content: the video Movable Type. Apple is making most of those tools today; there will be a few more. That will be an OK business. I'd rather build the content and the brands than the tools, but that's because I'm not a toolmaker.

: There will need to be a Google of video -- a means of helping people find what they want. And, no, that's not just about creating a search engine. It's about capturing the metadata we create when we watch and share things and making sense of it. It's not trivial but it's vital for without a great guide, we'll never find the programming we want and this new medium won't work. This video Google thing will be the next Google and TV Guide and it will be big. And I doubt that either Google or TV Guide will be the one to create it.

: While copyright holders and Congress get their knickers in knots about protecting content and restricting its use, people will be copying and remixing and distributing content like crazy.

The smart content creator will embrace this. And it will be a helluva lot easier for video creators to embrace the Napster/Kaazaa/BitTorrent world than it was for music because (a) they can learn from music's mistake and (b) we're already used to video programming being underwritten by sponsors.

Video programming, as Fred says, needs to come with hooks to serve ads and ping servers. If that exists, then content creators will happily let their content be distributed by whatever means -- so long as the can be paid when ads appear and so long as advertisers can target and track those ads.

This is a vital infrastructure that will enable a new world. Who will make it? Who knows?

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The real game

: The best replay I heard of last night's amazing Yankees/Sox game (not that I tend to hear much sports, mind you) was Artie Lang regaling the Stern show this morning with tales of the angry, drunken, desperate Yankee fans in the stands. That's what we need: coverage from the stands, from the fan's eyes, not from the dehumidified, dehumanized confines of a broadcast booth.

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My, my

: The minor dustup between Glenn Reynolds and Tony Pierce over blogger bias that began playing itself out here (and here, then here and here) has been covered and quoted extensively by Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post today. Glenn responds here to Andrew Sullivan's criticism here about lacking fire: "I've actually tried quite consciously to moderate my tone in the run-up to the elections, because I think that there's quite enough abuse out there." I've noticed that lately on Instapundit and I've been damned glad to see it. Actually, I think Glenn has returned to his natural self, having banished the angry Glenn with a few stiff drinks.

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Loonitarians

: Weblogs are the best thing to happen to the libertarian cause since its beginning. Libby bloggers -- and I'm still not sure why there are disproporportional number of them -- have done a great job spreading their worldview and making sense of it. They have advanced their cause admirably.

But this morning, I hear an NPR story about Libertarian candidate Michael Badnarik and it consigns libertarians right back into the looney bin: Their candidate thinks driver's licenses are unconstitutional, the report says, and so Badnarik makes it a point to get arrested for driving without a license whenever he can to prove his alleged point. This is exactly the image libertarians had for years: impractical, obnoxious loons.

I suggest that the libertarian bloggers band together and take over their party, for they are, in fact, their party's best hope: Hold the first online convention, a national internet primary to pick your next candidate. Run some sane people with libby leanings (Reynolds, Volokh, Gillespie, et al). And continue to have sane discussion of issues from your perspective to add into the national debate. And get rid of the loonies.

: A libby discussion ensues thanks to Matt Welch over at Hit & Run.

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What we need is a Friars' Club for the internet

: I got an email pitch from Always On to join up and pay up for the priviliege of getting its print magazine and getting discounts to its events. And that was fine -- if hauntingly familiar -- so far. But then I read on to the pitch for the first event:

As an example, all AO Insiders will be invited to a members-only Churchill
Club affair on November 9th for the Top 10 Trends in Technology Debate,
featuring John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins and Bono's new investment partner,
Roger McNamee. You will also be invited to the Yahoo campus on December 8th
to watch my live interview with Chief Yahoo Jerry Yang at a private dinner
for 300 insiders.

Web 2.0 ruined the appeal of that. John Doerr was an utter ass on stage, refusing to answer questions, playing coy for no reason, revealing nothing, boring the audience. And Jerry Yang, though a terribly nice guy, really has nothing new to say. Reverential interviews and panel discussions with these guys won't get a dollar from me. On the other hand, what if we started a Friars' Club for online with roasts of them (and a few others I can nominate). Now that would be entertaining.

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Stewart redux

: CNET writes about Jon Stewart and CNN and quotes this very blog on why CNN should have put the clip out there for all to see and send along. (It's funny seeing a quote written in blogspeak puilled out in a news story; it looks like a kid in jeans at the prom.)

I'll be on Brian Lehrer's show on WNYC this morning at 11 on the same topic. I hope to tell NPR that they should be cutting up all their shows into bit to allow the audience to distribute them (with sponsor underwriter messages and begging pledge pitches attached). Viral, audience, BitTorrent/RSS distribution of their programming would explode the audience for NPR -- and be damned convenient for their fans. NPR should fuel podcasting. At this point, most NPR affiliates won't allow most NPR programming even onto satellite. But WNYC could lead the way with its best show, Lehrer's.

: Oh, my, the CNET quotes look even nicer under a New York Times logo.

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