Media roundup, Jan 23-29

It's been a busy old week (both for me and the world of media). We've had two lesser networks, UPN and WB, announce that they're to merge to form a new network, CW (apparently the letters are from CBS and Warner). Then there's the news that Disney is buying former partner Pixar, in a $7.5 billion deal that puts it solidly back in the world of profitable digital feature film animation. And though Bob Iger's Disney is the one doing the buying, there's a strong sense that it's Steve Jobs (CEO of Apple and Pixar) who's the real power in this deal -- the new "King of all media". We've had Google announce it's setting up a new operation in China, even though that means allowing the Chinese government to censor its service. (Lots of coverage of that -- for a flavor of the latest coverage, and the competing issues involved, see here, from the Christian Science Monitor; here, from the Financial Times; and here; and for some pieces that argue that Google did the right thing see here, from Reuters, and here, from the LA Times). But otherwise, Google remains flavor of the month. Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin seem to be, along with Jobs, the men of the moment.

So what's going on? Everybody in medialand is worried that their old media properties are decaying while they risk missing out on the upcoming digital bonanza. How bad is it? Well, of course everyone is still making money, but they're all worried about making less money sometime in the future. It seems it's time for the big boys to make some big moves. So while Disney is paying top dollar to stay hitched to Pixar's star, CBS Corporation (until recently known as Viacom) merges one of its networks with that of a competitor. And now, according to CNN Money, NBC owner General Electric seems to be thinking along the same lines. "With NBC's ratings suffering, Wall Street debates whether General Electric still needs a media unit, " notes the piece. One reason? NBC helps GE "control its image and present itself in a favorable light." Oh, and it’s still profitable. But how long can the network sustain these profits, especially when it’s losing the ratings war for that key 18-49 year-old demographic (where it’s been slipping for the past season and a half and is now well behind CBS and ABC)? Clearly there's a lot of maneuvering going on, and the people who can claim to be on the digital edge -- Page, Jobs, et al. -- seem to be pretty much in the driving seat.

Elsewhere, there are signs that more and more actual journalists are less impressed at the developments surrounding the digital revolution's cutting edge -- developments that mostly seem to revolve around entertainment rather than news. The Wall Street Journal notes that more and more TV journalists are looking to move from ailing network news to NPR. Notes the WSJ ("TB News Stars Move to NPR and Sound Off"), "Many television journalists say they are fed up with the move toward consumer-friendly news-you-can-use and away from weightier subjects like foreign affairs and government. And many also see news of any sort as an increasingly low priority for their employers. " The piece also notes NPR’s rapidly rising audience figures, up to 25.3 million for 2005, from just 22 million the year earlier. Seems there are still plenty of people who stil just want good, solid news and information, and never mind the digital bells and whistles!

Google in the government's sights

In case you hadn't heard, Google is challenging the Justice Department's subpoena to turn over the search records of its millions of users -- records that federal attorneys are seeking to obtain in an attempt to defend the Child Online Protection Act, a controversial child pornography law being challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union. The government wants to trawl through Google's data to show how easy it might be for minors to "stumble" across porn.

Although the subpoenas were issued months ago it only became clear last week that (as the LA Times notes) "federal investigators had obtained potentially billions of Internet search requests made by users of major websites run by Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and America Online Inc" (see Joseph Menn & Chris Gaither, "U.S. Obtains Internet Users' Search Records"). The piece goes on:

The information turned over to Justice Department lawyers reveals a week's worth of online queries from millions of Americans — the Internet Age equivalent of eavesdropping on their inner monologues. The subpoenaed data could, for example, include how many times people searched online for "apple pie recipes," "movie tickets 90012" or even "bomb instructions."

. . .

Privacy advocates said the opportunity to peruse search queries provided an unprecedented glimpse into people's private thoughts and habits. Virtually unknown a decade ago, search engines rapidly have become an integral part of daily life.

(There's a good overview provided by NPR's Sunday evening All Things Considered.)

While Google’s stance seems to be smart business practice – presenting itself as a brave David standing up to the Goliath of Big Government makes it look cool – for the rest of us the issue is crucially important. Like so much else in this Brave New Digital World, the question is one of privacy – from both the government and big corporations and business organizations such as Google. All of this raises serious concerns not only about how this massive data trove will be used by these groups.

