From Sticky To Spreadable: The Antidote to "Viral Marketing" and the Broadcast Mentality
About a month ago, I announced a free webinar about spreadability featuring USC's Henry Jenkins, C3's Joshua Green, and CMS alum Sam Ford. Below, I've provided a video and audio recording of the webinar presentation, produced by Sam Ford. If you didn't get the chance to attend the talk, or would like the chance to review it, please enjoy the embedded video below!
* How do you understand and measure success in social media?
* How do you create content that audiences not only pay attention to, but want to share with others?
* Do you really want to make a video "go viral"?
* How does the language you use to describe social media campaigns impact the end result?
Based on years of researching how and why people spread news, popular culture, and marketing content online through the Convergence Culture Consortium for the past several years, our speakers are currently working on a book entitled Spreadable Media. This Webinar will look at what "spreadable media" means, why the concept of "stickiness" is inadequate for measuring success for brands and content producers online and ultimately why marketers and producers should spend more time creating "spreadable material" for audiences than trying to perfect "viral marketing." In this one-hour session, the speakers will share the ideas and strategy behind "spreadable media" and a variety of examples of best--and worst--practices online for both B2B and B2C campaigns.
Free Webinar (Friday 6 November 2009) - Moving from "Sticky" to "Spreadable": The Antidote to "Viral Marketing" and the Broadcast Mentality
Although news has been out for a while now, we'd like to remind everyone that on Friday 6 November (from noon to 1:00 pm), the Convergence Culture Consortium will co-host a webinar with Peppercom on the subject of spreadable media, featuring USC's Henry Jenkins, C3's Joshua Green, and Peppercom's Sam Ford (moderated by Peppercom's co-founder, Steve Cody). Registration is free!
Moving from "Sticky" to "Spreadable": The Antidote to "Viral Marketing" and the Broadcast Mentality
Based on years of researching how and why people spread news, popular culture, and marketing content online through the Convergence Culture Consortium for the past several years , our speakers are currently working on a book entitled Spreadable Media. This Webinar will look at what "spreadable media" means, why the concept of "stickiness" is inadequate for measuring success for brands and content producers online and ultimately why marketers and producers should spend more time creating "spreadable material" for audiences than trying to perfect "viral marketing." In this one-hour session, the speakers will share the ideas and strategy behind "spreadable media" and a variety of examples of best--and worst--practices online for both B2B and B2C campaigns.
This panel will address:
-- The concept of "stickiness" and why it cannot solely be used as a way to measure success online;
-- How and why viral marketing does not accurately describe how content spreads online;
-- Why a "broadcast mentality" does not work in a social media space;
-- The strategy companies should undertake when creating material for audiences to potentially spread online;
-- Companies that have learned difficult lessons and/or gotten the idea of "spreadable media" right;
-- Trends in popular culture/entertainment one which brands should keep a close eye;
-- How "spreadable media" might apply to B2B audiences.
If It Doesn't Spread, It's Dead (Part One): Media Viruses and Memes
Over the next few posts, I am going to be serializing a white paper which was developed last year by the Convergence Culture Consortium on the topic of Spreadable media. This report was drafted by Henry Jenkins, Xiaochang Li, and Ana Domb Krauskopf With Joshua Green. Our research was funded by the members of the Convergence Culture Consortium, including GSDM Advertising, MTV Networks, and Turner Broadcasting. The series will be cross-posted at my blog, Confessions of an Aca-Fan, as well.
I was able to share some of the key insights from this research during my opening remarks at the Futures of Entertainment conference last fall, where they have sparked considerable discussion within the branded entertainment sector. We are hoping that sharing this work in progress with you will spark further debate, allowing us to tap the collective intelligence of our readers. Green, Sam Ford, and I are developing this research into a book, which will further map how information circulates across the emerging media landscape.
Introduction: Media Viruses and Memes
Use of the terms "viral" and "memes" by those in the marketing, advertising and media industries may be creating more confusion than clarity. Both these terms rely on a biological metaphor to explain the way media content moves through cultures, a metaphor that confuses the actual power relations between producers, properties, brands, and consumers. Definitions of 'viral' media suffer from being both too limiting and too all-encompassing. The term has 'viral' has been used to describe so many related but ultimately distinct practices -- ranging from Word-of-Mouth marketing to video mash-ups and remixes posted to YouTube -- that just what counts as viral is unclear. It is invoked in discussions about buzz marketing and building brand recognition while also popping up in discussions about guerilla marketing, exploiting social networks, and mobilizing consumers and distributors. Needless, the concept of viral distribution is useful for understanding the emergence of a spreadable media landscape. Ultimately, however, viral media is a flawed way to think about distributing content through informal or adhoc networks of consumers.
Talking about memes and viral media places an emphasis on the replication of the original idea, which fails to consider the everyday reality of communication -- that ideas get transformed, repurposed, or distorted as they pass from hand to hand, a process which has been accelerated as we move into network culture. Arguably, those ideas which survive are those which can be most easily appropriated and reworked by a range of different communities. In focusing on the involuntary transmission of ideas by unaware consumers, these models allow advertisers and media producers to hold onto an inflated sense of their own power to shape the communication process, even as unruly behavior by consumers becomes a source of great anxiety within the media industry. A close look at particular examples of Internet "memes" or "viruses" highlight the ways they have mutated as they have traveled through an increasingly participatory culture.
Given these limitations, we are proposing an alternative model which we think better accounts for how and why media content circulates at the present time, the idea of spreadable media. A spreadable model emphasizes the activity of consumers -- or what Grant McCracken calls "multipliers" -- in shaping the circulation of media content, often expanding potential meanings and opening up brands to unanticipated new markets. Rather than emphasizing the direct replication of "memes," a spreadable model assumes that the repurposing and transformation of media content adds value, allowing media content to be localized to diverse contexts of use. This notion of spreadability is intended as a contrast to older models of stickiness which emphasize centralized control over distribution and attempts to maintain 'purity' of message.
In this section, we will explore the roots of the concept of viral media, looking at the concept of the "media viruses" and its ties to the theory of the "meme." The reliance on a potent biological metaphor to describe the process of communication reflects a particular set of assumptions about the power relations between producers, texts, and consumers which may obscure the realities these terms seek to explain. The metaphor of "infection" reduces consumers to the involuntary "hosts" of media viruses, while holding onto the idea that media producers can design "killer" texts which can ensure circulation by being injected directly into the cultural "bloodstream." While attractive, such a notion doesn't reflect the complexity of cultural and communicative processes. A continued dependency on terms based in biological phenomena dramatically limits our ability to adequately describe media circulation as a complex system of social, technological, textual, and economic practices and relations.
In the following, we will outline the limits of these two analogies as part of making the case for the importance of adopting a new model for thinking about the grassroots circulation of content in the current media landscape. In the end, we are going to propose that these concepts be retired in favor of a new framework -- Spreadable Media.
Definitional Fuzziness
Consider what happened when a group of advertising executives sat down to discuss the concept of viral media, a conversation which demonstrates the confusion about what viral media might be, about what it is good for, and why it's worth thinking about. One panelist began by suggesting viral media referred to situations "where the marketing messaging was powerful enough that it spread through the population like a virus," a suggestion the properties of viral media lie in the message itself, or perhaps in those who crafted that message. The second, on the other hand, described viral media in terms of the activity of consumers: "Anything you think is cool enough to send to your friends, that's viral." Later in the same exchange, he suggested "Viral, just by definition, is something that gets passed around by people."
As the discussion continued, it became clearer and clearer that viral media, like art and pornography, lies in the eye of the beholder. No one knew for sure why any given message "turned viral," though there was lots of talk about "designing the DNA" of viral properties and being "organic" to the communities through which messages circulated. To some degree, it seemed the strength of a viral message depends on "how easy is it to pass", suggesting viralness has something to do with the technical properties of the medium, yet quickly we were also told that it had to do with whether the message fit into the ongoing conversations of the community: "If you're getting a ton of negative comments, maybe you're not talking about it in the right place."
By the end of the exchange, no one could sort out what was meant by "viral media" or what metrics should be deployed to measure its success. This kind of definitional fuzziness makes it increasingly difficult to approach the process analytically. Without certainty about what set of practices the term refers to, it is impossible to attempt to understand how and why such practices work.
As already noted, the reliance on a biological metaphor to explain the way communication takes place -- through practices of 'infection' -- represents the first dificulty with the notion of viral media. The attraction of the infection metaphor is two-fold:
It reduces consumers, often the most unpredictable variable in the sender-message-receiver frame, to involuntary "hosts" of media viruses;
While holding onto the idea that media producers can design "killer" texts which can ensure circulation by being injected directly into the cultural "bloodstream."
Douglas Rushkoff's 1994 book Media Virus may not have invented the term "viral media", but his ideas eloquently describe the way these texts are popularly held to behave. The media virus, Rushkoff argues, is a Trojan horse, that surreptitiously brings messages into our homes -- messages can be encoded into a form people are compelled to pass along and share, allowing the embedded meanings, buried inside like DNA, to "infect" and spread, like a pathogen. There is an implicit and often explicit proposition that this spread of ideas and messages can occur not only without the user's consent, but perhaps actively against it, requiring that people be duped into passing a hidden agenda while circulating compelling content. Douglas Rushkoff insists he is not using the term "as a metaphor. These media events are not like viruses. They are viruses . . . (such as) the common cold, and perhaps even AIDS" (Rushkoff, 9, emphasis his).
Media viruses spread through the datasphere the same way biological ones spread through the body or a community. But instead of traveling along an organic circulatory system, a media virus travels through the networks of the mediaspace. The "protein shell" of a media virus might be an event, invention, technology, system of thought, musical riff, visual image, scientific theory, sex scandal, clothing style or even a pop hero -- as long as it can catch our attention. Any one of these media virus shells will search out the receptive nooks and crannies in popular culture and stick on anywhere it is noticed. Once attached, the virus injects its more hidden agendas into the datastream in the form of ideological code -- not genes, but a conceptual equivalent we now call "memes" (Rushkoff, p.9-10).
The "hidden agenda" and "embedded meanings" Rushkoff mentions are the brand messages buried at the heart of viral videos, the promotional elements in videos featuring Mentos exploding out of soda bottles, or Gorillas playing the drumline of In the Air Tonight . The media virus proposition is that these marketing messages -- messages consumers may normally avoid, approach skeptically, or disregard altogether -- are hidden by the "protein shell" of compelling media properties. Nestled within interesting bits of content, these messages are snuck into the heads of consumers, or wilfully passed between them.
These messages, Rushkoff and others suggest, constitute "memes", conceived by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in 1976 as a sort of cultural version of the gene. Dawkins was looking for a way to explain cultural evolution, imagining it as a biological system. What genes are to genetics, he suggested, memes would be to culture. Like the gene, the meme is driven to self-create, and is possessed of three important characteristics:
Fidelity -- memes have the ability to retain their informational content as they pass from mind to mind;
Fecundity -- memes possess the power to induce copies of themselves;
Longevity -- memes that survive longer have a better chance of being copied.
The meme, then, is "a unit of information in a mind whose existence influences events such that more copies of itself get created in other minds" (Brodie, 1996, p. 32). They are the ideas at the center of virally spread events, some coherent, self-replicating idea which moves from person-to-person, from mind-to-mind, duplicating itself as it goes.
Language seems to 'evolve' by non-genetic means and at a rate which is orders of magnitude faster than genetic evolution. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation (Dawkins, 1976, p.189).
Dawkins remained vague about the granularity of this concept, seeing it as an all-purpose unit which could explain everything from politics to fashion. Each of these fields are comprised of good ideas, good ideas which, in order to survive, attach themselves to media virii -- funny, catchy, compelling bits of content -- as a vehicle to infect new minds with copies of themselves.
We are all susceptible to the pull of viral ideas. Like mass hysteria. Or a tune that gets into your head that you keep on humming all day until you spread it to someone else. Jokes. Urban Legends. Crackpot religions. Marxism. No matter how smart we get, there is always this deep irrational part that makes us potential hosts for self-replicating information. (Neil Stephenson, Snow Crash, 1992, p.399)
Though imagined long before the rise of the Internet and the Web, the idea of the meme has been widely embraced as a way of talking about the rapid dispersion of informationn and the widespread circulation of concepts which characterize the digital era. It has been a particularly attractive way to think about the rise of Internet fads like the LOLcats or Soulja Boy, fads considered seemingly trivial or meangingless. The content which circulates in such a fashion is seen as simplistic, fragmentary, and essentially meaningless, though it may shape our beliefs and actions in significant ways. Wired magazine (Miller, 2007) recently summed it up as a culture of "media snacks":
We now devour our pop culture the same way we enjoy candy and chips - in conveniently packaged bite-size nuggets made to be munched easily with increased frequency and maximum speed. This is snack culture - and boy, is it tasty (not to mention addictive).
This description of snacks implies that they are without nutritional value, trivial or meaningless aspect of our culture, a time waste. And if this meaningless content is self-replicating then consumers are "irrational," and unable to escape their infection. Yet these models -- the idea of the meme and the media virus, of self-replicating ideas hidden in attractive, catchy content we are helpless to resist -- is a problematic way to understand cultural practices. We want to suggest that these materials travel through the web because they are meaningful to the people who spread them. At the most fundamental level, such an approach misunderstands the way content spreads, which is namely, through the active practices of people. As such, we would like to suggest:
That "memes" do not self-replicate;
That people are not "susceptible" to this viral media;
That viral media and Internet memes are not nutritionally bereft, meaningless 'snacks'.
The Problem of Agency
Central to the difficulties of both the meme and the media virus models is a particular confusion about the role people play in passing along media content. From the start, memetics has suffered from a confusion about the nature of agency. Unlike genetic features, culture is not in any meaningful sense self-replicating -- it relies on people to propel, develop and sustain it. The term 'culture' originates from metaphors of agriculture: the analogy was of cultivating the human mind much as one cultivates the land. Culture thus represents the assertion of human will and agency upon nature. As such, cultures are not something that happen to us, cultures are something we collectively create. Certainly any individual can be influenced by the culture which surrounds them, by the fashion, media, speech and ideas that fill their daily life, but individuals make their own contributions to their cultures through the choices which they make. The language of memetics, however, strips aside the concept of human agency.
Processes of cultural adaptation are more complex than the notion of meme circulation makes out. Indeed, theories for understanding cultural uptake must consider two factors not closely considered by memetics: human choice and the medium through which these ideas are circulated. Dawkins writes not about how "people acquire ideas" but about how "ideas acquire people." Every day humans create and circulate many more ideas than are actually likely to gain any deep traction within a culture. Over time, only a much smaller number of phrases, concepts, images, or stories survive. This winnowing down of cultural options is the product not of the strength of particular ideas but of many, many individual choices as people decide what ideas to reference, which to share with each other, decisions based on a range of different agendas and interests far beyond how compelling individual ideas may be. Few of the ideas get transmitted in anything like their original form: humans adapt, transform, rework them on the fly in response to a range of different local circumstances and personal needs. Stripping aside the human motives and choices that shape this process reveals little about the spread of these concepts.
By the same token, ideas circulate differently in and through different media. Some media allow for the more or less direct transmission of these ideas in something close to their original form -- as when a video gets replayed many times -- while others necessarily encourage much more rapid transformations -- as occurs when we play a game of "telephone" and each person passing along a message changes it in some way. So, it makes little sense to talk about "memes" as an all-purpose unit of thought without regard to the medium and processes of cultural transmission being described. Indeed, discussing the emergence of Internet memes, education researchers Michael Knobel and Colin Lankshear (2007) suggest Dawkins' notion of memetic 'fidelity' needs to be done away with altogether. Defining the Internet meme as the rapid uptake and spread of a particular idea, presented as a written text, image, language, "'move' or some unit of cultural "stuff", Knobel and Lankshear suggest adaptation is central to the propogation of memes:
Many of the online memes in this study were not passed on entirely 'intact' in that the meme 'vehicle' was changed, modified, mixed with other referential and expressive resources, and regularly given idiosyncratic spins by participants...A concept like 'replicability' therefore needs to include remixing as an important practice associated with many successful online memes, where remixing includes modifying, bricolaging, splicing, reordering, superimposing, etc., original and other images, sounds, films, music, talk, and so on. (Knobel and Lankshear, 2007, p.208-209)
Their argument is particularly revealing as a way to think about just what comprises the object at the heart of the Internet meme. The recent "LOLcat" Internet meme, built so heavily upon remixing and appropriation, is a good case study to illustrate the role of remixing in Internet memes. "LOLcats" are pictures of animals, most commonly cats, with digitally superimposed text for humorous effect. Officially referred to as "image macros," the pictures often feature "LOLspeak", a type of broken English that enhances the amusing tone of the juxtaposition. On websites such as icanhascheezburger.com, users are invited to upload their own "LOLcats" which are then shared throughout the web.
Over time, different contributors have stretched the "LOLcat" idea in many different directions which would not have been anticipated by the original posters -- including a whole strand of images centering around Walruses and buckets, the use of "LOLspeak" to translate religious texts (LOLbible) or represent complex theoretical arguments, the use of similar image macros to engage with Emo culture, philosophy (loltheorists), and dogs (LOLdogs, see: ihasahotdog.com).
So just what is the "meme" at the centre of this Internet meme? What is the idea that is replicated? More than the content of the pictures, the "meme" at the heart of this Internet phenomenon is the structure of the picture itself --the juxtaposition, broken English, and particularly the use of irreverent humor. Given the meme lies in the structure, however -- how to throw the pot rather than the pot itself -- then the very viability of the meme is dependent on the ability for the idea to be adapted in a variety of different ways. In this sense, then, it is somewhat hard to see how contained within this structure is a "message" waiting to occupy unsuspecting minds.
The re-use, remixing and adaptation of the LOLcat idea instead suggest that the spread and replication of this form of cultural production is not due to the especially compelling nature of the LOLcat idea but the fact it can be used to make meaning. A similar situation can be seen in the case of the "Crank Dat" song by Soulja Boy, which some have described as one of the most succesful Internet memes of 2007. Soulja Boy, originally an obscure amateur performer in Atlanta, produced a music video for his first song "Crank Dat", which he uploaded to video sharing sites such as YouTube. Soulja Boy then encouraged his fans to appropriate, remix, and reperform the song, spreading it through social networks, YouTube, and the blogosphere, in the hopes of gaining greater visibility for himself and his music.
Along the way, Crank Dat got performed countless times by very different communities -- from white suburban kids to black ballet dancers, from football teams to MIT graduate students. The video was used as the basis for "mash up" videos featuring characters as diverse as Winnie the Pooh and Dora the Explorer. People added their own steps, lyrics, themes, and images to the videos they made. As the song circulated, Soulja Boy's reputation grew -- he scored a record contract, and emerged as a top recording artist. -- in part as a consequence of his understanding of the mechanisms by which cultural content circulates within a participatory culture.
The success of "Crank Dat" cannot be explained as the slavish emulation of the dance by fans, as the self-replication of a "compelling" idea. Rather, "Crank Dat" spread the way dance crazes have always spread - through the processes of learning and adaptation by which people learn to dance. As CMS student Kevin Driscoll discusses, watching others dance to learn steps and refining these steps so they express local experience or variation are crucial to dance itself. Similarly, the adaptation of the LOLcat form to different situations -- theory, puppies, politicians -- constitute processes of meaning making, as people use tools at their disposal to explain the world around them.
Next Time: We will compare and contrast "stickiness" and "spreadability" as competing paradigms shaping the practices of web 2.0.
References
Brodie, Richard (1996). Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme, Seattle: Integral Press
Dawkins, Richard (1976). The Selfish Gene, Oxford: Oxford University Press
Knobel, Michele & Lankshear, Colin (2007). New Literacies: Everyday Practices &
Classroom Learning. Open University Press
McCracken, Grant (2005a). "'Consumers' or 'Multipliers': A New Language for
Marketing?," This Blog Sits At the Intersection of Anthropology and Economics,
November 10.
FOE3 Liveblog: Session 6 - Intersection of Academy and Industry
The sixth panel of FOE put together a number of academics and industry specialists to talk over how the two areas could be mutually beneficial to one another. The panel was moderated by C3 alum Sam Ford and liveblogging provided by CMS graduate student Lan Le.
Amanda Lotz, The Television Will be Revolutionized (NYU Press), University of Michigan.
She was trained in a text-based manner that was probably typical of media studies. She now looks into how texts are made, investigating the gaps in our understanding of TV history, the norms of production, and TV's role in US culture. While not strictly ethnographic, her work is informed by industry interviews and observing how industry talks to itself. She did not feel the previous theories were adequate in addressing the granularity of industrial case studies. But what can we say about media industries?
John Caldwell, Production Culture (Duke University Press), UCLA.
He has a background in production and film. He works in film, TV, labor, and ethnographic work in Los Angeles. The last few days has made him feel like a dinosaur, even though he writes about the same subjects -- but on the side of the workers and not the marketing. He feels that branding is merely the crust of a much larger space, and focuses on the "below the line" workers in this industry whose stories are not often seen. He has always advocated the integration of production and theory, but realized eventually that there's a lot of antipathy between the two sides. Distributed creativity occurs in professional workforces, not just in fan bases. There's a real contention about who is authorized to talk about the industry. Often failed academics will be most angry at the study of industry. We are dealing with the construction of two things: industry and academics. There are a multiplicity of industries, not a monolith. They are only willing to work together so long as the money keeps flowing. Academics are themselves not comfortable with acknowledge themselves as a construction.
Grant McCracken, Transformations: Identity Construction in Contemporary Culture (Indiana University Press).
He sees himself as an anthropologist of contemporary culture. He splits his time between academic and industrial consulting work. The dual identity is rough, which points to issues of integration.
Peter Kim, Dachis Corporation.
He feels that he represents industry, working for Razorfish in Cambridge. He began working for General Electric at age 18 in the Audit Staff, proceeding to move through many industry positions and companies. His work at Puma was in corporate digital branding.
QUESTIONS FROM Sam
Sam: What is the value of the flow of information between industry and academia? What does each side need to give and recieve to make this a valuable exchange?
MIT Futures of Entertainment 3 is now just a little more than a week away. For those who have not yet registered and who are interested in coming, registration information is available here, and the full program is available here.
I'm honored to be invited by those organizing the conference this year to moderate a discussion on the intersection of academia and the industry, and I'm fortunate to be joined by some intriguing panelists. From the academic world, John Caldwell from UCLA and Amanda Lotz from the University of Michigan (one of the Consortium's consulting researchers) will take part. Grant McCracken, another of C3's consulting researchers, will also join in. Grant is an independent academic, regularly publishing academic books, as well as a consultant.
They will be joined by Peter Kim from the Dachis Corporation.
Peter is part of the founding team at Dachis Corporation, a stealth mode startup focusing on social technology. Earlier, Peter was a senior analyst at Forrester Research focusing on social computing and customer-centric marketing. His professional experience also includes positions as head of global digital marketing for PUMA AG, strategy network at Razorfish and research analyst at Coopers & Lybrand. Peter has served as a keynote, moderator, and panelist at public events including the Advertising Research Foundation, American Marketing Association, and Direct Marketing Association. He has also been widely quoted on social technologies and marketing by the press, including CBS Evening News, CNBC, CNN, NPR, The Economist, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. Peter holds a B.A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from the Darden School at the University of Virginia. He currently resides in Boston and blogs here.
I'm looking forward to seeing several of you at FoE3 next week and hope many of the folks who joined us over the past two years will be back in Boston next weekend!
Sam Ford is a research affiliate with the Consortium and Director of Customer Insights with Peppercom. He also writes for PepperDigital.
Around the Consortium: C3 Connections Around the Web
Continuing with some catch-up news from over the summer, I wanted to point toward a few interesting articles and posts that highlighted the Consortium's work and the work of our graduate students and alum.
First, we're honored to have Prof. Mark Deuze at Indiana University using the Consortium's blog as part of the material for his course this fall, entitled "Media Organizations." In addition to highlighting Henry Jenkins' work, he includes links to this blog as one of the resources for students to follow what's happening in the industry, according to his recent post about the class. I am elated that Mark has found a classroom use for the public side of the what the Consortium is doing, and I'd love to hear from his students in comments here along the way.
On Soap Operas and "Strategic Forgetting and Remembering"
C3 Consulting Researcher Jason Mittell spent some time in June a little out of his element, presenting at a conference in Madison, Wisconsin, for The Society for Cognitive Study of the Moving Image. Jason gives an outsider's perspective on the work being done in the field of cognitive film studies, as well as the slides from his own work, on his blog, Just TV.
His presentation was entitled "Previously On: Prime Time Serials & the Poetics of Memory," addressing questions of how American television storytelling has shifted in the past two decades and issues of "historical poetics." His slides bring up some intriguing points, one of which deals with how the longtime complex and serialized storytelling nature of daytime serial dramas (soap operas) intersect with primetime dramas. Jason and I have discussed these issues through the blogosphere in the past (Look here and here.)
Back in that prior post, I wrote about some discussion that broke out in the comments section of Jason's blog.
I said regarding redundancy in soaps that:
But people outside the genre often greatly overstate the amount of redundancy in soaps, I think. Reader StinkyLuLu makes this point, writing, "My basic feeling is that what you call redundancy is actually a pivotal soap pleasure--revisiting key moments from the recent and distant past--not unlike the narrative data mining you describe in contemporary prime time serial drama." I'd like to develop that thought a little further.
At their worst, soaps are recap-laden. I've seen Days of Our Lives have episodes a few years ago, for instance, that seemed more flashback to earlier in the week than current. That's not good soap, and we have to distinguish between good and bad practices in the genre. However, with five episodes a week and little in terms of reruns, the redundancy is necessary. That's why REaction is so important in soaps. The redundancy becomes a central part of the story. It matters not as much that X happens as it does seeing how everyone in town responds to finding out about X. In that case, the plot is a driver for character-driven stories. Anyone who missed X will find out about it during various scenes retelling and reaction to parts of it, but that retelling process IS the show; it's about interpersonal relationships, not the what. (By the way, my guess is that some of the fans who fast-forward are also some of the ones who archive; fans often pick out particular characters or stories they follow on a show that they actively consume, even while skipping others...)
C3's Joshua Green will be speaking this Friday, Sept. 05, at the Inverge Interactive Convergence Conference in Portland, Oregon. His presentation, entitled "Restructure Time? Two Years in Convergence Culture," will focus on the two years since the publication of Henry Jenkins' book that this Consortium launched around. During Green's time with the Consortium over the past two years, he has helped direct and push our thinking about "what comes next?"
Inverge is an annual conference from IndePlay. See more here. See more information on Joshua's appearance last year from the invergence blog and here at the C3 blog.
Around the Consortium: Catching Up with the C3 Community
After light posting throughout the summer here on the Consortium's blog, we're going to be returning to daily posting once again now that a new academic year is upon us. The core C3 team will be organizing a new year of academic projects, and preparing for the big Futures of Entertainment 3 conference I posted the reminder about on Friday.
Although I'm no longer at MIT and participating in the core team's work, I look forward to returning to blogging on at least a weekly basis here at C3. To start that off, I wanted to draw your attention to some books, projects, thought pieces, and other projects the broader Consortium community has been working on over the summer, despite the gaps of silence here. Over the next few days, I'll be posting a few updates highlighting these projects.
To start off with, here are a few summer blog entries of note:
Another Member of the C3 Community Weighs in on Twitter. The "Twebinar" earlier this summer generated reactions from C3 Graduate Student Researcher Xiaochang Li, and I wrote a piece on Twitter here. Now, Geoffrey Long is the latest to weigh in. He writes:
Granted, one of the charming elements of businesses like The Minnesota Press on Twitter is the idea that there's an actual warm body writing those tweets out there somewhere; Twitter is such a still-indie enterprise that it still conveys, to me at least, a sense of personal connection with those whom I'm following. However, given the number of spam follow notifications I receive, I'm not sure that will stay that way much longer. It's this hat trick of corporate tweeting, a primed space for a tiered Pro package and the emergence of Twitter as a spam delivery system that makes me suspect that Twitter is right at the tipping point of some form of major reinvention.
Since several people have e-mailed me of late to inquire again about the dates of this year's Futures of Entertainment 3 conference, I wanted to remind everyone of the information here through the blog. Be sure to make your travel plans soon! More information about guest speakers, panel topics, and specific times will be forthcoming soon.
As has been the case in previous years, the event is scheduled the Friday and Saturday before Thanksgiving. This year, that will be Friday, Nov. 21, and Saturday, Nov. 22.
This year's event will be held in the Wong Auditorium in the Tang Center here at MIT, which will be a larger venue than the conference room that housed the first two iterations of this event.
Many of you who follow the C3 blog regularly might also be interested in next year's Media in Transition 6 conference. MiT6, subtitled "Stone and Papyrus, Storage and Transmission," will be held on MIT's campus from April 24-26, 2009. The call for papers was recently released, and researchers are accepted both from traditional academic positions, as well as independent researchers, industry voices, and anyone else interested in participating.
See information on the last iteration of the Media in Transition conference, MiT5, on the C3 blog here.
The call for papers is inside, and the conference Web site is here.
Abstracts of no more than 500 words or full papers should be sent to Brad Seawell at seawell@mit.edu no later than Friday, Jan. 9, 2009. We will evaluate abstracts and full papers on a rolling basis and early submission is highly encouraged. All submissions should be sent as attachments in a Word format. Submitted material will be subject to editing by conference organizers.
Email is preferred, but submissions can be mailed to:
Brad Seawell
MIT 14N-430
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139
Please include a biographical statement of no more than 100 words. If your paper is accepted, this statement will be used on the conference Web site.
Please monitor the conference Web site at for registration information, travel information and conference updates.
Abstracts will be accepted on a rolling basis until Jan. 9, 2009.
The full text of your paper must be submitted no later than Friday, April 17. Conference papers will be posted to the conference Web site.
i wanted to give a quick link today to another couple of pieces I wrote or collaborated on recently that I thought might interest some Consortium blog readers. First, Peppercom co-founder Steve Cody and I recently ran a piece in BusinessWeek entitled "The Fireside Chat Vs. the Podcast".
The piece looks at how FDR's use of the radio for more personal communication to the citizenry revolutionized the way national government spoke to the country in the 1930s and how the Internet has introduced myriad new opportunities that the government has taken little advantage of so far. In our editorial, we look at the current economic downturn, ways in which the Internet would allow the government and corporations alike to more efficiently communicate with the public about their decisions, and the general need for more transparency in national government decision-making.
We write:
But what happens once one of these candidates is elected to office? What would be the modern equivalent of the fireside chat? How can tools like LinkedIn and YouTube be used to provide a more transparent government? [ . . . ]
The White House today continues the weekly radio addresses pioneered by FDR and offers regular press briefings, weekly e-mail updates, and occasional Presidential press conferences. However, the information conveyed here lacks in both depth and accessibility when compared to the information supporters are inundated with by Presidential campaigns.
Perhaps the most promising title on the White House's official site--"White House Interactive"--leads to a question-and-answer section, with the most "recent" question dated Mar. 26, 2007. The question: "George W. Bush is what number as President of the U.S.?" Talk about useless information.
I'd love to hear any feedback you might have about the piece, either here or over on the BusinessWeek site.
Sam Ford is a research affiliate with the Consortium and Director of Customer Insights with Peppercom. He also writes for PepperDigital.
Interview with Communispace about C3 and the Industry
Before I left my position as project manager for the Consortium, I was fortunate enough to have a chance to correspond with the folks at Communispace about some of the Consortium's research and perspective on the current media landscape.
For those who don't know of Communispace, they are a company based in the Boston area that creates private, invitation-only communities that allow brands to converse directly with a small group of targeted people, who take part in an ongoing community that Communispace maintains. I've written about Communispace before here, and Judy Walklet represented the company in a discussion at our spring retreat.
As part of the interview, I said:
"I think it's crucial for businesses to understand that the world doesn't operate in what we call in media studies a "technological determinist" mindset. Avoiding significant engagement in today's digital world is increasingly dangerous for many businesses' survival, but just as perilous, or maybe more so, is the "gee whiz fever"--the disease which causes companies to believe they are smart and innovative if they try every new technology that comes along, without putting substantial thought into the strategy and purpose behind those digital decisions and offerings.
We're looking to return the favor soon with Manila Austin from Communispace. I conducted an interview with her awhile back that I'm hoping to post soon here on the C3 site. They're a company helping to lead the dialogue about what community really means, considering that it's a term that's thrown around a lot these days, especially by "Web 2.0" companies.
Sam Ford is a research affiliate with the Consortium and Director of Customer Insights with Peppercom. He also writes for PepperDigital.
Sorry for the radio silence on my part as I have settled into this new position at Peppercom as "Director of Customer Insights" and my new relationship with C3 as a research affiliate. I hope to be back to posting a couple of times a week from this point forward.
To start with, there were a couple of recent pieces I have written over on the PepperDigital blog that I thought might be of interest to Consortium blog readers:
A Model for Better Understanding Communities Online. "That's not to vilify segmentation. It's no more a help to say every audience member is unique than it is to say the audience is all the same--neither produce a model that's feasible for effective mass communication. It just means there's a need for a more nuanced way to understand the different types of online audience members."
More Chatter about Canada's Brand and Media's Role. "As Canadian media such as these two shows continue to gain notoriety south of the border and across the globe, one has to think there are definite benefits to the Canadian brand, differentiating the Canadian experience and Canadian society through distinctly Canadian television shows."
No Virtual Handshakes: Remember That the "Virtual" Doesn't Exist Outside the "Real" World. "So I wanted to remind everyone that, in all our enthusiasm about digital technologies, let's never fall into the trap of thinking about the 'virtual world' as something disconnected from everything else. After all, these are technological tools that still connect us in our everyday life, not a way that we can somehow transcend living."
Around the Consortium: Personalization, Emotion in Politics, Soaps, and Digital
To start with, C3 Alum Ilya Vedrashko has a recent post about sites morphing to the cognitive style of each visitor, over on his Advertising Lab site. See more here.
Meanwhile, C3 Consulting Researcher Grant McCracken writes about the prioritization of emotion in U.S. politics at the moment, and how separated this is from previous measurements of leadership.
I also wanted to give a quick link to this podcast with the team at Daytime Confidential. I was honored to be invited on for a call and appreciated having the chance to discuss my research and perspective on soap operas today, the class at MIT, other soaps projects I'm working on at the moment, and how this links to my work with the Consortium. Thanks also to Fred Smith for the plug.
As many regular C3 blog readers know, I spend quite a bit of my research time focusing on soap opera related projects. At the moment, I'm working with C3 Consulting Researchers C. Lee Harrington and Abigail Derecho on a collection looking at this pivotal moment in the history of one of U.S. television's oldest genres.
So I'm interested to keep seeing references to the soap opera popping up in the news, notably in the columns of New York Times television critic Gina Bellafante.
I first wrote last month about my frustrations with Bellafante's tone when writing about Luke and Noah from As the World Turns fame. Rather than knocking aspects of the storytelling that she felt was poor, the article indicated that aspects of the story were scripted poorly because this was a soap opera, and there's simply no way for these shows to do anything else.
Well, good friend Lynn Liccardo contacted me recently to share this, Bellafante's latest piece. On the one hand, I was elated. Here was a glowing review of the magic of Friday Night Lights, a show whose merits I've emphasized here time and time again (and see more from Xiaochang Li here). On the other, the story included this line: "The obviousness of his looks -- soap-opera hair, soap-opera smile, soap-opera skin -- is incongruous with the refined style of his performance."
Looking at the Convergence Culture Consortium with a Critical Eye
Being part of the team that helped launch what became the Convergence Culture Consortium and being at the center of the group's work for the past few years, I am interested in how C3's work is situated at an intersection amongst fandom, media companies and brands, and the academy. I feel that positioning is what energizes the group's work, but it can likewise lead to skepticism and scrutiny, especially as the perspective here on the blog and elsewhere balances positions that are sometimes oppositional or more often of little interest to one another.
Some industry folks who attend C3 events or read this blog might find it "a little too academic for them," while some academics might find it "a little too corporate." Likewise, C3 may see itself as advocating the interests of the audience to corporate partners, but that doesn't mean there can't (or shouldn't) be skepticism from fans and scholars alike as to what such a dialogue means, what's left out of the conversation, etc. After all, this is media studies: while cynicism is often unhelpful, where would we be without a healthy dose of skepticism?
I've written in the past about criticisms of the Consortium that I felt were somewhat off-base (look here and in the comments here for more). As the Consortium's PI Henry Jenkins often does over on his blog, I've attempted to describe the philosophy and approach our group takes toward talking with industry and other constituencies (such as here).
But the most thorough and thought-provoking critique (and by that I don't mean critical in the pejorative but rather as reasoned and thought-out) of the Consortium's position I've seen came recently from cryptoxin on LiveJournal. Anyone interested in these issues should read cryptoxin's post and the intelligent debate that follows it.
Changes Around C3: My New Position and Consortium Summer Schedule
With the academic year winding up here at MIT and graduation upon us, I wanted to give everyone a few updates regarding what's going to be happening with the Consortium.
As we posted here on the blog, we are in the process of hiring a new research director, and we will have an announcement about who that is once the decision has been made here on the blog.
Last week was the end of my duration as the Consortium's project manager. I have now gone to work for PR firm Peppercom as Director of Customer Insights (see more at PRWeek and Bulldog Reporter, as well as Firm Voice and The Holmes Report--subscription-only, so I can't link to it. I co-authored some pieces with Peppercom founder Steve Cody in the past, including writing some thoughts pieces available from The Christian Science Monitor, PR News, and Bulldog Reporter, if you're interested in knowing more about what a Director of Customer Insights might think or do...(I'm still trying to figure that out myself.)
However, I will remain an official research affiliate with the Consortium and can still be reached at samford@mit.edu. That also means that, while I won't be writing here quite as often, I still plan to post a couple of times a week here on the Consortium blog, so don't think C3 is suddenly going to run out of posts on soaps or the WWE.
Conflicting Images of WWE's The Great Khali from U.S. and Indian Cultural Perspectives
Awhile back, former C3 manager Parmesh Shahani sent me a link to an interesting post about World Wrestling Entertainment professional wrestler The Great Khali. Khali, from India, was brought into the WWE because of his abnormal size and was put into the "monster" role that pro wrestling has long cultivated, the scary and intimidating behemoth that other wrestlers fear because of their brute strength.
Khali was put into a variety of big matches and even had a run as the heavyweight champion of Smackdown , but this was all complicated by the fact that--even though Khali was an attention-getter with his abnormal size--his size were a detriment in the athleticism of his wrestling performances. In fact, dedicated wrestling fans in the U.S. regularly dreaded his matches, because of the feeling that he had less wrestling ability than almost any other wrestler on the roster.
Many wrestling fans have long resented the fact that less talented performers are brought in and often given big "pushes" as marquee wrestlers because of the visual impressiveness of their size, especially when they take up main event spots that lead to lower-quality pay-per-view wrestling matches and cause more talented athletes to be positioned lower on the card. It's the tension between trying to create dynamics to attract less involved fans and satisfying the most dedicated ones.
But this post, from EditIndia, emphasizes that there are often multiple audiences watching products, especially for a bland as global as the WWE, which has found increasing success in pushing its franchise into media markets across the globe.
Soap Fans Looking for a New Home: The General Hospital Nomads
Who owns the media property? Is it the copyright holder? Or is it the audience, the group that makes that product popular? These are questions at the core in tension between media producers and media audiences and at stake in discussions about relationships between producers or consumers or what consumer "can do" with texts out of the ausipices or interests of the producers.
A reader forwarded me some threads from the official ABC Daytime boards for General Hospital, where fans are upset about the way they are treated and the technical attributes of their board as opposed to message boards for ABC primetime shows. Rather than just complain, though, they have taken to invading the boards of other spaces in order to make their problems and presence more well known.
See this thread, in which fans are organizing 5 minute invasions of various other boards.
That didn't go over as well with the Lost fans, but attention has been directed instead toward the official board for Notes from the Underbelly, a cancelled ABC show that still has an active board, and a board that some GH fans feel are better than what they've been given.
Around the Consortium: ICA, IMR, and Online Music Promotion
A few notes this afternoon from around the Consortium:
First of all, several folks involved in the Consortium--including Principal Investigator Henry Jenkins, Research Manager Joshua Green, and a variety of our consulting researchers--spent the past several days in Montreal for the International Communication Association's annual conference. I was in the process of moving (more on that later) and didn't get to attend, but C3 Consulting Researcher Jonathan Gray has a wonderful short thought piece here, comparing the time he spent at the conference to some of the Consortium's event and praising the values of "paper-less" academic conferencing.
We at the Consortium were deeply saddened to hear of the recent passing of Erlene Zierke. We had the pleasure of getting to know Erlene through our relationship with Turner Broadcasting, where she put much energy into launching and developing Super Deluxe.
Some blog readers might have had the chance to meet Erlene at ROFLCon or the first Futures of Entertainment conference here at MIT--and, believe me, you would likely remember Erlene if you ever had the chance to meet her.
Her enthusiasm was unmatched, and she was always offering creative and unique perspective for those of us who had the chance to work with her here at MIT.
Our thoughts are with Erlene's many friends and family. She was an extraordinary individual, and I personally consider it a great privilege to have had the chance to get to know her during her all-too-brief time with us.
Another piece I've been meaning to direct C3 readers toward was a piece including some comments from C3 alum Geoffrey Long from earlier this month. The story, called Is the future of TV on the Web?, looks at the promises, questions, and tensions of online video.
Awhile back, I was interviewed for a few minutes by a reporter from The Chronicle of Higher Education about the potential promise of a social networking site for youth basketball, organized by the NCAA and the NBA.
Links of the Day: A Few Interesting Random Recent Sites and Stories
One of my tasks for the day has been to clean out the bookmarks I've not yet gone through. To make it a more productive exercise, I thought I'd share a few of them through the blog as well, not just to show how eclectic my own archiving interests are and the types of links people forward to me but likewise to pass along stuff that might be of interest to C3 readers as well.
First, there's this link for the Jack Myers Future of Media discussion from earlier this month. This entry looks at a conversation from a variety of speakers, with the mix including a former Coca-Cola exec and reps from Aegis North America, someone from Colgate Palmolive, blip.tv, and Worldwide Biggies.
Last month, the Program in Comparative Media Studies hosted an MIT Communications Forum entitled "Youth and Civic Engagement."
The official event description asked, "The current generation of young citizens is growing up in an age of unprecedented access to information. Will this change their understanding of democracy? What factors will shape their involvement in the political process?"
The forum featured three speakers with expertise on engaging young people in more active citizenship from various perspectives and backgrounds and was co-sponsored by the MIT Center for Future Civic Media, a collaboration between CMS and the MIT Media Lab.
Interesting Soaps Links: Liccardo, Bibel, and Muslim Representation on ATWT
I wanted to start out a full round of post-Memorial Day blog entries today with highlights of a couple of things worth seeing from around the Web. For this post, a few interesting soap opera related posts:
First, see the new blog from Sara Bibel. Sara is a friend of mine who I had the pleasure of meeting through my thesis work on soaps. She was formerly a writer for The Young and the Restless. She used to work with Kay Alden, one of the members of my thesis committee and a current writer for The Bold and the Beautiful, and it has been a pleasure getting to know Sara through some e-mail correspondence over the past year. Now, it's even better, since her thoughts--bolstered by some experience writing in the genre--are freely available online, through Fancast.
Culture Wars and Cultural Hierarchies: New York Times on ATWT's Nuke
Lynn Liccardo suggested to Lee Harrington, Gail Derecho, and me that one of us should respond to the recent article in The New York Timesby Gina Bellafante about the soap opera and specifically the popularity of the Luke and Noah couple on As the World Turns, because of the work we are doing on putting together a contemporary anthology of work on U.S. soap operas. Unfortunately, the article had to run right as I was moving into a new apartment, just the worst time to try to organize my thoughts, especially in a way that limited them to 150 words.
Instead, now that most of my furniture is in order and most of the boxes are unpacked, I wanted to return to Bellafante's article last week. First of all, as is no surprise, the article is beautifully written and a great bit of publicity for soap operas, which remain culturally ignored by most mainstream arts and entertainment publications. Scholars I know, including myself, would argue that there's a combination of cultural biases, geographic and economic stereotypes, and gender discrepancies that would explain why soap operas aren't covered as "entertainment" by publications that cover most else, just as one of my other areas of interest--pro wrestling--is ignored by Entertainment Weekly and The New Yorker alike. Rather, both get relegated to their own ghettoized press, separate and certainly not equal.
In reading Bellafante's piece, I'm reminded of Victoria Johnson's work on Friday Night Lights, in which she pointed out how critics had to justify and qualify why they liked the show and distance themselves from the stereotypes inherent with being a viewer or, God forbid, a fan. Johnson's best example came from a New Yorker review, I believe it was, in which the author had to explain that she started watching the show when an artist in Manhattan at a museum told her she should watch FNL, overcoding almost to extremes the situation in which she decided to watch the show and playing off the cultural stereotypes of what a show about football in a small West Texas town would be like.
See also this piece from yesterday about my lunch in which a fellow professional seemed somewhat taken aback about my enthusiasm about the creativity and potential for artistry in pro wrestling and soaps.
I have written some in the past about the continued development of the Luke Snyder coming out storyline on As the World Turns, a story which has engaged new viewers to that portion of the soap opera audience and attracted some mainstream attention due to ongoing controversies about the way the show has handled the gay storyline and resistance from conservative groups. The story started with Luke's coming out, complete with an online transmedia extension in which fans could read Luke's blog.
From the beginning, there was a broader audience who started watching the soap specifically through Luke's scenes, as I wrote about back in June 2006. That energy grew significantly when Luke eventually met and had his first gay relationship, with Noah Mayer. For instance, back in August, considerable attention was given to the first kiss between the couple (see here).
Then, there was no kissing for quite a while, and the show started getting protests, not from conservative groups but rather from online fans who were impatient to see the couple kiss again. First, there was the scene under the mistletoe at Christmas, in which the couple looked to be about to kiss, only to have the cameras pan out. Then, there was Valentine's Day, when Luke and Noah were the only couple featured on the episode not to lock lips.
One of my greatest frustrations from Console-ing Passions was that my workshop was scheduled directly against some of the panels most directly relevant to my interests. Now, this is not meant as an attack on the conference planners; I'm keenly aware that there's just no way to avoid this when you're launching a media studies and fandom conference, but it was hard knowing that, next door, there were four interesting research presentations occurring while I was boring audiences with all my blabbing.
Ironically, while I was talking about soap opera audiences outside the target demographic and the ways in which those audiences are devalued in the commodification of audiences, Elana Levine was in the next room, talking about how the masculinization of television in recent years has further devalued more "ephemeral" programming, such as U.S. soaps. Elana was kind enough to forward her research my way, and I found her approach--to look at the increasingly masculine rhetoric surrounding the removal of the television from the domestic and the increasing focus on the technology of television as we move into a flat-panel, digital world--a fresh way to understand how television has begun to overcome many of the cultural biases that have long existed against the products that are broadcast on television and provided through cable.
Foremost, I find it interesting that Elana's compelling argument that television has become increasingly masculinized in rhetoric through emphasis on technology and the escape of domestic spaces exists alongside the growing trend for primetime television to adopt many of the storytelling tactics of daytime soaps. For instance, I was talking with Ivan Askwith about some of the rhetoric surrounding Lost, marveling at the existence of such a large ensemble cast and purporting that there's never been such a large ensemble cast on television. That is, of course, except for the soap operas that have been an hour in length since the mid-1970s and which have featured hundreds, even thousands, of characters in several decades on the air, many of which still have the potential to come and go fluently from the show.
Supernatural and Looking at Fanvids as Media Texts
One of the current shows of focus for understanding fandom within fan studies is Supernatural on The CW. When I go to academic conferences, I probably don't hear about it quite as often as Lost, but it ranks high up on the list (and usually comes from a different set of media scholars). In particular, it is the active fan creation around the show that has driven such scholarly interest in Supernatural along the way, particularly in terms of fanvids.
I've written about one of the fan organizations that has done interesting work around Supernatural in a different context; see my interview last September with the founders of Fandom Rocks, a fan organization built around Supernatural that raises funds for non-profits.
But I spent part of the afternoon reading an interesting piece from Louisa Stein based on her recent Console-ing Passions presentation on fanvids about Supernatural, and I wanted to post a few notes on that work while it's fresh on my mind.
On Valuing Labor and Creativity in Industry and Academia
As part of my continued posts on some of the projects and papers I've found out about as late, I wanted to include some note after spending some time reading Vicki Mayer's latest work on reality casting. Vicki sent me the shorter paper her Console-ing Passions presentation was based on. (And, Vicki, if you read this, I haven't forgotten my promise to get back to you once I've read the full chapter.) But, in the process of reading through her notes on looking at the workload of those who do reality casting, a few interesting things came to mind.
First is one of the main argument Vicki is making in the piece, which is that much of the important work of casting agents come in the relationship building that is part of the job, precisely the type of work that is not given direct value in the system, even as it is the reason the system functions the way in does.
In other words, much of the job of casting doesn't happen at official events or in the office, yet this work is not valued. These people often spend more time "on the job" in ways that aren't financially compensated for, because the media industries don't often appropriately value the labor that goes into this type of work. Vicki looks at how this relates to biases against feminine disourses, often more tied to relationship-building and community-building, and how this might explain why many of the people she encountered in casting roles were women or gay men.
Soap Operas, Relative Realism, and Implicit Contracts
Just yesterday, I was out to lunch with someone when the subject of soap operas came up. This person vaguely knew that I have done a fair amount of writing about soap operas and their audience, so we started to discuss the nature of soaps, pro wrestling, and the other media content that I study.
It didn't take long for the importance of cultural taste hierarchies to get established, as my lunch partner made it clear she had never watched soap operas much herself. She felt the need to clarify after she had told a third person briefly involved in the conversation that they could download their soaps for free and podcast them for the commute to work. "Don't ask me how I know these things, because I don't watch those shows, but I do."
And I believe her. She doesn't watch them. These shows are just pervasive enough in our culture that even those who feel they've safely distanced themselves from "low culture" media texts are often more implicit than they want to be. This person is a media industries professional, who has worked and lived in the New York City area for some time now, and she wanted to be clear, even when talking to a soap opera fan and someone who not only is a fan of soaps but also studies soaps and their viewers, that she doesn't watch.
During the lunch, the difference between East Coast and West Coast soaps came up. I pointed out to her that East Coast soaps often have a different feel, because of the number of stage actors who appear in them. She said that she knew many stage actors worked in soaps for the steady pay, to fund their lifestyle on the stage. I agreed that it was sometimes the case and then posited that soaps often have quite good actors involved.
Lovers and Haters: But What About Ambivalence in Fan Communities?
One of the fan studies scholars I had the pleasure of meeting in person for the first time at Console-ing Passions 2008 in Santa Barbara was Alexis Lothian. I bwecame familiar with Alexis through her many insightful comments in and around the Gender and Fan Studies converastion that I referenced in my previous post, and her presentation at Console-ing Passions was informed in many ways from that conversation.
In short, Alexis posits that we've gotten pretty good at talking about fan enthusiasm in fan studies, as well as the importance of hate, but we haven't developed a significant discourse as of yet for talking as well about fan ambivalence.
Alexis writes that C3 Consulting Researcher Jonathan Gray "recently insisted on the importance of viewers' hate for media productions; but fans' more ambivalent affects toward their objects are rarely foregrounded in academic analysis. When questions not only of taste but also of racism, sexism and homophobia get involved, the textual and discursive spheres active fans build around and from their objects become very complex."
Over the next several posts, I'm going to revisit some of my traveling around the conference circuit in March and April and share some of the other interesting research projects and papers I had forwarded to me. Many of these will be from the 2008 Console-ing Passions conference in Santa Barbara I've written about on the blog in a few previous posts.
As I mentioned, I participated in a workshop that acted as a postmortem for the Gender and Fan Studies/Culture or Fandebate discussion that took place on Live Journal and on Henry Jenkins' blog last year.
On that topic, I saw a recent post from Kristina Busse, one of the central figures in helping to drive that discussion between male and female fan scholars about the state of the field and gender divides in fan communities and fan studies, that I thought might be of interest to blog readers who follow fan studies issues in particular.
Kristina is one of the founders of the Transformative Works and Cultures journal that I am on the editorial board for.
Another note this early afternoon that I wanted to pass along to blog readers. Since my wrap-up on the C3 Spring Retreat last week, C3 Consulting Researcher Robert V. Kozinets wrote a blog entry detailing some of his experiences from the event.
Rob writes:
A number of great people from major corporations were involved this year, including people from Fidelity Investments, Yahoo!, MTV/Viacom, and Turner Broadcasting. Industry speakers included Brian Haven from Keith Clarkson from Xenophile Media, Matt Wolf from Double Twenty Productions, Forrester Research, and Judy Walklet from Communispace. And for me, it was a thrill to meet a who's who of fan community researchers--people who were absolutely fundamental to my thesis work and who built the universe of fan studies. These included Nancy Baym, Lee Harrington, Jonathan Gray, and Jason Mittell. I also had the opportunity this year and in the past to meet some excellent new scholars in the area, whose work is sure to open up many exciting new avenues of opportunity and insight. This people include Kevin Sandler, Derek Johnson, Gail Derecho, Aswin Panathambekar, Geoff Long, Sam Ford, and Ivan Askwith. And of course it was genuine pleasure to see my friend the esteemed marketing anthropologist and consumer culture icon, Grant McCracken, whose contributions are always elegantly-phrased and thoroughly thought-provoking.
Around the Consortium: Advertising, Identity, and Ethnic Television
To start our look around the Consortium this afternoon, I wanted to point toward an intriguing piece from C3 Alum Ilya Vedrashko over at his Advertising Lab site about bookmarkable advertising. He starts:
People bookmark ads. They circle ads with red markers, cut them out, paste them on the fridge, carry them inside wallets, give ads away, put ads on the walls. Given the opportunity and a good reason, people archive, manage and retrieve ads. Naturally, it is in advertisers' best interests to encourage this behavior because bookmarking gives the ad another chance to do its job, which is why we often see the dotted "cut here" lines around ads.
