new media – Page 13 – Media Matters

October 5, 2008

Movies by and about Michael Moore

There’s a new film out by Michael Moore (Roger & Me, Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11, Sicko) but you won’t find it in theaters. In an attempt to allow as many people as possible access to the film, Moore is making the film available as a computer download at slackeruprising.com

The documentary chronicles Moore’s sixty-city tour in 2004 to get out the youth vote for John Kerry. In large stadium rallies, Moore challenges those in attendance to go to the polls. To help sweeten the deal, Moore is seen handing out Raman noodles and clean underwear to those who take his pledge to vote. Of course the outcome of the 2004 race turns this film into a review of what went wrong for Moore and his campaign. One suspects that the release of Slacker Uprising now is another attempt to motivate the college crowd to get out the vote….this time for Obama.

The documentary also chronicles Moore’s celebrity pals who show up to lend support. Eddie Vedder, Joan Baez, Viggo Mortensen, and Rosanne Barr are just some of the celebs who adoringly introduce Moore to the auditorium crowds. Film critics have been accusing Moore of being self-indulgent since Roger & Me premiered nearly 20 years ago…and this film will fan those flames again.

If you want to see a totally different perspective on Moore you can check out David Zucker’s comedy spoof called An American Carol, out in theaters now. This parody pokes fun at a character clearly modeled after Moore who is trying to abolish the Fourth of July holiday. While conservatives rail against Moore’s “liberal bias”, liberal critics accuse An American Carol of being “right-wing propaganda”.

What do you think?

Slacker Uprising trailer at blip.tv

An American Carol trailer at YouTube

September 13, 2008

MySpace Music to the Rescue!

The music industry has had a tough time of it for the past decade or so…but help may be on the way. According to a news story reported in Business Week, MySpace Music is about to launch in a few days.

MySpace Music is a joint venture between News Corp.’s social networking site and the three largest record labels—Universal Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, and Warner Music.

This effort is a direct response to the plummeting revenue that music labels have been experiencing since 1999. Part of the reason for the decline is online music piracy…but some would argue that it also reflects a shortage of hit records. Whatever the cause, record labels are trying new tricks to monetize their creative assets.

According to Business Week,

The idea behind MySpace Music is that it can help generate revenue for artists every day, not just around an album’s release. The venture gives the labels access to MySpace’s global audience of 118 million users and its ad sales team of more than 250 people. It also provides the labels with a prominent venue to pull in audiences and advertisers with new types of nonmusic content, including music news, behind-the-scenes videos, and artist interviews.

MySpace is designed to do more than bring in ad revenue, though. It also gives the industry a new channel through which to sell songs, ringtones, T-shirts, and tickets. With 5 million artists using the site to promote their bands, MySpace has already become a major destination for discovering new music and upcoming concerts.

One thing is fairly clear–the major record labels have been slow to embrace new media and only time will tell if this is a case of “better late than never,” or “too little, too late!” What do you think? Will MySpace Music revive the ailing music industry?

August 29, 2008

Welcome to Campus: Here’s Your iPhone

At the risk of making you want to transfer to University of Maryland or Abilene Christian University in Texas, you might as well know that several higher ed institutions are giving iPhones or iPod touch mobile devices to students this fall. While the “wow” factor is certainly one part of the equation, the other reasons cited are; online research, instant polling of students, and safety (students on the network can be instantly notified if an emergency arises).

In 2004 Duke University gave 20GB iPods, equipped with Belkin voice recorders, to 1,650 freshmen and encouraged the students to use them to record lectures. The iPods were preloaded with orientation information, a calendar of events, and, of course, the Duke fight song. They even envisioned a daily audio editorial to be downloaded from the campus newspaper. According to Duke University the experiment was a success on several fronts–one of which was the publicity generated for “Duke’s institutional commitment to technology.” The positive effect on learning was more difficult to measure.

Which leads us to the question: is mobile communication technology a help or hindrance when it comes to the enterprise of higher education? Clearly there are benefits to having internet and intranet resources at your fingertips when studying. And the online collaboration afforded by portable media devices cannot be denied. But what about when communication technology in the classroom competes with the professor for the attention of the student? According to the NY Times, one professor said he would ban the use of iPhones in class because it would detract from their opportunity to develop a, “wide range of complex reasoning abilities.” On the flip side one student speculated that professors might work harder to make classes interesting if they were competing with iPhones. What do you think?

