Recently in Internet Category

I will not have access to the Internet between November 4th and the 18th, because I will be traveling on a sail boat from Grenada to Antigua. Please excuse the blog interruption.

I leave you for the time being with my undigested thoughts on the broad and relevant topic “the evolving nature and aesthetics of creative content”.

First, it covers the evolving structures of storytelling via new media. Examples of new media structures are foureyedmonsters.com and lonelygirl15.com; and interactive television content that is created on the web to supplement traditional shows. Reality TV is obviously interactive but LOST is the best original dramatic example of this interactivity; and then of course, their is the growth of user generated content from channels like YouTube and CNN): What do these new storytelling structures look like? How are these structures similar and different to their predecessors?

Television, can have a relationship with the internet that film cannot. I imagine that the nature of going to the movies will still demand High Imaging that allows for suspension of disbelief...but there is a degrading of image quality and techniques that lower-end digital technologies have supplanted into the aesthetic psyche of many younger viewers – just look at the ads created and aimed at the under 30 demographic. Old tricks. Why is that? Perhaps because they are expert consumers of electronic stories and know it’s manufactured.... They are deconstructing the image.

Another thought, I think of Mark Chiolis’ (Grass Valley) remark to me in my interview with him:

"Today there are a number of thought provoking questions that are being asked. What happens when there is a true RGB 4k (there isn't one today) sensor that rivals, if not exceeds, that of today's film stock? One of the arguments for film is that people like the "look" which includes the grain and movement through the gate. What happens when the "game-boy" generation takes over? Having grown up with "video" is this the "look" they want to see? Will they have a different set of standards to compare to?"

Film (theatrical features) is (are) different. I think they will demand even more heighten realism and I suspect that Digital 3D will become increasingly popular in that format in the years to come (an outgrowth of the gamers demand for a heightened experience).

What are the fundamental relationships that the younger generation seem to be exploring via this new media content and traditional content? Some may say the subject matter is generally solipsistic, passive - an outgrowth perhaps of the individuals solitary communion with the anonymous web or with media itself...but look at the bleeding edge technology and science of virtual reality. Look at the studies of the psycho-physical effects of these media tools on users in medical and defense research. Passive is not the right word to describe this relationship. Interactive is better. But with what (media) and whom (other players)?

I say one cannot understand this generation unless they have a MySpace page and love it. Why? There is a freedom of movement in the field of archetype and symbol that enables both artist and audience to observe without disclosure, absorb without acquisition, and create without the demand for conclusion. The repetition of archetypical representation uncovers both artist's and audience's collective mythologies, thereby revealing: The anonymous is personal.

Renowned urban planer Richard Florida notes that the fundamental social and economic changes that underpin the Creative Economy, demonstrate that in “virtually every aspect of life, weak ties have replaced the stronger bonds that once gave structure to society. Rather than live in one town for decades, we now move about. Instead of communities defined by close associations and deep commitments to family, friends, and organizations, we seek places where we can make friends and acquaintances easily and live quasi-anonymous lives. The decline in the strength of our ties to people and institutions is a product of the increasing number of ties we have.”

How have television and new media influenced the sensibility and subject matter of creative content. I see the primary relationship that the younger generation is exploring, is with the media itself (I am not talking about the news media, I am talking about media itself). You may critiqued the passivity of video games...but, perhaps that passivity masks an exploration with identity that is not understood by non-participants and therefore disregarded as irrelevant. I say this exploration is powerful and emergent in movies like Adaptation and I Heart Huckabees. This relationship between identity and media is increasingly portrayed as mystical, interactive, and “high touch”. Their is a propensity for role playing, a desire for authenticity coupled with a disdain of truthiness and even traditional ideology. For dramatic content and docu-reality, they create satire and even sarcasm (the mass may also create cynicism, but I would never characterize this generation as cynical. They know the line of complicity runs through each of them).

In some respects, “reality shows” seem like an outgrowth of this propensity for role-playing, a study of the dramas of personality. In deconstructing the “sit com” and “documentary” and even the “commercial brand”, there appears to be an investigation of topics like truth and being.

Regarding lonelygirl15.com. As one writer I spoke with remarked, “Entertainment is always flirting with reality. It seems that things that don't aim to be thought of as real do a much better job. Verisimilitude, it's what it's all about."

