television

From Variety comes this report that "the five broadcast nets' average live median age (in other words, not including delayed DVR viewing) was 50 last season." I'd love to know how much of that is due to a shift to Internet browsing, including video of course, and how much of it is a result of the networks driving us away with a barrage of painfully mislabeled "talent" contests mixed with out-of-control commercial clutter.

Either way, it's clear that most of us are taking a more active role in our own video experiences, either selecting when we want to see our preferred entertainment through PVRs, or watching video online. Simon Waldman points out that Youtube is bigger than the entire Internet of 2000 when measured by the amount of traffic it generates. Hulu, a joint venture of NBC Universal and News Corp., seems to be taking off, some networks have videos on their own websites, and of course iTunes is selling videos by the download.

This poses a challenge to those of us who still think of the net as a place driven primarily by the power of words. Clearly I need to get my video camera out of my bag and into my hand.

In the print-only "Darts and Laurels" feature of Columbia Journalism Review for March/April, there's a "laurel to Charlie Gibson and ABC for hosting the best debates of the nominating season -- so far." Well, last night, only hours after I posted the complaint "Journalism? Public service? The networks aren't even trying," it seems Gibson and company threw it all away.

I'm judging, however, from the blogospheric uproar today. I honestly did intend to watch the Clinton-Obama debate, but apparently my eyelids closed seconds after I sat down. I think the reason was largely residual jetlag, but perhaps some part of my brain has decided that I've heard enough bickering already.

Cory Bergman over at LostRemote points to Action 25 News, a cable TV site for Macon, Ga., that NBC stations all over the country are reporting is a fake set up by Internet scammers selling DVD "training" programs. Apparently the website the website was created to lend credibility by having a fake TV consumer reporter claim you can make $84,000 a year by working at home.

If you think it looks real and believable, it's not just the garish primary colors, smiling faces of the hometown news team, and irritating scrolling marquee ticker. The design was stolen from a real TV website. Looking at the HTML code I noticed metrics and ad tags that quickly led me to WAXN64 in Charlotte, a UHF station affiliated with Cox Television and Internet Broadcasting (IBSys).

As newspapers fade from their historical role in covering world events, we're left with an unhealthy dependency on the newsgathering and news judgment of television networks. Writing for MIT's Technology Review, former NBC reporter John Hockenberry shreds any notion we might have that the networks are up to the task.

A particularly telling vignette:

At the moment Zucker blew in and interrupted, I had been in Corvo's office to propose a series of stories about al-Qaeda, which was just emerging as a suspect in the attacks. While well known in security circles and among journalists who tried to cover international Islamist movements, al-Qaeda as a terrorist organization and a story line was still obscure in the early days after September 11. It had occurred to me and a number of other journalists that a core mission of NBC News would now be to explain, even belatedly, the origins and significance of these organizations. But Zucker insisted that Dateline stay focused on the firefighters. The story of firefighters trapped in the crumbling towers, Zucker said, was the emotional center of this whole event. Corvo enthusiastically agreed. "Maybe," said Zucker, "we ought to do a series of specials on firehouses where we just ride along with our cameras. Like the show Cops, only with firefighters." He told Corvo he could make room in the prime-time lineup for firefighters, but then smiled at me and said, in effect, that he had no time for any subtitled interviews with jihadists raging about Palestine.

Of course, this is the thinking that led Dateline to the sick voyeurism of "To Catch a Predator."