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| Earlier, I made mention of a new "feature" from Google which would allow whomever they decide is the subject of a news story to post a response, which would be hosted by Google and posted alongside their link to the original story. The context of my post was that it was another example of Google releasing a "feature" which has no revenue stream, but then during the afternoon, I ran across a post on TechCrunch highlighting that Google News does not allow spiders to crawl their site and that they own the rights to everything which isn't from another news source. So, in effect, the NYTimes can write a piece, Google can scrape it from the NYTimes site, one of the subjects can write a response which Google will host and nobody, including the Times will be allowed to reprint it or make a derivative work. | |
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| When Yahoo! hit the IPO jackpot, they invested a lot of the extra cashflow into other standalone, web startups and as a result, they took a big hit when the bubble burst. The Google IPO has created a lot more liquidity for the younger search company, but they seem to be putting an inordinate amount of their money and effort into questionable in-house ventures which appear to only enhance the brand and which do not provide obvious income opportunities. Over the past week, two such endeavors have come to light; - Yesterday, Google announced that the subjects of a news story may now submit a written response and after the author's authenticity is verified, the response will be posted alongside the original story using AJAX, so a new pageview would not be required and no additional advertising would be displayed.
An example of this setup can be found in relation to a story about McDonalds.
- On Monday, Google announced that they'll be recruiting "Business Referral Representatives", who will be independent contractors that will be paid per verified listing for going to local businesses to collect data like phone number and hours of operation, plus take a photo of the business so that this information could be added to Google Maps.
While in contact with these businesses, the contractors, who could be anyone and anywhere are encouraged to talk-up the functionality of Google Maps and Adwords. Though, none of their pay is tied to the contracting for these services. The only way Google would make a return for this effort is if the business were to purchase Adwords and in my opinion, they may get some sales in markets larger than a hundred thousand, but in the smaller cities of this country, Adwords doesn't seem to make a lot of sense for the average brick and mortar business.
For example, if you punch the name of my town, the postal abbreviation for the state and the word "hardware" into Google, the first three listings are from Google: Local. All three of these businesses belong to a national buying cooperative and their phone number and map position are already displayed.
There's the "Ace", the "True Value" and a "Do It Best"; Two of the three do have freestanding websites which lists the kind of data that Google will be collecting, but they're already linked from the initial listing and an additional link to such a limited site would just be redundant. For shopping, specials or price comparisons, all of the businesses redirect to the national chains where the catalog is more extensive and the database is easier to maintain.
If I were the owner of any of these businesses, I don't see how I could justify buying an Adword. My listing already appears at the top of the Google results and though a geographically-targeted Adword would put another link on the page, I don't see how it would benefit me. There's three hardware stores in this town, much like there's three auto parts stores and two laundries. This situation and these numbers are fairly typical for the smaller markets, so why should Google pay somebody up to ten dollars to collect their phone numbers, which are already in Google anyway because of their lookup service?
As a user, I may get some benefit from these efforts, but the hosted responses to news articles raises legal, ethical and competitive questions. I pretty much know what my local hardware stores look like and where they're located, so since the phone numbers are already listed and their hours are a click away, I can't see any value in the second effort for anyone in a small to mid-sized market. If I were an investor in Google, it may be time to start questioning the reasoning for these and other ventures because I see only limited return, beyond a simple and non-revenue-producing enhancement of the brand. Though, if I were unemployed and in need of an income, I'd totally bank some of Google's misguided funds. | |
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| This morning, media blog "Lost Remote" linked to an AP story about the popularity of news bloopers on sites like YouTube. Of course, the Cynthia Izaguirre thing, where she called the blind mountain climber gay was included, but what's prompted me to post was the byproduct of a comment someone made pointing to a "blooper" from an old outspoken anchor. After watching the suggested video, I clicked through the sidebar and watched some of the Detroit anchor's other clips and his tone and delivery did somewhat remind me of Albuquerque anchor Dick Knipfing, primarily because of the "editorializing" that seemed to be done with tone, delivery and word choice. But then, I found the following "interview" Bill Bonds did with Sen. Orrin Hatch and I don't think even Dick Knipfing has anything like that in him, but it did strike me as something worth sharing, nonetheless. | |
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| Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post was on Tuesday's Newshour commenting on the CNN/YouTube debate, when he told Gwen Ifil; You know, I actually think that, as I've watched these debates -- and this is the fourth Democratic one we've had already -- as I've watched them, the margin between the best performance and the worst performance gets smaller and smaller.