First, the government. the Justice Department's fishing expedition is part of a bigger picture involving the federal government's (and particularly the Bush administration's) belief that if has the right to gain pretty much untrammelled access to citizens' digital records if it feels the cause is just. Notes the LA Times, "Congress is debating an extension of the Patriot Act, which dramatically expanded the government's ability to obtain private data. And congressional hearings are expected soon on the legality of a National Security Agency program to track communications by U.S. citizens without prior court approval."

Citizens' privacy from government intrusion is a huge issue for our democracy -- and an issue that not enough attention is being paid to. Google co-founder Larry Page, speaking on ABC News Friday night, called the government's subpoena the virtual equivalent of sending the police around to search every home in the country for a week, just in case there might be any pornography in anyone's house that might (might) be found by a child and have an impact on that child's upbringing. Of course, any such attempt by the government would be inconcievable (and unconstitutional, thanks to the Fourth Amendment.

As for Google, it may not quite be the knight in shining armor it likes to present itself as. (Listen to this NPR piece that questions Google's true motives.) Google’s motto may be "Don’t be Evil, " but I wonder just how long that motto will hold in the face of potentially massive profits for this company that has perhaps as close an impression of how its users’ brains work as anyone possibly could have. How’s that? Well, as the Wall Street Journal notes,

Some privacy advocates say Google should retain less data about users, and for shorter periods, in order to reduce the risk of privacy infringement by the government or others. "The broader question is why is Google keeping so much information at all," said Kevin Bankston, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based Internet civil-liberties group. "If you are a heavy user of Google, that is the closest thing to a printout of the contents of your brain that modern technology has yet devised."

A printout of the contents of your brain. Now that's scary.

NSA wiretaps: Illegal or not?

The Washington Post's David S. Broder writes a piece about former vice president Al Gore's return to the political fray earlier this week, when in a Washington, DC speech he damned President Bush's covert NSA wiretap policy (quickie wikipedia backgrounder here) as illegal and unconstitutional. Broder, who is widely regarded for his journalistic integrity, declared that Gore "has turned himself into a one-man grand jury" on this issue. But that is not necessarily a bad thing, he thinks, since Gore gave "as comprehensive a rundown of George W. Bush's ventures to the limits of executive authority as anyone could hope to find." Broder points to the obvious political perspective--Gore lost to Bush in the hugely controversial 2000 presidential election, and surely still nurtures a grudge against Bush.

But even after discounting for political motivations, it seems to me that Gore has done a service by laying out the case as clearly and copiously as he has done. His overall charge is that Bush has systematically broken the laws and bent the Constitution by his actions in the areas of national security and domestic anti-terrorism.

Many in the media, and the broader public sphere--on both left and right--have been complaining more and more bitterly about Bush's tendency to reach for too much executive power at the expense of the other two branches of government (see, e.g., an editorial from last Sunday's New York Times: "The Imperial Presidency at Work"). And law suits challenging the wiretaps, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights, have further raised the political temperature on this issue.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal comes to the defense of the Bush policy. In an editorial this week the powerful newspaper's editorial staff rejects the legitimacy of the aforementioned suits. The Benton CommPolicy listserv summarizes the editorial piece (which is blocked to view unless you have a subscription) defending the administration's position. The lawsuits are frivolous, they write,

because 1) the plaintiffs have no evidence they have been wronged and 2) the Totten doctrine which says a lawsuit can't proceed if it would inevitably lead to the disclosure of sensitive intelligence matters. The battle over the al Qaeda wiretaps isn't in fact a legal issue at all. It is basically a political battle between Congress and the White House over supremacy on matters of national security. President Bush has forthrightly defended the use of wiretaps as essential to fighting the war on terror. If the ACLU disapproves, it has every right to lobby Congress to exert political pressure on the White House to reverse its policy. But its charge of "illegality" is nothing but a political weapon designed to suggest something more nefarious.

Can we save newspapers?

Back in November I began one blog post by quoting a Washington Post piece (by Frank Ahrens) as follows: "To the list of challenges faced by newspapers--declining circulation, rising newsprint costs and increased competition from more up-to-the-minute media--add another: rising pressure from investors to make more money and reverse sliding stock prices."

Ahrens was talking about the latest woes afflicting the troubled Knight Ridder group, owner of the Philadelphia Inquirer, the San Jose Mercury News, and the Miami Herald.