Meanwhile, C3 Consulting Researcher Grant McCracken was just featured in Canada's The Globe and Mail, promoting his new book Transformations and sharing his thoughts on identity in a "convergence culture." Grant says:
You know, Erving Goffman, Canada's great gift to sociology, used to talk about consumer goods as an identikit - the process by which we would buy a number of consumer goods to outfit our present identity. And if it's the case that that identity is multiplying so we have many identities, several selves, then it makes sense for people to be buying several identikits. In fact about a year ago I did a project for a client on storage in the home. The striking thing about homes is that they are bursting at the seams as people accumulate. ... So I found myself in attics and garages looking at colour-coded plastic containers that contained all the things a house would need to outfit itself appropriately for the season. That too was a kind of multiple identity at play.
Amidst all the flurry of late spring here in the academic world, we just wanted to post to the blog to reiterate that our Futures of Entertainment 3 event will be coming up again this November. As has been the case in previous years, the event is scheduled the Friday and Saturday before Thanksgiving.
This year, that will be Friday, Nov. 21, and Saturday, Nov. 22.
We are happy to announce that this year's event will be held in the Wong Auditorium in the Tang Center here at MIT, a larger venue from our first two events that we hope will even better accommodate the type of conversation we've sought to have at this event in previous years.
I wanted to start out my list of updates this morning by giving a quick reminder to all our blog readers that the Consortium has started the hiring process for a new position with the title of "Research Director," who will work in conjunction with C3 principal investigators Henry Jenkins and William Uricchio and the various members of the Consortium to help guide both internal and external research for the group.
As many readers may know, the Consortium writes internal white papers, publishes a weekly internal newsletter, hosts an annual internal Consortium retreat, and collaborates with partner companies who pay an annual fee to be members in our Consortium, while we likewise run this blog, host the Futures of Entertainment conference each November, and engage with various audiences about our research through publications, conferences, talking with journalists, etc.
Finally, our afternoon last Friday at the C3 Spring Retreat was spent discussing how academia and industry might work together and putting that discussion into action through a series of breakout discussions built around topics of particular interest to some of those working with the Consortium: advertising and marketing, audience measurement and metrics, participatory culture, global media flow, and gaming.
The discussion started with a conversation led by a panel of C3 Consulting Researchers. I moderated the conversation, joined by Lee Harrington, Grant McCracken, Jason Mittell, and Kevin Sandler. Each talked about their own research and how it intersects with industry, and we had a conversation across the room about what academia has to offer to media industries companies, what type of insight they would like to have from media industries companies in return, and both the potentials and the difficulties in work between academia and industry, taking into account the differences in the approach and interests of each type of research.
This moved into a series of individual discussions that I think reached the pinnacle of what an event like this retreat can accomplish, fostering conversations across this industry/academia threshold. As I've said to many people in the past, it's what I found most energizing about Futures of Entertainment both of the past two years, and it's what I think an organization like C3 can help foster.
C3 Spring Retreat Discussion on Audience/Community
Our second panel discussion at the C3 Spring Retreat in our Friday session focused on the topic of media audiences and the worth of looking at media audiences as a community and as social beings. Moderating the panel was new C3 Consulting Researcher Nancy Baym, who previously wrote a book about U.S. soap opera fan communities online and who now works on "bandom."
The panel was launched by some thoughts from C3 Consulting Researcher Robert V. Kozinets, whose work has focused on the correlation between fan communities built around media content and "brand communities." In short, Kozinets has built his career researching community online and the intersection between community and consumerism.
Also joining the panel from the academic side was C3 Consulting Researcher Aswin Punathambekar, whose angle on the panel in part looked at the multiple communities that might develop around media content in a global context.
These three C3-affiliated academics were joined by two folks from the industry side, Brian Haven from Forrester Research and Judy Walklet from Communispace.
Friday's session at the C3 Spring Retreat featured a series of panels and breakout discussions amongst our consulting researchers, invited guests, and representatives from our partner companies. We mentioned back at MIT Futures of Entertainment 2 that we wanted to design that event to be a public place for industry and academic minds to come together and collaborate and brainstorm together. On a smaller scale, with those officially involved in the Consortium, we see our retreat as a chance to foster the same type of innovation and conversation among our partner companies, the academics we work with, and our core team here at the Program in Comparative Media Studies.
This got started on Friday morning with a conversation featuring C3 Consulting Researcher Jonathan Gray moderating a panel on transmedia, an issue C3 has been interested in since our launch at the beginning of 2006. Joining Jon was two more of our newest consulting researchers, Abigail Derecho and Derek Johnson, drawing on their respective work on fans and franchises to look at the phenomenon of transmedia. From the industry end, we invited two guests who are doing innovative work as transmedia practitioners: Keith Clarkson from Xenophile Media and Matt Wolf from Double Twenty Productions.
Notes on Thursday's Events at the C3 Spring Retreat
We're amidst several updates today, after a hiatus from blogging due to our annual C3 Spring Retreat and our continued work on a series of internal white papers within the Consortium, which we presented as part of the event last Thursday and Friday. As many regular readers might know, we have spent the past year working specifically on gaining a better understanding of video sharing sites like YouTube, the type of content that appears there, and how these sites work as potential places for promotion. We've also been exploring the "viral" media concept that has become part of our entertainment landscape.
In addition to the various blog posts we've written about these issues here on the C3 blog this past academic year, we've been working on three white papers that are due to be shared internally at the end of the academic year. We spent the first day of the retreat previewing and discussing that work with our corporate partners (see our partners listed on the left side of the page, along with Fidelity Investments) and our consulting researchers.
The event kicked off with an introduction from C3 Principal Investigator and Co-Director of the Program in Comparative Media Studies here at MIT, William Uricchio, who talked about how the work we do here in the Convergence Culture Consortium plugs into the history of media theory at MIT. William and Henry have been doing research on that connection for some time now, in light of the upcoming 150th anniversary of the Institute.
C3 Work in 2007-2008: 10 Most Popular Posts (RSS Feed)
In my previous post, I highlighted what was the 10 post popular posts on our blog from the previous academic year. Looking at RSS feed data from Feedburner, I wanted to likewise highlight what was the 10 most popular posts from the past academic year through our feed.
The two most popular posts were also one of our Top 10 posts in terms of page views, and--as you will see--most of the most popular topics through our feed dealt with the Futures of Entertainment event.
FoE2: Advertising and Convergence Culture. This post recaps some of the comments from the participants in last November's Futures of Entertainment 2 panel on Advertising and Convergence Culture, featuring Mike Rubenstein, Bill Fox, Faris Yakob, Tina Wells, and Baba Shetty.
FoE2: Opening Remarks. C3 Principal Investigator Henry Jenkins and C3 Research Director Joshua Green open Futures of Entertainment 2 with a discussion on the future of television, interactivity, engagement, and fan labor.
Looking Back at FoE: Not the Real World Anymore. The last panel at the first Futures of Entertainment featured John Lester from Linden Labs, Ron Meiners from Mplayer.com, and Todd Cunningham and Eric Gruber from MTV Networks, talking about virtual worlds.
Hey! Nielsen--Whats the Metric? C3 Graduate Student Researcher Eleanor Baird looks at Nielsen's newest attempts to take into account engagement and fan activities as part of their measurement, through the development of an online community looking at these issues.
C3 Work in 2007-2008: 10 Most Popular Posts (Page Visits)
As we near the end of the academic year, I thought readers might be interested in seeing what the Top 10 most popular posts have been over the previous nine months or so. First, according to page views through Google Analytics, our Top 10 posts have been:
Hustling 2.0: Soulja Boy and the Crank Dat Phenomenon. C3 graduate researcher Xiaochang Li looks at the rise of Soulja Boy and the energy the artist has created on YouTube with the latest dance phenomenon, complete with the Program in Comparative Media Studies' own attempt to "crank that."
Surplus Audiences, ATWT, and the Luke/Noah Kiss.As the World Turns had a milestone moment last September--the first "serious" kiss between gay male characters in American daytime. Sam Ford asks how producers of the show can use the kiss' popularity on YouTube, and in online gay communities?
This Thursday evening, the MIT Convergence Culture Consortium, in conjunction with the Program in Comparative Media Studies at MIT, will be hosting a public event entitled "Potentials of YouTube."
This event is the public portion of our C3 Spring Retreat, with many of our consulting researchers and representatives from our corporate partners in attendance.
Since the Consortium has been spending significant time researching YouTube in the past year, we will feature two short presentations and subsequent discussion about the potential uses and significance of YouTube as a site for cultural performance, vernacular creativity, and evolving business practice.
C3 Research Manager Joshua Green will introduce the discussion, and presenting will be Nate Greenslit, a postdoctoral scholar in MIT's Program on Emerging Technologies, and Kevin Driscoll, a graduate student in the Program in Comparative Media Studies at MIT.
This event will be held from 5 p.m. until 7 p.m. at MIT in Building 2 Room 105.
In my final piece this afternoon regarding product placement, I wanted to provide some excerpts from my research on the subject of acceptable and unacceptable placement. This project started as my Master's thesis work (see original submitted version here--today is the one year anniversary of my thesis defens...ahem...consultation), and I have continued editing the manuscript, eyeing eventual publication. Let me know if you have any thoughts, queries, or disagreements.
Product Placement in As the World Turns
In my manuscript chapter entitled "Not So Nice 'n Easy," I wrote about an example from As the World Turns, in which a longtime character, Margo Hughes, notices gray in her hair. Hughes, one of the senior officers of the local police station, talks to her mother-in-law about it at the police station and gets a recommendation to use Nice 'n Easy, which she does. Later, in the same episode, we hear how satisfied she is with the results...
While there was some attempt to use the Nice 'n Easy product integration for humor, viewers and columnists did not find the disruptive audio references to the hair product amusing in the least.
Product Placement: C3's Work on Implicit Contracts and Reverse Placement
I think product placement and good television can co-exist in cases where the product doesn't get in the way of the text. It should be a utility to further the story, first and foremost, or to add realism to the drama, not a way to insert commercials into the text. If it provides some of the latter, great for business, but the $$$ deal can't be put first, at least if companies don't want to annoy their audiences.
However, as I wrote about in my thesis work, the worst that can happen is visual combined with reference, unless it is done in an ironic way (and that only works in rare form, so marketers don't think you can just pull an out by being funny with the brand and then laughing all the way to the bank).
Implicit Contract
C3 Alum Alec Austin did a significant amount of work while he was here looking into the history of product placement and what makes product placement look particularly good or bad. For one of the internal studies for the Consortium, entitled Selling Creatively: Product Placement in the New Media Landscape, Alec writes about the long history of product placement in American television, the problem with industry and critics alike pretending as if product placement is new considering its central place on radio and in early television (i.e. the Texaco men, the origin of "soap operas," etc.), and the need for a more nuanced way to understand what successful product placement would look like.
In trying to catch up on my reading this week, I noticed that C3 Consulting Researcher Grant McCracken continues his look at product placement done poorly over at FX, this time writing about a conversation about buying a GMC as part of the dialogue of the show.
Grant first writes about a character in The Riches driving a GMC car, noting that GMC both appears throughout the show and is advertised at several points during commercial breaks. He says, "I don't like product placement, as I have argued here, but as long as we TIVO through the ads this is perhaps forgivable."
However, it is the insertion of a pitch about the GMC into dialogue that becomes the blatant offender here. Grant writes:
Holy ****. This may very well be the most egregious example of commercial interference ever registered in our culture. Recall that my original objection to FX was that they put an ad for one of their shows in the corner of the screen for the duration of an episode. I thought this was a little much. But to put a sales pitch in the middle of the dramatic action, and to reduce a dramatic genius like Minnie Driver to a product pitcher, this is insufferable.
Grant ends with a call to action, wondering how the audience can discourage such blatant pitching in the middle of a show and questioning what commercial force might be held responsible for such a deal.
Transformations: Identity Construction in Contemporary Culture
The final C3-related publication I want to highlight this afternoon is the recent release of Grant McCracken's latest book, Transformations: Identity Construction in Contemporary Culture. The book, from Indiana University Press, has a May 2008 release date and is already available through Amazon.
According to the official description:
Self reinvention has become a preoccupation of contemporary culture. In the last decade, Hollywood made a 500-million-dollar bet on this idea with movies such as Multiplicity, Fight Club, eXistenZ, and Catch Me If You Can. Self reinvention marks the careers of Madonna, Ani DiFranco, Martha Stewart, and Robin Williams. The Nike ads of LeBron James, the experiments of New Age spirituality, the mores of contemporary teen culture, and the obsession with "extreme makeovers" are all examples of our culture's fixation with change. In a time marked by plenitude, transformation is one of the few things these parties have in common.
Another recent book from a Convergence Culture Consortium consulting researcher that might be of interest to a variety of the blog readers is Amanda Lotz' The Television Will Be Revolutionized, from NYU Press. According to the official description:
After occupying a central space in American living rooms for the past fifty years, is television, as we've known it, dead? The capabilities and features of that simple box have been so radically redefined that it's now nearly unrecognizable. Today, viewers with digital video recorders such as TiVo may elect to circumvent scheduling constraints and commercials. Owners of iPods and other portable viewing devices are able to download the latest episodes of their favorite shows and watch them whenever and wherever they want. Still others rent television shows on DVD, or download them through legal and illegal sources online. But these changes have not been hastening the demise of the medium. They are revolutionizing it.
A couple more book projects I wanted to point everyone toward from around the Consortium this week. C3 Consulting Researcher Kevin Sandler's 2007 book through Rutgers is The Naked Truth: Why Hollywood Doesn't Make X-Rated Movies.
According to the official description:
From parents and teachers to politicians and policymakers, there is a din of voices participating in the debate over how young people are affected by violence, strong language, and explicit sexual activity in films. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) responded to this concern in 1968 when it introduced a classification and rating system based on the now well-known labels: "G," "PG," PG-13," "R," and "X."
Among the C3-related books I'm noting on the blog at the beginning of this week, I also wanted to point everyone's attention toward Grant McCracken's 2006 book Flock and Flow.
Is it possible any longer to "read" markets fast enough to respond to them? A world of discrete parts is now one interconnected web of ceaseless calculation and response. Marketing has become a thing of speed and turbulence, with all the players moving simultaneously.
Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World
While spending a little time this week pointing toward recent books from Convergence Culture Consortium members, I thought I'd also mention another book from the past year that might be of interest to C3 blog readers:
Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World: C3 Consulting Researchers Jonathan Gray and C. Lee Harrington are joined by co-editor Cornel Sandvoss in this 2007 volume about fandom.
According to the description:
We are all fans. Whether we log on to Web sites to scrutinize the latest plot turns in Lost, "stalk" our favorite celebrities on Gawker, attend gaming conventions, or simply wait with bated breath for the newest Harry Potter novel-each of us is a fan. Fandom extends beyond television and film to literature, opera, sports, and pop music, and encompasses both high and low culture.
Speaking of recent books from C3 Consulting Researchers, I thought C3 blog readers might be interested in knowing more about the latest book edited by C3 Consulting Researcher Robert V. Kozinets, along with Bernard Cova and Avi Shankar.
The book, entitled Consumer Tribtes, is a collection of essays on understanding consumption in social rather than individual terms.
Using a combination of multi-sited ethnography, textual analysis, historical documentation analysis, and memoir writing, the author provides macro and micro perspectives on what it means to be a gay man located in Gay Bombay at a particular point in time. Specifically, he explores what being gay means to members of Gay Bombay and how they negotiate locality and globalization, their sense of identity as well as a feeling of community within its online/offline world. On a broader level, he critically examines the formulation and reconfiguration of contemporary Indian gayness in the light of its emergent cultural, media, and political alliances.
As we move into the final phase of our work for the third academic year for the Consortium and go through the process of finishing out many of our internal research projects over the summer, there are some changes taking place for the Consortium, as we prepare for new students to come in and some of our roles to shift. As part of that, we are looking to hire a new person with the position title of "research director" for the Consortium.
We figured the best way to circulate word about the job is to reach out to some of the folks who follow the Consortium's work regularly. Please feel free to forward the link along to anyone you know who fits the qualifications and might be interested in working with a project like C3.
The full job description is in the full entry link below, as well as a link to the page at MIT to submit an application.
Who Do You Think I Am?: My Life as a Cartoon Character
I shared this over on my blog recently but thought Consortium blog readers would enjoy it as well.
Shortly after South by Southwest, I got a note from Rafi Santo from Global Kids calling my attention to the fact that my likeness had become a cartoon character, thanks to a new site called Bitstrips, which has used the festival to broaden its public visibility. Bitstrips is a site which supports the production and distribution of user-generated web comics. More recently, reader Jordon Himelfarb, a Canadian journalist wrote to tell me that the Henry Jenkins character had been deployed more than 95 times. I am one of a small selection of icons supposed to represent "famous figures", including Steve Jobs, Moby, and Doogie Howser. (The narrow range of options here suggests how deeply embedded this project has been in geek culture to date.)
As someone who is interested in the ways images get appropriate and transformed over time, not to mention a notorious ego-maniac, I was very interested to see what uses were being made of this iconic representation of me. For what it's worth, I think I am funnier in real life than in the comics.
It is clear that the first few uses were from people who attended South by Southwest and were somewhat familiar with who I am and what kinds of things I am apt to say or do.
A Followup from Lynn Liccardo on Listening to Consumers and P&G Soap Operas
In the previous post, I ran a piece from Lynn Liccardo, one of my thesis advisors and a longtime soap opera fan and critic, on how the P&G ethos is separated from their soap opera programming. I waned to run Lynn's followup piece this morning.
No matter what reformulations, new packaging and other improvements market research generates for existing products, the fundamental function of those products must remain recognizable to consumers. At the end of the day, people have to be able to wash their clothes with Tide's "new formula" and brush their teeth with the "new and improved" Crest. While our mothers and grandmothers used earlier versions of Tide and Crest, they certainly wouldn't have any trouble recognizing and using the current formulas.
But when it comes today's soap operas, what I see flashing by as I watch with my finger on ff I can barely recognize the shows I've been watching for over 50 years. Such has been the impact of market research on soap operas. (And I want to be clear that while I'm speaking here specifically about P&G, the negative impact of market research effects all soap operas, not just those produced by P&G.)
Regular reader and commenter on the Consortium blog, Lynn Liccardo, recently wrote me regarding some comments from Procter & Gamble CEO A.G. Lafley she found interesting, especially considering our common interest in P&G's two soap operas. Lynn served as a member of my Master's thesis committee here at MIT and is contributing a piece to the collection on soaps I'm co-editing with Consortium consulting reserachers Abigail Derecho and Lee Harrington. Also, see Lynn's recent piece Henry Jenkins shared here.
From Lynn:
As I watched Charlie Rose's interview with A. G. Lafley, P&G's CEO, I was pretty sure I wasn't going to hear anything about P&G's two long-running soap operas, As the World Turns and Guiding Light, and indeed, I did not. But what I did hear has enormous and immediate relevance for the current sorry state of these two shows.
I was immediately struck by several "ironies," as Sam Ford described the situation I relayed to him. I, however, think we're way beyond irony here - well on our way to cognitive dissonance. When Lafley talked about his experience as a supply officer in the Navy, running a PO on a military base in Japan, and described complaints as "these little clues you can use to improve your product...you should treasure complaints," I immediately thought of Alina Adams, who clearly wasn't copied on the "we should treasure complaints" memo.
Console-ing Passions: Abigail Derecho on Filipino Viewer Protests
Unfortunately, the only other person affiliated with the MIT Convergence Culture Consortium presenting at this year's Console-ing Passions conference was scheduled to present at the same time as the workshop I participated in. Abigail Derecho--whose work can be found at her Minority Fandom blog--is one of our C3 Consulting Researchers (bio here), and she and I are currently co-editing a collection of essays on the U.S. soap opera with fellow C3 Consulting Researcher Lee Harrington.
Gail participated in a panel called "'Most Wired' in a Globalized Arena: Asian Americans, Asia, and New Media," with a presentation called "Performing Transnational Anti-Fandom: Filipinos Protesting The Daily Show and Desperate Housewives Online.
Gail's presentation started with two incidents on U.S. television last fall that drew a digitally mobilized protest from Filipinos, with The Daily Show making a joke about an icon of The Philippines--Corazon Aquino--and Desperate Housewives making a joke about Filipino medical degrees being worth less than U.S. degrees. While the Desperate Housewives reference seemed to draw the greater ire (not surprising, considering The Daily Show comment was positioned as more tongue-in-cheek alongside similar insults to Margaret Thatcher and Golda Meir), both garnered specific media attention outside The Philippines, in part because of the prominence of digital tools in the process.
Gail breaks the situation down and looks at the history of U.S. cultural products in Filipino culture, alongside political and economic links between the two countries, to better understand the cultural tensions that made these two jokes so politically charged for some Filipino viewers.
Console-ing Passions: Heather Hendershot, Abortion, House, and BSG
One of the panels I was only able to catch part of at this year's Console-ing Passions dealt with the critically acclaimed Sci Fi series Battlestar Galactica. Since I came in only at the end of the panel, I went in afterward in hopes to get caught up on some of the presentation. I was particularly interested in hearing more about the work of Heather Hendershot, one of the presenters in the session.
Heather and I first had the chance to meet when she came up to MIT last November to attend our MIT Futures of Entertainment 2 conference and to participate in Unboxing Television, a gathering of television studies scholars for a small retreat-like session to discuss the current state and future of TV studies and share our current work with one another. I'd long been interested in Heather's work on Christian media and representations of U.S. protestant religion, so the work she presented at Console-ing Passions was particularly fascinating for me.
Luckily, Heather had a copy of the draft of her paper she had with her for the presentation, and I had a chance to read it on my flight back to Boston. Her presentation was entitled "'You Have Your Pound of Flesh': Religion, Battlestar Galactica, and Television's Sacred/Secular Fetuses." Turns out, Heather's work here was on looking at modern representations of abortion in not only BSG but likewise the popular FOX series House. Her work further focuses on BSG as an innovative show in part because of the nuanced way in tackles issues of religious difference and the politicizing of religious beliefs.
As I mentioned in my previous post, I spent the weekend in Santa Barbara at the 2008 Console-ing Passions conference. My role in the conference was to participate in a workshop to reflect upon how to build off of the series of discussions about gender amongst those participated in fan studies last summer on Henry Jenkins' blog and on LiveJournal.
Each of the five panelists for the workshop began the session by talking about some of our individual research and how we might build that research from an awareness of issues raised in that discussion last summer, which brought together 44 fan studies academics and a variety of other interested commenters to talk about gender divides in academia and in the fan cultures we study.
I posted the short paper I presented at Console-ing Passions here on the blog last week, and each of us involved in the workshop posted our papers to the LiveJournal Fandebate site that hosted the academic dialogue last year.
The workshop was entitled "Gendered Fan Labor in New Media and Old." In addition to my provocation--entilted "Outside the Target Demographic: Surplus Audiences in Wrestling and Soaps"--Bob Rehak presented "Boys, Blueprints, and Boundaries;" Julie Levin Russo presented "The L Word: Labors of Love;" Suzanne Scott presented "From Filk to Wrock: Performane, Professionalism, and Power in Harry Potter Wizard Rock;" and Louisa Stein presented "Vidding as Cultural Narrative."
In the previous three posts, I included the text of a short thought piece or provocation for my workshop at this past weekend's Console-ing Passions conference in Santa Barbara. I'll blame my lack of updates since last Thursday on an intriguing conference and unfortunately one for me that happened as much around the conference as necessarily at it.
To start with, Console-ing Passions was held at UC-Santa Barbara's campus, while the conference hotel was on the ocean--a great detail, but one that made getting back and forth very difficult, especially if you didn't want to pay about $50 for a one-way cab fare. I didn't have the foresight to rent a car, so I ended up bumming rides, since I had a penchant for missing the once-a-day shuttle to and from the conference.
What's worse, some of the most relevant TV studies presentations to my work was scheduled directly against our workshop. However, I've been lucky enough to have some others share their work with me directly, and I'm going to be including updates on that work in a series of forthcoming posts. And, other than those couple of scheduling issues, the conference was great. Any of the shortcomings of a conference not put on by a slick "conference operation" were also empowered by the energy the organizers infused into the event.
Outside the Target Demographic: Surplus Audiences in Wrestling and Soaps (3 of 3)
Perhaps even more frustrated, then, are soap opera fans. Soap opera producers sell the 18-49 female demographic more broadly, and the 18-34 female demographic in particular, to advertisers. Further, since soap operas primarily only exist as a daily television show, there are few economic forces counterbalancing the pervading "logic" of the target demographic, thus leading "the powers that be" (or "the idiots in charge," as soap opera fans more often refer to them) to constantly try to develop stories, and feature characters most prominently, that they believe will play well to the target demo. Since soap opera ratings have been falling steadily for the past 15-20 years, soaps have responded by trying to even more expressly target the target demo. However, the problem with that logic is that it directly defies the transgenerational nature of the narrative itself.
I have found anecdotally that almost all longtime soap opera fans began their relationship with the text of these shows through relationships with other fans. Often, this has been a transgenerational relationship. A grandmother, a mother, an uncle, or a babysitter watched soaps regularly, and the fan grew up with these same soap operas on. Thus, it is the longtime characters that have remained the glue holding them to the show, and it is the relationships built around the show--or the memories of these relationships, for loved ones who have passed away--that keeps them watching today. For more on this appeal, see Lee Harrington and Denise Brothers-McPhail's latest project on aging in soaps, as well as some of the work from Barbara Irwin and Mary Cassata at Project Daytime.
Outside the Target Demographic: Surplus Audiences in Wrestling and Soaps (2 of 3)
In the case of pro wrestling, the WWE's popular television shows--Monday Night Raw, ECW, and Friday Night Smackdown target a young adult male and teenage audience.
Advertisers expect this audience, and the shows position their texts to presumably appeal to heterosexual U.S. young men in particular, despite the fact that some estimates have WWE audiences at 30 percent to 40 percent female, the average age of the WWE's fan base is older than the target demographic, and WWE's international popularity often helps bolster flagging enthusiasm in this country.
This economic marginalization can lead to great creativity among pro wrestling fans excluded from the debate--see scholarship, for instance, about how Latino-American children interpret the WWE narrative from Ellen Seiter, Sue Clerc and Catherine Salmon's work on pro wrestling slash, and Brian Pronger's writing about pro wrestling from the standpoint of a gay spectator.
Outside the Target Demographic: Surplus Audiences in Wrestling and Soaps (1 of 3)
I came to the Gender and Fan Studies/Culture dialogue on LiveJournal and Henry Jenkins' blog from both ends of the producer/consumer scholarship binaries often posed in the discussion. On the one hand, I work for a group called the MIT Convergence Culture Consortium, which converses with media corporations to look at the intersection between media producers and audiences. On the other, my primary areas of research interest have come from studying the ways in which fans reappropriate media texts in their own performances and discussions, often in ways that run counter to the interests, or at least irrelevant of the interests, of bottom-line driven corporate endeavors.
I also felt some kinship to both sides of the gender divisions being discussed in the debate. On the one hand, my work on professional wrestling occupies a place between sports fandom and media fandom--two worlds that have strangely been separated in academic discourse, as Kimberly Schimmel, Lee Harrington, and Denise Bielby have researched recently. Pro wrestling has often been criticized as "hypermasculine," while my other research interest--soap operas--has often been derided and ghettoized in popular culture in many ways because of its rich history of primarily female authorship, a feminine narrative perspective, and a largely female fan base. For me--as a lifelong fan of both professional wrestling and soaps--I saw great connections between the two, connections I have written about as dealing with the immersiveness of the narrative worlds of both texts.
Last month, I read an article in The New York Times from Brad Stone, looking at a "Risk-esque" game created for Ivy League schools called GoCrossCampus. The game, called GXC, is called by their site "a team-based locally social online sport that revolves around your connections, location and interests. The game is billed as "a massively multiplayer game built on your social networks.
This local angle to digital culture is what I've been writing about for some time now and one of my greatest interests in the potential of new technologies. This post is not really about this Ivy League game per say but rather how social networking sites and initiatives like this are proving just how localized the global adoption of online technologies can be.
In a Web 2.0 world, global really is local. Many of the earliest, most utopian writings about the Web were about how people could transcend the boundaries of where they are from, their local community, in an effort to reach out to others like them. In other words, we could defy geographical boundaries and make new connections, based not on proximity but on genuine compatibility. Online fan communities, matchmaking sites, and a plethora of other social gatherings are built on this principle.
Faris Yakob on Futures of Entertainment; Marlena on Soaps Class
Yesterday was Patriots Day here in Boston, so I'm in the midst of a flurry of updates this morning, as you may be able to tell. As part of this, I wanted to point toward a couple of recent references to the Consortium, our blog, and our work here at MIT.
First off, I have been meaning for some time to direct everyone's attention to this piece written by Naked Communications' Faris Yakob, from the first vresion of The Next Issue, which lists itself as "16 loose-leaf pages of opinion, news and views on the Next Issues facing the communications and design industries."
Transparency and the Public Eye: Wal-Mart's Shank Controversy
First off, since the following post is about reputation, I wanted to share with everyone the resulting white paper from the recent PR News Webinar I participated in with Peppercom. The paper is entitled "D=BC²: Are You a Digital Einstein?" See more here.
Sometimes, you can't help but wonder what companies are thinking. But here's a rule of thumb that I think might help anyone out in their decision-making process. If it's the type of move that you don't want the public to know about, then don't make it. Transparency is crucial.
Take, for instance, all the blogosphere discussion regarding Wal-Mart from earlier this month. For those who haven't heard the story, a Wal-Mart employee suffered serious brain damage after being hit by a truck in her van several years ago. She eventually won a settlement with the trucking company, but Wal-Mart decided to sue her in order to recoup medical expenses that had been paid out for her injury. As if this didn't seem suspect enough, it was complicated by the fact that the amount Wal-Mart was asking for was more than the amount the woman received, after lawyer fees. Ultimately, Wal-Mart took the funds remaining in the woman's trust, which amounted to approximately $277,000.
As many of you may have read in this post here on the blog earlier in the month, I'm teaching a course this semester on the history and current state of the U.S. soap opera genre, using As the World Turns as a case study. As I continue research on that field, and particularly how one of television's oldest genres may transform itself in interesting ways in a digital age, I'm always interested in hearing of new initiatives being launched.
For instance, see this post from December 2006 on the SOAPnet Fantasy Soap League, the idea being to mimic the success of fantasy football by having fans play games based around some of the stereotypes in the genre. I guess it's a chance for those of us not terribly interested in sports to nevertheless participate in something similar that, in part, measures our knowledge of a media property while also encouraging us to watch the current product. I know I participated in pro wrestling fantasy leagues once upon a time that incorporated some elements from this approach, and it reminds me as well of the Fantasy Television League that some C3-affiliated folks have taken part in.
But, in following soap operas for more than two years here on the Consortium blog, I'm always interested to see how these initiatives launch in the U.S. daytime serial drama industry, which is what attracted my attention to this post from Adrants back in March.
In an effort to further build their brand, Soap Opera Digest has launched casual games surrounding the soap operas, available here. The choices include a jigsaw puzzle of the cover of SOD, a variety of word-based games, solitaire, and other variations on classic casual games.
I don't know about you, but it always makes me good to see someone else I think is really smart say something I agree with. It's a little inward validation, a positive external review validating what you think. At worst, it can lead to an echo chamber, or else a validation for shutting out ideas. See, for instance, C3 Consulting Researcher Grant McCracken's post about a conversation we had back in the fall and the danger of scorn.
But we also surround ourselves with like-minded people for a reason. I pointed out in my previous post how the Consortium contains an interesting variety of perspectives, opinions, and interests, but I'm also sure there are some common sentiments, worldviews, and idiosyncrasies that bond many of us together.
I saw one of those eloquently explained in a post from C3 alum Ilya Vedrashko's Advertising Lab. Ilya writes about his distant relationship with Twitter. I agree. Being at MIT and in a group researching where the media industries are headed, people sometimes expect you to use every new program or way of communicating that comes along. It's not that I don't find value in Twitter theoretically, it's that I don't find value for me.
Around the Consortium: Jayhawks Fans, Sarah Marshall, and Filipino "Thriller"
As I've noted in the past, we have a slew of interesting people associated with the Convergence Culture Consortium. There is our core team here, our alum, and all sorts of great C3 Consulting Researchers, most of whom are located at academic institutions around the country, and internationally.
You can also find many of their blogs linked from our page here. As I did earlier today, I like to point out some of the most C3-relevant work these folks have been doing on their own blogs of late. After all, one of the best ways I have to keep abreast of the latest happening around the media industries is through the work of these folks, and what I like most is the diversity of viewpoints within a particular field of study that an environment like the Consortium offers.
As I scroll through the work on the 12 blogs we link to, perhaps the most surprising discovery is that I rarely, if ever, see the same story covered...so I not only get to learn about what's happening in stories I normally care about, I also get to find out what's happening in areas normally outside my radar.
Take, for instance, this post from C3 Consulting Researcher Nancy Baym. Still within her purview of fan studies, Nancy covers the reaction of her university's KU Jayhawks, celebrating their Final Four victory. She writes, "The internet is great for information pooling and network building, and it does alright at collective emotion, but there is simply no substitute for sharing physical space with other people feeling the same thing. It builds, it magnifies, it takes on a life of its own. It allows people to TOUCH. This is why fans will always create opportunities for collective face-to-face experience."
Around the Consortium: Grant McCracken on Chipchase, FX, and Baseball
As part of a round of updates today, I also wanted to point toward some of the work other folks are doing around the Consortium. In particular, I wanted to direct your attention to a great round of updates from C3 Consulting Researcher Grant McCracken. I'd fallen behind on keeping up with Grant amidst a lot of travel of late, so I've had the chance to catch up on many of Grant's observations at once this afternoon, and I found his latest three posts particularly apropos for the issues we cover here on the Consortium's blog.
He writes about Nokia's Jan Chipchase, who he calls "the hardest working man in anthropology, traveling almost constantly on behalf of Nokia, doing more fieldwork in a quarter than most anthropologist manage in a year." Grant writes about a recent New York Times Magazine piece covering Jan's work.
MIT Art Work-Out: John Bell and the Celtics' Lucky
In addition to my presentation on the history of professional wrestling in the U.S. as part of the Art Work-Out Lecture Series event on "The Theater of Sport," I was joined at the event by John Bell, a professor here at MIT who is also known as a puppeteer, as well as an historian of puppet theater. He is author of such books as Strings, Hands, Shadows: A Modern Puppet History and the forthcoming American Puppet Modernism.
I had heard about John's work, but I had never gotten the chance to meet him. John introduced and interviewed Damon Lee Blust, famed for his impressive dunks at Boston basketball games in recent years in his role as Lucky, mascot of the Celtics. Lucky is the only "human mascot," with no large outfit, allowing him to perform more athletic feats.
Turns out, building off my talk about pro wrestling as "sports entertainment," and prepared completely independent from my presentation, John and Damon talked about the work of a mascot also as sports entertainment.
Earlier this week, I was honored to be invited to take part in the Art Work-Out Lecture Series sponsored by the MIT Visual Arts Program, in conjunction with the Department of Athletics, Physical Education, and Recreation (DAPER), for an event called "The Theater of Sport."
The lecture was offered as part of Wendy Jacob's Introduction to Visual Arts class and Andrea Frank's Introduction to Photography and Related Media class. Thanks to Jennifer Tren, Sofia Ponte, and Kate James for their work in setting this up. (By the way, you can still see Kate's insights on the world of professional wrestling archived from her participation in my Spring 2007 course on U.S. pro wrestling here at MIT on our class blog.)
My portion of the Art Work-Out event was entitled "Pro Wrestling--Sport as Theater." This talk was based on a lecture I gave for the MIT List Visual Arts Center back in May 2007, entitled "America's Fascination with Pro Wrestling."
Dates Set for Consortium's Futures of Entertainment 3
This year's Futures of Entertainment conference the Consortium holds every November at MIT is set for Friday, Nov. 21, and Saturday, Nov. 22. The event will be held this year in the Wong Auditorium in the Tang Center here at MIT.
Our World Digitized: Henry Jenkins, Yochai Benkler, and Cass Sunstein
As we've mentioned a few times on the blog lately, the Program in Comparative Media Studies featured the latest version of the MIT Communications Forum last week, an event particularly of potential interest to Consortium readers.
C3 Principal Investigator Henry Jenkins moderated a conversation between University of Chicago law and political science professor Cass Sunstein and Yochai Benkler of Harvard University's Berkman Center, in an event called "Our World Digitized: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly."
Sustein is the author of Republic.com 2.0 and Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge, while Benkler wrote The Wealth of Networks.
According to the abstract:
Much discussion of our impending digital future is insular and without nuance. Skeptics talk mainly among themselves, while utopians and optimists also keep company mainly within their own tribal cultures. Today's forum challenges this unhelpful division, staging a conversation between two of our country's most thoughtful and influential writers on the promise and the perils of the Internet Age.
The audiocast of the event is already available here, and video will be available soon.
We are in the process of preparing some of our internal research for the end-of-the-year retreat we host here in the Consortium at the end of every spring semester. Our first retreat event, called "There Is No Box," was held in April 2006. For more on that event, look here. I blogged about the first day of the event here and the second day here and here.
I was contacted by a reporter on Monday with The Chronicle of Higher Education about a decision from the NCAA to work with the NBA to develop a company to help cultivate the organization of youth basketball in the U.S. Prior to the request, I hadn't heard about the announcement, but there was particular interest in the Comparative Media Studies/Convergence Culture Consortium perspective because of the centrality of social networking at the center of the initiative.
I had a 10 or 15 minute conversation with a reporter who was contributing to the article, Catherine Rampell, in which we talked about the positives and negatives of such a decision, particularly how this approach has much promise but also plenty of potential stumbling blocks. You can see the full article here.
My appearance comes in the article's conclusion, in which they propose that reaction is mixed. As evidence of the mixed reaction, Brad Wolverton picks out mine as a positive response to the decision, saying "A project like this really catches my eye," and noting I thought it had "much potential," while Eric J. Anctil was quoted as saying that it's hard to get kids to "do what you want them to do" and that this "sounds like a good idea to people who are in their 40s and don't know what kids like."
Being a journalist myself, I know how the construction of articles goes, and perhaps it set Eric and I up as being on two opposite sides of the article, myself the CMS optimist and Eric the cynic. But, and perhaps Eric would agree with me, I'm both optimist AND cynic when it comes to announcements like this.
Presenting on the panel alongside me were some other academics doing interesting research. Mary Cassata and Barbara Irwin, who are chief powers in organizing the soap opera area for the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association national conference each year and who head up "Project Daytime," presented a project entitled "The American Soap Opera Genre at a Crossroads: An Analysis of Its Past, Present, and Future." Although, through my own lack of organizational skill, I neglected to take my copy of their essay back to my room with me even after they were nice enough to print out copies for everyone, I have reached out to Barb to get an electronic version and am expecting one shortly.
PCA/ACA: Marsha Ducey on FCC Complaints; Other Soap Projects
One project that really caught my eye at this years soap opera area at the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association national conference in San Francisco was from Marsha Ducey at the State University of New York--Buffalo, whose project was entitled "As the World Turns: 'Indecency' in American Soap Operas."
Marsha's project looks at complaints filed against soap operas in particular with the Federal Communications Commission from 2004 through January 2008, with information provided through a Freedom of Information request. Marsha became interested in her projects in a post-nipple society, as she wondered what impact--if any--the controversy surrounding the Janet Jackson incident at the Super Bowl would have on daytime television. She was also interested in the FCC issuing what had been the largest fine in history at the time for a show called Married in America, despite abysmal ratings and the fact that there were only about 25 complaints, stemming from a couple of form letters. She could not find any research on complaints filed for soaps and decided to investigate.
The soap opera area at the national joint conference for the Popular Culture Association and American Culture Association in San Francisco this year was my main reason for attending. Since I did my thesis work on soaps and am currently co-editing an anthology on the current state of the U.S. soap opera (see more on my soaps projects here), I find it rewarding to go to a conference where I can talk with others who are working on soaps in particular.
This year was particularly rewarding, because part of the session was in tribute to an academic who I never had the opportunity to meet personally but who nevertheless had a significant impact on my project and the work of many soap opera scholars. That person was Suzanne Frentz, a longtime soap opera scholar who was the original chair of the soap opera area at the PCA/ACA.
PCA/ACA: Clayton Childress on Daytime Television and Pro-Anorexic Groups Online
I never actually got the chance to meet up with Clayton Childress at the National Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association joint annual conference in San Francisco last month. I became aware of Clayton's work because of a piece he and Denise Bielby are contributing to the anthology on soap operas I am co-editing with Gail Derecho and Lee Harrington. But we'd never met.
After several failed attempts, we eventually came to accept it wasn't going to happen in San Francisco. But I was lucky enough to have Clayton pass the two papers he presented at the PCA/ACA conference this year along. Apparently, he wasn't aware that you are only supposed to present one round of work at the conference, and he wa allowed to go forward with presenting both. I was also lucky to have him be agreeable to pass both projects along to me, since I wasn't able to attend his panels.
Clayton chaired a panel on meaning-making and Internet culture, presenting on "pro-anorexic journaling." He also presented on "Variations in Talk from Trash to Simulated Courtrooms," as part of a larger project looking at changes in daytime television. That project, Childress' thesis at the University of California-Santa Barbara, is entitled "Ordering the Court: Morality, Power and Play in Daytime Television." Childress is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology.
PCA/ACA: Louis Bosshart, Sports, and Celebrity Culture
One of my most intriguing PCA/ACA friendships struck up over a complete accident. My first year at the PCA, in San Antonio, we had a paper added to our panel at the last minute. Dr. Louis Bosshart, from Switzerland's University of Fribourg (or Freiburg in German), had missed his regular panel and joined a panel otherwise on pro wrestling to discuss his work on what television did and does to sports. I remember that he was intrigued by the fact that I had notes on one index card rather than reading a paper as many people do at these academic panels, and we struck up a conversation afterward.
The conversation turned into an e-mail exchange, and hopes at creating a collaborative project on looking further at how televising sports fundamentally changes the way the competition is structured. In particular, pro wrestling can be seen as an extreme of the importance of mediation in athletic demonstration, because pro wrestling has adapted itself for the spectator to the point it is no longer a competition at all, or at least not in the traditional sports sense. I soon moved to Boston for the Program in Comparative Media Studies at MIT, and Louis came to town once and we discussed the project further, but it never got out of the "ideation" phase.
We used San Francisco as the opportunity to strike the conversation up again.
PCA/ACA: Bryce McNeil and Shane Toepfer on Wrestling Morality and Fandom
There may be no session I was more disappointed in missing than Bryce McNeil's presentation on Wednesday afternoon with fellow Georgia State University scholar Shane Toepfer, entitled "'He's a Rattlesnake but He's One Tough S.O.B.': Establishing the Fluidity of Professional Wrestling Character Types." My interest in the subject's no secret: one only has to look at the course I taught on the subject last spring. (See more on the course from the class blog, the OpenCourseWare site for the class here at MIT, and Emily Sweeney's Boston Globe article on the class.)
Bryce and I first started corresponding based on his Master's thesis work on pro wrestling, looking at the rhetoric of WWE owner Vince McMahon in situations in which his company was in some form of public controversy. He ended up coming up here and spending some time with my class last spring, and we keep up, especially as we both have a continued research interest in the world of pro wrestling.
Bryce was nice enough to give me a copy of his and Shane's remarks, and we had corresponded a few times as they planned the paper. In short, their central proposition is that it has been a mistake to look at pro wrestling as "good vs. evil," but it is likewise a mistake to throw the "face/heel" dichotomy in pro wrestling out completely as well. Rather than wrestling characters "being" babyfaces or heels, in a static way, it's easier to understand actions as face or heel actions, thus acknowledging a greater degree of moral ambiguity not only in today's pro wrestling but arguably that has always existed.
No moment was quite as intriguing while in San Francisco for the Popular Culture Association and American Culture Association joint annual national conference last month than the moment that two of my worlds collided. I knew going into the PCA/ACA that I would spend most of the day Friday in the soaps panels. I arrived Wednesday afternoon, and the conference ended on Saturday, so I wasn't sure what all I would be able to cram in. Instead, I just started lining up one-on-one meetings, to make up for the fact that I wouldn't be able to attend many of the panels I'd theoretically be interested in attending (especially since a good many of them fell on Friday against the soaps festivities).
I ended up trying to line up a variety of meetings, some more successful than others. For instance, I never was able to make plans with fellow Comparative Media Studies alum James Nadeau, despite various attempts, until we both realized we were still located in Boston and could just make plans to meet here when we got back. But, of course, there was just something special about being at the same conference together...it just wouldn't be the same. (We'll see if James and I can make good on our dinner plans before I declare complete defeat in that regard.)
But my coffee with Sue Clerc and Bob Lochte was the apex of my scheduling.
PCA/ACA: Michael Duffy and Regionally Digital Filmmaking
As most of the academic readers of this blog would likely agree, the intellectual curiosities of many media studies researchers far outweighs the time and resources one has to spend on writing and research projects, especially for those tenure-track academics who have courses, peer-reviewed publications, and a variety of institutional obligations to contend with. That's the great thing about a venue like a blog, though; it gives you the chance to briefly explore and think about issues that you might not have time to design a more rigorous project around.
Such was the case with my interest in regional cinema. In the summer of 2006, between my first and second year as a Master's student in the Program in Comparative Media Studies, I returned back to Kentucky to spend the summer working for several local weekly newspapers, in addition to continuing my work for the Consortium. In the process, I was assigned the task of covering a film being shot locally in Hartford, Ky., called Red Velvet Cake.
When I attended the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association conference last month, I had the chance to meet up with Michael Duffy, an emerging scholar whose dissertation reminded me of that interest.
Notes from the PCA/ACA National Conference: An Introduction
Last month, I spent several days in San Francisco for the Popular Culture Association and the American Culture Association's annual joint national conference. The PCA/ACA conference is an interesting conference. First, it's greatest benefit and its greatest drawback is that it is huge. There's enough room for an array of topics, from television and film to literature to sports to more "off-the-beaten-path" subjects such as motorcycle studies, fat studies, gravemarker studies, and so on.
That means, first of all, a variety of sub-disciplines and interests can basically co-opt the conference as their own, make use of the conference as housing their mini-conference they could never organize on their own. For instance, the appeal for me to attend the event is that it is the only conference I know of that allows the room for those studying soap operas in particular to have their own area, to get together from 8 a.m. until 4 p.m. and share their work.
Another thing to keep in mind if ever attending the PCA/ACA national conference is that little, if anything, is turned away from the conference. This is not a closely guarded conference in terms of the subjects and presenters that are allowed to participate. That can of course have major drawbacks in terms of quality control for listeners, in that there's no guarantee attending a panel will mean that even a marginally interesting paper will be presented in some cases. But it's also liberating because of the diversity of voices that are included. There are a fair number of independent scholars who present at the PCA/ACA, for instance. And there are a number of first time presenters, not just graduate students but undergraduates as well. I find it a great remedy for many conference circuits which seem more like the established talking to one another.
The Consortium and events related to our work has received great coverage in Brazil of late, thanks to the work of Maurício Mota, who attended our Futures of Entertainment 2 conference back in November. The most recent edition of Brazil's MeioDigital magazine, from Meio & Mensagem, featured a total of 12 pages dedicated to the Consortium, FoE2, and a related story on Heroes, based in part on our hosting a couple of members of the Heroes team here at MIT last November.
The MIT Convergence Culture Consortium, its Futures of Entertainment 2 event, and the Program in Comparative Media Studies were all featured in an article entitled "Os Alquimistas Estão Chengando!," including insights from myself, C3 Research Manager Joshua Green, as well as a focus on Consortium director Henry Jenkins. Mota's article highlights of all of the Program in Comparative Media Studies' research groups and Henry's recent publications and blog. See the piece here.
This semester at MIT, I'm teaching a course on the history of U.S. soap operas, based on the work I've published here on the blog over the past couple of years, my Master's thesis project, etc. The class includes a few MIT undergraduates and a Harvard undergraduate, as we look at the history of and contemporary state of the U.S. soap opera through reading and discussing the history of soap opera scholarship and soaps.
In particular, the class is following the soap opera As the World Turns, my longtime favorite, for the semester. None of the students were fans of U.S. soaps prior to the launching of the class, and none had seen ATWT prior to the class' beginning, save perhaps a few clips of gay couple Luke and Noah, through YouTube or other video sharing sites.
The Program in Comparative Media Studies at MIT, of which the Consortium is part, asked that I pass along word of an event coming up this evening here at MIT, from 7 p.m. until 9 p.m. in Building E51, Room 335. This event, entitled "Slightly More Than Expected from a Band of Novelists: On How and Why a Group of Writers Called Wu Ming Set to Disrupt Italian (nay, European) Literature and Popular Culture (and then Came to Boston to Brag About It)," features Wu Ming 1.
The event is sponsored by CMS, funded in part by a Director's Grant from the Council for the Arts at MIT. For more on the Wu Ming Foundation, look here.
The description of this event is below the fold...
C3 Director Henry Jenkins made a presentation at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference in Philadelphia based on his research on politics in the era of convergence culture, particularly looking at the 2008 presidential primary season in relation to the rising popularity and political uses of sites such as YouTube.
The basis of this presentation was a blog entry Jenkins wrote last fall, entitled "Answering Questions from a Snowman: The YouTube Debate and Its Aftermath." This project has led to a chapter completed for a forthcoming anthology, as well as the paperback version of Henry's book and the project that was this origin of this Consortium, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide.
The television panel I wrote about in my previous post also included a presentation from Victoria Johnson, who discussed Friday Night Lights and the ways in which the show's promotion, and the difficulties the network has had in promoting the show, can be tied to tensions at the network in how to promote the show and tensions among critics on how the should should be received.
As many of you know (see here, here, and here, among others), FNL is a favorite show among a couple of us here in the Consortium, and I am particularly passionate about what many call "flyover country" and thus was particularly interested in Johnson's research about how the idea of a "quality television" show based on high school football in Texas presented a variety of challenges in how to promote and receive the show.
For the network, it was promoted at first alongside football shows and later as a show not really about football. On the reception side, Johnson presented quite a bit of evidence that critics who liked the show was troubled at liking it and continually felt the need to validate their enjoying the show. I'm hoping to discuss this more with Victoria in coming months and perhaps center more work on this topic in particular. But her SCMS presentation was among the most interesting I heard.
SCMS: Amanda Lotz, Max Dawson, and Laurie Ouelette
One of the most enjoyable full panels I attended at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference in Philadelphia earlier this month looked at the construction of television from a variety of angles. I was fortunate enough to know the work of each of the panelists, several of whom I met at the Unboxing Television event at MIT last November.
The panel began with Laurie Ouelette, who looked at ABC's public service initiative encouraging volunteerism amongst its viewers and establishing the network as a site of extended community serving the public good through bringing citizens together outside the constraints of government to be pro-active consumer/citizens. She looked in particular at how these public service initiatives not only existed as a campaign through the Web site and during commercial breaks on the network but also how these initiatives showed up on a variety of shows, including a storyline on ABC Daytime's All My Children, in which the characters on the show volunteered for Pine Valley's Habitat for Humanity and the projects on Extreme Makeover Home Edition.
Around the Consortium: Dr. Pepper, The Tolchuks, PSFK, Etc.
Amidst a flurry of updates on the blog this weekend, I wanted to point toward a variety of interesting posts from around the Consortium, in addition to the podcasts and other events mentioned in Henry and my posts earlier today. First off, I will be finishing up my notes from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference in Philadelphia earlier this month and beginning to post some of my notes from the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association National Conference I attended last weekend in San Francisco. I look forward to any thoughts readers might have who were at either of those events or who weren't able to make it but are interested in the presentations I refer to here.
As Henry Jenkins posted in his list of links earlier today, there have been a lot of events happening around the Program in Comparative Media Studies here at MIT that have been keeping us busy lately. Among those are two MIT Communications Forum we featured here on the Consortium blog that are now available for podcast.
The first of those events was a conversation with John Romano, a longtime television writer and producer who has worked on shows such as Hill Street Blues, Party of Five, and Monk, as well as a variety of films.
As Henry Jenkins mentioned briefly in his post earlier today, the podcast from the colloquium event hosted by the Convergence Culture Consortium back in February is now available online. That event, entitled "Viral Media--Hows and Whys," featured C3 Consulting Researcher Shenja van der Graaf hosting Mike Rubenstein from The Barbarian Group, who was one of our guest speakers at Futures of Entertainment 2, and Fanista's Natalie Lent, a Harvard alum who I first met at FoE2.
New Consulting Researchers and Postdoctoral Researcher
The Consortium is proud to welcome six new consulting researchers and a postdoctoral researcher to the team. Find out more about them inside, or on our "People" page.
One of the more intriguing panels at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies dealt with paratextual material--that material outside the "main text" or "primary text" of the show--from a variety of perspectives. The idea of paratext is that it is anything surrounding the text that isn't considered the text itself, and it is most often used to give us better understanding of the primary text.
This panel featured two of the Consortium's consulting researchers--Jonathan Gray and Jason Mittell--as well as two academics I've had the pleasure of increasingly collaborating with--Louisa Stein and Kristina Busse. Kristina was responsible for helping spearhead the Gender and Fan Studies/Culture discussions that took place in LiveJournal and on Henry Jenkins' blog last year, and Louisa and I are participating in a workshop with others at Console-ing Passions next month to discuss that series of discussions in greater detail.
This panel was directly informed by the Gender and Fan Studies/Culture discussion as well. All four participants were part of that discussion, and all four are involved with the new journal Transformative Works and Culture, whose first issue is coming out this fall. Here, the way the panel was laid out was in response to many of the issues raised as part of that Gender and Fan Studies/Culture discussion and the ongoing dialogue that came out of that series. In particular, the four presentations at SCMS in this session were organized based on their relativity to the source text itself.
SCMS: Kevin Sandler on Production Studies and Censorship
At the Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference in Philadelphia earlier this month, C3 Consulting Researcher Kevin Sandler presented the latest in his continuing work on censorship and managing concerns with regulatory powers, through a compelling project in which Kevin spent time looking at the negotiation between the creators and standards and practices.
From this presentation, my understanding is that Kevin is using this study of standards and practices to build on the work of others like Elana Levine to create a more robust body of work on what is being called "production studies," better understanding the ways in which these shows are being put together and the many creative and regulatory forces that are involved with the creative product.