I felt like last night -- you know, I do a winners and losers column at WashingtonPost.com -- I had trouble picking losers, just because I thought everybody did pretty well. But the problem for people like Bill Richardson, Dennis Kucinich, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd is that they really need a breakthrough, a big moment. And these debates haven't given them that yet.
I thought Dennis Kucinich did quite well last night. I thought Joe Biden did quite well. I thought Bill Richardson was better than he had been. And I thought Chris Dodd did well. But the problem is, what did we learn or see last night that fundamentally alters the dynamic, which is Clinton, Obama and possibly Edwards? I don't think we saw all that much that is going to make people who are watching think about this race in a different way. Well, Mr Cillizza: How can one expect the media-defined second tier to have a breaktrough moment or alter the dynamic, when the supposed first tier gets almost twice as many opportunities to speak? Unequal distribution of time has been a problem with most of the debates this primary season and it exists on both sides of the aisle. This is unfair and it does not provide the citizenry a chance to not only take an equal measure of all the candidates, but it also prevents their ideas from reaching the largest possible audience and our democracy is not being served. Granted, there is no legal recourse to force the networks, sponsors, political parties and organizing committees to provide equal time to all qualified candidates, but there is the court of public opinion and that is why I urge everyone reading this post to sign this virtual petition and spread its address, far and wide. Censorship can take many forms and among them is limiting the debate. | |
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|  | Godspeed, Molly Ivins. You've served your country, your world and Texas, quite well and in your honor, I promise to do my level best to always kick ass and take names.
For as you've taught me by your excellent example -- Our freedom depends upon it. | | Ms Ivins died today and her publisher, Creators Syndicate has a tribute page set up, where there is an archive of her columns dating back to January of 2006, available for reading. |
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| Earlier, I made the following comment on another blog and because it's heavily footnoted, I wanted to repeat it, here. Mike Huckabee gets hit by his local paper on January 19th, they expand upon it on the 20th and Mr Huckabee responds in this past Sunday's paper (28th) to coincide with his MTP appearance, but somehow this wasn't worth at least one question from Russert? FYI: Former Arkansas Governor, Mike Huckabee announced the formation of an exploratory committee on Sunday's Meet The Press. | |
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| - First, the setup;
- For some reason, the topic of YouTube has been big over the past week on a few of the blogs that I read and these discussions have covered a variety of subjects. Among them was a suggestion that television news make their clips more YouTube-friendly. This suggestion prompted a variety of comments, as you might imagine, but among them was someone saying that they didn't think people would turn to YouTube for news to which, pretty much everyone agreed.
- And now, the punchline;
- Last night, I was messing around in Technorati, when I saw a link that I didn't notice was headed toward MySpace before I clicked.
In the linked post, a 24 year-old dude wrote that he had heard his sister say they had executed Saddam and because he "wanted to know more about this so I go to youtube so I would not have to watch the news via one sided bullshit on CNN and all I find is a bunch of videos making fun of the event...".
Please join me in a moment of silence for the future of our world. | |
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| With about ten minutes remaining in tonight's rerun of Boston Legal, ABC News jumped into programming with a "Special Report", where Terry Moran told us that Gerald Ford had died. I'll admit that the death of a former President is news, but the man was of an advanced age, he was the longest living former President and he has not been well for a while.
