Is HDTV really worth it?

The Christian Science Monitor asks whether HDTV (High Definition Television) is really living up to all the hype. The Monitor's Gregory M. Lamb notes that, while some high-tech gadgets have been adopted by Americans in astonishing numbers over a very short period (think DVDs, iPods, and digital cameras), High-Definition TVs haven't yet followed suit. Although there was a spike in interest in late January (thanks to the Super Bowl), that hasn't yet translated into the sorts of sales figures that many were predicting four or five years ago. Notes Lamb:

While nearly everyone has heard of HDTV, only 15 percent of American families have bought one since their introduction in the late 1990s, according to Ipsos Insight, a market research firm. Worse yet, only 15 percent more are seriously considering buying one in the near future. What's holding back the other 70 percent? Prices that can soar well into the four digits and suspicion that they are going to drop sharply are big factors. So are hidden hassles. For instance, getting an HDTV set to actually display a high-definition picture involves a process that a surprisingly large number of people either don't know about or don't bother with. And for many, the value of a fantastic picture that's available on just a few special HDTV channels hasn't outweighed the cost and frustrations.

Having recently purchased an HDTV ourselves, my wife and I came head-to-head with some of these issues. By last December our old TV was on its last legs, and we needed a new one. But we wanted an upgrade rather than just buy another low-def analog TV set. In fact we'd been wanting an upgrade for 18 months, and had been thinking about a widescreen HDTV all that time, but we couldn't justify the expense. Like most people in our situation, we weren't prepared to pay thousands of dollars for a product that in its previous form cost no more than a couple of hundred. We procrastinated endlessly, but after about a dozen visits to Circuit City, Best Buy et al, we finally bought a slimfit version of a more traditional CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) high-definition TV set. It's a 30-inch screen, looks great, and cost well under a thousand dollars. (If we had plumped for a flatscreen LCD or plasma set, it could have cost 2-3 times as much.) Still, there were hidden costs attached, such as the $50 it cost for a set of high-definition "rabbit ears" (antenna for over-the-air broadcast signals), $150 for a new DVD/VCR combo (our old ones were shot), $60 for a special HDMI cable (necessary for optimal viewing of DVDs), and a $100 installation fee for the Best Buy guy to come over and tune in the TV for an optimal signal. (I nearly balked at that last "hidden fee," but I am glad we did it.) So our upgrade ended up costing a bit over a grand after all. At that price, we felt it necessary to make savings, so we cut back on cable (and I cut back on lattes at the coffee shop). Now most of the TV we watch is via over-the-air high-definition signals--just like the old days (except for the high-definition part)! We can get some good, though limited HDTV signals over the air for free. We've now got four PBS channels provided by Rochester's WXXI. And we can invite friends over to watch the Super Bowl, the Olympics, and the Oscars in high-def widescreen glory! But we still suffered serious sticker shock from the experience. We're definitely not going near digital cable or DVRs or satellite anytime soon.

So there you have it: HDTV is cool--but it's not cheap! It will get cheaper and cheaper as time goes by, but I think it's fair to say that it'll never be as cheap as the "good old days" of analog. And there's lot about HDTV that is confusing and obscure. But as we get closer to the FCC's Feb 2009 analog cutoff, more and more consumers will have to come to terms with the same issues we had to face in making what was a pretty difficult decision. And more American families might think twice about whether they really need that expanded cable TV package.

NBC takes an Olympic knock

It's a real shame: What if they held a Winter Olympics, and nobody watched? Nobody from America, anyway. For those who haven't been paying attention - and judging by the ratings figures, that's a lot of people - the Winter Olympics have been underway in Turin (or Torino), Italy, for almost two weeks. Now I like the Olympics (especially the curling, since I do that as a pastime), but I love it even more if I think the rest of the country is joining in the fun. But increasingly, that's not happening, if NBC's Olympics early ratings figures are to be believed. MSNBC.com notes how last week the Olympics were consistently beaten by competing big network shows such as ABC's Lost, Grey's Anatomy, and Fox's American Idol, which doubled the Olympic audience.