The Society for cinema and Media Studies conference earlier this month gave the Consortium its first change to officially welcome a few new consulting researchers to our project. One of those scholars is Abigail Derecho, who is currently teaching at Columbia College Chicago and who will be moving to the University of California-Berkeley in the fall. Gail and I met through the Gender and Fan Studies/Culture discussion that happened throughout last summer and fall over on C3 Director Henry Jenkins' blog and on LiveJournal, after she made various comments referring to her work on soap operas in her round of the conversation.
She and I began to share thoughts and research possibilities surrounding our common interest in soaps, leading to our planned collaboration with another C3 Consulting Researcher, C. Lee Harrington, to co-edit an anthology on the current state of the U.S. soap opera industry, entitled Search for Soaps' Tomorrow. SCMS provided me my first chance to see Gail "in action," so to speak, presenting her work, and I was especially excited to hear her present something off the path of the work we've been doing together, dealing not with soap operas but rather copyright issues surrounding the development of remix culture in hip-hop music and how legal precedents set in the early 1990s impact discussions of reappropriation of media content and video mash-ups today.
Our approach here at the Program in Comparative Media Studies in general, and in the Consortium in particular, is that, often, the best way to understand the present moment and where the media industries are headed is to look at where they have been. That is one of the foundational principles, for instance, of our bi-annual Media in Transition conference, and it explains why the Consortium is built on the type of work, for instance, that C3 Principal Investigator William Uricchio has done on early conceptions of new media forms in the past, such as the telephone, phonograph, cinema, television, etc. Questions currently arising about mobile media, online video, virtual worlds, and the Internet more broadly can often be better understood by looking at how similar questions were tackled and what mistakes were made in previous eras of media transition.
That approach is a staple of CMS curricula, and it explains in part our association with scholars like Dr. Ted Hovet of Western Kentucky University. I've been fortunate enough to know and work under and with Ted for six years or so now. We've had the pleasure of presenting workshops at conferences together in the past (the 2006 Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association conference in particular, where--along with my wife Amanda Ford and WKU's Dale Rigby--we discussed the importance of an interdisciplinary approach to curriculum and academic research), and I was glad to be able to hear him present his latest work at this year's SCMS. His presentation on Friday morning was entitled "Framing Motion: Early Cinema's Conservative Methods of Display."
MIT Communications Forum on Global Television (2 of 2)
This followup to yesterday evening's post comes from CMS graduate student Lan Le, who is reporting on the MIT Communications Forum called Global Television. An audio version of the event is available here. The previous post from Lan summarized the comments of C3 Principal Investigator William Uricchio. This post looks at the comments of Roberta Pearson and Eggo Müller.
Roberta Pearson (University of Nottingham)
Pearson began her talk with a billboard advertisement for American television in the UK. The slogan is "Who says nothing good ever came out of America," and features "respectable" television actors and producers like Spike Lee or William H. Macy. This example shows the way American television is framed and positioned in the UK.
MIT Communications Forum on Global Television (1 of 2)
The following post comes from CMS graduate student Lan Le, who attended the recent MIT Communications Forum called Global Television. An audio version of the event is available here.
A feature of emerging television is the increasing global profile of programs appealing more widely across national boundaries, a kind of global programming. Big Brother is an example of the wide appeal of this competition-based reality programming, which has been adapted to different national contexts. Fiction shows like Ugly Betty require only a small amount of adaptation before release in the US. And a great deal of American television, like Lost or Desperate Housewives, now finds enthusiastic audiences in other countries.
These global flows of television are accompanied by country specific promotion strategies to frame the show for national contexts. But are we moving beyond nationally specific interests to a global village of television? This forum will also consider the impact of American programming on the world, especially how the world reacts, adapts to, and utilizes American TV formats.
The following are summaries of the speaker's remarks for the forum.
New C3 Consulting Researcher Jonathan Gray, who is a professor at Fordham University and--among other things--posts regularly on The Extratextuals. Since I couldn't take notes on all of the panels at the SCMS conference last week, he offered to put together some of his notes from the event to post there. I wanted to include his introduction here and then link to his post over on The Extratextuals.
This past weekend marked the Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference in Philadelphia. This SCMS also marked the beginning of my time as a consulting researcher for the Convergence Culture Consortium, based out of MIT. I've been chatting with the C3'ers for a while now, and was truly honored to be invited on board (incidentally, Ivan already has his C3 Brownie Badge, and Derek Johnson's a consulting researcher now too, so The Extratextuals are now Completely C3-Compatible, or "C5").
I'm still not exactly sure what is entailed, but it meant I got a free breakfast at SCMS, so it's already looking good. Sam Ford, one of C3's several superhuman forces and one of the nicer folks in the business, asked me to write up some comments on SCMS, in the aim of perhaps sharing these with other C3'ers. Well, he paid for my eggs benedict, so I will deliver.
C3 in the News: MIT Communications Forum and PR News Webinar
As we mentioned previously, all of our Consortium's management and a variety of our consulting researchers presented at the SCMS conference in Philadelphia last weekend. We are going to be including some notes on several of those presentations in the next few days.
C3 Principal Investigator William Uricchio participated in a MIT Communications Forum with Eggo Müller, and Roberta Pearson this past Thursday which will be available in audio and video form shortly.
The audio from last week's Prime Time in Transition MIT Communications Forum featuring MIT's David Thorburn and television writer and producer John Romano is available here.
Meanwhile, I had the honor of being invited to participate in a Webinar for PR News this past week, sponsored by Peppercom, a company I have consulted with in the past, separate from the Consortium's work.
The call for papers is currently open for the inaugural edition of Transformative Works and Cultures, the international peer-reviewed journal coming out of The Organization for Transformative Works. For more information, see the CFP.
Considering our interest in the past few months in the history of ideas such as "viral marketing" and mimetics, I thought I'd take Henry Jenkins up on his spread of what he is calls the "1, 2, 3 Meme." According to Henry, from his post earlier this week:
Here's how it works:
Look up page 123 in the nearest book
Look for the fifth sentence
Then post the three sentences that follow that fifth sentence on page 123.
I decided to look at the books that I've been carrying around in my bag, and give three examples from the books I've looked at most recently as well.
Around the Consortium: SCMS, Comments, No Meanings, and Facebook
I've just gotten back from a fabulous trip to Philadelphia for the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. I had the pleasure of speaking as part of the event and will post a full report of the panel I presented on, as well as my notes from a variety of other panels I had the privilege to attend. All I talked with everyone about, however, is the guilt I felt at the number of great panels I DIDN'T get to attend. With an event like SCMS that has so many stellar scholars on the agenda, it seems that every panel choice, lunch break, or coffee came at the exclusion of something interesting.
Perhaps best of all was the fact that a variety of C3 Consulting Researchers were there presenting some of their latest research, and most of us even got the chance to get together, share a breakfast, and talk about the type of research the Consortium is doing moving forward. Included in that breakfast was four of the Consortium's six newest consulting researchers. We'll be sure to run a post in the near future introducing you to those new folks.
Telling Stories Across Multiple Media Platforms: An Interview with WWE's J.R. (V of V)
This is the final part of an interview I conducted with World Wrestling Entertainment icon Jim Ross. For background on the interview, please see the first part in this series. For J.R.'s appearance here at MIT, listen to the podcast here.
Sam Ford: WWE has been increasingly working to expand its mobile services. Â Where do you feel this might take the product in the future, and how will mobile fit in to the future of pro wrestling, in your mind?
Jim Ross: I think WWE Mobile is on the same path that the Internet created for our company. I think it's a new horizon. It's a new way of getting your message out. Telephones are becoming all-purpose, and now iPhones provide computers in your phones. Phones are not just something to talk to someone with today; they are now information sources. As the technology continues to evolve, the WWE is smart to be on the front end.
Telling Stories Across Multiple Media Platforms: An Interview with WWE's J.R. (IV of V)
This is the third part of an interview I conducted with World Wrestling Entertainment icon Jim Ross. For background on the interview, please see the first part in this series. For J.R.'s appearance here at MIT, listen to the podcast here.
Sam Ford: In addition to your work on WWE.com, you also run your own blog, J.R. What are the differences between writing on the WWE's official site and writing on your own site?
Jim Ross: What I write on WWE.com is a little different than what I wrote on my own blog on JRsBarBQ.com. That's done intentionally. I look at it as apples and oranges because there's a major difference in what I write on those two venues. I write my column every week for WWE.com, and they tell me that it does well and that people enjoy reading it. I believe that's because I infuse that column with humor and entertainment.
Telling Stories Across Multiple Media Platforms: An Interview with WWE's J.R. (III of V)
This is the second part of an interview I conducted with World Wrestling Entertainment icon Jim Ross. For background on the interview, please see the first part in this series. For J.R.'s appearance here at MIT, listen to the podcast here.
Sam Ford: J.R., what do you feel are the biggest changes in marketing and producing professional wrestling in the Internet era?
Jim Ross: I think one of the biggest changes would probably be the timeliness with which information is provided. When I was a kid, before cable television was invented, we got our one hour wrestling show in our area, and that was it. We got one hour a week on our local show.
Telling Stories Across Multiple Media Platforms: An Interview with WWE's J.R. (II of V)
This is the first part of an interview I conducted with World Wrestling Entertainment icon Jim Ross. For background on the interview, please see the first part in this series. For J.R.'s appearance here at MIT, listen to the podcast here.
Sam Ford: J.R., you have been involved with a variety of projects for WWE 24/7 On Demand. Can you tell us a little about the motivation behind that initiative?
Jim Ross: I have a theory that you really can't navigate the future if you don't understand the past. I think that from just a corporate standpoint and a young sports entertainer standpoint, it's really a great option for them to see how the business was and how it has evolved.
Telling Stories Across Multiple Media Platforms: An Interview with WWE's J.R. (I of V)
Over the next five entries, I'm presenting the transcript of a recent question and answer session I conducted with World Wrestling Entertainment Monday Night RAW commentator and professional wrestling icon Jim Ross, known affectionately to wrestling fans as "Good 'Ol J.R."
J.R. has been a fixture in the wrestling world for decades now, growing up in the territory era and serving as a referee, an announcer, and a pivotal part of the organizations of Leroy McGuirk and later Bill Watts in the center of the country. J.R. worked for several years for Ted Turner's now defunct World Championship Wrestling and has been a key part of the WWE, as both an on-air personality and a pivotal behind-the-scenes force, since he joined the company in 1993.
When I taught a class on American professional wrestling last spring, the WWE partnered with me to officially sponsor the class, which included sending J.R. our way to visit with the class on two different sessions, as well as participate in a public question and answer event that has later been made available as a podcast. That podcast is available here.
As I noted last month, the Program in Comparative Media Studies will be holding our CMS Research Fair from 5 p.m. until 7 p.m. tonight, on the first floor of the Ray and Maria Stata Center here on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. If you're interested in attending this evening and need any further info, don't hesitate to e-mail me at samford@mit.edu.
Around the Consortium: GDC, His Girl Friday, and the Advertising Lab
Wrapping up a weekend of updates for the Consortium blog, I wanted to look around C3 to a number of interesting posts from some of our C3 Consulting Researchers.
This week, I wanted to point to David Edery's recent work presented at the Game Developers Conference, Jason Mittell's piece on His Girl Friday and early television in the public domain, and a variety of stories that Ilya Vedrashko has provided of late on his Advertising Lab site.
For anyone here in the Boston area, I wanted to put it on your radar to attend the Boston FCC hearing on the future of the Internet, which will be taking place tomorrow, Monday, Feb. 25, from 11 a.m. until 4 p.m. in the Ames Courtroom at Austin Hall in Harvard Law School. The hearing will not include an open microphone for the public at large to voice their opinion as part of the event, but activist group "SaveTheInternet" will be videotaping the comments of those in attendance and submitting them to the FCC.
A wide variety of speakers will be present as part of the event, which will revolve around two 1.5-hour panels. The first will feature Harvard Law School professor Yochai Benlker, author of The Wealth of Networks, as well as a variety of other law professors, a general counsel for Free Press, Massachusetts State Representative Daniel E. Bosley, and Comcast EVP David L. Cohen.
The second panel will focus on technology and include the Chief Technology Officer of BitTorrent, a network architect, SVP of Networks & Systems Architecture for Sony Electronics, and three MIT speakers.
GL Makes Major Shift in Soap Opera Production This Week
One industry many have come to expect the Consortium blog to post on, per my entries, over the past couple of years is American soap operas, the area in which I've done my thesis work and continue to write about substantially. In fact, my particular areas of interest and my acting as the primary contributor to this blog explains why there are robust categories of entries on soap operas and professional wrestling. (NOTE: We have not completely tagged all the posts in our archives, so these categories often do not include a significant number of the posts we've done on a subject.)
I'm actually teaching a course on the American soap opera this spring here at MIT for the Program in Comparative Media Studies, and my students and I are in the process of launching a class blog about soaps and particularly about the soap opera we are following for the semester, Procter & Gamble Productions' As the World Turns. We'd love to have you stop by and join in the conversation here. The good news is that comments actually work over at that site! We've also been invited to run regular class updates at the official blog for Procter & Gamble Productions, located here.
But one of the most significant stories in soaps this year is set to take place this week, when Guiding Light switches over to a new taping format that uses handheld cameras and four-walled sets.
Seems that board games based on media properties have been more prevalent than media properties based on board games. After all, it's easy to create a fairly low-maintenance ancillary product by replacing the names of various streets with venues associated with The Simpsons or Star Wars. It's a bit more challenging to turn the very brief narratives of most board games into film.
Now, news has come from Hasbro that a major deal has been signed to do just that, however, and many of the world's favorite board games are set to come to life through a partnership with Universal Pictures.
Transparency and Viral Media--Notes from the CMS/C3 Colloquium
The Viral Media--Hows and Whys colloquium event I wrote about in my previous post earlier tonight featured a discussion of a few issues that are of particular interest of me with regard to the issues I've been writing about here on the C3 blog over the past several months.
During the panel, Natalie Lent brought up issues of transparency and authenticity when it comes to promoting word of mouth as an advocate. I've written a few posts recently about transparency and what I see as its great importance in that, despite being a buzzword, it still seems to be primarily undervalued as an essential component of online presence for many companies. See a couple of the anecdotes I shared regarding transparency here and here.
Tonight, we hosted an event in conjunction with our parent academic program, the Program in Comparative Media Studies, here at MIT, dealing with viral media. For those of you who follow the blog regularly, you know that we're doing a fair bit of research within the Consortium right now about this concept of "viral," and some anecdotes from that research have made their way here on the blog. This CMS colloquium event also flowed out of that work.
The event was hosted by C3 Consulting Researcher Shenja van der Graaf (see her bio here), who is a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society here in Cambridge at Harvard Law School and who works with the London School of Economics, moderating a discussion between two practitioners working in the digital space who incorporate tactics that are often labeled as "viral."
I wanted to start a string of blog updates this afternoon/evening by making note of the end of the format war that has divided HD television owners for some time now. However, now that the DVD format war is over, despite what might be lost in innovation and pricing for the consumer, one would think a consolidated technology will help push innovation forward on the content side and likewise ease consumer reluctance in adopting the new technology.
For those who haven't followed the events, news surfaced earlier this week (see here) that Toshiba has conceded the market battle with Sony between its HD DVD format and Sony's Blu-Ray.
As with others I know, since I hadn't taken a personal stake in the battle up to this point and never purchased and HD player, this is a victory because it means consumers now know which technology to invest in, but I still feel there's some bad branding involved when the format which won carries the name "Blu-Ray" instead of the more intuitive "HD DVD." Perhaps they could just buy Toshiba's much simpler brand name in the process?
We spend quite a bit of time here on the Consortium's blog writing about and thinking about the relationship between producers and consumers, particularly in the media and entertainment space. As regular readers know, my own Master's thesis work at MIT dealt with how this relationship manifests itself today in the soap opera industry in particular (see here, for instance), and the energy of the Consortium and many people surrounding the CMS program here at MIT are often dedicated to these questions.
While I hold fast to the idea that companies must treat their fan communities with some esteem and pay attention to the discussion taking place around their product, perhaps even communicate directly with those fans, we also see that this desire to get closer to fan communities can quickly become a desire to control communities in many cases. It's quite a mistake to think that all fans want, through the social connections they form online around brands and media properties, is to get closer to the official productions of these shows. After all, that's one of the biggest misconceptions that caused some of the controversy surrounding Fanlib.com, which we wrote about several times in the past year (see, for instance, here).
Each day, a media scholar uploads a video between 30 seconds and 3 minutes in length and includes as well a 100-150 word response to it. According to the site, "The goal is to promote an online dialogue amongst media scholars and the public about contemporary media scholarship through clips chosen for either their typicality or atypicality in demonstrating narrative strategies, genre formulations, aesthetic choices, representational practices, institutional approaches, fan engagements, etc."
I recently participated in the project for the first time, posting a video entitled "Cactus Jack and the Moral Justification of Great Wrestling Heels." If you have a chance to watch the video, I encourage you to contact me or leave a comment there if you have any thoughts.
The latest in continuing controversy about the role of Internet service providers in monitoring or having any responsibility or culpability in the actions of its customers comes from the United Kingdom, where Mark Ward from the BBC reports on governmental pressure directed toward ISPs to reject net access to those who use their Internet service for pirating copyrighted content.
Ward writes about a new consultation document that has been circulated in the UK this week, advising the government that ISPs should be brought into "the fight against piracy." However, the Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) has come out in staunch opposition to the suggestion, pointing out that "the 2002 E-Commerce Regulations defined net firms as 'mere conduits' and not responsible for the contents of the traffic flowing across their networks.
Online Buzz as a Catalyst and a Symptom of Popularity
Perhaps it is intuitive, but it's always helpful to have some bolstering studies out there. News came out earlier this month of the results of a study from the Stern Business School at NYU that, among a variety of factors studied surrounding the success of album sales, blogs and social networks are particular indicators of successful album sales.
According to Jacqui Cheng with Ars Technica, the study found that albums with 40 or more posts made about them before their release received three times the average sales; for albums with 250 or more blog posts about them, the sales were six time the average.
Last.fm, Online Music Distribution, and Cross-Platform Promotion
The Web has brought discussion of crises to traditional media for a variety of industries. However, no industries have been hit harder than newspapers and music, in terms of rhetoric about Internet culture and consumption signing the death warrant for those industries as we know it.
I have written multiple times in the past about the plight of newspapers here on the C3 blog (look here and here, for instance), while Ana Domb has written multiple times about changes in the music industries (see here and here).
Last month, Ana wrote specifically about how 2007 was considered "the year the media industry broke," writing further that:
My sense is that the music industry is not broken, but it is going through terrible growing pains. It's outgrowing its parents and struggling to find its new identity. (We all know that this is a long and painful process.) Now, granted, "parents" is not the strongest analogy for the music labels, since they have NOT given birth to music, and some might argue they've done just the opposite. For the moment, though, let's consider them the music industry's legal guardians.
We have yet to find out what this new music industry will look like, but changes like the ones that took place last year will help consolidate an important shift in the dominant power structure. Much has been said about how this change has empowered the audience, and certainly Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails respond to this trend, but they also reflect the increasing power that the creators have obtained over the production and distribution of their content. This will be a long, slow and interesting struggle. And I would say that, in spite of the industry's flare for the dramatic, it will be a while until everybody knows what their new role is, what they are allowed to expect, and how they can relate to each other.
This all takes me to Last.fm, a CBS-owned music site which allows users to listen to a wide variety of musical choices, on-demand, for free, with advertising support. The positives? Through CBS's reach and access to a deep reserve of music, users can line up their own mix of music to play for free without interruption. The negative? At current, a track is only allowed to be played three times. Otherwise, users are linked to iTunes, Amazon, and other outlets to buy that song from.
Bickering between Dunkin' Donuts and Its Franchises
Some of you may have read my posts a few weeks ago about a local donut joint here in town called Linda's and the subsequent discussion regarding authenticity and chains (see here, here, and here.
A couple of the Yelp users I wrote about framed Linda's against the chain of Dunkin' Donuts, and in fact I got into a longtime discussion with the guy my age while I was visiting about Dunkin' Donuts, the value of their convenience, and what he felt was the declining quality of their product, in favor of proliferation and speed.
Compare this with our discussion with Joe Pine from back last fall, in which Joe referred to the Starbucks edict that "it should take time to get a cup of coffee."
Apparently, many of the franchise-holders of Dunkin' Donuts agree to some extent, that there is a point of too much proliferation. And that's not that surprising, considering that they have quite a financial stake into not seeing the Dunkin' Donuts brand extend too far...especially out of their stores.
Light Bulbs and Eye Drops: FNL Fan Care Packages for NBC
In my previous post, I wrote about the fan campaign surrounding the effort to keep FNL on the air. With some further searching this afternoon, I've found a couple of other campaigns focusing on keeping this NBC drama on the air.
While the group I wrote about earlier are focusing on sending mini-footballs to the network, other groups are sending related household and health items related to the show.
Considering the writing we've done here at the Consortium of late about Friday Night Lights (see here, here, and here), as well as fan campaigns (see here and here), I wanted to spend some time looking at the rise of fan energy surrounding attempts to get NBC to renew or find a new home for one of the best American primetime dramas I've seen.
More Notes on the Upcoming Console-ing Passions Conference
At the Console-ing Passions conference in April I wrote about in my previous post, I am participating in a workshop from 10:30 a.m. until noon on Friday, entitled "Gendered Fan Labor in New Media and Old."
My presentation is entitled, "Outside the Target Demographic: Surplus Audiences in Wrestling and Soaps." The workshop is chaired by Bob Rehak from Swarthmore College, who is presenting on "Boys, Blueprints, and Boundaries: Star Trek's Hardware Fandom." The workshop also includes Julie Levin Russo from Brown University, who has a presentation entitled "Labors of Love: Who Charts The L Word?" Louisa Stein from San Diego State University will present "Videogames, Fan Creativity, and Gendered Authorship: Complicating Dichotomies," while Suzanne Scott from the University of Southern California presents "From Filk to Wrock: Performance, Professionalism, and Power in Harry Potter Wizard."
Some Notes on the Upcoming Console-ing Passions Conference
A couple of weeks ago, I posted some information about intriguing panels at a couple of academic conferences I will be speaking at in March: the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (see here and here) and the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association National Conference (see here and here).
The preliminary program is now available for a third conference I'm speaking at this spring, called Console-ing Passions. The conference's tagline is "an international conference on television, audio, video, new media & feminism." This year's event is being held at the University of California-Santa Barbara, from Thursday, April 24, to Saturday, April 26.
Around the Consortium: FoE2, Firebrand, Bollywood, and Jason Mittell
I wanted to finish off the weekend by pointing out a few interesting pieces of writing taking place around the Consortium recently.
First, I wanted to direct everyone's attention to this recap of the Futures of Entertainment 2 conference from C3 partner MTV Networks' Greg Weinstein, appearing on the FanTrust site.
As part of some blog catch-up this Sunday, I wanted to pick back up on a story I wrote about last month about fan response to the firing of actor Scott Bryce on As the World Turns. Fan campaigns have launched Web sites, petitions, and mailing campaigns, as soap fans are so quick to do when they dislike a decisions made by soap opera producers.
Now, with Bryce doing a fairly candid interview with well-known soap opera columnist Michael Logan about the situation for TV Guide, fans have had much of their sentiment confirmed by the actor himself.
Passions Cancelled Again...But Rumors of Its Continuation Persist
Last April, I wrote about the intriguing deal NBC struck with DirecTV to move its soap opera Passions over to the satellite provider as exclusive content, after the network had decided to cut the soap opera from its daytime schedule to make room for another hour of The Today Show.
The show ended up getting a run that lasted from Fall 2007 until Summer 2008, when the last episode of Passions is currently set to air. Fans and critics alike knew the deal struck with DirecTV was an experiment from the start.
WWE's Departure from The CW a Situation Worth Watching
Significant news broke this week for the CW Network and World Wrestling Entertainment, as the WWE announced on its Web site Friday that, at the end of the current television season, Friday Night Smackdown will no longer air on the CW Network.
The move raises significant questions for what will happen to one of the two major WWE wrestling brands, but it also gives us a chance to consider what programming with a strong base like the WWE's might be able to seek out as alternatives. The WWE has proven in the past few years to be willing to experiment and change the nature of its programming, from its launch of defunct brand ECW as its "C-show" on Sci Fi (a move that was controversial in itself, especially due to tensions between wrestling fans and sci fi fans over its placement on the network) to its use of the Internet for distribution of shows in the past when they were moved off the network (see here).
As we have written about several times here on the C3 blog of late, we've been immersed in a study of YouTube for the past several months that involved going through and coding a variety of details about hundreds of videos on the site. As part of our ongoing effort to provide some very preliminary sketches on some of the interesting data or trends we've found, I wanted to write a bit about some of the more interesting series that appear to have a strong following online.
Binbir Gece. Several times, I ran into posted videos of a Turkish video series called Binbir Gece. It appears these videos became popular after an individual user started splitting individual episodes into pieces short enough to be posted on the video sharing site, from a handful of individuals, none of whom seem to be officially affiliated with the site. A search for the series on YouTube reveals about 2,500 videos in all, These videos appear to generate a significant amount of discussion in the comments section, revealing a community of Turkish-speakers on YouTube that might not be apparent at first glance.
Measuring Consumer Awareness about the Digital Deadline
When it comes to measuring phenomena, there are a variety of things one can look at, but at the heart of any question is whether your goal is to measure how much of something exists or the quality of that phenomena where it does exist. These are two fundamentally different research questions, yet it often feels that the goals of both get confused.
We've spent considerable time over the past year talking about audience measurement--online, for advertisers, for the television industry, for technological adoption, and so on. Several of those pieces are available here, and you can watch to a whole panel on the topic from our Futures of Entertainment 2 conference back in November.
Around the Consortium: IAP Class, Ad Impressions, Indian Radio, Community Managers, and the NATPE
It's Monday morning, and we're getting ready to launch our spring classes here at MIT. I wanted to start out the new week with a look at some of the most interesting pieces being written on blogs affiliated with the Consortium.
First, now that C3 Consulting Researcher Grant McCracken and C3 Research Manager Joshua Green have finished their course on qualitative research methods for the Independent Activities Period here at MIT, Grant has shared a few pieces of insight he received from the course and from his time here in Boston. Grant provides some insights from a couple of his students who I've had the pleasure of interacting with, Jason Haas who works here in the Program in Comparative Media Studies at MIT and John Deighton from Harvard Business School, regarding Mr. Rogers and a sneaker store in Boston.
I've gotten a few e-mails regarding the piece I wrote a few days ago about Linda's Donuts and the search for authenticity. One of them came from friend and Consortium Consulting Researcher Grant McCracken, who turns out had written some on the subject of authenticity only a couple of days prior, in response to criticisms of the Dove and Axe Unilever campaigns, which many have had problems with because of what they identify as an inconsistency between the messages of each, with Dove stressing one's comfort with their own body in their advertising, while Axe emphasizes a more narrow form of feminine beauty in encouraging teenage boys to use the body spray to attract a certain kind of woman.
Grant wrote me wondering whether we might disagree, and I didn't answer him for a couple of days, as I wasn't sure if we were or not. And I'm still not.
I read his post before I ever wrote the Linda's piece, but it hadn't dawned on me that my points about authenticity might be in conflict with his, even though we both referred to Joe Pine and James Gilmore's new book Authenticity. Of course, in academia, one has a right---perhaps an obligation--to not always agree, and Grant and I have discovered in the past that perfect agreement at the expense of others can sometimes be downright unhelpful. I'm referring here to Grant's September piece on the nature and problem of scorn.
On Wikipedia and Ironic Statements: Another Apropos Analogy
Another anecdote I've been sharing increasingly with others--apologies to those readers who've heard me share this in private conversation--is a conversation I had while doing some research as a graduate student with an executive for a media production company. At the time, I was doing research into the history of the company's brand, and I had searched far and wide for information on when their production company's brand had launched.
The production company has a weak corporate presence online, and the only place I could find anyone venture an explanation for when the current name had been used was Wikipedia. While I find the collective intelligence that Wikipedia offers incredibly useful, I also realize that there are all sorts of gaps in knowledge cobbled together by users, so I wanted to seek out confirmation from an "official source" who I felt was in a much better position to clarify this fact, as opposed to the anonymous. I was particularly afraid that this company's Wikipedia page may not have been as heavily edited as more hot-button pages, so it stood a greater chance of being wrong.
I asked the company representative who had asked to be the point-person for all my inquiries while I was doing research, to which that person replied, "I would not rely on Wikipedia for academic research."
Airline Restrictions: An Analogy for Lack of Transparency
One buzzword making its rounds at the moment is "transparency," and it's one that I find myself using increasingly, no matter my aversion to adopting terms. In an era of Web 2.0 technologies, I find increasingly--as I wrote about earlier this month--that there are too many people who haven't gotten Web 1.0 correctly, either.
As Steve Cody and I wrote about recently, many companies are making a variety of costly gaffes online, and part of the reason is that the same principles regarding open communication and transparency still apply.
Recently, when I was preparing for a flight to New York City, these problems became apparent. I was going for an overnight trip, so I was in need of a variety of belongings to cart along with me, but not enough to pack checked baggage.
After my daily intake of As the World Turns yesterday afternoon, I saw a curious ad, one that prompted me to write this morning.
First of all, I'm one of those timeshifters who doesn't watch the ads...It takes my hour of soap a day down to 30-some minutes, and it gives my wife and I something routine to watch on the DVR while we're having dinner. Generally, as the show ends, and we get a couple of preview teasers from the next episode, I hit stop and delete.
We got a new "all-in-one" remote over the weekend, so it look me a little longer than usual to stop and delete the episode, and I heard a commercial that sounded vaguely familiar. "Six weeks ago, Bob slipped into a coma. Ooh! Now, he's fine, and Chris is the one with a headache." At first, and only half-listening, I thought it was a bizarre start to the commercial, but then I realized that they were talking about Dr. Bob Hughes and his son, Dr. Chris Hughes, characters on ATWT.
The tagline? In that same amount of time, you could have lowered your cholesterol by 4 percent by eating Cheerios.
I've had the pleasure recently of having several conversations and exchanges with Bernard Timberg, a professor at East Carolina University. Bernard wrote a piece on soap operas more than 20 years ago that dealt with production, and Abigail Derecho and I are interviewing him for the collection we are putting together on soaps, looking at the rhetoric of the camera in American soaps today, compared to the early 1980s.
Timberg has written on a variety of subjects, including a substantial amount of work on talk shows, and he is passionate about fair use as well, which is where our most recent conversations were targeted.
Recently, an e-mail came my way bringing my attention to this interesting piece from back in 2006, as a user decides to look back 10 years and see what the Web was like back in 1996. The author of the piece, Eric Karjala, writes occasional articles and blogs regularly at 3,300 Diggs. But it's interesting to see it still getting forwarded, more than a year after its spread and all those Diggs, and it's a reminder that, to whatever degree you buy into the idea of a Long Tail, an extended archive does leave content dormant for a renaissance someday. (That's what I keep thinking about some of those random blog pieces I wrote that I just know someone is going to find valuable in the future--ham radio, anyone?
Around CMS: Jesper Juul, Beth Coleman, and Market Truths
I wanted to start out this morning by passing along a few interesting stories that readers and colleagues have passed my way of late. The first comes from a few games-related stories here at MIT.
Looking at the National PCA/ACA Conference: Interesting Presentations (2 of 2)
For me, Friday at the PCA/ACA conference will see me give most of my day to discussing the current state of soap operas, in a series of three panels.
Starting at 8:30 a.m., the Soap Opera I panel--entitled "Families, Fantasy, and Values: Shaping Soap Operas and Telenovelas"--will feature four presentations. Barbara Irwin from Canisius College chairs the panel. Mary Devine from Marblehead, Mass., will be presenting on "Dynasties on All My Children." Jeffrey Lubang from De La Salle University Dasmarinas in The Philippines presents, "Commodifying Culture: Telenovelas as Cultural Commodity and Social Fantasy," looking at Mexican, Taiwanese, and Korean telenovaelas in Philippene Television History. I'll be ready to discuss MariMar with him. Melixa Abad-Izquierdo from SUNY at Stony Brook will be presenting "Cinderella, Indians and Aspirations to Modernity: Mexican Telenovelas 1958-1973." Finally, the University of Buffalo's Marsha Ducey will present As the World Turns: "Indecency" in American Soap Operas."
Looking at the National PCA/ACA Conference: Interesting Presentations (1 of 2)
In the past couple of posts, I wrote in preview of the SCMS conference that I'll be presenting at in March. Later that month, I'm also going to be traveling to the annual national joint conference of the Popular Culture Association and American Culture Association, which takes place this year in San Francisco.
I am one of only two people affiliated with the Convergence Culture Consortium participating in a panel at the conference, joined by C3 Consulting Researcher Ted Hovet from Western Kentucky University.
In scanning through the panels, a variety of speakers I know caught my eye, and I thought I'd pass these presentations along to the blog readership as well, in case some of you are coming to the PCA meeting as well. If you are, please drop me a line at samford@mit.edu, and let me know of particular panels that you think might be of interest to the blog readers as a whole, since our comments section is currently down. I thought I'd include some presentations of interest from the first couple of days in this post, and I'll put some from Friday and Saturday up later today.
In the previous post, I wrote about presentations at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference from C3 staff and consulting researchers. Now, for a few other presentations that caught my eye from this conference, which will be March 6-9 in Philadelphia.
From 2 p.m. until 3:45 p.m. on Thursday, Mary Jeanne Wilson from the University of Southern California is making a presentation entitled "'Just the Good Parts': Fan Manipulation of the Soap Opera Narrative Structure through Elimination and Compilation of Storylines," as part of the panel "Storytelling: Narrative in Film and Television." Wilson is a contributor to the forthcoming collection on the current state and future of soap operas that I am co-editing.
For those of you on the academic side of the aisle among the C3 blog readership, I thought you might be interested to know that there will be a variety of C3 staff and consulting researchers presenting at this year's conference for the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, which will take place March 06-March 09 in Philadelphia, Penn. I was looking through the program of events and marking the times that members of the Consortium's official community would be speaking, and I thought I might share that information with others as well. (Thanks to Julie Levin Russo for the idea.)
SCMS is probably the one academic conference that draws the most C3-affiliated folks together, as well as many other academics who are interested in many of the same types of research as the Consortium. In a subsequent post, I may include some of the other presentations that caught my eye. Here, however, are the panels at SCMS which involve those affiliated with the Consortium.
In light of the previous post, I wanted to share with you an article I wrote back in the summer of 2005 for The Ohio County Times-News, for the column I write there entitled "From Beaver Dam to Boston." This deals with franchise chains and locally owned shops:
Over the past couple of weeks, Amanda and I were hosts to one of our English professors from Western Kentucky University, Dale Rigby, who was participating in a nearby writing workshop in Vermont. While Dale was here, we discussed Kentucky a lot. Dale has lived all over the country in his life: Ohio, California, Iowa and Missouri, before coming to Bowling Green.
He really enjoyed Boston and Cambridge, the chance to go to English pubs and play chess with strangers. That got us talking about the differences between the business culture and the culture of Bowling Green. Here in Boston, there are local businesses and restaurants on almost every block, each establishment with its own stories and its own history, and I think that should serve as a point of inspiration to the Bowling Greens and even the Beaver Dams I came from.
In cities the size of Bowling Green, though, there is just something increasingly generic about the city as it grows. I have worked with Bowling Green's Chamber of Commerce on various articles and know that there are many unique things about the local Bowling Green economy. But, for every Mariah's in Bowling Green, there's 10 Red Lobsters, good food but without any sense of local culture.
Sometimes, your life changes when you don't have a car. I decided to work from home one day last week, to do some writing from home. Now that I live outside of Boston and Cambridge, though, out in Belmont here in the Boston area, it's not quite as easy to run out for some lunch on foot. But I had dropped my suit off at the dry cleaners' on the corner, the one who waved at us when we drove by--a move that was so Kentucky-like in nature that we decided to give that particular dry cleaners--Hemmingway--a try.
A couple of blocks away, there's a small little restaurant I noticed shortly after moving in here last summer, but I'd never dropped in. The restaurant opens at 6 a.m. each morning, but it's always closed by the early afternoon. I had driven by on the morning commute and especially on weekend mornings and seen a virtual traffic jam around this place.
It's name is Linda's Donuts, and the store touts that these particular donuts are "hand-cut."
In January 2007, during the Independent Activities Period, there were three major strains of discussion here on the C3 blog. The first was about the emergence in 2006 and going into 2007 of various Web 2.0 initiatives. This included social networking and video sharing sites in particular. See our posts on the prevalence of social networking, legislation regarding social networks, and ambivalence toward social networks and big media's move toward using social networks.
It's hard to believe that the Convergence Culture Consortium has now passed its second year of existence. As the ideas that led into Henry Jenkins' 2006 book Convergence Culture have become increasingly accepted and understood by the media industries, media scholars, and media audiences, I thought it might be interesting to return to the IAPs of years past to look at what major concerns the Consortium was confronting and discussing at the time.
For those who haven't been a part of MIT culture, the IAP time in January stands for Independent Activities Period, when our students here are back on campus but not yet in the classroom. Traditionally, this has provided an opportunity for the Consortium to push research projects into a new phase and plan activities for the spring semester.
Looking back at our first year, when our research group was in its infancy, it appears that our greatest focuses--at least in the insights that appeared on the blog--dealt with participatory culture and cross-platform distribution.
Soap Fans and Veteran Actors: Jesse & Angie, Scott Bryce
For those of you who have followed my writing about soaps here on the C3 blog, you likely know that I feel one of the strongest thing the current daytime serial dramas have on their side is their history. As such, historical characters on the show today provide those contemporary ties to that deep history which I believe helps strengthen the transgenerational viewing patterns necessary to gain and maintain viewership for these shows in the long term.
ABC seems to hope this is the case, especially with the sagging ratings of longtime ABC Daytime fixture All My Children has been experiencing. Racquel Gonzales, one of the contributors to the book Abigail Derecho at Columbia College Chicago and I are putting together on the current state of soap operas, wrote me recently about how ABC Daytime is using the SOAPnet channel in a strategic way for both AMC and General Hospital. For GH, the cable network has planned to air a "Robin Unwrapped" episode marathon which helps catch viewers up on the history that more fully explains a pivotal story on the show, which is the first HIV pregnancy storyline in television, according to the promotion.
Around the Consortium: Qualitative Research, Commercial Avoidance, Games, and TV
As always, there's a variety of interesting pieces popping up around the blogosphere by those associated with the Convergence Culture Consortium. This week, we'll be looking at qualitative research, commercial avoidance, trial games, time-shifting television, and 24's connection with the current political scene.
First of all, as C3 Research Manager Joshua Green and Consulting Researcher Grant McCracken teach their course on qualitative research here at MIT for our Independent Activities Period, Grant has been providing some of the resources for the class to his blog readers as well. Grant shares some of his thoughts here and here.
I've followed the story for a long time, but as of this Monday night, World Wrestling Entertainment has converted its programming over to HD.
WWE RAW on the USA Network, ECW on Sci Fi, and Friday Night Smackdown on The CW will all now be aired with high-definition feeds, as well as WWE pay-per-view events, starting with Sunday's Royal Rumble. The CW had been looking to upgrade Smackdown for a while, in its effort to transition all its programming to HD. Meanwhile, both USA and Sci Fi are using the transition amidst their creation of dedicated HD channels.
WWE provides an FAQ section on HD, as well as a story on their site detailing some of the last minute struggles for the production team to get prepared for the first HD broadcast of WWE television.
Meeting Scheduled to Discuss Digital Deadline for TV
Recently, in my regular daily e-mail update from TelevisionWeek, I saw the latest update from Ira Teinowitz on the House of Representatives' most recent reaction to preparations for the digital deadline for American televisions.
Teinowitz, who has covered this situation regularly for that publication for quite a while now, writes that House Energy & Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell remains displeased with the ways in which everyone involved with preparing for the Feb. 17, 2009, transition from analog to digital signals for television broadcasting has been educating the public and preparing for the transition.
Now, a hearing is scheduled for Feb. 13, with the idea of looking at how well the preparation has been and needs to be, one year from the actual date of the conversion.
C3 in the News: Soulja Boy, Soaps, and Friday Night Lights
Back for a round of updates this afternoon and evening, starting with a look at a few pieces in the press that we thought might be of interest to C3 blog readers.
Most prominently, Xiaochang Li's pieces from the fall semester here on the Soulja Boy (entitled Hustling 2.0 and Meet Me at My Crib) has been referenced or featured in a couple of places of late.
McCracken and Green's Qualitative Research Course at MIT
Grant McCracken wrote a note recently over on his blog about the workshop he and Joshua Green are teaching at MIT on qualitative research. I thought this would be of interest ton Consortium readers as well, both because of the topic and because the course is being taught by C3's research manager and one of our consulting researchers.
The course runs for the next 3 weeks and students present their findings January 31st. Grant will be posting observations from the course over the next few weeks on his blog.
Around the Consortium: Web 1.0, 2007 in Review, and The Playboy Professor
I wanted to start off this week's update from "Around the Consortium" by pointing toward a blurb that appeared on C3 Alum Ilya Vedrashko's Advertising Lab site back last month. This is directing people toward Jakob Nielsen's piece on some of the dangers of the Web 2.0 mentality. It's not that Jakob is against Web 2.0, per say, but rather the way that they are implemented.
In particular, Jakob feels (correctly, I believe) that too many people get the "get me one of those" mentalities that Stacey Lynn Schulman talked about at Futures of Entertainment 2, wherein they think very little about why they need some aspect to their site but rather that they should because it's the trendy thing to do. I believe very much in social connectivity on the Web, but not just for the sake of doing it. I think back to the conversation I had with the journalist who said she had put a camera in the newsroom as an example of convergence, as if that is inherently a good idea and little to no thought needed to be put into what comes next and what purpose that camera would serve to covering stories more comprehensively.
As the World Turns in a Convergence Culture: A Summary, Part VIII: Soap Operas as Brands and Conclusion
Soap Operas as Brands
The phrase "not your mother's soap opera" does not work well for fans in this genre. This phrase may never have been overtly used, but the implication has been in place when the show's history was sacrificed at times to new characters meant to appeal to the target demographic with little connection to a soap opera's past. In most of these cases, though, managing these shows as one would a primetime show and trying to come up with a short-term way to increase viewership among the desired demographic proved to do nothing to curb the downward ratings trend and the continued loss of cultural and financial significance for soap operas. While every other television industry seems to make its name off target marketing and niche audiences according to age/sex demographics, soap operas are in danger when being conceptualized in this way because they are, by their nature, best as a transgenerational narrative. Soap operas may be able to continue thriving in a narrowcasting environment, but the niche audience these shows appeal to may not be able to be broken down so neatly by age/sex.
As the World Turns in a Convergence Culture: A Summary, Part VII: Quick Fixes and Fan Proselytizers
Quick Fixes
Many long-standing television forms have not completely grasped the idea that one of the most important selling tools they have is exactly what sets them apart from the more ephemeral primetime fare: longevity. This category includes any type of program with deep archives but particularly daytime serial drama. These programs have been on for years, without an end in sight, making them special in a television industry of constant changes and cancellations. The formats of these programs are meant to instill in viewers the sense that, even if the program hits a down time, its longevity and format will cause it to rebound and remain a part of the television landscape for years to come.
Most soap operas today concentrate on finding new viewers by either trying to appeal to casual fans or else stealing viewers from other soap operas, resulting in a dwindling pool of potential audience members as the viewership of the genre as a whole slowly drops. On the other hand, these shows used to have millions more viewers a decade ago and especially two decades ago. Appealing to those prodigal viewers, the "lapsed fans" who have moved away from their soap but would still recognize and perhaps even care about some of the longtime faces of the show--legacy characters--could help bring fans back to these shows, and through the process of transgenerational storytelling, get them interested in newer characters as well.
As the World Turns in a Convergence Culture: A Summary, Part VI: Product Placement and Transmedia Storytelling
Product Placement and Soap Operas
If soap operas shift to a brand-management strategy that gives greater value to depth of fan engagement and the social activities surrounding the consumption of the official texts of these shows, new revenue sources become more plausible, as I look at in the fourth chapter of my Master's thesis.
The deeper engagement that the immersive story worlds of soap operas encourage also lead to revenue models that value engagement in a way that commercials based on Nielsen ratings do not. While the first forms of product placement can be found in literature, product placement in broadcast was launched simultaneously with commercial radio content, particularly driven by corporate sponsorship that involved prominent product mentions on the air. Nowhere in radio drama was the product more closely married to the show than in the soap opera, however, a genre in which product placement was part of its name.
As the World Turns in a Convergence Culture: A Summary, Part V: Utilizing Soap Opera Archives in a Long Tail Economy
Since most American soap operas have been on the air for decades now, these shows have legions of former viewers from previous generations that may not be as interested in the contemporary product but might watch the shows from their past if they could be reached and marketed to and especially if material could be packaged and contextualized in meaningful ways, rather than just airing every episode from the archive in its entirety--especially since many of those episodes no longer exist, especially from the early years. The potential value in this archive leads to a logical business model which directly integrates the available content from the many years in the air.
Using Chris Anderson's concept of the "Long Tail economy," the fifth chapter of my thesis looks at how soap operas could use their history more meaningfully, perhaps as an ancillary revenue source. While ratings today are lower than in previous decades, much of the footage available in that archive aired with higher ratings than the show airing today.
The proliferation of television viewing choices, the rise of women in the workforce, and the O.J. Simpson trial have all contributed to these changes, but the fact remains that most soap operas may have more prodigal children who could potentially be part of a market for this archive content than current viewers. Further, since there is no syndication and no off-season, many of these popular episodes only aired once, never to be seen again, unless a viewer happened to archive the episode and add it to his/her tape collection.
As the World Turns in a Convergence Culture: A Summary, Part IV: Understanding Online Fan Communities
Online fans are more active than the casual viewer model the Nielsen ratings system is based on, with its focus on impressions without relation to the level of engagement. The shift to balancing quantitative measurements with qualitative ones requires acknowledging and valuing that active engagement, however, as I explain in further detail in the third chapter of my thesis.
Further, many of the "unique" and "niche" aspects of online fan communities actually echo offline modes of engagement with the text as well, albeit on a much larger scale and in published form. These discussion boards can often seem full of noise, especially for the television executive approaching these fan forums with no history in the fan community.
It is important for those exploring the reaction of these fans to be a part of that fan community in an active way and to understand it not as an outsider but as a native. Generally, this means that researchers are best recruited from the fan community rather than trying to become anthropologists studying that community from a distance.
As the World Turns in a Convergence Culture: A Summary, Part III: The History of Fan Discussion
Soaps do not exist in a vacuum, and a show's daily texts can only be completely understood in the context of the community of fans surrounding them. Instead of imagining the audience as a passive sea of eyeballs measured through impressions, this approach views soaps as the gathering place for a social network. Acting as dynamic social texts, soap operas are created as much by the audience that debates, critiques, and interprets them than through the production team itself. Here are the various ways fans have interacted with and around soap opera texts through the years, as described in detail in the second chapter of my thesis:
As the World Turns in a Convergence Culture: A Summary, Part II: The Current State of Soaps
Currently, the soap opera industry is in a state of flux. With Passions moving off NBC, ratings that continue to fall or at best stay even, commentators continue the discussion that has taken place for more than a decade as to the long-term fate of the American soap opera. Reasons for the long-term decline of soaps most often cited include the proliferation of media choices, women moving into the workforce, and the O.J. Simpson case interrupting the daily flow of the soap opera text. However, the inevitability argument posits that nothing can be done to reverse this trend, that soap operas are inevitably on a slowly declining path toward eventual extinction, and also attempts to give a pass to the strategic and creative errors that have expedited or even created many of these negative trends in viewership.
These shows have attempted a series of short-term strategies to gain more viewers specifically in the 18-to-49 female demographic, but this process is often done by focusing on characters within that age demographic as well, ignoring one of the soap opera's strengths--transgenerational storytelling, and particularly transgenerational storytelling that focuses on characters and relationships more than plot progression. In a broad-casting model, soap operas were strengthened by their ability to draw in viewers from multiple generations through texts that examined the relationships in multigenerational families, but the genre has increasingly targeted young adult females at the exclusion of its older viewers and characters as the television industry has become focused on target demographics.
As the World Turns in a Convergence Culture: A Summary, Part I: Immersive Story Worlds
With my class on soap operas coming up, I recently completed a summary of some of the major points of my thesis work, some of which has appeared here on the C3 blog in the past here and here. A draft of the full thesis is available here. Speaking of the class, a quick thanks to the folks at CBS Soaps: In Depth for featuring it in their latest magazine.
As of this posting, comments have been temporarily turned off, so if you have any response to this summary, feel free to e-mail me directly at samford@mit.edu. Our tech guys tell me comments should be enabled once again later this month.
One of the central ideas of my thesis' posits that soap operas exist as one of few "immersive story worlds" in the media industries, narratives that are developed over time with a large volume of characters and text. Many of the reasons why people are attracted to these narratives deal with the depth and breadth of these stories and the feeling that these narratives are immortal. The first chapter of the thesis posits that only three narrative types exist as exemplars of immersive story worlds, even if many media franchises have some of the characteristics:
The Internet is abuzz with politics. And it's that time every four years when suddenly everyone cares about civic engagement and democracy and all that. I'd like to see more of that type of engagement on a local level, including form myself, but nevertheless we're swept up in the frenzy of national politics.
This year, with so many candidates in the mix, it seems as if every election is a surprise. Online, it's been quite interesting as well. There's no doubt that Barack Obama is carrying unprecedented amounts of interest from young voters, and there's a corresponding amount of buzz in the blogosphere, on YouTube, and elsewhere.
For those of you who follow these spaces regularly, it will come as no surprise that there's a comparable amount of buzz from a much more unsuspecting candidate, Rep. Ron Paul of Texas. As opposed to Obama, who is the youngest candidate in this year's election, Paul is the second-oldest, following only Mike Gravel. Further, Paul is a Republican fiscal conservative to an extreme, a fairly strict libertarian at heart.
The media industries adapt to change very slowly. That I have established several times. In some ways, this is necessarily so. The infrastructure that the industry has built for itself helps major media companies weather the tests of time, but they also keep them from being nimble enough to change very easily.
Before the holidays, we published a couple of posts dealing with the writer's strike. As you know, a lot has changed over the past couple of months when the Heroes writers visited MIT while the strike was young. We've seen the late night shows disappear, only to come back in the new year. Letterman and Ferguson have returned with an interim deal in place, while the other late night shows--including The Daily Show and The Colbert Report have come back sans writers.
For me, soap operas are in the most interesting place, as they are the one narrative that is especially built on a "world without end." Strike don't stop soaps, and whether you call the writers "interim," "scabs," or "fi core," there are a group of unnamed people churning out scripts for the nine American daytime soaps. Most of those scripts haven't made it on air yet, but fans are wondering what this will mean for the respective shows.
As many of you who follow our blog or our other writings or conferences regularly know, the Consortium has always been interested in transmedia storytelling, and I have often posited that professional wrestling is a narrative that has always been ripe for crossing multiple media formats. World Wrestling Entertainment has built a model around it.
At first, television and other revenue streams were meant as ancillary content and even more as a way to build for the real meat of the business, which was the touring live event show. Over time, however, the television show, pay-per-views, DVDs, and other media products have become the primary focus, while live events that aren't televised have fallen low on the list of priorities.
The question for a long time now has been what to do about that, how to make coming to a non-televised WWE event worthwhile. After all, very little usually happens at them, and the idea is more of a touring show that you only get to see live on occasion. A lot of fans otherwise engaged in the product, though, are happy to stay home when WWE comes to town, as they know nothing important in the narrative will happen if the cameras aren't rolling.
Around the Consortium: FoE2, Ad Ubiquity, Tech News, Politics, and Social Issues
I wanted to start with a few stories and blog posts that are happening around the Convergence Culture Consortium this week.
First, Kevin Driscoll, a Comparative Media Studies graduate student here at MIT working with the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab, ties some of the marketing rhetoric he heard from some industry folks at Futures of Entertainment 2 to the work of Lawrence Lessig.
Updates on Stories: Soulja Boy, Radiohead, LinkedIn, Christianity, and Quarterlife
Now that we're in a new year, and with so many stories slipping by us during the time of our conference and the ensuing onslaught of holidays, I wanted to give some updates on stories we've run in the past that have had new developments over the past couple of months.
Since many of the daily hits to the C3 blog continue to come from people seeking further information on the Soulja Boy phenomenon (see Xiaochang Li's posts on the issue here and here), I thought you might be interested in Andy Hunter's post about the Family Guy Soulja Boy reference. Andy, who used to work for C3 partner GSD&M Idea City, has blogged here in the past (look here).
The Convergence Culture Consortium will be presenting in a Research Fair for the Program in Comparative Media Studies from 5 p.m. until 7 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 28, on the first floor of the Ray and Maria Stata Center on MIT's campus.
Around the Consortium: The Digital Race, FoE2, Soaps, and IAP
It's a new year, and the C3 team is back on the ground to start off 2008 with several new changes. You may have seen that the site was down for some of the holiday break, as we were in the process of changing server space and hopefully eliminating some of the load time problems readers have informed us about in the past few months.
Our team is hard at work on its YouTube and viral media projects for what MIT calls the "Independent Activities Period," or IAP, in which students at the Institute spend time working on independent projects, taking short classes, and partaking in other projects outside of the normal class schedule, which resumes at the beginning of February. In the meantime, I wanted to point out to the blog readers a few interesting stories and publications from and about the Consortium regarding the digital race, FoE2, soap operas, and qualitative research.
The C3 team is going to be taking a little time off for blogging throug the holiday season. Don't expect to see much in the way of new content here until the beginning of 2008, as we wrap up a few research projects and enjoy the holiday season.
We wanted to take this opportunity, however, to say thanks to everyone reading our blog for a stimulating and produtive year for the Convergence Culture Consortium Weblog. We've appreciated all the feedback and support and hope that what we've provided here has, in the very least, provoked some interesting thoughts and discussion.
There are several new posts from the past few days for you to take a look at, and we'll be back in a couple of weeks with our usual schedule of 12 or so updates per week.
