Reality Shows Are NOT News Dammit!

I was on the verge of incensed this morning by headlines in two of my primary online news sources touting the winner of the reality show "X-Factor."

In what universe is the outcome of a TV show news? I don't see headlines announcing today's Jeopardy winner (though a long-running champ did get some perhaps deserved national attention a few years ago), or who's divorcing whom on a popular soap opera or how last night's case on The Good Wife came out for the lead actress. That's because none of those is real. None of those is an actual "event". Nothing actually happened.

And the reality shows are the same. Yet, news media seem to be blinded to the truth of what they're doing -- acting as touts for shows under the guise of news -- to the extent that they have even spent time and energy trying to find out the outcome before it appears on the show, as if such a "news scoop" gave them some cred.

Have they NO shame? Where is Walter Cronkite when you really need him?
Tagged Media News TV

Study Blames TV But Truth Takes More Thought

File this one under Plain Silly Stats.

A new study finds that for every two hours of television per day, a viewer's risk of an early death rises by 13 percent. The chances of diabetes jumps by 20 percent, and the risk of heart disease increases by 15 percent.

Let's do the math. If you watch TV for four hours a day, your risk of an "early death" (whatever that means) goes up by 26%, right? So if you watch for eight hours a day, your risk goes up 104%? Making you an absolutely sure bet to die "prematurely." Just over six hours a day and, bang, you are magically a diabetic?

To make matters even more ridiculous, this longer report on the study carried on the Reuters wire leaves out the word "prematurely." The implication is that more TV pushes you closer to guaranteed death. Hello! We are all gonna die, folks. Nobody gets out alive! And, by contrast, watching no TV won't make you immortal, either.

Yeah, I know. My use of stats is only somewhat more accurate than these reports. But the point is just that: stats don't prove anything when they're cited to prove an abstract point. We're all going to die. "Premature" death isn't a valid objective measurement. Even the study said the real culprit isn't TV, it's a sedentary lifestyle which "presumably" gives rise to bad eating habits. TV was just a convenient scapegoat for sedentary living. By the same measure, reading too much can do you in.

Gimme a break.
Tagged Health Media

What Does AOL Purchase Mean for HuffPo's Editorial Control?

The news of AOL's $315 million acquisition of Huffington Post yesterday stunned the media world whose pundits didn't see the deal coming at all. 

Loyal HuffPo readers reacted swiftly, angrily and in large numbers. Many of them tossed off hasty posts accusing founder Ariana Huffington and her management team of selling out, sure that the acquisition will ultimately mean that HuffPo will lose its decidedly Liberal edginess in the presumed suffocation of a mega-media outfit known less for thoughtful journalism and support for Liberal causes than for bad grammar ("You've Got Mail!") and a least-common-denominator approach to content.

I'm not so sure. I'm not one of those HuffPo fanatics who feel personally betrayed at the possible loss of a home on the Lefty Web. But I am a relatively frequent if selective reader of HuffPo. AOL may seem to be trying to gain editorial control here, but if that's their intent they have a strange way of approaching it. They've made Ariana the chief of the newly forming Huffington Post Media Group which will encompass all of HuffPo's present content and all of AOL's content as well. Ms. Huffington is not a shrinking violet and she's not likely to take kindly to anyone attempting to censor her properties. The AOL folks know that. 

I suspect this may turn out to be a big win for HuffPo faithful (at least those who stay around and those who come slinking back as the worst outcome doesn't materialize) and for the Political Left, which will at last have a major media vehicle that is at least not predisposed to ignore or attack it. Surely there will also be a significant decrease now in the share-of-site devoted to politics but that was already in Ariana's 2011 game plan. More celebrity news, sports coverage, bimbo content and other such drivel will undoubtedly proliferate. And it is inevitable that there will be cause conflict between conservative and liberal viewpoints across the board. But I doubt Ariana is ready to hang up her hard-earned Lefty cred at this point as she's become a powerful influencer in that arena. 

This is going to be interesting to watch, trust me.
Tagged Media Technology

Photomicrography Winners' Gallery is Amazing!

Nikon sponsors a contest among folks who photograph the extremely tiny in the world around us. I've been entertained by it a few times, but this year's crop of winners is absolutely outstanding. The mosquito heart shot that won first prize has a number of deep levels of meaning for me.

Enjoy!
Tagged Media

Netflix Becoming an Internet Company: They Can Have a Bunch of My Money!

At Netflix' quarterly earnings call this week, the company made the strongest statements yet on its intent to become a largely if not purely Internet company, focusing its business on streaming video content rather than on the mail-delivery-and-return of DVDs, a business they pioneered and still heavily dominate.

I love Netflix. My only objection is that not nearly enough content is available for streaming delivery. I pore over the listings and locate stuff to watch when I'm in the mood, store it in my queue, and visit it often. If they had more content -- and particularly more of the recent TV series and movies -- available for streaming, I'd probably reduce or eliminate my cable company's role in my entertainment life. (I'd still keep Comcast for Internet, though.)

