television

TV is for old people, but video is booming

Submitted by yelvington on July 2, 2008 - 11:34am

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.

Waking up from a 40-year bender? Maybe, maybe not ....

Submitted by yelvington on May 6, 2008 - 4:48pm

Jay Rosen points to a thought-provoking speech in which Clay Shirky likens American television to a gin bender that unfortunately has lasted half a century.

All those hours wasted on mind-numbing trash. How many hours? He calculates "two hundred billion hours, in the U.S. alone, every year," and projects that's enough to create the equivalent of 2,000 Wikipedia projects, assuming Wikipedia encapsulates "100 million hours of human thought."

I certainly agree about the waste of human potential represented by the time we devote to television, which I also think is a major factor in corroding the social fabric of America by keeping us from talking to each other.

I wish I could be so optimistic about our liberation and our future, but my straight-A girls have fallen under the spell of "America's Next Top Model," which my cable system seems intent on running nonstop until either Armageddon or we run out of electricity, whichever comes first.

(I defend my BSG addiction on the grounds that it's artistic commentary on current events and human nature.)

ABC goes from laurel to dart

Submitted by yelvington on April 17, 2008 - 1:13pm

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.

Tonight's election coverage

Submitted by yelvington on March 4, 2008 - 4:58pm

George Bernard Shaw died too early to enjoy the fruits of 24-hour TV news channels, but his famous condemnation of newspaper journalism would apply: "Newspapers are unable, seemingly, to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilisation." Tonight's election coverage is sure to provide plenty of fresh examples. While you're wincing at the usual cacophony, click over to Slate's interactive delegate counter and see for yourself whether it's possible in the remaining primaries for Hillary Clinton to catch up with Barack Obama. Nicely done.

Fake TV site is part of Internet scam

Submitted by yelvington on February 26, 2008 - 5:15pm

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).

Not exactly covered with glory

Submitted by yelvington on January 9, 2008 - 9:06am

After Charlie Gibson's excellent handling of the New Hampshire primary debates Saturday night my hopes for television journalism were temporarily raised, but watching the coverage over the last two days has restored my cynicism. The cable networks may have temporarily pushed aside the likes of O'Reilly and Dobbs, but I still feel like I'm watching coverage of Britney Spears or Anna Nicole.

Somewhere in yesterday's "Hillary tears" and "angry Bill" soap operas it might have been nice to hear someone, anyone, talk about how the New Hampshire and Iowa results are proportionate and not winner-take-all. The delegate assignment system is complicated and perhaps not as visual and visceral as a tear and a quivering voice, but it's important. Where's the coverage? I had to go online to find an AP graph showing me how things stand.

After Clinton finished in the (minority) lead last night I hoped to hear three little words, but I did not. Here they are:

"We were wrong."

I did hear the talking heads on CNN and MSNBC discuss how "the pundits" had gotten it wrong, as if "the pundits" were some mysterious third party.

Overall, it was a poor performance from institutions with the talent and resources to do much better.

TV news: Infotainment, not journalism

Submitted by yelvington on January 3, 2008 - 5:25pm

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."

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