Television's White Lies

At first blush, this will seem to be a post of only local interest -- but it doesn't have to be.

Sarah Honenberger, the author of "White Lies," will be appearing on WTVR, Channel 6 in Richmond, Virginia. She'll be a guest on "Virginia This Morning," on Monday, January 22. In olden days, only those who actually tuned in at 10 AM would see Honenberger -- a vanishingly small percentage of people. The publicity boost for her book would be welcome, but minimal.

But as anyone who's visited YouTube.com knows, things that happen on local television can now be viewed by anyone in the world. What does that mean for a small publishing house trying to get the word out?

Consider: if WTVR posts the video to thier website, or perhaps allow it to be posted on YouTube, Honenberger could link to it from her site. All of a sudden a five-minute piece that would have vanished into the air becomes something that folks can view again and again, garnering a much larger number of viewers potentially from anywhere in the world. And they can watch it next week, next month or even next year -- whenever they discover and want to know more about "White Lies."

A YouTube posting can be great publicity not only for Honenberger, but for WTVR as well. KZSW, a small local station in Temecula, California is now regularly posting local news segments on YouTube. They understand the potential of this new media stream. Does WTVR?

- Ralph

An Arbitron Observation

I found the Fall 2007 Arbitron ratings for the Washington, DC market an intersting sidebar to the WGMS story, and the plans to turn it into a sports/talk station. According to that list, WGMS was #11 with 3.1 percent of the market (the top station had just double that). The highest sports/talk station on the list, WETM had 1.1 -- a third of the classical station's audience. And the Red Zebra sports/talk station had 0.7. Public radio stations don't show up in the official Arbitron rankings. The best I could find was a citation in Current that in 2005 WETA was around 2 percent.

So WGMS has a healthy 3.1 percent of the market. Dan Snyder wanted to buy it to convert it to sports/talk -- a format that pulls a combined pull of 1.7 percent of the market between two stations, or about half the audience size of WGMS. And WETA, which seems in no hurry to return to classical, sticks by their assertion that they went to news/talk to serve a wider audience -- an audience that seems at best to be roughly two-thirds the size of WGMS's classical listenership.

Is this making any sense?

- Ralph

The Netflix Stream

As most have probably heard, Netflix will begin offering streaming movies and TV programs shortly to subscriber's computers. The key words here are "streaming" and "computers." As Ralph pointed out recently, the promise of "convergence" -- computers and home entertainment working in tandem -- is being prodded along by the introduction of Apple TV.

Yet the promise of online movie delivery is being held back by commercial and tech obstacles. Movie studios don't want to give up their distribution businesses, and fear even more prevalent and piracy and file-sharing if users can download movies.

By streaming the movies exclusively to user's PCs, Netflix does an end-around these problems, and gives customers another reason to choose their service. You don't have to pay anything extra for the service -- you just get a set amount of time you can stream movies every month, based on your Netflix subscription level. Initial reports and reviews are encouraging, and there may be a good market for this, particularly for those on the go, like business travelers who can link into WiFi networks.

At any rate, time will tell, and it's nice to see Netflix make a creative move in this direction.

Ken

The Digital Subdivision

As the Internet buzzes with the latest news about the iPhone, Apple TV and the new devices introduced at CES, let's keep in mind that the sweeping changes predicted won't be universal. Not everyone in this country is plugged into the Internet, and thereby are excluded from a lot of the benefits these devices bring.

Much has been made about the "digital divide" separating those with Internet access and those without -- the "haves" and the "have-nots." Let's take a closer look at the "haves" side of that divide. It's not as uniform as you might think.

A great many of my friends and acquaintances can only be considered marginally online. Some are hampered by dial-up (still an issue in the hinterlands of Orange County, VA). Even if they wanted to, the difficulties of accessing sites with extensive graphics, flash animation, downloadable audio or video content with a slow modem effectively cuts them off from most of what the Internet has to offer.

Overlapping that line of dial-up vs. broadband is another division. I don't know if anyone's come up with an official name, but I call them the minimalists. This group is an offshoot of those who think of the computer as a typewriter with a screen. Their use of the Internet is minimal, and they seem uninterested in expanding beyond their extremely limited knowledge and skill.

Minimalists use e-mail, but primarily to forward urban legends, jokes and cute photos as opposed to active communication. One of our friends sends us several e-mails weekly, and over the course of several years we have yet to receive an original message.

I know of other friends and family members who only visit game sites like Puzzle Pirates. Some just play online bridge. Anything wrong with this? Not at all. But while a minimalist may spend several hours playing some flash animation game, they're usually oblivious to the web's other resources. The burning issues covered by online newssites, blogs and forums go unread. To minimalists, the global network that some of us live and work in simply don't exist -- just as it doesn't for those on the "have-not" side of the divide.

As we continue our discussions about the impact of technology, keep in mind that a significant part of those on the Internet are only marginally so. And that group, the minimalists, can slow the rate of change we postulate. Time's "Person of the Year" may have been "YOU," but it wasn't necessarily them.

- Ralph

...there's Apple TV

We privately joke that when it comes to posts, I excel in quantity, Ken in quality. This time he also beat me to the punch with commentary about the iPhone. I, too, want to draw the reader's attention away from this epicenter of media commentary. Rather than go retro, I'd like to focus on the other device Steve Jobs unveiled –- Apple TV.

When coupled with the new AirPort Extreme, Apple TV has the potential to significantly impact the way we use media in our homes, and the creation of media for the home. And that’s good news for me as a consumer, and me as a producer of new media.

The Apple TV is basically a 40GB hard drive with audio and video output. With the WiFi network and USB connectivity the AirPort Extreme brings to the party, things get interesting.

With the Apple TV system you can display photos, play videos and music –- including audio and video podcasts -- on your HD-ready TV. And most it will look and sound pretty darned good.

You can also connect an external hard drive to the AirPort Extreme's USB port, and access that for display on the TV. And use the external hard drive as a backup for your computer.

And you can access anything stored on the Apple TV's hard drive as well, although I haven't found any info that suggests it works as a DVR – yet. The system also supports up to five computers (both Mac and PC) with wireless connections. So videos/photos/music libraries on other computers (providing they have iTunes) can also be added to the mix, without having to hook anything up.

So how do I think things will change? Now that it's easy and convenient to store and access all your media, I predict an increased demand for new media to fill up that space. Some video podcasts are already shooting in 720p and higher. As viewing on a full-sized TV as opposed to an iPod's screen becomes widespread, I think we'll see video podcasters get more creative and visually more interesting.

Apple TV places podcasts in the main navigation menu, along with TV shows, movies, music and photos. The easy access of podcasts through iTunes spurred the first creative boom – look at the success of Rocketboom, Ask A Ninja and This Week in Tech. Having it front and center on Apple TV will unleash a second wave, and like before, the best programming won’t necessarily come from the Big Three, either.

I think indie film making will also increase – especially for shorter films. Who needs the studio system when you can sell downloads of your film through iTunes? I also expect to see more network TV content available for download. And if the networks are smart, they'll also start creating new content specifically for download rather than broadcast.

There were MP3 players long before iPods. Apple’s took off because of their seamless integration between online store, computer software, and portable device. The rest is history. Apple’s not the first with a computer media center. They just created one with seamless integration between their online store, computer software and your PC (or laptop).

As a podcaster, I’ve very excited. And its potential for a new creative renaissance makes the Apple TV much more interesting than the iPhone.

- Ralph