Is there a common thread in the subject and structures explored by newer creative content, a post-post modern sensibility? See the NYT’s article, “Brand Underground”:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/30/magazine/30brand.html?ex=1311912000&en=82edb890b1d6c977&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

There are several larger forces manifesting in the recent development of MTV's Virtual Laguna Beach for example. One of them is the evolution of brand: how the concept has extended itself into the realm of branded communities in the digital age. Gamers (the generation under age 35 and including generations X and Y) have grown up in a world saturated by brand so that the phenomenon is now a vehicle for personal expression and identity beyond the ostensible confines of a corporate mandate (well, except their own). Commentators like Rob Walker (The Brand Underground, NYT) have elucidated the social phenomena well, however, they tend to look at the expression as another failed modernist attempt to beat the system. Hand me the cyanide, the revolution is over and we lost!

Boomers are wired to view creativity as a choice between “selling out” or “sticking it to the man” and the quest for the great society as a dogmatic battle between the mediocrity of relativism and the virtue of absolutes. To use former bohemian terminology, today’s generation does not have that hang up. “They have relatively little generational consciousness,” writes David Brooks, “because this generation is for the most part not fighting to emancipate itself from the past.” The suggestion is provocative considering that while “the baby boom included the largest U.S. birth cohort to date, the game generation will ultimately outdo the baby boom in size, in scope, and presumably in influence,” notes John C. Beck and Mitchell Wade in their study of the game generation’s influence on organizational values in business. “The total size of the game generation is already greater than the baby boom ever was,” and the whole generation of gamers, “including X and Y and letters to be named later-simply approach the world differently than their predecessors.”

I am a broken record, but like dissident antipoliticians from the former Czechoslovakia, who used satire and absurdity to highlight the fact that in a postmodern consumer society the “line of complicity runs through each of us," this new American generation distrusts political grandstanding and even traditional forms of organized politics. Hence, the popularity of so-called no brow satires like South Park, The Colbert Report, and The Daily Show.

The playwright Heiner Mueller once remarked that the potency of theater in his native East Germany was based on the absence of other ways of getting messages across to people. "As a result," Mueller says, "Theater here has taken over the function of other media in the West," before now. While the never ending surface chatter of talking points and double speak on both the left and the right continue to erode the value of words, they also inflate the space between the lines.

None of this mentions how the game generation take globalization for granted and the growing crossover of cultural content from other traditions, “bollywood”, Japanese Anime et cetera.

Advertising Age - CBS to Stream Prime-time Shows Through Innertube

Excerpts:

Just weeks after ABC touted the success of its online rebroadcasts of first-run shows, CBS has followed suit and will offer several of its top prime-time shows online, through the network's broadband channel, Innertube. The network will offer up "CSI," "CSI: Miami," "CSI: NY," "NCIS," "Survivor" and "Numb3rs," along with newcomer "Jericho."

MySpace selects Google search system | Business News | Reuters.com

 Excerpt:

News Corp.'s Fox Interactive Media said on Monday that signed a multiyear deal to use Google Inc.'s search and advertising system to direct traffic across its network of Internet sites, including the wildly popular MySpace.com.

Reality television is a result evolving market forces.  Certainly, the rising cost of production and the demand for content with the worldwide proliferation of cable is one obvious driver.  Reality television especially of the type that is integrated with the Internet or with direct viewer response is also part of the evolving trend towards interactive media with the younger demographic.  Interactivity is also part of the gaming generation's fascination with role-playing.  Sims in the world of traditional television content is found in the form of reality television.  According to John C. Beck and Mitchell Wade, in their study of the gaming generation's attitudes towards business, entertainment software has trained this generation to expect a heightened relationship based on immediate rewards or consequences with media and the world at large.  I believe this ethos towards role-playing and interactivity is seen in the form of reality-based shows like "American Idol" and the "Apprentice".

With advertising in turmoil on broadcast TV, reality shows - like American Idol or even Tommy Hilfiger's less successful "The Cut" - take product placement well beyond a can of Coke enjoyed by our favorite television show's character. "Idol was simply a marketing tool for me to sell records," says Simon Cowell on "Larry King Live."  "The show was one thing but it was actually my record label, which was the most important thing.  So, my background is I run a record label, and I still run a record label and that's really my passion.