Perhaps, if ABC had simply said that Gerald Ford had died and told us to stay tuned for our late local news or for additional coverage on Nightline, I could be giving them credit for possibly being first, but that's not what they did. Instead, Mr Moran did a phone interview with someone I don't remember, then via a telephone report, they reminded us that Charles Gibson is the only anchor old enough to have been working at the time and he only said stuff that most people already know.
There was only a few seconds left in the primetime broadcast, when Mr Moran tossed it back to Nightline for viewers in the eastern time zone, where he said there would be extended coverage. At no point in his broadcast did he say to stay tuned to the late local news for further information, something which would've been relevant to viewers in the other three time zones, nor did he say that they'd be doing another edition of Nightline for the remainder of the country.
Admittedly it was news, but nothing was said that couldn't wait, it was mostly just an exercise in being first and a way to promote Charles Gibson. The story may have warranted an interruption, but the bulk of the message could've been communicated in a minute or two, which would've allowed everyone not in the eastern time zone to finish the program, they had been watching.
In my opinion and with all due respect to the late President, the performance of ABC News mostly showed their lack of regard for everyone not living in the east and for the time we had devoted to watching one of their programs. A quick spin of the dial because they weren't saying anything new, showed that no other broadcast network was pre-empting the full final minutes of any show.
ABC News may or may not have been first, we won't know until later. But, I am willing to bet that their extended interruption, where they simply rehashed ancient history did the network's entertainment division no favors, nor did it serve the local affiliates by failing to mention their upcoming coverage and in the area of viewer loyalty, it could have done more harm than good. | |
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| I was too young to watch Star Trek on its first run, but somewhere around the time I was ten and when it had found its second life in syndication, one of my hometown television stations ran it at five o'clock. I remember that I watched some of them, but even at that young of an age, it was obvious where each episode was going and I found the whole thing cheesy, plus Andy Griffith and Hogan's Heroes were back to back on the other station. Now, lately, I've been occasionally watching the first half of the cleaned-up episodes on commercials, then I'll sometimes finish the thing just to see what the fuss is about. I still find them cheesy and some of them are unintentionally funny. Like tonight's episode featured a couple of guys hiding under a piece of carpet that looked like it was covered in thrown-up pizza. It had been obvious since the get-go that the styrofoam bowling balls were supposed to be eggs, but you had to laugh when the doctor showed-up and said; "Jim, I'm a doctor, not a bricklayer" and then he magically cured the thing by invisibly having a hundred pounds of Sakrete beamed down, effortlessly mixing it and invisibly plastering it onto the beast in a matter of minutes. Though, as I've watched these things over the past several months, something else has struck me. Classic TV could be described as very clean looking, while most of our better shows from the modern era could be described as gritty. There are very few good, modern shows that look so aesthetically neat and I'm hard-pressed to think of any that will stand the test of time. Perhaps and very easily, The Golden Girls might have been one of the last of the breed. And, while I'm on the subject of classic television, I've long wanted to point toward a vast archive on the Google Video. The Emmy ® organization has loaded an untold number of "Archive of American Television Interviews" onto Google. Each interview is cut into multiple twenty-two minute segments and I've been watching a lot of them, off and on for about a year. I've never found a complete list, but if you search Google Video with just the phrase "Archive of American Television Interview" (including the quotes), you should find a pretty good unordered catalog and probably somebody in whom you may be interested. From my own experience, I'd have to say that the five parts with Jonathan Winters starts out surprising slow. Ted Turner is always honest and Norman Lear is actual cultural history, but as of right now, I haven't watched all eight of Ted's videos or all ten of Norman's. And while I'm at it, I'm also going to throw a shout-out toward Betty White. When I watched her description of early television, when it was either her or a test pattern in the Los Angeles market, I was kind of reminded of the early days of the web. There's far too many videos to list and a lot of legends were interviewed at length, so once again, if you're not interested in any of those whom I've pointed toward part one, you can always pick and choose from your own listAnd finally, to make this a well-rounded