In the meantime, all of us here in the Consortium wish everyone happy holidays!
In my previous post, I wrote about the smart people I met at Communispace out in Watertown. There are a lot of other great companies and bright minds I've been crossing paths with here in the Boston area of late. We were honored, for instance, to have Jim Nail from out at Cymfony join us on our recent panel on Metrics and Measurement at FoE2.
Another guy in attendance who I've been honored to get to know is John Eckman from Optaros. We had a chance to meet John a few weeks before our conference, when he came in for a visit. Eckman had written about Henry Jenkins' appearance at the Forrester Consumer Forum back in October, and he ended up coming in to meet myself and Joshua Green, C3's Research Manager. The conversation ended going on even past the point I had to leave for another appointment.
Surrounded by Smart Folks: Fanscape and Communispace
While we've been working on rounding out the semester here at MIT and pushing several projects forward, I've had the chance to cross paths with quite a few interesting people. Of course, FoE2 brought all sorts of fascinating people through our doors, and I've been fortunate enough to follow up with more than a few of them.
One of those folks is Natalie Lent, who is coordinator of business development for Fanscape. Natalie, a Harvard grad who previously worked for Creative Artists, "works to determine how potential and existing clients can creatively utilize a multitude of non-traditional online marketing strategies to connect to their target audience in ways that are engaging, personalized and seamlessly integrated into their preferred online properties and communities."
Around the Consortium: The Press and Consulting Researchers
There have been a few interesting publications and bits of news related to the Convergence Culture Consortium of late that I thought might be of interest for you.
First, Meio & Mensagem in Brazil ran a two-page recap of Futures of Entertainment 2, by Mauricio Mota. A PDF of the write-up is available here. Mauricio actually spent a few days with us both before and after the conference, and it was great to hear his perspective on what this age of "convergence culture" means for the media industries in Brazil.
Also, I thought C3 readers might be interested in this story I was interviewed for by Tom Vandyck on the Amazon Kindle for De Morgen in Belgium.
The final panel at our Futures of Entertainment 2 conference, on cult media, is now available fro download in audio form. The mobile panel from the first day will be made available in the coming weeks, and video on the rest of these panels will be available shortly.
The cult media panel, available here, features a conversation among Danny Bilson, Jesse Alexander of Heroes, Jeff Gomez of Starlight Runner, and Gordon Tichell of Walden Media, moderated by Henry Jenkins.
The first full panel on the second day of our Futures of Entertainment 2 conference, on advertising, is now available for download in audio form.
This panel, available here, features a conversation among Bill Fox of Fidelity Investments, Mike Rubenstein of the Barbarian Group, Baba Shetty of Hill/Holliday, Tina Wells of Buzz Marketing Group, and Faris Yakob from Naked Communications, moderated by Joshua Green.
FoE2 Podcast: Jason Mittell, Jonathan Gray, and Lee Harrington
The opening comments panel on the second day of our Futures of Entertainment 2 conference is now available for download in audio form.
This panel, available here, features a conversation among three academic speakers--C3 Consulting Resercher Jason Mittell of Middlebury College, Jonathan Gray of Fordham University, and Lee Harrington of Miami University, moderated by me.
On Monday morning, I was up at 3 a.m. working on a class project. Part of the assignment was to come up with an alternative metric for television.
I thought back to what I know about engagement and what it might mean from my friend Ivan Askwith's thesis, the Metrics & Measurement panel at C3's Futures of Entertainment 2 conference, and what we'd covered in class. There's been a lot of great discussion about a new metric, but few concrete suggestions about what might replace the much maligned Nielsen ratings and C3 (the commercial rating).
So, I decided to write a metric, put something on paper, and get feedback on it. That's what this post is about.
I wanted to start Monday morning by rounding out a few new links coming out of the Futures of Entertainment 2 conference.
First, Kare Anderson over at Moving from Me to We wrote a piece on this year's Futures of Entertainment 2, which also includes excerpts from an interview she conducted with me regarding the event.
Meanwhile, Rik Hunter, a Ph.D. student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the composition and rhetoric program in the university's English department, provides a lot of notes from the conference on his site, Canned Goods.
Five Things About the Convergence Culture Consortium
I have gotten tagged a couple of times over the past year to share things on the blog that readers might not know about me or "secrets to success," first from the savvy Nancy Baym back in April and now from Kare Anderson, who is a force of nature herself.
Since this isn't a personal blog, I figure the better approach would be to share a little about the nature of our work at the Consortium. Below is five notes about the nature of our research group and the work we do.
The final panel on the first day of our Futures of Entertainment 2 conference, on fan labor, is now available for download in audio and both high-res and low-res video form.
This panel is available here in audio and video form. The video is intended for download, and some browsers may try to display text if you don't right-click the link to save to your computer. If your browser tries to download it as a ".txt," remove the ".txt" from the name, and the file should work as an "m4v."
The panel features a conversation among Mark Deuze of Indiana University, Jordan Greenhall of DivX, Raph Koster of Areae, Elizabeth Osder of Buzznet, and Catherine Tosenberger of the University of Florida, moderated by Henry Jenkins.
The first panel from the conference, on mobile media, will be available shortly. However, we now have the metrics and measurement panel from FoE2 available for download in audio and video forms.
The metrics and measurement panel, available here, can be accessed in audio, 320x240 video, and 640x480 video. The video is intended for download, and some browsers may try to display text if you don't right-click the link to save to your computer. If your browser tries to download it as a ".txt," remove the ".txt" from the name, and the file should work as an "m4v."
here for download, features a conversation among Maury Giles of GSD&M Idea City, Bruce Leitchman of Leitchman Research Group, Jim Nail of Cymfony, and Stacey Lynn Schulman of Turner Broadcasting, and moderated by me.
We're excited to make the first of our events from the recent Futures of Entertainment 2 conference here at MIT available for download. Each of the panels from the conference are available in both video and audio form.
The panels are available here. Here is audio and video. The video is intended for download, and some browsers may try to display text if you don't right-click the link to save to your computer. If your browser tries to download it as a ".txt," remove the ".txt" from the name, and the file should work as an "m4v."
The opening comments features C3 Director Henry Jenkins and C3 Research Manager Joshua Green discussing some of the media industries trends in 2007. These opening comments helped set the agenda for what would be covered in the six panels to follow at FoE2.
Writing About FoE2: Around the Blogosphere (3 of 3)
A variety of folks wrote summaries of several different panels simultaneously or referenced the conference as a whole. Faris Yakob wrote about the conference here, here, and here. Faris also provided a piece on FoE2 for Contagious.
C3 Consulting Researcher Grant McCracken provides his take on FoE2 here and here. Meanwhile, see Jonathan Gray's take on the conference at The Extratextuals.
Darren Crawforth provided a report from FoE2 for PSFK.
Writing About FoE2: Around the Blogosphere (2 of 3)
Below is a list of the blogs and pieces that reflected on or recapped Friday afternoon and Saturday's panels from our Futures of Entertainment 2 conference here in mid-November. See the first post of links here.
Writing About FoE2: Around the Blogosphere (1 of 3)
Between Futures of Entertainment 2 on Nov. 16 and 17 and Thanksgiving the next week, we've been in the process of trying to catch up on internal research projects and finish out what was really a fantastic conference, as far as we felt. Thanks to everyone who came, both panelists and audience members, for making it such a fantastic conversation. The plan is to have the audio and video from the conference made available, panel by panel, over the next few days, so be sure to come back here continuously for the latest.
In the meantime, I wanted to share with all of our readers many of the interesting accounts that have been posted around the blogosphere from FoE2. Over the next three posts, I'll link to a variety of these conversations, as a preview of those podcasts.
In this post, I'm linking to the posts for the pre-conference and some of the first day's events.
First, the MIT Communications Forum with Jesse Alexander and Mark Warshaw from Heroes was covered by C3 Graduate Researcher Lauren Silberman for this blog, here and here.
The second panel of the day was on Advertising and Convergence Culture. Speakers included Mike Rubenstein of the Barbarian Group, Baba Shetty of Hill/Holliday, Tina Wells of Buzz Marketing Group, Faris Yakob from Naked Communications, and Bill Fox of Fidelity Investments.
The panelists talked about the challenges and successes that they have encountered as marketers and advertisers in a convergent media environment, the problem of relinquishing total control over brands, user generated content and social media.
Live blogging for this session are Kevin Driscoll, Xiaochang Li, and Eleanor Baird.
Day two of the Futures of Entertainment began this chilly Cambridge morning with opening remarks by Jason Mittell, Middlebury College; Jonathan Gray, Fordham University; Lee Harrington, Miami University. Sam Ford, C3's Project Manager moderated.
In this session, the panelists talked about the "holy trinity" of media studies scholarship, tensions between industry and academia, qualitative versus quantitative understandings of audiences, and improving the connections between academics and insdustry in the future.
Live blogging the session were Xiaochang Li, Josh Diaz and Eleanor Baird.
Today is the launch of Futures of Entertainment 2. It's the wee hours of the morning now, and we're trying to get everything prepared for what we hope is a stimulating conference for academics and industry execs alike. We have a variety of folks coming in from around the country, and internationally, and from what looks to be about an even split of academic and industry registrants. We're hoping that it will lead to some stimulating conversation, on par with the energy developed around last year's event.
One thing I wanted to note before the conference begins is that we have had a couple of late additions to the program. Francesco Cara from Nokia will no longer be able to make it here for the mobile media panel this morning, so we will be joined by Anmol Madan of the Media Lab here at MIT.
Also, Jim Nail from Cymfony has been added to the list of speakers for the metrics and measurement panel this afternoon.
Around the Consortium: FoE2, Free Game Types, and Gender and Fan Studies
We are on the eve of our second Futures of Entertainment event here at MIT, co-sponsored by the Consortium and Comparative Media Studies, the program in which we are housed in. We're going to be doing a lot of blogging from the scene, and the blog will become dedicated to featuring that content over the next few days, so I thought it might be good to do a round-up of some interesting posts by people around the Consortium in the meantime.
First, Grant McCracken made an interesting post from earlier this evening on the train ride into MIT for the event. Grant, who is a consulting researcher for our group, shares some musing that might get us thinking about some "comparative media" issues from a genre standpoint:
Fr the moment, some things still travel in packs. The Diderot effect still applies. Some categorical distinctions are still relatively inviolate. Our intuition tells us so.
This is one of the challenges that will confront us at the The Futures of Entertainment Conference.
WWE Grapples with CNN Documentary: Smacking Down the News
Journalism is fundamentally altered in an age of convergence culture. This isn't particularly new news for my colleagues over at the Center for Future Civic Media here at MIT in the Program in Comparative Media Studies. Nor is it new news for many of the people I spent time with back at Western Kentucky University when I was a journalism student in the School of Journalism and Broadcasting.
It's not even new news for the folks in the trenches of rural weekly journalism, described as the cockroaches of the journalism world by my editor at The Ohio County Times-News.
But I was reminded how talking back to the official journalists is possible in new ways in a new media environment, as was evidenced by a recent controversy between the WWE and CNN.
The final panel at last year's Futures of Entertainment 2, like the mobile media panel this year, focused on a particular media outlet, in this case virtual worlds. The discussion included John Lester from Linden Labs, Ron Meiners from Mplayer.com, and Todd Cunningham from MTV Networks, who we work with closely, as well as Eric Gruber from MTVN.
Todd will be able to join us again this year as a conference attendee, and we're glad to have Alice Kim from MTVN on our panel discussing mobile media.
The panel, called "Not the Real World Anymore," is available in audio here and in video here.
Last year's panel on fan cultures was one of the greatest precursors to the direction this year's conference has taken. Our discussions on fan labor, cult media, and even the audience measurement panel will deal with issues that were first raised in last year's fan cultures panel, which we live-blogged here.
The audio from last year's panel is available here, and the video is available here.
Looking back at FoE: Dr. Joshua Green on Viscerality
The second day of Futures of Entertainment last year began with a discussion led by Dr. Joshua Green, C3's Research Manager. Green will be helping to lead the opening comments of the conference with Dr. Henry Jenkins on Friday morning and will be moderating two of the panels at the conference.
Last year's presentation from Green focused on viscerality in a convergence culture. The audio of the presentation is available here, and the video is available here.
Green, whose bio is available here, has helped direct several exciting new strands of research at the Consortium this year, and the panels planned for the conference this year are indicators of the types of issues we've been tackling in our internal work that Joshua directs and what I've written here on the blog, along with our graduate students.
The final panel on Friday of last year's Futures of Entertainment focused on transmedia properties, in what is a precursor to a couple of the discussions taking place this year, perhaps most notably the conversation on cult media properties, which might be particularly ripe for transmedia storytelling.
The audio from this panel is available here, and the video is available here.
For those who haven't seen it, our panel on cult media this year will feature a variety of people steeped in knowledge of transmedia storytelling: Danny Bilson, who has written for a variety of media platforms; Jeff Gomez of Starlight Runner; Gordon Tichell with Walden Media; and Jesse Alexander with Heroes.
The second panel on the first day of Futures of Entertainment last year was focused particularly on user-generated content. The panel provides a good precursor to a lot of the issues to be discussed this year in the "fan labor" panel.
For those who have not seen it, the description of our "Fan Labor" panel this year reads, "There is growing anxiety about the way labor is compensated in Web 2.0. The accepted model -- trading content in exchange for connectivity or experience -- is starting to strain, particularly as the commodity culture of user-generated content confronts the gift economy which has long characterized the participatory fan cultures of the web." The full description is available on the program, here.
Last year's "User-Generated Content" panel was live blogged here on the C3 site, available here. The conversation included Rob Tercek, who is president and co-founder of MultiMedia Networks; Caterina Fake, Tech Development at Yahoo!/Flickr; Bubble Project founder Ji Lee; and BioWare Director of Design Kevin Barrett.
Audio is available here, and video is available here.
Delivering the Message: Interview with a Baptist Minister (5 of 5)
This is the fifth of a five-part series of an interview I conducted in March 2006 with the pastor of a small Baptist church in Kentucky about how ministers use the media at a local level and the art of oratory in preaching. Rev. Darrell Belcher is the past or Echols General Baptist Church in Echols, Ky.
Sam Ford: Do you think the Internet, since it can stream audio and video, provides new opportunities for delivering sermons?
Darrell Belcher: I think we have a wonderful opportunity here, if it is used correctly. Television, radio, and the Internet broadens a pastor's horizons immensely. You can think about outreach here and can potentially have this be a religious realm, if you use it correctly.
Delivering the Message: Interview with a Baptist Minister (4 of 5)
This is the fourth of a five-part series of an interview I conducted in March 2006 with the pastor of a small Baptist church in Kentucky about how ministers use the media at a local level and the art of oratory in preaching. Rev. Darrell Belcher is the past or Echols General Baptist Church in Echols, Ky.
Sam Ford: Do you find preaching on radio and/or television more restrictive than a regular sermon?
Darrell Belcher: I feel equally comfortable doing radio as I do delivering a message live. When you are with a congregation, you don't have any time limits or anything like that, so you can deliver live better than on radio because you don't have to figure out how to squeeze a message into 15 or 20 minutes. You don't have time to stop and deliberate on something and then start back. You just have to put it out there fast and get it out there. In front of a congregation, you have time to play with things a little bit while you are preaching.
Delivering the Message: Interview with a Baptist Minister (3 of 5)
This is the third of a five-part series of an interview I conducted in March 2006 with the pastor of a small Baptist church in Kentucky about how ministers use the media at a local level and the art of oratory in preaching. Rev. Darrell Belcher is the past or Echols General Baptist Church in Echols, Ky.
Sam Ford: Tell me about your experience in preaching on the radio.
Darrell Belcher: Radio is completely different. For radio, you go into a studio. They sit you in a sound room, just you alone, or maybe they'll bring in a group of singers first who will sing, and then they put you in a sound room by yourself. They turn the lights on, and you know you are live on the air and what amount of time has been allotted to you. You have a time when you can start and a time you have to finish. It's not like preaching to the congregation; it's a lot harder, standing in there all alone, just preaching to the walls. It's a lot harder preaching like that than it is preaching at a church somewhere. You can't have any contact with anyone but the four walls in the studio. Of course, they have a little window there you can look through and see the person running the switchboard or whatever it might be out there. They give you your cues of when to start and when to stop, so you have to keep your mind on that, too. It's completely different than going into a church or anything like that.
Delivering the Message: Interview with a Baptist Minister (2 of 5)
This is the second of a five-part series of an interview I conducted in March 2006 with the pastor of a small Baptist church in Kentucky about how ministers use the media at a local level and the art of oratory in preaching. Rev. Darrell Belcher is the past or Echols General Baptist Church in Echols, Ky.
Sam Ford: Darrell, how frequently do pastors in your position deliver sermons?
Darrell Belcher: I have done radio shows, and I used to do some things years ago for Channel 13 (a local station in Bowling Green, Ky.) There was a lot of filming done of revivals I have preached and messages I delivered back in Louisville years ago. 15 or 20 years ago, I preached a lot of revivals. I was healthy, so I travelled a lot. I would sometimes preach five or six revivals in a row, without stopping, plus pastoring a church in between. It was hard to travel, and you had to take off work if you had a regular job most of the time. I always tried to keep my preaching in front of my job. WHen I worked for General Motors, it was always a little harder to manage my work schedule with pastoring and revivals. But, I worked for about 20 years in my own business, so I could plan my work schedule around revivals, and have employees work for me while I was gone.
Delivering the Message: Interview with a Baptist Minister (1 of 5)
Our C3 graduate students, as part of their course on media theory and methods with Henry Jenkins this semester, have been working on an assignment to interview a media producer of some sort. My recent post on Jesus 2.0 reminded me of my own assignment I did for Henry's class last year, when I interviewed a longtime Baptist preacher as my assignment.
I returned to the original transcript of the interview and thought I would include it here on the C3 blog, as it focuses on how religion has long dealt with how content fits into multiple media forms, and how to adapt messages for various audiences. As religion, and all media, are struggling with how to best adapt messages for a new media space--which we actually call "new media" in this case--it's interesting to see how individual pastors on a local level have been considering these changes in relation to the radio, televised preaching, etc.
The theory is that Friday Night Lights just hasn't grown a bigger audience because most people have never watched it. More than most shows, it does seem that I don't find people peripherally familiar with it; the people I talk to who have seen it absolutely love it, and everyone else says they have never watched. The show feels real in a way that few primetime shows have, and there's one element in particular that FNL does better than any other show on television: product placement and integration.
The Applebee's integration into FNL is the best use of product integration I've ever seen. The restaurant is a prominent part of the story at many points, as one of the key characters works as a waitress there and it's the de facto place to stop in town for a nicer meal, if players or their parents aren't going to the local burger shop or the "Alamo Freeze." Actually, the "Alamo Freeze" is a Dairy Queen, and you can easily tell that's the case, complete with partial shots of the Dairy Queen sign and Blizzards on the menu. My understanding is that it is even filmed at a Dairy Queen in Austin, Texas, but that they've chosen to make it a localized restaurant instead.
Around the Consortium: Kinset, Netnography, Globe and Mail, and Podcasts
As I wrap up a run of weekend posts for the Consortium, I wanted to point the way to a few interesting pieces that have been written around the Consortium in the past week.
First, I mentioned earlier this week that I spent some time over at Hill/Holliday with Ilya Vedrashko this past week. On Ilya's blog, The Advertising Lab, he wrote last week about Kinset, a company which provides 3D storefronts for online retailers, trying to create a virtual version of real-world shopping. He points out that shelves are filled with search results.
The Black Nerd: A Stereotype to Break Stereotypes?
No one knows about nerd culture quite like MIT, right? After all, as legendary WWE play-by-play announcer put it so succinctly when he visited the Program in Comparative Media Studies last spring to speak to my class on pro wrestling and in a colloquium, we're supposed to be a school full of math nerds.
But Raafi Rivero at Desedo Films recently provided an interesting account of the ways in which the black nerd was an important part of our culture yet not particularly well marketed to, in favor of the stereotypes most generally associated with hip-hop culture. We're a culture that trades on stereotypes, to be sure, but Rivero's piece emphasizes that there are many types of archetypes to play on, and black culture is sprinkled with plenty of "black nerds."
Bluegrass Music and Fan Tourism at Jerusalem Ridge
I wanted to start out this morning by writing about something close to my heart: bluegrass music, bourbon, and The Bluegrass State. I was reading an article from today's New York Times that dealt with a reporter's excursion for a tour of Kentucky, which ended up being on the front page of the travel section. And right there at the top of the story, by Steven Kurutz, was The Rosine Barn Jamboree, a landmark of my home county: Ohio County, Ky., "The Birthplace of Bluegrass Music," as it commonly called itself, and home to about 23,000 people.
The article chronicles a journey through bourbon country and distilleries throughout the state, which are mostly east of where bluegrass music was berthed. But the final piece of the article looks at their journey to the big Jerusalem Ridge bluegrass music festival and the many ways it tries to recreate the authenticity of yesteryear in celebrating the music, and the culture that inspired the music, of Bill Monroe and other bluegrass legends.
Is it time to explore alternate forms of distribution a little bit more heavily? We have all come to generally agree to some of the principles for Long Tail economics; particularly, that there is room for marketing to niche interests. Hollywood has been met with increasing skepticism, however, as to what this means for film distribution, which leaves me to question whether savvy forms of direct-to-DVD distribution or online distribution or VOD distribution may be the answer to the problems currently facing some films in the theater.
Perhaps several of you read or heard about the New York Times article a few days ago by Michael Cieply dealing with the lack of money derived from the theater release of several films. Of course, these films may end up being more profitable over time, but it's likely that the amount of cost put into promoting them for theater release will make turning a profit even less likely. Maybe it's not just the fat middles in danger anymore, to steal a line from Grant McCracken.
Looking at the Panoramic View: The State of Online Video
Robert Doornick and his robot were not the only interesting people I met up with yesterday. I also had the chance to talk with a couple of very savvy guys who are looking toward advertising models for the new media space. One is Ilya Vedrashko, an alum of the Consortium who now works The Advertising Lab.
Joining us was Sorosh Tavakoli, one of the founders of VideoPlaza who was visiting from Sweden. The company looks at how to monetize online video in the European market.
If anyone believes we live in a world that is all about social connections, and understanding people in relation to one another rather than as distinct wholes, it would be folks around CMS and the Consortium. Concepts we discuss often such as the value of Web 2.0 and social networks, as well as fan communities and "collective intelligence," are all about the power of meeting people.
But, recently, I had a chance to not just meet up with an interesting who, but a what as well. Yesterday afternoon, while spending some time in downtown Boston, I ended up in what turned into a longer conversation with a man and his robot.
Looking at the Google/Nielsen Partnership in Light of This Year's Developments
One of the biggest pieces of news making the rounds of late is Google's further movement into the television industry with the announced partnership with Nielsen to help provide second-by-second ratings information, starting with a test market. I wanted to link this back to the trends we've been discussing here at the C3 blog for the past several months, to think about all that this means, and doesn't mean, for the industry.
First, Google having its eye on television advertising is hardly new news, although its application to audience measurement through Nielsen is. I wrote about the Echostar partnership Google started earlier this year in a post back in April, which also touted bringing online precision of "measurability and accountability" online.
Our cohorts over at MIT's new Center for Future Civic Media have been providing a lot of interesting and insightful pieces over on their new blog for the center, which is located here. The center is a collaboration between the Program in Comparative Media Studies and the Media Lab here at MIT, through a grant from the Knight Foundation. According to their Web site, the group will focus on creating the "technical and social systems for sharing, prioritizing, organizing, and acting on information. These include developing new technologies that support and foster civic media and political action; serving as an international resource for the study and analysis of civic media; and coordinating community-based test beds both in the United States and internationally."
A friend of mine, Surya Yalamanchili, recently took a job as director of marketing for LinkedIn. His moving into that position got me to thinking about the role that social networking site plays in the "Web 2.0" universe and the reasons people get involved with the site.
As you know, I am am a proponent of social networks and the way they can transform our lives. I also think they introduce a variety of new strains and that you should not enter them lightly; as well, you should have a strategy about how to handle connections and try to remain consistent with that strategy.
All these issues prompted me to write after I read Steve Cody's recent piece on LinkedIn over on his RepMan blog about the headache of trying to manage LinkedIn. Steve is one of the co-founders of Peppercom, a public relations company who recently graciously hosted me for a day at their offices in New York City. He writes about some of the challenges of finding use out of LinkedIn from an executive-level standpoint.
Around the Consortium: Gender and Fan Studies, WGA Strike, Lost
As the weekend draws to a close, I wanted to point the way to a few interesting conversations that have been taking place of late around the Convergence Culture Consortium. For those who follow our work through the blog, C3 is made up of a core team here at MIT comprised of myself and research manager Joshua Green, in conjunction with Henry Jenkins, and a team of four graduate students, all of whom post here on the blog. In addition, we have a variety of consulting researchers who provide work through our internal weekly newsletter and who act as "guiding lights," so to speak, on our thinking along the way.
As usual, I like to point to some of the public work those folks have been doing, for those who have regular blogs. For a complete list of our consulting researchers, look here. We will be bringing more updates to this page soon, including putting up the student bios for each of our grad student researchers.
Producing the CSI:NY/Second Life Crossover: An Interview with Electric Sheep's Taylor and Krueger (4 of 4)
This is the final section of a four-part series featuring an interview with Damon Taylor and Daniel Krueger from Electric Sheep, who helped produce tonight's launch of the CSI:NY television series crossover into Second Life.
Sam Ford: Electric Sheep is using this collaboration for the launch of OnRez, your viewer of the Second Life universe. What is it about the CSI:NY/Second Life collaboration you all are producing that made this the best opportunity to launch OnRez?
Daniel Krueger: I can't speak for our software development team, but I think that it's always been something that Electric Sheep wanted to do, as far as making an easier interface for navigating Second Life. It's not traditionally a very intuitive space for new users, so we wanted to make something simple for new users to come in with. We launched it with this project because we wanted to provide the easiest way for CSI:NY viewers who have never used Second Life to be able to come into the virtual world. It's really a perfect opportunity to launch OnRez.
Producing the CSI:NY/Second Life Crossover: An Interview with Electric Sheep's Taylor and Krueger (3 of 4)
The following is the third part of an interview series being published today regarding tonight's launch of the CSI:NY television series crossover into Second Life. This interview, with Damon Taylor and Daniel Krueger from Electric Sheep, looks at the motivations, implementation, and plans for extending the popular crime drama series into a virtual world.
Sam Ford: What is Electric Sheep Company's involvement in this project?
Damon Taylor: We are the vendor working with CBS to develop this, and it all started out as a relationship between Electric Sheep and CBS, working with Anthony E. Zuiker, who has become convinced that virtual worlds provide an opportunity for television companies or entertainment companies in general to create and provide content in ways that has never been done before. This has been a six-month planning process, culminating today. Our contract with CBS is to do this for six months, so we will be operating this experience for the next half-year. With content being updated every four weeks, we will be moving this story forward, along with a second television show next year that will tie back into the whole storyline.
Producing the CSI:NY/Second Life Crossover: An Interview with Electric Sheep's Taylor and Krueger (2 of 4)
What follows is an interview with Electric Sheep Company producers Daniel Krueger and Damon Taylor about their involvement in the CSI:NY/Second Life collaboration that launches with tonight's episode of the crime scene investigation drama on CBS. For a background on the crossover, look at this post from earlier today.
Sam Ford: To start off with, what do the two of you believe are some of the most compelling aspects of the CSI:NY/Second Life crossover that's taking place tonight, and what are the benefits for CBS and CSI:NY, on the one hand, and for Second Life other other?
Damon Taylor: This experience is compelling for users from two different perspectives. One of those perspectives is new users of Second Life, who are new to virtual worlds in general. The other perspective is for existing Second Life users. Potential new users who are fans of CSI:NY will care about this crossover because it will give them the opportunity to wrestle with CSI content in a way that has never been made available to them before. We have endeavored and achieved a true cross-platform experience where these fans can watch the television show, see the storyline that began on the TV show continued in-world, and then see the storyline jump back to the TV show next February when there is a sequel show that wraps up the storyline that starts tonight.
Producing the CSI:NY/Second Life Crossover: An Interview with Electric Sheep's Taylor and Krueger (1 of 4)
For those who haven't heard, tonight is the launch of a particularly compelling transmedia experience, the first time a major television franchise has driven its viewers into a virtual world to fill in the gap of a cliffhanger mystery that will not be resolved until next February.
CSI:NY, the New York version of the Anthony E. Zuiker television franchise, will feature an episode tonight in which a murder mystery takes the crime scene investigation team deep into Linden Lab's Second Life, with the mystery not being resolved until the concluding episode next year. The activities that take place in SL will build off what happens on the show and are planned to give fans the opportunity to get acquainted with a virtual world and also to have a new place to interact with and around the television franchise.
Even as television and other media forms struggle to quantitatively understand audiences as anything other than a mass of passive eyeballs, there is an increasing awareness among marketers that connecting with a brand is an active process not just for advertisers but for consumers as well. One of the ways this approach manifests itself is the movement away from traditional commercials and sponsorships and the movement toward a much different approach: branded services.
It's a concept that perhaps sounds novel and yet not all that surprising at all. Built off the backs of various goodwill and public relations initiatives that have long been a part of marketing brands, these newest moves are to offer services and experiences to potential consumers that in some way help promote the overarching brand.
Around the Consortium: Gender and Fan Studies, Consumption Studies, and Dumbledore
After a couple of updates to get us started this morning, I wanted to followup with a look around the Consortium at the work some of our consulting researchers have been doing. Today, I wanted to point the way toward the latest round of gender and fan studies discussion on Henry Jenkins' blog, the latest consumption studies pieces from Rob Kozinets, and Jason Mittell's writing about his response to Dumbledore's being shoved out of the closet by J.K. Rowling.
The 20th round of the Gender and Fan Studies conversation on Henry's blog features two 2006 graduates of the Program in Comparative Media Studies here at MIT, James Nadeu and Alicia "Kestrell" Verlager. Kestrell, an institution around MIT, writes about being a lifelong fan but a newcomer to fan studies, while James writes about his own focus on queer cinema and visual art, including comic books. Their conversation is available here and here.
As many regular readers of our blog know, one thing that interests several of us here at C3 is audience measurement. There are a variety of debates about audience measurement; a couple of us are quite invested in our own individual projects at looking at how just measuring quantity of views--impressions--is severely lacking in understanding the qualitative relationships people have with that content. But we also often cover a problem that Louise Story examines in today's New York Times: discrepancies in counting.
Significant Changes for Procter & Gamble Daytime Shows
One of the big discussions generating a significant amount of buzz among the soap opera industry and the soaps fan community is the decision to make some production changes to Procter & Gamble Productions' two daytime serial dramas, Guiding Light and As the World Turns. As those of you who follow this blog regularly know, the soaps industry is an area of particular fascination with me. My Master's thesis work, which is currently under consideration for publication, deals with the PGP soaps in particular, and I am currently co-editing a collection of contemporary work on the state of soaps with Abigail Derecho from Columbia College Chicago, as well as gearing up to teach a class on soaps in the spring here at MIT.
Tremors of this decision had been making their way around the fan community. ATWT has been experimenting with various new aesthetics on the show, including the use of a digital handheld camera and an increase in the use of location shoots, as it has been rare in recent years to have outdoors scenes actually filmed out of the studio. Through using digital cameras, though, PGP has decided that it would actually be a better use of funds to have a permanent "outdoor studio" of sorts, where all outdoor scenes are filmed.
Punathambekar on Showtheme!, Askwith in Slate, and the McCracken/Anderson Debate
I know I just did a roundup of some of the interesting discussions surrounding the Convergence Culture Consortium, but I have to double back around and point you all toward a few new conversations that have caught my eye this week. With the somewhat heated discussion that has occurred over on Grant McCracken's blog with Chris Anderson, coupled with C3 alum Ivan Askwith's latest appearance in Slate, there's been plenty to cover.
First, though, from C3 Consulting Researcher Aswin Punathambekar: a great piece detailing one of the earliest examples of the convergence of film and television in Bombay cinema.
Babel: Understanding Online Video Trends Is a Messy Process
All right, class. Time for a review. This material may be covered on a future exam. Assuming you've been keeping up with what we've covered on the blog of late, what do we know about online video?
1.) People who are online like being online. Just ask IBM, who took a survey to find out that surprising bit of information.
Pragmatically Challenged: Where Do Quotes Fit in the YouTube Copyright Solution?
As those who are either members of the Consortium or who follow C3 regularly may know, we are in the process of doing some in-depth research into YouTube and the types of content that is most prevalent on the video sharing site. With that in mind, we have been paying more attention than ever to what is happening in this space. With the recent launch of the tools designed to cut out the improper use of copyrighted material, or at least offer copyright holders the opportunity to profit from the content's appearance on YouTube by offering ads, I fear that both fair use and the benefits to producers are getting lost in the process.
Let me explain what I mean. It has to do with what I feel is a very legitimate and fundamentally important aspect of YouTube: quoting. There is a substantial amount of copyrighted material on YouTube--of that, we can all surely agree. However, there is something fundamentally different about a segment from a show, a funny bit or a suspenseful bit, that is quoted in particular, versus the many people who post "last night's episode of X, Part I of V." One is trying to find the way around distribution; the other is about sharing a snippet of content that points back to the larger work, pointing to the proselytizing activities that are vital to a fan community and benefit both the fan sharing the link, those who click on the link, and the media company which the quote points back to.
Online TV Affects TV Viewing; It Affects It Not; It Affects It...
Alice Robison here at the Program in Comparative Media Studies alerted me last night to a short piece from TelevisionWeek's Daisy Whitney that viewing of online TV has doubled in the past year.
The study, which came from ad researchers TNS Media Intelligence, found that viewers cited most often a desire to avoid ads and the convenience of watching on-demand as reasons to move online. However, she writes, "While broadcast television ratings continue to decline, 80 percent of online viewers say watching shows online has not affected their viewing of traditional television."
Best and Worst Practice in Online Narrative Extensions
I wanted to respond this morning to a piece over at The Extratextuals, the blog which C3 alum Ivan Askwith has a 1/3 stake in. This was not from Ivan, but prolific Extratextual Jonathan Gray, who had a couple of notes of interest for me.
Gray reviews two NBC-related textual extensions of their show, a character blog from My Name Is Earl and the Dunder Mifflin site for The Office. His criticisms of each are both quite strong, as they include official NBC logos, advertisements for shows, ranking favorite characters, and a whole host of things that break the illusion that this is in any way part of the narrative world. I think his criticisms here are a lesson as to how to make these extratextual extensions more meaningful and part of creating an immersive story world, a sense of deeper engagement with the characters.
He asks for examples of really good Web sites, and there's one, bar none, that deserves all the credit: WWE.
It's retro marketing at its most direct, and since it is intended to appeal directly to my demographic, it fascinates me: it's NBC's plans for the return of American Gladiators. For those who don't remember the original, it was over-the-top television spectacle at its most ridiculous, often to the point of absurdity. Of course, it was coupled by many stations in syndication alongside professional wrestling content, hoping to appeal to the same demographic.
In the early-1990s, when I was in elementary school, I watched American Gladiators among my Saturday morning television favorites. Without the narrative development and greater story world of the World Wrestling Federation (now WWE), American Gladiators seemed to pale in comparison, but it served as an acceptable appetizer for wrestling content.
The future of online television continues to get brighter. Why? Not necessarily because any of the particular series that have launched are of such high quality that it will make a major difference. In fact, I'm trying to take a quality-agnostic approach here. I'm convinced rather by the proliferation of online video series. As the number of television series that launch online continues to skyrocket, the chance of online distribution becoming a viable market increases.
The learning curve requires industry innovation, an increase in quality, and viewer acclimation. The many online video series that have been launching in recent months encourage all of that. The first online video series are interesting just for their "gee-whiz-ness," the fact that they were an online video series being a novelty all their own. As these series become more commonplace, though, the industry begins to learn through trial and error what does and doesn't work, and series can no longer ride on that innovator wave, requiring the shows to have to stand on their artistic merit.
TV Sponsorship Model Becoming Increasingly Prevalent
Earlier today, I wrote about the new Live with Regis and Kelly promotion with Walgreens for a 3D episode on Halloween. In that case, Walgreens was not planned to circumvent the usual advertising for the show but rather to help promote and provide the glasses for 3D viewing for that special event. In many other cases, though, a sponsorship model increasingly means limited advertising for a show.
The latest to get some attention for moving toward a sponsorship model is Mad Men, the AMC series actually focusing on the advertising industry. The season finale of the critical hit show will be commercial-free branded as being brought to us by DirecTV.
As high-definitiion becomes increasingly ubiquitous, the new frontier of experimentation continues to be 3D TV. Whle sports organizations and networks have been the predominant experimenters with 3D technology and television content, the latest tinkerer looking to add a dimension to his show is one that American daytime audiences might know well: the shy TV producer at the sidelines, Michael Gelman.
Gelman is the not-so-behind-the-scenes executive producer of Live with Regis and Kelly, the daytime talk show featuring longtime TV personality Regis Philbin and Kelly Ripa, a daytime TV star in multiple genres. The 3D experiment will be featured as a stunt for Halloween. As longtime viewers of Live will know, Halloween has long been a featured episode on the show, stretching back to the days that it was Kathy Lee Gifford instead of Kelly Ripa.
This is more than just an experiment with 3D technology, though: it is also an experiment in sponsorship, as the special 3D Halloween episode will be brought to viewers by Walgreens pharmacy. As soon as the episode was planned, Disney-ABC went forward to find a sponsor willing to take part in playing 3D to the home viewing audience.
Jericho Fans in Waiting to See How Season Plays Out
When are we going to see the next chapter in the Jericho saga? As most of you know, Jericho was the CBS serial primetime drama cancelled at the end of last season that raised substantial fan outrage, which manifested itself in fans sending a large amount of peanuts to the CBS offices, among other things. CBS has decided to bring the series back for a seven-episode run in its second season. The only question is when that mini-season will run.
Jericho was planned as a replacement series once one of the newcomers to the CBS lineup fails, with the idea that it would launch after the first several weeks and give viewers either a chance to support the show for a longer run or to get a better resolution of the plot with seven episodes to wrap up lingering questions.
Around the Consortium: Fan Studies, Geeks, and Nielsen
It's a holiday here at MIT, so our C3 team is still scattered enjoying a long weekend, or else getting caught up on work. In the midst of the updates I've been doing this weekend on Futures of Entertainment 2, among other things, I wanted to note some of the most interesting work that has been occurring around the Consortium over the past week.
First, the Gender and Fan Studies discussion over at Henry Jenkins' blog continues, with the eighteenth round featuring Julie Levin Russo and Hector Postigo. The conversation, which covers issues such as labor, value, capitalism, the work of Tiziana Terranova, as well as "technology and control" and "ownership and desire," is available here and here. Those who are concerned with some of these issues might also be interested in the fan labor panel at our upcoming FoE2.
VOD's Business Model: Need for Advertiser Leadership?
Recently, I was reading a piece from MediaPost by Lydia Loizides, a friend of the Consortium's. Lydia was talking about video-on-demand and some of the problems inherent with the current deployment of VOD, particularly the myriad ways in which VOD advertising has been capitalized on so little.
She points out all the ways in which VOD needs to be revolutionized as a business and calls on the advertisers to be the one to make this happen, since they will drive the VOD business model as it matures. Lydia, who is VP of the new media division at Paradigm, writes, "I have been following VoD technology for close to ten years now, and I can honestly say that while the advances we have made in deployment should be applauded, the lack of technological enhancements that have been developed and adopted in order to grow this into a true revenue-generating business should be admonished."
You know we are in a phase of experimental marketing when audiences start debating whether or not something was meant to be an advertisement, or whether it was just an error.
The debate, of course, can be good or bad: when an ad runs consecutively, back-to-back, I've often found that it annoys consumers, at least from anecdotal evidence of hearing others talk when it happens, or conversations I've seen take place online. But I saw a new one a little while back.
I was reminded of it when I was going back to watch parts of a wrestling show from the end of August. It was Friday Night Smackdown, World Wrestling Entertainment's show on the CW Network, for Aug. 31. When the show first came on, I noticed something peculiar every time there was a black screen: a Wendy's watermark.
This past week, registration opened for our second annual Convergence Culture Consortium and Program in Comparative Media Studies (CMS) co-sponsored conference, Futures of Entertainment 2. More updates will be forthcoming over at the FoE2 Web site.
We will be including full speaker bios and headshots over the next few days for all the speakers on our various panels, among other things.
For more, see our last few posts, including our announcement of the conference, Henry Jenkins' notes on the conference, and a look back at the first event last year. However, word about FoE2 has been popping up elsewhere across the Web as well.
For those of you who may have been hearing recently about this year's Futures of Entertainment 2 conference (see the site here), but who may not have been able to attend last year's event, I wanted to go back into the archives and share more information about last year's event.
The site is still up, available here. As I noted back in August, there are audio and/or video podcasts up from the panels last year.
The Consortium is always interested in ARG-esque promotions for content, as regular readers of the blog and some of our other work know, and I am always keeping a close eye on the world of professional wrestling. That's why a recent WWE campaign caught my eye in particular. It has the fans talking and speculating about the potential impending return of one of the biggest wrestling stars of the last decade, "Y2J" Chris Jericho, or perhaps the impending return of "The Heartbreak Kid" Shawn Michaels, who was injured earlier this year.
Jericho, who took a sabbatical from wrestling in 2005, has not returned to the ring since. But a short clip that aired during World Wrestling Entertainment, starting a couple of weeks ago, has gotten people talking about his potential return. The video, available here and in various versions, features streaming numbers and letters, Matrix-style, with the only major repeated text being flashes of a message: "Save_us.222."
I've been writing about a variety of interesting online video series lately, that have been in one way or another labeled "online soaps." I want to make clear at the outset, though, that I don't personally agree with this definition, or at least would argue that the online soap would be considered a very different format than the daytime soap.
I've been thinking about these issues a lot lately, as Abigail Derecho and I are co-editing a collection of essays on the contemporary state of daytime serial drama. We have been thinking through questions about what does and does not count as soap opera. I've discussed this often with other friends and fellow soaps enthusiasts, like Lynn Liccardo, in the past, finding that there is danger in the conflation of daytime soaps and primetime soaps, even with the similarities.
The latest of these online soaps comes from the United Kingdom, originating with a study that has found that the desire to watch the romantic lives of soap stars often eclipse the romantic lives of the actual fans. Now, mind you, a condom maker commissioned this study.
Around C3: Askwith at the Producer's Guild and Interesting Writing from Consulting Researchers
Early this morning, I wanted to catch up on the C3 blog by directing readers' attention toward some interesting work that's been done by some C3 alum and consulting researchers recently.
C3 alum Ivan Askwith appeared on a panel about transmedia storytelling at the Producers Guild of America last Wednesday. Askwith, who now works for Big Spaceship, participated in a discussion called "Creating Blockbuster Worlds: Transmedia Development & Production," along with Starlight Runner's Jeff Gomez (who will be here for Futures of Entertainment 2); Kenneth N. Swezey from Cowan, DeBaets, Abrahams, & Sheppard LLP; and Jeremy Kagan from Publicis Modem. For more information, see Askwith's blog, The Extratextuals.
A lot of discussion focused on Second Life of late has been about the overhype--how the economic and cultural implications of late have exaggerated the impact that this space is having. I, however, take the same approach that Henry Jenkins has at times, noting that Second Life is interesting inasmuch as it is a testing ground for interesting behaviors. In short, it's an interesting place to study, even if it is not necessarily a major piece of the economic puzzle for the mainstream.
The latest example of interesting things happening in Second Life? See this post from Wagner James Au, who reports from Second Life, about labor union protests spilling over from the first life into this world. Workers who are part of the RSU Italian labor union are in a struggle with IBM, and the picketing and other protest behaviors have made their way into the virtual world.
It was an announcement we knew was in the works, but Nielsen has made public that it will be tripling the size of its ratings sample by that mythic year, 2011, in which the media industry is hanging all its hopes. (I say this because every projection I come across extends a forecast out to 2011.)
The announcement, made earlier this week, has seen Nielsen proclaim that their numbers will be much more precise now, since they will be based on 37,000 homes and 100,000 people, rather than the current 12,000 homes and 35,000 people that Nielsen says it uses today.
Among all the discussion about the television shows launching this season is a whole other series of programming launching this fall as well: new online series.
In the past couple of weeks, I have written about new online series like Crescent Heights, sponsored by Tide, and Quarterlife, the online television series from the creators of thirtysomething and My So-Called Life.
Now, there has been some buzz about another new online series, launched from NBC, called Coastal Dreams. According to the series' site, Coastal Dreams "is a new online-only drama featuring two young women living, working and playing in the scenic seaside town of Pacific Shores."
Discovery/Starcom Study Finds HD Ads Sigificantly More Successful
A new study that's been making its rounds finds that high-definition advertising content, at this stage, is a much more successful way to reach audiences.
The study, which was conducted in correlation with the upfront deal struck between the Discovery HD Theater channel and Starcom USA, found a lot of interesting points: that recall of brands was three times higher for HD users as compared to those watching commercials in standard-definition; that advertising was considered more enjoyable in HD; and that the "intent-to-purchase" was 55 percent higher comparing high-definition ads to standard-definition ads. The study looked at SD and HD viewers of Discovery programming and their ad recall rates.
The latest news coming out about an online series ties into writing we've been doing here at the Convergence Culture Consortium about online video, branded entertainment, and soap operas. Procter & Gamble's Tide brand will be the sponsor of a new broadband series through GoTV Networks, a 10-parter called Crescent Heights.
The series, written by Mike Martineau of Rescue Me fame (see this post relating to Jason Mittell's writing about the FX series and how he feels it serves as a hypermasculine soap opera), will be available not just through Tide's Web site but also through mobile providers as well.
Kentucky Weatherman Controversy Raises Issues About Privacy, Copyright, Context, and Information Traces
An event that got a lot of people talking over the past few weeks back in Kentucky, and elsewhere, have--for some people--brought up the somewhat unsavory side of online video, user-generated content, and issues of privacy and context. The weatherman and morning television personality for a local news station in Kentucky, WBKO-13, had a short video clip released of him, off-the-air, waiting for a segment on breast milk donors.
Chris Allen, the news personality, was standing at a screen, juxtaposed against a quite large illustration of the female figure, with the figure's breast next to him. Allen, in an attempt at humor toward his fellow colleagues, started feigning that he was suckling at the breast of the figure, and then reached out to do a grab, complete with "honk, honk" noises.
An interesting piece of self-reflection from The New York Times yesterday. For those of you who are interested in the newspaper business, or just interested readers of The Times, you may have already seen that the site has decided to release most of its archives from behind the pay wall.
I'm intrigued anytime a newspaper decides to report on itself, but this piece, by journalist Richard Perez-Pena, is particularly open about the business rationale behind the decision. Rather than try to hide behind the facade of a good-hearted wish to make the archive open to the masses of students, researchers, and interested citizens, the article highlights the real reason: making the archives available openly is simply more profitable for the Times than keeping them as gated content in a pay-per-view model.
The second part of our discussion yesterday with Joe Pine focused on his work with Gillmore on authenticity, which is part of a forthcoming book of his.
This discussion began with Pine describing the three aspects of a product that make people determine it to be inauthentic: the first would be in terms of popularity, in that products often become less authentic as they become more mainstream or taking into account mainstream interests; the second would be in terms of machine, as the lack of human crafting usually causes people to view a product as less authentic; and, finally, there is the aspect of money, in which the more lucrative a product is or the more the creation is perceived to be driven by profit, the less authentic it is.
Joe Pine of experience economy fame joined the C3 team and a few other interested folks for a discussion of his work yesterday afternoon, prior to his planned colloquium yesterday evening, for which the podcast will be available in the coming weeks. (Update: The podcast is now available here.)
C3 has encountered Joe's work on the experience economy in the past, although many of the arguments made there have become part of the ways in which may in the media industry think. On the other hand, Joe pointed out that, often, the problem was that the idea gets implemented in quite opposite ways in which it was intended.
For the next couple of posts, I thought I would share some observations based on our conversation yesterday, with this post focusing on our discussion of the experience economy, and the next one focusing on our discussion of authenticity, a subject which Pine and Gillmore are about to release a book on.
We're in the process of adding a blog roll here at the Consortium's site, primarily to highlight all of our alum, partners, and consulting researchers who have interesting blogs of their own. I link to relevant stories from them from time-to-time, but a recent C3 graduate now launching a blog of his own might have quite a few stories that will be of interest to C3 readers.
Ivan Askwith, who was until recently a graduate student researcher here, has just launched a new blog with Jonathan Gray, an assistant professor of communication and media studies at Fordham University in NYC, and Derek Johnson, a Ph.D. candidate in media in cultural studies at University of Wisconsin-Madison's Communication Arts Department. Askwith is a creative strategist at Big Spaceship in NYC, and he's going to be speaking on a panel at the Producer's Guild of America seminar on Sept. 26 called "Creating Blockbuster Worlds: Transmedia Development and Production." The blog is called The Extratextuals.
A few weeks ago, I got an e-mail from Pontus Bergdahi, the CEO of Swedish television measurement company MMS. Pontus, a regular reader of the C3 blog, wrote to say that his company had produced a study that might be of interest to our focus here at the Consortium. Unfortunately, the 100-pp. study is not available in English, but I got a chance to look through a summary of the findings, which revealed a few interesting trends.
For instance, the study emphasized above all else that viewers today are watching more television than ever, but it is complicated by the fact that there are a variety of new channels in which they are viewing. In a media environment which values views equally, without bias to which platform they are viewed on, the television industry is stronger than ever, then. As examples like the CBS/Jericho situation reveal, however, the system is not equipped to deal with views on video-on-demand, DVRs, online streaming, downloading or other sources equally, meaning that a viewer really does "count more" when watching on television at the regular time, than they do otherwise...Well, let me amend that: as long as they have a Nielsen box, that is.
The Disney Channel: Educating Children for a Transmediated World
The Disney Channel has provided an interesting case study throughout cable television history. From its early launch on cable in 1983, to its switch from a premium cable channel to a basic cable channel, to its continued reinventions and rebranding with each new generation of viewers, the outline provides yet another interesting form of study into one of the most important players in the entertainment and media industries, not just in the United States, but around the world.
In Disney TV, J.P. Telotte examines the history of Disney on television, particularly focusing on Walt Disney's early television shows and their relationship to the theme park. The book was required reading in Henry Jenkins' class on the media industries that I took back in 2005, and I found it to be a great model for an intense, narrowly focused, and concise take on a media company.
C3's Balance between Industry and the Academy: The Consortium in the Press
We mentioned this in our C3 Weekly Update that we sent out within the Consortium this week, but I wanted to draw the attention of the larger C3 community toward an interesting piece in the latest Chronicle of Higher Education, focusing on the Program in Comparative Media Studies here at MIT, and Dr. Henry Jenkins in particular. The piece, here, is one of the most detailed pieces that have been written on Henry, and there's some focus on C3 in particular as part of the piece.
SIGGART: Trying to Emphasize the Importance of Nimble UGC Campaigns
Last month, we got an e-mail from The Gold Group about an interesting project they had completed on behalf of SIGG Switzerland, which is an aluminum bottle manufacturer with its US offices based in Stamford, Conn., who are concerned about building their brand as being eco-conscious. The company solicited user-generated ideas, "crowdsourcing" a new design for their bottles. Based on the study, Gold wants to emphasize that the "wisdom of crowds" can generate interesting results, no matter which buzzword you use. The winning bottle design was produced and sold by the company.
A report that Jeff Greene, Executive Director of Client Services for the Gold Group, wrote, focused on the question, "Do social media outreach effects really produce word of mouth engagement? And, if they do, what are the most effective components of social media that should be incorporated into a campaign?"
Yesterday, I was walking into the lobby of Five Cambridge Center, where the Convergence Culture Consortium offices are located, when a newspaper on the front desk caught my eye. Now, the subscription to this Wall Street Journal was for one of my neighbors on another floor of the center, so I could only glance at the headline, but it involved two things of interest to me: our partner, MTV, and deodorant.
Of course, I guess deodorant is of the interest of many of the C3 readers, but I am particularly interested because of my fascination with the history of product placement, and particularly with the history of soaps and everyday items as product placement. Considering my interest in soap operas, I often emphasize the fact that this was a whole genre (or format, depending on your perspective) which was set up under the notion of product integration or branded entertainment, two phrases that have become quite the buzzwords for the industry.
Quarterlife and the Rise of the Online Video Series
What will be the impact of Quarterlife on the future of online video? It's hard to say, but one thing is for certain: the evolution of online video series continue to move forward. In short, the creators of My So-Called Life and thirtysomething, Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, are releasing a new television series on the Web, through MySpace. The show, which will debut on Nov. 11 and run for 18 weeks, with two new eight-minute episodes a week, will focus on a group of characters in their 20s.
Daisy Whitney at TelevisionWeekpoints out that this news is particularly relevant coming after the announcement from Warner Bros. Television Group for the production of 23 new series produced for online video, all short-form content. The business model will be through ad revenue sharing with MySpace.
The background for the show? It was originally a pilot for ABC, which was ultimately not picked up.
Jonathan's Story: Guiding Light's New Transmedia Project
A story that's been getting some press in the American daytime drama industry of late is over at Guiding Light, where the character Jonathan Randall returned for a short stint recently after having faked his death, along with his daughter's, in order to escape the domineering figure of Alan Spaulding, his daughter's great-grandfather.
A short-stint return of a popular character is always big news in daytime, but it's not particularly novel. What is perhaps more interesting is his return is yet another chance for daytime to experiment with the novel, quite literally, as Procter & Gamble Productions is promoting a book tie-in with Jonathan's return, with the upcoming release of Jonathan's Story through Simon and Schuster. See this post from A.C. Powers at The Soap Dispenser for more, and look here for more information on the character.
Catching Up: Net Neutrality, Online Video Ads, and Nielsen
In my efforts to play a little catchup tonight with a week that has largely gotten away from me, I wanted to catch up on a few developments on stories the Consortium has followed quite regularly here on the blog.