The real winner of "American Idol" is Cingular Wireless. Cingular has an exclusive deal with the show's producers that let customers text their votes instead of trying to call in on busy lines. In Season Four last year, 41.5-million text votes were sent in; Cingular charges between $19.99 per month for a text package with 2,500 messages included and 10 cents per message on a pay-as-you-go plan, meaning the company raked in as much as $4.15-million in text messaging fees from American Idol votes alone last year. When the Apprentice was at its peak, Ad Age writes, Yahoo's product placement was a solid success, "After the ice cream challenge during the second season, viewers were told to go search Yahoo, and “Within three hours of the end of the show, the term ‘Apprentice Ice Cream’ was the third-most-searched term on Yahoo that day. By 5 o’clock the next afternoon, the ice cream was sold out,” says Yahoo VP Jim Moloshok. And the results kept coming.  After the Levis challenge, “[f]our days after that episode ran, viewers were still searching Yahoo avidly for ‘Apprentice Jeans’ to get a copy of the catalog.  And "Apprentice Jeans" was still ranked No. 1 among Yahoo Web searches,” AdAge reports. Using secret tracking devices, Yahoo discovered that “The core demographic for the ice cream was 21 to 34 years old. For the jeans, it was 35 to 44.” Yahoo VP  Moloshok says, “If you can complete the loop, product placements like Mark Burnett is doing are one of the most effective ways to get people engaged with a product.”

Now CNN like MTV Flux are taking "reality" one-step further implementing an infrastructure for user-based content.

Advertising Age - MediaWorks - Dell to Sponsor CNN's 'Citizen Journalism'

Guardian Unlimited Business | | MTV hooks up with Google

MySpace a launch pad for next-gen media biz

News Corp. sculpting bold plan for growth

FT.com / Companies / Media & internet - News Corp to sell films online

Advertising Age - MediaWorks - MTV Wants to Be Marketers' On-Ramp to the Web

USNews.com: Money: MySpace for boomers

Excerpts:

MTV acquires US online student news network - Digital Bulletin - Digital news by Email - Brand Republic

EContentMag.com: Group Members Only Launches MySpace Type Technology for Businesses

Far Removed From the Multiplex - Los Angeles Times

AdCritic Interactive

Excerpts:

Off-Broadway? Try online. That's where you'll find Absolut Ruby Red: The Evolutionary Musical, an oddball animated production by Stockholm-based agency Great Works that trumpets the Swedish vodka brand's newest flavor. The word "surreal" doesn't even begin to describe this interactive musical, which puts viewers in the director's chair by allowing them to choose the narrative path of a heroic grapefruit as it evolves from a simple fruit into a glorious alcoholic beverage—all while encountering flying sharks, anthropomorphic camels and other similarly bizarre characters along the way. After completing the musical "choose-your-own-adventure"-style, viewers can download their masterpiece onto their PSP or iPod. And for those who'd rather play composer than director, the Song-O-Gram feature lets you pick the words and genre for a personalized musical shout-out to all of your unsuspecting friends.

Filmmaker Magazine | Summer 2006: THANKS FOR THE ADD

    Excerpts:

There are roughly 130 million television households in Western Europe.  In the United there are roughly 99 million.  However, Western Europe is not a unified market, while the U.S. is.   U.S. broadcasters can benefit from the economies of scale and therefore the  U.S.  dominates cultural copyright exports to Europe with its sizable trade surplus.

Will the growing segmentation and narrowcasting of television and the Internet erode this dominance?   How will the  intermix of television and the internet contribute to this?  I ask myself these questions.

I believe U.S. media and entertainment are undervalued assets in the American economy.  It trendy to say that American films are of poor quality and that our media is valueless.  Certainly, the media may deserve criticism for becoming in some respects the "un-ratified fourth branch" of American government.  However, outside the context of THAT discussion, U.S. media and entertainment industries are the only U.S. sectors that boast a surplus balance of trade with nearly every nation in the world.  That deserves some attention, consideration, and respect.

Creative copyright industries will always engender debate as to their cultural and social effect.  Since these industries are at the core of the emerging global creative economy we can expect these discussions to become more heated as time goes on: whether the topic be American movies, Disneyland, or cloning.  The point I want to make is this:  These debates about cultural effect  can also overpower our discussions about these sectors' legitimate economic benefit.  Many countries may also use these debates as smoke screens to cover up their protectionist policies. 

Media heir wants 'Airbus of the web' - Financial Times - MSNBC.com

Excerpts:

Christoph Mohn, the heir to the Bertelsmann media empire, has called for Europe to create an Airbus of the internet, to compete with US giants such as Google and Ebay.

MTV goes after MySpace users with new social networking site MTV Flux news story in Online - Pocket-lint.co.uk

Ultimately, television can have a relationship with the internet that features cannot. “Features have been able to grab on to what internet can do for marketing and publicity,” says Megan Wolpert, executive vice president of Spyglass Television, when I interviewed her in January this year: “However, TV can do what movies can’t with that relationship, because they don’t need to add a step. They don’t need to say come see us. They just show it. You can show a memoir, a travelogue, a serialized anything on the internet. I think even if you just look at the act of watching a movie versus watching television, it’s more analogous to the act of watching a computer.”

