This from a BBC Press Release. Sure, many radio companies in the U.S. are making noise about new distribution channels and busienss models, but the BBC's strategy is forward-thinking and employs the policy of "doing it" rather than "talking about it."
Brilliant (as they say across The Ocean).
The number of people listening to BBC radio shows on the internet has grown by a quarter in the past month.
Online demands to hear radio programmes passed nine million in February - up more than 25% on the previous month.
The show which is most requested is Radio 4's long-running soap opera The Archers, with Chris Moyles' Radio 1 breakfast show in second spot.
Online listening to digital-only networks, such as 6 Music, has soared
When we arrived at Ho Ho Kam Stadium for today’s Cubs-Rockies game, a line of fans circled the perimeter of the stands. The line threaded its way up a set of stairs to the WGN broadcast booth. Devoted Cubs fans wanted an autograph from their beloved #10, Ron Santo. It was one of the coolest moments of all of Spring Training. It was like worshippers waiting to touch the hem of the Maharishi’s garment.
Santo should be in the Hall of Fame, no questions asked.
I have shut down my personal blog at thingsiloveandhate2.blogspot.com and moved it to Yahoo! 360--an invite only space. If you want to share in my commentary (as well as photos) at that site, shoot me an email at: allen_weiner@yahoo.com
Prior to today's Spring Training game featuring the Arizona Diamondbacks and the San Francisco Giants at Scottsdale Stadium, Thom and Mark entertain the fans with their pre-game warm-up.
League faces balancing act between delivering content and maintaining value for rights holders
This headline from a leading sports business publication. How timely. Yesterday, I was talking with the parents of Seattle Mariners prospect, Greg Dobbs. Greg’s dad told me that he is not allowed to bring his home video camera into an MLB game and shoot video. Can you believe that? After all the years of supporting their son—driving him to practices, nurturing him through a near-career-ending injury—Greg’s folks cannot take video of their son playing in a major league game? Is that nuts, or what?
We talked about this issue for a while. Greg’s dad (sorry, I don’t know his first name), told me that with my camera, I’ll never be stopped from taking videos at the game. The camera is small and inconspicuous. When video cameras are popular add-ons to mobile phones, it will be an unstoppable force.
Note to MLB: The fan is not the enemy. Allow the fan to take his or her video camera into the game. No one is interested in stealing away the broadcast rights from ESPN. Fans, like me, want to shoot clips of the game and…well…be fans and share those clips (with their own fan comments) with other fans. That’s it…nothing more.
MLB must embrace its fans. If you’re looking for a positive PR move that takes the sting out of the BALCO controversy, allow the fans to shoot videos of their favorite players, stadiums, concession stands, speed pitch games, beer vendor, etc… Put a section on MLB.com for fans to share their videos.
The game is about the fans. At least it used to be.
We have been in the process of doing a major housecleaning. Taking on the guise of being merciless anti-Pat Racks--applying the theory if you haven’t seen it or used it in six months, it’s toast—I decided to chuck our Yellow Pages ®. We have seven or eight Yellow Pages of various flavors and now they’re headed to the Scottsdale Recycling center. Will they be turned into something more useful? I’d say that’s a near mortal lock.
As someone who always was a YP true believer, I expunged them because they no longer have value. The Web has kicked them to the curb because:
Online, listings can be updated regularly
Online, there is an endless supply of ancillary information that could be put with each listing—current promos and specials, holiday hours, new ownership…
Online you can search
Online you can share something you find with someone else
Online you can embed driving instructions and a map
And so on…
I bid my friends goodbye. They are going to a better place—maybe they will be reincarnated as something cool like confetti to be tossed at Barry Bonds for his victory celebration when he breaks Aaron’s homerun record.
To be 18 years old and the owner of a 95-mile-an-hour fastball. Also, his curveball is something special. Today, however, was not young Felix Hernandez’s day as he got hit around for a handful of runs. No doubt, he will start the season in Tacoma (AAA), but he will be up in “the show” shortly. Felix has great stuff--I mean classic Pedro, Gibson, Gooden type stuff. Hope he has lots of room on the mantle for all those Cy Young Awards.