What's going on? Are the Olympics dying in this country because nobody cares anymore, or is it just NBC's inability to make the event exciting. Of course, with the general fragmentation of the viewing audience, ratings figures for the Olympics (and most other big sporting events, with the exception of the Super Bowl) have been declining for years. But maybe NBC's not helping. The Baltimore Sun quotes University of Maryland media scholar Douglas Gomery, who argues that NBC's "got no style, no narrative and no ratings . . . NBC is watching its money go down the toilet, because we're not watching the Games." Gomery blames NBC first and foremost, though he notes that "changes in the audience and the way in which other networks are competing have something to do with it, too." What that last point means is that other networks are now challenging Olympic coverage with their own top shows -- i.e., aggressive counterprogramming. They're doing it because they know that NBC is vulnerable, partly due to their incompetence in showcasing the Olympics. Notes the Baltimore Sun:

The Olympics used to rally viewers of all ages to watch the U.S. hockey team beat Russia or see how the Nancy Kerrigan-Tonya Harding catfight played out. This Olympics, though, there is no one big story to unite a fragmented audience, some of whom are glued instead to Idol or - having already heard the news from Turin - are simply uninterested in the tape-delayed broadcast.

"That's the great failure of NBC in this Olympics," Gomery said, "its inability to find or forge a narrative that can inspire a mass audience to be in front of the TV set every night."

Right vs Left on the Sunday talk shows

An interesting new study by Media Matters for America suggests that there is systematic bias in favor of the right wing in the old networks' Sunday morning talk shows (on ABC, CBS, and NBC) "where policy makers state their case, the conventional wisdom takes shape, and the left and right in American politics debate the pressing issues of the day on equal ground." Or not so equal, apparently. As Broadcasting & Cable notes, the study (released last Tuesday) examined Meet the Press, Face the Nation and This Week during both the second term of President Clinton's administration and President George W. Bush's time in office to date. The Benton Communication Policy listserv points to the study's main contention that "conservative voices significantly outnumber progressive voices on the Sunday talk shows." Among the study's key findings:

1) During President Clinton's second term, the right held a small advantage in the balance between Democrats/progressives and Republicans/conservatives. But in President Bush's first term, Republicans and conservatives held a dramatic advantage, outnumbering Democrats and progressives by 58 percent to 42 percent. In 2005, the figures were identical: 58 percent to 42 percent.
2) Counting only elected officials and administration representatives, Democrats had an eight-point advantage during Clinton's second term, 53 percent to 45 percent. In Bush's first term, however, the Republican advantage was 61 percent to 39 percent, nearly three times as large.
3) In both the Clinton and Bush administrations, conservative journalists were far more likely to appear on the Sunday shows than were progressive journalists. In Clinton's second term, 61 percent of the ideologically identifiable journalists were conservative; in Bush's first term, that figure rose to 69 percent.
4) In 1997 and 1998, the shows conducted more solo interviews with Democrats and progressives than with Republicans and conservatives. But in every year since, there have been more solo interviews with Republicans and conservatives.
5) The most frequent Sunday show guest during this nine-year period is Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) who has appeared 124 times. A staggering 69 percent (86 out of 124) of McCain's appearances have been solo interviews. Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE) has been the most frequent guest since 2003, but only 31 percent (25 out of 80) of his appearances have been solo interviews.
6) In every year examined by the study -- 1997 through 2005 -- more multi-guest panel discussions tilted right (a greater number of Republicans/conservatives than Democrats/progressives) than tilted left. In some years, there were two, three, or even four times as many right-titled panels as left-tilted panels. 7) Congressional opponents of the Iraq war were largely absent from the Sunday shows, particularly during the period just before the war began.

So how damning is this report? Well, Broadcasting & Cable notes a response from NBC's Meet the Press stating that the study is "misleading." Meet the Press's Executive Producer Betsy Fischer points out in her show's defense that if the study had included Clinton's first term, "the same analysis would have found that, on Meet the Press, for example, the guests skewed heavily toward Democrats." (Media Matters noted that it was unable to analyze Clinton's first term "because of limitations of the data and the fact that it had to cut it off somewhere.") Fischer also noted,

"During the first two years of the Clinton Administration - when Democrats controlled both the White House and Congress, . . . the breakdown of ideological guests were as follows: 1993 (72 Democrats, 29 Republicans -or a ratio of (71% Dem to 29% GOP); in 1994 ( 71 Democrats and 47 Republicans - or a ratio of 60% Dem to 40% GOP).