Certainly, the popularity of Reality TV is the outcome of the game generation trend towards interactivity. What is happening more recently, however, is an extension of the relationship between television and internet with show like Lost and VH1 Webjunk. Now MTV introduces MTV Flux a combination social networking portal/television channel.

Excerpts:

Timothy Moenk | Catching Up With the MySpace Generation | What a Concept! | Business Intelligence | Networking

Moenk's piece on the game generation's social application of technology and its influences on Web 2.0 design is both insightful and uniquely refreshing.  While everyone is talking about marketing on MySpace, Moenk focuses on the effect of the MySpace ethos on business culture as the game generation matures into their productive years.

“They have relatively little generational consciousness,” writes political columist David Brooks about the game generation.  Why?  "[B]ecause this generation is for the most part not fighting to emancipate itself from the past.”  This suggestion is provocative considering that while “the baby boom included the largest U.S. birth cohort to date, the game generation will ultimately outdo the baby boom in size, in scope, and presumably in influence,” notes John C. Beck and Mitchell Wade in their study of the game generation’s influence on organizational values in business.  In fact, “the total size of the game generation is already greater than the baby boom ever was,” and the whole generation of gamers, “including X and Y and letters to be named later-simply approach the world differently than their predecessors.” 

This generational amnesia is partly the result of the movement away from traditional forms of social capital towards weaker, and more numerous ties.  Renowned urban planer Richard Florida notes that the fundamental social and economic changes that underpin the Creative Economy, demonstrate that in “virtually every aspect of life, weak ties have replaced the stronger bonds that once gave structure to society.  Rather than live in one town for decades, we now move about.  Instead of communities defined by close associations and deep commitments to family, friends, and organizations, we seek places where we can make friends and acquaintances easily and live quasi-anonymous lives.  The decline in the strength of our ties to people and institutions is a product of the increasing number of ties we have.”  Continues Florida:

"What appears to be self-indulgence to conservatives or devices of corporate oppression to liberals in fact turns out to be the result of the rational evolution of economic forces.  Changes in taste and lifestyle that at first glance seem superficial and unrelated turn out to be rooted in widespread, fundamental economic change.”

Excerpts and Highlights from Moenk's article:

CinemaTech: From AlwaysOn: `How Far Will Consumer-Generated Media Go?'


New York Times writer, Scott Kirsner, stopped in at the AlwaysOn conference at Stanford and posted a report about the panel 'How Far Will Consumer-Generated Media Go". The panel featured YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley, the CEO of MP3 Tunes, and execs from Yahoo and Sony Pictures Digital Entertainment.

While I do believe distribution becomes more fluid with the continued evolution of digital technology along all points of the media supply chain, I do not believe that digital technology will democratize film making. Multinational corporations and conglomerates have the scope and capital to market and distinguish their product from the glut of global competitors (whether that competition is created by Chinese manufacturing or American independent filmmakers). Certainly the segmentation or "narrow-casting" currently developing with the expansion of world-wide cable and the internet creates spaces for creative expression produced, say, less expensively with digital technology; however, outside of those exceptions eventually marketed to broader audiences, digital technology will not disturb media firms' control over the organs of distribution. The question ALWAYS remains: Who reaps the benefits of copyright? Is it the content creator or the media firm that owns the intellectual property that the content creator sold to the distributor for a profit?

Indeed, media firms may be held captive at choking points along the supply chain - a consequence of handing their brands over to stars or whomever - but media firms are more apt to forge strategic partnerships or acquire internet portals like Amazon et cetera, then wither away and die. In an economic environment starved for content, the power does shift to the content creator or more specifically, whoever owns the copyright, but corporations are the ones most likely to benefit from this paradigm; because they can exploit their natural economies of scale. The myth of democratizing filmmaking is techno-utopianism. The creative economy needs a mixture of small, medium, and large size creative industry firms.

Excerpts from CinemaTech:

Variety.com - Amazon ambitions

Excerpts:

Fox News Corp has a brand. Unlike their competitors, they haven't relinquished it to stars or shows et cetera. They are also the exception because they understand market retention. You may have a political bone to pick with Fox News, but only because you are aware of their brand. MySpace has market retention too, because, well frankly, it's quite addictive. It's the internet version of tobacco.

This idea of market retention is foreign to media firms in an age where most are hyper-focused on "capturing" markets. Media firms spend millions of dollars on marketing only to toss away their branding in a nano-second. All of this is applicable to Fox News Corp. and MySpace. News Corp's acquisition is on the digital ball. Viacom is not far off, but they are trying to build from scratch (with MTV's new social networking site Flux) what Murdoch had but to acquire. While other media firms are looking in their rear view mirror, Murdoch and Myspace are the perfect and timely diagonal expansion. More on that later. In the meantime...

