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Today from Gilt City:
An exclusive, VIP tour for two of the “Piers Morgan Tonight” set.
I’m a cheapskate so I’d never buy something like this. However, if I’m paying $2,500 I would like, at the very least, a lesson on phone hacking.
And just in time for the May Sweeps and the summer vacation season, a very special episode of Modern Family….
Disney-owned ABC airs an episode set in Disneyland.
When the family travels to Disneyland, Phil struggles to keep up with Luke.
Really, Modern Family? Again!?!
While the New York Post received Mayor Bloomberg’s nomination for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction, it was another story that sent a few chills down my spine. Will Hulu be tied to a pay TV subscription?
the move by Hulu toward the new model — called authentication because viewers would have to log in with their cable or satellite TV account number — was behind the move last week by Providence Equity Partners to cash out of Hulu after five years, these sources said.
The major networks founded Hulu to prevent everyone from circumventing revenue-producing way of watching television. The move has been great. It has been a formidable way to get TV shows, and I have been a subscriber of Hulu Plus since the service launched. The appeal has always been that I can watch the television shows I want to watch and when I want to watch them.
This move could threaten the a-la-carte model that Hulu provides in favoring of bundling a package of channels that I’m never going to watch. While the Post article indicates that Providence Equity Partners is behind this strategy, I question that thinking for two reasons.
Free Press has launched an online petition to save Hulu from its possible fate as some “TV Everywhere” service that will only inflate cable bills.
(Via TV News Check.)
As much as Samsung and others have promoted “Smart TVs,” the reality is that consumers with tablets think their tablets are even smarter, and at least some of the time prefer to watch the content from their small device on the big screen.
If I’m going to watch something alone, I’ve been choosing the iPad apps, especially Hulu Plus, over the TV. Call me a miser, but I’m trying to save electricity!
Generally speaking: a solution introduces a new problem requiring a workaround that not only negates the goals of the solution but actually serves to exacerbate the initial problem.
Today, I went to a shared office space and found a note reading “Do Not Turn Off” covering the light switch. The note is there because we have temporarily disabled the motion sensor for the overhead lights. Before today, if the motion sensor did not detect any movement after five minutes, or so I’ve calculated, the lights will go off. The goal is to conserve energy, which is obviously a worthwhile goal. However, the motion sensor rarely detects our very subtle movements. It has made working difficult because we have to stop what we’re doing to get up and move about the room every few minutes.
As a workaround, the facilities managers disabled the motion sensor, but it will only remain off if we do not turn off the light switch, hence the handwritten note. The problem is that now the lights won’t actually turn off. It would have been better if we simply reminded the last person in the office to turn off the lights each night, which we were doing anyway. We now have to keep the lights on for the sixteen hours each day (and forty-eight each weekend) when no one is here. It seems like a waste, right?
This reminded me of the CW and Fox television networks each implemented embargoes on streaming new episodes through their own sites or through Hulu. The CW, for example, had implemented a three-day embargo on streaming its own TV shows to boost the Nielsen Live + 3 day ratings, which is how the network calculates what to charge for advertising against its programs. The thinking was that it would encourage viewers to either watch a program live or within three days on their DVR to boost advertising revenue.
However, enterprising viewers who hadn’t recorded the program or watched it live decided to turn to the Internet to get their CW fix. And since they couldn’t find the program on cw.com or Hulu, they would turn to unauthorized sources, such as torrents.
Now, not only are CW viewers skipping the live broadcasts or DVR viewing, they are even skipping the ads that come with online streams on cw.com or Hulu, hence reducing the overall impressions and advertising revenue.
The CW seems to have backtracked and will now release their streams on the day after the network broadcast.
But what we will do about our lights?
(Via paidContent)
On Tuesday night, ABC News aired its exclusive report on the working conditions at one of the Foxconn factories where almost all of Apple’s products are produced. I was looking forward to the seeing the report because of my enthusiasm for Apple and because I had become more interested in Foxconn’s production methods since seeing Mike Daisey’s monologue The Agony and the Ecstacy of Steve Jobs last November. To be fair, I was skeptical from the beginning that a commercial television network would broadcast a scathing report against Foxconn and Apple, and I was overall disappointed by the report portraying the Foxconn factories as little worse than mind-numbing labor.
I appreciated that Bill Weir, the story’s reporter, acknowledged the relationship between ABC/Disney and Apple at the onset. Not only are both companies heavily financially invested in each other, Disney often is the software to Apple’s new hardware. For example, when Steve Jobs demonstrated the original iPhone’s movie playback capability in his famous 2007 keynote, it was Pirates of the Caribbean on the new screen. Most disclosures seem innocent enough, but this one stuck with me. Out of all the news organizations in the United States, why did the one that is most owned by the Steve Jobs Trust get this scoop?
The abbreviated length of the report hindered the ability to investigate the factory throughly. Nightline only runs for twenty-five minutes, and once you subtract the advertisements, we were left with less than twenty minutes of actual news. Moreover, since the report aired on a major broadcast network, it needed to brief the audience at the expense of covering the details about the factory and its human toll. For example, instead of hearing about how popular these devices are, I would have liked to seen more than one shift of workers on the factory floor and perhaps even the shift change. It would have also been nice to have see how they hire from the nearly 3,000 new applicants each week. Also, could we have seen at least one former employee or did they all move into management and out of poverty?
Weir and his crew must have been challenged by what seemed to be Foxconn showing for the cameras. While it was unprecedented that cameras were given almost full access to the factory floor and its employees, Foxconn knew about the reporters and FLA inspector and the news crew was escorted for their entire visit. The presence of management during an inspection or investigation can be chilling for those being interviewed. What would happen to an employee if she or he spoke candidly to Weir, once the cameras and reporters were gone, other than complain about the wages and the loneliness. What if they spoke about happen what happens to misbehaving or under-performing employees?
