CBS Radio News will provide a number of its programs to affiliate stations for podcasting or station Web site use. Beginning this week, CBS stations will be able to access the material via an affiliate Web site. Programming will include regularly scheduled programs and features, as well special in-depth series. [Story at MediaWeek.com]
Brother-in-law Chris reports that Verizon is installing fiber-to-the-home in his neighborhood of South Lake, Texas. According to this Yahoo! story, the company expects to market video services on the new FTTP network next year. DSL? Cable? Shhiiiiitttt. Fiber will deliver “download speeds of up to 5 Mbps, 15 Mbps and 30 Mbps, with upstream speeds of up to 2 Mbps for the first two products and 5 Mbps for the third. The 5 Mbps service sells for $34.95 per month, when purchased with a package of Verizon services, and $39.95 when purchased separately.” Hard to believe I’ll live to see that kind of speed to our home but I’m happy for him. Sort of.
Rick Bozich — a sports columnist for The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky– isn’t sure he needs radio anymore:
“I followed the final 15 minutes of the Louisville-Florida basketball game while I was in Freedom Hall on Saturday. The game, remember, was played in Gainesville. I was courtside for Kentucky’s annual Basketball 101 lecture against Indiana. I did not have a radio. I did have my cell phone. I connected to the Internet. Clicked to an ESPN site. Another click, and play-by-play from Gainesville flashed on my screen. Stats. Time. The works. Actually, that’s not true no greasy bacon ads. So tell me again, for precisely what do I depend on WHAS radio?
From my perspective, the most interesting part of this story is that the cheif operating officer of our company brought it in to me. He gets it and that’s very important. One more thing… Radio is not going away. I don’t want it to go away. But broadcasters must find a way to embrace new technologies instead of trying to lobby them out of existance or deny that existance.
God, how depressing. I’m on my third Thinkpad and loved ’em all. Next one will be a Mac.
“The Internet will reestablish a more balanced, decentralized lifestyle. In the physical world, you win by being big, with economies of scale in manufacturing, worldwide distribution, and branding. In the virtual world, you win by being good: Automation reduces the benefits of scale, the Internet equalizes distribution, and reputation follows from quality rather than incessantly repeated slogans. The switch from centralization to decentralization goes to the heart of the human experience. And because the switch will drive up quality, it will tend to be a force for good.” [Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox, November 22, 2004]
I no longer believe in politicians, large institutions, and organized religion…just to name a few. One thing (?) in which I believe strongly is the Internet and it’s potential for improving (saving?) mankind. I can’t make an intelligent case for that belief but Jakob Nielsen makes a good running start at it.
The Long Tail, by Chris Anderson (Wired) explains why you can’t find movies like Sorcerer (Roy Scheider) at the corner Blockbuster but can at Netflix. Anderson’s easy-to-follow-explanation is a tad long but an informative piece. In the (near) future, everything will be available online. While nobody cares about everything, somebody cares about every thing.
Warning: Self-serving shop talk follows. The Radio-Television News Directors Association announced the winners in their annual Edward R. Murrow Awards competition today. This is kind of a big deal in the radio and TV news business. This year they started out with 3,182 entries and gave 74 awards to 53 news organization. The regional winners were announced a few weeks ago and today they announced the national winners. And one of our network websites won.
Entries fall into one of three categories (Network/Syndication Service, Large Market and Small Market) for radio and the same three for TV. And this year they added a category called Websiste Non-Broadcast.
Our entry (Missourinet.com) won in the Radio Network/Syndication Service category. Pretty cool given that the competition was ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, CNN and god only knows who else. You gotta figure there’s some “online journalists” in NY and Atlanta scratching their heads and asking each other, “What the hell is a Missourinet? Somebody get a map!”
For some reason the RTNDA website provide the urls of the Website winners but didn’t create links. That seems a little clueless to me.
*Radio Network/Syndication Service: Missourinet, Jefferson City, MO
*Television Network/Syndication Service: MSNBC
*Television Large-Market: News 14 Carolina, Charlotte, NC
*Television Small-Market: Capital News 9, Albany, NY
*Radio Large-Market: KSL-AM, Salt Lake City
*Radio Small-Market: WBLL-AM, Bellefontaine, OH
*Website Non-Broadcast: Washington Post, Washington; Belo Interactive, Dallas
I’ll probably never know what they judges liked about our site. And let’s face it, those big national network websites have some cool features our site does not. But I can name a few things we’ve got that are unique or cool or both:
Crash Reports: Missouri State Highway Patrol accident reports, updated 24/7.
Legislature.com: Live debate audio from the state legislature. Then we archive. We’ve got it back to 2002.
Supreme Court Arguments: Oral agurments (live & archived). I think we have nearly 500 arguments online.
Missouri Death Row: Ours has become the “official” site for Missouri.
Last time I checked, there were no other websites featuring this content. On the planet. At least not the way we do. Of course, there’s a lot we can do to improve our site but, for now, it’s nice to know someone appreciates the effort. The big award show is October 4th in NY. Gomer Goes to Manhatten in a Rented Tux.
Eastman Kodak Co. on Tuesday said it will stop selling traditional film cameras in the United States, Canada and Western Europe, another move by the troubled photography company to cut lines with declining appeal in favor of fast-growing digital products.
Mark Cuban thinks he’s ready to turn filmmaking on its ear: “Why can’t I preorder a DVD and receive it the day the film is released in theaters? Or buy it on my way out of the theater if I liked what I saw? One thing I learned from the Mavs is that you can watch the game on TV, but you’ll still go to the game, because it’s a different experience.” [Wired via Boing Boing]
A new report issued this week by Future Image predicts that “by mid-2004, sales of photo phones in the U.S. could exceed the combined total sales of digital and film cameras.” [Via Poynter Onlilne]