Measure The Tragedy Difference: Imus vs Virginia Tech
Last week, much of the nation's conversation focused not on the War in Iraq or Afghanistan. Not on the fired U.S. Attorneys controversy or Karl Rove's "accidental" deletion of key email documents related to the firings. Not how the cellphone may be the cause for the dwindling bee population around the world. Labels: Big Media, broadcasters, Cable TV, college students, Control, Coverage, Government, Imus, Media, Media Influence, News, Outrage, Politics, Radio, Rutgers, Shock, Tragedy, TV, Virginia Tech
Or even the O'Reilly/Geraldo verbal fight.
Instead, media -- and even personal conversions among friends and coworkers -- were fixated on the Don Imus scandal.
At first, his broadcast corporate owners were forced to suspend his national radio and simulcast cable TV show for two weeks.
When the uproar refused to die down (and the ratings on news channels kept going up), Al Sharpton's interest group cranked up the pile-on pressure, leading major advertisers to drop their advertising sponsorships. Once this happened, the end was inevitable. MSNBC and CBS Radio both were forced to cancel his show entirely and send the I-Man back to his ranch to contemplate the error of his ways and consider a possible retirement for his 30-year-plus Hall of Fame broadcast career.
The lesson learned?
Big Media has lost control of their content.
(Well, actually, they lost it years ago...but Big Media desperately tries to maintain their grip with the remaining fingernails they haven't nibbled down to nubs.)
Broadcast content no longer is something that just dissipates after its aired. While most listeners or viewers treat broadcast content as disposable, someone is recording...ready to exploit both excellent content as well as potential gaffs in judgement in order to satirize, criticize, reinterpret, spoof or simply to use as a base argument in the fight against social injustices.
Should the nation have been so transfixed on this issue? Was this naval-gazing really necessary? Will it actually create social change...or will our short attention spans just move on like society tends to move on after every scandal?
(Anna Nicole and Britney was so two months ago.)
Were the Three Nasty Words (which were nasty, wrong, and over the line of taste, respect and manners) aimed at the Rutgers University women's basketball team deserving of Tragedy Coverage?
Because feelings were hurt, did this deserve National Outrage?
No.
Does racism suck, does bigotry and misogyny exist and should we stop prejudicial injustice?
Of course.
Does this country need to make Improving Social Harmony Between Races, Classes, Genders and Ethnicities a national and governmental priority requiring regular conversation and debate in order to move forward and heal past and current injustices?
Absolutely.
This is a Presidential job. It requires Presidential leadership. And it should be a permanent job responsibility.
What deserves National Outrage?
What deserves 24/7 Media Tragedy Coverage?
The shocking, awful and criminal catastrophe Monday morning on the campus of Virginia Tech, resulting in the deaths of 32 innocent, gunned-down victims.
We have two examples of college students being attacked in the last 2 weeks. One group of students were verbally attacked through the crass use of three disparaging words during a radio/TV show those students never heard live on-air. They had never listened to nor watched Imus before this scandal. Their hurt only came after other's made them aware of it. After other's exposed and pushed forward the issue.
This attack did not change the documented and permanent result that the Rutgers is this year's NCAA division 1 women's basketball semi-finalists.
On the other hand, another group of students were physically and mortally attacked by a fellow student packed with heavy weapons and apparent mental issues. These 32 students were murdered in less than two hours of real terror.
This is the story deserving national, interest group, parental, academic and media outrage. Everyone is and should be outraged and saddened. This is real Tragedy.
There is a clear and obvious Tragedy difference in these events.
One is the violent weapon of words, stupidity, bad manners, disrespect and spin. Yes, it was a serious problem that needed to be addressed, brought to attention and fixed; apologies needed to be (and were) made. The other is actual violence, shaking the foundations of trust and security on our valued institutions.
Which event is the real tragedy?
The world wants to know where America stands today, what American values remain essential and true. America needs to heal. It does not need more violence.
Violence should not be the American brand.
There is real anger and frustration in our society. We all play a part in finding a solution.
What lessons will we learn from these two very different issues, these different tragedies?
And how will the media choose to influence pop culture and political action?
posted by Unknown @ Tuesday, April 17, 2007,
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New Study: Americans Love Streaming Video
Labels: Broadband, Cable TV, Internet, Ipsos Insight, Long-form, Market Research, Media Trend Watching, Short-form, Streaming Video, Time Shifting, Viral Video
Thanks to the surge of broadband internet access and other new wireless high-speed options, Americans love their streaming video, making the web their own personal time-shifted TiVo.
YouTube was last year's major success story, leading to mainstream media content owners, Network TV broadcasters and even video rental agents like Blockbluster and Netflix to make more of their content available online.
The public is quickly embracing streaming video...and wants more of it. Online video now blurs the mainstream/new media divide. Americans love their TV and online video is quickly becoming a mainstream way to consume it, even if Google says the Internet isn't TV.