Preceding today’s Seattle Mariners-Chicago White Sox Spring Training game, members of the U.S. Air Force Academy parachuted into Peoria Stadium. It reminded me of the scene with the Flying Elvis-es in “Honeymoon in Vegas.”
I was a guest this morning on Biz Radio 1320 in Houston. We talked about search and other related topics. It was big fun. Makes me miss my days on the radio.
As with everyone else who takes Podcasting seriously, I am stuck on the issue of recording phone calls. I tell anyone who will listen that I think the content of our MADCasts is good but the sound quality stinks. (To be polite). As someone who has worked in talk radio, I have a vision or (sound-vision) that my Podcast should sound like a good talk radio program where the host and callers don’t sound like they are in the same studio. The callers should sound like callers.
I have tried all the Radio Shack ® devices and you hear what my results have been. Some people have suggested using Skype, but the VoIP client will sound like two people in the same room.
So, yesterday I was listening to a great Podcast at www.eatfeed.com . The food show had a phone interview with Bill Niman (of Niman Ranch. the only meat our family will eat) and it sounded great. I emailed Anne Bramley for her scoop on how she did such a clean Podcast and she recommended Skype Out (which allows you to call people who have a land line connection). The net result is a recording that sounds like a recoding. Note: Skype Out is not free, but quite cheap.
I will be experimenting with it shortly. Also, a few guests likely to appear on the MADCast (once I resolve the recording issues) in the coming weeks: New media impresario Eric Rice and Tucows’ resident head of innovation, Ross Rader.
No games yet available as Podcasts, but the NBA gets it by offering highlights via RSS (in MP3 format). I’ll bet anyone that MLB.com offers some sort of Podcast this year—probably highlights of your favorite team’s games.
These headlines grabbed my attention. The time for radio stations to begin to see the Web as a powerful delivery medium was three to five years ago. Now, they are forced to play catch up to both satellite radio as well as the more powerful Podcasting opportunity.
As traditional radio begins to slip away into a more portable and personalized experience, and increasing number of top on-air celebrities will be lost to the competition. They will experiment with their own Podcasts, especially once “super enablers” come into the market that offer them direct distribution to empowered consumers who can time-shift their programs and listen to them on ay device at any time. These “super enablers” will offer ad models and subscriptions models.
Local radio will be reduced to traffic, news and weather services. And, honestly, those opportunities will be ephemeral. Add simple transmitting capabilities from host/content producer to device and these grandfathered services disappear. As some who grew up loving traditional radio, I feel sad over its pending demise.
John Edwards has started a Podcast. He gets it. It's a simple 'cast done at his kitchen table. Will every future candidate have a Podcast to facilitate interaction with the voters? No, just the smart ones.
Here’s something for anyone who doubts the viability of citizen journalism I wrote and posted this same story Monday night (see below) within one hour of the close of this event. The Scottsdale section of The Arizona Republic ran this today, more than 24 hours after my story posted.
I have said it before—newspapers will have to do more with less. They must embrace citizen journalisms or face them as competitors in the marketplace.
Yahoo! announced that it will expand its mail storage capacity to 1 GB per free Yahoo! Mail user. So, stop and think… what does this mean. You guessed it, Yahoo! and others will be using their email services as delivery channels for rich media—music, movies, TV programs, films… The inbox will be—pardon the metaphor—like receiving DVDs in your physical mailbox. Add an overlay of search and RSS capabilities and you can use your mailbox as a gathering and management point for all of your rich media needs.
Certainly, the other freemail services will follow suit. I think Google already offers a monster-sized inbox, but the service is not totally public. We'll stay tuned.
Three of the top newspaper groups—Gannett, Tribune and Knight Ridder—have purchased a controlling interest in one of my favorite new media companies, Topix.Net. Topix offers granular, consumer-controlled news and infiormation searches which are far more powerful than anything offered by the leading Web Portals. Actually, AOL (not to mention Ask Jeeves and Citysearch) has a deal in place with Topix, which is one of the reasons I picked AOL as someone to watch over the course of the rest of the year.
Topix has worked with The New York Times in creating a custom news profile for the newspaper company. Will Topix be enough to help newspapers out of their current mess of declining circulation and dwindling mindshare? Not sure, but it sure is a step in the right direction.