television post; This season we've seen a growing number of free streaming shows from the networks. ABC recently announced that they're adding Brothers & Sisters and What About Brian and starting after Christmas, they'll be streaming every episode from the first part of the season from Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy and Ugly Betty. NBC is offering all of the back episodes from Heroes, 30 Rock and Friday Night Lights until the winter season begins. There's no word yet from CBS about any changes to their regular Innertube offerings, but my lists are by no means exhaustive. If you have broadband and if you want to play, it might really pay to visit your show's official sites because free streams have the phenomenon of the season. Also, I've linked to them before, but AOL's collection of free classic shows has been continuously growing throughout the season. Note: If you do watch any of the interviews, you'll see that the proper format to find all parts of an individual would be to search on "Archive of American Television Interview with (interviewee name)", including the quotes and removing the parenthesis. | |
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| As a quick update to my previous post concerning the OJ book and special: Rupert Murdoch himself has released a statement canceling both releases. So, there may or may not be a book or special, both produced by subsidiaries of News Corp, which Judith Regan has described as a confession, but we'll never be able to judge his responses for ourselves. The firestorm of publicity has made this "confession" such common knowledge that people like Nancy Grace, John Gibson and Bill O'Reilly could feel comfortable treating it as fact. Though, no one has actually seen any of it and we can't even swear any of it really exists. All the while, if I were a conspiracy theorist, one could argue that the discussion of these projects and now their cancellations will dominate talking heads and late night monologues, so they've also diverted attention from the recent election and ongoing reorganization of Congress. Well played Mr Murdoch, well played. I don't know whether it was a game and if so, what was your goal, but let's just say; "Money for nothing and chicks for free". It's more than a mantra, it's also a valid strategy in the 21st century. | |
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|  Earlier, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) nebris pointed toward a long piece from Friday's New York Post, in which Judith Regan offers an explanation for why she's publishing the O.J. book and recorded the infamous interview. Basically, she claims to have been a battered spouse and when the opportunity presented itself, where she could finagle a confession from O.J., it'd be like she was striking a blow for battered women, everywhere. She explains in the article that experts have told her, killers will often confess in the hypothetical and by doing the project, she feels that she may have diagnosed his psychological problem or mental defect and for all intents and purposes, she projects it onto batterers as a group. I can't see into the deepest recesses of her soul, but based on the book's cover design (pictured) and one of the pull quotes from the special, it appears that she has a definite point of view and isn't afraid to paint the picture, she feels to be accurate. So, if Ms Regan's motivations are noble, where does that put News Corp and Rupert Murdoch? News Corp owns Regan Books through their Harper Collins division. Her explanation was published in the New York Post, which is also owned by Mr Murdoch's company. I can't find the name of the company producing the television special, which reportedly will not be carried in the Albuquerque market, but it's scheduled for Fox Broadcasting and they probably produced it through one of its sister divisions, all owned by News Corp. Fox News, which is also owned by Murdoch and is under the direction of Roger Ailes, who also heads the Fox Television Station group has been railing against the show. Bill O'Reilly has been quoted as saying that he won't watch the program, look at the book or purchase anything from anyone who advertise during its broadcast. Throughout the entire personality chain of Fox News, the television special and sweeps stunt is being called the lowest of the low. Jon Stewart did a bit some time ago, where he drew attention to Fox's use of a question mark to get away with putting any outrageous statement on the screen. Several divisions of News Corp have questioned the objectivity of "60 Minutes" doing newsmaker interviews, in advance of a book release from another division of Viacom, Simon & Shuster. Bob Woodward's and Richard Clarke's book come to mind, as do a few others. Perhaps, by screaming about the morality of something done by other divisions from their same parent, the whole exercise could be called another method of applying a question mark or a "Cavuto" to the matter. As I said, I don't know if Ms Regan's reasonings are based entirely in reality, I've never met the woman. Though, it does make sense, especially when you consider the way the ads have been cut, her public statements and the creative use of color on the book jacket. Nevertheless, News Corp is fueled entirely by money and by playing both sides of the fence, they're making it coming and going. --- Update: Both projects have now been cancelled by Rupert Murdoch, himself and I've posted additional thoughts on the subject. | |