"When both House of Congress shifted to Republican control in 1995 - the number Republican guest appearances also increased and resulted in almost an even number of Republican and Democratic appearances."

B&C does note that "there is something intuitive in the findings, given that key administration figures are the plum guests on those shows" and this suggests a natural "skew toward the party in power." And indeed this is what tends to happen in journalism: The people who are in power are the people who get quoted and interviewed most often. And there's lots of research on journalism newsgathering routines that has noted the heavy reliance of journalists on official sources in gathering and framing the news. This, in fact, is closely related to the "indexing hypothesis" proposed by Lance Bennett, who in a key 1990 article in Journal of Communication argued that journalists "tend to 'index' the range of voices and viewpoints in both news and editorials according to the range of views expressed in mainstream government debate about a given topic." It might not be right that the talk shows skew right, but it's probably inevitable, certainly until the Democrats start winning again. At least Lance Bennett must be happy that Media Matters for America has found more evidence to support his hypothesis.

"The sky is actually falling right now:" Good or bad?

If anyone's got some good insights into the direction our mass media are going in, it should be David Carr, the New York Times media critic and long-time writer for the alternative press in Washington, DC and Minneapolis. The media are now Carr's beat for the Times, and in addition to his regular writing he also composes the Times's Carpetbagger blog. Carr speaks about his take on the media next Wednesday, February 15 at SUNY Brockport's MetroCenter in downtown Rochester. And judging by this interview for the Rochester City newspaper, he's got a lot to say.

Carr is less than ecstatic about what he sees in media-land, though he seems simultaneously energized and shocked at the changes underway. City's Krestia DeGeorge kicks off her piece by noting that "he almost passed on the chance to be a media columnist with the Times" as he was so tired of media issues. But he "came around," and he now says he's glad he did, because he has something to say. And that brings us to his quote about the sky "actually falling right now." He thinks it's "fun and interesting and scary all at the same time to watch the ways in which media are atomizing and becoming commoditized." So, it's a mixed bag, then?

Yes, indeed. There's lots of cool stuff going on, but Carr seems to be concerned about the general lack of news awareness among young folks today. And the changes in technology aren't helping as much as everyone assumes. No matter how many blogs and news groups inhabit the Internet, we still absolutely need a "robust press"--both mainstream and alternative--because that's the only place where this stuff will get critically analyzed. He points out something that's pretty obvious to anyone of my generation, but might not be to someone in their teens or early twenties:

I think people assume that, "Oh, we'll be able to use the web to assemble a portrait of the world beyond our town," and the fact is that Google News or whatever RSS feeder you've got, most of it is just annotating coverage. Somebody has to make phone calls somewhere in order for news to function.

Where are the data inputs coming from? Where is the information coming from? In other words, who is making the phone calls? Who is sending the emails? You cannot have a robust discourse without a database of current information. And if the information that's being culled through is just government-issued data without a critical eye or editing, then you're going to end up with a fairly dumb republic.

There's a conceit that young people get their news from the Jon Stewart show or get their news from the web, but there was a study not long ago at Ball State, and if you're talking, say, 18 to 24, young people just don't get their news. That's all there is to it. They don't have a strong interest in it. So there you have a very attractive advertising demographic where there's no upside in serving them with that kind of information, because they have no interest or need. There's not much news on a Playstation, man.

Comic books and movies after 9/11

I got an interesting email the other day from a former student who's now enrolled in a Master's advanced writing program at Syracuse University. He's working on an article for a magazine that deals with comic book movies--with the focus on Marvel comics superheroes, beginning with 1998's Blade (starring Wesley Snipes). He's examining whether the financial success of these movies (think Spider-Man and X-Men) can be attributed in any way to "America's collective post-9/11 psyche."

