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January 07, 2005

Media on media

: I'm on On The Media this weekend talking about vlogs, about citizens' video. Listen here. Or download big radio's first podcast! (Brian Lehrer and Leonard Lopate are the next podcasts; when I last appeared on Brian's show, I bugged him and the station's program director to put up MP3s of their shows... and they are!) Esther Dyson appears on the same show. toca 2 bonus access

On the interview, Bob Garfield makes reference to my embarrassing albeit pioneering attempts at vlogging two years ago. OK, since you insist, they're here. toca 2 bonus access

: I'm also interviewed on The Advertising Show about citizens' media and marketing. Stream will be up midday Saturday. toca 2 bonus access

LINK | Comments (0)

Oh, Gawd!

: England is turning into America. The red states are spreading. Church attendance rises in London.toca 2 bonus access

: More evidence of red-state seepage into England: An outcry of prigs and prudes against the BBC airing of the Jerry Springer play. toca 2 bonus access

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So much for tsunami news

: Jen and Brad have split. toca 2 bonus access

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Ingratitude

: Australians are worried about attacks on aid workers by angry Muslims:

Fuelling the volatility of the region, fundamental Islamic activists are also flooding into the region in a bid to guard against what they regard as dangerous Western influences....toca 2 bonus access

Indonesian sources say the chief concerns for the safety of aid workers and unarmed defence personnel are Free Aceh Movement (GAM) separatists looking for publicity, criminal gangs attached to GAM, and Islamic fundamentalists concerned about the influx of Westerners.toca 2 bonus access

One hardline Islamic group took aim yesterday at an Australian Catholic charity, Father Chris Riley's Youth off the Streets, planning to set up an orphanage in tsunami-ravaged Aceh, warning it not to try to convert Muslim children.

Nutjobs. Just plain nutjobs. toca 2 bonus access

I ridiculed the NY Times when it said the reason for us to give aid to Indian Ocean victims was because we should make nice to Muslims for our PR. No, I said, the reason to do it is because it's the right thing to do. Period. toca 2 bonus access

And attacking aid workers who are doing the right thing is the wrong thing. Period. If these nutjobs attack the good souls who are there to help them... well, let the world and God judge them.toca 2 bonus access

LINK | Comments (3)

Paranoia reigns supreme

: I, too, am chomping at the bit waiting for CBS to finally release the Rathergate report. But in the meantime, I have a life. RatherBiased apparently does not. Now they're even attacking CBS flacks. They're going after the hiring of Donna Dees, a former CBS flack because -- gasp -- she's an organizer of the Million Mom March! She doesn't like guns! She must be a ... liberal!toca 2 bonus access

Back when I was a TV critic, I worked with Donna. I asked for tapes and facts. She sent them. Worked fine. I met her at MMM. She was still nice. So now she's going to flack for CBS News again. No big. No conspiracy. No -- pardon me -- smoking gun. toca 2 bonus access

Hey, Ratherbiased guys, go take a weekend. Go to the mall. Go to a movie. Get popcorn. Order a beer. Live it up. And then let's get back next week and dig into the Rathergate report with fang and claws. In the meantime, get a life. toca 2 bonus access

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Waaa Waaaa Waaaa My bow tie is too tight!

: Mickey Kaus and Andrew Sullivan are teaming up at the Tucker Carlson Defense Fund. As Artie Lang would say on Howard Stern: Waaa Waaaa Waaaa! They fired me! I'm an unemployed conservate in a bow tie. Waaaa Waaaa Waaaa! Wails Kaus:

Yesterday, in the course of killing Crossfire and not renewing Crossfire co-host Tucker Carlson's contract--two decisions that may be perfectly defensible--Klein told the Associated Press, "I guess I come down more firmly in the Jon Stewart camp." ... So let me get this straight. Carlson soldiers on as Crossfire interviewer while the show gets worse and worse. It's expanded, it's contracted, it's moved around the schedule. He has CNN people yelling in his ear to "get mad" or to interrupt his guests. He does what he's told. (You think he necessarily likes doing that? Then why is his own show, Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered, a model of civil discourse?) Then Carlson has a guest on Crossfire, a popular liberal comedian who doesn't like CNN-style shoutfests and when challenged calls Carlson a "dick" on the air. Everybody talks about it for a week. Most of the chatterers favor the comedian. Carlson takes a PR hit for the team. So when Klein gets to choose between backing his organization's employee up or associating himself with the popular comedian, Klein ... tells the press he sides with the guy who called his employee a "dick"? ...

Oh, come on. It's show biz! Carlson could have decided anytime not to yell and act like a dork. He could have said, "I'm my own man and I don't care what you say in my ear. I am the star." Instead, he and his cohort shouted and incited shouting and acted like dorks. And he'll get hired elsewhere. There's a shortage of dorks on TV, you know. toca 2 bonus access

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Up the down staircase

: Dateline is doing a panic piece on a tsunami hitting New York. So we had been thinking about ways to get down fast and now we need to get up fast. Or move to Kansas. toca 2 bonus access

LINK | Comments (5)

Competition, it's what makes America great

: Gizmodo has Bill Gates:

I think blogging is super-important and we've got to do a lot more software....toca 2 bonus access

Well, we're very proud of the role of the PC in allowing lots of voices to exist and make them accessible. Historically, the publishing baron in the city had a very high share of voice, and they didn't even need to employ the best writers, because they had kind of the unique distribution. As more and more reading gets online, the ability to get to lots of different things, and the competition and quality that takes will be pretty amazing.toca 2 bonus access

We ourselves aren't that much of a publisher. We did the Slate Magazine thing to try and prove out what kind of things, what kind of formats could you do in online journalism that were different than the things that had been done.toca 2 bonus access

We're very proud of pioneering that—what was it, ten years [ago] or something—and pass that on to the Washington Post. In the long run, it's a more natural fit there. I'm not some media expert....

: Meanwhile, Engadget has geek goddess Cat Schwartz. toca 2 bonus access

Hmmmmm.toca 2 bonus access

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It's war

: DirecTV announces it will release a branded personal video recorder to compete with TiVo. This follows TiVo's announcement that it is throwing its fate with the internet rather than with old pipes (and birds). It's war. For TiVo, it is a war of survival and the question is whether it has the resources to survive long enough to reach the future that will surely arrive, when the internet and BitTorrent become a primary means of delivery of media. toca 2 bonus access

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More exploding TV

: I found more evidence of exploding TV at the Consumer Electronics Show, below. toca 2 bonus access

Cory Bergman at Lost Remote finds more:

For years broadcasters have heard warnings that the internet will challenge their core TV business. But some still think the internet only siphons away a little TV viewing here and there. No big deal. But they're missing the big picture. Take a look at the announcements coming out of CES. Tech companies are aggressively wiring their way into living rooms with video via the internet (Microsoft, TiVo, Akimbo) and phone fiber (SBC). Then of course, don't forget satellite and cable as they race to add VOD features (DISH announced today). With so many pipelines into tomorrow's living rooms -- all providing on-demand content -- the tired, old broadcast model falls flat. Everything will be on-demand and interactive. So why do so many TV stations (and to a lesser extent, the networks) still think of themselves as broadcasters? How yesterday. TV stations must reinvent themselves as content providers for multiple platforms.

: See also this from the NY Times. And this from PaidContent. toca 2 bonus access

: Exploding TV posts here. toca 2 bonus access

LINK | Comments (3)