Side note: It's ironic or perhaps foreshadowing that Topix has deals with both Ask Jeeves and Citysearch (owned by IAC). Makes you wonder.
You can wait for tomorrow's Arizona Republic or tonight's TV news, or...
Tonight, I made my first foray into the official world of Citizen Journalism. Congressman J.D. Hayworth had the first of a series of Town Halls in Scottsdale on the issue of fixing the Social Security system. There are two other such meetings planned in other parts of Hayworth’s district.
About 100 people, an even mix of supporters and opponents, attended this meeting at the Sunrise United Methodist Church which centered around the Congressman’s desire to seek feedback and opinion on the future of social security. However, the evening mainly focused on his solution which is to privatize the system--or allow individuals to set up private self-managed accounts. Such a view is not popular with Democrats who see such a plan as only benefiting the wealthy.
After a 20-minute presentation--mostly outlining the inner workings of a privatized plan--Hayworth read aloud a number of questions from the audience, but the crowd was not to be denied its voice. A number of those gathered spoke out with suggestions and suggestions. Throughout, Hayworth lightly engaged with the crowd, stating that he welcomed input but never entered into one-on-one dialogue with those who were eager to point out the pitfalls of a privatized system. Some pointed to failures of a similar system in Great Britain while others blamed Congress and the President for mismanagement of the funds earmarked for Social Security.
Barry Bonds is 52 home runs shy of Henry Aaron’s all-time record. I cannot help but wonder what would happen if I was lucky enough to be in the park when he broke the record and I captured the at-bat on video. Would MLB.Com be able to stop me from putting it on this site for all to see—for free!
An amazing win-win deal that has the potential to be marketing moving. IAC has lots of high-profile content (Expedia, Match.com, Citysearch) and Ask Jeeves has a growing platform for search and content managament.
Here is a link to the News Analysis I wrote on the issue.
The story below is from CBS Marketwatch. The folks quoted as well as the insight provided is very shortsighted. All you need to do is look at what Viacom is contemplating to see the point. Big media is on the way out. The first wave will hit news and information with others (rich media mos notably) to follow. Power will not be in size—power will be in impact as well as the ability to reach key connectors who forage for news, information and commentary and share those findings with others in their “network.” Individuals will be the powerful media companies of the future. Just look at the platforms, such as Yahoo! 360, being built to facilitate viral sharing of information (and later music, movies, TV programs). I am not saying The New York Times, CNN, etc.. will not matter. I am saying that if they do not develop the tools to allow key foragers to find their content, manage that content and share that content, they will be toast.
Major media companies have the most influential Web sites, according to the founder of Technorati, which tracks the popularity and content of almost 8 million Web logs. David Sifry issued an analysis this morning showing that BoingBoing.net is the blog that has achieved the most attention and influence on the Web when measured by the number of people who link to it. Technorati considers linking a proxy for attention and influence. "The most influential media sites are still the well-funded sites like The New York Times, the Washington Post and CNN," he said. However, a lot of bloggers are gaining currency. "BoingBoing and Instapundit are highly influential, especially among technology and political thought leaders, and sites like Gizmodo are seeing as much influence as mainstream media sites like MTV.com," Sifry concluded. Technorati's analysis.
By now, you have figured out my wife and I are big Huston Street fans. Today, he showed that even without his best stuff, he can be effective. He pitched two innings and gave up a homerun to Damien Miller, but got out of a jam in the seventh with two men in scoring position. Street never lost his cool and showed he has the heart to go with that great arm.
Young Prince Fielder, the son of former slugger Cecil Fielder, is a large man with a quick bat. Here the Milwaukee Brewer firstbaseman of the future hits a single off of our hero, A's rookie pitcher Huston Street.
Is there a future for consumer-created content or is it mere folly? Also, how does Yahoo! 360, the company's new community-based content-sharing platform, fit into this scheme.
Live from Maryvale Park, the Spring Training home of the Milwaukee Brewers, the 7th Inning Sausage Races. It's just like the ones at Miller Park, but without visiting players swatting at the Sausages with their bats.
This clip shows the races as described by the PA announcer.
