The Affari Edge Blog

Network television has taken another step towards releasing its content online, for free, and I like the sound of it. Thanks to a story at Forbes.com, I have been alerted that “Hulu’s Here”. In case you weren’t aware, Hulu (which sounds like the name of Uhura’s and Mr. Sulu’s space-aged love child) is the new Internet video service of NBC Universal. The site will feature full episodes of TV shows mostly from NBC and FOX, with programming from sister networks such as F/X, The Sci-Fi Channel, and USA. According to the article, you won’t just be able to get most of the programming from those channels, you’ll also be able to get TV classics such as WKRP in Cincinnati (one of my all-time favorites) and the Mary Tyler Moore Show. Movies from several studios, such as Sideways and The Breakfast Club, will also be available.

Even though the service is free, there is a price to pay. Unlike content on YouTube, there will be the occasional commercial messages on Hulu. Once you start playing a selection, a banner ad will be featured at the top of the screen (unless you select the “full screen” viewing option). Brief commercial breaks will appear about every 22 minutes, and like most network-driven online content today a quick commercial at the beginning or end of the broadcast will appear. And apparently the “overlay ad”, those annoying ads that just glide across your computer screen with a cleverly-concealed “close” tab will show up from time to time.

Despite the commercial interruptions, I think most web viewers will ignore (or at least put up with) the commercials. Banner ads, while not as annoying as the old-fashioned pop-up ad, are everywhere on the internet any way. And network television (cable networks included) invade the screen with overlay promos for upcoming shows on a regular basis. I think they do it too often, but over the past few years I feel most people have gotten over the intrusion (except when it covers up a graphic pertaining to the show like a chyron… I hate that). What is conspicuously missing from the Hulu “about us” page is any mention of advertising which I feel is a bit misleading to the consumer who isn’t totally clued in.

I’m also a little miffed at the service in general simply because following a press conference announcing its launch, and the nice pub from Forbes, the site isn’t ready yet. After signing up for the beta test version, the only e-mail I’ve received from Hulu is that yes indeed I signed up for Hulu. But even with the delay I’m curious about a couple of things regarding how successful Hulu can be.

Louis Hau, who penned the article about the site, seems to wonder if Hulu will be as big as YouTube. To me, I don’t think it has to be. In fact, I know it won’t be. But that shouldn’t make anyone think Hulu will be a disaster in the making. Hulu will be the only legal place streaming shows from NBC and Fox, and the other networks I mentioned earlier. If a niche audience is willing to go out of its way to watch an episode of Monk or My Name is Earl, than the advertiser is being taken directly to the person it wants to reach during a regular network broadcast. YouTube may have 2.5 million views of Chris Crocker crying about Britney Spears (sadly, it does), but who’s watching that garbage? Even if ONE show on Hulu has one-percent of that audience (25,000 viewers if you weren’t a math major), that’s 25,000 potential clients exposed to whomever advertises on that stream. And Hulu is unique in that unlike YouTube it will NOT accept user-generated material. The reason is simple: the minds at Hulu don’t want crap on their website. And you have to admit that 98% of the original, user-generated video on YouTube is indeed crap.

Finally, what really intrigues me is how a site like Hulu will affect the DVD market. Nowadays it’s cool to have seasons one through ten of The Simpsons on DVD, taking up valuable space on your entertainment center but showing your friends you’re a fan and you have enough disposable income to buy all of those box sets. But what if one day you could stream all of those episodes, and still get the bonus goodies that sell most DVDs today? Keep in mind just ten years ago people used to show off CD collections with towers of discs in their living rooms. Then came Napster, which begat Kazaa, which begat Apple iTunes. Who shows off stacks of CDs in their jewel cases any more? For 99 cents a song you build your library on a chip in you mp3 player.

So I’m still waiting for my personal “invitation” from Hulu that says they’re ready for me. I’m ready for them and I’m curious how eager the rest of the world is ready for a similar service.

There are tons of stories floating through cyberspace about how television network news is dead. While the ratings for network television news have declined sharply over the past several years, the forum for the 30-minute nighttime newscast is hardly dead in America. However, the television networks know that in order to keep the younger end of the crucial 25-54 demographic interested in the network news, especially the tech-savvy 18-34-year-old crowd, a little reinventing of the wheel needs to be done.