Now Douglas McCollam follows up on this issue in a piece in the January/February edition of Columbia Journalism Review ("A Way Out?"). McCollam again recounts the sorry situation newspaper most newsapaper companies find themeselves in--of sustaining profit margins (around 20%) that would be fantastic in almost any other industry, but which are deemed sub-par by the shareholders who expect even higher profits from their media holdings. The impact of this on the newspapers themselves--and on our notion of a healthy Fourth Estate press functioning in a vibrant democracy--should be of great concern to all.

The November Washington Post article also outlined the scale of the problem. To review:

Knight Ridder is vulnerable to a sell-off because its stock price has steadily declined, and the same holds true for other major media companies that own newspapers. Gannett Co.'s stock is down 21 percent over the past year, The Washington Post Co.'s is down 19 percent and the New York Times Co.'s is down 30 percent--opening the door to shareholder dissent.

(I had noted in an earlier post the particular problems suffered by Tribune Media--owner of the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune--which "recently secured a profit margin of 'only' 17.5 per cent (high by almost any other industry's measures, but low for the obscenely profitable mainstream media)."
CJR's McCollam points out that, by the end of 2005, Tribune's stock was down 29 percent. And the rest of McCollam's figures are even more depressing than those provide by Ahrens. This, then, is a serious problem. But McCollam gives us an insight into just how serious the problem is, pointing out that "In an effort to arrest the slide and appease shareholders, virtually every major newspaper in the country got busy slashing editorial positions and aggressively cutting costs." He goes on:

In response [to shareholder pressure], many newspapers are desperately trying to convince the market that they, too, are sexy, hi-tech companies. To please the market, companies like Knight Ridder have done almost everything their large shareholders have asked — slashing staff, making stories more “reader friendly,” searching for Internet strategies that might magically transform newspapers from dead-wood deadbeats into new-media darlings. To date, none of it has worked.

So what's the answer? Are newspapers--and the huge reservoir of journalistic expertise and professionalism (yes, really!) they provide--headed for the chopping block in a vain attempt to be "sexy"? Can they be saved before they're destroyed in the race for ever-higher profits? Well, yes they can, argues McCollam: By being taken back into private ownership (i.e., by ceasing to be publically traded companies on the stock exchange).

Ahrens also brought this up in his November Washington Post piece when he pointed out that "Some within the industry think newspapers are better suited to private rather than public ownership," he notes. "Private companies attempt to minimize earnings, which are taxable, and maximize cash flow, which can be used to pay down debts. Public companies, however, are pressured to maximize earnings to appease shareholders." McCollam elaborates on this point in his piece:

What newspapers really need, above all else, is ownership that values journalism and understands that the work of gathering, writing, and publishing the news is an inherently inefficient business that is in a period of profound transition. The private press baron of the past might have been a blowhard propagandist with the ethics of a wharf rat, but at least he loved the trade. Compared with the lineup of bloodless managers and mandarins currently squeezing the life out of journalism, Charles Foster Kane looks pretty damn good. So while there is no guarantee that the private ownership of today would recognize the value of journalism, it has already been established that Wall Street does not. Maybe it’s time we took our chances.

McCollam writes a well-considered piece that points out the potential pitfalls as well as the potential benefits of privates ownership. But he makes a convincing argument that the private route is better for newspapers--which are qualitatively different from entertainment companies--and ultimately better for a thriving democracy.

The Book of Daniel: Ignored by advertisers (and audiences)

The New York Times reports that the controversial new NBC series "The Book of Daniel" was pretty much boycotted by many advertisers (and five network affiliates) for its two-hour season debut last Friday. This is an interesting piece because it gives some insight into what networks do when advertisers annd sponsors bale on a program. The religious subject matter--very touchy for Americans--resulted in low advertiser turnout,

despite lower prices for the spots, which reflected a week's worth of media attention devoted to complaints from the American Family Association about the contents of the program. The complaints led 5 of NBC's 232 affiliates to pre-empt the series last Friday; in one market, Little Rock, Ark., the local WB affiliate ran it instead. The series "touches on something that our society, and Madison Avenue, are not ready for," said Joe Mandese, editor of MediaPost, an online and print trade publication. "Religion is the ultimate taboo topic."

At a time when the network is losing more and more viewers to cable, NBC is hoping that the controversial drugs-and-alcohol story lines involving the Episcopal minister's dysfunctional family "will appeal to younger, educated and affluent viewers who prefer their TV programs with an edge." But advertisers still don't like these shows when they're on the big networks. And apparently ratings were low as well, with only 9 million viewers tuning in to "The Book of Daniel."