This sounds like a fascinating topic/hypothesis, but also a tough nut to crack. I should note that I was a big Marvel Comics fan when I was a kid in the '70s (when they were just starting to distribute Marvel in the UK). And I've seen most of these new movies, including Blade (that's the vampire movie where Snipes famously states that the world is just a "sugar-coated topping"--lovely line!). But that's the limit of my "expertise." Still, it got me thinking.

Why is this such a tough question? First off, it's hard to say exactly what the "post-9/11 psyche" actually is--it seemed clear enough after the WTC/Pentagon attacks, when we were all talking about the "death of irony" and a new seriousness in how we conduct our affairs--but IMHO that all dissipated surprisingly quickly, or metastasized into something else. Bush was too busy getting us back out shopping for the economy and avoiding any mention of sacrifice. Business as usual!

There surely is a link, all the same, but I don't know how direct and causal it is. The rise of comic book-based movies has been a feature of the past few years, but it could also be explained by many factors, such as new technology, i.e., the development of CGI that's good enough to render these fantasy worlds as realistically as possible. But that can also explain the making of Lord of the Rings, Narnia, Harry Potter, King Kong, and so on. And though the CGI in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man is excellent, the same can't be said of Ang Lee's Hulk.

Another obvious explanation for the popularity in comic book movies is the commercial conservatism of Hollywood, their love of fads, and their aversion to original screenplays (comics are a tried and tested source of ideas and characters). And of course comic book heroes--mostly DC stuff, Superman & Batman--were being turned into movies long before 9/11 (as was Blade, which was made in 1997). We're talking mainly about Marvel here as the primary source for recent superhero movies. Is there a specific link between Marvel's superheroes, who are generally thought to have more depth and character than their DC counterparts?

We also have to recall that there's been a general increase in feature film animation recently, including non superhero stuff, from Wallace & Gromit to American Splendor (and comedy, including just about everything that Pixar's done, including The Incredibles, which pokes fun at the superhero action genre). I also wonder, if 9/11 spawned a new era of high patriotism, why hasn't Marvel's Captain America (pictured above left) not been greenlighted (at least not yet, though there's talk of making that movie). Captain America was the super-patriot superhero from WWII. He should have been first on the list!

So: Maybe I'm missing something (I'm sure I am!) but the direct connection isn't jumping out at me right away. Of course, that just means it requires more digging and thinking. Maybe the "post-9/11 psyche" is rooted in something very different to what I'm thinking about. Anyway, something to ponder.

Centripetal cartoons of Mohammed

There has of course been a huge upsurge in coverage of the widespread controversy and unrest sparked off by the publication and republication of cartoon images of Mohammed. Of course this issue is interesting in terms of free speech and liberal marketplace of ideas in the "global public sphere"--if such a thing truly exists. (A good round-up is provided in Slate.com and a helpful timeline of developments is provided by the BBC.) But it's also fascinating in terms of the centrifugal-centripetal elements of global communications. And that's what I'd like to talk about here.

This is a distinction raised by Harold Innis, a Canadian economist and pioneer historian of economics and communication. Innis believed that the main thrust for societal change is determined by development in communication forms. Innis's idea is that the dominant form of communication determines societal structures (see also McLuhan and Walter Ong for more on this). He focuses on the biases of communication formed through technology determining social organization. As new forms of communication become dominant, the nature of society changes fundamentally to accommodate these developments. Thus, e.g., the nature of oral cultures changed dramatically with the development of writing. Writing-based cultures structured their societies fundamentally differently from their oral-based predecessors. Innis's two most famous works, Empire and Communications and Bias of Communication, were published in the early 1950s and tackled these issues head-on.

It's in Empire and Communications that Innis elaborates on the concepts of centrifugal and centripetal forces. Centripetal forces of communication tend to make a culture or society more integrated over a given area over time; they tend to bring us together in a common "ritual" on consuming and interacting with common media (this is what James Carey is talking about with his Ritual Model of communication).