First, there is network neutrality. The latest comes from the Justice Department, which has written to the Federal Communications Commission with official comments opposing net neutrality. While, at the time Ira Teinowitz wrote her piece for TelevisionWeek, the FCC had received almost 28,000 comments on the issue, most of which supported net neutrality being upheld, the Justice Department said that neutrality "could in fact prevent, rather than promote, optimal investment and innovation in the Internet." The comments have sparked some controversy, and it's not yet clear whether the pressure from the Justice Department will have a significant effect on the FCC's decision-making process.
C3 Community: Jason Mittell on Canon and Tenure, Edery on Violence, Kozinets on Britney
Starting a large round of updates after a hectic week, I wanted to point the way tonight toward a variety of interesting pieces that has been published around the C3 community. There's been plenty of intellectual energy flowing across the Consortium's Consulting Researchers and Alum, so I wanted to point my way toward a few of the highlights from their recent writing.
A couple of pieces that really jumped out at me came from Jason Mittell's Just TV. Jason writes about the recently published list of the best 100 television shows of all-time, according to Time (look here). Jason muses about the use of these lists at all. The AFI's Top 100 Films in 1996 can be debated for its authenticity and credibility, but the truth is that it greatly influenced a generation of movie viewers as to what the "canon" would be. I know that I, along with a generation of my friends, waded through movie history with that list as a guide.
An Interview with the Organizers of Fandom Rocks (4 of 4)
This is the final part of a four-part interview with the creators of a fan-led grassroots movement to raise money for charities within the Supernatural fan community. I have been publishing my e-mail discussion with three organizers for the group: Dana Stodgel, Brande Ruiz, and Rebecca Mawhinney.
Sam: What has been the impact of using various social networking sites to help spread the word of Fandom Rocks?
Dana: Utilizing as many networking sites as we are familiar with has been important because we know each site has a subsection of the viewing audience. Some people participate in more than one site, but often there is a specific site you spend more time at than others. We wanted to make sure we were reaching as many Supernatural fans as possible. However, we know it is also important to reach fans away from networking sites - potential fans on other forums and especially offline. We have plenty of work ahead of us to reach new fans. Recently, a fan on the CW Lounge forum responded to my post that she hadn't heard of Fandom Rocks before that moment, despite my posting there three times prior. This showed me we still needed to work hard at spreading the news of Fandom Rocks if we were missing fans who participated regularly at the network's Web site.
An Interview with the Organizers of Fandom Rocks (3 of 4)
This is the third part of a four-part interview with the organizers of Fandom Rocks, a fan organized grassroots initiative within the Supernatural fan community which sponsors a variety of charities. This interview is conducted with three organizers for the group, Dana Stodgel, Brande Ruiz, and Rebecca Mawhinney.
Sam: What activities have you all engaged with so far?
Dana: We just completed our first campaign. Just over $2,000 was raised via fan donations and Cafe Press purchases. I traveled to Lawrence to visit the community shelter and give them our donation in person. While there, I also visited the soup kitchen across the street where shelter guests often receive their meals if the shelter is not serving. I also visited the humane society anticipating they would be one of the charities fans chose for the next campaign.
An Interview with the Organizers of Fandom Rocks (2 of 4)
This is the second part of an interview with Dana Stodgel, Brande Ruiz, and Rebecca Mawhinney, the three creators of Fandom Rocks, a fan-led organization from the Supernatural fan community dedicated to raising money for charities.
Sam: Why Supernatural? What is it about this show and this fandom in particular that encourages this type of initiative?
Dana: I think Supernatural falls into that category of show where it has an extremely loyal fan following, but it is on a lesser-known network with an imminent threat of cancellation. Fans want to keep their show, but they also want other people to learn about it and enjoy it as much as they do. Starting campaigns for charity accomplishes the goal of making more potential viewers aware of Supernatural, and it has the added benefit of making a difference in the world. It shows the "offline" world that online communities are formed by caring, intelligent individuals, much like themselves.
An Interview with the Organizers of Fandom Rocks (1 of 4)
A few weeks ago, I received an e-mail from Dana Stodgel, representing an interesting group called "Fandom Rocks," which Stodgel described as "a fan-created initiative to support charities and raise interest in the CW show Supernatural." She thought that the work they were doing might be of interest to the type of issues we look into here at the Convergence Culture Consortium.
As I examined the work of Fandom Rocks further through their Web site, I thought that the best approach might just be to do a multi-part interview with the organizers of Fandom Rocks here on the C3 blog, to get a better idea of the work they do, what motivates them, and how the activities a group like Fandom Rocks participate in can be understood in relation to the show, the network, the fan community, and the charities they work with.
This interview is conducted with Stodgel, Brande Ruiz, and Rebecca Mawhinney.
Sam: What are each of your backgrounds, both in relation to the fan community, the network, and the pro-social purpose of Fandom Rocks?
Dana: I am a fairly quiet member of the fan community, contributing mostly to discussions with fellow fans on LiveJournal and some graphics. I do not have any connection to the CW network. As for the pro-social purpose of Fandom Rocks, I have been involved in other fandom charity events and participated as a volunteer and fundraiser for organizations offline as well, so it was another opportunity to give back.
IBM Internet Survey Finds Respondents Spend a Lot of Time Online
Language can be an interesting thing. And an important one when you are talking about issues like consumer adoption. You know that we're interested in these issues at C3, and that I am a proponent for looking and preparing for the future. But I also believe a healthy dose of realism is good as well, and the hyperbole and overhype has saturated our discussion of technological point to the degree that even the most culturally savvy border on mild forms of technological determinism when they aren't careful.
Related to all of this, I was reading an IBM press release recently that touted the decline of television as the primary media device in the home, boasting that "the global findings overwhelmingly suggest personal Internet time rivals TV time."
We just finished our first week of meeting and getting to know our new team of graduate students here at the Convergence Culture Consortium, and I wanted to take a few minutes tonight to share information about them with the larger community of C3 readers.
As you all know, Geoffrey Long, Ivan Askwith, and Alec Austin have now moved on to their new jobs. Geoff is now communications director for the Program in Comparative Media Studies, while Ivan Askwith works for Big Spaceship and Alec Austin just took a job with EA in Los Angeles.
Eleanor Baird, a student with the MIT Sloan School of Management, remains a part of the C3 team, and she is joined by three new and exciting graduate students in the Program in Comparative Media Studies: Ana Domb Krauskopf, Xiaochang Li, and Lauren Silberman. As part of their duties with C3, the three of them will begin blogging on a weekly basis here on the C3 blog, so we look forward to bringing their perspectives into the Consortium.
As we have mentioned a few times here on the blog, C3 has been been paying special attention to social networking sites in the past several months. That work has spilled over here on the blog in a variety of ways, looking both at the business models and deals struck around the business models for these sites, and perhaps even more interestingly, the types of behaviors that take place in these online communities.
For me, it is key to distinguish between Facebook the company and site, and Facebook the community of people, just as it is for MySpace, or even sites like YouTube. Especially when lawsuits and accusations start getting thrown around, precision of language matters, as squabbles between corporate parent entities often instead seem to be conversations that show disdain for the community of users who inhabit and empower these sites.
In my mind, it is crucial to realize that these sites mean nothing without the people on them, and that any discussion of the brand equity of a YouTube or MySpace has to be tempered with the realization that it is directly the users who provide that value and who control the continued vitality of these sites.
Catching Up on C3 Stories: Micropayments, YouTube, and the Digital Deadline
There have also been a variety of stories floating around of late that are of direct interest to issues we write about regularly or have covered in the past here on the C3 blog. I thought I might also point out some quick updates to those stories.
First, Dan Mitchell had an interesting piece in the New York Times about the current state of micropayments, pointing out how "closed loop" micropayment systems like iTunes have been most successful and looking at issues of how systems like AdSense are based on the concept of micropayments. Thanks to Lynn Liccardo for bringing the article to my attention.
For those of you who may have followed our coverage here on the blog for a while now, you'll know that we spent quite a bit of time discussing these issues in our earlier days. Look, for instance, at this post from C3 Alum Alec Austin in December 2005, looking at Xbox Live Arcade's use of "Microsoft Points." He wrote, "Microsoft Points may well be the first step towards a viable and widespread micropayment system, as imagined by Scott McCloud."
C3 Team: New Students, Fan Studies, Consumption Studies, and Collective Intelligence
We're having a busy week launching a new academic year here in the Program in Comparative Media Studies at MIT. Since we haven't had any new updates since Monday, I wanted to point out a few interesting things going on around the larger Convergence Culture Consortium community this week.
First of all, we have three new and enterprising graduate students joining our research team: Ana Domb Krauskopf, Xiaochang Li, and Lauren Silberman. We will introduce each of these three students with a note both about their backgrounds and the issues they are most interested in over the next few days here on the C3 blog.
Looking Back at C3 Work--Interviews and Other Series
My final post today will look at some of the more extended work of others here at the C3 blog over the past year, as well as interviews with some interesting folks doing work of interest to the Convergence Culture Consortium. As we wrap up this look at the Consortium's work in the blog over the past year in preview of a new academic year here at the Program in Comparative Media Studies at MIT, I wanted to highlight some series worth looking back at.
Here at the blog, we have completed four series of interviews over the summer. Look back at interviews with:
Bruce Leichtman, a researcher on media consumer behaviors and the adoption of new technologies, took part in a four-part interview with C3. (part onepart twopart threepart four)
I wanted to finish up my Labor Day posts here on the C3 blog highlighting some of the C3 team's work from the past academic year by looking at some of the multi-part series, interviews, and other longer pieces of writing that have appeared here in the past year. In this post, I'm going to note some of the series I have published in the past year, followed by another post detailing some of the series from others on the C3 team, as well as various interviews with interesting personalities we have published in the past few months.
First, I want to note some essays I have published based on my thesis work, which has focused on soap operas. Back in May, some work from my thesis appeared on Henry Jenkins' blog, and I also published it here on the C3 blog. (part one and part two) This research focuses on worlds which facilitates vast narratives, the kind that has so much official content that it requires the collective intelligence of a fan community to fully make sense of. The case studies here are of soap operas, pro wrestling, and comic books.
My final post today looking at some overall posts from the past academic year as we embark on a new year here at MIT with a new team of graduate students on board for the Convergence Culture Consortium focuses on some of the C3 work published here on the blog this summer. As many of you who are familiar with our work know, we both do proprietary research that is shared internally within the Consortium before it is published otherwise but also view the blog and other outreach programs, such as the Futures of Entertainment conference, as a way to engage on a larger basis with the many people who are interested in these questions.
With that in mind, here are a few more posts from the summer. I will follow this up later today with a couple of posts highlighting some essays and interviews we have run here on the C3 blog in the past year as well.
Go Ahead...Google Yourself Sam Ford brings up not only the C3 analyst but a news anchor, a porn star, and a sex offender. What other versions of you do you now have to contend with?
To follow up on my post from earlier today, I wanted to point out a few more interesting posts from the C3 blog, these all coming from the first part of 2007, through spring semester.
In honor of Labor Day, and the start of a new academic year her at MIT when classes begin later this week, I thought it might be good today to point to some of the work that has been written here on the Convergence Culture Consortium blog here in the past year.
In this post, I wanted to highlight some of posts from the 2006 fall semester here on the C3 blog that might still be of interest to some of our readers, especially those who might not have been reading at this time last year.
Can People Steal the Word? Christianity and the File-Sharing Debate Should Christian artists be worried about copyright management and cuts in their income or rather should they rejoice at the word getting spread to that many more people? Is it a sin to pass along Christian content for free or rather the obligation of Christian listeners/viewers?
AOL Truveo Developing a Reputation in Online Video Search
As the growth in online video proliferates, despite some people's unsatisfactory experiences with downloading as mentioned here, video search becomes a more and more important function. With powerhouses like Google providing less-than-satisfactory results for video search, there is a gap in the field that several companies have been looking to fill.
Of late, most of the attention has been going to AOL's Truveo. Truveo, which has been powering a variety of online video sites with search functions, has now relaunched as its own more boldly branded site, hoping to fill the dearth of reliable online video search options by putting greater emphasis on its presence in online video search.
Survey Says Downloading Video an Unsatisfactory Experience
Sure it's cool, but will the general population do it? That's the question that a recent survey asked about consumption of online video. And this particular study found that a wide variety of those who said they had downloaded online video didn't really plan to do it again in the future.
According to the Parks Associates study, only one out of every five Americans who have downloaded video plan to do it again, according to their sample. Their analysis points to the fact that there are a lot of technological barriers in place that impede viewers from getting an enjoyable experience from online video. The lag in download time, lower-quality video, smaller screen sizes for those who don't have the technology to easily transport the video to their television sets, selection of what's commercially available, and a variety of other issues are among the problems people have with online video.
There are a variety of issues to keep in mind. Internet connection is a major one. I don't have details on Parks Associates' study, but one would think that a study of places in which higher-speed Internet connectivity is less prevalent probably makes those who have tried downloading video particularly frustrated.
YouTube Creates New Ad Models as Viacom Woes Move Forward
A little bit of interesting wrap-up on the YouTube front as well, based on some unfolding stories throughout the month. I was interested in the continuing fallout from the Viacom/Google lawsuit based around YouTube, as I've blogged about several times.
When I first wrote about the topic, I was concerned with the ways in which the community of YouTube was getting lost in the corporate structure for the business model as the lawsuit moved on, with no distinguishing between YouTube the group of users and YouTube the business. I wrote, "What's missing is the fact that YouTube is not the entity posting this content--it's the fans, fans who see quoting from these shows and sharing their favorite moments with each other as part of expressing their love for these programs." See more here, here, and here.
Those who follow the blog even with casual interest probably know that the world of soap opera is the site of a significant amount of my research and writing. I'm currently in the early stages of preparing a course here at MIT in the spring on soap operas, and my Master's thesis work was on the subject as well.
I'm also really interested in the topic of surplus audiences, those that rest outside the "target demographic" but who still create a valid and significant audience portion. The fact that pro wrestling is sometimes among the most popular content for young adult women, according to some numbers I've seen, or that 25 percent of gamers are over 50, as I wrote about earlier today, are key examples of this.
Perhaps most interesting to me, then, is male soap opera fans, a group I fit into. There are many male soap opera fans, and that's nothing new, but soaps have always been about the 18-49 female demo. Some have gone so far as to say that anyone else simply doesn't matter or doesn't exist, since that's not who shows are selling to advertisers.
Another piece that I wanted to make it a point to respond to in my flurry of blog updates today comes from Steven Lipscomb. For those of you not familiar with Lipscomb, he is the founder, CEO, and Director of the World Poker Tour, whose content my friend John Morris is addicted to, including buying it on PPV.
Lipscomb wrote a recent commentary on the TelevisionWeek blog, pointing out how China demonstrates the future of capitalism because it enforces the rules of the market better than the United States.
The paragraph that caught my eye in particular? "Free market advocates should agree with this proposition. Either we abandon things like copyright ownership entirely... or we enforce it. Today we have a system that rewards the cheaters and discourages ethical behavior. That simply cannot be the capitalist system we desire."
Geoffrey Long sent me a link not too long ago to a really interesting post from Jeffrey Zeldman, a designer and writer. The point? What he calls "externally located" content.
Really, much of what C3 writes about is "externally located content." We are interested in the ways in which technology has allowed for and new conceptions of the audience have acknowledged that viewers can make quite deep connections for and with their content, that the linking among cultural content provides much of its value.
Of course, the blogosphere is the best illustration os this viewpoint, in which value is gained simply by being able to call easy reference to a wealth of prior material. And this leads to a wide variety of content which is purposefully culturally located, fixing to particular ideas and sensibility of the time.
Is there a male bias in the blogosphere? Many people would say that, when looking at political blogs in particular, that question would be akin to wondering whether there is any evidence of global warming or not.
There was an interesting Boston Globe commentary that my thesis advisor Lynn Liccardo sent to me earlier this month, about how the vast majority of political bloggers--especially the prominent ones--were male. She was interested in knowing what Henry and I thought, if we had seen the article, since so much of our work deals on participatory culture and the way that new technologies are changing dynamics.
But I think these are very real issues to discuss. The piece, by Ellen Goodman, posits a variety of possibilities: that males interested in politics have entrenched networks that help them get more visibility, more gigs in the traditional media, etc.
More news has surfaced regarding the move of professional wrestling to high-definition, something that has interested me and that I've written about here a few times in the past few months.
World Wrestling Entertainment has been among the top rated shows on the three channels that its three brands air: USA Network, the Sci Fi Channel, and The CW Network. The company has been toying with a transfer to high-definition for some time, but this culminated with the decision by the CW Network to move to broadcasting in all HD.
At first, it looked as if wrestling would be left out of the picture. As Richard Lawler writes, the CW announced that all its other shows would be going HD at the launch of the new TV season, aside from its Friday evening wrestling programming.
However, word is circulating now that WWE will make the transition to high-definition in January.
As some blog readers may know and those within C3 who follow my work more in-depth, I am quite interested in surplus audiences. For anyone interested in my thesis work on soap opera fandom, you will see that come out even more. (A copy of my thesis is available here; thanks for the plug, Boing Boing.)
My work has focused in the past on female fans of professional wrestling, for instance, or in my thesis work on male viewers of soaps, or viewers over the age of the target demographic. No matter what the lies of target demos might tell us, these people still add significant value to the properties and often are engaged consumers/fans.
C3 Alum Geoffrey Long sent me this piece a little while back on Wii players 50 and older.
In trying to push forward with some much-needed updates to the blog this week, something else caught my eye: Kimberly D. Williams' in-depth article from Advertising Age on the season finale of Lonelygirl. The article is not openly available from Ad Age, but TelevisionWeek has the story available here.
Don't click on the article, though, if you don't want to read spoilers, because they give away a pretty big chunk of information on the online video series. Guess they aren't quite as sensitive to the spoiler issues we've been discussing here recently. If you missed it, see our posting from last month on the Harry Potter book spoiler controversy here and here.
Looks like we've made one step forward in the planned digital deadline, the switch from analog broadcasting signals to digital television broadcasting in February 2009. That comes with the recent naming of IBM as the outsourced group in control of the coupon program the federal government will institute to help pay for converter boxes which will translate digital signals to be read by the analog televisions.
According to Ira Teinowitz's recent report on the decision, the National Telecommunications Information Administration awarded "IBM a contract worth up to $120 million. IBM will design a Web site, phone center and fulfillment procedures to track the issuing and redemption of the $40 coupons the government is offering to households without cable."
The converter boxes are expected to cost a maximum of $70, while the coupons will be for $40 off.
Checking Out Their Alibis: Do Viewers Remember What They've Seen?
Sometimes, you have news you just really don't want to report. That's probably how Nielsen feels about its engagement panel. In short, Nielsen was interviewing folks who formerly participated as Nielsen households about their television viewing. When news started circulating about the Nielsen engagement panel earlier this month, the result was that a great number of the 918 people they had interviewed so far not only couldn't name advertising they had seen while serving as a Nielsen household but television programs as well.
According to a story from MediaPost's MediaDailyNews by Joe Mandese, only a third of those interviewed could recall a television commercial, and 21 percent of viewers could not "correctly recall" at least one TV show they had viewed. The reason it is titled "correctly" is that the interviews were then compared to their viewer data, as some of those who named a show they had watched had not--in fact--watched it, or at least not in their home on a television being monitored by Nielsen. They are going to be comparing those who claim they could remember a commercial with the commercials they actually watched from the Nielsen tracking data.
MTVN, Second-by-Second Measurement, and Accountability
A few interesting stories have came out in the past couple of weeks relating to shifting advertising structures. First, for those who love the idea of quantifying things down to the nth degree, you might be interested in the story that circulated earlier this month about MTVN's decision to break viewership down to "second-by-second" measurement.
As you all know, MTV Networks is a partner in the Convergence Culture Consortium, so we like to think that might be evidence that they are interested in reconceptualizing the way the industry works, since much of the work we do is about understanding new ways of organizing the system, new ways to tell stories, and new ways to understand, interact with, and respect viewers. Second-by-second measurements are intended to create really deep ways of understanding viewership patterns, partiuclarly during advertising breaks.
Tomorrow, Eleanor Baird will be providing an in-depth look at NBC's current repositioning of its online content, through its launch of the New Site venture in particular. I wanted to preface that earlier today by pointing toward what we've written about previously regarding New Site, as well as pointing out another new venture launched by NBC that has been getting some press lately.
That new venture is an online channel made up entirely of advertising, where the ads are not just something to support the content, but content themselves. Our partners over at Turner Broadcasting were trendsetters in this regard, with their channel focuses particularly on humorous commercials called Very Funny Ads.
C3 Updates: Flash Gordon, ATWT Inturn, and Ten Day Take
Hope the C3 readers got something valuable out of the interview with Parry Aftab. It's Wednesday morning now, and I wanted to update everyone on a few extensions of issues we've been following here at the C3 blog over the past year.
1.) Flash Gordon. I first wrote about Flash Gordon in a post from January on fan communities based on historical comic strips, such as Dick Tracy and Flash Gordon, as well as the historical Yellow Kid of much older fame. Some fans wrote in response to me, questioning whether Tracy and Gordon could really be considered historical properties, and the scope of this changed when I learned through Warren Ellis' blog that Sci Fi was planning on making a television movie featuring Gordon.
This is the final part of the four-part series featuring an interview with WiredSafety's Parry Aftab.
Sam Ford: If the government's involvement is limited, what are your views on how to manage self-regulation?
Parry Aftab: The industry needs to do a lot of self-regulation because they have the power to respond quickly and create standards that will be enforced. Further, they should want to, because their insurance and banks and venture capitalists will expect them to answer to these questions when these social networking companies start getting popular. That's just good business to be prepared for these safety issues. Whenever the business environment require the companies involved to be smarter and more careful, I am always for self-regulations. I think MySpace had the best of intentions, and we worked with them for free. A lot of people are safer because we did that. The key to keep in mind is that these companies, for the most part, will do the right thing and the safe thing. No one wants to have something terrible happen through their site, and the people who work for these companies are often parents themselves, and we've all been kids ourselves once. A lot of what needs to be done for safety really are simple things these companies can do, simpler than many people think.
This is the third part of a four-part series with Parry Aftab, the Executive Director of the WiredSafety organization.
Sam Ford: Are you still working with MySpace?
Parry Aftab: When Rupert Murdoch took over MySpace, everything was put on hold with everyone for about 10 months while they were tring to figure out what to do. I personally wasn't very pleased with the company's responsiveness once Murdoch took over. I work with MySpace still, but we don't work with them in the same way we had before. They've hired their own lawyers now, and they are working with all the politically correct groups to work with. No one is embedded with them like we were in those days, but our mark is still there.
This is the second part of an interview with Parry Aftab, Executive Director of WiredSafety, an organization which focuses on safety issues related to children on the Internet and particularly on social networks.
Sam Ford: Tell us about what has now grown into WiredSafety and the work that you all do.
Parry Aftab: We are a network of 12,000 unpaid volunteers from 76 countries around the world. We have no offices; we operate virtually. None of us are paid a dime, including me. And we all come together to do different aspects of the job. I had personally been interested in Internet safety before I saw the picture of the little girl. I had gotten involved in writing a book on Internet safety and also did a piece on CNN. At the time, my argument was that you could protect children on the Internet, but it requires a little more of a thoughtful response and not knee-jerk reactions to just shut the technologies down. I self-published a book on these issues that ended up becoming a bible on Internet safety for some called A Parent's Guide to the Internet.
My early days were spent working to protect the Internet to well-meaning people, some of them in Congress, who were interested in curtailing or even shutting down the Internet. When I saw that image, though, I went from working primarily on protecting the Internet to protecting children from horrible things, such as online child pornography, cyber bullying, and a range of other issues. My work focused on trying to keep children from being sexually exploited and trafficked online, for instance.
Over the next few posts, I want to present an interview I conducted over the weekend with Parry Aftab, a leader in Internet safety movements for children who heads up the WiredSafety volunteer organization. Aftab, a lawyer, has worked with a variety of companies--including MySpace--to help develop their strategies on how to develop child safety protections and privacy settings while still maintaining as many of the features of the network as possible.
I first got introduced to Parry through a New York Times story by Brad Stone, in which she was quoted as saying that no good could come of children using Webcams. At the time, I wrote, "The problem is that people go to these extremes when discussing the issue. It has to be all bad because of child safety fears, with no balancing discussion of the many ways high schoolers could use tools such as video chat and Webcams."
Later, I received comments here on the blog from Aftab, in a post on DOPA that was part of my Access vs. Censorship series.
As many of you know, we have been doing a significant amount of research here at the consortium recently in regard to social networking. While some of this has ben for a white paper shared internally in the consortium, our musing on social networks has appeared multiple times here on the blog in the past several months (see here, for instance).
Tied into those comments on social networking, though, are questions regarding social marketing, especially as we think about how brands co-exist in these online spaces. There are always a variety of opinions on what this means for users, what the correct balance between marketing and a lack of commercialism is, and...on the business side...what constitutes a worthwhile investment and what does not.
The Convergence Culture Consortium, in conjunction with the Program in Comparative Media Studies at MIT, will host their second annual MIT Futures of Entertainment conference on Friday, Nov. 16, and Saturday, Nov. 17, on the campus of MIT in Cambridge, Mass.
The Problems with Measuring Reputation in the PR Industry
I've had the pleasure of being connected recently to some intelligent folks over at Peppercom, a public relations company that serves a variety of interesting clients, from The Columbia School of Journalism to Netflix to Panasonic to Tyco.
Ed Moed, who is one of the co-founders of Peppercom, wrote a piece recently about the public relations industry, focusing on the dangers of the way quantitative metrics are understood for measuring corporate reputations in the public relations industry.
Considering all that we've been writing lately about metrics in relation to the Nielsens, engagement, and both the television industry and the success of Web advertising (look here), I found his perspective on the dangerous assumptions always backing what are accepted as "hard numbers" to be illuminating.
In short, he looks at a recent study which measure company reputations on the basis of the amount of positive press that company has received. Ed's point, however, is that articles touting the release of some new product or service doesn't necessarily mean that readers, or the media itself, views those companies positively, just that they gave them some positive coverage.
People Are Consuming Less Media? But What Does That Mean?
A new study finds that consumers are spending .5 percent less time annually with media this year than one year ago. But what does that mean?
The study won't really tell you definitively. It was from Veronis Suhler Stevenson, who did provide their hypotheses about it--that it was due to digital alternatives taking less time than traditional media and therefore being quicker. It would be interesting to know more about what is and is not considered media, and about what people who would report a declining time spent on media were spending that time on instead...After all, with a finite amount of time in the world, the question is where that time goes to instead.
The study also found, however, that media usage has grown 3.2 percent at work, which also makes sense in relation to a continuing rise in time spent consuming online media. While watching television or listening to the radio while working might be a little more difficult, there's something more private (and easier to hide, if your job requires you hide it) about consuming media online, and being able to look at media in conjunction with work, with multiple windows open on the screen. (That spreadsheet, of course, to pop up when a supervisor walks by.)
CBS' Schizophrenic Response to the Jericho Situation
Seems like CBS has been sending a lot of mixed messages lately. Or else just demonstrating the confused nature across the television landscape. CBS is just a particularly good example, given all the fervor surrounding the cancellation, then renewal of Jericho. (See Nancy Baym's following of the Jericho phenomenon; I link to her here and here.
I've been e-mailing with Lynn Liccardo lately, who pointed out an interesting distinction in the CBS timeline. It was back on June 07 when CBS Entertainment President Nina Tassler told The New York Times, "We want them to watch on Wednesday at 8 o'clock, and we need them to recruit viewers who are going to watch the broadcast."
For those who are interested in the mixing of brand planning and content distribution, brand exemplar Harley-Davidson shows once again how to make open content a meaningful part of the brand experience and to engage proselytism in the process.
It all hinges around the big bike rally in Sturgis, which--despite my uber-masculine lifestyle--I had forgotten was even coming up until a storyline on As the World Turns saw a kidnapping plot move toward Sturgis, as the kidnappers might be headed to the big bike rally.
Of course I should have remembered that this time of year equalled Sturgis from those terrible Road Wild pay-per-view wrestling events that WCW used to put on, held live from Sturgis and featuring a crowd full of bikers who both didn't pay to be there and didn't really have any product knowledge...Oh, and the 1998 Road Wild was one of the worst PPV events I've ever seen, especially with Jay Leno in the main event.
But that's a tangent. My point is that, while WCW didn't seem to get anything about Sturgis culture at all, Harley-Davidson has found another way to tap into that American cultural milestone in a way that meaningfully extends its brand.
Harley created a gadget that can be incorporated onto anyone's Web site that both featured a live feed from Sturgis, with the window branded by Harley-Davidson, as well as a variety of packaged videos from the motorcycle rally as well.
Another Proposed Metric: Tabulating Engagement Online
And there's yet another way to measure the value of viewers online, tied into the magic industry word of the year: engagement.
The prize goes to WebTrends, the analytics firm which has created a tabulation method that can give you a score on the spot for a specific visitor. That's right, the qualitative processes of engagements can just be narrowed down to a simple metric that you can add up.
While the sarcasm here is directed at how misguided this intense obsession with making everything boil down to some simple number, there are some important points...the site tracks how deep they go into the site, weighting various pages on the site depending on how engaged with the content you are likely to be to view them. More time spent on these pages might help weed out those who are on the phone or involved in other activities while they are on the site.
FCC Preparing to Educate Public on Digital Deadline
The FCC is moving forward on finding ways to educate the public about the coming digital deadline, the Feb. 17, 2009, date when over-the-air analog broadcasts will be replaced by digital. For a number of Americans who only have analog television sets and no cable or satellite subscription, this will be a pivotal date without a digital-to-analog converter box or a new digital television, since they will no longer be able to watch TV.
Of course, this only comes after a wide variety of folks have criticized the government and the industry for not doing enough to inform Americans about such a big change being well under two years away. In response, the FCC has finally laid out a number of ideas, including public service announcements, notices that come with new television sets, and inserts in cable bills. However, although a digital deadline has been discussed for some time, a great number of Americans don't seem to know about the digital deadline.
Skype/Metacafe Deal Expands Video Sharing Site's Reach
VIdeo sharing site Metacafe has made the news in the past week by striking a deal with Skype to provide its videos to Skype users, integrated in the newest Skype launch. Among the features are options to allow users to include a video in a chat or as part of their profile. There is also a deal in place for Dailymotion.
What does this mean? It's the latest in a continuing number of cross-platform distribution deals, as more and more it is online channels finding an increasing number of avenues to promote their content. Metacafe, in its effort to be more than just a one-stop destination for Web videos, is trying to extend the Metacafe reach outward, and that includes syndicating into programs like Skype that are becoming more and more mainstream for broadband Internet users.
Gender and Fan Studies, Facebook, and The Death of Marketing
Over the weekend, I thought it might be helpful to point the way to a few recent posts from the blogs of some C3 Consulting Researchers and corporate partners.
First, the ninth round of Henry Jenkins' continuing Gender and Fan Studies series posted late this past week. This round features Cynthia Walker and Derek Kompare. It can be found here and here.
I continue to do a lot of thinking about virtual networks and how they are transforming social and professional relationships, as I've written about several times here on the C3 blog. For instance, see my post from back in June on personal questions on maintaining personal relationships raised by social networks.
That takes me to this interesting post from the Idea City blog from our partners over at GSD&M. This focuses on how Facebook is being heralded as the next big breakout star of online networks, based particularly on its surge of popularity since going public and away from high school and college registration.
The Importance of News Brands in a Convergence Culture
Earlier today, I was on a conference call espousing about how important a reminder it is to temper all this discussion about a transformation of journalism with the realization that the brand names of the most respected news, magazine, and industry publications still carry a lot of cultural cache, whether we want to proclaim the era of print as dead or not.
This was all driven by the news from a few news outlets recently that Second Life was losing steam and that it wasn't the business opportunity some thought it was. I wrote about those issues earlier today.
But this has been a longheld debate, whether it is Axel Bruns in Gatewatching or Dan Gillmor and his book, We the Media. I agree with both that there is something transformational in involving the collective intelligence of everyone by getting them involved with the news-gathering and reporting process and that it leads to a better information in the process. There has always been something a little murky about the intense "professionalization" of journalism, and it seems that the credentials of being a good journalism means that "the proof is in the pudding," so to speak. If we are to believe in a system where the best writing rises to the top, anyway, doesn't this mean that credibility still has to be gained on a micro-level, even in a much more decentralized news world?
Second Life and the Dangers of the Expectations of Immediate Profitability
For those of you who have been following discussions here at the Convergence Culture Consortium for some time, you know that we've been thinking about Second Life in one way or another for a while. In fact, folks throughout MIT have been. Our recent conference Media in Transition 5 took place in Second Life, for instance. And then there was the three-way Second Life between Henry Jenkins, Beth Coleman, and Clay Shirky. Clay brings up some of the questions about the validity of Second Life that have been raised more broadly in the press recently, while the CMSers look at the use of Second Life through all the "overhype."
Be sure to read this piece from Paul Hemp at Harvard. Paul has spoken at our internal retreat here before and is a very keen thinker in this space.
Daytime and Primetime Serial Dramas: The Question of Complexity
One final post for the day. I have been meaning to post links to the latest two rounds in Henry Jenkins' fan studies and gender discussions, and I also wanted to respond to some detailed comments from Jason Mittell over at his blog, Just TV. Jason is one of our consulting researchers here in the consortium.
First, see the posts and debate surrounding a round of posts from Kristina Busse and Cornel Sandvoss here and here.
This week's posts are from Abigail Derecho and Christian McCrea, here and here.
The first round of Abigail and Christian's debate brought up a lot of issues about soap operas and pro wrestling and other massive narratives which exist on the "margins" of popular culture, which of course got me particularly interested in the discussion. Be sure to look through the comments there for more.
Mittell's post on these issues particularly interested me, as he addresses his own works on narrative complexity in primetime television. I have often credited Jason with being one of the few scholars who does not try and hide the ties to daytime serial drama that primetime complexity has, but some in a recent conversation criticized his essay for not going very in-depth with that connection. He brings up quite a valid point in his blog--that many scholars have pointed out that it's hard to understand soaps from the outside and that it's best not to try and analyze them without intimate knowledge of them. Of course, that makes folks who aren't looking particularly at soaps at a loss for how to cover them, since many of their visual and storytelling markers have been so stereotyped, and are often misunderstood.
Producers, Writers, and Advertisers Harmed by the Hype
How is the hype and bluster surrounding "branded entertainment," "transmedia storytelling," and "product placement" endangering real and meaningful developments in actually making these concepts a real part of the industry?
People who read our blog here regularly know that we are quite keen on these concepts. But, of course, we come at it primarily from a fan-centered perspective, and that fannishness has a lot to do with artistry as well. We are excited to know about how product placement might help escape from the confines of the simple-minded advertising models currently in place; how transmedia storytelling might help media properties better tell their stories without the confines of a particular medium; and so on.
But the over-hyping of some of these ideas cause great problems. See Wayne Friedman's take on product placement. He talks with producers about product integration, and he points out that many of them are sour on it? Why? Because of the instant desire of the industry to turn everything into a stream. You can't just have something appear on a show; it has to take over the show. We still haven't tackled the art of subtlety. And if you can't make a quick and simple metric out of it, what use is it?
Followups on Coverage of Gambling, Viacom, Decency, and Fairness
I wanted to spend a few minutes this afternoon going through some recent news that provides updates for issues I have written about continually here on the blog. These include the Second Life gambling issues, the Viacom/YouTube case, and the indecency and Fairness Doctrine bills currently making their way through Congress.
1.) Gambling in Second Life. Word has officially been released that Second Life has shut down gambling inside the virtual world. I found out about it from Raph Koster's blog, as the new policy was released through the Second Life blog. The blog's Robin Linden writes that, even though there is no official gambling service in Second Life, they are still required to operate under governmental laws that regulate online gambling.
Users on Raph's blog debate issues such as whether poker is a game of chance, whether Second Life is better off or not with the gambling gone, and what this might mean for SL longterm, especially if the door for government intrusion stays open.
Hotswap Launches: Questions About Long-Term Success
I was reading about the latest Web video start-up, Hotstwap, recently. Dane Hamilton's Reuters article focuses on the people behind the process, the connection to big money behind the little startup. With co-founders of Apple and Clear Channel behind them, their promise to offer high-definition television through the Web is quite impressive.
Of course, everyone is trying to find their little niche in Web video. Search throughout this blog, and you will find scores of posts about the latest Web video venture or redesign to offer new features or deals to reward those who post content or attract new professional content producers to submit their work.
It's no different with Hotswap. They want to define themselves through the quality of their video. This approach fascinates me, because I understand it in the short-term (although there are multiple folks who look to be competing in that online high-definition video field right now), but the difficulty comes in the long-term process. I thought about this when HDNet launched; when high-definition television becomes widespread, just offering content in HD doesn't provide much of a brand to identify with. That's why Cuban and Friends have moved toward original programming to get people's attention, such as Dan Rather Reports.
New Measurement and Monetizing Efforts on Web, Mobile Platforms
Our continued discussions here about transmedia storytelling and the potential for new models for telling stories, gaining revenue, and consuming media properties remains reliant on the gradual acceptance of these new technologies and the infrastructure--both in terms of technology and business models--that surround them. This was a major focus of several of my posts here last week, focusing on the rate of technological change, realities of the digital divide, measurement systems, and cultural practices.
While thinking about some of these issues, I was paying particularly close attention to a couple of recent news stories.
First, ComScore--the main competitor for Nielsen NetRatings--sounds like they are moving in quite a different direction than Nielsen. While Nielsen is focusing its ratings toward time spent on a page more than total number of views, ComScore's shift in practice will move toward targeting less active viewers instead of the active minority.
Mick Foley: Pro Wrestling and the Contradictions of a Contemporary American Hero (V of V)
Conclusion
Pro wrestling is an appropriate avenue for researching broader themes in American culture because wrestling allows its fans a close involvement in writing and defining the text. Through the instant feedback available in wrestling shows, fans can directly influence the pacing of a show and can rewrite its meaning. Those viewing televised wrestling can mediate its meaning through their own interpretation of wrestling's often ambiguous messages and through their viewing patterns, around which the shows are written. Promoters and performers alter their fictional characters to change the character's meaning, similar to how musicians such as Prince, Pat Boone, and David Bowie "redefine" themselves for a new generation.
Meanwhile, fans alter fictional characters through their perceptions and interpretations, similar to the ways that another liminal star, Elvis Presley, has been appropriated to represent a variety of American values. As Doss (1999: 259) concludes in her study of Elvis, "Elvis, after all, is an American emblem, and debates and conflicts over who Elvis is and what he means are comparable to the debates and conflicts over what America is and what America means." Rodman (1996: 1) writes that Elvis surfaces "in ways that defy common-sense notions of how dead stars are supposed to behave," popping up not only in for-profit creations but in very personal ways in fans' lives--such as my editor at the Ohio County Times-News newspaper in Hartford, Ky., who jokingly refers to his former "Skinny Elvis" days and his current "Fat Elvis" days, in which Elvis' personal trajectory becomes a metaphor for my editor's own aging and physical change.
Mick Foley: Pro Wrestling and the Contradictions of a Contemporary American Hero (IV of V)
Gender/Masculinity: Brains vs. Brawn
The criticism of wrestling's narrow definition of manhood and its vilifying of any opposing views of what constitutes manliness has been covered by many critics (i.e., Lincoln 1989, Berger 1990). The critical concern about the effects of such confining representations of masculinity has been waged most broadly by Jhally and Katz (2002), who indict WWE as purveyors of damaging stereotypes and narrow codes of masculine behavior. Jhally and Katz attempt to connect wrestling's definition of gender roles with broad social problems relating to domestic violence. Jenkins (2005: 306-307) refutes these arguments by claiming that by oversimplifying their subjects, such narrow readings of wrestling participate in the very "anti-intellectualism" for which these critics often condemn wrestling. He particularly attacks their unsubstantiated attempts to liken the ignoring of wrestling's ill effects to the ignoring of Adolf Hitler's rise in Germany.
Wrestling has become a battleground for an argument that involves methodology (whether an examination of wrestling content can have only one possible reading), mediation (a singular writing of wrestling shows by Vince McMahon and his writing team or a communal definition of the product mediated by writers, performers, and fans), and gender roles (wrestling as one definition of masculinity or wrestling as a battle among conflicting masculinities). While wrestling glorifies certain aspects of the traditional hero, its treatment of masculinity is more nuanced than a simplistic reading would find. For instance, Jhally and Katz, in their analysis, do not consider the context of scenes they analyze in the overall narrative or whether the person perpetrating a certain action is a hero or a villain. The contradictions in Foley's character and its affirming and denying of traditional masculine attributes are a fitting example for Jenkins' argument of a more layered reading of pro wrestling. A reading of a character such as Foley's in unambiguous terms ignores the importance of his many contradictions.
Mick Foley: Pro Wrestling and the Contradictions of a Contemporary American Hero (III of V)
The Star Image of Mick Foley
Mick Foley's character developed over the course of twenty years in pro wrestling. Following the definition provided by Ellis (1999: 539) of the star as "a performer in a particular medium whose figure enters into subsidiary forms of circulation, and then feeds back into future performances," Foley's star image emerges out of his various fictional personas and the public dissemination of information about his private life that is incorporated into his star image. The image in wrestling is the fictional character depicted on the screen. These fictional characters are usually either heroes or villains, although they may change freely between the two extremes. Pro wrestling thrives on the relationship between these heroes and villains to build toward eventual grudge matches that fans want to see. Wrestling heroes and villains are defined chiefly through their opposition, as a villain can become a hero by engaging in a feud with one even more villainous than he or she. Similarly, a hero can become a villain by coming into conflict with a hero more popular than he or she. In the case of a change, the star image usually only alters slightly, as wrestlers generally retain their same basic characters. The chief difference is their view of the fans, as the hero-turned-villain usually abandons his or her supporters, while the villain-turned-hero embraces the fans he or she once despised.
In pro wrestling, the wrestler is the commodity. As Birrell and Turowetz (1979: 220) point out, then, every appearance is an opportunity to sell his or her character identity. This commodification process likens wrestling to another form of public discourse, politics. For instance, as Roper (2004) analyzes, the selling of President George W. Bush's heroic persona during his "War on Terror" led to the cultivation of a protector-figure to respond to the terrorist attacks on America. Wrestling's connection to political life has often been articulated by former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura (2004), who admitted that his understanding of marketing himself as a pro wrestler greatly informed his successful campaign for the governorship in 1998.
Mick Foley: Pro Wrestling and the Contradictions of a Contemporary American Hero (II of V)
A growing body of scholarship has formed to analyze professional wrestling; however, this preliminary collection of work into wrestling's close connection with American society, past and present, has only scratched the surface of an art form that provides an inexhaustible wealth of research material. Wrestling is a particularly apt way to study the culture of a particular time and place and an exaggerated visual text that provides many potential avenues to study the hero-making process in American culture. Pro wrestling is liminal, existing both as sport and drama, fact and fiction, all mediated through a web of complex relationships within the larger construct of the promoter, the media, the actors, and the fans. Furthermore, wrestling is a text that draws on a variety of dramatic conventions and a unique blending of "high" and "low" culture, reflecting what Levine (1988) identifies as a contemporary questioning of distinctions between "highbrow" and "lowbrow" in American art.
Wrestling has been examined from a myriad of critical perspectives because of the rich possibilities its complicated narrative structure offers for various disciplines. Barthes (1972: 21) claims that pro wrestling is "a spectacle of excess" involving a symbolic show of suffering and justice through the hero's struggle with the rule-breaking villain. Goffman (1974) further identifies this spectacular element of wrestling's central narrative, the hero's appropriation of rule-breaking to retaliate against an opponent who has broken the agreement of a fair fight between the two. Goffman (1974: 418) claims wrestling's excitement comes through this breaking of the audience's perceived frame of fair play in sports.
Mick Foley: Pro Wrestling and the Contradictions of a Contemporary American Hero (I of V)
I am finishing up the final version of an essay about three years in the making, that I actually got accepted for publication in my final days as an undergraduate back at Western Kentucky University. After a few holdups here and there, the piece will be going into a collection edited by Cornel Sandvoss, Michael Real, and Alina Bernstein called Bodies of Discourse: Sport Stars, Globalization, and the Public Sphere. As I am tidying the essay up, I wanted to see if there were any relevant thoughts from C3 readers on the implications "real" characters like those in pro wrestling have on the meaning of masculinity in the modern media.
When professional wrestler Mick Foley won the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE, formerly WWF) World Heavyweight Title on Monday Night RAW at the end of 1998, he became a heroic character in the realm of pro wrestling, then at its height of popularity on cable television. Many considered Foley an unusual hero. His character blended masculine heroic qualities of tenacity, endurance, and hard work with characteristics not usually seen in the American hero: a need for communal acceptance, a desire for intellectual growth, and an unattractive aesthetic, with Foley's missing teeth, severed ear, unkempt hair, pear-shaped figure, and lack of the muscular definition usually expected in the wrestling hero.
Mick Foley is a paradox, as his character both embraces and defies elements of the traditional masculine hero. This redefinition of the heroic figure in wrestling, according to Dalbir Singh Sehmby (2000: 202), stems from wrestling's complex relationship among fans, promoters, the media, and Foley himself. Sammond (2005) writes that "whether professional wrestling is progressive, transgressive, or regressive (or all these at different moments) depends on how it serves the social goals of its producers, performers, audiences, and its critics." Because of wrestling's participatory nature, allowing fans to directly influence the product, wrestling heroes may perhaps be more indicative of the paradoxes in defining masculinity and American heroism than the heroes created through many other media products. The construction of Foley as hero reveals America's changing and conflicting values regarding its traditions and its definition of masculinity.
Here's another concept underlying all of this and that bears repeating; it's not about the technology, stupid. As these posts throughout the morning indicate, we here at C3 do not consider ourselves technological determinists, even when we look at a lot of neat gadgets. Quite the opposite, we are interested in the social and cultural meaning attached to these new technologies. We are much less interested in what's possible than in how people choose to use technologies, the preconditions in their lives that make particular groups adapt to a technology, etc.
Changing Measurement Systems Move Even Slower than Technological Change...
If the rate of technological change is often slower than many people want to acknowledge that it is, as I wrote about earlier today, it is perhaps even more true that the systems we have in place to measure how people consume media is even more slow at adapting to these changes.
There's little doubt that the process of measuring television viewership based on a modest sampling of American homes became less and less relevant as television viewing became more and more fragmented. Now, as traditional "television" viewing patterns are moving to a variety of new platforms and a variety of time-shifting behaviors, the whole model of the linear television channel is showing cracks, as well as its supporting advertising system.
Again, I think it's important to emphasize that we aren't talking about the death of the 30-second spot, or the demise of television as we know it, but there is little question that a lot of changes are happening at relatively quick speed, when looking at change from a decade-by-decade perspective. The problem is that any single metrics system is designed to measure a single phenomena, but it's becoming increasingly clear we don't live in a single-phenomena world.
I mentioned earlier today that the rate of technological change is often misunderstood. There are a group of people who want to bury their heads in the sand and pretend that everything is going to remain the same, to be sure, but there are likewise plenty of folks who want to believe that every change is revolutionary, will become widespread very quickly, and will completely overtake the outdated technologies and modes of the past and transform the world into a fundamentally democratic utopia.
However, the world can't be explained by such technological determinism, whether it be utopian or dystopian. And that includes remaining aware that, for all the discussions we have about the way the Internet is a primary driver in fundamentally changing the ways in which consumers interact with producers, fans interact with media properties and brands, readers interact with authors, and people simply interact with one another, we cannot pretend that there still does not exist a great digital divide among socioeconomic classes in individual countries and, even more sharply contrasted, between various peoples around the world.
Misconceptions of the Rate of Technological Change
Ostensibly, some observers might say this blog is "about" new technologies, changes in the media industries, new ways for users and fans to interact with one another and "the powers that be" and brand managers of the world. I've even said that myself many times. But the work C3 does often always focuses on just the opposite message, the misconception that change is going to come about really rapidly.
It can't be repeated often enough: change takes time. When we look at where we are now compared to where we are 10 years ago, it seems a major difference. The number of people who have reliable Internet connections in the past decade has mushroomed. Yet, I hear others talking about how we might all be wirelessly connected in five years, and I think about the technological bubbles many people live in. The length of time it takes for technology to move from early adopters to the public at large, the difficulty of infrastructure reliability on a national basis, the digital divide that is too often ignored, and a variety of other factors can't be forgotten.
I talked about these issues with television industry researcher Bruce Leichtman in my interview with him here on the blog last month.
Reverse Product Placement, The Simpsons, and the Value of the 7-Eleven Brand
Over the past few days, there have been a couple of interesting ideas batted around by C3 consulting researchers and alumni on a couple of issues that I thought might be of direct interest to the wider C3 readership. With all that is happening in the fan fallout from Harry Potter, the repercussions and new business deals stemming from the upfronts, and all the issues we've been covering more regularly, I thought that pointing the way toward a couple of those pieces might be beneficial.
One is an issue that I've been following from afar. I've never been an avid Simpsons viewer, although I appreciate its place in popular culture. It's not even that I have any aversion to The Simpsons, but I've just never become a regular viewer. Nevertheless, I've been paying attention to the promotion of The Simpsons Movie, both in the transformation of 7-Eleven Stores to Kwik-E Marts and in the competition for deciding which Springfield is the home of the Simpson family.
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that Jason Mittell had published a piece on the Springfield competition. Now, Grant McCracken has weighed in on the Kwik-E Mart cross-promotion.
C3 Team Continues Analysis of Harry Potter Spoiler Controversy
Tuesday afternoon, and it's time to catch up on some relevant issues here on the C3 blog. One thing that has C3 and its consulting researchers talking is all the discussion flowing out the Harry Potter book release and concerns about spoilers related to it.
The release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows has gotten a lot of people up in a stir. There are all the people who crowded Harvard Square on Friday night, or sites all across the country, although that created a fervor I've encountered before back in Kentucky and that echoed the recent "happening" that was the iPhone release. This is all about event-based marketing and the importance of the release in an experience economy.
But people online are talking almost as much about the unofficial releases as they are about the official ones, including the New York Times review that some people felt provided too much information, as well as online leaks of the book before the official midnight book release.
Why Do People Go To Search Engines Instead of the Official Site?
I saw a short news note from Daisy Whitney at TelevisionWeek yesterday, noting that NBC has said that a third of its Web site traffic comes from search engines.
This doesn't sound like news to me, but it indicates something fundamental that I think media companies have been missing for a while. As the technology for the Web has spread, media properties have competed with one another by who could create the most aesthetically pleasing site that technology allows for.
We have some of the best Flash animations, the slickest graphics, the coolest interactive features one could imagine for a site, yet many people are finding content through a search engine instead of coming to the main page of the site and clicking through. I hypothesize it might have something to do with that ugly "U" word: utility.
Nielsen Finds Web Video Viewing Up, Not Interfering with TV Viewing
According to a recent study from Nielsen, the number of folks watching online video continues to rise, while a third of those respondents said that watching Web video actually increases the amount of traditional television they watch. Only 13 percent of those surveyed said that watching video online has decreased their watching television.
The study found that 81 million broadband customers reported watching online video, up 16 percent from September 2006 to March 2007. The 16 percent hike has been getting some attention.
What might cause a rise in those viewing online video to not necessarily trim viewership away from traditional television? One question is what they're watching online. People engage in user-generated, short-form content, or even clipped and quoted content from professionally produced material, in different ways and for much different reasons than they watch TV.
Spoilers and Special Release Events: The Case of Harry Potter
C3 Director Joshua Green clued me in to a fascinating conversation taking place over on Bruce Schneier's blog regarding the leak of the final Harry Potter book online, with digital photographs of each page.
The debate is going in both directions. Schneier's take is that this is no big deal and that it does not really equal much of a profit loss. This perspective is that, since the people obsessed with finding a copy just to read it online a few days before it comes out in print will likely buy a copy anyway, and anyone particularly adamant with finding a free copy would have either not read it at all otherwise or borrowed a copy from someone else.
But, of course, this is also about scheduling and real-time deployment of content. The same question gets raised for television as we move more toward a non-linear method of television watching, with DVRs and television shows on DVD. As I wrote about last October, television is no longer the consensus narrative it once was because even if people watch the same series, they may be on a different season.
NBCU Strikes Deal with Alltel, as the Company Tries to Expand Mobile Reach
Back in March, I wrote about the launch of plans for NBC Universal's mobile plan on Verizon and MobiTV. The deal included television shows from not just NBC but also from USA, Sci Fi, Bravo, Telemundo, and mun2, in addition to CNBC.
Now the network has signed yet another mobile deal to extent the reach of its content into new realms, this time with mobile service provider Alltel. NBC will provide 11 VOD channels, in addition to Web sites, ringtones, wallpapers, and more, featuring content from NBC, Sci Fi, Bravo and the USA Network.
What I like most about NBCU's approach here is that, even as the company has to strike deals individually with various service providers, the plan seems to be to stretch their content offerings across a variety of services, rather than rely on some exclusive partnership with just Verizon or Alltel.
Excerpts from the press release and a link to the full release are available on the Inside Cable News blog.
Joshua Green and I were sitting in his office yesterday, talking about copyright issues and how they relate to our own upcoming thoughts about a new environment of spreadable media, when the conversation shifted to fair use issues surrounding these debates.
Joshua's contention was that fair use issues are an implicit part of any facet of conversation about mash-ups, viral marketing, proselytizing, fan communities, or even convergence culture in general, and that, while talking about fair use is not necessarily something we will extensively focus on in our research, it is a part of many of the arguments we are making.
I concur that fair use discussions are quite important when thinking about issues of respect, and the prohibitionist/collaborationist modes of thinking Henry Jenkins writes about. Back in December, we featured a series of conversations about fair use issues in relation to C3 (see the posts from Jason Mittell, Ted Hovet, and Joel Greenberg), and I have been thinking about these issues recently in relation to my own writing about quoting, as opposed to piracy, when it comes to online video.
The Digital Deadline, Inefficient Preparation, and a New Digital Divide?
Not that long ago, I ran into Prof. Nolan Bowie, who teaches at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University down the road. I took a class with him on public policy issues surrounding new media last year, and I was intrigued to know that he would be writing a series of commentaries for The Boston Globe since, if nothing else, Nolan is always provocative.