Overall, last week's ratings saw ABC on top for the first time this season, thanks to three big bowl games (the Orange Bowl, the Sugar Bowl, and the electrifying National championship Rose Bowl game, where Texas just edged out USC). Ballroom dancing also helped ABC, which broke CBS's season-long, 15-week winning streak.

Southwarth and Hawes: Daguerreotypes and Young America

On a slightly different note from most of my postings: My wife and I finally went to see--on its closing day, January 8--the George Eastman House's display of early photographic daguerreotypes by Southwarth and Hawes, a pair of studio photographers who ran one of Boston's most prominent studios in the mid-19th century. Daguerreotypes were early types of photographs, first developed in 1839, that, in contrast to later chemical processes, left no negative:

Instead, it is an image exposed directly onto a mirror-polished surface of silver, which has first been exposed to iodine vapour, or in the later use of the process, bromine vapour, housed in a velvet-lined folding case. While the daguerreotype was not the first photographic process to be developed, images of earlier processes required hours of exposure. The daguerreotype photographic process was one of the first to permanently record and affix an image with exposure time compatible with portrait photography, and became the first commercially used photographic process.

So while the daguerreotype process was a key advance--perhaps the key advance--in early photography, they're pretty rare today, with most of these early examples lost to history. That's why this exhibition was so special. Titled Young America: The Daguerreotypes of Southworth & Hawes, the exhibition, which debuted at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York City last June, shows how Southwarth and Hawes

took artistic portraiture to a new level beyond common commercial photography. In service of an elite and famous clientele, they worked with large 8x6-inch plate sizes, technically more challenging but aesthetically more beautiful. As their unique daguerreotypes attest, Southworth & Hawes focused lavish attention on national and international celebrities who traveled to their Boston studio, capturing likenesses in picturesque fashion.

The startling fact that Southworth & Hawes retained copies of most of their works, rather than wiping clean old images and reusing their silver plates, makes this collection even more exceptional. There were many fascinating portraits of major figures of the early American Republic, including "statesman Daniel Webster and literary figures Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Harriet Beecher Stowe;" but I found equally fascinating the images of ordinary men and women, boys and girls, most of whose names have been lost to history 150 years on. And the daguerreotype stereoviews were pretty amazing too! (See also the permanent exhibition website here.)

Public media on the media

Two interesting sources for inside-baseball analysis on the media by the media are PBS's mediawatch (part of the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer) and NPR's On the Media. This week saw some pretty interesting analysis pieces on both programs. Friday's NewsHour included pieces on questions raised by media coverage of the trapped miners in West Virginia (how did the media come to report that 12 miners survived when in fact they had died?) and the Bush administration's domestic spying program (why did the New York Times wait more than a year to break the story?). Inevitably the issues of ethics and journalists' use of sources was front and center. The same can be said of the key items in this week's On the Media, which also deals with the West Virginia mining disaster as well as Bush's leak investigation (over the extralegal wiretap story) and a very interesting backgrounder--originally aired in 2001--about the key role of leaks and leakers in American democracy.

Jan. 6 roundup

There's a lot of tech- and media-related news coming from the annual Consumer Electronics Show, currently underway in Las Vegas. The headline in the "Business Day" section of today's New York Times is "Google and Yahoo Aim at Another Screen", which focuses on how the two Internet search giants "intend to move aggressively beyond the Internet browser and onto the television screen." Notes the Times's Saul Hansell:

Both Yahoo and Google have emerged as potent threats to television networks because they are drawing ad dollars to their existing sites. And they are poised to cause further disruption if they can establish themselves as major players in advertising on Internet video.

Moreover, Google and Yahoo want to play a role in the emerging market for paid downloads of video programming, a market pioneered in 2005 by Apple Computer, which introduced a video iPod player and video downloads priced at $1.99 from ABC, NBC and other sources.

Sony's English-born Chief Executive Howard Stringer, also speaking at the Consumer Electronics Show, said that "the transition to high-definition television and video will be a watershed, surpassing even the move to color TV from black-and-white." Reuters reported Stringer as saying, "Content is no longer pushed at consumers, it's pulled when they want it and how they want it."

