Mommy! Leo said a Swear!
Posted by Andrew | Filed under New Media
If you have been paying attention to what has been happening in the TWiT-verse (not to be confused with the Twitter-verse, an any other verse for that matter), you will know that a certain naughty boy named Leo Laporte revealed his extensive vocabulary while on the Gillmor Gang last week. Apparently, Leo will no longer broadcast the Gang on TWiT Live, and good riddance too, if I wanted to listen to boring old men gassing, I would tune to NPR. Just kidding, as a white guy, I love NPR!
The problem all started when Mike Arrington accused Leo of having a positive review of the Palm Pre, a desperate attempt by Palm to stay relevant in today’s tech world, because Palm gave him a review unit for a week free of charge. Wow, I would totally kiss Palm’s butt if they LOANED me a phone FOR A WHOLE WEEK for FREE. Well, Leo, a man who is as soft as he is doughy, gave Arrington a piece of his mind by calling him, among other things “a troll.”
Finally, someone gave that self righteous, big headed, dirtbag what he had coming to him. Arrington, who’s biggest accomplishment was making $32 million off of the sale of a company that he had nothing to do with other than being the Founders best friend, is the founder and Editor of TechCrunch, which is one of several blogs covering Internet start-ups. OK, the guy did have one good idea, but he acts he is the second coming of Christ most of the time. John C. Dvorak summed him up well in his posting about the incident.
To sum up my thoughts about what happened, here it is. Way to go Leo, thanks for putting the dirtbag where he belongs. As for Mike Arrington, screw you. If you didn’t laugh at that last sentence, then you need to watch the video, and read more about the incident here.
News and the Collective Conscience
Posted by Andrew | Filed under New Media
We truly live in a wonderful time. Back when my dad was growing up, there were only three channels and most of them had “BC” in their name. That really reflects the era of time that their idea of broadcasting came from. And in other countries around the world, it was more of the same. Mostly public government owned broadcasters both on radio and television, at least in America, we had three “unbiased” private corporations bringing us our news. Man, times were much simpler back when only major corporations like General Electric and Walt Disney were the only ones who could report the news.
But then, people like Dave Winer, Adam Curry and Leo Laporte decided to take a dump all over this perfect American media system. They started writing blogs, and hosting podcasts and managing RSS feeds and now they are Twittering! And then people like Kevin Rose decided that the audience should be the one to decide what the top news headlines should be! And then the ultimate thorn in the side of any major media corporation, Craig Newmark, who decided that advertising and classifieds can be free.
Back in the old days, the only way your opinion could get on the air was if you owned the station. Alternatively, you could buy a newspaper company and get your opinions out there, and I’ve heard there are some great deals out there now. But, you can just save your money by going to Blogger or Twitter and just posting online for absolutely nothing. And now, most news organizations allow people to comment on the stories that they post right on their websites! From small and measly local papers and radio stations to major national newspapers and networks. NPR will now read people’s Twitter responses on the air!
Now, you are probably thinking to yourself, “Andrew, you post a blog, you host a podcast and post regularly to Twitter and read Digg and all of that.” You of course are absolutely right, but what you are forgetting is that my opinion actually matters. And guess what, yours does too. All news and information out there is biased and has an agenda no matter what. But, the Internet and new media have allowed us to display different points of view on events and ideas reported in the media in a single place. People thought that CNN was a revolution back when it came on the scene. But the revolution that is taking place right here, right now on blogs like this, podcasts, and other social networking, and information aggregating (wow, thats a word!) sites is one hundred times more earth shattering than anything Ted Turner did.
Are Cable Companies in Trouble?
Posted by Andrew | Filed under New Media
I’ve already talked about how Newspapers are quickly dying out. Well, apparently they aren’t the only big media providers that are having financial difficulties, and this one hits closer to home. You may have heard about Charter Communications, the country’s third largest Cable provider, declaring bankruptcy. To quote the immortal John C. Dvorak, “How do you lose money with a cable company?”
It is pretty hard to believe, Cable companies have a monopoly in the areas that they serve, so they can basically charge whatever they want. But, there are always limits, and apparently they can’t get people to spend enough on their cable bills. I was listening to the latest MacBreak Weekly, and Alex Lindsay and Andy Ihnatko were commenting on how how much Cable now costs, and it came up that the Cable company needs each individual customer to spend $150 a month to make a profit. And when you think about it, it makes sense. Maintaining a network as complex as a Cable system probably costs a lot, with trucks, maintenance people, accountants, installation people, etc.
However, do to the rise of services like Hulu and TV.com, people are starting to dump their television subscriptions in exchange for cheaper Internet connections. Most major networks now offer free streaming video right on their own web sites. Cable companies don’t want to be a utility like the phone company, they want people to buy their premium services, it’s their bread and butter.
Could companies like Charter and Comcast find a completely new business model built around being an Internet service provider? I think one thing they could do is move into the TV over IP business. You know, offer On Demand content over the internet for subscribers. Comcast is already dabbling in this with their new Fancast service, which directly competes with Hulu. Would you pay money to have access to TV and movies from your Internet provider?
Can Newspapers Survive?
Posted by Andrew | Filed under New Media
Newspapers across the country are feeling crunched. The price of ink and paper has gone up, so has the cost of delivery, and they aren’t being helped by the decrease of subscribers. Not to mention that Craigslist is eating all of their revenues from Classified ads, and local businesses are spending more advertising dollars online, in television, and on the radio.
We’re hearing news about the San Francisco Chronicle losing $1 million a week, and it’s sister paper, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, has gone online only, ceasing it’s print edition. The Rocky Mountain News in Denver has disappeared entirely.
We already know that in this age of television and the internet, that the days of the newspapers were numbered. Back during the Nixon administration, they had to develop “Joint Operating Agreements,” so that newspapers in markets with multiple dailies could survive. The trouble all started as far back as the 60s.
My family recently cancelled our subscription to the local paper. It’s not because we get our news from the internet or the TV, it’s because the newspaper sucked. It would constantly have misspellings and bad grammar, and it never had any real news. One morning, the entire front page was dedicated to a cat that had been stolen by some middle schoolers. This was, keep in mind, while their was a war in Iraq, Afghanistan, our financial system was crumbling, and the 2008 U.S. Presidential election was still in full swing.
Can newspapers survive if they are going online only? The Seattle P.I. has a good following, and is well respected by people. But the dinky little local in my neck of the woods, can they survive? With the kind of stories they are printing, probably not.
Another question I’m wondering about is, are people attached to the physical paper that is delivered to their tube every day? Is there a fundamental problem with reading your news online? I mean, when you read your news online, you can sort through all the stories, only read the stuff you’re interested in, and you can get news from multiple sources around the world.
My dad reads our local paper, the Boston Globe, the Seattle Times, and the Deseret News during his lunch break at work (We live in Maine, we used to live in Seattle, and before that, Utah). Do we really need to waste all those trees and print our news on paper every day?