This from Paidcontent.Org. Sports fans' interest in minor league sports--especially baseball--will drive many future media opportunities. For example, I have been a huge fan of Arizona Fall League baseball for many seasons. It's a league that features the top up and coming stars of the game (including most Rookies of the Year). Offering those games (September-November) would not only be a nice revenue-geneator (we can leave business models aside for now), but offer sports-hungry fans some great additional content.
The Ontario Hockey League and Interactive Netcasting Systems Inc. have started a three-year program to stream thousands of hours of OHL hockey. Games are free for the rest of this regular season with PPV playoffs at $8.95 a game. No details yet on packages for next season. Some 60 percent of the games will be broadcast-quality regional OHL broadcasts; the remainder will use a "scout feed" combining visuals from the press box camera and the live audio from a team radio broadcast. The service will go beyond live games, providing highlights and game clips for consumers and hockey professionals
A tour of some of the more interesting spots in Grand Central Station. A guest appearance by Denise Garcia, a work colleague who really knows the interactive ad market.
One of the nice touches at Grand Central Station is the Music Under New York performers. Here we see a virtuoso violinist performing his craft. Such artists are given license by the city to perform (for donations) at fixed spots throughout the city.
I had read about the Chelsea Market (located in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York), so I wandered down early today. Food TV Network is located in the building, which I take to be a former warehouse or garment building. The main floor is food and food-related businesses. Also, it appears it’s where they tape the show “Emeril Live” with Emeril Lagasse.
Production note: because I strung together four separate segments, I had to convert my MPEG 4 files to MPEG2 to edit. Therefore, the final product is not as crisp as the native MPEG4. I can only hope someone wakes up to the need for MPEG4 editing for consumer content creators.
This is for fans of "Curb Your Enthusiasm." The current cast, on Broadway, includes a CYE character, Richard Kind (he plays Larry David's cousin). A touch of irony.
It’s been a long time since I have listened to Howard Stern live on the radio (K-Rock, 93.3 NYC). Definitely, the first time since he signed his satellite radio deal. He’s supposed to have Jose Canseco on later today, but right now he’s talking to some Playmate, and Howard is doing his best to test the limits of over-the-air FM radio content. Clearly, he’s setting up his listeners for what might be to come once he’s on Pay Radio, but that’s whole appeal of Stern—walking to the ledge or edge of titillation and allowing the listener to take his or her imagination the next few, final steps. Stern merely spewing epithets and acting like a peephole observer will not be funny or sexy or interesting. I guarantee it.
Stern even had a tantrum aimed at Tom, his General Manager. Tom had some word bleeped and Stern went into a fit. It was, as if to say, “If you listen to me on satellite radio, my words will not be bleeped.”
Stern’s missing the boat. If he was to Podcast the show, he’d be in total control of his material and would have instant global distribution. Heck, at the same time he could even do a Videoblog of the show. Can’t you imagine advertisers lining up?
It’s been something like 90 days into my media creation project chronicled on this Website. I am quite pleased with what’s I’ve done so far, but have some other tasks on the immediate horizon.
Podcasts: I must figure out the means to record phone calls for ‘Casts so they have decent audio quality. Mike and my MADCasts have god content, but the audio quality sucks. AGB did not intend for phone calls to be recorded. Because of duplexing issues, one voice sounds louder than the other. I actually have a solution and presented the idea last week to the CEO of a service provider firm. He thought it was cool and is working to build a prototype. I hope to soon announce the solution.
V-blogs: Here’s an issue that's out of my hands. I need a SW package that can edit MPEG-4 on Windows. My sense is that those nice people at Adobe are working on that capability; since more MPEG-4 cameras are soon to hit the market, that functionality will be crucial. Today, only Mac folks can do a decent job of editing MPEG-4.
TV program: This is somewhat dependent on the issue above. In order for me to create a 15 minute program, I will need to edit segments together. I have the idea in hand and actually somewhat storyboarded. If no SW solution comes forward, I may have to convert files, convert back…you get the picture.
There are some projects I am working on using some new SW tools such as Amplify, Grouper, etc… The results of those should be forthcoming.