According to the latest reported update in a biannual digital video study from Ipsos Insight:"At the end of 2006, nearly six of ten Americans (58 percent) age 12 or older with internet access had streamed some form of video content online, according to findings released by Ipsos Insight from MOTION - its biannual digital video study.
What kind of online video is most-preferred? No surprise here. Among the various types of video streams offered online, shorter video clips, such as those on video-sharing sites like YouTube, are by far the most preferred.
In other words, 44 percent of the U.S. population age 12 or older - some 100 million people - have streamed digital video online.
Moreover, over one in four Americans (28 percent) age 12+ have downloaded a digital video file, with a significant amount of overlap between the two types of digital video.
Among those that stream video online, teens and young adults are the most likely to do so: three in four of all teens age 12-17 and young adults age 18-24 in the U.S. have streamed digital video content online. Moreover, they are more likely to have higher incomes and be highly educated, even more so than others with internet access.
This highly coveted demographic appears to be watching digital video more and more on PCs or portable devices. Teens and young adults, on average, have stored 20 percent of their entire video library either digitally (on a hard drive) and/or have burned it onto DVDs."
Three-quarters of all digital video streamers have streamed short news or sports clips; two-thirds have streamed amateur or homemade video clips. Roughly 40 percent of those who have streamed or downloaded video content have accessed YouTube.
What does this mean? As written on the Jointblog last month, content may be king...but it's distribution that really matters.
Make it easy, make it simple, make it fast. Video usage may soon be broken into two categories: short-form video for online streaming (music videos, perhaps commercials?); and long-form video for broadcast and/or DVD viewing (movies, TV shows, etc.).
This Ipsos Insight study pairs up nicely with a new video brand building study from Millward Brown which says video ads are great for brand recall.
The evolution of video continues to be a major media trend to watch, which puts the whole Google/YouTube/Viacom distribution battle center-stage.
To read more, click here
posted by Unknown @ Wednesday, April 04, 2007,
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Media Time Travel: The Beatles on Doctor Who in 1965
Labels: 1965, Archives, BBC, Beatles, Cable TV, Classic, Doctor Who, Findability, Media, Styles, Time Shifting, Time Travel, Trippy, YouTube
As a kid, H.G. Wells' The Time Machine as a favorite of mine. In some ways, the Internet is evolving into something like a time machine, allowing us to "time travel" to different media eras with the click of a link.
Previously-unavailable or hard-to-get archival material is suddenly and easily accessible, such as classic commercials and TV shows long "lost" to the typical viewer.
We are time shifting our media usage through findability. Watched when we want, how often we want. As Microsoft used to say, "Where do you want to go today?"
How trippy!
Being both a Beatles fan and a Doctor Who fan, my thanks to BoingBoing for spotting this YouTube submission. Apparently, the only existing video footage of The Beatles performing "Ticket to Ride" was used on the BBC's Doctor Who in 1965. Take a look at how much styles do change...while also enjoying a little time-travelin' ticket to ride:"The Beatles had a guest appearance on Doctor Who in 1965 -- singing "Ticket to Ride." Afterwards, a traveller from the future remarks that she's heard of the Beatles, having visited their memorial in Liverpool, but that she didn't realize that the Beatles also performed "classical music." This is black-and-white Doctor Who comedy gold. A fan adds, "The original recording of that particular Beatles performance has been lost along with a lot of the BBC library which was tragically thrown out in a great video tape purge in the 1970s. That Doctor Who footage is now the only visual record of that performance."
posted by Unknown @ Saturday, March 31, 2007,
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Hannity & Colmes Confirm "It's A Purple Nation"
Labels: Cable TV, Colmes, Fake, FNC, Fox News, Hannity, Media, Nation, Purple
Last Spring, New York magazine and other magazines wrote that Purple Politics was a new political trend view.
Instead of media's focus on extreme political splits of left vs right, liberal vs conservative, democrat vs republican...Americans were really more of a "blue" and "red" blending.
A centrist "Purple" nation.
The 2006 mid-term elections results supports this thinking; Congress is far less red and much more "purple" now.
Looks like Fox Noise noticed and read the memo: Time to blend the red and blue to be more purple!
First a Fox News Channel threat down against Comedy Central's The Daily Show and Colbert Report called The 1/2 Hour News Hour (which some think is 30 minutes too long). Waitaminute...fake news on Fox News?
Now this: Hannity & Colmes debuted a new look that would make Prince proud, broadcasting their dueling neoconservative Republican and moderately Democratic viewpoints from a brand-new purple set.
How fashionable! Is it an extreme makeover? Well, no. The look has changed...but the FNC's noise content remains the same. Hey, we can report, too...and let you decide.
posted by Unknown @ Thursday, March 22, 2007,
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