What caught my eye when looking back over the articles I missed was his piece from last month on Bridging the TV Gap.
Those of you who follow the C3 blog fairly regularly may know that I've been quite concerned with the upcoming digital deadline, although also aware that the deadline could very well be moved again before all is said and done. The plan for analog television signals to be a think of the past by February 2009 is quite understandable when one understands the potential benefits for freeing the spectrum for more efficient uses, but the way in which the public has been informed, and plans have been made for such a digital deadline, has been...well...something less than efficient.
Nolan writes about the great benefits of the digital conversion but also about the dangers for low-income families, the need to follow this up with an emphasis on better and universally available high-speed broadband Internet connection, and concerns about what will happen with ownership rules with the proliferation of channels allowed by a completely digital media environment, as well as the substantial concern about the disposal of analog televisions. He warns, "Many poor and low income working poor families may not be able to afford new digital TV sets or suitable substitutes, thus creating a new kind of digital divide in addition to the expanding gaps associated with Internet access."
Place-Based Gaming, Romance Interactive Storytelling, and Choose-Your-Own Adventure
Our research manager here at the Convergence Culture Consortium, Dr. Joshua Green, sent me an interesting link to an interactive love story that is being described as akin to the "choose your own adventure" books of times past--except this takes place in actual real space.
The project is called She Loves the Moon, and it is a story told in San Francisco's Mission District through stencils on the sidewalks, connected by arrows. The story starts with two characters located in two different location, one at 16th and Valencia with the stencil "He Leaves His Lonely Apartment," and the other at 21st and Guerrero with a similar stencil. The couple meet through the course of the game and make several decisions, leading to four possible endings, depending on the choices players make.
A collection of writing about the stencil story is available here, and the project already has a Flickr site here.
How Much Have Industry Developments Changed in the Past Year?
While thinking today about how this issue between the Writer's Guild of America and television producers seems to have been stretching on for quite a while now, I began to realize that a lot of the issues I've been covering for the Consortium since we started our blog a little under two years ago, and especially since I've been the primary contributor to the blog since last summer have not changed that much.
So, while people talk sometimes about how fast change happens, it is important to realize that the falsity that nothing is ever going to change is often countered by an equally tall tale, that things are changing extremely quickly. The truth is that industry practices, corporate infrastructure, technological lagtime, and an endless variety of factors causes everything to move slowly.
I was told by an industry executive not too long ago that the upfronts this year didn't feel that much different, as if this person were somehow disappointed. I think that's how we all feel when we realize that the new environment feels only slightly removed from yesterday's...and that's because we as human beings can only move in steps. The first cars really did resemble horseless carriages, and the first mobile phones looked quite like landline phones. Change necessarily comes one step at a time.
That being the case, I thought it might be interesting to revisit the stories that were posted here on the blog during this same week last year. You'll see a few stories that have fallen by the wayside but a few more that could quite possibly be easily plugged into this week's headlines and still seem right at home.
WGA Negotiations Begin; What Will Be the Future of Transmedia Storytelling?
Tensions between the Writer's Guild of America and the entertainment industry show no signs of being any less heated than predicted, as a few news stories from last week emphasize. The negotiations began yesterday. TV Week has been my media coverage site of choice to follow the developments.
For instance, there was the bulletin sent around to WGA members emphasizing the need to stand strong for a piece of the profit on new-media ventures and to ensure what they consider proper compensation.
On the other hand the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers propose a three-year study of new media to help determine the conditions for compensation for this ancillary content, trying to determine the differences between models set up for television that would need to be built differently for online projects.
These tensions are about very important industry issues that must be worked out, since the teams that produce and create the content for these projects should certainly be justly compensated. Yet, while I understand that this is a complex issue not easy to resolve, the continued delays and lack of leadership in working through these issues only mean that the reality of transmedia storytelling will have to lag behind these longstanding stubborn positions within the industry.
Collective Coping: Fan Communities Deal with Tragedy
I have written here on the MIT Convergence Culture Consortium blog (see here and here) about issues surrounding Chris Benoit's shocking double-murder and suicide last month and the continued fallout from his horrendous actions.
One aspect of the story that has amazed me is the way that fans banded together to help one another through several stages of grief, first at the knowledge of losing a performer who most fans greatly respected and had always heard good things about, only to find out hours later that this heralded athlete had murdered his family and then killed himself. The conflicted feelings fans had of not only losing one of their favorite performers, but also finding out the awful truth about the man's final actions, have been hard for fans to handle, as well as the aftermath of this tragedy, leaving fans with a lot of soul-searching themselves in many cases.
As the issue continues to pervade media coverage and get tied into larger conversations that extend beyond the Benoit tragedy, wrestling fans continue to process and cope with how to move past this tragic news, especially when many wrestling fans have friendship built around the shared media text.
Dr. Laury Silvers directed me toward this conversation which follows, in real-time, one particular wrestling community's attempt to cope with this news as it slowly progressed. An in-depth case study could probably glean a lot of insight on the nature of these communities and how they are useful in times of tragedy.
Cadillac/Damages Latest Example of FX Single-Sponsor Model
FX continues their interesting model of single-sponsored shows, the latest of which will be for the premiere of their newest series starring Glenn Close, Damages.
Close, coming off a heralded performance in season four of The Shield as Captain Monica Rawling, will star in a show about lawyers.
This time, the sponsor will be Cadillac, who will not only be the sole sponsor of the show and provide a commercial-free season premiere, but whose cars will also be integrated through the series.
This combination of product placement/integration with single-sponsor content is yet another hybrid of a model that seems to be fairly consist for FX season and series premieres. It seems to be a model that works well enough to continue returning to it as special events for important episodes, but we have not seen it port over to whole season deals for any FX shows of yet.
Immersive Story Worlds and "How Not to Wreck a Show"
In my work on soap opera fandom, I keep encountering a document that I think deals with some questions that are at the heart of much of what we are talking about in working with fandoms, especially in thinking toward longstanding media properties with long and complicated histories.
I have written quite a bit lately about a particular form of narrative universe of this type, which I call immersive story worlds. As I have written about here on the blog before (see here and here), immersive story worlds are fictional universes whose characteristics include seriality, multiple creators, long-term continuity, a character backlog, contemporary ties to a deep history, and a sense of permanence.
In my own research, I have identified soap opera narratives (once a show has passed a certain number of years), comic books, and professional wrestling texts as being the best examples of these sorts of narratives, but the principles--and potential benefits of thinking toward developing and maintaining immersive story worlds--apply to a wide range of products which have some similar characteristics to these massive serial (social) texts.
To return to my point, however, I think that my writing about serial texts is underpinned by a set of creative criteria and an industry perspective perhaps best articulated by the late Douglas Marland, known by a variety of soap opera fan communities as one of the best soaps creators of all time, in particular in his relationship to the fan community and in respecting the continuity and history of soaps, and the nature of serialized storytelling for an immersive story world.
The Sharecroppers of the Digital Age: Remixing and Fair Use
One message has been emphasized throughout the bulk of our work here at the Convergence Culture Consortium, and throughout some of the writing by our director, Henry Jenkins, over the past few years, that the traditional model of prohibition in the media industries is being eroded by, and in our view should give way to, a more collaborative view of copyright ownership.
This takes into account a conversation that has been very important to C3 researchers, that of fair use. In his column this morning in The Washington Post, Lawrence Lessig writes that "the remixer becomes the sharecropper of the digital age." He admits it is an over-the-top metaphor but acknowledges that it applies an old way of thinking to new technologies and new consumer practices.
He doesn't mince words, writing, "Lawyers never face an opening weekend. Like law professors, their advice lives largely protected from the market. They justify what they do in terms of "right and wrong," while everyone else has to justify their work in terms of profit. They move slowly, and deliberately. If you listen carefully, sometimes you can even hear them breathe."
Sam Ford: I know that a lot of the people following this debate might not be that interested in soaps in particular, but I am interested in the differences in discussing fan culture when it shifts from being a conversation primarily about fan fiction, which many of the back-and-forths have so far. How do we measure creativity in relation to fan communities? My understanding is that most people would agree that fan fiction only retains its full meaning and resonance within the community that it is produced in, and the social specificity of creative output is no different in the soap opera fan communities we have been discussing, but the output is often much different--criticism, debate, parody, discussion, continuity-maintenance, historical perspective...these are very creative processes that seem to be the prevalent forms of fan output for soap opera fandom.
To move toward your discussion of sports and media fans, I think the question you pose is one relevant to this series as a whole and one which various contributors have touched on in one way or another. Are we looking at the difference in male and female fan responses or in the responses of scholarship on fans, or can you really separate the two? As you imply in your question, there is some difficulty in separating the two, and perhaps the body of academic work on soap opera fandom, television fandom, fan fiction communities, sports fandom, and so on are shaped greatly by the gendered perspectives, and the respective genders, of those who have been most prevalent in those fields. It is important to realize this may be the case, while not making that the totalizing explanation for differences in sports fandom and sports fan studies, when compared to media fandom.
Two major congressional movements continue to pose potential major repercussions for the media industry and particularly for television.
The first is continued discussion about indecency enforcement, as Kansas Senator and Republican presidential hopeful Sam Brownback continues to make noise about "fleeting indecency" enforcement for the Federal Communications Commission and giving the FCC powers over violent programming. After courts questioned the definition of indecency in FCC decisions recently, Brownback is pushing for new legislation to be pushed through Congress to make these changes.
The discussion is to give FCC the authority for fining for "fleeting expletives" and the ability to fine networks for "excessively violent content."
What Are the Most Popular Video Sites? Companies Jockey for Position
Yahoo! Video and AOL Video are now more than popular than MySpace in terms of video-sharing sites. But, wait, more popular by what terms? Is that visitors and page views? Or will it be in terms of the time spent on the site?
Appears the news that MySpace has fallen is through "old school" Nielsen/NetRatings mentality. According to the story from Daisy Whitney at TelevisionWeek, YouTube dominates the heap with 51 million visitors for June, followed by Google Video at 18 million, AOL Video at 16 million, Yahoo Video at 15 million, and MySpace at 15 million. These are all unique visitors.
A Look at Recent Writing from Affiliated C3 Thinkers
I wanted to point the way to some interesting posts from various Consulting Researchers with the Convergence Culture Consortium. A variety of our affiliated thinkers maintain regular blogs regarding their opinion of the latest developments in the media industries, and a wide variety of other subjects.
Henry Jenkins posted a piece on his blog last week emphasizing his own interest and respect with NBC's Heroes and his reading of a recent interview with Heroes executive producer Jesse Alexander, in which he brought up reading Jenkins' book Convergence Culture. Henry links his look at fan communities with Rob Kozinets' recent writing on wiki-media.
Jason Mittellwrites about the contest among the different cities of Springfield across the country to claim The Simpsons and to host the premiere for the upcoming Simpsons Movie. The state Mittell calls home, Vermont, won the contest.
New Industry Deals Demonstrate Shifting Media Landscape
I wanted to mention a few news stories that passed my eye over the past few days that I thought would be of particular interest to C3 researchers and readers, especially taking into account links between online initiatives and traditional television and print properties.
The news includes a new deal between TV Guide and Maven Networks for powering broadband video content for TV Guide's Web site, a cosmetic change for the brand of Court TV to the new truTV, Joost's deal with VH1 to show a sneak peek of the premiere of I Hate My 30s online first, and Bravo's deal struck to do its advertising deals minute-by-minute with Starcom USA.
TV Guide and Maven Networks.TV Guide's choice to hire the technology provider to power its broadband video on its Web site indicates an increased effort to make TV Guide a brand based on more than the print product it is most closely identified with, especially as paper guides have become all but obsolete. Find more at The Boston Business Journal.
Nielsen/NetRatings Replaces a Simplistic Model with...Another One
Nielsen is not just making changes to its television program ratings and commercial ratings systems. As I have already written about this month, Nielsen recently purchased mobile research firm Telephia, as the company looks to bolster its Nielsen Wireless Initiative for mobile content audience measurement. See more on that purchase here.
Now, Nielsen has announced that it will be changing the way in which it measures the popularity of Web sites. We here at C3 are gearing up for a year of talking about the stickiness model in terms of Web traffic and how it is, in many ways, still fixed in prior ways of thinking. Nielsen does not agree, or else it sees value in keeping a system as close to the current one as it can find.
Their shift is going from measuring the popularity of a Web site from total number of page views to one that measures instead time spent. The change has particularly been attributed to the rising popularity of online video, which might keep a viewer on a particular page for quite a while instead of clicking through an increasing number of links.
The measure will be of "total sessions" and "total minutes," for the new Nielsen/NetRatings.
Gender and Fan Studies (Round Six, Part One): C. Lee Harrington and Sam Ford
This is the first of a two-part series being posted on Henry Jenkins' blog and discussed through a LiveJournal community site, the latest in the rounds of posts featuring a male and female fan studies scholar looking at issues of gender in relation to the study of fan communities. This round features my discussion with C. Lee Harrington, who has been a key scholar in the history of the study of soap opera fandom. Both parts will be posted here on the C3 blog as well.
C. Lee Harrington: Hi everyone. This has been an interesting set of discussions thus far -- Sam and I are happy to contribute. We'll follow the general norm by beginning with introductions. I've been engaged in audience/fan studies since the early 1990s, with most of my work co-authored with Denise Bielby.
Our interest in fan studies grew out of our long term soap opera-watching habit. I don't remember how long Denise has been watching, but I started watching soaps in the late 1970s and have been an enthusiastic follower ever since (mostly ABC soaps, with some years watching DOOL).
When I was in grad school at UCSB in the late 1980s (Denise is on the faculty there), we went to a General Hospital fan club luncheon, were fascinated by the entire experience, and decided to study the soap fan culture. Our book Soap Fans was published a few years after Henry Jenkins' Textual Poachers and Camille Bacon- Smith's Enterprising Women, among other important work of the late 80s/early 90s, which heavily influenced the way I thought about audience/fans.
The West Side, Urban Westerns, and Independent Distribution
Some say that the Western is dead. With the lack of quality Western movies in recent years (and, yes, I know some people are going to debate Open Range, but there was a strong negative response to the quality of that film), there has been a fascinating online collaboration from Ryan Bilsborrow-Koo and Zachary Lieberman called The West Side.
It is a series of online short videos, a collection that the creators call "a contemporary version of the serial novel." The series is being funded personally by the two creators and presented online for free, distributed through their Web site and through RSS subscriptions. And it is an urban western set "in a unique, alternate universe," melding the American Western style with an urban setting.
In all, there will be 12 episodes of the series, with the first one posting on Independence Day. The creators plan to have a blog for the series run alongside the distribution of the 12 episodes, located here.
Digital Cinema and HD DVDs Expected to Experience Significant Growth by 2011
A new study from PricewaterhouseCoopers examines high-definition DVDs and digital cinema, finding that digital and HD filmed content will reach $103.3 billion, up from $81.2 billion in 2006. The study, entitled "Global Entertainment and Media Outlook: 2007-2011," emphasizes Asia Pacific as the fastest growing market and finds that download-to-own services will remain a niche market but one that will grow tremendously over the next few years.
One of the most interesting predictions is that digital cinema will "reinvigorate the box office to the tune of $11.7 billion by 2011," according to Reuters' Gina Keating in her article on the report.
There are still a lot of controversies, particularly in the length of time given to release for DVD, which digital cinema encourages. However, theater owners are adamantly opposed to such a move because, while it will benefit the production companies, it may very well be detrimental to the box office, especially due to the fact that one can own a movie on DVD for about the cost of a couple viewing it once at a theater, not counting the costs for snacks and beverages.
AOL Video/AOL News Relaunches Emphasize AOL's Continuing Emphasis on Content
The race for dominance in providing content and a viable site for online video has been very tight in the past year-and-a-half. As AOL tries to establish itself more and more as a content provider rather than a service provider, the company has continued giving a great deal of attention into improving both its content and its services in relation to video.
This week, AOL relaunched its video portal to improve the search functions, as well as to be able to increase access to non-AOL content online and to make the home page reflect such features. The new site allows for playing YouTube videos, among other things.
NBCU Folding Its Online Syndication Network into New Site with News Corp.
Earlier this week, I saw that the process for launching the Fox/NBC-Universal online video site continues to move forward, as NBC starts to wind down its own exclusive video service that it offered to syndicate sites (National Broadband Co., or NBBC), in preparation for folding those operations into the project, which is apparently being called simply "New Site" for now.
Back last September, I first wrote about NBC's plans to stream entire episodes of shows for free on its own site, bolstered by advertising. I wrote, "The plan is for new fall prime-time shows to be made available through the NBC Universal Video Player, a revamped product that will make its relaunch on Oct. 1."
The decision to scale back the NBCU-specific video offering and start switching over to the new venture is the latest move toward the collaborative video platform effort. I last wrote about this in May, when NBCU and News Corp. were working toward a summer launch by securing advertisers and discussing names. For now, the "new site" moniker stands.
Gated Content, Walled Gardens, and Social Networks
There are both positives and negatives to building walls around content and services. I often get caught up in the negative aspects, especially when thinking content that is locked down by service providers, which I find to be a particularly bad idea for the content brands.
For instance, if you are an ardent fan of a particular show that uses a transmedia storytelling campaign across multiple platforms, but that deal is locked down into only those who have Sprint mobile or Verizon for an online provider or Comcast as a cable provider, it can be a little hard to take for the fans most likely to take advantage of such transmedia stories. After all, if you follow three shows, but you must have Verizon mobile service for the extra content for one, AT&T for another, and T-Mobile for the third, it wouldn't really seem very worthwhile to have three cell phone contracts just for the extra mobile content.
That being said, though, it doesn't mean that walled gardens are not without their uses, and Steve Bryant has raised some good points in this regard in relation to the benefits of privacy, particularly in relation to Facebook's lack of searchability and accessibility from the Googles of the world.
Growing Old Together: Following As the World Turns' Tom Hughes Through the Years, Part VI of VI
Conclusion
To trace the character of Tom Hughes is to trace the trajectory of the American soap opera and, to a degree, American television. The character demonstrates the soap opera genre's use of SORASing and the supercouple and the constant tug at soap storytelling between the three major strands of soap opera plots--family and workplace drama, tackling social issues, and escapist romance fare.
A part of the soap canvas for 45 years now, Tom Hughes is, in a sense, the history of ATWT, and the treatment of his character marks changes in performers, changes in writing staffs, and changes in audience reception and in American society. From tackling divorce to drug culture and Vietnam to living wills and AIDS, Tom's character has been involved with many of the controversies that have defined American public discourse over the past few decades. And for fan communities with lasting memories, his current character serves as a monument to those social changes and plot turns.
Growing Old Together: Following As the World Turns' Tom Hughes Through the Years, Part V of VI
Tom's Maturity--Scott Holmes Takes the Role
At this point, Scott Holmes took over the role of Tom Hughes. Tom was out of Oakdale for some time in Washington D.C., where he was heavily involved in a massive FBI case that the Oakdale Police Force was also involved in. With Holmes portraying Tom, he returned to Oakdale to put his marriage back together and began working with Margo on the Falcon case. The couple was eventually reunited.
The central character in the defining family of Oakdale, Holmes' Tom once again became a part of several storylines that sought to renew focus on social issues through personal drama, similar to the stories Tom was part of in the late 1960s. This mid-1980s to early-1990s time period is often celebrated by ATWT fans as a glory period of the show, with head writer Douglas Marland blending social relevance into a strong writing emphasis on workspace tension and family drama.
Growing Old Together: Following As the World Turns' Tom Hughes Through the Years, Part IV of VI
Childhood and Adolescence--The SORASing of Tom Hughes
Tom Hughes was immediately a central focus on ATWT because he was born to the central couple of the show at the time, Bob and Lisa. The show's writers recognized that only a minimal amount of storytelling could be accomplished with Tom as a young child.
Therefore, Tom became one of the first victims of SORAS, a disease that now regularly strikes children in soap opera towns. SORAS, which stands for Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome, is a term popularized in the soap opera press and in online fan communities, in response to the trend to age soap opera characters, almost always children, much more rapidly than real time would allow.
The early development of Tommy Hughes is one of the most blatant examples of SORASing, as the character was born in 1961 and, by the end of the decade, was in Vietnam. The character's birth and early existence was largely as a plot device in the dissolution of Bob and Lisa's marriage.
Growing Old Together: Following As the World Turns' Tom Hughes Through the Years, Part III of VI
Shifting Portrayals: The Many Men Who Are Tom Hughes
One important aspect of daytime television is that characters, even as they become so entwined with their portrayers, are also bigger than those actors. It is quite common in American soap opera for a character to be recast if an actor leaves the show, especially when the character is linked to several others. Because the power of soap operas lies in character relationships rather than plot development, an essential character must stay on the show, whether the actor who portrays him or her does or not. The duration of actors such as Wagner, Fulton, or Hastings is impressive because such long-term performances are relatively rare.
Tom Hughes, excluding his time as a baby, has been portrayed by 13 different actors. Starting in 1963, Tom was old enough to have dialogue on the show and began being portrayed consistently by one child actor at a time. The character was aged more rapidly than real time would allow, and his birth date was revised significantly as the show progressed so that the character would be aged enough to allow for certain stories.
Growing Old Together: Following As the World Turns' Tom Hughes Through the Years, Part II of VI
As the World Turns
However, As the World Turns changed the conception of the television soap opera. Under the supervision of Irna Phillips, one of the "auteurs" of television rarely discussed in "mainstream" accounts of television history, As the World Turns (ATWT) popularized many of what are now considered defining elements of the genre.
The program aired daily for 30 minutes, breaking away from the shorter 15-minute increments of shows like Guiding Light. Slow pacing, an emphasis on dialogue, and the now-stereotyped camera angles were all part of the ATWT conception. For that reason, many soap historians would consider ATWT the most significant soap opera in American television history.
From 1958 until 1978, ATWT was unchallenged as the top rated soap opera, until growing competition in the 1970s unseated it. Throughout its now 50-year run on CBS, ATWT has survived important changes--the switch to color, the conversion from live to taped television in the early 1970s, the shift from 30 minutes to an hour in the late 1970s, and fluctuating ideas about what topics the genre should cover, oscillating from family drama to romantic escapist fare to tackling controversial social issues or some combination of the three.
Today, ATWT remains an award-winning soap, often recognized with writing and production awards at the Daytime Emmy awards. While Guiding Light has phased out many of its long-term characters (most characters considered "veterans" on the show today debuted with Guiding Light in the late 1970s or early 1980s), ATWT has retained not only the greatest number of long-term characters but also many of the actors who have defined those characters.
Growing Old Together: Following As the World Turns' Tom Hughes Through the Years, Part I of VI
Next week, Lee Harrington and I will be presenting the latest in Henry Jenkins' series of discussions about gender and fan studies. Since Lee has been a pioneer in research on soap opera fan communities and since much of my recent focus have been on fans of daytime drama, I wanted to return to a paper that I presented at the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association's conference here in Boston back in April. It was a great conference, with a followup discussion about the present and future of soaps with a variety of interesting and interested scholars who have written and presented on soaps. I thought I would present the content of that paper, sans the footnotes, as I prepare for next week.
Television is an actor's medium. While budgets and schedules have often given movies a greater mastery of grand visual spectacle than television (a divide between film and television that is growing increasingly thin), the actor has always remained the currency of television fiction. Even today, with television series consistently raising the bar for production values, the actor still holds the most power in connecting with the audience.
The smaller screen of (most) television sets values the close-up, the study of human emotion (and especially the human face), in a way that the grand vistas and elaborate cinematography of most Hollywood films seem to miss. The value placed on the actor and the exploration of character is more suited to the seriality of television as well. While films visit a character's life for a short time, a television series visits characters on a regular basis, over a number of seasons.
C3 Alum Geoffrey Long recently alerted me to an interesting study from Jan Chipchase (see his profile here). Jan works as a researcher for the design branch of Nokia, and he both designs new products and tests them.
In the meantime, he publishes a lot of intriguing studies and materials on his personal Web site, enttiled Future Perfect. He writes, "The material that you see on this site is what I do in my spare time--the stuff that inspires or challenges me, helps me understand how the future might turn out."
What caught Geoff's idea was his piece "Where's the Phone?" drawing on research he had done with Cui Yanging and Fumiko Ichikawa, based on a variety of street surveys for Nokia between 2003 and 2006, focusing on "where people carry their mobile phones and why."
I wanted to do a quick roundup of some of the interesting stories that have caught my eye over the past week that I thought it might be of worth for interested C3 readers to take a look at.
1.) MySpaceTV. The new service, available here, is an upgrade of MySpace video with the idea of creating a forum for cross-platform distribution of professional content, including of course News Corp. content. The plan is for an international video platform with 15 countries and seven languages and an emphasis on customization. The company may be looking to compete with YouTube in relation to video views, but the focus seems to be much more on professional content for the MySpace platform. See more at Mashable.
2.) Lycos Further Integrates blinkx. Lycos has increased its relationship with video search engine blinkx so that the blinkx function will be fully functional on the Lycos MIX platform. Users can do a blinkx search within the platform. More from Minic Rivera at 901am.
3.) BBC YouTube Platform on thePlatform. BBC Global News will be working with Comcast's thePlatform, an online video technology, to help the network deliver its news through YouTube. The branded BBC Global News site on YouTube is promised to feature up to 30 news clips daily. See more from Daisy Whitney at TelevisionWeek.
I have mentioned here previously that I write about differences in my former life in Kentucky and life on the East Coast in a weekly column for The Ohio County TImes-News called "From Beaver Dam to Boston." I was in the process of writing my next column when I realized that it might be of interest to readers of the consortium as well, so I thought I would share it here:
My wife and I made a grave mistake. Seeing that I study media technologies, branding, popular culture, and the like, one would think I would be more in-tune with the craze that was taking the country over on Friday, June 29, but I suppose that I'm not as "in touch" as I would like to fancy myself.
Last Thursday, Amanda's laptop battery just quit working. The battery decided it didn't want to charge anymore, so when the computer ran out of energy, the only way that she could use it was to have it plugged into the wall. The battery had a little "X" in the middle in the spot where it usually tells us how much of her battery is charged.
Apparently, it was a problem with the MacBook model, one that they caught but which many users had not fixed in time to stop the computer from, as the genius at the help bar in the Apple store told us, "self-cannibalizing" itself. He claimed all one would have to do is switch out the batteries, but I can't help but wonder if there might be deeper issues that need to be resolved in cases of self-cannibalization.
Telephia Finds Mobile Video Subscribers Tripled; Company Purchased by Nielsen
Mobile consumer research group Telephia has seen a significant amount of press in the past week, releasing a study at the beginning of last week which found that revenues spent on mobile video tripled in the first quarter of 2007, and then following that up with news that the research firm is being purchased by industry titan Nielsen.
The Nielsen purchase will bolster Telephia's resources while giving the audience measurement company substantial in-roads to the burgeoning mobile market. Rafat Ali with paidContent points out that this comes three weeks after Nielsen announced its Nielsen Wireless initiative for mobile content audience measurement.
Their most recent study found that subscriptions to mobile television services actually grew 198 percent from the first quarter of 2006, to approximately $146 million. The estimation is that 8.4 million people in the U.S. subscribe to mobile video, which is about 4 percent of the country's mobile users.
Interview with C3 Alum Geoffrey Long, Part IV of IV
This is the final entry in a four-part interview with C3 alumnus and recent graduate of MIT's Program in Comparative Media Studies Geoffrey Long.
Sam: Since you have recently completed your Master's thesis research, do you mind sharing some general information about the project and some of the observations or arguments you make in your writing?
Geoff: The primary takeaway from my Master's thesis on transmedia storytelling is for would-be transmedia storytellers: it's not what you say that's critical in transmedia narratives, it's what you don't say.
Negative capability is the art of making references to external events, characters or locations as a story unfolds, which can then be returned to later for future transmedia expansion. Until then, these empty spaces provide fans with areas to fill in themselves.
Interview with C3 Alum Geoffrey Long, Part III of IV
This is the third in a four-part series featuring an interview with recent MIT Program in Comparative Media Studies graduate and C3 alumnus Geoffrey Long.
Sam: What do you think is on the horizon in terms of media development and continuing changes in the way media industries tell their stories and also in the relationship between producers and consumers?
Geoff: I think that we're on the verge of some truly exciting stuff, creatively speaking.
I think that the genuinely smart big entertainment companies are finally adopting the 'nimbler, faster' model magazines like Fast Company and WIRED have been preaching for years, and are learning how to provide specialty entertainment to niche audiences.
The very nature of corporate America makes big companies almost insatiable, demanding higher ratings and greater profit margins and bigger and bigger ROI, but that's not what America - or the world, for that matter - is anymore, so these behemoths are starving themselves out.
The days of I Love Lucy dominating the vast majority of the American psyche are just plain over. Big companies need to learn that making reasonable profits on an intelligently-increasing number of niche properties is not just a recipe for survival, but is also a model for thriving in our new media landscape.
Interview with C3 Alum Geoffrey Long, Part II of IV
This is the second part of a four-part series featuring an interview with recent graduate of the Program in Comprative Media Studies and C3 alumnus Geoffrey Long.
Sam: What are some of the areas of research that you have looked into and that have interested you in the past couple of years?
Geoff: My core interest for the last decade or so has been digital storytelling. My key influences there were the late Dana Atchley, who founded the Digital Storytelling Festival, and Derek Powazek, who founded the online storytelling site {fray}.
While in C3 I studied storytelling using mobile devices and ubiquitous computing - what Adam Greenfield calls 'Everyware' - but most of my attention was focused on transmedia storytelling, which Henry outlines in Convergence Culture.
I'm fascinated by how stories evolve across multiple media forms, but especially by ways that new technology can empower storytellers to use multiple media in the crafting of a single, unified narrative.
Interview with C3 Alum Geoffrey Long, Part I of IV
C3 alumnus Geoffrey Long has recently graduated from the Program in Comparative Media Studies here at MIT. This is the first of a four-part series of interviews with Geoff regarding his background, his time working in the Convergence Culture Consortium, and where he is headed next.
Sam: What was your background before coming the Program in Comparative Media Studies at MIT and the Convergence Culture Consortium?
Geoff: My interests have always been a weird hybrid of storytelling, technology and design. I was an only kid, and I grew up in a rural Ohio farmhouse built before the Civil War.
We didn't have cable at our house, so when I was at home I read and played in the woods a lot, but I crammed in crazy amounts of TV at my grandparents' house after school. My favorite shows were the G.I. Joe and Transformers cartoons, which would often run multi-part episodes, but since my Mom only worked a couple days a week, I'd usually miss half the episodes and I'd have to fill in the gaps in the story myself.
Looking back, I suspect that's when I first became interested in negative capability, which would eventually become my primary focus for my Master's thesis.
I wanted to write a quick note in followup to the previous post, considering the news that has come to light regarding the Chris Benoit tragedy, as the WWE performer killed his wife and son and then committed suicide over the course of two days, while telling the company that his family was sick and no-showing his scheduled events, including a live pay-per-view wrestling event he was scheduled to perform on.
I have gotten an Associated Press request for an interview related to these stories, since I had taught the class on pro wrestling here at MIT.
I told the reporter that she could e-mail questions to me instead, and that I would skip over any questions that I had no expertise on (such as questions about steroids or Benoit's actions; I am not a physician/chemist/pharmacist, nor a criminologist). So far, I have not received any questions. But I did want to share my thoughts, so I thought I would do so here instead.
WWE Fans, Transmedia Storytelling, and The Death of Mr. McMahon
One thing that I haven't written about yet but which certainly has gotten my attention, and a lot of correspondence, is WWE's big storyline over the past couple of weeks of the death of real-life owner Vince McMahon's on-air character, Mr. McMahon.
On a Monday Night Raw two weeks ago, McMahon stepped into his limousine, only to have it blow up on him, on a three-hour special that had been intended to be "Mr. McMahon Appreciation Night," but which primarily consisted of wrestlers and WWE personalities ripping on Vince. McMahon had been having premonitions of his own demise previous to the explosion, and television for the past two weeks has focused on getting to the bottom of Vince's death.
Reaction has been interesting and split. On the one hand, there has been a great amount of fan interests. Previous posts on this site which mention the name Vince McMahon have gotten a lot of extra hits, for instance.
Further, when I was visiting WWE headquarters last Tuesday for a series of meetings, I was amazed at a fair amount of wreaths and memorabilia that had been left in front of the main entrance to the building, presumably by interested fans. There were tributes and posters to the memory of the Mr. McMahon character, and the company left them all in place and on display. From the accounts I got, everyone went home last Friday with a clear front entrance and then fans started leaving things over the weekend.
The Best Business School Is a Soap Company in Ohio?
While I didn't come to my present job working in media research through a business school but rather through our program here in Comparative Media Studies at MIT, I'm quite interested in how the ideas we think about and write about are reacted to and incorporated into business school rhetoric, since today's MBA candidates may very well be tomorrow's business leaders or researchers who could have significant impact on the types of questions we are addressing.
(Let me be clear on this, though--I don't think one HAS to have that MBA to make an impact...at least I sure hope not!)
I don't know if it will become a bona fide buzzword, but C3 Affiliated Faculty Grant McCracken sent me an e-mail recently recommending the site Fragvergence, a Blogger site started by Sam Smith (head of future media research for the BBC) that just presents a presentation he made at the Market Research Society and a note that the MRS had nominated his paper in their best New Thinking category.
Smith's presentation focuses on his use of the word fragvergence to emphasize that what is meant by the term convergence does not actually mean the convergence of services into one "black box" (see Henry Jenkins' writing about "The Black Box Fallacy" in Convergence Culture) but rather into many devices, and he provides a diagram depicting how messy technological convergence has become.
While the majority of our work in C3, and posts on this site, focus on the social and cultural implications of convergence, particularly in relation to the ways in which consumers relate to each other and to producers, we nonetheless do regularly focus on and feature news about technological changes, and Smith's research is well worth a read in that regard.
Links for Sunday, June 25: Bringo, OPA Study, Third Screen Media, Gender and Fan Studies
A few interesting final weekend notes that I wanted to pass along to C3 readers.
1.) BRINGO. I got an e-mail hoping I would promote this beta project, and I thought readers might find it interesting. The plan is for a service which will take care of the preliminaries of getting a human being on the line for a variety of companies. In short, you pick the company you need to call and the phone number for that company and then Bringo will call them up and call you back when they have a human being lined up.
A few people seemed to have good luck in using the service, and it's a way around the complaint many have that new technologies have eliminated the human touch. Now we have another new technology eliminating the elimination of the human touch. Nifty.
Prom Queen and LonelyGirl15: Spinoffs and Product Integration
A couple of interesting news notes surrounding Web-only series that I thought I would pass along this weekend. Two of the most talked-about online Webisode series is the grassroots popularity of LonelyGirl15 and the promotion-driven Prom Queen.
The two series have both made interesting new moves in the past week, both worth highlighting.
For Prom Queen, the Michael Eisner-produced show will soon be launching into a spinofff series entitled Prom Queen: Summer Heat, which will start in August and run for three weeks in a series of 15 two-minute episodes. The idea will be to pick up the story following the prom night culmination of the narrative by following the lead characters to Mexico during their summer.
Another post that came to me via Geoffrey Long, a C3 alum who works for the Program in Comparative Media Studies here at MIT. This is a direct to the blog of Cabel Maxfield Sasser, co-founder of Panic, who writes about a variety of new packaged food products that have come out recently.
There are a lot of interesting branding issues contained in his post, and both some particularly tasty and quite scary products along the way, but what Geoff recommended I pass along to C3 readers in particular was the third product featured in his post, a brand called (for now) Doritos X-13D.
Here's the deal: Doritos has what Cabel calls a "beta" flavor of chips. The bag comes with the Doritos name followed by a nondescript "X-13D" and a message to consumers, stating, "This is the X-13D Flavor Experiment. Objective: Taste and name Doritos flavor X-13D."
Media and Entertainment a $2 Trillion Global Industry by 2011?
C3 alum Geoffrey Long sent along a quite interesting story from The News Market which explained both that spending on "convergent platforms" will surpass 50 percent of total global entertainment and media spending and also that it is estimated that the global media/entertainment business will grow to more than $2 trillion U.S. dollars by 2011 according to current estimates of a 6.4 percent "compound annual growth rate."
The information is based on a study from PricewaterhouseCoopers called the Global Entertainment and Media Outlook 2007-2011.
According to PricewaterhouseCoopers' press release, "convergent platforms" here means "convergence of the home computer, wireless handset and television."
Children Vs. The First Amendment: Sugary Foods and Marketing to Kids
Children v. The First Amendment. This is the choice being touted by Ed Markey, our Democratic Representative here in Massachusetts. I had been following Ira Teinowitz's writing (look here and here) in TelevisionWeek following public policy surrounding the media industries, especially in light of the recent decision by Kellogg's to quit promoting its cereals to children if they can't follow certain nutritional guidelines.
Markey was quoted as saying, "The First Amendment is precious, but the children of our country are just as precious." And I agree with him. But I also think the First Amendment is there for our children. While I don't want them to be dying of diabetes and heart failure before they are 30 and get a chance to enjoy their First Amendment, I don't feel particularly comfortable with government restrictions on these issues.
I've always been more of an advocate that the best way to fight speech you don't like is with alternate speech explaining why that original speech isn't so great. That's why I hold no ill will toward the grassroots public support that these nutritional groups have. If companies make decisions voluntarily based on consumer pressure to make a change, that's one thing. For the government to step in is quite another.
Autonomy and Authorship Versus Mainstream Distribution: Homestar Runner
Are Internet and indy creators just TV wannabes? This is a question that I've seen posed in many ways time and time again, from indy rock groups who claimed to want to buck the system who were then offered big money from record labels and faced the big dilemma of staying true to their anti-authoritarian nature or joining the network and reaching a much bigger audience.
Then there was the story of Extreme Championship Wrestling, the renegade wrestling group who became really popular among Internet fans and Internet tape traders through word-of-mouth and a syndicated television deal for their local Philadelphia-produced show, only to then face the question of how to go big without changing the nature of their gritty product.
Of course, that's not to say that there aren't many ways in which autonomous auteurs can't reach wider distribution without having to relinquish creative control over their product, as there are myriad examples of independent content that have parlayed to a wider audience while retaining their hardcore basis, but I can't think of any situation in which the conflict isn't there.
VeohTV Creating a Centralized Program to Watch Internet Video Through
Last week, we featured an interview from Bruce Leichtman, looking at the past, present, and future of video in the realm of digital video recorders and Internet video, among other trends that Leichtman tracks. (Look here, here, here, and here.)
I was interested in the latest news coming from Veoh this past week, as it has launched the equivalent of an Internet DVR (as Daisy Whitney with TelevisionWeek called it) or "a sort of distributed Joost" (as TechCrunch's Michael Arrington referred to it as).
What Do Commercial Ratings Mean, with Nothing to Compare Them To?
As the upfronts continue to be negotiated, value is the question on everyone's mind. Now that commercial ratings are being gathered by Nielsen's, the idea is that it would lead to more accountability.
But how does that shift the metric? Obviously, with the first chance the industry has had to measure commercial ratings, it is hard to determine whether viewers are watching 30-second spots more or less than they did before. In other words, the first year of collecting data on commercial viewing would be better served as a benchmark to compare future years and has limited value as a reliable metric in itself.
Of course, I've expressed my concern about the reliability of the Nielsen ratings system as it stands on several occasions. Its value at this point relies much less on measuring the most viewed and most popular television content but rather on keeping the system status quo in place so that the industry can keep running business-as-usual as it always had.
Links for Monday, June 18: YouTube, Bravo, Advertising, Jericho, Comcast, The Election...Too Much to Cover!
I thought I would round out my catchup flurry of posts with links to a variety of recent interesting stories that I haven't covered here in full but which I think might be of interest to C3 readers:
1.) Comcast has launched its own island in Second Life. A variety of bloggers have posted their own takes on it, including Aleister Kronos. (See more at MindBlizzard.) Of course, there are some heavy critics, such as this review from Kzero which calls the island cliche and is criticized from a branding level for not adding a lot new to the equation to make Comcastic! feel that much differently than other online destinations. See more here.
2.) CNN will be allowing user-generated questions via YouTube as part of the Democratic and Republican forums for 2008 presidential hopefuls. That's not to say the announcement wasn't without its problems. However, some bloggers feel that such a format could introduce much less staged questions to the mix, even if the editorial hand of moderators will be involved. The idea does bring a town hall format to national politics in a way that hasn't really been achieved in the past. Jeff Jarvis has more.
3.) Bravo is transforming into Bravo Media, including digital and radio channels, as well as merchandising and publishing, linked in with a talent agency as well. It will be a combination of six separate divisions, headlined by the television show. Some are questioning whether what was considered a home for quality television by many might be compromised in the name of synergy--and especially what might happen to Television Without Pity.
Are Trix for Kids? Will Other Cereal Brands Follow the Kellogg's Lead?
As those of you who follow this site regularly know, I have done my own study of the past on branding in relation to children's series, which I posted as a series of blog entries back in March, called The Cereal Serial. Imagine my surprise, then, when Kellogg's announced last week that it would be ending its marketing to children if cereals do not meet certain nutritional guidelines.
In particular, Fruit Loops has gotten a lot of press as a cereal which contains enough sugar per serving that it will no longer be directed toward kids unless and new version of the cereal will be released. This comes in conjunction with a lawsuit filed against Kellogg's and Viacom by a few advocacy groups and a set of Massachusetts parents regarding the marketing of sugary foods to children. In connection, the group backed down on their lawsuit.
C3 alum Geoffrey Long directed me to Andrew Martin's New York Times story about the decision, which came as quite a surprise.
While Kellogg's was under fire from children's advocacy groups for marketing to minors, there are now quite a few in the blogosphere who are angered by Kellogg's bowing to pressure from the consumer rights group. The blog Moonbattery linked to my series in their being upset about the groups who "have apparently used the threat of legal action to coerce Kellogg into doing away with the old favorites."
Spam May Increase, But Has People's Tolerance as Well?
A while back, Alain Jourdier (friend of the blog) had a post over on his blog, Marketing Bytes Man, about a report on spam from Pew's Internet division.
In short, an increasing number of those polled said that they had an increase in spam for their personal and work accounts, yet fewer people seem as bothered by it in the newest round of their study.
The particular numbers are that 37 percent of users said their spam had increased in personal accounts, while 29 percent said that their work spam had increased. That's up from 28 percent for personal accounts two years ago and 21 percent for work accounts.
According to the report, 88 percent of the e-mail users they surveyed have a personal account, while 49 percent have a work account. Only 10 percent of those with a personal account reported getting less spam, while only 8 percent with a work account reported less spam. The majority in both (not surprisingly) didn't notice a major change one way or another in the past year (55 percent for work e-mail and 51 percent for personal e-mail).
The survey was among 2,200 American adults via phone. The reported margin of error is plus or minus 3 percent.
The following is the final part in a series of four posts featuring a phone interview I recently conducted with Bruce Leichtman, who is the head of New Hampshire-based Leichtman Research Group. Leichtman is a respected quantitative survey-based researcher who focuses on both consumer analysis and industry data and perspectives.
The first three parts of the interview focused on Leichtman's background, his company's focus, and his work on high-definition television and online video. This final installment looks at his work on video-on-demand and his ongoing research.
For a previous mention of Leichtman's work on VOD, look here.
Sam: In a story on VOD from TelevisionWeek back in April, you were quoted pointing out the differences between 1.9 billion VOD sessions from Comcast and 51.3 million downloads from iTunes, yet iTunes gets much more attention in the press and the blogosphere. What do you think leads to this bias?
Bruce: There's the reality of what is actually happening, and then there is the hype about it, or what is being written. I think a great example of the disconnect that is out there was in the early days of the DVR and high-definition. Then, everything that was written about the DVR was positive, and everything that was written about high-definitioin was negative. Why was that? The writers for these publications had a DVR but could not afford an HD television at the time, so they didn't know people who had an HD television. Since they didn't know anyone who had one, they thought it was a failure, and they got caught up in their own circle without thinking of who else is out there.
A lot of people who write technologies like VOD off as passe aren't looking at what is really out there. Let's look at the reality of it; I always try to come back to what the reality is. The most important thing is not about me or you but about the masses.
One of the nice things about living here in New Hampshire is that life is a little more "normal." In New York or L.A., people are in a cocoon, and they think that everyone else is like them, but they are not. You often hear executives talking about themselves or their families as examples, but they don't realize how out of the mainstream they are. People just don't get that. Whether you are the president of a company or the reporter at a paper, everyone thinks they are mainstream, but no one IS the mainstream. That's why you do research.
The following is the third installment of a four-part series featuring an interview with Bruce Leichtman, head of the Leichtman Research Group, based out of New Hampshire. Leichtman has become a respected quantitative survey-based researcher who focuses on both consumer analysis and industry data and perspectives.
In the first two installments, the interview looked at Leichtman's background, the focus of his company, and his work on high-definition. This third installment looks further at his focus on high-definition television and his work on online video as well. For previous posts mentioning Bruce's work online video, look here.
Sam: What do you think will happen in the next three years in relation to HD in the average American household?
Bruce: We are going to have 9 to 10 million new HD homes each year, but there is still a lot of consumer confusion around these technologies. 37 percent of the digital TV sets purchased last year were not high-definition, and the CEA expects that number to be even higher next year. If you go to Circuit City or Best Buy now, all you can get is a digital set. But a lot of people don't know that their digital sets are not high-definition.
Then, you have people who have HD sets not watching high-definition programming but thinking that they are. It is still an evolving market with a lot of constituencies involved, and the problem is that they are not all always on the same dance card.
Earlier today, we posted the first part of a four-part interview with Bruce Leichtman, head of Leichtman Research Group.
In October, I wrote about Leichtman's research. I wrote, "Interesting news regarding consumer behavior released this week, as the Leichtman Research Group examined the expansion of high-definition televisions not just across the total number of U.S. homes but rather WITHIN U.S. homes. The group found that getting an initial high-def. television set causes most families to want to buy another set."
I also wrote more recently about Bruce's TelevisionWeek quotes about wrestling not having as much potential to be a hit on HD because it has "more of a downscale appeal." I wrote about cultural biases and how they might be informing such a statement, but I wanted to dig deeper into what Bruce meant. In the process, we ended up discussing issues of active fans versus passive fans, and the importance of the differences between the two. In short, wrestling is massively popular and has a large core audience that consumes its product in multiple media formats, but it also has a more casual fan base that may watch the television show and nothing more.
Here is the second excerpt from this interview:
Sam: Back in October, some research that you release indicated that homes which purchase one HD set are more likely to then want more subsequent sets. Were you surprised by these findings?
Bruce: Some people mistakenly thought initially that HDTV sales indicated the number of homes who now have high-definition television sets. That's the advantage to being focused and doing surveys, though. I always marvel at the analysts who don't do research. I'm not saying that all quantitative research is pure, but how can you get at the number without surveying what people say. That's the mistake a lot of firms are making, thinking that one set equals one house.
One of the leading voices of research in relation to new television and video technologies is the Leichtman Research Group, based out of Durham, New Hampshire. At the head of this research is Bruce Leichtman, who serves as principal analyst and president of the company.
Leichtman is regularly quoted as an expert in the field based on his continued research on high-definition television, video-on-demand, digital video recorders, online video, and other important issues in the television industry.
Since these are areas that C3 focuses on as well, I thought it might be of interest to our readers to interview Leichtman about his research, his background, and his thoughts on the current and future of the market. This interview was conducted via phone this morning. It will be presented in four installments. See more about Leichtman Research Group here.
Sam: What is your background in media and technology research?
Bruce: I have been in this industry for a while now, and I have run my own company for the past six years. I was previously the Vice President of Media and Internet Strategies for the Yankee Group., and I worked as director of marketing for Continental Cablevision before that. Prior to all of that, I was a communication major at Syracuse University. At the time, I was looking at going on-air, and I've even done some on-air internships. Basically I've been involved in this field and this field has been in my blood since before I started school in 1980.
As my final note on the blog for today, I wanted to mention an interesting partnership that has been making the news between the infamous gossip syndicated television show Access Hollywood and C3 corporate partner Yahoo!
The plan is to create an online site for gossip connected to a known television property and also to create a rival for TMZ.com, the celebrity gossip site launched by AOL.
The site will be called omg!, trying to rival the "Thirty Mile Zone" abbreviation specific to celebrity culture with the more culturally prevalent "Oh My God."
The move coincides with a reformatting of the Web site of Access Hollywood, which will be relaunching in the fall.
Since we don't have a blogroll up and running here on the C3 site (one of our planned renovations over the summer), I wanted to point toward the new Web site and blog of Dr. Robert V. Kozinets, one of our affiliated faculty here at the Convergence Culture Consortium.
Rob's blog, called Brandthroposophy, launched at the beginning of June and already has a variety of interesting topics up.
In his introductory post, Rob writes, "The title of this blog derives from a weird hybridizing of consumer culture, management science, entertainment and mysticism, in keeping with the theme of much of my thinking and writing."
Through the blog, Rob further examines his work on Star Trek as well as a look at the recent discussion about the appeal of the Beatles during the 40th anniversary of the release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
In the past few days, a few interesting pieces have appeared on C3 Director Henry Jenkins' blog that I thought would be of particular interest to consortium readers.
The first is an interview with C3 Affiliated Faculty Ian Condry through Henry's blog yesterday. Jenkins, the director of the consortium, talks with Ian about his Cool Japan project and both his 2006 book Hip-Hop Japan: Rap and the Paths of Cultural Globalization and his new book project Global Anime: The Making of Japan's Transnational Culture. I have written in the past about Condry's work on Japan.
Silver Surfer Coins Generate Reaction from U.S. Mint
For those who haven't followed the story, there is another round of controversy from a marketing initiative, this time from promotion surrounding the upcoming Fantastic Four sequel.
I first heard about this from my colleague Geoffrey Long's blog. As these excerpts from the New York Times story detail, the U.S. Mint has spoken out against a promotional stunt in which 40,000 California quarters have the Silver Surfer stamped on the back of the coins.
In short, while it is not illegal to deface coins without intention to defraud, advertising on coins is considered illegal.
World Wrestling Entertainment, Japanese Culture, and Pop Cosmopolitanism--Part VI of VI
Conclusion
The WWE has continually attempted to balance its domestic product with an attempt to maintain and foster an international appeal, especially at a time in which numbers are down from a late 1990s popularity boom for the company in the U.S. However, taking an international audience in mind raises new questions about the business dangers of relying on old stereotypes, as the WWE's change of heart regarding the Hirohito character demonstrates.
Meanwhile, the Japanese audience has to balance its desire for an authentic American product with a desire to see that product tweaked in some ways for the interests of a Japanese audience. Should matches be conducted in the colorful "American" style or the more traditional serious athletic Japanese style? Fans seem to expect an authentic American product that nevertheless acknowledges the "Japanese-ness" of its audience at points, and WWE has tried to find ways to balance the American stereotypes of U.S. pro wrestling's past with a transnational audience.
To return to the quandary posed at the beginning of this study, that moment when fans asked Shane McMahon to kick the Japanese interpreter from the ring, one inclination might be to say that it proves the cultural imperialism of the WWE, internalizing a desire for another culture's language. However, as James L. Watson points out in Golden Arches East, the outward appearance of globalization must be distinguished from the meaning that people attribute to that product.
World Wrestling Entertainment, Japanese Culture, and Pop Cosmopolitanism--Part V of VI
WWE's Television Product and Japanese Stereotypes
As Brendan Maguire and John F. Wozniak point out in their 1987 essay "Racial and Ethnic Stereotypes in Pro Wrestling," pro wrestling has long played heavily on racial and ethnic stereotypes. From the German and Japanese villains of the Post-World War II era to the Russians of the 60s and 70s, wrestling has a long background of playing up current events with villainous foreign heels. With its roots in Rikidozan battling the evil gaijin, there are similar uses of racial stereotypes in traditional Japanese wrestling storylines as well.
The WWE has continued that tradition, whether it be the Iron Sheik when American/Iranian hostilities were at a peak in the 1980s or La Resistance, a French team who drew the ire of American fans post-9/11. Yet, when the company is attempting to draw a massive international audience, some of these business practices have to be rethought.
In 2004, WWE made plans to bring in Japanese wrestler Kenzo Suzuki, running a promo on its RAW broadcast for his new character, named Hirohito. The character was introduced amid old war footage, and the obvious plan was to try and create an evil Japanese villain of the post-World War II type (The Wrestling Observer, April 26, 2004, p. 14).
World Wrestling Entertainment, Japanese Culture, and Pop Cosmopolitanism--Part IV of VI
WWE in Japan: 2004
Based on its popularity, the company decided to create a book release solely for the Japanese market, a memoir of wrestler Yoshihiro Tajiri, and also translated the books of two of its prominent historical wrestling figures, Hulk Hogan and Freddie Blassie, into Japanese as well (documented in the January 19, 2004, edition of Dave Meltzer's The Wrestling Observer, 19). A history of Vince McMahon and American wrestling called Sex, Lies, and Headlocks was translated into Japanese as well, called The Dictator of WWE, according to the March 29, 2004, Observer (10). Otherwise, the company announced its philosophy as continuing to have one Raw and one Smackdown tour per year in Japan, for fear that any more than that would dilute the success of their shows (The Wrestling Observer, January 26, 2004, p. 9).
For its February 2004 Raw tour, WWE announced in late January that the $1.6 million advance for the Saitama Super Arena on February 07 was already the largest gate in company history for a non-televised show, making it seventh place at the time for the largest gate in WWE history (The Wrestling Observer, February 02, 2004, p. 15). When the Fuji Network gave WWE a chance to promote their shows in a ten-minute spot on February 01, Vince McMahon made Japanese wrestling promoters furious by playing up the entertainment aspects of his shows and even showing backstage footage that demonstrated how this was, indeed, a "show" (The Wrestling Observer, February 09, 2004, p. 16). Meanwhile, WWE was also announcing plans to continue its drive into India, despite an unsuccessful 2003 tour, by expanding its marketing deals there.
The February 2004 tour grossed more than $3 million in ticket sales, with 20,002 fans at the Saitama Super Arena drawing almost $2 million. The show, which lasted four hours, drew a lot of people on their mid-20s, many of whom appeared to be on dates, "described as more like a rock concert crowd than the more wrestling educated crowd" at Japanese pro wrestling events, according to Dave Meltzer in the February 16 ,2004, edition of The Observer (1).