I am off to NYC on business. My camera will be along for the ride. I am hoping to have time to do a few short clips between business meetings. I have a new tool essential for traveling V-blogs—a 12 in one card reader. I will simply pluck the SD card out of my Xacti and move the files to my laptop. I also added my Adobe editing SW if I feel the urge to get creative.
I have seen the future. The future is ANT. ANT, up til today, has been available only on the Mac platform. I signed up for, and got, a pre-release beta version. Whoa. I stopped dead in my tracks and now see what everyone on the Mac platform has seen. ANT is the network TV killer as it allows you to subscribe (via RSS) to and view videoblog feeds. It takes little imagination to see where this will lead. I don’t know I can use ANT asynchronously yet, but if I can, all those MediaCenter products will face some serious issues.
I’ll write more about this as I kick the tires. I’ll say it again—Whoa!
Oakland A's relief pitcher Huston Street, who we have followed since his play in Arizona Fall League, pitched a masterful fourth inning against the Giants today. His path to becoming the closer has one major obstacle--Octavio Dotel. Dotel came in and blew the Giants away in the fifth inning. Nothing like an embarrassment of riches.
How lucky can you get? There, seated in a booth over my shoulder was Dan Patrick. He was doing his radio show, but because there was no "ESPN" banner, only a few people saw him. Here's a clip of Dan.
Follow that with Jon Miller, the voice of the San Francisco Giants. Also in a booth without a banner, Jon was more conspicuous in his Hawaiian shirt.
US consumers with broadband used the internet rather than newspapers during the last presidential elections as their primary news source, a survey has revealed.
"The last election was a breakout event for the internet," said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project and one of the authors of the report.
Just under 40 per cent of those with broadband at home cited the internet as their major source of political news, compared to 36 per cent who obtained their news mainly from newspapers.
Maybe this is true, but newspapers are guilty of killing themselves. Back in the early ‘90s, when I was general manager of The Gate, I can tell you the Web put quite a scare into newspapers. As the Dot.com bust took hold, newspapers breathed a sigh of relief and went back to their “we’re invincible” mode. The rise of the user-controlled media experience and an explosion in consumer-created content have proven them not only “vincible” but darned near close to extinction. This may not be true for all newspapers, but as citizen journalism and other similar trends take hold, we’re likely to see a number of newspapers begin to downsize and take drastic measures to stay afloat. The economics of the newspaper business are just not designed to withstand this level of competition.
It's now been reported that AOL plays to launch a Voice over IP service for its IM users. As part of our Media Titans research, Mike and I have been boldly commenting for 18 months that Instant Messaging is the most powerful legitimate P2P network anywhere. It can be used to share pictures, files, movies, TV programs, music, etc.. It’s a platform for multi-player games, and, of course Voice over IP. Should telcos be scared? IM networks are global and have in excess of 100 million registered users? You figure it out.
Given IM networks are closed (for the most part—some companies are working on systems that tie users together), MSN, Yahoo! and AOL are in the catbird’s seat here. If Google is the play in this space (and if so, they’d better get moving), they will be playing catch up. Think IM networks are a good place to “do search?” You betcha
Hurray for Virgin Radio. They get it (as does the BBC, as we mentioned in our MADCast yesterday) in terms of new distribution channels. Virgin will begin Podcasting. Here is a missive from Virgin’s head of new media for the radio division.
Tomorrow, Virgin Radio will become the first UK radio station to offer a podcast of a daily show.
Every weekday, you can download the best of Pete and Geoff on the Virgin Radio Breakfast Show, direct to your media player. So now, you can enjoy Pete and Geoff at lunchtime, on the tube, or while driving home - the very best of Pete and Geoff whenever you like. Think of it as Sky+ for the internet, except in your pocket, and nothing to do with telly.
What on earth is going on with U.S. radio stations (other than a few public stations and thought leaders such as KOMO in Seattle)? Is it advertising accountability? Is it concern that there aren’t enough media players out there? I’d sure like to know. I sense it's just plain inertia.
I didn’t plan this as part of my experiment with this blog, but it now seems like a good idea. I think it’s time to see how ad keywords actually work. It will not be a scientific experiment but one worth watching.
Here’s the process—I will buy the same simple keywords from both Google and Yahoo (Overture) and see if the ads spike traffic to this site. I will try each for a week and keep tabs on the results. I might try them at the same time…not sure yet.
A few things:
This is not a commercial site, so there are not any ads here, so my ROI will be $0. I will bear the out of pocket costs in the spirit of this experiment. I will spend $50 with each service.
I am going to use simple keywords that will be cheap (such as Podcast, Vblog…) yet will entice surfers to come to the site.
I will keep everyone posted as to my results—stay tuned!
I saw this today on one of my favorite sites, Paidcontent.org:
Denver Post has joined the small but growing ranks of newspapers and news sites launching branded RSS newsreaders. It has tied up with vendor NewsGator...
Is it too little too late? Maybe. RSS is only as good as the content that is offered to readers/subscribers for personal syndication. If all the newspaper is going to offer for RSS-ing is its traditional coverage, the syndication value is of little consequence. For a newspaper to be successful, it must couple its RSS platform with “new” content offerings, such as Podcasts (I think my beloved SFgate is looking at that) and Videoblogs (Detroit News’ political writer does one) that take advantage of RSS’ ability to offer targeted, consumer-controlled content regardless of platform or file type. At the same time, newspapers must RSS their classifieds to have a prayer of competing with such forces as Craigslist.
If you have followed the thoughts (and rants) on this site, you know how I feel about newspaper embracing citizen journalists as an extension of their local coverage. Newspapers who wake up to this opportunity can easily offer these supplementary blogs as RSS feeds under their own banner/brand. The window to strike on all of these new channels is limited; the AOLs & the Yahoo!s of the world are rapidly moving down this path with the assistance of companies such as Topix.Net.
Newspaper publishers: move quickly. This is a story with a short deadline whose headline says, “The future is now.”
Why wait for ESPN Sportscenter? Here are a few highlights from today's Spring Training game, Cubs hosting Giants. No Barry Bonds, but lots of fun nonetheless.
This montage features my first on-screen appearance. Props to my wife/camera-person; the sound is a little low, but it's loud at Spring Training games (all those noisy, semi-blitzed Cubs fans).
Your intrepid correspondent is in Toronto to talk online music distribution. No easy task when it's 180-degrees below 0 (C). A fellow I was meeting with said that Fahrenheit and Celsius "synch-up" at -35. Whatever. All this little California beach kid knows is that it's bone-breaking cold here. The locals told me to be thankful there isn't any wind. Then they called me a wimp. (They're still a little grumpy around here because the NHL season was put on ice a couple of weeks ago.)
I'm here as a guest of Canadian Music Week to participate in a panel entitled, "Canada Saves the World (Or at least the music biz)." This particular track in the program was devised by Sandy Pearlman (famed producer of Blue Oyster Cult, The Clash, Pavlov's Dog, among others, and a founder of eMusic) and Professor Dan Levittin, Bell Chair, Psychology of Information Science, McGillUniversity. Other panelists were Walter McDonough, chief legal counsel for the Future of Music Coalition; Charlie Angus, the only working musician who is also a member of the Canadian Parliament (he represents West Timmins-James Bay, and he's the lead singer/songwriter of the Grievous Angels); Richard Pfohl, general counsel of the Canadian Recording Industry Association; and the aforementioned Mssrs. Pearlman and Levittin. The panel was moderated by John Nichols, Washington Editor, The Nation magazine.
Here’s the situation facing music today, as described by Sandy:
Despite the tremendous business Apple's iTunes has done over the past two years, p2p traffic continues to grow and Apple's competitors continue to struggle to find traction in the market.
A possible solution: Create a truly compelling alternative to P2P by combining new database architectures, search technology and rich music-recommendation engines to create what amounts to a massive music-delivery platform that sits on top of a "tank" of all known recorded music. How to distribute? Use a highly efficient distribution architecture such as BitTorrent. Consumers not only find what they're looking for, they are then presented with sets of recommendations, ranging from fairly obvious -- other songs or albums by the artist for which the original search was created -- to very deep recommendations based on the actual "DNA" of a song i.e. genre, instrumentation, rhythm patterns, pitch, structure etc. At the heart of this model is another very powerful attraction for music lovers, especially those who currently use P2P networks: the price per track must be low. How low? Try $.05/track.
