AR&D Reinventing Local Media

Just because the feeds are automated doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be checking the content. There was an embarrassing incident for the AP and Forbes.com today, as the AP mistakenly published what appears to be its morning notes where it meant to run the Roman Polanski story. Now, mistakes are a part of our business. But what gets my goat is that Forbes has pulled the story, rather than running a retraction or explanation of what happened. Something else to learn – if it were following the Twittersphere, Forbes would have heard about its mistake hours earlier.

Pulling a story without an explainer is a New Media Sin, IMHO. It also invites people to republish rather than make a quick comment and move on. So, if you missed it – here’s the story.

Associated Press

Swiss arrest Polanski on US request in sex case

Associated Press, 09.27.09, 10:41 AM EDT

OK, can you do some more probing? New York will want to know

frank’s out today.

i checked already, and so did zurich. they say the question is irrelevant. he answered me with the quote i used, about we knew when he was coming this time. he’s been here many times in the past, we think.

thx brad. aptn is aware, but unfortunately won’t make it in time, but is hoping to catch tail end.

i’m pushing out another writethru with some more background details before press conference.

no surprise, new york is really hot on this.

they particularly want to know why now. (has he never set foot in switzerland before?) sheila, theorizes that’s because they’re under intense pressure over ubs and want to throw the U.S. a bone, but can yo ucheck with justice department sources there?

is frank around too, or are you alone?

u can tell aptn press conf 1700 (15 gmt) in bern at the parliament

i’ll watch it live on internet

The Harvard Book Store is having a contest to promote its new “Book ATM.”The Espresso Book Machine, made by On Demand Books, can print a 300-page, library-quality paperback will full-color cover in about four minutes. (Watch how it works.)

The machine is about the size of an large industrial copier. (I suspect later versions will get smaller.) On Demand Books signed an agreement this month with Google to have access to print more than two-million public-domain titles from Google Books. On top of that, the company already has the rights to print 1.4 million titles. That’s a great start. It’s not exactly an Amazon-killer, but I predict you’ll see these in every book store – and in non-traditional locations — think Starbucks, or even a 7-11. It will be a boon to local libraries that can afford it.

This has the potential to create a massive disruption in the book publishing industry. I expect there will be backlash from the traditional print houses. With the right deals, Google Books can become the publisher, and it has nearly limitless room for content. There’s no reason why you couldn’t write a book, upload it to Google Books and have it instantly available for sale everywhere that has one of these machines.

Back to that contest – Harvard wants a unique name for its book machine. Enter if you come up with a good name. My suggestion: “The Guten-Nuff.”

How is it possible in 2009 that a big, prime time extravaganza can leave it soley to the audience to take all its clips? The Emmys put on a solid show this year, but try to find any of the great moments on the Emmy site and you will be disappointed. The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS) has lost its chance to benefit from what will surely be many viral videos to come out of the 2009 Emmy show.

Thank God for the viewers. They’re the ones who posted the good stuff on YouTube.

There are some strange ironies here. Prior to the show, it seemed it would be the “webbiest” ever. The E! preshow had celebrity Tweets. The people behind the Emmy site used a Flip camera for some Red Carpet interviews. The promos for the Emmys featured host Neil Patrick Harris (who did an excellent job) with a kid who livetweeted everything he said. Indeed, the Academy did a good job livetweeting attwitter.com/primetimeemmys.

So where is the actual show video? And how is an online user supposed to navigate this?

For starters, there is confusion between the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) and the plain ol’ ATAS. ATAS was the original, but the two split in 1977. The National Academy is responsible for the Daytime, Sports, News, Public Service and Technology Emmys. Its site is at emmyonline.org. ATAS does the awards most people think of as “The Emmys,” the big TV awards show.

There is also an International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Best to leave that one alone.

The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (no National) runs the big show, and its site is at emmys.com.

It turns out Emmy.com is a two-page family site with a picture of a girl and her dog, from Emmerdale Farms. Surely ATAS could offer a little money to pick up the URL and make things a little more convenient for us (and help the farm while they’re at it)? Even sillier - Emmy.tv is a placeholder page for a John Murray, whom I contacted via email. He tells me he has been a NATAS member for 10 years and intends to use the site to showcase his work.

So, once you’ve navigated your way through the Emmy sites and found the one for TV, you’d think you’d get a pretty goodwrapup. Sadly, you get squat. There is one video from the show - Neil Patrick Harris’sexcellent song-and-dance opening number. Want anything more? Go rogue.

One of the great successes of internet content has been Dr Horrible’s Sing Along Blog. The inexplicably funny short film (originally released in three parts) won an Emmy this year. It so happens Neil Patrick Harris (our host, remember) starred as Dr. Horrible. People have been begging for a sequel. Who shows up in the middle of the Emmys? Harris, in a Dr. Horrible short along with his co-stars. The original Dr. Horrible, when it was released online crashed servers. Demand for this clip should be through the roof. CBS, however, won’t profit a bit.

We need to learn from this. It’s a simple lesson: give the audience what it wants, or it will go elsewhere. All the use of the cool tools in the world won’t mean anything if we don’t deliver on the big goods.

Terry will often write about the importance of being a platform rather than a site. This is brought home once again by the rollout of “The Beatles: Rock Band,” the video game that is part of the Rock Band platform. For the uninitiated, Rock Band and Guitar Hero present a videogame interface that lets you play along with songs. The controllers are shaped like guitars and drums, and you “play” notes by striking the right color bars as they scroll down the screen. It doesn’t teach much about playing guitar, but it’s a ton of fun.