Now I’m not saying the wheel is network news broadcasts themselves. Networks have tried over and over again during the past few years to bump up ratings by changing hosts such as CBS and NBC have done, or by switching to a two-host system which ABC tried briefly in 2006 before Bob Woodruff was seriously injured while reporting in Iraq. I’m talking about “the wheel” as network newscasts on line.

Up until now a network’s website, which was heavily promoted throughout the newscast, featured repackaged news segments. Basically the website served as a dumping ground for features you may have missed or would like to see again. But that begs the question, if you didn’t see the feature the first time around are you really inclined to go searching a website for it? It’s the old “tree in the forest” adage at play here. If you’re not watching the network news in the first place, are you going to go out of your way to find a network news feature on the network’s website? Probably not, and I highly doubt anyone has been so moved by a network news feature recently they e-mailed all of their friends and said, “You’ve got to see this piece on Medicare from NBC!”

ABC News is trying to change that, and I love their approach detailed in this article from the New York Times. ABC’s internet webcast, titled simply “World News”, features regular ABC World News anchor Charles Gibson as host (most of the time). What’s unique about this though is Gibson merely isn’t cuing up eight or nine feature already shown on the ABC World News report that night. Instead, this 15-minute webcast features stories shot by the ABC News staff specifically for the webcast. What’s really interesting to me is how these stories are presented.

Jason Samuels, the senior producer of the webcast, takes a fresh approach to presenting the news to a generation of people whose lives don’t fit the network television schedule like generations past.

“I don’t have to count the seconds,” he said. “I just try to put in a good show that’s around 15 minutes. Do one long stand-up, do much longer sound bites, play an interview,” he said, summing up his advice to the staff. “Produce a story in any way you think is engaging — there are no rules.”

That right there sums up EXACTLY what network news programs have to do with their online content. Break all of the rules– the same rules that have been dragging down network news ratings for more than 20 years now. Reporters aren’t tied to 90-second or 2-minute packages, and unlike most newscasts stories aren’t bogged down with network promos masquerading as news stories or celebrity gossip. And staples of newscasts from the past, or newsmagazine shows prior to Chris Hansen busting one pervert after another, in-depth interviews are featured.

My favorite part of this webcast is the lack of commercials. There’s only one commercial, 15 seconds long, at the start of the webcast. After that, it’s laid out for convenience. The webcast on October 11, 2007, was a mere 16:27 long, and starts with updated headlines. The remaining 14 minutes starts with Gibson giving “signposts” to upcoming stories. Those same signposts are featured underneath the video player screen. Not only are there no commercial interruptions, you know exactly what you will get in that newscast, something someone my age (soon to be 30) appreciates greatly. Instead of dressing up reporters, sets, or story ideas with 53-year-old adults trying to look hip, ABC manages to deliver the news straight and without the bells and whistles others in the past have tried.

The big question is, will the coveted 18-34-year-old crowd actually tune in on a regular basis? To date, ABC averages 4.5 million downloads of the World News webcast per month. That averages to only about 150,000 a day, or roughly the amount of households watching a major market local newscast on any given night. ABC has a great product here, but the trick is to tell those 18-34-year-olds who don’t watch the network news on a regular basis to actually sign on and listen to a guy they probably remember as the host of Good Morning America 15 years ago.

As if the never-ending attention to Britney Spears and her lethargic MTV Video Music Awards performance wasn’t enough for people trying to find a shred of news in the local newscast nowadays, along came Chris Crocker.

Crocker, as you are probably aware of by now, is the “star” of the “Leave Britney Alone” videos on YouTube. What was just a simply awful video of a young man screaming about how unfair people were being to Spears has become a worldwide phenomena. Amazingly, it has also turned Crocker into a celebrity. His MySpace videos have topped 35 million views, the Britney video has been spoofed on late night talk shows, he’s been a guest on those same shows, and he has signed a contract with 44 Blue Productions to star in a new reality series. What’s even more appalling is the reality show deal came just one week after the Britney videos were posted on line. I’d hate to be a waiter in Los Angeles who has been turned down in casting call after casting call only to see this guy get a deal just like THAT because he turned the camera on his self.

Now understand I’m not flabbergasted by Crocker’s fame because of his sexual orientation or just plain weirdness. You are what you are and that has actually helped Crocker tremendously. What’s really bothering me about this is two things: the rise of a “celebrity” who really isn’t a celebrity, and the fact that the media and general public are eating it up.