At a very high level, the system Sandy and Levittin outlined strikes me as being very similar to what Dell does with PCs: Drive all the costs out of a given product/platform, deliver it efficiently and spin the inventory like crazy. Think about it: any music-related query on a search engine such as Google could instantly be turned into a music transaction because: a) the consumer gets not only the result they were looking for the recommendation engine is presenting other works that are closely tied to the original request and b) at $.05, it's cheap.
Levittin and Pearlman argue that Canada's uniquely positioned to be a test bed for such a platform because of its public policy (pro-arts, relatively artist-friendly copyrights, high regard for technologies that enable a more connected society etc.), and it has a very "wired" infrastructure. (I believe it has a higher per-capita broadband penetration that the U.S...)
Because of an unfortunate scheduling snafu, our panel was cut short before the audience could jump in and really stir the pot. This idea, however, is not going to go away. We might be spending a lot more time in Canada. But maybe just during the summer...
Good news, bad news. Adobe Premiere Elements has arrived (thanks to the nice people at Adobe) and it’s a very intuitive editing tool. Bad news is that it does not support native MPEG4 files. My sense is that is a short-term issue; as more MPEG-4 cameras make their way into consumers’ hands, my hunch is that a plug in will be available to import MPEG-4 files.
For now, I will covert my files to AVI and then edit them.
Here comes content foraging. A good first step. Next will be the ability for a commuter to download what he or she likes.
By late spring, the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority will become the first North American subway to pump television and radio feeds into its rail cars. Each of its 230 rail cars will be outfitted with 15-inch flat screens that will offer a local television news loop from ABC affiliate, WSB-TV, and transmitters that will offer three formats of on-board music—top 40, jazz and R&B.
In a deal with New York-based media company The Rail Network, MARTA will get a cut of the revenue from the advertising on the televisions and the on-train music channels. MARTA stands to make $20 million over the next decade, said David Lane, chief executive officer of The Rail Network.
Lane said he expects Washington and Vancouver, Canada, to follow Atlanta’s lead. He said he’s had discussions with every major transit authority in North America, and his company plans to cater each system’s content to the wants of that particular city.
I remember the day in 1995 when Jerry Yang came to meet me at my office at Dataquest in San Jose. He and his friend David Filo were college grad students with a dream. Jerry told me about his mom in Taiwan who didn’t care about his business success as long as he finished his doctoral research. I won’t bore you with details, and I won’t bore you with my thoughts about Yahoo!’s place in the world. You can see this article at the BBC if you actually care about my opinion.
Yahoo!’s power actually struck me when we saw the movie, “Inspector Gadget” when there was a Yahoo! logo in the film. I also remember when I worked at NetRatings, being startled at how Yahoo! rated in countries outside the U.S. The ability to build a brand with such global power is a marvel of today’s technology-powered world.
I just would like to congratulate Yahoo! on 10 great years. I hope its rivals continue to keep the heat on; it’s competition that powers a great marketplace.
I have told anyone who will listen that one of the great future businesses/applications will be a national (followed by global) sports talk show. It might not take the form of what we currently know as sports talk, but it will be cool and it will take advantage of emerging technology.
Imagine this: you are watching a Major League Baseball game, say the Phillies and Giants (my two favorite teams). Wouldn’t it be cool to have the ability to interact with other fans watching the game? Maybe IM, maybe some actual voice dialog during the game and especially before and after the game. Why did Alou pinch hit for Vizquel in the ninth inning? How can Thome strike out in the clutch so much? You get the picture… fans from all over the world can watch together (in groups of reasonable size) and have a virtual fan fest/talk show clash/hot stove league.
This will work for virtually any sport, but those with a global interest and player base--baseball and basketball--would be hot for starters. These “shows” may or may not have hosts to fuel the fire. You can even use a VOIP client (Skype, for one) to allow fans to communicate during the game. The format and execution of this iea is only limited by one's imagination.
Who is likely to tackle this? Entrepreneurs, for sure. MLB will try. Yahoo! might even take a run as part of its IPTV project. In the meantime, check out this blog that does play by play of computer-generated games. That could be a cool topic or segment for a global sports talk show.