August 21, 2008

Gold medal ratings for NBC

Twenty years ago this month I was fortunate to have the opportunity to work with NBC Sports in their coverage of the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, Korea. I, along with the rest of the technical team, worked 32 days straight, between 12-16 hours per day. It was grueling but fun, and exciting to be a part of the biggest broadcast event in history. Every four years the Summer Olympic games are the biggest broadcast event in history…and this year is no exception. Back in 1988 we were excited to be part of the team offering up more than 180 hours of television coverage. This year they will broadcast 3,600 hours of the Olympics on seven networks — NBC, USA Network, MSNBC, CNBC, Oxygen, Telemundo and Universal HD, as well as streaming video on the Internet and to mobile devices. Just to put that in perspective, NBC reports that the 2008 coverage will exceed, by more than 1000 hours, the combined coverage of every Summer Olympics from Rome 1960 to Athens 2004.

In addition to the expansion of coverage, this year has seen a big increase in the size of the audience. According to NBC, approximately 157 million people, about half the U.S. population, watched some Olympic action in the first several days. In addition, Nielsen Media Research reports that NBC Universal’s Beijing Olympic coverage was the most-watched event in U.S. television history with more than 214 million total viewers. Starting with the opening ceremonies, TV ratings records have been falling like world records in the Water Cube. Some are calling it the Phelps effect. With 8 gold medals and 7 world records, Michael Phelps is certainly attracting TV, and web, viewers. Visitors to NBCOlympics.com viewed 1.1 million streams of the 400 meter freestyle relay in which the US came from behind to win the gold. (For more audience research on the 2008 games, visit the Nielsen website. See especially the Special Report: The Olympics’ Impact on Advertising and The Media)

NBC is hoping that they can turn those viewers into advertising revenue. After paying nearly $900 million for the rights to broadcast the Beijing Olympics to the American audience, NBC is working overtime to turn sports drama into dollars. And there appears to be no end in sight for rising costs. NBC Sports Chairman Dick Ebersol (no “e” = no relation, I’m sorry to report) has also secured the rights to the 2012 Summer Olympics in London for a reported $1.181 billion. Makes you wonder how they ever hope to recoup that kind of money.

July 2, 2008

Outsourcing the News

Of all the professions that you would think would be safe from the trends towards outsourcing, newspaper journalism would be high on everyone’s list. But you may want to reconsider. Listen to this story from NRP’s Morning Edition (click on Listen Now). Seems that not only is ad design headed for points on the other side of the planet. Business Week reported that the Orange County Register is outsourcing copy editing and layout. Even news coverage is fair game. News about the Pasadena City Council was outsourced as reported in the LA Times. Remember Shift Happens?

Here’s a video version of Shift Happens-

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U]

May 24, 2008

Streaming movies to your computer, and to your TV

For years the movie industry has been trying to figure out how to distribute their products to consumers. Movies that have a theatrical release have film “prints” made, which are then shipped to theaters (BTW, printing and shipping can cost tens of millions of dollars), loaded onto projects, and presented to audiences sitting in the dark listening to cell phones and small talk while their shoes adhere to the floor. Although I’m exaggerating the down-side of the theater experience (and ignoring the positive aspects such as image and sound quality, the group dynamic that allows us to laugh, scream and cringe at exactly the same moment, etc.), the economic reality is that printing and projecting 35mm film prints is destined for the same fate as the broadsheet newspaper. But until digital distribution and projection technology (and security) improves, it is still the best alternative for the group viewing experience.

Roku's interface box for Netflix Viewing motion pictures in the comfort of your own home on your Blu-Ray high definition, 5.1 surround sound home theater system is another matter. With gas at $4/gal and climbing, there’s got to be a better way than driving to your local video rental store to pickup and return a movie on DVD. Cable would like you to subscribe to their VOD (Video On Demand) service to watch something in their library. But that’s part of the problem…their library is limited. Netflix, on the other hand, has a huge database of movies available. While currently only a fraction (about 10% of their 100,000 title library) are available for streaming to your computer, the good news is that more and more movies are being added, and you can purchase a piece of hardware for $100 that makes your Netflix moves available for viewing on your big-screen TV. Think AppleTV but cheaper. The Roku costs less (Apple TV is $250), and there is no additional cost per movie if you’re on one of Netflix’s unlimited plans that starts at $8.99/month.

When broadband internet connections and large-screen HD displays reach saturation, all movies will be distributed online rather than on disc. And if you want that group-viewing experience, you’ll just have to invite your friends over to the house!

April 29, 2008

GTA IV

Grand Theft Auto, version IV, is out today and according to early reports is expected to break a few records (perhaps $200 million in US sales the first week). USA Today reports that the video game industry is already on a roll, with revenues up every month for the past 2 years and last year reporting record sales of $18 billion. BTW, that’s more than the film industry. Video game critics are also suggesting that the rich narratives and increasingly realistic visual effects of games like GTA are making video games the ultimate replacement for feature films. Why just watch a film when you can control one?! GTA highlights the power of interactive media to engage the player while creating a world in which anything…and in this case it really is anything…can happen. Will Wright, the renowned game designer, calls this the game’s “possibility space.”