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| I don't know who contacted who, but last night as a sweeps stunt, an Albuquerque television station filed a long report about our local "First Responder Training Program". The file tape is available on the station's website, as is a written synopsis. They also blew up a car, live on television and this was announced by the university in advance, which is why I'm not sure who contacted who because it seemed to serve both party's purposes. The television station was able to hype a live explosion, though it really didn't differ from the one on tape and it appears that the questionable federally-funded program was able to do some outreach. This could easily be classified as a lobbying effort to aid in its continuation, now that we're beginning to wake-up from our long national sleep. Apparently, the feds pay to bring in fire and rescue personnel from all over the country, so that they can receive some training to use in the event of a terrorist attack. I guess that's good because it could happen. But, the bulk of the reporter's story is about their demonstrations of letter and car bombs and I find the value of this exercise, highly questionable. A "First Responder" is charged with seeing to the medical needs of victims and to put out the fires or possibly contain the blasts. By and large, we haven't been plagued by a rash of letter bombs, since the Unabomber was arrested and there haven't been waves of car bombs in this country. If and when one were to occur, a first responder shouldn't be charged with investigating the crime or looking for the VIN number (duh), you'd think that Homeland Security has specially-trained task forces on call and showing the rescue personnel what an unlikely explosion might look like, doesn't really seem to be a valuable use of resources. Though, maybe it's just me and the fact that I'm tired of hearing regular, unnecessary explosions staged for entertainment purposes. | |
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| - From the "Barone Blog" on USNews.com
- The Edison/Mitofsky Research exit poll proved somewhat misleading, as past exit polls have. The Fox News decision desk personnel decided to abandon the exit poll entirely as a guide to calling winners on the grounds that it overstated Democratic percentages by 6 to 8 percent. They made this decision based on information from EMR that the actual tallies in the precincts tested showed Democrats winning 6 to 8 percent fewer votes than the exit pollsters from those precincts reported. Exit polls from 1992 on have consistently overstated Democratic percentages, most notably in the high turnout elections of 1992 and 2004.
The late Warren Mitofsky, who created the first exit poll for CBS News in 1968, went back and examined the 2004 results and found that the biggest discrepancies between actual precinct votes and the exit pollsters' results occurred in precincts where the exit poll personnel were female graduate students. All those discrepancies overstated the Democratic vote. Joe Lenski, the current EMR boss, tried to hire fewer young women as exit poll interviewers... The fault may be with the interviewers (do they approach only the voters they think simpatico), but it may also be with the respondents. Mitofsky has told me that almost everyone approached to fill out an exit poll questionnaire in countries like Mexico and Russia does so, while about half the people approached in the United States refuse. Perhaps Republicans are more likely than Democrats to refuse, especially when the interviewer is a young woman whose appearance signals she is some kind of Bush hater.
Off-the-cuff, I'd say that the possibility might exist where Republicans tend to more often be older men, while Democrats may be statistically younger and more female, so there could be a level of increased comfort for the interviewee. But, I have no real numbers to support these assumptions at this time and I'm not really sure how much stock, I put into the idea of sex being an issue. --- PS) I promise this isn't becoming a clip journal, but I've got a thing this afternoon and wouldn't want this topic to pass. | |
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| Bill O'Reilly will be on Friday's Letterman with a new appearance that was recorded earlier this week. In advance of the broadcast, Mr O'Reilly gave a heads-up to Fox's sister, the New York Post and they describe it as a "very bloody rematch", plus the opinionated opinion-maker confesses that he believes David Letterman "sincerely doesn't like me". If you missed the previous battle, when the modern Johnny Carson and Mr Middle America famously said; "I have a feeling that 60 percent of what you say is crap!". The appearance has been archived in full and is available via YouTube. | |
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occupymytime