Why? The primary beef I have with Comcast and its cable competitors is the pre-packaged menu-options approach they take to content delivery. I want my entertainment a la carte. Not only do I not watch 99% of the channels Comcast rams down my throat, but having them around makes finding interesting content on the networks I do like much more difficult. By contrast, the Netflix locate-and-deliver user experience is absolutely first-rate and all but seamless.

I already have access to Netflix streaming over my LG Blu-Ray DVD player. If Netflix gets serious about being in this business, they'll see a huge uptick in my use of their service. And, yes, I'm willing to pay for that convenience.
Tagged Media

Why News Corp's Stupid Idea Won't Work

This afternoon presented me with a perfect example of why Rupert Murdoch's dumb idea of charging for access to his media empire's "knowledge" is such a loser.

There was a fake hijacking or bomb threat called in to San Francisco International Airport today.  I saw the item on my Google News page. I clicked the headline without paying attention to the source of that particular story (I've often done that) and was taken to the story on Murdoch's once-respectable, now-trashy Wall Street Journal. The generous folks there allowed me to read a two-sentence teaser of the story and then suggested that if I'd just log in they'd let me read the rest of it.

The story they reported on the WSJ wasn't even their original reporting. It was from Fox. I closed the WSJ page, went back to Google News, picked the same story from one of more than 100 additional sources, and read the entire account. For free. Imagine that.

As if that weren't ample evidence of Murdoch's faulty (you should pardon my loose use of the word) "thinking," all I had to do was go to the Fox site and read the piece in its entirety...again, for free.

I can see charging for access to unique reporting or commentary, though I'm not sure that model's sustainable. But when you tell me i have to pay -- or even subscribe so you can bury me with spam and claim we have a business relationship -- to read someone else's story or general reporting on a topic of broad news interest, I say, "Thanks, but no thanks."
Tagged Media

Tony Seton Tells CNN How to Right the Ship

My buddy Tony Seton has a great piece today on how CNN, whose top shows are taking in the ratings as the network spirals toward oblivion, can fix the problem. He suggests that what's needed is for a network -- and CNN is clearly best positioned to do this -- to recognize that what Tony calls the "top one-third of Americans" really want is real debate on issues and authentic journalism.

Pointing out that NPR could do this but seems stuck in a pedantic backwater that limits their listenership dramatically, Tony suggests that CNN could provide news that, as he so eloquently put it, "sizzles with accessible erudition." The man can turn a phrase.

If there were a network whose news did in fact perform as Tony describes it, I'd become an absolutely faithful viewer. About as close as I've been able to come is on the Internet by blending Google News, Associated Press feeds and Fluent News. TV news remains the "vast wasteland" bemoaned four decades ago with rare exceptions. In fact, even though I thoroughly enjoy Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow on the left (MSNBC), I find them too myopic and Keith far too bombastic to take in large daily doses. Rachel's better, but as I've said here before, her emphasis on very narrow topics of specific interest to her can be distracting and annoying. Jon Stewart of Comedy Central's Daily Show is, on more days than I care to admit, the brightest spot in the tubular commentary pantheon.

Who am I overlooking?

Tagged Media

Me and Bill O: You Mean He's Not a Clown?

I decided today that I'd start watching the O'Reilly Factor on Fox at least for a little while or as long as I could stand it. I haven't listened to O'Reilly for a long time. All I had on which to base my assessment of him was my favorite progressive news commentator (recently slipped to No. 2), Keith Olbermann of Countodwn on MSNBC. Keith often refers to O'Reilly as "Bill O the Clown" and judging just from the clips and commentary provided by Olbermann, that epithet seemed justified.

Tonight I watched his entire show. While it's clear he has a conservative bent to his personal take on the news, I also found him engaging and at least somewhat balanced. I was, frankly, a bit surprised.

My usual nighttime news fare consists of the Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC almost without fail, Countdown when I can take the time, and snippets of Jon Stewart's Daily Show and the Colbert Report from Comedy Central on the Net. I get most of my news all day online from hundreds of sources filtered through RSS feeds of my own selection and Google's excellent news site. Keith and Rachel cover almost nothing but politics. This is in keeping with MSNBC's billing of itself as the place for politics. Nothing wrong with that, of course; it's why I tune in. But seldom does Keith even mention stories outside politics except for his nightly "Oddball" segment and the occasional sports take. Rachel does a little better job of non-political coverage but her primary focus is on the political arena.

O'Reilly, based just on tonight's show of course, covers politics but also covers tangential topics. I found his segment tonight in which two lawyers disagreed with one another about three different pieces of litigation at least mildly entertaining (though he is pretty annoying as he frequently interrupts his guests). He led tonight with an interview with former Alaska Gov. and GOP VP Candidate Sarah Palin, one of my least favorite politicians on the planet. And while she made only a bit more sense than I've come to expect from her, his questioning was at least partially balanced. He asked her some pointed questions about the so-called Tea Party movement (which, as he pointed out, isn't really a singular movement) and even though she dodged and hedged, he tried to get her to answer clearly. He even succeeded once or twice.