World Wrestling Entertainment, Japanese Culture, and Pop Cosmopolitanism--Part III of VI
WWE's Previous Trips to Japan
Current WWE owner Vince McMahon's father, Vince Senior, ran the WWE from the 1960s until the early 1980s and had a working relationship with New Japan Pro Wrestling, occasionally featuring their wrestlers on his shows at Madison Square Garden and sending his wrestlers to Japan for tours. The figurehead president of the company on the shows themselves was even Japanese for a while, with Hisashi Shinma from New Japan playing the WWE President role, as noted in the May 24, 2004, edition of The Wrestling Observer Newsletter (17).
However, when the WWE expanded on cable television in the 1980s and put many regional promoters out of business, they opted to begin touring in Japan in joint-promoted shows with Japanese promoters instead of merely sending over a few wrestlers for a tour. In America, Ted Turner-owned World Championship Wrestling and the WWE were both looking at ties with the Japanese market, considering the continued success of Japanese wrestling since the 1950s.
WWE worked with both All Japan and New Japan to promote the "U.S. and Japan Wrestling Summit" on 13 April 1990, not promoted as a major deal in America but promoted heavily to the Japanese audience through the two Japanese organizations. The show was considered something of a disappointment for not selling out the huge arena rented for the event, but it drew 41,000 fans and a $2.1 million gate, and drawing a 14.1 rating on NTV, according to the July 28, 2003, edition of The Wrestling Observer Newsletter (5-6).
With all the promoters trying to put a show on together, arguments ranged from endings of matches to where the ring would be positioned to how the ring announcer would announce time limits.
World Wrestling Entertainment, Japanese Culture, and Pop Cosmopolitanism--Part II of VI
Scholarly Interest in American Pro Wrestling
Current American interest in pro wrestling takes an unlikely lineage, best traced out by scholars Gerald W. Morton and George M. O'Brien in their book, Wrestling to Rasslin': Ancient Sport to American Spectacle. They trace the roots of the American exhibition of wrestling to athletic competitions in Egyptian, Jewish, Greek, and Roman cultures and a long tradition of "real" wrestling in European culture.
That wrestling tradition in Western culture collided with Native American conceptions of wrestling as well and spread in popularity through the Civil War, when troops on both sides wrestled each other as a pastime. Many of these soldiers, after the war was over, began touring with carnivals to display their wrestling skills.
Not surprisingly, carnival barkers like P.T. Barnum soon decided to capitalize on the showmanship, giving these grapplers costumes and characters and fixing the matches. The increasing visuality and performative style of pro wrestling bonded with television from its infancy, and wrestling has thrived in both national and regional distribution ever since. For more information on the historical relationship of American wrestling and television, see Forest Steven Beverly's 1989 Master's thesis from Auburn, A History of Professional Wrestling as Television Programming.
Since French Semiotician Roland Barthes first examined professional wrestling in 1957 in "The World of Wrestling," (first written in 1957 and translated into English in 1972), American academics in particular have sought to understand why millions of people across the country are attracted to this performance of violence. Barthes claims pro wrestling is "a spectacle of excess," as the hero's struggle against the unfair tactics of the villain provides a plethora of symbols of suffering and justice.
Meanwhile, in his 1974 book Frame Analysis, sociologist Erving Goffman finds the power of pro wrestling to be a key narrative, in which the hero adopts the rule-breaking tactics of his opponent in order to retaliate against him, only after the rulebreaker has first broken the frame of fair play. In other words, pro wrestling fans like the show most when the rules break down, and it is that departure from the rules that causes the excitement of a match's climax.
World Wrestling Entertainment, Japanese Culture, and Pop Cosmopolitanism--Part I of VI
The following series presents work I completed for James L. Watson's course on globalization through Harvard University's Department of Anthropology in Fall 2006. Since the work was closely related to the concepts of pop cosmopolitanism and the interenational flow of media products, as well as my work on professional wrestling that has appeared on this site on numerous occasions, I thought it might be appropriate to include this work here on the C3 site. This is the first of a six-part series looking into the popularity of World Wrestling Entertainment's pro wrestling shows in Japan from 2002 until 2006.
Thinking Outside the Box and Understanding the History of Television Studies
As I was skimming through the latest issue of The Journal of Popular Culture which I received in the mail not that long ago, I found a note about a somewhat old book volume that might nevertheless be quite interesting to peruse. It's called Thinking Outside the Box: A Contemporary Television Genre Reader, featuring work from the likes of C3's Jason Mittell, although the reviewer mistakenly attributed his work to some bloke named Jason Mittrell. It's nice to know I'm not the only person who has their name regularly botched; remember back to an article in The Louisville Courier-Journallast summer on the changing branding practices of Kentucky Fried Chicken that attributed my quotes to C3's "Sam Bond."
The reviewer--Michigan State University's John F. Bratzell--points to Mittell's piece about understanding television genres alongside a review from Horace Newcomb as to "the early growth of cultural studies and subsequently the study of television." This is bookended by an epilogue from Brian G. Rose looking at the history of television analysis. The book is edited by Rose and Gary R. Edgerton.
First Round of Discussion on Gender Issues and Fan Communities
I wanted to direct attention of regular C3 readers who might not follow Henry Jenkins' "Aca/Fan" blog on a regular basis to note an intriguing series of conversations that will be taking place throughout the summer among those interested in researching fan communities and fan activities and particularly in discussing the gender issues surrounding fan studies.
C3, of course, has a strong interest in fan behaviors and the motivations fans have for engaging in these activities. I will be taking part in this series in July alongside C. Lee Harrington, and Lee and I have an interesting dual commonality that exists somewhat on the fringe of these discussions. Lee has written considerably about soap opera fandom, and those of you who read here regularly know that I've been immersed in works on soaps fandom for the past couple of years, as a self-identified soap opera fan no less.
My other major area of interest is pro wrestling fandom, and Lee has done a significant amount of work on sports fandom. These two areas stereotypically have a gender divide--sports/wrestling with a masculine fandom, soaps drawing primarily female fans--and I hope that our contributions will help question some of these overall understandings about what fan behaviors are inherently "male" or "female" and how certain ways of looking at fans are inherently one way or the other.
The first round of this discussion, available here and here, takes place between Karen Hellekson and C3 affiliated faculty Jason Mittell.
Soap fans were shocked when news began to break last night and became official this morning that daytime television veteran Benjamin Hendrickson, 55, had passed away over the weekend. Hendrickson, who trained at Julliard and won an Emmy for his portrayal of Hal Munson on As the World Turns, has been in the role since 1985, aside from a few brief hiatuses along the way. The cause of death has not been reported, although Hendrickson was rumored to have had health troubles for some time.
However, because many major entertainment outlets rarely report on or are at least slow to report on events that happen in daytime television, the news spread instead through the soap world, primarily via the fan community. Soap Opera Digestbroke the story earlier this afternoon. A few minutes later, fans on the Media Domain message board reacted to the news. Someone had posted a rumor of Hendrickson's death the night before but it had been dismissed on the message boards as "a sick rumor" when no further information was made available.
Around the same time, fans on the official Web site of Procter & Gamble Productions, The Soap Box, posted their response to the news within the hour. Minutes later, a representative of the company issued an official release on the fan board. In the past couple of hours, fan response has filled threads at both message boards, as well as others. At this point, the fan community can do no more than address their disbelief, since he is currently playing a central role in scenes where his on-screen daughter is dying of complications from viral pneumonia. (As an ATWT fan and a Ben Hendrickson fan, I am still in shock myself.) By watching a performer play a character several times a week over decades, an even closer character identification often develops than in primetime shows, especially since soap operas are particularly about character and character relationships.
The show tapes several weeks ahead, and Hendrickson's final air date will be next Wednesday. Hendrickson has had various personal issues and rumored health problems that have taken him from the show in the past, including a year's hiatus in which Randolph Mantooth filled the role. While fans accepted Mantooth in the role as a replacement, Hendrickson was soon welcomed back to the show and received a central supporting role upon his return. The reaction to Mantooth's performance demonstrated how fans often feel about recasts of roles portrayed for such a long time by one portrayer in the soaps world. Recasting is accepted in daytime, but it is less accepted the longer an actor has been in the role. The response to bringing Hendrickson back, even though he was not a young or starring performer by that point, shows the powerful relationships actors develop with fans while portraying a role over decades.
The role of Hal Munson is not planned to be recast this time around, according to a statement from PGP. It's not yet clear how his death will be handled on the show.
In the past two hours, soap Web sites have picked up more information based on PGP press releases and more mainstream news sources are beginning to react as well. However, since mainstream news sources often pay little attention to what happens in the world of daytime television (as I've written about before) daytime fans had to spread the word themselves after it was broke by SOD. As of this posting, neither CBS's main page or even its daytime page had acknowledged the actor's passing.
Hendrickson's performance has an important place in ATWT's 50-year history, as he was among a group of 10 or so performers on that show to have lasted in a role for about 20 years or more and remained an integral part of the show. And, whether the mainstream media take note of his importance or not, the fan community and the soap opera press are mourning the loss of one of the genre's most talented veterans.
Yesterday in Louisville's The Courier-Journal, I was quoted on the transformation of the image of Col. Sanders for Kentucky Fried Chicken. The fast food chain is making moves to create a more youthful Colonel, including adding some color to his image which adorns all of their cups, advertisements, etc. The changing of the Col. Sanders picture was the focus of this article, but the company has also been utilizing a cartoon version of the colonel in its television advertisements as well. It's not yet clear if the old image of the Colonel will be replaced with the new one, but the paperwork has been filed.
I was quoted in The Courier-Journal as saying that the image of the colonel has evolved because a younger generation only knows the icon and not the actual human being. In old ads, an actual photo of the Colonel or actual footage of the Colonel might have been used, but consumers in their 20s or younger would not remember the actual Col. Sanders but only his image for the KFC brand. According to the story, by David Goetz, the move is "part of a strategy to reconnect with the baby boomers, who still have fond memories of the original Col. Sanders, while appealing to younger fast-food users who may not know who the old dude is but like his picture." Indeed, part of the interest in this new youthful image and the cartoon icon in the television commercials may be to redefine KFC as a multi-generational brand instead of relying on nostalgic images for older consumers. Putting more emphasis on Col. Sanders instead of Harland Sanders still respects his legacy while distancing the company from the man.
For those who don't know the backstory (as a Kentuckian, it's my duty to know about one of our favorite culinary sons), Col. Sanders owned a small restaurant that became famous for its fried chicken, which he then successfully franchised throughout the region before eventually being bought out by future Kentucky governor John Y. Brown Jr. Now owned by Yum! Foods, KFC is an internationally known franchise, with Col. Sanders retained as its creator.
The Col. Sanders icon has changed through the years as the company distances itself from Harlan Sanders but continues to celebrate his legacy through the Col. Sanders character (Sanders was actually a Kentucky Colonel, an honorary title here in The Bluegrass State).
When Sanders died, KFC no longer had the actual Sanders as spokesperson but instead a representation of him and, now, in their television commercials, a cartoon version. Through this evolution, you can trace Sanders' development from a human spokesperson, Harland Sanders, to a mythic figure, Col. Sanders. The new cartoon version of Sanders still references the immense history of the KFC brand through Sanders the character while creating a new version of the Colonel to further distance itself from the person.
While Col. Sanders' image is still used on every aspect of KFC merchandising, Wendy's has distanced itself from using founder Dave Thomas in commercials. Why? Maybe it's becuase, in order for KFC to remain Kentucky Fried Chicken, it needs to retain the authenticity of the creator of the food, who was actually from The Bluegrass State and whose food became popular through word-of-mouth. In other words, can it really be "Kentucky" Fried Chicken if the company moves from emphasizing its Kentucky roots?
Even though KFC doesn't include the creator's name in its title, like popcorn brand Orville Redenbacher, much of the company's legacy and brand still depends on Col. Sanders, if not Harland himself. While the company may be distancing itself from the actual creator as time goes by, they are as dependant as ever on the Colonel.
Last year, fellow C3 analyst Ilya Vedrashko blogged about this issue on the site that was a precursor to this blog, citing the company's interest in giving the Colonel a facelift to attract younger audiences.
Oh, and contrary to the CJ's story, my name is not Bond...Sam Bond. It's still Sam Ford, although I guess I could start branding myself as the 007 of convergence culture.
One of our C3 team members from MIT's Sloan School of Management, Tim Crosby, alerted me to a fascinating site last week that shows the power of convergence culture and how the Internet can serve to incorporate the style and work of another medium--an online television series, updated at regular intervals and with a continued story-arc from episode to episode.
While other series have been done online, few have captured the cohesive feel of Soup of the Day, an ongoing Web-based situation comedy that builds on ongoing storylines. The site calls itself "a relation entertainment series," with the storyline of a central male protagonist who has three girlfriends--"one man, split pea-tween three girlfriends." The show features Brandon's struggle in trying to maintain these multiple relationships and also features male supporting characters.
Soup of the Day has already made it to the 18th installment, and all the episodes are available through the archives now. All the previous shows are available in the show's archives, with the content distributed through YouTube.
The show is likely done with a meager budget, without major name talent, but has gained a following through clever transmedial marketing, through its being a unique venture in the first place, and Iron Sink Media's ability to make compelling episodes that people want to follow--and with pretty impressive production values for a small independent project like this.
When Tim e-mailed me about this venture, he pointed out that the site is perhaps the best example of how video distribution costs have dropped immensely, through the video hosting power of YouTube. And it becomes further evidence of other models of distribution that does not require a traditional broadcasting network to produce a compelling television series. Through video-sharing, grassroots networking among the growing fan community, and clever transmedial marketing by the producers, Soup of the Day could be come the hit de jour of Summer 2006.
In terms of transmedia, the site features a video log for one of the characters, and several characters have their own MySpace pages that extend the storyworld into another online space. Viewers can check out protagonist Brandon's MySpace page for continued interaction and thoughts that feed back into the series, as well as to interact with the show's characters. Their are also sites set up for Brandon's three girlfriends: Monique, and Wendy. Pretty shrewd marketing, if you ask me.
The only thing that neither Tim nor I am sure of is where revenue for the show is coming from, as the site doesn't feature significant advertising and is not a pay-for-content distribution system. But, regardless of the financial situation of the show, it's popularity demonstrates much of what we hope to see in the future for convergence culture, in terms of allowing an unprecedented number of voices to participate in production in the creative industries.
Wright's essay, "Welcome to the Jungle of the Real: Simulation, Commoditization, and Survivor," details the way in which television shows become not just content to drive marketing but are marketed themselves. This marketing includes the ancillary products that are sold based around the television show, which seem obvious to anyone who has studied the creative industries in great detail, but also--especially--the marketing of the show's past seasons as Survivor progresses and the commoditizing of people who appear on the reality show--as Wright points out, "these days even people can be commodities" (170). I would say "especially" people can be commodities and that it's no recent phenomenon, as the immense amount of scholarship on the marketing of early mass sports stars or Hollywood star images proves.
However, Wright points out the hyperreality of reality television shows, meaning that the line between "real" and "fictional" becomes blurred so that "real" events play into the fictional world. I've found this concept immensely helpful in understanding immersive story world that try to blend reality and fantasy, including both alternate reality gaming (ARGs) and World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). Thanks to Ben Wright for his Master's thesis study of hyperreality in pro wrestling for helping me solidify those thoughts.
Christopher J.. Wright studies how the repeated process of a Survivor episode both commodifies the past and teaches viewers about the show's rituals, so that the Tribal Council portion of the show that originally seemed comical and absurd to some of the first season's contestants has been so effectively built in the show's production that contestants by the second season felt there was an aura around the contrived event that was created by their own viewing of the first season.
This coincides in the pro wrestling world with the development of the Wrestlemania PPV event. For the first several years, WWE promoters tried to bill Wrestlemania as the most important card of the year, as an event that would transcend time with performances that would be remembered forever. Many of the early wrestlers probably didn't view it as that much more special than other paydays...but, through the years and repeated marketing of the images from the early Wrestlemanias, most of today's performers who grew up as fans watching Wrestlemania have bought into this myth to the point that they themselves see Wrestlemania as a sacred event.
Wright's piece goes on to examine how other reality shows and Survivor itself has effectively built on itself and created the "reality television" genre that remains so prevalent today. He also gives a small amount of space to Survivor spoiler fan communities online.
For those who are interested in reading about how Survivor has developed such a passionate fan following, Henry Jenkins has a chapter dedicated to Survivor spoiler communities in his upcoming book Convergence Culture. But Wright's essay provides some key insights about how Survivor has built its history and its myths that are worth checking out.
The majority of the people who visit our site may live in areas where these issues aren't quite as pressing because there are healthy daily newspapers available and vibrant alternative papers that push the underground of the journalism world. But, for anyone who is familiar with the weekly newspaper industry or who may have grown up in a rural area where the only paper of record is a local weekly, the plight of weekly newspapers is an important one.
In a lot of communities, these small-operation newspapers are the only major source of local history, the only form of accountability for local elected officials, and the only means of communication for major news stories that aren't so big that they get picked up by regional or national dailies.
In short, it's called the Wal-Martization of local communities that puts community journalism in danger. A lot of people know about the effects of Wal-Mart moving in on a lot of locally owned business that compete with the superstore, especially considering all the anti Wal-Mart documentaries that have been made about the phenomenon.
But few people acknowledge the effect Wal-Martization has had on community journalism. The local businesses that are either impoverished or slaughtered by the low-priced juggernaut are what formerly gave the newspapers the bulk of its revenue. Locally owned small-town newspapers are funded by advertising revenue from local businesses. And Wal-Mart does not run ads in newspapers, neither inserts nor paid ads on pages, except in rare cases.
While some growing communities have maintained ad support, the number of businesses that advertise are dwindling for many places...and the hopes of attracting businesses from bigger towns to advertise in the small papers of distant communities is getting more bleak when television, radio, billboard, direct mail, and other forms of advertising are joined by Web advertising. There's only so much of the advertising budget for these local businesses to give to the print media. I had a friend in the weekly newspaper business tell me recently of a prominent regional car dealer who was dropping all of his print ads for the rest of the year.
As I've mentioned, I'm back in Kentucky working for a couple of weeklies this summer "getting back to my journalism roots," and I've been putting a lot of thought to how the long-term integrity of community journalism can be protected. And I think that, while the Web provides many potential dangers for the print media because of the emphasis it takes off the building of local community in favor of national communities built around common interests instead of geographical space, the Web also provides the potential saving grace for community journalism.
The Web may be a contributing factor to the diminished power of a sense of local community, but it also provides the only means for people in our increasingly mobile society to stay in touch with "where they are from." This phenomenon is one of the things that have fueled the popularity of sites like MySpace, as people use the social networking tool to stay in touch with friends back home.
Community journalism may be able to flourish by moving their operations increasingly into this online space and becoming a meeting place for people interested in their small town, not just among the local residents but among the so-called "diaspora" as well...those will are likely never to return to the area due to lack of good employment options but who care about what's happening in the area. Local newspapers can only gain so many readers in a small geographical space, but there are hundreds of kids moving out of these communities every year to college, many likely never to return as a resident. Sites that attract these former residents may be able to draw advertising revenue not just from local businesses but from regional or even national ones as well.
It's something worth looking into and something I'm contemplating spending significant more time researching and writing about. Do any readers have any thoughts while I'm still trying to conceptualize this?
Major Moves to Online Content--But How Will Congress' Upcoming Decision Affect Convergence Culture?
Moving into a major holiday four-day weekend, there were a lot of major announcements and events in the industry at the end of last week that affect old media companies moving their content online.
For instance, CBS announced a deal with its affiliates to help gain further network-wide support for a drive to new media content related to CBS programming. According to Michele Greppi of TelevisionWeek, the deal resembles FOX's agreement with its affiliates, in which stations receive 12.5 percent of what the network receives, after deducting various expenses, for on-demand repurposing of already-aired content and 25 percent of any content being available online before it airs on television.
CBS's deal will allow those stations who promote digital content on broadcasts to share in the revenue that results from the on-demand Web content. The affiliates are also slated to receive a fee for generating hits on CBS-owned Web sites with content supported by advertising revenues.
Finally, also on Thursday, Google announced that its video service will now allow users to rate clips, as Google tries to continue competing with the immensely popular YouTube in the video sharing market.
But all this news of content moving online comes amidst growing fear that content providers will lose the battle on Capitol Hill with Internet service providers over what has been labeled "net neutrality," which I've written about in the past. The Senate Commerce Committee rejected the addition of a "net neutrality" clause to the current legislation aimed at easing restrictions for telephone companies to get involved in pay television...As usual, it's hard to figure out how the one thing has to do with the other when it comes to bills being put together.
Regardless, net neutrality (as is currently in place, for the most part) has already been rejected by the House and is now on the Senate floor. Online content providers and "Internet equality" types are all protesting and organizing lobbying efforts to get net neutrality onto the agenda for the bill to pass.
The debate right now is, one the one side, that net neutrality is essential to allow everyone equal access to Internet content, and, on the other side, that service providers need to be able to get extra compensation for expenses required in updating lines for increased video content, etc., and that they should be able to work out deals and charge sites for preferential treatment.
Just as we have a strong movement toward equal access online, these proposals to eliminate net neutrality--along with moves toward online gated content--damages the ability of consumers to find products. And any move that ultimately takes power away from consumers is, to me, detrimental to convergence culture.
The State of High-Speed Internet and Convergence Culture
Recently, I was having a conversation with fellow C3 analyst Geoffrey Long about a prior post in which I indicated that indecency fines raising would stifle the creative industry and cause great damage to convergence culture. Playing devil's advocate, he pointed out that a heavily policed environment on broadcast could give networks a powerful new force to drive fans to try content from online platforms, with the full or uncensored versions available there and the sanitized version appearing on TV.
It was a point well taken, and I do agree that companies may be able to find ways to use this increase in government influence on television programming to their advantage. However, on the other hand, I fear that advocating or okaying a tightened censorship on broadcast television helps open the door further for intrusion into other spaces as well, including the Internet. Censorship is like a bad house guest or Chris Farley's Herlihy Boy...once you give it an a small place in your life, it begins to take over.
However, relating to this conversation, one of the comments in that prior post about the PTC and the indecency fines questioned what these old media companies had to do with convergence culture. I pointed out that the very idea of convergence deals with the collision of old and new media. If all we were talking about were the Internet, then it would be new media culture and not convergence. Television, magazines, newspapers, films...these platforms are far from dead and hold a central place in people's lives and entertainment consumption.
And, among us who study the media or work in the media industry, it's a common tendency to think that the tools essential to participate in the new media of convergence culture are commonly available to everyone. Sure, when I'm in Boston (where I'm visiting right now), I can pick up Internet signals at almost every corner. But, I'm staying in Kentucky this summer, and I feel like a druggie in need of a fix when I'm searching for a good Internet connection.
C3 adviser Grant McCracken, C3 analyst Ivan Askwith and I were all having a conversation while visiting New York City a few months back that wireless Internet for the nation might be available in five years, and that would really help to enable the convergence culture we talk about. But, there are plenty of places where people who have the disposable income to afford the Internet not only don't have great wireless options available but are even completely dependent on dial-up Internet service. My parents and my in-laws both have and use the Internet but cannot have high-speed at home. I'm forced to sneak outside the city building of the City of Beaver Dam, parked in the alleyway, to pick up a wireless connection, or else go into work after hours at the newspaper office where I'm working this summer.
These places aren't behind the times conceptually. There's income available. But rural areas just have not been a market that's been penetrated with high-speed service at this point. And, until the majority of the nation is wired (or wireless) and ready to go, convergence culture is going to remain primarily dependent on being pushed by old media forms and placing a priority on the types of technology that are universally accessible. Not being a proponent for elitist culture, I think we have to keep this social reality in mind when fantasizing about the current or near-future state of transmedia storytelling and online content.
This blog, by Dr. Henry Jenkins, originally appeared on his blog:
I am participating in a very interesting conversation about digital storytelling, visual culture, and web 2.0 over at Morph, the blog of the Media Center, which describes itself as "a provocative, future-oriented, nonprofit think tank. In the dawning Digital Age, as media, technology and society converge at an accelerating pace in overlapping cycles of disruption, transition and change, and in all areas of human endeavor, The Media Center facilitates the process by gathering information and insights and conceiving context and meaning. We identify opportunity, provide narrative, stimulate new thinking and innovation, and agitate for dialog and action towards the creation of a better-informed society."
The Media Center has asked a fairly diverse group of media makers and thinkers to participate in a "slow conversation" to be conducted over the next month or so about creativity in the new media age. So far, the most interesting post has come from Daniel Meadows, currently a lecturer at Cardiff University in Wales, about work he has done with the British Broadcasting System to get digital stories by everyday people onto the air. He provides links to a great array of amateur media projects. I haven't spent as much time following these links as I would like but it's a great snapshot of the work being done in digital storytelling.
What follows are some excerpts from my own first post in the exchange which uses webcomics to explore some of the ideas in Yochai Benkler's The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, a book I referenced here the other day.
World Wrestling Entertainment has launched a new transmedia product--of sorts. The new WWE Books novel, Big Apple Take Down, is a fantasy book in no way related to the fictional world of the wrestling company--it's a fiction based on a fictional work but which is acknowledged as fiction even within the wrestling world.
The premise of the book is that the federal government is trying to take down a dangerous drug operation and enlists the help of WWE wrestlers to infiltrate the drug ring. WWE writers may be trying to create a new line of books, with the premise that wrestlers would make perfect undercover agents because they travel from town to town constantly for wrestling cards and could plan their wrestling schedule around the government's agenda, with no one ever suspecting a thing.
In this case, an elite group of WWE wrestlers, led by Vince McMahon, are given the mission. According to the WWE's own story about the book in its Smackdown Magazine, Big Apple Take Down is "the first book that takes the Superstars out of their usual element and places them in an entirely new genre" (60).
The book is actually the second novel released by the WWE, the first being Michael Chiappetta's novel Journey Into Darkness. That novel, however, was actually worked into the fictional universe of the WWE, being the "unauthorized biography" of a wrestling character Kane. In short, Kane is the brother of The Undertaker, was burned in a fire at birth and spent his life believing he was disfigured, staying in hiding and wearing a full body suit. Obviously, this is not a realistic background, but the book treated Kane's story as if it were a legitimate sports biography. Kane went on to star in the film See No Evil, WWE Films' first, and he was billed not at Glen Jacobs (who portrays Kane) but as "Kane."
Big Apple Take Down, as with Journey Into Darkness, were released as paperbacks and were not heavily hyped on WWE programming or the Web site, so the WWE obviously doesn't value this on the same level as it does projects more closely integrated as "transmedia," such as the Web site, the Mobile Alerts system, WWE 24/7, Web casts, DVD releases and the company's myriad other projects.
Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see if fans react well to this fictional story that is even fantastical within the fictional universe of the WWE. The company hasn't made the project a top priority in promotion or execution, so it appears to be a pretty low-risk investment ancillary product. But, if it turns a profit for them, it might lead the WWE to consider more of these in the future, perhaps under the same general premise.
It's election year, so Congress is making its political rounds to make sure that it connects with social conservatives, concerned parents, and anyone else who can be swayed by similar arguments. Already this political season, Congress has seen fit to raise the indecency fines at the behest of The Parents Television Council and other censorship-minded organizations.
And now they have moved on to find yet another way to attack the First Amendment in order to score more votes in November--in addition to trying to bring back up banning flag burning...
That's right...Congress' favorite activity is back...talking about video games. The FTC presented to a Congressional subcommittee a couple of weeks ago about regulating video games. Here is the FTC's official report of that presentation. Meanwhile, Oklahoma has signed into law a statute banning the sale of violent video games to minors.
For those of you who caught The Daily Show with Jon Stewart earlier this week, you may have seen some excerpts from the latest Congressional hearing where Congressmen attempt to scare a generation of voters who don't know anything about video games while, in actuality, probably planning to do nothing but increase its votes.
Stewart was pretty well able to let the Congressmen speak for themselves to make fun of them, as Fred Upton from Michigan claims his own ties to video game culture because of his love of Pong, followed by Rep. Joseph Pitts' admission that middle-class kids could handle video games while poor kids in rough neighborhoods might get confused because the environment on violent games is like what they live in every day.
Stewart said it appears "the House of Representatives is full of insane jackasses." Well, we can at least say that they are people who have their minds on re-election, which makes the bi-partisan discussion of video games on election coming right now about as sincere as...well...a politician. But, for those of us who are interested in an environment that encourages a "convergence culture," rhetoric about eroding First Amendment rights in order to gain a few extra votes is no laughing matter.
Madison and Vine Advocates a Drive to Digital Video
According to a news article/commentary yesterday from Advertising Age's Madison and Vine Web site, video consumption online has grown 18 percent over the past seven months, with the average consumer now watching slightly less than 100 minutes of video a month.
The Madison and Vine piece looks at the trend of advertising to follow this trail, with major reallocations of traditional television ad funds now going to new or integrated media. While it isn't surprising that this growth in consumption leads to an influx of advertising revenue supporting online sites with video content, the article highlighted or alluded to a few important implications that greatly affect recent discussions we've had here on this blog:
1.) Transmedia content--With digital streaming poised to become increasingly profitable, those companies who integrate online video content as part of their entertainment package are at a particular advantage. If companies have bonus content available for download or streaming online, they can easily package ad sales that include advertising or sponsorship of both the traditional content and digital content that may become increasingly attractive to advertisers, who would benefit from having a strong association with dedicated fans who follow the product across multiple platforms;
2.) Product placement--As the Madison and Vine article points out, those companies who are paying for product placement now have added incentives, since more and more television shows are becoming available for digital download or streaming. While traditional ads or the ads that run on television are not present in a lot of these digital presentations, all product placements are--indicating that placing products on a show is the smarter investment long-term.
3.) Promotional films--Creating branded video content subtly promoting a product, such as the famed BMW Films campaign, is proving itself to be an attractive option for reaching customers turned off by push advertising. Increased video streaming gives advertisers more of an impetus for creating compelling content that viewers want to stream or download and gives creative independent talents a chance to shine...It's smart marketing and less offensive to commercial-sensitive viewers.
It's hard to find much fault with Madison & Vine's final call--for marketers to "take heed" and take advantage of an audience "hungry for programming." For advertisers and for media content producers, digital video not only provides a chance for revenues and a chance to provide consumers what they want but also makes possible an environment that better enables transmedia content and new forms of storytelling.
Thanks to fellow C3 media analyst Geoffrey Long for directing me to this article.
The following entry by Henry Jenkins was originally posted on Henry's blog, Confessions of an Aca/Fan:
Reader Skwid compares the Snakes on a Plane phenomenon with what happened to Serenity. He notes:
I'm looking forward to this movie as much as the next net.geek, but I don't expect as much of a box-office surprise as many seem to be anticipating, because I've seen it before.
What am I referring to? Serenity. It would be hard to beat the online buzz Serenity was getting, and sometimes it seems like it's difficult to find a blogger who isn't a fan of the prematurely cancelled series Firefly, but all of that buzz and a good deal of critical acclaim still couldn't get people into the theaters.
He may well be right--it is very easy living at the hub of digital culture to imagine that all of the buzz we are hearing is generalizable across the population as a whole. But let's look for a moment at what happened with Firefly/Serenity and then, I will try to explain why I think Snakes on a Plane is in a somewhat different situation.
Praise Be the Whedon
Let's be clear that I am a big fan of Firefly and of Joss Whedon's other work in television and in comics. I think he's one of the smartest and most creative people operating within the media industry today. He has enormous respect for his fans and he has earned our respect in return. He had constructed a television series he really believed in.
He was watching a very dedicated, very resourceful fan community form around a television series which either got canceled because a)the ratings were low and it was not seen as having a broad general appeal or b)the ratings were low because the network had not successfully targeted its most likely audiences and given it a chance to develop the word of mouth needed to expand its core viewership. We may never know which of these explanations is the correct one--I suspect some combination of the two.
Whedon still wanted to produce the content; there was a group of people clammering for the content; but the networks didn't think there's a large enough audience to sustain a prime time broadcast series. This is a situation we've seen again and again in the history of broadcast media. I think it's about time we rewrote the rules.
Two new announcements of mutli-platform promotion and distribution of television programs was announced this week, including NBC's new deal with YouTube and MTV Networks' The N distributing the debut of its new series both on television and on the Web simultaneously.
NBC will market its fall lineup on YouTube and will also purchase advertising and give on-air promotion to the video sharing Web site that has helped transform user generated content and fan control of television clips and which has burgeoning popularity over the past year.
NBC's is the first comprehensive deal with the online video provider among the broadcast networks, probably explained by the fact that NBC is currently fourth among the six broadcast networks for marketing to 18-49s according to TelevisionWeek, and more willing to experiment with new ways to reach young viewers. As part of the deal, NBC is sponsoring a contest for amateur videos to be made promoting The Office, with the winning spot running on the network.
Cable networks, such as E! and MTV 2, have done similar promotions of television programs through YouTube.
For NBC, which has pulled out its legal eagles as much as anyone else in the past, it's a major step in the right direction.
As for our research partner MTVN's new teen series Whistler, the program will both air on their primetime teen network The N but also on their Click media player online simultaneously, in what is being called a "simulcast" (which always makes me think of that surreal moment when Vince McMahon bought WCW and a 15-minute segment aired simultaneously on both TNN and TNT, cable competitors).
Two more moves in the right direction when it comes to networks being more open about promoting content in multiple media forms.
Google Research Making Waves with Social Intereactive Television Proposal
By this point, some of you have probably heard about the new technology proposed by Google researchers Michele Covell and Shumeet Baluja, in association with Michael Fink of the Center for Neural Computation at Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The study, which won the "Best Paper" award at the Euro Interactive Television Conference in Athens, Greece, about a month ago, was announced by Google Research on their blog on June 6 and made available for the public to read.
Siddiq Bello from Turner Broadcasting, one of our partners, made me aware of the study's availability, and I've been reading and thinking about it since he first contacted me about it a couple of weeks ago. In short, the proposed system would create mass personalization, meaning that the traditional mass media would become personalized to a degree never accomplished before.
I'm not talking about having a fireside chat where you make the American people feel like you are coming in your home. This is more than changing one's tone-of-voice. The researchers write that "mass-media channels typically provide limited content to many people; the Web provides vast amounts of information, most of interest to few." They propose to use their technology to make television and radio as personalized as Web content, while still providing the ability to be a somewhat passive consumer.
How to do this? The system would use a computer's microphone to pick up on what programs a person is watching on television and would then provide relevant data online to help enrich the viewer's experience. The report breaks this down into four categories:
The current issue of The Journal of Popular Culture begins with what I think is an important reminder for academics and an important message for the rest of the world to realize about the academic community. The short piece, written by Gary Hoppenstand from Michigan State University, emphasizes that theories are not there to be proven or to cloud things, make them seem more obscure, but to help make complicated things make sense.
Of course, that's theory in theory. In practice, academics often get caught up in their own verbiage, their own jargon, and their own theories, to the point that theories are only used for theory's sake. And that's what gives academics such a bad name. It's especially scary in media studies, when theory takes precedence over the content to be analyzed, as Hoppenstand points out.
Hoppenstand writes that "academic jargon has a way of somehow making the obvious appear unknowable" (347). For any of you who have ever had any contact with the academic world, you know that this is sadly too often the case. When ideas are judged on their obscurity and their insularity, it just serves to distance the people who study our culture further and further from that culture ourselves. Sure, there might be some degree of value in objective distance, but not the hierarchical distance that this affords.
Our work with C3, engaging with corporate partners and writing this blog for instance, emphasizes the type of work that Hoppenstand writes about, a work that engages the world and engages the content of popular culture rather than trying to contort it to fit some bizarre theory that might make us famous in academic circles. If the object of theory is to know something better or to provide greater undersatnding about a subject, we shouldn't be afraid to engage content producers, to engage media fans and to engage the public at large about issues. In other words, we can't be afraid to make our theory accessible, to let people criticize and perhaps even disprove our theories, even if those people are...gasp...not "academics!"
Academia is facing some of the same problems that journalism is, as written about in Dan Gillmor's We the Media, where bloggers are being perceived as competition by professional journalists. When "amateur philosophers" are given a chance to interact with academics and engage in conversations with academics, how can we smart people prove that we're smart anymore...what if people realize that everyday people aren't dumb? Obviously, I'm stereotyping the academic community, but of course there is some degree of this sentiment.
Theory does have its place. In Henry Jenkins' and William Uricchio's classes on media theory, we have discussed the importance of theory in detail. Everyone is a theorist, as putting together "ways of knowing," as Hoppenstand puts it (347), is a part of understanding and functioning in life. But we need to keep theory in its place, use it as a tool, a means to an end, not as the end itself. Then, our colleagues in the corporate world, in fan communities, and in the general public might be able to engage with us on issues.
I wanted to commend Dr. Hoppenstand for his outstanding short mission statement at the beginning of June's JPC and hope that it serves as a continued drive to making academic discourse a conversation for all, focused around trying to know our popular culture better instead of just participating in insulated academic exercises.
A Non-Media Lifestyle--Eliminating the Mass Media from One's Life
When we think of people who don't participate in watching/reading/listening to the mass media in our culture, we often think about the anti-commercial activists, the highbrow critics, conservative censors, and (overly) concerned parents. It's easy to forget about a significant segment of American society, however, who willingly choose to ignore the media to mainstain their lifestyle, a group of people commonly grouped together as "plain people"--the Mennonites, the Amish, and the Brethren. These three groups of people, in varying degrees depending on the particular community, distrust media use among the members of their society.
The head of our consortium, Henry Jenkins, was quoted as saying, tongue-in-cheek, that not allowing a child to participate in media consumption was a form of child abuse in a media-saturated society in which people communicate through and by talking about the mass media. Yet, here we have a group of people who say that it is not just the content funneled through a medium but the very media forms themselves that serve to disrupt their way of life, which requires being cut off from the rest of society.
Thomas W. Cooper, a professor at Emerson College and cofounder of Media Ethics Magazine, presents an intriguing look at what he calls a "media fast" among these plain people in the latest issue of The Journal of American Culture, entitled "Of Scripts and Scriptures," (pp. 139-153).
The plain people often see surveys and interviewers' questions as invasions of their privacy, so in-depth probing of their view on the media is often hard to receive. On the other hand, it's important to realize that, even in our media-driven country, there are plenty of people who consciously cut themselves off from the mass media industry.
In the June 2006 journal, Cooper provides readers with a review of the history of the plain people and how the groups share similarities yet have distinct differences among them. He also briefly details the history of plain people with mass media technologies, from photography to radio to television to the Internet. He explains the spiritual reasons these people reject the media, often not on form of content, as most social conservatives would, but on the principles of the medium itself.
For instance, many cannot substantiate fictional works because acting is seen as a form of professional lying, and radio and television cannot be trusted because "Satan had been biblically described as 'the Prince of the air.' Further, while most other social conservatives and liberal critics would criticize the mass media for its homogenizing effects, the plain people often distrust the individualizing nature of these media forms, encouraging people to fragment themselves from each other and to quit attending communal events. To these people, letting even some families participate in these media forms can be problematic because the communities are often felt to be a cohesive unit, in which any "antomized individualism" is dangerous (146).
Cooper concludes that, while many of the policies of these communities can be seen as oppressive and narrow-minded, the societies should be commended for avoiding many of the social ills of American society in general and for maintaining their own control of technology.
While Cooper's identification with his research often causes him to be overly sympathetic with the restrictive views of these societies, in my opinion, his essay does provide a valuable look at why these people choose to distance themselves from the media in order to preserve their culture. I remain skeptical about celebrating any culture that attempts to severely restrict the parameters of those who grow up within it in order to retain them as the next generation of that culture, and I find that the mass media can be an important way for people to be exposed to a variety of ideas and cultures, but I did appreciate the opportunity Cooper gives us to better understand why this oft-forgotten group of people choose to live in an insular world.
Could They?? Fans Reacting Passionately to Murder Rumor on Soap
A couple of years ago, Days of Our Lives got a lot of people's attention by killing off many members of its main cast, later revealing that these veterans had not died but rather had been sent to a deserted island.
That kind of camp may work on a show like DAYS, but it is not what viewers expect from As the World Turns, the long-running CBS soap I follow closely and have blogged about here several times.
Rumors are circulating quite heavily that Summer 2006 will feature a serial killer storyline, and now word is circulating that the story will lead to the demise of a couple of minor and a couple of major characters on the show. Word has begun to circulate in the online community that TV Guide and Soap Opera Digest are breaking news about the serial killer storyline, although no conclusive word has come out about cast members ending their contract so far, indicating that either word is being suppressed about who is leaving the show for as long as possible or that the characters planned to be killed are not played by contracted stars, making it much harder for word to break out (or, a third option, that fans are taking several unrelated news bits and combining them into something blown out of proportion).
Recently, the show killed off newcomer character Nick Kasnoff, who was murdered in self-defense, and is set to kill off Jennifer Munson, a longtime 20-something character on the show, next week to a bout of viral pneumonia.
Fans were upset about Jennifer's death, as she's been a major featured character on the show for a while, but that pales to the reaction that fans have given over the past day or two on the ATWT Media Domain message board about rumors of the death of character Tom Hughes.
Rumors had been circulating that a veteran on the show was unhappy with their contract, and the star who plays Tom's wife Margo--Ellen Dolan--has also voiced her displeasure with ATWT in a letter written to the fan community that I blogged about a couple of months ago. With news that a beloved character was leaving the show and that Tom was going to be attacked breaking out, longtime fans are angered and feel that portrayer Scott Holmes must be fed up with never getting a storyline. While some fans don't particularly care about the character and others feel that Tom's role has been diminished to the point that his leaving wouldn't be that big of a deal, many fans feel such a move would be a slap in the face of the show's history.
Fashion is worthy of considerable academic study and has been looked at by some of the most important philosophers of the past few centuries. That is the message of Daniel Leonhard Purdy's 2004 collection of essays The Rise of Fashion: A Reader. At least we've been clued into that for some time, as fashion is certainly not outside the scope of this blog, as indicated here and here.
The book presents essays from some of the greatest minds of philosophy and literature, including Voltaire, Baudelaire, Oscar Wilde, Goethe, Hegel, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. For those interested in cultural studies, this book offers conclusive proof that there's nothing wrong with studying fashion because some of the greatest mind in Western thought have done the same thing.
This collection shows how views of fashion's role in society has shifted throughout time and how understanding the marketing of fashion is important for understanding a group of people. This collection moves beyond the restricte "I hate (insert brand name)" anti-commercialist rhetoric that surrounds many of the most popular teen clothing lines today and moves into legitimating a focus on fashion. Part of the disrespect to fashion has been that it has largely been considered a feminine concern and thus somehow considered less legitimate.
Thse views are shifting, and men's fashion is becoming the focus of study as well. And, books like Purdy's reader prove that further emphasis is being put on trying to understand what makes clothing and fashion connect with people's lives and their self-expressions.
In the latest Journal of Popular Culture, Patricia A. Cunningham of Ohio State University concludes her review of the book by recommending that not only academics but marketers could benefit by reading what some of the greatest minds in history wrote about fashion throughout the years. As anyone who studies history knows, the best way to understand the present and predict the future is often to study and understand the past. This reader provides an interesting historical perspective on the mprtance of fashion in society that might be worth taking a look at.
The latest announcement by OMD indicates a further shift toward considering viewer/reader engagement as a factor.
OMD, a media agency, announced that it would use these metrics in its decisions on which programs to buy after studying the engagement that people have with Web sites, television and magazine titles. Their studies found massive differences in the degree to which people engaged in certain television shows versus others, which comes as no real surprise.
Television, as with radio, can serve both as background noise at some points but as the focal point at others, depending on if people are "watching television" or "watching a particular program." My wife is a zapper who is known for "watching television," but I almost always only turn the TV on if I have the intent of watching something in particular.
And that type of viewing definitely carries a more focused involvement with programs that the industry has known it should take into account for a while--no one likes to talk about it, though, because qualitative measurements are a little harder to do than just counting eyeballs as all being equal.
However, study after study demonstrates how much more valuable involved viewing can be.
OMD claims that they are going to be able to create a "standard engagement currency" based on their study that would be comparative in nature, branching across multiple media forms.
To me, this should invariably take advertisers back to thinking more closely about natural product placement as an important alternative. DVR and TiVo viewers are the most dedicated viewers of all, since they've singled a program out for special viewing. Of course they're going to skip the regular commercial spots because they want to continue with the dramatic run of the show, but advertisers and producers alike should be considering product placement alternatives and sponsoring alternatives that do not interfere with the quality of programming and diminish viewer involvement while capitalizing on the deep involvement these consumers have with the product.
University of Chicago law professor Randy Picker was nice enough to pass along a link to what he has written -- from a legal perspective -- about the potential threat which the RIAA may pose to those folks who want to post lip-sync or karaoke songvids on YouTube:
For the music industry, this is a not-so-golden oldie and the conflict illustrates the persistent gap between actual law and the public's knowledge of that law and, frequently, perceptions of fairness. On these facts, far from being crazy or somehow a misuse of copyright, I think that music copyright holders have a straight-forward action against YouTube.... this is how we pay for music in the real world: different uses, different prices, and until we change the law and come up with a better way to pay for music, you should assume that the music industry is going to show up one day and knock on YouTube's door.
I don't pretend to be a lawyer so my views on the law should be taken with a grain of salt. I am pretty sure though that Picker is correct that the RIAA is almost certainly well within its legal rights to take action to shut down this use of its music via YouTube.
That said, I feel that we should be paying closer attention to that "persistent gap between actual law and the public's knowledge of that law and frequently, perceptions of fairness." True, ignorance of the law is no excuse but a democratic state should always be concerned if the gap between the law and the public's perception of fairness grows too great. (And I would suggest that gap is growing hourly at the present moment).
Ratings-wise, we've gotten our answer. ECW blows away anything else that airs regularly on Sci Fi in the ratings. Before ECW's debut, according to Dave Meltzer, the highest rated show on the network was Ghost Hunters, which regualrly draws about a 1.2 rating. In its first week, ECW drew a 2.8 rating, more than double the highest rated regular Sci Fi program. The second week, in opposition with the NBA finals, the show drew a 2.4, and Sci-Fi and NBC Universal are ecstatic.
But that doesn't mean that ECW is still a particularly good fit on Sci-Fi. The regular Sci Fi fans are resentful. Fans on both sides seem ignorant of any aesthetic value in the other side's entertainment. Wrestling fans have no interest in what they perceive as any "sci-fi" influence creeping onto their show, and the sentiments of the fan who posted here, saying that Sci Fi is a refuge from terrible programming like wrestling, sums up how many sci-fi fans feel about wrestling.
So, let's establish this: neither Sci Fi programming nor pro wrestling is inherently bad, but trying to mix the two could be. The wrestling fans don't particularly care what network a show comes on, as long as it's true to what it's supposed to be: wrestling. But Sci Fi marketing people, according to Dave Meltzer, made suggestions that Martians and vampires appear on the ECW show in the arena and that ECW wrestlers should go into other dimensions. Well, you can imagine how regular ECW fans, and even WWE fans, felt about a suggestion like that. The WWE made fun of the very idea on the initial ECW episode, with a wrestler named The Zombie coming down to the ring, only to get caned by The Sandman, an old ECW regular. From WWE's perspective, Sci Fi probably was not their top choice (I'm sure that would have been USA), but they knew they wanted to launch an ECW show, and their exclusivity deal with NBC Universal dictated that it could only be on one of the conglomerate's networks...Sci Fi was the only network that displayed a strong interest.
While the sci-fi community has been vocally upset about the wrestling influence, wrestling fans were incensed by these suggestions and happy that the Sci Fi Channel got their answer with the caning. It was a joint statement by WWE and Sci Fi to wrestling fans that ECW would not be mired by such silly gimmicks. Consessions to the sci-fi sentiment, at least in the network's eyes, include a set of vampire cultish wrestlers in ECW, as well as pushing Paul Heyman's character as a cultish leader of ECW.
The only thing at this point that's hurting ECW with the wrestling fanbase are the hardcore ECW fans who can't see the new version of ECW as being true to the original, which WWE purchased the rights to. The first episode, while doing "extremely" well in the ratings, was considered a disappointment aesthetically by most fans and many with the company. But the following week introduced some new characters and started to reveal the direction the show will be going. And wrestling fans must realize that ECW can't be a reunion show and remain a vibrant weekly television program, so there has to be a new version that draws in the wider WWE fan base, in addition to the hardcore fans.
USA Network and Sci Fi are working hard to make the two wrestling shows cross-promote each other, but both networks have come to realize something about wrestling fans: they feel little loyalty to the network, so that WWE fans are most likely to tune in when their show comes on and tune back out as soon as the show is over. The only value WWE adds to the network, then, is increasing the ratings of the network substantially, especially since wrestling draws lower advertising rates than many other shows, despite its high ratings, because of the unfair stereotypes against its fanbase. For USA, this means that it more consistently wins its war to top the weekly cable ratings because WWE inflates its numbers. For Sci Fi, this means that they have a show that, ratings-wise, is their biggest hit. And, with ECW and Monday Night RAW cross-promoting each other, the two networks are at least giving wrestling fans more to tune into and trying to keep those flagship shows high.
So, at this point, that appears to be the impasse. If Sci Fi fans will support or at least ignore ECW's presence, it will be a boon to the network's numbers. Conversely, if Sci Fi stays out of ECW's programming, wrestling fans care little what network their show airs on. And it's a win-win...unless the fan communities have to come into contact again; then it turns into another battle royal.
This is another in a series of posts highlighting trends which threaten our rights to participate in our culture.
According to a report published in the Boston Phoenix this week, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) may soon take aim at the amateur lip syncing and Karaoke videos which circulate on YouTube. Spokespeople from the RIAA, which has never been slow to assert the broadest possible claims on intellectual property, have so far not confirmed the claims that they will be using their power to force YouTube to take down such videos.
Participatory Culture's Most Powerful Distribution System YouTube represents perhaps the most powerful distribution channel so far for amateur media content. More than 6 million visitors watch a total of 40 million clips per day and upload another 50,000 more, according to the Phoenix. Some of that traffic is no doubt generated by content grabbed from commercial media -- including a fair number of commercials which are virally circulated, music videos and segments from late night comedy shows, strange clips from reality television, and the like. But a good deal of the content is user generated and this content is generating wide interest.
Many people will have seen the footage of the guy who went a little extreme with his Christmas tree lights last year or, in regards to this current issue, some of the videos of pasty-faced and overweight people singing off key versions of their favorite pop songs -- often with demonstrably limited comprehension of the lyrics. Many of us had argued that earlier file-sharing services such as Napster provided an infrastructure for garage bands and the like to get their music into broader circulation but there, the illegal content swamped the legal and made it hard to support this case. With YouTube, there is no question that some of the most interesting content comes from grassroots creators. Via YouTube, what were once home movies are finding a public -- some coming to appreciate real creativity, some there to gawk.
For those who have not already read this story on Paid Content, the latest news in examining the success of online distribution of television shows comes from Weeds, the Showtime situation comedy which features a single mother who must sell marijuana to support her family.
The show, produced by Lion's Gate, has produced an income of more than $600,000 on iTunes at this point, yet producers reveal that the show is providing high numbers (pun intended) in pre-orders for the DVD of the first season.
This success is leading to Lion's Gate further expandng their online distribution options, in addition to iTunes. So far, the company has found that these online sales are not cutting into DVD distribution, which means at this point that there is no downside to online distribution and that, with TV shows on DVD, at least, there is still a value to owning the actual official DVD set of the show.
As more companies seem to be finding this lesson to be the case, iTunes will likely continue getting a substantial influx of television programming and producers will be a little less scared of providing its content through even more media platforms.
The lesson seems suprrising yet full of common sense at the same time. After all, DVDs sets of television shows are expensive--it comes as no surprise that they are for collectors in particular. And those collectors may be well willing to pay to download episodes to see them early and still purchase the DVD set. Again, it all hinges on creating a quality product that people will want to own and/or finding a niche audience willing to pay first for convience of viewing and later for collecting purposes.
Coming from a wrestling standpoint, a similar phenomenon is when wrestling fans are willing to buy a wrestling pay-per-view program live as it happens for $40 and then buy the DVD of the same event a month later. Sure, there are plenty of fans who don't buy the DVD and wouldn't under any circumstances, and there are some that wait until the DVD comes out and who care less about the exclusivity, but the two products appeal to different types of customers--and many customers fall in both camps--and thus really do not compete with one another.
Instead, by providing its products in multiple arenas, the companies seem to be reaching more customers by providing their products in ways that are convenient for different types of consumers. Basically, a show like Weeds has a large group of potential consumers. The Showtime airing of the weekly show would not reach many of these people who do not have timeshifting capabilities and who cannot watch it when it's on or who do not pay to have Showtime. Those who do timeshift may never find the program unless they watch Showtime often enough to see promotions for the program.
By making the product available on DVD and online, the producers have been able to expand the Weeds fan base considerably, not hamper their own sales. Sure, customers are not willing to buy the same product over and over again, but a show downloaded from iTunes and a show to collect on DVD are vastly different products, even if they are two releases of the same programming.
Thanks to David Edery for passing this along as well.
What's Next for Advertising, and What Should "The Media" Do About It?
According to Scott Karp at Publishing 2.0, advertising's link to the mass media could be showing signs of major strains, as grassroots marketing initiatives become more and more viable.
In other words, when advertisers begin marketing campaigns that are so creative that fans are willing to forward it to their family and friends for free, then the traditional media has been completely side-stepped. Ad firms still get their piece of the pie, for helping develop the creative ad that everyone is forwarding around, but the distribution system becomes voluntary on behalf of the people instead of through an ad-supported media model.
Karp predicts that this is the way of advertising in the future, ads that seep into personal relationships and begin getting forwarded on a regular basis for their creativity, their novelty, or their appeal to a niche audience. And where does that leave ad placements and traditional ad services? More importantly, what does this do to the traditional system of the media?
Pretty good question...Karp's suggestion is that now, before it's too late, media companies should get their creative services involved in helping craft compelling video ads. In addition to providing content for television, these companies could use their creative services to create skits, commercials, and entertainment of various sorts meant to market a particular brand. In that way, these companies wouldn't miss out by trying to hang on to taditional ad profits while the future of advertising is controlled by more forward-thinking companies.