Let me tackle the second issue first. It wasn’t that long ago people voiced their displeasure over the news media’s coverage of Paris Hilton’s imprisonment or Lindsay Lohan’s continuous run-ins with the law. Recently, people are moaning over the wall-to-wall coverage of Spears’ custody battle for her kids with former husband Kevin Federline. But an interesting things remains under this alleged disgust: people love a train wreck. Even I have to admit when I’m bored and have a few minutes to kill I’ll check out TMZ.com or the New York Post’s Page Six (but only after I’ve exhausted my viewing of more important websites).

If you doubt people like train wrecks, then explain why reality TV is still around even though it really doesn’t reflect reality at all. Explain why the first few episodes of FOX’s “American Idol” pull in higher ratings than episodes featuring the final 12 contestants. Think of why you watch shows like “The Next Food Network Star” or “The Bachelor”. You don’t really care who wins, you just want to see who screws up the most. With this love for the freakish, whether it be a reality show meltdown or DOT cameras showing a collapsing interstate bridge, we just love seeing things going wrong. Enter Crocker, and America embraced him with open arms.

And this opens the door for my other point of contention. The accolades for Crocker have ranged from The Daily Reel proclaiming he is, “an insidious comic mastermind” to the Ocala Star-Banner’s Dave Schlenker comparing Crocker to the late Andy Kaufman. While there is an entertaining quirkiness to Crocker’s schtick, the man is hardly a comic genius. In fact, he claims the Britney video was his honest feelings toward Britney and not an act. There’s no fine line between comic genius and comical by accident. Kaufman, George Carlin, Lenny Bruce… they were comic geniuses. Crocker is comical because it appears he has a lot of issues in his life right now.

Yet Crocker is invited to awards shows, Hollywood parties with real celebrities, and TMZ paparazzi follow him around town looking for a photo op. Only in America… and only in cyberspace. If there’s one thing about Crocker’s newfound fame is it is only a testament to the power of the internet. One video, whether it be funny or sad or gory or enlightening, can find it’s way into millions of peoples’ every day lives and illicit a response. This is a guy, who is only 20 years-old, who for a couple of years has posted videos and photos of himself doing weird things and building a fan base. The Spears video launched him in star status, whether I like it or not. It’s amazing what popularity a slightly (check that, WAY) off-centered young man could garner with a simple video.

Imagine how popular someone could become with a good video online.

While killing some time during a lunch break, I stumbled across an interesting column from ESPN’s Pat Forde regarding the antics of two college football coaches at press conferences. The first came from Oklahoma State head coach Mike Gundy, who spent several minutes ripping into a columnist for The Oklahoman after she wrote a column regarding the toughness of OSU’s starting quarterback Bobby Reid. The second story referred to Navy head coach Paul Johnson challenging an unnamed fan (and indirectly the reporter who asked the question) to come to his house and talk football, or find one instance in the past four years where Johnson praised his coaching ability when the team won. If someone could do that, he would kiss the person’s butt at city dock.

With the overzealousness of both coaches at their individual press conferences, it’s easy to see why Forde would be upset with what both gentlemen did. Gundy spent a considerable amount of time ripping into the columnist instead of praising his team in beating a tough Texas Tech team. Johnson got a little graphic when trying to deflect the thought that when Navy wins he pats himself on the back and when they lose he blames the kids. Throughout the column, Forde brings up several good points including the double-edged sword of praising and criticizing a player in the media, calling out coaches who claim they don’t read or listen to the local media (trust me, they do), and asking for a little more professionalism from coaches in a public forum such as a scheduled press conference. The problem with Forde’s criticism is while he makes some very valid points, the company he is working for (ESPN) is making what Forde is criticizing perfectly acceptable.

In it’s 28 years of existence, ESPN has turned the sound bite or the incredible piece of video footage into a sportscasting art form. When it comes to coaches losing their top, ESPN has seen its fair share of antics. And I know this because ESPN KEEPS SHOWING THESE ANTICS OVER AND OVER AGAIN! Whether it’s former Dallas Cowboys‘ coach Bill Parcells leaving a press conference regarding Terrell Owens in a huff, former Indianapolis Colts‘ head coach Jim Mora snarkingly screaming, “PLAYOFFS?!?” when his team was in a tailspin several years ago, or Tampa Bay Lightning head coach John Tortorella claiming the idea one of his defensemen purposely injured the opposition’s defensemen as, “BULLS–T!”, ESPN doesn’t mind showing an expletive-laden press conference when one comes along. And it’s not just press conferences.