Marketing on MySpace | ForBiddeN fruit | Economist.com

Excerpts:

Advertising Age - MediaWorks - Digitas Brings in Digital VP From Roo

AdAge interviews Greg Verdino as the new Digital VP at Digitas about new media marketing. The segmentation or 'narrowcasting' of cable and internet audiences works for marketing brands like Home Depot or Big Pharma with websites, channels, and specialized social networking sites.

Excerpts:

"Advertising is in turmoil because of new technology," says Dave Morgan, CEO of Litton Entertainment when I interviewed the leading independent distributor in February this year. More than fragmenting audiences new media allow viewers to bypass advertising altogether.

Excerpts from "Amazon Readies Launch of Ad-Free Video Download Service":

A year in the works, the e-tailer's digital-video-download service is set for a mid-August launch and will feature a subscription service and a la carte movies and TV shows. Yes, folks, that's more ad-free TV for sale.

The service, which is referred to as Amazon Digital Video -- or Amazon "DV" -- has evolved over the past year from a music-themed offering to a video-centric one, according to production-studio and TV-network executives briefed on the plans. The reason? Apple, these executives said, already commands such a large share of digital-music sales that Amazon felt it would be too difficult to break into the market.

Amazon's reputation for ease of use could help it capture the video-download market, much as iTunes did with its simplicity in the music market. If that happens, it's sure to speed up consumers' comfort level with paying for ad-free TV content -- at a time when networks are trying to launch their own ad-supported video-on-demand plays. ABC, for example, has offered online versions of its shows that allow the advertisers to ride along and has plans for a more sophisticated offering in October.

Revenue from licensed digital-music distribution doubled in 2005 to $653 million, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers, which estimates that by 2010, digital music will be a $20.7 billion market. In contrast, the firm said consumers spent only $1.1 billion on online movie-rental subscriptions and $1 million on digital-streaming movies in 2005. Digital-streaming services are expected to outpace online rentals, by 2010 generating $400 billion in annual spending while online rentals will be a $3.2 billion business.

Amazon owns IMDb.com, the database of Hollywood information, and has been trying to get into the content creation business. Its first foray is a promotional program called "Fishbowl," a series of Bill Maher-hosted interviews, sponsored by UPS and Cingular. Mr. Maher's guests include moviemakers, actors and authors -- all of whose products can be bought on Amazon.

Murdoch surprised by MySpace growth | Tech&Sci | Internet | Reuters.com

The Hollywood Reporter interviewed Rupert Murdoch, chairman and CEO of The News Corp. 

Excerpt:

The Hollywood Reporter: DO YOU THINK THAT WILL BE A CHALLENGE GIVEN WHAT YOU HAVE BEEN UP AGAINST BEFORE?

Murdoch: Probably not. It will be a little bit different in each country. The English-speaking world will be easy. We will have to think about going with a slightly different model or architecture in Japan or Germany or some other countries. It will be driven by exactly the same principles. Young people are the same everywhere. They are curious. They want to take control of things. They want to live in their own world.

The Hollywood Reporter: THIS IS A REMARKABLE TIME. YOU HAVE CALLED THIS THE GOLDEN AGE OF MEDIA. WHAT WILL IT EVENTUALLY MEAN TO THE INDUSTRIES YOU ARE IN AND TO YOUR COMPANY?

Murdoch: There are new capital advantages to get things done. You go to these conventions and see all the new technologies being rolled out. But they are all meaningless unless they have content. There is going to be more and more demand for content, and there will be more ways for us to develop more content. And we've got to use these platforms to monetize all of our existing content.

Download Press Release [PDF]

Excerpts:

Beginning on Tuesday, March 21 in Las Vegas, the Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. (MPAA) will host a technology booth at TelecomNEXT, featuring several companies who will display some of the latest online distribution platforms and filtering tools which could assist the telecommunications industry and play an important role in the emerging legitimate digital content distribution markets. This is the first time that the MPAA has had a presence at this event which is important in bringing business and technology of communications and entertainment together.

Representatives from Audible Magic, BitTorrent Inc., CacheLogic, Peer Impact, Red Swoosh and Thomson Content Security will be on hand to demonstrate methods their companies have developed to facilitate legal online movie distribution and to protect copyrights in a digital environment.

2006 STATE OF THE INDUSTRY, SHOWEST, MPAA DAN GLICKMAN, CHAIRMAN AND CEO, MOTION PICTURE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA, Las Vegas, March 14, 2006 [PDF]

 

Excerpts and Highlights: