tv – Page 3 – Media Matters

June 15, 2015

Rewiring my brain…this could take awhile

I’m approaching the mid-point of my year-long experiment. For 2015 I’m avoiding (as much as is professionally possible) all forms of electronic mass media. No TV news, no NPR or music on the radio, no podcasts, no Facebook or Twitter (except for an occasional post to the MCCNM department’s pages). Essentially I’m allowing myself print media. I resubscribed to the Pueblo Chieftain (newsprint edition) and have been reading a lot of books. (So far over 30, about 10,000 pages!) I continue to use email, course management software for classes, and I post content to various websites (this blog, YouTube, etc). I cannot turn off the switch entirely without taking a sabbatical from work.

I’m sure some of you may be wondering whether this constitutes professional malpractice for someone who is a professor in a Mass Communication department. Unplugging, while demanding that my students pay close attention to the media event or scandal du jour, may seem unfair or irresponsible. Perhaps you think that I’m just a curmudgeonly old fool, a closet Luddite, a technophobe, and a recluse. I can assure you that most (not all) of those assumptions are unfounded.

This has been, and continues to be, an experiment. It is not unique…many others have run this experiment before, and for many different reasons. And with such a small sample (n=1) you know that this qualitative experiment will have very little generalizability in the end. But it will matter to me. One way or the other I expect to learn a lot about myself, my media habits, my thinking process (with and without the constant barrage of media shrapnel), and my relationships.

Our discipline has a long history of media deprivation studies. Usually a researcher looks for a naturally occurring interruption in media services and uses the occasion to collect data on how people respond and react to the loss of service. Strikes by journalists or union workers who drive the delivery trucks, extended power outages, and natural disasters are all sources of media outages. Self-inflicted media blackouts are another matter altogether.

The reason for this experiment is to see if there has been a slow and steady decline in my thinking and my thought process as a result of my media consumption behavior over time. Reading Nicolas Carr’s prescient essay, Is Google Making Us Stupid, when it was published in 2008 initiated my concern. In the essay Carr bemoans his own ability to read deeply…and to think deeply about what he has read. For an academic, this is NOT good news. When I assigned Carr’s essay to students in my Media & Society class, they complained that it was too long…thus supporting Carr’s thesis. Can’t I have my internet, my social media, my podcasts, my news sound bites AND an intellectual capacity to contemplate the big issues? Not according to Carr.

A friend of mine who works with people with addictions tells me that it takes three years to change the mental processes that frequently drive compulsive behavior. The big question that remains for me is whether this one year of partial withdraw will be sufficient to see a significant effect. I’ll keep you posted…just not on Twitter or Facebook!

May 27, 2015

Stumbling Upon a Little Slice of America the Beautiful

Monday was Memorial Day, and since I had no other plans I decided to head east of Pueblo to grab some footage of the Arkansas river at flood stage. I’m working on a documentary about the Arkansas river, and footage of it flooding might be useful as I try to explain how this precious, over-tapped resource occasionally delivers more water than anyone wants or needs. I grabbed a few shots at the bridge at Avondale and then continued east towards Rocky Ford.

On my way I noticed a small crowd beginning to gather at the Fowler Cemetery. With American flags flying, and Boy Scouts and veterans of war in uniform, it quickly occurred to me that this was a Memorial Day observance at the local cemetery. Since I wasn’t on a schedule I decided to stop and grab a few quick shots. As I moved through the crowd I saw young and old, mostly ranchers and farmers, turning out to honor those who died fighting for freedom. They sang patriotic songs, a local minister delivered an inspirational speech, and the local Boy Scouts raised the flag…to which the crowd recited the pledge of allegiance.

After returning home a few hours later I edited a short piece that attempted to capture this little slice of America…and a scene that I’m sure was repeated in hundreds, if not thousands, of small towns across America. KOAA-TV used a portion of it in their 10pm newscast and uploaded the entire video to their Facebook page where it attracted more than 17,000 views, 570 likes, and 182 shares in the first 12 hours.

https://youtu.be/6T1mKhvU4yM

April 14, 2015

What happened in Vegas…

Many companies were demonstrating drone technology — Drone demo on the exhibit floor

Actually, it’s still happening. It’s the annual convention of the National Association of Broadcasters and it will be continuing through Thursday. According to their press release, “With more than 98,000 attendees from 150 countries and 1,700+ exhibitors, NAB Show is the ultimate marketplace for digital media and entertainment.” Conveniently for academics, the Broadcast Education Association annual convention runs concurrently and overlaps the NAB for a few days.

I, along with several of my colleagues from CSU-Pueblo, made presentations, attended sessions and workshops, and toured the more than 1 million square feet of exhibit space. Of course I didn’t see it all. Even if I had been there for the entire 4-day run I would have had a hard time seeing all of the booths, exhibits, and displays.

But I can tell you one thing…in just a few hours today I saw more pixels than some people see in a lifetime. There were 4K displays everywhere, and quite a few 8K displays as well. Monitor walls stretched from floor to ceiling, and there were $50,000 digital cinema cameras everywhere you looked. Companies (including: Adobe, Arri, Canon, Dolby Laboratories, GoPro, Red Digital Cinema, Sony, and Zacuto, just to name a few) were showing off the latest and greatest hardware and, perhaps more important, software used by radio and TV broadcasters and media content producers. One of the highlights this year is the aerial robotics and done pavilion. Other buzz words for 2015 include UHD (Ultra High Definition), ATSC 3.0, Virtual Reality, and SVOD (Subscription Video On Demand, e.g. Netflix and Hulu+).

So, what was my ah-ha moment? During a State of the Industry report one of the speakers made the point that the media production/distribution industry was moving from hardware to software. More and more of the tools that we use to acquire, edit, manage, and distribute content are primarily software tools. Once media content is digital, software allows us to do any number of things to it in the process of making it available to our intended audience. The future of media production will be less about engineering breakthroughs and more about software development. And in the future most of our media and software will live in the cloud. It’s an exciting time to be in this business.

March 31, 2015

The Infamous Spaghetti Tree Harvest

April Fool’s Day is a time to prank your friends and family members with a tall-tale or fib designed to make them believe something that isn’t true. When I was growing up it was not uncommon for one of us to look out the window first thing in the morning and exclaim, “Wow, look at that…it snowed last night!” Of course one could only hope that the target of the prank would look outside before remembering what day it was.

But how would you feel if your local news broadcaster pulled a fast one on you this April 1st? In 1957 the BBC’s Panorama program broadcast a 3-minute segment about the spaghetti harvest in the south of Switzerland. Here, see for yourself…

According to the hoaxes.org website,

The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest hoax generated an enormous response. Hundreds of people phoned the BBC wanting to know how they could grow their own spaghetti tree. To this query the BBC diplomatically replied, “Place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best.”

To this day the Panorama broadcast remains one of the most famous and popular April Fool’s Day hoaxes of all time. It is also believed to be the first time the medium of television was used to stage an April Fool’s Day hoax.

You can read more about it here.

March 19, 2015

Is This Mic On?

Plenty of people have ended up in hot water after saying something that was picked up by a “live” mic that they forgot they were wearing. President Obama leaning in to promise Russian president Dmitry Medvedev “more flexibility” after the election; President George W. Bush calling a NYT reporter “a major-league a@*%#*!”; and Jesse Jackson issuing a fairly graphic threat to President Obama for “talking down to Black people.”

This is such a common occurrence that Time magazine has assembled a Top 10 list for our amusement.

But the latest “caught on mic” moment may lead to a murder conviction for an eccentric (to say the least) character who was the subject of a recent HBO documentary. According to a report in the New York Daily News,

The LAPD recently reopened its Berman investigation, bolstered by new evidence in the HBO documentary by Andrew Jarecki, “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst.”

Durst appears to make a chilling confession in the final episode of the six-part series when he says off-camera — while his mic is still live — “What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.”

Fame and fortune have an odd way of bringing out the worst in people…but if there’s one thing for sure, this real-life, made-for-TV drama will continue to attract attention and win ratings. For you binge-viewers, the entire series will be airing back-to-back on HBO, starting at 3pm on March 21st.

February 8, 2015

When the News Reporter Becomes the News Maker

Brian Williams, anchor of NBC Nightly News for more than 10 years, is stepping down from his nightly responsibilities. While it is unclear for how long he will be gone, it is a sign that Williams and NBC are beginning to take seriously the damage that has been done to his professional career by his failure to accurately remember (or his intentional misrepresentation of) events that took place in the recent past.

At question is an incident while reporting on the war in Iraq. According to various recollections by Williams he was in a helicopter that was either under fire, took a hit from an R.P.G., and/or was forced down. Military personnel who were there recall it differently and have been upset that Williams has been twisting the facts to make it appear that he was in greater danger than was the case. In a separate case, Williams’s reporting after Hurricane Katrina is also being questioned.

Social media has not been kind. The hashtag #BrianWilliamsMisremembers has dogged Williams since the story broke and fellow journalists are not coming to his rescue. Some are piling on, according to the New York Times. “Brian Williams will be fine,” Andy Levy, a Fox News commentator, wrote on Twitter. “If he can survive being hit by an R.P.G., he can survive this.”

Journalism is a business that trades in credibility and the fair exchange of accurate information in a timely manner. If any part of that equation is missing, the value of the information plummets. For a network anchor who is reported by the New York Times to be worth about $2M a year, the loss of value is significant. According to the Times, at his recent contract negotiations “Deborah Turness, the president of NBC News, called him one of ‘the most trusted journalists of our time.’” Also according to the Times,

Before the episode, Mr. Williams long had been considered one of the most trusted people in not only in the news business but in the country as a whole. He was trusted by about three-quarters of consumers, making him the 23rd-most-trusted person in the country, according to the celebrity index of The Marketing Arm, a research firm owned by Omnicom. That places him alongside the likes of Denzel Washington, Warren E. Buffett and Robin Roberts.

That was then, this is now. Brian Williams’s credibility is on the line and only time will tell if American consumers of news will forgive him the lapse in judgement.

January 31, 2015

Cord Cutters Gaining Options

The cable and satellite TV industry is beginning to face the inevitable. With broadband internet widely available on multiple screens, TV viewing options are morphing from the traditional fixed time and space (appointment TV in your living room) to flexible viewing (anytime, anywhere). Having resisted a la cart pricing for many years, cable and satellite TV providers are slowly coming to terms with the future…and hoping that they haven’t waiting too long to become viable players in a future where content is packaged by the buyer–not the seller.

In the past if you wanted access to broadcast and cable network programming you had, at most, only a few options. Depending on where you lived you could subscribe to cable (basic and tiered packages at prices ranging from $50-$100+ per month), satellite (pretty much the same deal but with a dish instead of a wire), or, in some markets, a variation known as wireless cable. Or, (see my earlier post), you might consider OTA (Over The Air) broadcast TV for only the cost of an antenna!

Most of these “packages” were available directly from the provider or bundled with your phone and/or internet service. Telecom and cable providers rushed to create packages of video, voice and data (i.e. television, telephone and internet) and the result was often a monthly bill between $100-$200.

But Millennials have been slow to buy in to these marketing plans. Tech savvy and often financially squeezed, they have looked for other, (read, less expensive) alternatives. These alternatives still required internet access or a data plan on their phones…but landline phones and cable/satellite TV were for older folks, e.g., their parents, and seemed redundant at best. With so many media options literally at their fingertips, younger consumers found that a mix of YouTube (seriously?, you need a link for YouTube?), Hulu, and Netflix provides a wealth of “television” programming without the sticker shock.

The problem is that, up until recently, live sports were seldom available online (unless you wanted to watch a choppy stream from some former Soviet-bloc website). But DiSH TV’s Sling TV (their slogan is Take Back TV), will soon be offering a basic package available for $20/month that will include ESPN, ESPN2, Disney Channel and CNN along with a handful of other popular networks. All you need is a smart TV or one of several streaming devices (e.g., Apple TV, Roku, Chromecast) and you’re in business. Or just sign up and watch on your computer, tablet or phone. In either case there is no long-term contract to sign. However, if you need your DVR’s time-shifting capability, or your weekly fix of Mad Men or The Walking Dead, Sling TV may not be for you. But others may find that it’s time to Take Back TV!

One other significant development is that cable networks and program providers are beginning to offer stand-alone streaming packages. In addition to deals announced last year by HBO, Showtime, and CBS, you can now subscribe to Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, and Sesame Street via Google’s Chromecast service, and the necessary hardware will only set you back a one-time fee of $35.

As you can see it will be fairly easy to cobble together some sort of TV programming package from a variety of sources to build a customized set of choices–and probably for a good bit less than you’d pay for a cable or satellite package.

January 22, 2015

RIP Peggy Charren

A powerful advocates for children’s television died today. Peggy Charren, founder of Action for Children’s Television (ACT), passed away after a long life of advocacy for quality TV programming for children. Dismayed by the rampant violence and commercialism that marred children’s programming in the ’60 and ’70s, Charren became a crusader and reformer. Her steadfast devotion to the cause led to the Children’s Television Act which was passed into law in 1990. The legislation limited the amount of commercial content in children’s TV programming and required stations to show evidence of the educational value of its programming.

According to an article in the Boston Globe, Charren’s group seized upon “one tiny clause in the 1934 Federal Communications Act that required broadcasters using the public airwaves to ‘serve the public interest‘ if they wanted to keep their licenses. Ms. Charren’s group, which grew to 20,000 members, insisted that federal authorities and network executives take that mandate seriously.”

Current FCC chairman Tom Wheeler was quoted as saying,

Parents across America owe a debt of gratitude to Peggy, who single-handedly turned the vast wasteland that was children’s television programming in the 1960s and 1970s into the plethora of educational, informational and entertaining programming families enjoy today.

Peggy Charren was recipient of a Peabody award, an Emmy award, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1995.

October 19, 2014

An Epidemic of Fear

I watched a few Sunday news shows today and, thanks to the DVR, was able to fast-forward through their Ebola coverage. It’s not that I don’t want to know what’s going on in the world. Rather it is precisely because the coverage that I have seen this past week has been long on sensationalism and short on useful information.

Journalists have a difficult job and I don’t want to Monday-morning quarterback their attempt to cover this fast-moving and emotional story. But I also don’t want to defend the fear-mongering and ratings-whoring that is being pawned off as journalism.

There’s always a delicate balance between keeping people informed and keeping things in proper perspective. For example, Ebola is a deadly disease that does not have a vaccine or a cure. It is spread by contact with bodily fluids of an infected carrier. And because of modern air transportation, any viral disease can travel around the world in a matter of hours. On the other hand, as of October 19th only two individuals have contracted Ebola in the US and both were healthcare workers who were treating a patient who had carried the disease from Liberia to the US. Most medical experts are confident that modern treatment and aggressive containment can prevent the virus from becoming an epidemic.

If you saw the movie Contagion (2011), you may recall that this fictional account of a global pandemic shares some similarities with the Ebola crisis. Hollywood loves a narrative because we, the viewing public, love narratives. A story allows us to make sense of the onslaught of information that is frequently confusing and contradictory. In this case the storyline is simple: a deadly disease appears (usually in some dark corner of the globe) because of mankind’s lack of respect for nature. It quickly spreads and threatens population centers in the western world. Science comes to the rescue and the hero is usually someone who defies conventional wisdom to save the day.

Sadly, life doesn’t follow the script. While we obsess over the fate of folks on a plane or cruise ship who MAY have come in contact with someone who MAY have been exposed to Ebola, fear keeps people from living life. And meanwhile, in Western Africa, the true crisis continues out of the glare of the media spotlight.