Sometimes, a coach just melts down, like Asheville Tourists manager Joe Mikulik did in 2006, or Mississippi Braves manager Phillip Wellman did in 2007. Hal McRae has thrown telephones, Lou Piniella has launched bases, and even the usually even-tempered Roger Nielson once through a stick on the ice because he didn’t like a penalty called against his Philadelphia Flyers. The grand master of all meltdowns is Bobby Knight, who could single-handedly have an ESPN show devoted just to his blowups in the 40 years he has coached college basketball. As big of a sports fan as I am, I didn’t just think up of these legendary mental lapses in judgment– I saw them on ESPN (or other sports highlight shows and networks to be fair to ESPN).

But in today’s culture, and really since the early 1990s, showing these meltdowns as “highlights” only adds to the problem. The videos have never been shown to teach someone a lesson, or to get the idea across that “this is a bad idea folks”. Instead they were lampooned and laughed at, and we the viewers laughed along. Along with the coaches going bananas we were treated to football players doing silly end zone dances, bench-clearing brawls in baseball, and wackier attempts at dunking a basketball in the NBA and NCAA. With the endless looping of these “highlights” the idea of showing how a team won or lost a game has turned into how one guy said, “LOOK AT ME!” louder than anyone else in the game. ESPN is not the only guilty party in this issue, but it has certainly led the way the past 15 or 20 years. And if anyone doubts me, please remember ESPN once put together a Top 10 video list of the biggest coaching meltdowns for crying out loud.

Whether or not you agree with Forde is not the issue here. The issue is Forde is panning something ESPN profits on. More outrageous moments in sports, especially in a controlled environment like a press conferences, equals higher ratings which leads to higher ad revenue. In the crystal-clean Disney World ESPN lives in, it actually pays to be nasty. And in a world like that, a guy like Forde needs to realize he falling on a double-edged sword when he tells coaches to behave better in public.

Okay. So I’m a big USF Bulls fan.  Especially football.  As such, I follow a lot of news about USF and its upcoming opponents.  One of the cool sites I found was a blog from Phillip Marshall, a Huntsville Times reporter, about Auburn (whom USF plays on September 8th).  Normally such information would not be worthy of a post here on the Affari Blog… but he posted today about the process.  I thought it was worth sharing:

It is indeed a new day in my business.It used to be that, as the Auburn beat writer for The Huntsville Times, I would spend an average day asking questions and observing. I would put what information I could in the newspaper and go on to the next day.

The events of Wednesday show just how much things have changed. It was a little after noon when I ventured into offensive line coach Hugh Nall’s office and asked him about the situation at right tackle. He told me that he had moved freshman Lee Ziemba to the first team.

As recently as last year, that information would have been interesting, but I would have been more than 12 hours from being able to report it. By then, of course, Ziemba would have lined up there at practice and it would have become obvious to all.

But in this age of the 24-hour news cycle, of the Internet and blogs and the like, I went straight to my computer, wrote the story and had out half an hour later.

Perusing other newspapers on the Internet, I saw where my friend Chip Towers of The Atlanta Constitution was actually blogging live from Georgia’s practice. Sometimes you even see newspaper reporters carrying video cameras. As time goes on, you’ll see more blogs and the like. And you’ll see more people looking for unique ways to cover the news and get the attention of readers.

Things have come a long way since I wrote stories on an old black Underwood typewriter.

Now, he still works for a newspaper - but this niche (Auburn atheltics) is narrow enough that he could register a domain (”Tiger Tracking”) sell ads and become a full-time reporter-blogger.   News gathering and news reporting is changing, moving into more deliniated niches, rather than an “everything for everyone” kind of news we have today.   Marshall’s realization is just the beginning - it’s not quite a new day, more like a new sunrise.

During the past few days, former CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather has been the target of much hate for his assessment of the current state of the program he hosted for 23 years. But when one looks at what Rather said, HE hit the target with his comments while those throwing bitterness at him are clearly missing the point.

