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?
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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!
Acknowledging the inevitable, Toshiba has withdrawn from the next-generation DVD race. Avoiding a protracted fight is probably a good thing…no sense in waging a war that they are almost certain to loose. The parallels drawn between the DVD format war and the VHS Betamax war of the late 70s are striking. This time Sony is coming out on top and their Blu-ray format appears destined to be the defacto standard for high-definition DVD recordings. While the VHS Betamax battle was largely won/lost over recording time and cost, this battle appears to be more about film studio and retail buy-in. Blu-ray was able to secure commitments from many of the leading Hollywood studios. In addition, retail and distribution outlets like Walmart and Netflix jumped on board the Blu-ray train. If you’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop before buying a DVD recorder/player…it looks like you now have one more consumer electronic gadget on which to spend your “economic stimulus” check!
News is that Yahoo! will announce tomorrow (Feb, 11) its intention to reject the $44.6 million offer by Microsoft. Yahoo may be playing tough and holding out for more dough, but it is not without risks. Microsoft could take the offer directly to shareholders who may choose to oust the Yahoo board of directors. While this setback may be seen as good news for rival Google, it is difficult to predict how this might turn out for the search leader. Certainly a merger of two former competitors into a super-competitor would spell trouble for Google…whose lead in the search advertising business is currently unquestioned. In the short term, Yahoo stock is up for now.
Pauline Millard at The Huffington Post has a point…the phrase new media has lost its…well, its newness. And while I’d love to be able to move on, there really are no reasonable replacements. We still need a term that allows us to differentiate between this and the “old media,” aka traditional media, aka MSM. Interactive media works, but is rather clunky. But perhaps the best argument for “new media” is that it can morph over time, keeping up with the latest and greatest changes and never getting locked into a particular technology or point in time. New media is always new, and it can be used to describe the vanguard of the media revolution. Until we can come up with something better, new media works for me.
Viewing motion pictures in the comfort of your own home on your 
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 
Acknowledging the inevitable, Toshiba has withdrawn from the next-generation DVD race. Avoiding a protracted fight is probably a good thing…no sense in waging a war that they are almost certain to loose. The parallels drawn between the DVD format war and the VHS Betamax war of the late 70s are striking. This time Sony is coming out on top and their Blu-ray format appears destined to be the defacto standard for high-definition DVD recordings. While the VHS Betamax battle was largely won/lost over recording time and cost, this battle appears to be more about film studio and retail buy-in. Blu-ray was able to secure commitments from many of the leading Hollywood studios. In addition, retail and distribution outlets like Walmart and Netflix jumped on board the Blu-ray train. If you’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop before buying a DVD recorder/player…it looks like you now have one more consumer electronic gadget on which to spend your “economic stimulus” check!