I never expected this report to shock anyone or make any real impact, as such is broadcast journalism in the conglomerate era. After all, this was a report aired by a commercial broadcast network, owned by a media conglomerate, that depends on advertising and the approval of its shareholders. However, this might be the perfect opportunity for a competing news operation, such as CBS, NBC or CNN, who have vast resources and no substantial relationship with Apple, to follow up. If only Bob Costas covered technology and labor.
Groupon received the 60 Minutes treatment last night. The report was a primer on what Groupon is and an explanation on what it does, meant for a national television audience who may not know anything about the Internet except that it runs on computers. It mentions the biggest issues that Groupon is facing, such as the caustic relationship it has cultivated with retailers, its troubled IPO, its even more troubled balance sheet, and the challenge of emerging competitors.
As someone who has bought several of these “daily deals,” and more than a few offered by Groupon, I can say that I have been reluctant to buy a Groupon deal simply because their deals are not very good. When I first used the service in 2010, Groupon regularly offered deals that were 50% off at places that I would like to go. In a one-month period, for example, no fewer than four restaurants in my nook of Long Island City offered excellent 50%-off deals. But in the last year or so, the deals have been less impressive. The deals are at places that I wouldn’t want to go, in neighborhoods I never travel to, and the discounts aren’t very good. The problem seems even worse when for their Groupon Now deals.
In the morning, when the deluge of “daily deal” emails arrive, I don’t pay much attention to the Groupon offers. It’s not because I have anything against them per se, but it’s really the deal that is going to make me take action. The same goes for Gilt City, Travelzoo, Living Social, and Thrillist.
However, Groupon has insisted that one of the things that sets it apart from its competitors is the “Groupon Voice,” the punchy blurb included with each deal. I’ve considered these little else than poor attempts at humor, filled with a lot of impenetrable references. Take for example today’s featured New York deal at the Village Pourhouse:
Microbrews are lauded for their craftsmanship and distinguished by the tiny medals draped from their every molecule. Sample the finest of particles with today’s Groupon to Village Pourhouse
Where’s the humor?
The joke is supposed to link beer with chemistry. I get it, but I don’t see how it’s funny. Is it because medals are bigger than molecules? Is it, because since it would presumably take a lot of molecules to make a glass of beer, that there would be medals everywhere? These blurbs would be better if they explained how a friend and I can taste good beer, not just yellow, American-style corn swill, for cheap. And that they wash down all kinds of savory snacks.
60 Minutes devoted a ninety-second web extra clip to the “Groupon Voice,” without posing any skepticism. Instead, we just let Editor-in-Chief Aaron With insist that the “distinct, unusual, unique” voice is a competitive advantage for the company. This was the same subject in a May 2010 New York Times article about how Groupon’s “funny” words set it apart from its competitors. When I read this article, it was the first time I had thought about those blurbs because I deliberately ignore them. No one I know ever mentions those blurbs, and I doubt that any in my peer groups reads them or looks forward to reading them in the daily email.
Nope! We just all want a good deal.
As I was flying to Los Angeles today and watching the episode of 30 Rock that comes on between the inflight safety video and the feature film, I saw the episode, “¿Que Sopresa?” where Jack Donaghy pitches the idea of a voice controlled television set to his new Kabletown bosses. The demonstration doesn’t go well.
When I saw that scene, it made me think of how Steve Jobs reportedly said that he had finally “Cracked It” when it came to an Apple TV. If the rumors are true, the new integrated television set will take advantage of Siri, Apple’s new voice-activated personal assistant.
So did Jack Donaghy “crack” television before Jobs and Apple?
On my recent trip to Los Angeles, I was coming flying back to New York through San Francisco, which was a bit longer than I had originally planned, but while there, I had the pleasure of carefully studying, Television: TV in the Antenna Age, the exhibit of vintage television hardware (and some memorabilia, too) at the SFO Airport Museum.
If you know me, you know that this is exactly the kind of thing that excites so many of my interests—television, once new but deprecated technology, some history, and, yes, the airport location. When I used to travel through here more often when I was younger, the museum had some pretty bland exhibits. I can’t even remember any of them, except for a sports-related one around football season, that were as exciting as the current exhibit.
I spent about an hour going through all of the hardware, and I snapped a lot of photos. Some of the my favorite pieces were the various TV-radio combinations. I like the idea of all-in-one devices, and one was designed to have programmed all of the New York City radio and television stations that you could press a button and it would automatically tune to that station. “It just works.”
The portable television sets were also novel since portability in the 1960s was remarkably advanced fifty years ago. Some of those sets were as small as 4-inches in size, which isn’t much bigger than a current smartphone screen.
If you’re at SFO and have a layover (or, more likely, a delay) stop by Terminal 3 and have a look, or just look at my photo album.
In today’s New York Times, Brooke Barnes writes about the possibility of movie studios adding a new “window,” or a new run, to the existing tiers of home video sales. The new window, called Premium VOD, would begin as little as 45 days after the theatrical run would start and would be facilitated by video service providers (i.e., your cable or satellite company). The move is done to combat slumping DVD/Blu-Ray sales and Internet piracy.
The main opponents to Premium VOD include the movie theaters, which depend on the content, and the retailers of DVDs. Both fear that customers would opt to watch movies at home for a price that is lower than either theatrical exhibition or video disc sales.
Students should consider this in the context of the old run-zone-clearance system that emerged nearly 100 years ago and was pioneered by studios such as Paramount. Also, consider the digital revolution in media and how this marks another transformation in the film industry.