It all began the morning of Monday, June 11th, when Rather appeared via phone on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program, hosted by Joe Scarborough. When the topic of conversation shifted to the current state of the CBS Evening news, currently ranked third in the Nielsen ratings among the three network newscasts, Rather gave his honest opinion. In short, he felt the people at CBS have been “dumbing it down, tarting it up,” by having Katie Couric host the program. This comment is the one that has set most people ablaze. But I ask, what’s so wrong about what he said?

When Couric announced in May 2006 she was moving from NBC’s Today Show to the CBS Evening News, there was much hoopla– 98% of it from CBS. In a day and age where fewer people are getting their daily news from old media (network TV, radio, and printed newspapers), CBS felt it had to re-invent the wheel. Instead of a stodgy old man like Rather or Bob Schieffer sitting behind a desk with a map of the world behind him, here was a vibrant woman at the tail end of the Baby Boom age range. She would sit behind a desk, but she would also stand in front of green screens with a lot of eye candy in the form of nice graphics and really shiny colors zipping by. She would also introduce guest opinion segments called “Free Speech”, a rare (by today’s standards) editorial piece from today’s biggest celebrities.

The biggest re-invention though would be on the internet, where the newscast supposedly would have met with a larger audience through various innovations such as a Couric blog, on-demand “editor’s cut” versions of interviews, a rundown of that night’s newscast in the afternoon, and an on-demand one-minute newscast on the top stories of the day. With the new and younger face, and the hi-tech additions to the old-fashioned newscast, where would CBS do its research to see how this new newscast should be carried out? CBS decided to send Couric out on a nationwide “town hall meeting” tour in the summer of 2006, going through several major cities to see what the “average person” wanted in his or her nightly news. That would prove to be the biggest mistake by CBS.

Nowadays everything is title “MY” this or “YOU” that thanks in part to successful new media platforms Myspace and You Tube. As online technology and information gathering and dispersal fly miles ahead of traditional media, anyone who runs a TV or radio station, or a printed newspaper, is panicking to get in to the mix. CBS depended too much on the “average person” factor in shaping its new version of the nightly news. As the average person knows, yet major broadcast networks still fail to understand, is what works in Los Angeles doesn’t necessarily work in Chicago. The people who went out of their way to speak with Couric at one of these gatherings probably weren’t watching the nightly news that night. Do you see what I’m getting at? While a carefully molded group of likely young women were collected at meeting sites, the 60-something white males who are the network news’ bread and butter were at home actually watching the news.

Following these meetings, and some additional research from a demographic much younger than the one that watches network news now, CBS radically altered the nightly news. With Couric, it brought in the softer side of hard news. Unfortunately for the people at CBS headquarters, it didn’t bring in the hoards of people expected. Ratings for the newscast were excellent at first in September 2006, but by the end of October CBS had returned to its familiar third place in the ratings. The situation hasn’t improved much since then, as it has become painfully clear that people who watch the network news on a regular basis don’t want soft news coming from someone who spent 16 years interviewing celebrity chefs and fashion designers on the Today show. There’s a good reason why “hard” news segments last only five minutes on national morning talk shows– people who watch those shows want chatter and not news.

So I ask again, what did Rather say that was so wrong? In an attempt to beef up ratings, CBS spent on a ton of money to lure a morning show interviewer away from the competition, spent even more money promoting that interviewer, and tried to change the content of network news for a generation of consumers not brought up on Walter Kronkite or David Brinkley. From the view of an old hawk like Rather, this was CBS “dumbing down” and “tarting up” what he knew as network news from the 1960s and 1970s for the vastly different world of the early 21st century.

Network news ratings as a whole have continued to decline over the years, while most people under the age of 50 (and specifically under the age of 30) now get their news online in one form or fashion. CBS tried to bring the two different realms of media together and it hasn’t worked yet. To be fair to Couric and CBS, this experiment is only nine months old and any measure of success for any TV or radio program should be done over a year’s time.

Still, in the end, we may see CBS shift back to its traditional hard news delivery, and according to some insiders it may not be Couric delivering it after the 2008 presidential election. CBS will fall back in line, and the big three network news makers will still have a low-rated nightly newscast simply because there are enough people in their twilight years sitting in the recliner watching it.

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(h/t to Think)