He wrapped the show with an interview with Ann Coulter. I have heard about her mostly on MSNBC as well and have formed an opinion of her as an obnoxious, ignorant and angry person. One night on O'Reilly's show made be think the MSNBC folks are being too easy on her. She just makes stuff up, spouts it as truth and insults people who point out she's wrong. The world will be a better place when she is finally fired and silenced.

But on the whole I was pleasantly surprised by the O'Reilly experience. I'm planning to watch his show at least a few more times before I decide whether to change my opinion but so far, he's got me leaning in a more charitable direction.

Go figure.

Tagged media politics

NBC's Olympics Coverage Smacks of 1960

NBC (Notoriously Bad Coverage) has done it again. Virtually none of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics will be streamed on the Web. Most of it won't even be available on the Net by any other sanctioned means either. In fact, as Technorati Blogger Dennis Tarwood says, the network appears to be spending a lot more money preventing anyone who doesn't fit their sit-in-front-of-your-TV-and-shut-up model of viewership from doing any more than curling up with...well...curling.

I'm not a big NBC fan as it turns out. And I mean that, "as it turns out." I don't hate the network. It's just that they don't seem to have much in the way of interesting programming when compared to the other networks. So I'm not going to miss my favorite shows while NBC turns its network over to the winter sports world. I do like MSNBC, but only for the politics. In our house, the networks seem to rank CBS, Fox, ABC (unless you count our two-year-old granddaughter who badly skews the stats).

But if I were a big NBC fan, I'd boycott those suckers. What a terrible, unenlightened, backward-thinking strategy to bomb the TV airways with hundreds of hours of programming, the bulk of which almost nobody will care about or watch, while barring the Net where there might actually be a measurable audience for some of the minor sports events. This network deserves to die an ugly, brutal, gruesome death.
Tagged media

Memo to the Newspaper World: Get Local or Get Buried, Part Two

(Editor's Note: This is the second in a series of three posts on this subject that will appear in this space. Part One appeared Jan. 18. I'm breaking it up to keep any one post from becoming overwhelmingly long.)


The 24-hour cable news cycle combined with the Internet have rendered the coverage of worldwide news an activity to which the print media are simply and innately unable to engage. The delay inherent in publishing the dead-tree version of the news is an inelastic and unforgiving reality. I don't know about anyone else but even as a life-long reader, long-time career print journalist and near worshipper of the newspaper world, I have long since stopped relying primarily on my local newspaper for world and national news. Long before the San Jose Mercury-News and the Monterey County Herald -- the two newspapers I'd consider "local" to me -- have been put to bed and are streaming off their presses, I have already read all of the national and global news they are likely to contain. I've read that news on multiple sites with multiple perspectives, probably formed any judgment I'm going to make on it, and read late-breaking updates the newspapers won't get to until tomorrow, if they get to them at all.


It is time the newspaper world woke up to this harsh reality.


But this needn't spell the end of the need for newspapers. Far from it. I still turn to the Monterey paper for one thing: local news. And the notion of "local news" is far broader than might be obvious. I want to hear about schools and local politics, high school and amateur sports, concerts, special events and a host of other things going on in my community. I also want to read local angles on those big, breaking national and international news stories. In addition, I find myself interested in reading local readers' and columnists' opinions about those world and national events if only because it keeps me in touch with the pulse of the community in which I live.


In other words, I love what is local about my local paper. For the rest, I could not care much less. I would pay for this news. Why? Because I cannot get it free at a dozen or hundreds of Web sites. Because it's important to me. And because by supporting a truly local news outlet, I'm contributing to the good of my community. I would patronize advertisers who supported this local newspaper. Immediacy is seldom important with this news. 


I know I'm not alone in this. I don' know how widespread the feeling is, but i do know that many others with whom I've discussed this idea are enthusiastic supporters of it. I am totally uninterested in reading yet another wire story about the earthquake in Haiti in my local paper. I would, however, like to read about local folks with Haitian families and connections and how they are handling the news, what their families are telling them. Stuff I couldn't get in the metro dailies of other cities and states.


It is perfectly possible for local newspapers to become purely local again. They can rid themselves of a substantial portion of their paid editorial staffs or convert them to stringers who are paid only when they bring stories of real value and import to the paper. They can hire local "correspondents" to report news of neighborhoods, individual schools, clubs, organizations, events. Local churches could provide information about their weekly services and the papers would have room for this material, which would be well-read. They could reduce ad rates to a level that all local businesses could afford. I suspect they could generate far higher profit margins even if on smaller revenue streams. They could become viable and vital.


Weekly newspapers all over the country are doing just this. And few if any of them are in trouble today. Why? Because their communities of readers aren't likely to let them close. They are seen as an essential part of the local scene.


This way lies success.

Tagged media
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