While the record industry cries foul over music downloading and the like, what we’re seeing is a resurgence of music as it’s presented in new and interactive ways. What’s more fun than pretending to be a Beatle? The band was smart to reissue all its albums, now remastered (and sounding great) on the same day the Rock Band game came out.

This isn’t a game review. What’s interesting is how Rock Band is becoming a platform. The game is $60. If you own the original Rock Band and Guitar Hero games, plus their sequels, you’ve spent more than $600. That’s not including ancillary products. Be a real nut for these games, and you’ll be shelling out $1,000 before you know it.

You can download new songs for each of the games. And here’s the really big part – Rock Band is becoming a platform for new artists. The Rock Band Network (RBN) is coming soon. It will allow you to “Rock Band-enable” your band’s song, upload it, and share in the money as people download and play along. Oh – by the way – MTV (owners of Rock Band) charges bands $99 for a “premium account.” Smart.

So why should you care? Local news isn’t going to rock out any time soon. This concept is important to note, because it once again shows us that technology doesn’t kill content; it enables it in new ways. Apple is making money by legitimizing downloadable music on iTunes; now MTV is in the same business, going a step further by selling downloadableinteractive content. Rock Band doesn’t spell the end of music. It’s another way to appeal to audiences and get them to buy content. We have to change our approach to our content, just as they do.

We’re finally past the point where people have (largely) stopped arguing over whether Twitter is journalism, and we’re now Tweeting in big numbers. I’ve said for some time that Twitter is an excellent marketing tool, but that we can’t look at it strictly as a device for driving traffic. We can also learn a few more things about how people consume information — and even how we write.

Twitter forces us to use an extreme economy of writing. Now, we’re not about to switch to 140-character scripts, but we can think of script-writing in terms of Twitter in this respect: is every word necessary?

Writes Josh Catone at Mashable:

These limits can be seen as a burden, or they can force you to think creatively about your content. If you only have 140 characters to work with, for example, you have to work extra hard to pack as much information as you can into each tweet while maintaining a voice consistent with your brand’s other copy.

Right on. We have to ask ourselves: Does each word add to the understanding of the story? Have we chosen our words carefully? With Twitter, we have no choice. It’s an excellent cure for logorrhea.

Twitter reminds us that people talk about the news in real time. I strongly recommend visiting twitpipe to get a view of just how much conversation about news is happening. Twitter is not all about “what I had for lunch.” Go to twitpipe, enter a keyword from the news, and watch the river flow. What do we learn? That we need to be a part of this river. The continuous news model that we preach feeds this desire. Tweeters (and webbies in general) don’t wait for the whole story. As I watch twitpipe today, I see a blast of tweets about the various Apple announcements.

There’s another good reason to use twitpipe (or the many sites and programs that do similar things). We constantly wonder what people are talking about in our community. Enter some search terms and you’ll see whether your guess is on the mark. This is real-time eavesdropping.

Josh also points out that Twitter is an excellent case of the importance of knowing your audience. My tweets are aimed at the people I think are following me (mostly TV and tech types). I try to offer helpful links and advice, mixed with my own strange sense of humor. My feed would be unsuccessful if I were to post my favorite recipes. If I were a chef, on the other hand, that’s exactly what I’d do because my followers would expect that. Know your audience, and use your expertise.

My other takeaway from years of using Twitter is the importance of links. The most helpful tweets are those that both summarize a story and link to it. That way I have a choice. We don’t link out enough. We need to. TV news websites are designed to be “sticky,” but the web doesn’t care about “stickiness.” What matters is being the right place to start. People will opt in to your Twitter feed when they believe you’re a trusted source of continuous, multi-platform information.

Check out USOpen.org for another fascinating experiment in online multicasting. The site is streaming all its tennis matches live, and it even allows picture-in-picture so you can monitor a second match. There’s chat along with the games, too, making this a social experience.

The picture quality is excellent – you’d be fine if you hooked this up to a large monitor or even your TV. It’s wide-screen and HD. Is it as good as broadcast? No. But for tennis addicts, it’s amazing. It also allows people to watch during Web’s prime-time – 9am – 5pm. (Sorry, employers.) This is an excellent execution for another reason — there is advertising along the top and bottom. It’s unobtrusive yet unmistakable. Advertisers get the branding the whole time. Imagine that for a three-hour game.

It’s not a stretch to go from here to other sports. In fact, the MLB does this already with its MLB Live product. For that, you have to pay. But tennis is hurting a bit in the U.S. right now, so the multicast is one way to capture more audience. The NCAA Final Four tournament offers something similar to this as well.

We have to recognize that these systems allow sports and networks to do an end run around us. Professional sports continues to cut back its access to local media, and here’s an example of why. The more the sports can control their own product, the less they need us. You can call “fault” on them if you like, but for sports, it’s an easy ace.

Big news from ABC – Charles Gibson is stepping down from the anchor slot at “World News Tonight,” and Diane Sawyer will take his place. The choice is interesting for whom they didn’t choose – Elizabeth Vargas, who briefly co-hosted “WNT” with Bob Woodruff.

Gibson will leave at the end of the year, with Sawyer taking over in January 2010. Why the move? Tough to say. ABC is second to NBC, not CBS, so this isn’t a “let’s take on Katie Couric” move. Then there’s the next question – who will replace Sawyer on “Good Morning America?”

What are the competitors saying? In typically dry fashion, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams told TV Newser “I would love to say that ABC’s loss is NBC’s gain, but then they went and appointed Diane Sawyer to replace Charlie Gibson. That doesn’t lessen the competition one bit.”