Of course there are always social issues that accompany any new technology and the related mass media phenomena. Rockstar Games, maker of GTA, has been in hot water since the “Hot Coffee” scandal when an earlier version of GTA had hidden content that was, a) not very well hidden, and b) clearly Adult Only in nature. I won’t get into the raging controversy about the effects of video game play right now, but if you’er interested, check out this audio podcast from On the Media. Or, if you want, take a look at the extended trailer and you’ll get a hint of what the debate is about. Be forewarned, it is rated Mature, and some of the content is clearly not appropriate for the younger teen crowd.

April 19, 2008

Seeing Red @ NAB/BEA in LV, NV

For the acronym impaired, the second part of the title refers to the National Association of Broadcasters/Broadcast Education Association convention in Las Vega, Nevada. I attended the conference this past week along with a couple of colleagues and several students from CSU-Pueblo. As always the NAB exhibit hall was daunting…too much to see and take in in the short amount of time that I had. And the BEA conference that followed the NAB presented its own challenges. I found myself wanting to attend two or three concurrent sessions and having to make some difficult choices on which one to attend.

So, what did I see in Vegas…besides the sad evidence of thousands of people trying to get lucky? Perhaps the most impressive new tools on the NAB showroom floor were the cameras by Red. The promise of electronic cinematography has been around for a long time…Francis Ford Coppola was a leading proponent back in the 80s…but this camera heralds a new age of electronic image acquisition. With over 4K pixels horizontal, the high resolution image is suitable for delivery on everything from HDTV to film projection. And with a camera body price below $18K, some are calling the Red, “the tipping point of the democratization of filmmaking.” This year Red intro’d the Scarlet…a 3K camera below $3K. Truly amazing! Check out the YouTube interview with Ted “Leader of the Rebellion” Schilowitz.

BEA also provided an excellent opportunity to find out what’s on the cutting edge of media production, research, and instruction. I had the opportunity to attend excellent sessions sponsored by the documentary division as well as several research presentations by colleagues and graduate students. All in all, a very interesting and informative visit to this dull, dusty town in the Nevada desert.

April 9, 2008

The Social Media News Release

Over at MediaShift Mark Glaser has written a fascinating article about the latest trend in news releases…the social media news release. If you want to cut right to the chase, check out the image on the right to see what a SMNR might look like. According to Glaser, the venerable news release–the stock in trade tool of PR practitioners–is long past its prime. The all-to-obvious solution is to update the release to take advantage of the power of social media.

Glaser quotes Tom Foremski who had this to say about traditional press releases:

Press releases are nearly useless. They typically start with a tremendous amount of top-spin, they contain pat-on-the-back phrases and meaningless quotes…Press releases are created by committees, edited by lawyers, and then sent out at great expense through Business Wire or PRnewswire to reach the digital and physical trash bins of tens of thousands of journalists. This madness has to end. It is wasted time and effort by hundreds of thousands of professionals.

Strong words. But if these new-fangled news releases catch on, it means that PR practitioners will have to become more savvy about social media technologies such as RSS feeds and social aggregation tools. And as these news releases incorporate more and more rich media, i.e., digital audio and video, skill with digital media tools will also be necessary. If you’re preparing for a career in PR and thinking that your future includes faxing text press releases–you may want to think again.

February 29, 2008

The New Media Presidential Race

Looking back at the 2008 Presidential Race historians and media critics are likely to note some dramatic shifts. One is the increased interest and participation on the part of young voters. The second, and clearly related, phenomenon is the use of new media technology by the candidates, their supporters, and their detractors. One example of consumer-generated new media in a supporting role is the We Are The Ones music video by the Black Eyed Peas’ will.i.am. The title comes from Senator Obama’s Super Tuesday speech in which he said, “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” On the same website you can upload your photo to contribute to a picture montage of the video.

On a more sinister note, Matt Druge posted an image on his website of Obama in traditional Somali garb. Drudge reported that the photo was sent to him by Clinton operatives, who Obama’s camp accused of fear-mongering.

But these developments are just the tip of the iceberg. A couple of months ago YouTube partnered with CNN for a televised debate…the highlight of which was a question about global warming asked by a snowman! Someone uploaded a parody spot for Obama featuring Senator Hillary Clinton as Big Bro in the classic 1984 spot for Macintosh. And don’t forget Senator John Edwards feeling pretty. Before that was Obama Girl, who is now trying to cash in on her 15 minutes of fame with her own blog. And before her there was Senator George Allen’s “macaca” moment, Dan Rather’s “memogate,” Senator Foley’s sexually explicit emails to pages, Howard Dean’s scream, and the Lewinski affair brought to light by the Drudge Report. New media and politics…its a powerful, and potentially dangerous, combination!