Centrifugal forces, on the other hand, tend to divide humanity into sets of smaller, more narrowly defined peoples and cultures; they allow a broader array of independent, peripheral cultural entities not fully integrated into a unified, hegemonic or imperial core. Nation-states, empires and other dominating geopolitical entities have always tried to emphasize and reinforce the centripetal forces of communication (through enhancing tight physical and technological channels and networks within the geopolitical unit and controlling the interchange of ideas and ideological debates carried on these networks). But ideas and and ideological debates tend to have a life of their own, and can use these networks to tear apart and undermine the formal forces of integration and assimiliation. (Interestingly, Russian formalist literary scholar Mikhail Bakhtin expressed similar ideas in terms of languages, which "do not coexist peacefully, but are rather in a permanent state of competition." He distinguished "centripetal linguistic forces, exerted by official forms backed by the cultural or administrative establishment, from centrifugal forces intent on preserving the existence of unofficial, dialectal forms; he identifies the former with the social processes of political, cultural and ideological centralization.”)

This brings us back to the offending cartoons of Mohammed. This continuing story is, unfortunately, an excellent example of centrifugal forces of modern global communications in action. The series of cartoons, some depicting the Prophet Mohammed as a terrorist, were first published in a Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, back in September 2005. Then things died down a bit, but on January 10, a Norwegian newspaper reprinted the cartoons. At the end of January, the Danish paper apologised; but the following day newsapers in France, Germany, Italy and Spain reprinted the caricatures, in the face of Muslim outrage. By this point the information had been communicated and recommunicated not only through the traditional press but also hugely magnified by the play given the story by the web, cable and satellite news, and the blogosphere. This massive and integrated communication network, which many associate with the powerful integrationist forces of globalization, was now being used as the forum for a clash of ideas and cultures (if not a clash of civilizations). This network is spreading the information about the cartoons and the story of the Muslim outrage, but more fundamentally it's spreading the idea of the clash itself as a major news story in its own right--connoting the idea that, on the one hand, the West hates Islam; and on the other, that Muslims are all radical and resistant to logic and reason.

If there is a centripetal element to this (and this isn't a good thing), it could be in terms of defining and more radically distinguishing between cultural groups that define themselves in terms of being different from, and opposed to, a cultural "other." I'm not saying that this is happening in a permanent way or that it's irreversible. But we do have to take at the long game when trying to understand the big impact of globaization and global media. We always need to remember that all new global communications technologies and networks can act centrifugally as well as centripetally--yes, they can bring people together, but they can also emphasize differences, and pull apart and ultimately destroy political or cultural entities. European imperialism and its attendant institutions were brought down by the ideas of nationalism and independence spread on the imperial channels and networks of communication; Communism and the Soviet Union could not survive the spread of information and ideas carried on the communication networks of the late 20th century. How will communication tear us apart and redefine us in the future?

The State of the Union, by the numbers

The Washington Post's coverage of the President's State of the Union address included a table of the number of times the president used selected key words in his address, and compared it with the number of times he used those words in past addresses. The table is reproduced below (comparing 2006 with '05 and '04). Note the shift in emphasis away from Iraq, Tax (Reform) and Social Security -- places where Bush is either mired in controversy or has seen to have failed -- and toward "The World," "The Economy,", and a wide array of issues that garnered between 2 and 7 mentions (below). This seems to reflect Bush's move away from Big Ideas to smaller-scale, (supposedly) more manageable policies. Terrorism remains a strong suit for Bush, so that word count remains high, while "glittering generalities" such as "Freedom" will never get old for an American president (guaranteed to force even reluctant Democrats to give a Standing O). Anyway, who said the State of the Union isn't a laundry list?

World..................... 26 ('06).. 15 ('05)... 14 ('04)
Economy/
economic................ 23........... 14.......... 17
Terrorism/-ist/
terror...................... 20.......... 27.......... 20
Freedom................. 17............ 21............ 8
Iraq........................ 16........... 27.......... 24
Government............ 11............ 14............ 7
Tax......................... 8........... 10.......... 20
Spending/spend....... 7............. 4............ 2
AIDS....................... 6............. 1............ 0
Iran........................ 6............. 3............. 1
Liberty.................... 4............. 7............. 1
Social Security......... 3............17............. 2
Surveillance............ 2............. 0............. 0
Medicare................. 2............ 0............. 8
Medicaid................. 2............ 0............. 0

Source: Washington Post
(Note: Where appropriate, singular, plural and possessive variations are also counted.)