Elsewhere, the Benton Foundation notes that the House and Senate have "agreed on legislation to speed the nation’s transition to digital television while helping consumers to continue to use their analog televisions, recover spectrum for use by public safety officials and improve emergency communications, and auction off additional spectrum to reduce the national deficit"; Michael Copps and Deborah Taylor Tate were this week sworn in as FCC commissioners; the Washington Post and USA Today both discuss the big-news business separation of CBS and Viacom (though both firms will remain under the ultimate control of Sumner Redstone)

And finally, there's an invited piece in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that accuses big telephone firms such as AT&T, Verizon, BellSouth and Qwest of pushing "legislators to bless a dubious business plan to bring their new TV services only to wealthy neighborhoods." The Bells are arguing that they don't have the resources to comply non-discrimination provisions of universal service rules, "which would require a far more ambitious build-out of fiber networks than they seem prepared to undertake;" they'd rather be relieved of this burden. Of course, this is a load of rubbish, and if these companies were releived of their public interest obligations, this would inevitably expand the digital divide between rich and poor in the U.S.

The Guardian's Film Year in Review

Here it is: The Guardian's Film Year in Review of 2005, and here are some of the high points related for you:

January saw Sundance, and the adulation of shiny new movies such as Hustle and Flow and The Squid and the Whale (which have only recently made their long journey from Colorado to Rochester screens).

February: The Oscars of course, "billed as a showdown between Clint Eastwood and Martin Scorsese. And in the end it was the [Million Dollar] baby that emerged victorious."

March, and the Weinstein brothers and Disney-Miramax part company.

April saw the release of the controversial Hitler's-final-days flick, Downfall; and Sir John Mills dies

May was Cannes, which "played host to everything from Sin City to Hidden and everyone from Emir Kusturica to Paris Hilton."

June saw Tom Cruise's pre-War of the Worlds meltdown.

August exacerbated Hollywood's year-long box office blues, from The Island to Stealth

October was a big month, with the London Film Festival (opening with The Constant Gardener); Daniel Craig as the new Bond; and Nick Park's Aardman Studios (creators of Wallace & Gromit) burned down.

And lots more fascinating film-buff info.

Hollywood reflects on 2005 woes

USA Today today reminds us yet again that last year was a disappointing year for Hollywood, with domestic ticket sales dropping nearly $400 million. The shortfall mostly affected the summer season, which was down $400 million in sales. Only one movie-Star Wars, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith-took in more than $300 million, the current standard for a B-i-i-i-I-I-G blockbuster. Theatre attendance overall dropped by 8.5%, from 1.53 billion tickets in 2004 to only 1.4 billion last year. The year 2005 was the fourth year in a row that has seen a drop in sales-from a high of 1.63 billion in 2002.

Round-up, Jan 3

Here we are with the New Year-and the third year of operation for this blog!-and I thought one new thing I could introduce is a (fairly)regular round-up of news and information I find as I read around the media (though mostly from the Benton CommPolicy listserv, which is an excellent source of news and information about the media). Anyway, here we go:

Reports are coming in (e.g., on NPR's marketplace) that Viacom is separating the business activities of its CBS network television from Paramount and most everything else; MediaWeek's Year in Review gives some interesting predictions on digital/convergent media, cable a la carte, and the future of the 30-second ad spot; Broadcasting & Cable also looks to the digital future in 2006, with the focus on Video on Demand (VOD), either on cable or on iPods; B&C also proclaims that, with 12 million HDTV sets now in US homes, High Definition TV has finally "arrived".

Finally (for now), the Wall Street Journal today asks the question, As the 30-second ad disappears, what will advertisers do next? The paper points to some of the more obvious advertiser strategies that will be tried out in the 2006:

1) advertising everywhere
2) mobile devices such as cellphones and video iPods are fast emerging as new ad vehicles
3) advertisers seeking to market new TV shows, movies and songs are exploring other media
4) marketers have become obsessed with finding ordinary people to endorse, criticize or simply spread the word about new movies and new products on blogs or other consumer-created media
5) going well beyond buying a single TV spot or ad page in a magazine, advertisers want ideas that bind their messages inextricably with the media outlets they choose.

George Gerbner, RIP

I didn't get a chance to put this up earlier, but it's worthy of note: veteran media scholar and Philadelphia resident George Gerbner is dead. He died on Christmas Eve at the age of 86. Here's his LA Times obituary. Gerbner was well known for his research into television effects, Cultivation Theory, his long-running Cultural Indicators Project, and his more recent Cultural Environment Movement (designed "to work for greater diversity in media ownership, employment and representation."). (Here are some useful Gerbner-related links.) Gerbner's wife of almost 60 years, Ilona, also passed away earlier last month (December 8) at the age of 87.