What does Karp predict for media producrs who don't take on this new role as advertising creator? "Those businesses will likely survive, but most won't grow very much, some will shrink, and some media brands may not survive at all."
Does this mean that, in his opinion, all television programming would have to go the way of HBO?
The major flaw in Karp's argument, at least as I see it here, is that it completely sidesteps issues of alternatives to the traditional 30-second advertisements placed in commercial breaks on shows but still within the traditional system. For instance, natural product placement within the fictive world of a show is an aspect of television advertising that's always been present and is currently growing that would not overturn the traditional media system, other than diminishing the role of the "commercial break." He also doesn't have any discussion of products sponsoring particular shows, another longheld television advertising staple that has been making quite a comeback as people lose faith in the 30-second spot.
With Nielsen planning to release viewer numbers on commercials come this fall, what does this mean for Karp's argument? I think he has noticed two very important trends--the importance of viral marketing and the slow death of the 30-second spot--but his prediction is a little extreme. I think it may very well be possible that media companies could directly involved in this advisory function for creative services in viral marketing, but I don't think Karp gives enough credit to other movements in the traditional media that will transform from traditional commercial breaks into other sources for commercial revenue. That's not to say that Karp has not though of these issues but just that they aren't present in this piece.
Henry Jenkins asked that I also pass along this post about Robot Chicken to this blog from his blog promoting his new book, Convergence Culture:
I recently had a chance to catch up with the first season DVD of The Cartoon Network's Robot Chicken series and found it an interesting illustration of some of the trends I discuss in Convergence Culture. For those of you not in the know, Robot Chicken is a fifteen minute long, fast-paced and tightly-edited, stop motion animation series, produced by Seth Green (formerly of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Austin Powers) and Matthew Senreich: think of it as a sketch comedy series where all of the parts of played by action figures. The show spoofs popular culture--vintage and contemporary--mixing and matching characters with the same reckless abandon as a kid playing on the floor with his favorite collectibles.
For example, the first episode I ever saw included a Real World: Metropolis segment where Superman, Aquaman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Cat Woman, the Hulk, and other superheroes share an apartment and deal with real life issues, such as struggles for access to the bathroom or conflicts about who is going to do household chores. The same episode also included an outrageous parody of Kill Bil l, in which Jesus does battle with the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, and George Burns (as God). And a spoof of American Idol where the contestants are zombies of dead rock stars and the judges are breakfast cereal icons--Frankenberry (as Randy), Booberry (as Paula) and Count Chocula (as Simon).
The humor is sometimes sophomoric (in the best and worst senses of the word)--lots of jokes about masturbation, farting, vomiting, and random violence--an entire "nutcracker suite" sequence consists of nothing but various characters getting hit or kicked in the groin. Yet, at its best, it manages to force us to look at the familiar icons of popular culture from a fresh perspective: one of my favorite segments features a series of breakfast cereal icons (Tony the Tiger, Toucan Sam, Captain Crunch, The Trix Rabbit, and the Lucky Charms Leprechaun) as forming an international drug cartel smuggling "sugar" into the country. Many of the sketches depend on the juxtaposition of toys remembered fondly from childhood with adult realities (such as a segment which restages the violent murders of S7even within the Smurf kingdom): it has all of the transgressive appeal of cross-dressing a G.I. doll or staging a ritual hanging of Barney the Dinosaur, speaking to a generation which has only partially outgrown its childhood obsessions.
Henry Jenkins, Director of the Convergence Culture Consortium, wrote the following on his own blog this past week, which I thought was pretty relevant to the topics covered here on the C3 blog, especially since I have followed the Snakes on a Plane fan following here as well. Henry's blog is in preparation for his new book, aptly titled Convergence Culture:
I am watching with great interest the growing hubbub about the new suspense/disaster film, Snakes on a Plane, scheduled for release later this summer and expected by many to yield some of the strongest opening weekend grosses of the season. In many ways, we can see the ever expanding cult following of this predictably awful movie as an example of the new power audiences are exerting over entertainment content.
Here's what I think is going on here:
Enter the Grassroots Intermediaries.
First, the Snakes on a Planephenomenon has been building momentum for well over a year now. In the old days, the public would never have known about a film this far out of the gate. They might have learned about it when the previews hit the theatre -- a phenomenon which itself is occurring earlier and earlier in the production cycle -- or even given the fairly low-brow aspirations of this particular title -- when the film actually hit the theatre. In the old days, this would have been an exploitation movie of the kind that Roger Corman used to crank out in the 1950s and 1960s and destined to play on the second bill at the local drive-in.
One member of our C3 team, David Edery here at MIT, has published a piece entitled "Games as Lifestyle Brands" on Next Generation on Tuesday.
In this piece, Edery discusses the disputed definitions of the lifestyle brand, which can mean a product that becomes a part of your life, a product that you make part of your self-identity, a marketing campaign launched around a narrowly defined product that expands to all aspects of one's life (such as the Harley), or myriad others. Edery is right in that it's something that we know when it works, but we don't quite know what it is. For instance, I would argue that Target is not (ironically) targeted enough to be a "lifestyle brand" because it's a large retail store that distributes the products of hundreds of companies. It has elements of a lifestyle brand but just is not that concentrated enough.
In Edery's piece, though, he extends this argument to video games, about whether there already is lifestyle brands among video game publishers or not. Is EA Sports or Harmonix a lifestyle brand? It's an interesting discussion to have, and Edery's piece is worth taking a look at.
My take is that it's going to be just as hard for video game publishers to truly be lifestyle brands, just as it seems hard to me for movie production companies to be lifestyle brands--their products are often not concentrated enough to be a single statement and are not immersive enough. Sure, Harmonix has elements of a lifestyle brand, just as you may argue Lion's Gate has a certain feel to its films, but there's a major difference between publishers that release various titles and a store you go to regularly (The New Yorker), or a television network (MTV).
Whether your agree or disagree with me, the point is not that this makes video games less desirable to market. After all, even though I don't see Target, Starbucks, or IKEA as fully being a lifestyle brand, they still have many elements of a lifestyle brand that they incorporate into their marketing strategy that is beneficial to both producers and consumers. And, as David mentions, not every brand is or should be a lifestyle brand.
But incorporating more elements of lifestyle branding for video game production certainly helps labels develop a following. EA Sports comes as close as any video game label I can think of in that their product line is sufficiently limited and has video games at its core but extends to all sorts of ancillary products. But how can other video game developers copy or even build on that success?
Within the comic book medium, both DC and Marvel have proven their expertise in stretching narratives across various comic series. Occasionally, a storyline or a catastrophe is so great that it encompasses all of the fictional universes of a certain comic company, so that all characters and all monthly comic series are affected by a current event. And, for readers to get the full story, they would have to buy all the comic books that company produces in that time span, even if they are regular collectors of many of those series.
However, comic books have often used crossing media platforms simply for adaptation instead of transmedia storytelling (the difference being that transmedia requires each story to build on the other rather than simply telling the same essential story in multiple media forms). Comics have branched into film, cartoons, video games, and various other venues, but have often not utilized the storytelling potential this transmedia empire allows.
A new initiative from DC Comics proves what transmedia storytelling within the superhero genre is capable of, however. DC has launched an intriguing new comic series called 52, a weekly series produced by four of DC's best writers. The series focuses on what happened in the DC Universe that week, including the aftermath of many of the events that happen in the other comic series.
The storytelling extends to an online project, a digital version of The Daily Planet, the newspaper of fictional Metropolis. This daily newspaper mimics news sites in providing stock trackers, online ads, and other features, all utilizing companies that are part of the DC Universe. And there are several options, including a variety of news stories, updated on a regular basis.
The idea of providing a digital newspaper to cover the events happening in a fictional universe, especially as one as outlandish as the comic book genre, is a project that could extend to almost any transmedia storytelling format as an easy way to provide additional and meaningful content. For any fictional universe that is big enough to provide enough material for constant news updates, this type of project seems not only feasible but as providing meaningful extensions for fans.
This would be a more difficult fit for weekly series to pull off, but other daily series could do this as well because their fictional universe is updated often enough to make this type of product valuable. The areas I follow--such as soap operas and pro wrestling--are other potential extensions for this type of product. The WWE already has as an online newspaper of sorts in its main Web site, complemented by its magazine, which provides news on a regular basis about the WWE universe, often blending fiction and reality. WWE on-air commentator Michael Cole--a former news correspondent--has been named editor of the online news content and is working to give it a more authentic, news-oriented feel.
However, soaps have not yet branched into this area, although it's a natural extension. Most shows already have their newspaper as part of the fictional universe, so that Oakdale's City Times or The Intruder could easily become an online daily extension for As the World Turns, with AP-style reports on events that happen in Oakdale, on the show. Sure, Jack and Carly's divorce wouldn't be in the news, but it would be a fascinating way to provide background for the show and cover shocking events--murders and the like--when they happen.
I, for one, hope that the entertainment world takes notice of The Daily Planet and that the site is given enough meaningful content to realize its potential.
Thanks to Dr. Henry Jenkins for passing this along.
Two new examples of "Convergence Culture" surfaced today (doesn't this seem to be the trend almost every day?) in two corporate partnerships that blend new media companies and concepts with traditional content providers or advertisers.
The first was a deal announced by EchoStar (Dish Network), an interactive advertising campaign for the Ford Motor Company through the company's satellite service. These ads will run for the next month, featuring the Ford Mustang on several TV screens, on which the viewer can use their remote control to view photos, for instance.
However, the project branches into transmedia, since you can download a ringtone specifically for the Mustang. And the interaction is taken to a direct consumer level, considering that the ad will allow you to find a local Ford dealer or receive more information on the product.
With our constant discussion of the slow death of the traditional advertisement, these more active and targeted advertising opportunities are coming more and more frequently.
In a different realm, longtime children's entertainment supplier DIC Entertainment has found a new partnership to launch a CBS Saturday morning programming block for kids: AOL. This new fall lineup will be called the Saturday Morning Secret Slumber Party and will have transmedia tie-ins with KOL, the AOL online site for kids. And a KOL online personality will have his own reality series on Saturday mornings.
I've yet to be convinced that the partnership will take advantage of the opportunities this type of coalition allows initially, but this could be another step in the right direction. Transmedia opportunities seem particularly vibrant here in children's programming, where convergence seems more second-hand and moving from one media platform to another is second-nature.
But both products are two examples that I found today through TelevisionWeek of new interactive and transmedia movements. Fall 2006 is shaping up to be a period of intense experimentation. Some of these concepts will probably miss their mark, and others have probably come along a little too early...but I'm interested in seeing what will become of these two intiatives in terms of viewer response.
On the heels of Nielsen announcing the move away from paper and into completely digital media consumption measurements, including counts of media consumption away from the home, over the next few years comes the news of ratings for commercials.
By this fall, the media research company will be providing ratings for braodcast networks showing the average ratings of their commercials playing nationwide. The data will provide not only live viewers but those who watch the programs on digital recorders within a week.
In a story on Nielsen's announcement yesterday, Jon Lafayette of TelevisionWeek quoted David Poltrack, chief research officer for CBS, as saying that the ratings would play a part in price negotiations for the next season but would not affect this year's deals. Poltrack warned that commercial avoidance will definitely be noticeable in the numbers but that the number has remained steady for years and that new techologies have not increased commercial avoidance. Instead, he "questioned the sincerity" of ad buyers for why they wanted the information and figured that it might be a negotiation ploy to lower the cost of national ads.
Whatever the case, accountability for commercials, in as accurate as Nielsen data is going to be, is a positive thing for measuring where the 30-second spot is at. David Poltrack came to MIT this past semester and spoke about changes in the media industry. As you can imagine, he was well-versed and very forward-thinking about CBS' role, but it is still a company invested in the 30-second spot system. There must have been some pretty heavy pressure from advertisers to succeed in getting a push like this, for Nielsen numbers for their ads.
If Nielsen continues with their push for active/passive viewer measurement as well, I wonder if we will eventually be able to also have attempts to measure the level of engagement people have during certain ads. We might find that particularly creative ads catch people's attention and ads placed right before a show comes back from commercial break, etc. But, even though I still question the validity of many Nielsen numbers, I think this will provide some basis for discussion.
According to a press release on the Web site TV Shows on DVD, Warner Home Video has finally announced that they will be releasing the first season of the 1980s sitcom Mama's Family on DVD this September.
Last December, I blogged about this Web site and the potential power it gives for communication between fan communities and content distributors when it comes to the potential market for releasing a product from the archives. On the site, people vote for their favorite shows that have not yet been released on DVD, and fan communities often lobby actively to move their show higher up the rating, with the feeling that companies are taking notice at the popularity shows have on this site.
I had participated actively in getting Mama's Family released on DVD, a childhood favorite. Later that month, I blogged about the potential success we were having.
However, for the past six months, there was no news after Warner first said that it was considering releasing the show. Mama's Family despite last airing 16 years ago, maintains a few active online sites dedicated to discussing the show, still in reruns on TBS, including some that have continued daily postings from fans.
In the press release, WHV VP Rosemary Markson says that, "For years fans have anxiously been asking us to release it on DVD and we are delighted to bring it to consumers at last."
The show only lasted on network television for two yeras before moving to syndication, where it continued to prosper throughout the 1980s. In reruns, the show has gained more continued popularity among the fan community than in its initial airing. For those of us who are in that community, it's a great victory. And we would like to think that our vote on TV Shows on DVD made a difference in showing how the power of fan communities can benefit both fans and producers alike.
Every day brings something new at the offices of The Ohio County Times-News (terrible Web site, but they have no interest in my helping them with it), the weekly newspaper in Kentucky that I'm working at part of the time this summer, in an effort to "get back to my journalism roots." And two surprise guests I had today seemed to have particular relevance with my work at C3--a pair of ham radio enthusiasts.
With all our buzz about new technology, we often forget that there are vibrant fan communities surrounding very old technology. Studies have been done to examine fan communities for outmoded or endangered technologies, such as the Fisher-Price PXL-2000 and the Apple Newton. And I'm sure there have been plenty of people, whether journalists or scholars, who have examined the national fascination with ham radios.
These guys, Felix Miles and Henry Morgan, were dedicating their performance in a nationwide ham radio competition this weekend to a ham contemporary who had died after falling while working on his radio antenna. We got into a discussion of the philosophy of the ham radio operators, and Felix told me that old school ham operators primarily like to communicate in Morse code and don't go for the voice communication that most "newbies" go for.
The fact that there are thousands of people around the country dedicated to what most people would consider a technology of the past, as with "Ten Four, Over and Out" on the CB, the telegraph, and--soon to be, if the massive switch to cell phones is any indication--the landline phone, is fascinating.
We discussed the move away from Morse code and Miles' own anger that modern ham radio operators no longer have to prove their competency with Morse code when getting an operator's license from the FCC.
My emphasis here at the C3 blog has been on content instead of the medium, more often than not, but we can't forget the importance of attachments to old technologies and distribution means. People become fascinated with vinyl records and eight tracks, and a beloved member of our department here at CMS often treks out his Beta player to show us clips of old television shows, even when many of these shows are available on DVD.
What is it about these old technologies that fascinate us? These ham radio operators give part of their life over to keeping this technology alive and vibrant, and it's aided the country substantially during natural disasters, etc., with ham radio operators creating a communication chain. But people are willing to give part of their lives--and even their lives--through maintenance of radios and antennas. As much as any brand, these outmoded technologies seem to connect with people's lives in fundamental ways, and even specific brands develop continued brand communities surrounding them, long after they have outlived their major pragmatic usefulness.
A new study released by Cornel University surmises that "teens take to the Internet like ants to a summer picnic."
This quote, from Science News Online's newest issue, is a sobering reminder that cyberspace provides unheralded communication opportunities (and marketing opportunities), but the effects of this communication can contain both an expanding world view and corresponding dangers. While Internet utopian fluff pieces celebrate the medium without fault, and watchdog attack groups go after the medium incessantly, this study emphasizes the neutrality of the medium and its capacity for both good and evil.
Those of us who study or are involved in the entertainment industry know that any medium--whether it be the written word, television, radio, or film--contains both the capacity for good as well as exploitative and lowest common denominator content. The Internet is much more complicated when you are talking about message boards and chat rooms, because you can't compare television shows and message boards, which is many-to-many communication.
Bruce Bower, who wrote the Science News piece, goes on to examine a Michigan State University study about the ways in which the Internet improves the reading skills of middle schoolers, and a Northwestern University study on leadership skill building among teens who form global Internet communities.
When we discuss teen audiences and the importance of using the Internet as a storytelling tool, it is important to realize how Internet has changed the lives of America's youth. And, while I blast pundits like L. Brent Bozell of the Parents Television Council for always leading the censorship march under the premise of "negative effects on children," we can't forget that there are always dangers involved when people are allowed to communicate, especially children. As parents, as educators, as content providers, and as citizens, we have some duty to take responsibility. While I don't think those restrictions should be imposed through censorship, it doesn't mean that we don't all have an ethical obligation as well. And, when we talk about expanding transmedia into participatory culture online, especially involving young people, we can't hide from some of the issues this brings up.
Again, the study is a fairly lengthy read for an online article but provides a lot of interesting context for online communities involving teens.
Several posts in the last couple of months on our blog have been dedicated to product placement and product integration in television programming, but the news that received some play last week of a Cover Girl novel crossover reminds us once again at how well books can cover product placement as well.
Cover Girl, along with parent company Procter & Gamble, will be working with Running Press, part of Perseus, to promote Cover Girl throughout several references in a new novel called Cathy's Book, written by Jordan Weisman and Sean Stewart. The book will be inspired by the principles of alternate reality games (ARGs), and the authors previously worked on "The Beast" and "I Love Bees."
The novel will include references to Cover Girl lipsticks and eyeliners, among other things, and Cover Girl will promote the release of the novel. According to a post by Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing, the novel included references to makeup brands but were only changed after a deal was put in place with Cover Girl.
But, it didn't take long to get the non-profits after them. Commercial Alert, a non-profit organization dedicated to "protecting communities against commercialism," have contacted book reviewers across the country, requesting that they boycott the novel because of its product placement.
Apparently, these organizations have particular problems with this book, as it is being marketed to teens. The problem here is probably not as much that the products are being used but that the company is receiving extra money for that placement. While the company has made the distinction that the book clearly called for a product there and that the deal came organically from that, Commercial Alert is not quite so excited.
The publishers, Perseus, quickly came to the book's and the authors' defense, with CEO David Steinberger saying that "calling for a review boycott is a form of censorship." In this case, I have to agree with the authors. While I understand Commercial Alert's sensitivity to commercialism and have seen plenty of great works ruined by product placement, this is a little different. If the product placement is organic, I don't think it's a problem, especially since we live in a branded world. And the book seems to have much more of a point than simply advertising Cover Girl. Steinberger says that the authors have a right to include these placements, "incorporating real-world elements consistent with their vision."
Further, I agree that the worst approach of all is attaching reviewers instead of engaging in public debate about product placement. What Commercial Alert is trying to do is end the debate before it starts, to eliminate the other side completely and not allow the book to get reviewed. And that's more dangerous to our rights as Americans as the commercialism of Perseus Publishing could ever be.
Oxygen has once again launched an on-demand preview for an original movie it will be airing on its main channel this week, marking the third time the channel has used on-demand to hype both the airing of a new movie and the channel itself.
The movie, called Banshee, has been previewed since last Thursday and will continue to be until Wednesday. The linear debut of Banshee will be next Saturday at 8 p.m. EST.
The on-demand option seems to be a good way both to experiment with shifts in distribution and also to catch those flipping through on-demand options with a strong piece of programming tied to Oxygen. This way, those who might consider Oxygen programming as inferior or who may never even give the channel a shot can get a taste of sample programming.
Since Oxygen has tried this tactic twice before and continues to do so, it is an indication that the network does not consider making the movie available before its release to have substantial damage to its initial rating as a network premiere. In fact, it's likely--if the product is good--that allowing previews and making the launch date clear on the previews will cause word-of-mouth to increase the number for the network debut.
And, as a marketing tool, a strong product available on-demand may create new viewers for Oxygen.
The Greatest Five Mintues of L. Brent Bozell's Year
The Book of Job reminds us all that bad things often happen to very good people. And, if that's the case, it must be conversely true that, very often, great things happen to pretty crummy people.
And that's the case this week for the pit bull attacking the leg of free speech, The Parents Television Council, when our heralded leader President George W. Bush signed into law the raising of fines for television indecency from $32,500 to $325,000.
For those of you who want to know more, never fear--the PTC has included a complete transcript of what President Bush said for those five minutes when he signed the bill into law. And, for anyone who can't read, they also provide video. Hey, the PTC may not be fans of almost everything about what we call "convergence culture," since they consider shows like According to Jim to be heavily offensive to moral sensibilities (learned that one from Stephen Colbert)...But they sure do know how to be pretty media savvy. And, surprise! The video they show comes from Fox News Network.
Go look around the PTC Web site. They have difinitive proof about how free speech on television is destroying our country. Watching MTV for an hour makes kids more lkely to approve of pre-marital sex (just imagine what watching every day might do!) I guess we should be ashamed of our partners here at C3. And, in their press release celebrating victory, Bozell said this, which has been quoted in numerous news articles about the story, "They (the public) are fed up with the sexually raunchy and gratuitously violent content that's broadcast over the public airwaves, particularly during hours when millions of children are in the viewing audience."
In a subsequent online column about this issue, Bozell asks, "How can our media elite find so much pessimism in our society about our future in Iraq, or our future planetary health, or our future economic success, and totally ignore the public's pessimism about how Hollywood -- that is to say, they -- are polluting the culture?" This shows how powerful rhetoric can be when you turn a whole industry of creative people into one mass evil body..."they." More a propos to the "they" are groups like the PTC who directly tell people what they think, send out form letters to be mailed to people, and then claim how many people have spoken.
This site is dedicated to the vibrant possibilities that a new media landscape affords to us through convergence culture, but censorship initiatives like this endanger public expression by lumping everyone in the media industry into a "they" seeking to corrupt children...and, of course, anytime a group wants to attack an industry, the "children" line is always the infallible answer.
Bozell concludes with the point that "the four largest networks and 800 oftheir affiliates quietly have gone to court demanding the right to air the F-word and the S-word on the public airwaves any time and anywhere they wish, no matter how many children are watching."
And this is a guy who is consistently quoted in newspapers as an expert. An expert in rhetoric and distortion, maybe. Sure, there are plenty of things on television that I think is just done for sex, violence, or language's sake that is too "shock TV' in nature. And I wish every program had quality writing and imagination, but that isn't the way creativity works...you get a lot of bad stuff when you let people be free, but you also get a lot of quality.
In short, I believe that there's nothing more dangerous to American values than L. Brent Bozell, and continued initiatives like this can dampen the spirit of convergence culture like nothing else...
Nielsen Media Research made a not-all-that-surprising move this week, when the company announced that it will be making a shift to all-electronic recording of television viewing over the next five years.
The company will be abandoning current paper responses for what it is calling the "Anytime Anywhere Media Measurement," or the very clever A2/M2. However, the company hopes that A2/M2 will be much more compelling than a Star Wars character, in that it will compel companies to trust the data it collects on out-of-home media viewing, Internet viewing and other "non-traditional" media engagements.
According to their press release, the technology will be used to "measure the new ways consumers are watching television, such as on the Internet, outside the home, and via cell phones, iPods, and other personal, mobile devices."
This, in addition to the Active/Passive meter which measures all time-and-place shifted viewing and measurements of DVR and VOD viewing, are Nielsen's attempts at remaining the flag-bearer for audience measurement for the television media.
And it's reassuring to see the company try to further address the problems. As long as everyone remains invested in the 30-second spot, system, however, many of these issues remain problematic. The designation of active and passive is moving in the right direction, and measuring depth of experience seems to be preferable to just getting overall impression numbers, but those are tough things to quantify.
We have to applaud Nielsen for its further attempts to move in the right direction, however, and responding to the growing number of media changes, even if it is going to take the next five years to implement.
Bravo's hit reality show Project Runway will be signing up a sizable list of substantial sponsors, who will be integrated into the show in one way or another.
Involvement with most of these brands included on-air presence and product integration infused throughout the show, as well as an online presence.
Considering the natural way that many of these products fit with the show, this makes sense. Further, there seems to be less of a backlash against reality shows having product placement as fictional programs, where it seems that some sort of creative aesthetic is damaged by heavy product integration.
On the other hand, reality shows already lack a sense of suspension of disbelief that fictional programs do, so that they draw attention to the fact that it is a show. This is the way that they've avoided the backlash I've blogged about before with the WGA. As I mentioned then, shows like Project Runway are not badly hurt by extensive use of sponsor names because it doesn't seem as absurd and because contestants are already in contrived situations so that, even if giving away a Saturn vehicle to the winner seems pretty overt, it works within the "game" aspect of the reality show.
Both Ivan Askwith and Rachel Shearer have followed the WGA battle with product integration in the past here on our blog as well.
And the reality genre's ability to do product integration without continued backlash is another reason why it may be such preferable program to many executives (even though many of these programs probably won't fare as well in their long tail future).
Last night, I set my DVR (gasp!) to record The Colbert Report to my hard drive. I watched it a few hours ago and was surprised when his popular "The Word" segment featured a current Congressional debate that was the topic of one of my posts here last week: the push to raise indecency fines for television broadcasters by adding a zero to the end.
For those who haven't seen Colbert's "The Word" segment, he goes through a verbal diatribe while a graphic beside him displays one-liners that either contradict or further illustrates points that he's making. On this particular episode, he was discussing the current drive by conservative Christian "family" groups like the Parents Television Council to define what's indecent on television.
Colbert mocked how the group's encouragement of free speech and citizen voice was really nothing more than ventriloquism, as a recent drive to protest the show Without a Trace containing a scene simulating an orgy resulted in a massive numbers of form letters computer-generated by members of a group like this through their Web site.
Colbert's main complaint with this proposal is both that this type of encouragement of censorship is outside the purview of what our government should be doing in the first place, which I wholeheartedly agree with, but also that raising the fees will cause networks to become more and more gun shy of airing any new or potentially controversial types of programming, lest the PTC have its sensibilities offended. That's the point that I made in my blog post last week, that these initiatives could greatly hinder the autonomy of show creators and writers to create meaningful, interesting, artistic, and challenging content. In other words, censorship is hardly ever a good thing.
On Colbert's "snippet" preview of his show on The Daily Show, he spoofed product placement by bringing us his pre-show, sponsored by Coca-Cola, in which he did nothing but drink a Coke and then advertise his post-show, sponsored by Budweiser, with a huge Budweiser graphic. This coincides with the drive we've had since this blog's beginning toward understanding the difference between product placement and product integration, which I posted about a couple of weeks ago.
But, could these be coincidences? Maybe Mr. Colbert is reading this blog every night after his show airs. If so, Stephen Colbert deserves a "tip of the hat."
(By the way, if you're interested in watching this particular episode of The Colbert Report, it's available on iTunes).
Traditional Advertising Revenue Down from Earlier Projections
A report from TNS Media Intelligence released yesterday states that ad spending is not doing as well as originally projected, with ad sales increasing 4.9 percent this year instead of the 5.4 percent in the initial predictions.
On the other hand, the prediction for Internet advertising revenues made in January had severely underrated the power of all the new content being available online to pull in ad revenue, as the prediction was a 9.1 percent increase in Internet ad revenue which has now been revised to 13 percent.
But wait...didn't all the major networks get together several months ago and tell us all that the 30-second spot is more alive than ever? Of course, we can't predict any immediate doom...There's still a pretty sharp price increase, and the biggest loser in ad revenue appears to be ABC, with their attempted move to include DVR viewers, which I posted about last week.
However, this does weaken the stance that the 30-second spot cannot be toppled. WIth the increases in Internet advertising comes decreases in television advertising. Shouldn't come as a surprise, as viewers seem more willing to watch the few ads on most ad-supported video content Internet sites, instead of the many commercial interruptions that have driven so many people to
TiVo, DVRs, and other forms of time-shifting and channel surfing.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it...That's what the industry has said. But, maybe it's just a little bit more broke than anyone wants to admit. And there has to come that point where doing something about it becomes a necessity instead of innovative thinking. The increases in product placement, show sponsorships, and various other forms of deviation from the 30-second spot is already showing some alternate routes, even as networks claim the 30-second spot is gaining power instead of losing it.
However, it wasn't clear to me whether the report included any numbers for non-traditional ads like show sponsorships or product placement. Anyone know?
We'll see how this trend in ad spending continues, but it may be even further indications that a change is coming, even if it's coming slowly.
Considering my previous post about what has been labeled "gated" channel distribution, such as is the case with the SoapNetic series only being available on Verizon, comes something more along the line of the model I'm thinking of--Sundance will be launching a new series on the AOL Black Voices Web site before it debuts on its show.
Of course, AOL helped pioneer the "gated" channel concept on television, as I can remember the stress one had in the mid-1990s if some of their favorite media content was available exclusively to AOL members and others were available exclusively to Prodigy members.
But this newest initiative shows how much their thinking has switched. Sundance will be launching its new series House of Boateng, which is based on fashion designer Ozwald Boateng launching his first clothing line in America. The series will debut on the AOL site on June 20 and will play that Tuesday and Wednesday before debuting at 9 p.m. next Thursday night.
AOL Black Voices is a major online initiative to reach African-American audiences.
I think this is just the right idea to create buzz for a new show among a target audience. Of course, that type of approach only works if the show you have is worth creating the right kind of buzz for. Sometimes, movies that don't release their films early for reviewers have the right idea--they don't want to kill any buzz for their release. In this case, though, I think Sundance has the right idea, as long as they believe in their product.
It will be interesting to see how many downloads it gets in the two days prior to the series premiere on television with the numbers the show brings in. Will the exposure on Black Voices create a grassroots word-of-mouth for the target audience in time to get more views for the program's opening on television?
And, if so, will the Nielsen numbers be able to reflect that word-of-mouth, which depends on your faith in current measurement systems, I guess.
Disney and Gated Channels: Exploring the Future of Online Distribution
A post by Rafat on paidContent has brought my attention to a TelevisionWeek piece about Disney's new digital distribution efforts through the Disney Channel Network, as well as its SOAPnet channel--a project I'm particularly interested in.
The company has adopted two simultaneous revenue streams, by receiving paid advertising content from a broader online site available to everyone in some projects, while only allowing other services to be accessed through what Daisy Whitney in the TV Week piece refers to as "gated" channels. For instance, the second approach is embodied by SoapNet's project called SoapNetic, offering content only to those who Verizon high-speed internet customers who pay to see it. But, companies should be careful by locking up content in gates that some people cannot access it even if they were willing to pay to...
According to Disney's strategy, this approach strengthens the relationship between Verizon and SOAPnet and encourages fans of SOAPnet to use Verizon to gain access to SoapNetic, while Disney gains fees from Verizon for offering this exclusive content.
The company is celebrating this two-pronged approach, offering both content exclusive to gated channels while also offering shows that are available for download by all. Experts quoted in the story indicate that this proves that the right idea is still up in the air and that Disney is trying to diversify by launching several different approaches simultaneously.
For SoapNetic, launching content in online forms helps it overcome the fact that the channel is not yet available in many cable markets. Daisy Whitney says that SOAPnet has been "among the vanguard of networks offering shows online." The SoapNetic site will include content not available anywhere else.
I'm interested in seeing which of Disney's dual approaches seems to gain the most legs. The problem with the "gated" approach appears to be the company-specific restrictions that causes many problems of platform. If, as a fan of soap opera and pro wrestling and classic country music (using me as an example, you see), soap opera content is available to me exclusively on Verizon, wrestling exclusively on RCN, and country exclusively on BellSouth, then I'm going to be extremely upset as a fan that I'm blocked from being able to enjoy the content I want to see the most because it's locked up in such company-specific deals. Of course, these deals mentioned above are hypothetical, but--while staying in Kentucky--I can't see the SoapNetic content if I wanted to, since Verizon Internet service is not offered here.
I would much rather see companies taking the approach of charging subscription prices or pay-per-view webcasts to get content directly from their site, such as WWE does with its content. Of course, with network neutrality itself hanging in the balance, more and more of these "gated" channel distribution deals may be in our future. But I think companies, including Disney, should think more about what they may be costing themselves with "gated" deals in alienating fans and shutting them off from content they love.
In the media world, absence does not make the heart grow fonder. Considering the great number of choices out there, absence usually makes you forgotten.
Thanks to C3's David Edery for pointing me toward this development.
Digital Push Leads to Greater Transmedia Potential
Various networks have made announcements over the past week indicating that, even if there hasn't necessarily been a complete digital plunge, companies are at least getting their feet wet.
According to some TelevisionWeek stories today and over the weekend, new networks are popping up exclusively on the Internet, while several old dogs are trying some new digital tricks.
For instance, there's the new Code Networks, the online network that's aimed at the social life of the affluent, with a programming list that reads a lot like the sections of an elite magazine, focusing on the nightlife and arts of New York City. Reporter Daisy Whitney writes that the program was started by two ex-MTV executives, aimed at 25-to-49-year olds who make six figures.
Then, there's the new initiative from CBS Digital Media, ShowBuzz, an online product for entertainment news with broadband video and interactive content. The site will be ad-supported and will include content from various other established entertainment entities, such as Billboard and The Hollywood Reporter. According to reporter Christopher Lisotta, the advertising will be session-based, "meaning that the only one advertiser will be featured throughout the site for any given user session or visit."
Then, Lifetime Networks has hired a new digital media executive vice-president to handle the development of the company's Web site, wireless initiatives, DVD releases and interactive components of television programming. Dan Suratt, who was hired from NBC Olympics, was responsible for new media development opportunities there, according to reporter Jon Lafayette.
With the exception of Code Networks, the initiatives offer many new opportunities for transmedia, with online reporting that both supplements and adds to content from traditional media forms, such as using content from the Lifetime television networks or from Hollywood Reporter. This may still be baby steps, but they're baby steps in the right direction, as long as these don't just become a place to dump repurposed content but explores the abilities of the digital to supplement and increase storytelling potential.
I was watching a rerun of CSI last week when Gil Grissom made the joke, one of his usual one-liners, that there were way too many crime investigation shows on TV. For fans of diversity in broadcast network programming, there's probably a lot of consensus at that dig at the prevalence of a genre that CSI has led the drive for in many ways. But, of course, we've always had these trends (Westerns in the late 1950s being one of the best examples).
Some have made the claim that shows like this aren't destined to do as well in downloads and such because they are so episodic in nature and don't have the seriality that drives the need to watch and own that shows that build on themselves from week to week do.
However, both Law and Order and CSI seems to do well in DVD boxed sets, which seems to destroy some of that. There is a tendency among television historians and critics, at least those of us here at MIT, to dismiss these more episodic shows as not taking enough advantage of the seriality of television, but there is at least enough character development or at least interesting characters that it continues to interest people.
And, as all the crime investigation shows invade iTunes with these newest moves, it serves as a strong reminder that episodic television has its place and its power in the digital world as well as on cable and broadcast television. Those who claim that these shows only work because they are push media that just offer an episode to people flipping through channels don't realize how much these become "pull" media that people seek out--and, if iTunes are any indication, episodes that people are willing to download, even if they deny much of the serial power of television.
The piece doesn't really say anything that most of us don't already realize to some degree: that Netflix has the right idea and the worst distribution system. For those of you who have dealt with our illustrious postal system that much, you know that it's not the most reliable way to transfer information in the world--the Internet provides a much better way to send data reliably (that is, unless network neutrality is out the window).
Since I'm always bringing personal anecdotes to the blog, here's another: I moved out of my Boston apartment and forwarded my mail to Kentucky on May 1. Now, it's June 8, and I've only gotten about three pieces of forwarded mail, and the postal system isn't entirely sure where that other mail ended up.
So, while Netflix has the right idea with making every DVD out there available for rental in its system, the distribution system is far from the best. Leonhardt chastises Hollywood, who have an online downloadable option available to them that could rival or eventually overturn Netflix but which is currently blocked due to the outmoded thinking of current deals with television distributors, which would allow DVD distribution but not online downloads of movies that cable and broadcast networks have exclusive rights to.
I was still shocked, though, that of the 60,000 titles available on DVD in NetFlix's inventory, 35,000 to 40,000 of them are rented every day. As Netflix's Chief Executive Reed Hastings said, "Americans' tastes are really broad." But it's still a shame that today's most forward-thinking distributor, that is helping to instill this Long Tail effect in the media industry and to create what Leonhardt calls a "meritocracy" for content, is doing so using one of the most disorganized distribution systems around (the postal service being a great example of how terrible a government-owned business becomes when it is allowed a monopoly on most mail delivery services).
Netflix already realizes that, if digital streaming of movies becomes prevalent, its current DVD-through-mail system could become obsolete, and the company is already considering ways to shift its distribution to stay on top of the market. In the meantime, though, Netflix is the best we've got, considering that Hollywood exclusivity rights only allows about 1,500 of the 60,000 DVD releases available through Netflix to be distributed digitally through the studios' Movielink. Oh, and I can't look at Movielink, anyway, because they don't support Macs.
Yet another reminder of how old thought patterns restrict the ways in which the industry can respond to new technologies and new viewer demands.
2006 appears more and more to be the Year of the Telenovela in America, as network executives have already turned their eye toward the power of telenovelas and soap operas to garner a continued audience. The American soap industry has had a fall from grace and dwindling ratings due to the increase of so many new programming choices over the past 20 years, but few--if any--types of programming are better at garnering continued viewing from its ardent fan base. And few programs are more ripe for timeshifting of various sorts. After all, a whole cable channel--SOAPnet--is currently being powered by providing nighttime viewing of daytime soaps, and many of today's soap viewers--for instance, me--are timeshifting soaps using digital recorders because they are working during the time they officially air.
Telenovelas are an interesting branch from the soap opera, as short-term soaps that examine one particular storyline with a smaller cast and then end when that storyline is over.
News came out earlier this week that Lifetime has ordered a 20-episode run of the telenovela Bianca, based on a popular German program that had the same name.
This comes on the heels of the development of a sixth broadcast network called My Network TV, owned by Rupert Murdoch. The network, which is planning to pick up many of the stations that are losing network affiliation in the fall with the merger of UPN and The WB into the CW Network, will be powered, at least initially, on soap operas and telenovelas.
The network launched from several FOX-owned UPN affiliates who were losing their network and has expanded into various other major markets already; New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Nashville, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, San Antonio and many others. Overall, the network already has 150 affiliates or more at this point.
Right now, programming will focus on only two shows, airing 8 p.m. until 10 p.m. EST, but the two soaps will air six days a week. The stations will fill up the rest of the day with syndicated programming. Both soaps will be telenovelas, named Desire and Secret Obsessions. After 13 weeks, each soap will begin a new story unrelated to the prior focus. Therefore, the overall program is just a blanket name for the telenovela series, while each 13-week show will have its own title.
While my home city of Boston has yet to find an affiliate, FOX is going to carry the network from 1 p.m. until 3 p.m. so that Bostonians do not miss out on Desire and Secret Obsessions. (Thanks to the Wikipedia page for providing some of that information.)
How powerful will the telenovela form be? Because of its 13-week structure, the shows may be able to garner a powerful audience during each 13-week run. However, unlike American daytime soap operas, the storylines from one 13-week arc to the next will be unrelated. Will Desire and Secret Obsessions carry any long-term vitality without that ability to depict the lives of characters on a daily basis over a number of years?
Those party poopers at TiVo are trying to cause more problems for tradition-lovers. First, they had to mess with the idea of live programming, and now they're getting desperate enough to try and further blur the lines between what is Internet programming and what is television.
TiVo announced on Wednesday that they are launching the new TiVoCast. For the 400,000 TiVo boxes that have high-speed Internet, the boxes will allow them to watch Internet video on their television set.
But...wait....if this program can be viewed on the television set...what is television, anyway? Most people have moved past the antenna phase, so it's not broadcast. And services like TiVo and DVRs (and even that dreaded VCR of yesteryear) have already done all they could to obliterate the liveness and the scheduling power of television networks.
TiVo's feeling enough pressure from all the DVR services provided by cable companies and DVRs with hard drives that many people value over the TiVo service.
We had a class at MIT this past semester in which a few of my colleagues and I debated at length what television really is, anyway. If it's not defined by its broadcasting or its liveness or screen size, what makes television different than any other video material? Or does it really matter anymore?
Seeing that the announcement came on Wednesday, I'm sure that, by the time I've posted this, there's already a group of lawyers ready to issue a statement from someone about the latest lawsuit to try and stop TiVo. But, again...it's like trying to hold a tsunami back with toilet paper.
A book released last year, edited by scholars Morten T. Hojgaard and Margit Warburg, brings us a reminder that one form of popular movement that has and continues to innovate the way the Internet is being used are religious movements.
In Religion and Cyberspace, a collection of academic work on the impact the Internet has had on various religious movements focuses not on the particulars but the overall way that one of the deepest human values in all culture--faith--has expanded with new means of communication.
Few movements are more grassroots and more "fan"-driven than religious movements (if you consider the faithful "fans" of their deity). Last year at MIT, when we were instructed to conduct an in-depth interview with a media content producer, I called back to my hometown baptist church in Echols, Ky., and contacted the pastor there, Darrell Belcher.
While many people who don't follow the Christian movement closely (especially since most strictly Christian programs only appear in places like Trinity Broadcasting) don't realize how media-savvy religion can be, Darrell discussed with me the importance of an oratory performance and the art of preaching, which he believes is often lost on those who study the craft in a seminary instead of being born with that gift of reaching people. Further, Belcher talked with me at length about the transmedia experience of transferring his sermons to video and to radio, both of which he has done.
Darrell had never done any Internet-related projects but said that he saw it as yet another tool to reach people, another communication forum. And that's what attracted me to learn more about Hojsgaard and Warburg's book. According to reviewer John Shelton Lawrence, whose review in the latest Journal of American Culture is how I learned about the book, a distinction made in most scholarship about religion stems from a comment made by A. Karaflogka, who cites the difference between "'religion on cyberspace' (where a religion merely uploads its usual wares to a server) and 'religion in cyberspace' (where new forms of worship are mediated by computer networks and reside there exclusively)" (247).
Similarly, Darrell talked to me at length about what a disaster one would have if they were unable to adapt their sermon appropriately for the radio medium, yet try to recreate the atmosphere of a church meeting by learning how to address the home listener versus the live congregation.
Regardless of one's religious affiliation or lack of one, these distinctions are important for all transmedia content. As Darrell realizes with radio preaching and as scholars who distinguish between on and in cyberspace acknowledge, media content is just not that interesting if some degree of medium specificity isn't kept in mind. I mean, sure you can video tape a play and put it on screen or transport clips from a show and put it on the Internet, but it will be imagination and new concepts of content that will drive new media and transmedia opportunities. And that's one message the industry can learn from.
I am an unwavering advocate for free speech, even if it's speech I don't agree with, but L. Brent Bozell's constant campaigns sure do make me want to pull my hair out. Now, he's taking credit for the current move to drastically increase indecency fines that's making it's way through Congress.
He has led such efforts as the Parents Television Council, a group who watches for material that offends its members' sensibilities in all broadcast programming. I first became acquainted with Mr. Bozell as a high school wrestling fan in the late 1990s when his group declared war on Vince McMahon's World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), calling sponsors and pressuring them to pull ads from WWE programming.
Eventually, Bozell began to claim an amazing success, but his "successes" included both advertisers who never had even advertised with WWE and even companies still running ads with the company. He was eventually forced to make a formal apology, after legal proceedings between the PTC and the WWE. Through the efforts of anti-PTC wrestling fan communities online, I became acquainted with the group's tactics. By the way, one of the greatest critiques of Bozell and his background is available in Foley is Good...and the Real World is Faker than Wrestling.
Only later did I realize that Bozell was the bane of many other fan communities as well. On the other hand, his grassroots marketing is amazing, and he's generated quite a fan community of his own. And he's helped create all sorts of unholy alliances among censors on all points of the political spectrum, so that's pretty impressive.
Somehow, he always pops back up as a pundit, quoted in stories about important policy debates, as was the case with Jim Abrams' AP story this week.
But, I guess in a world where the senate is spending our time and money debating how much to fine shows for offending some general idea of what is "public sensibility," it comes as no surprise that Bozell has this much cultural cache. But these censoring moves does nothing but inhibit creativity and make network executives much less likely to try out interesting material, especially if they have a potential $325,000 fine waiting for them instead of $32,500.
In the meantime, I'm thinking about trying to convince my local congressmen to find a way to start fining journalists every time they cite Bozell as a credible source. After all, your children are reading.
When you are living in Western Kentucky, especially working in the media industry, few days go by without hearing something about bluegrass music, especially since the genre has received such a resurgence in popularity over the past few years, after the Coen Brothers' O Brother, Where Art Thou? introduced the music to mainstream America with its outstanding soundtrack.
My home county is considered "the birthplace of bluegrass music," because the man often considered the genre's father, Bill Monroe, and many other founding voices for the style, were born in the small town of Rosine. At least once a month, public debate has popped up in our small town, as the Bill Monroe Foundation hopes to gain control of the county's budget to help increase the drive for tourism traffic through Monroe's home place. (The wars over bluegrass music are more than can be detailed here, but--so far this year--they've included a public battle and debate over a semi-sacred tree on the homeplace between the county government and the BMF director and a current battle over the trailer which houses the BMF director being located on someone's property who wants it removed.)
However, bluegrass music and our neighboring Muhlenberg County's thumbpicking movement provides a space where most of the historians and scholars studying the music also play the music. In the latest Journal of American Culture, Dan Cusic of Belmont University reviews both Neil Rosenberg's groundbreaking Bluegrass: A History, now celebrating its 20th anniversary, and Bob Black's Come Hither to Go Yonder: Playing Bluegrass with Bill Monroe. He writes that, "one of the unique things about bluegrass is that almost everyone associated with it as a scholar, promoter, business person, DJ, or any other way is also a picker" (231).
While bluegrass music may not be the first place most of us think to look for media analysis, this blurring of the producer/fan/analyst line shows how we might be able to rethink and better understand how to frame the relationship between producers and fans. For all of the fans who go down to the barn on Friday night here in Rosine for our bluegrass jamboree, it's pretty hard to distinguish amateur from professional, and the heart of the music seems to lie in the community more than individual performers (save Monroe, of course).
This week, the debate over network neutrality has taken the blogosphere by storm. And, of course, such debates are key for communication that takes place over the net in the first place, considering how important current congressional debates are to the way the Internet works.
The House will decide today whether to allow debate on the floor about abandoning the principle of network neutrality in favor of allowing access providers the chance to favor some sites over others. The rhetoric is strong on this side, led by phone companies, who argue that certain sites use up more bandwidth and that they currently have to treat all types of sites similarly, or neutral, which is an unfair burden on their ability to conduct business.
Some are making a deregulationist argument on grounds of true capitalism to support the phone companies, saying that companies should be allowed to get a piece of the action when it comes to providing access to one site over another.
For someone with a fairly strong libertarian bent, the argument would be appealing if it weren't so obvious how heavily this line of thinking encroaches on the content providers that drive the Internet. After all, the phone companies and cable companies that provide everyone internet access would not have much of a business if it weren't for iTunes and Google and the other forces that cause people to want to surf the net in the first place. Obviously, content providers have a lot to lose if bidding begins for access providers to begin giving more bandwidth to some sites to another, and consumer rights groups are lobbying Congress as well.
When something termed "deregulation" instead leads to barriers for a free market, we get into dangerous territory. Net neutrality, as it stands, has allowed a free market to flourish online and has fueled new industry giants and new forms of competition that are unparalleled. All of our debates about transmedia, the power of new providers like iTunes and Urge, and the move toward BitTorrent are all dependent on a neutral battling ground. And it's not like access providers are hurting at this point.
But where does this leave media giants like Time-Warner who are simultaneously involved in both distribution and content? I referenced Erick Schonfeld's recommendations for Time-Warner in a previous blog post. Schonfeld recommends that Time-Warner step into a role solely as content provider and out of a mindset of access provider or distributor, particularly in the AOL branch.
With the divide between Internet access providers and Internet content providers growing greater over this current "network neutrality debate," his words may be growing even more appropriate.
If the proposals make it to the House floor, a vote could come by the end of this week.
Is It The Tonight Show if You Watch It the Next Morning?
Network wars seem to be battled as often online as on television these days. Previous posts have outlined issues such as the expansion of news content online by NBC and ABC. However, now the deals for ways in which content can be accessed on iTunes are increasing experimentation.
Case in point: the new distribution deal for Jay Leno's Tonight Show, which airs on NBC. The network's staple late show was launched on iTunes in December with sample episodes lasting less than five minutes in length, according to Michele Greppi's article in TelevisionWeek. Now, Leno's complete monologue will be made available for download, as well as comedy bits from the show.
Each set of clips will cost the traditional $1.99, but a 20-monologue mutipass will cost $9.99.
Will avid Leno fans be willing to download episodes, or will fans choose to cash in on a multipass? And, if Leno is successful, maybe we'll see an online reprisal of the Letterman vs. Leno wars. Perhaps an even better question--how does the loss of timeliness affect the entire idea of a "late show?" In the end, is programming that suggests its temporality such as news or daily variety shows as easy to turn into paid downloadable content, stripped of its "airing time"? How will shows like The Tonight Show perform alongside more serial fare such as Lost or Desperate Housewives?
The newest craze in fan-created content circulating on YouTube goes even further the the pieces I've noted over the past several days, in that this involves a parody performance of Bono from U2 that makes the piece even more amazing.
The video editing that transforms this fairly accurate impersonation of Bono singing a tribute to actor Samuel L. Jackson makes what looks very much like a legitimate music video, aside from its obviously comedic aspect.
Jackie Huba at the Church of the Customer blog calls the piece "citizen marketing." Indeed, with such ardent fan support, the producers should realize the powerful marketing opportunities that fans present at no cost. Sure, creator David Coyne has broken some substantial copyright laws with his parody performance of Bono because of all the images of Jackson in the background. However, the producers of Snakes on a Plane and Jackson himself should celebrate such marketing. Even though the piece is clearly parody, it also draws attention to and celebrates Jackson and the upcoming film.
More than almost any other film in recent memory, Snakes on a Plane has a lot of cult buzz behind it. The show's producers capitalized on this through the very title, adopting what became an underground title for the project as the film's public name as well. Further, check out the film's site, particularly the "Fan Site of the Week" option, to see how well the show has integrated the grassroots marketing of the fan community with official marketing.
How much profit will all this cult grassroots marketing have on the film? Time will tell, but the even harder question is how long we have to wait with a cult film to determine its success--will audiences turn out to see it in droves on theatrical release, will DVD sales be substantially higher, or will the film's potential cult status lead to its continued success in DVD sales for years to come?
Thanks to Siddiq Bello with Turner for bringing this piece of fan promotion to my attention.
According to Jon Lafayette of TelevisionWeek, CBS is taking over the lead in advertising deals with significant increases, moving past main competitor ABC, with CBS ranging a 2 percent to 4 percent price increase.
This comes on the heels of Lafayette's story yesterday detailing ABC's decision to back off of counting DVR viewers in overall numbers for advertisers and instead concentrate only on live ratings. The network originally claimed it would only do deals that counted viewing on digital video recorders, but advertisers had strong concerns that those recording on DVRs would be very unlikely to watch commercial breaks.
ABC's statement issued about rescinding the demand for inclusion of DVR numbers included the following comment: "While the majority of the advertising community has reached a consensus on the Nielsen DVR ratings issue, and has concluded that that commercials seen during a DVR-recorded programming have no value, the ABC Television Network continues to believe strongly in the worth of the 'Live Plus' viewer, and will continue its efforts to include this audience." Lafayette's story today indicated his belief that this drive for DVR inclusion is what caused ABC to drop from its perch, while every other network continued conducting business based only on live viewers.
What amazes me about the whole discussion is how vehemently everyone is holding to the traditional 30-second spot, when more and more people are moving to DVRs. It may not be that shocking to see the crowd around a "technology" school like MIT raving about DVRs, but more and more of them are cropping up around Kentucky, where I'm staying this summer.
I'll be interested in seeing how long people will hold to the non-DVR numbers. Hopefully, we won't get to the point where the nation's ad rate will be determined by a few households somewhere in the hills of North Dakota.
In the meantime, ABC's failed system doesn't seem to address the problem. Skeptics were right in that people are likely not watching commercials on their DVR. It's instead an indication that we need to have a major reconceptualization of how the industry obtains its profits, maybe even something along the lines of Erick Schonfeld's recommendations for Time-Warner.
As Schonfeld says, media companies are "groping for ways to fix their businesses before all content goes digital and their financial assumptions go out the window." Maybe Schonfeld's recommendations--such as an emphasis on content and fans instead of distribution and products--are a propos for the major networks as well.
Meanwhile, most of the experimentation continues to happen in the cable industry, such as WE's decision to let John Frieda's Luminous Color Glaze and the film The Devil Wears Prada to sponsor its hit show Bridezillas. Moving to these types of arrangements seem to cause fewer problems in the long-run than all the continued haggling to hang on to the vestiges of the 30-second spot.
Slater Just Can't Quit The Preppie: A Brokeback Spoof on Saved by the Bell
After blogging about The Skeletor Show and 10 Things I Hate About Commandments over the past couple of weeks, my cousin and future doctor Steven Ford directed me toward another YouTube phenomenon--the Brokeback Mountain style parody of the relationship between characters Zach Morris and A.C. Slater on that teen situation comedy my generation grew up captivated by, Saved by the Bell.
Apparently, this fan, in true slash fiction fashion, searched out the many scenes of mutual admiration between Slater and Zach in the show's archives and edited together this video, "Saved by the Bell: Brokeback Style," as a tribute to their love, set to the great soundtrack from the award-winning cowboy gay love story. The show, marketed on DVD as nostalgia for those that remembered it fondly but largely unwatchable for anyone who didn't grow up watching it, is considered a marker of childhood for the generation that watched it on a regular basis.
For those who remember the show and the two masculine leads, the tribute video works almost as well as Kirk/Spock slash fiction--(such as the "Perhaps" video tribute to their love aboard the Starship Enterprise). And, considering the constant focus on Slater's body in the show and the rather cheesy dialogue, I believe there was probably a wealth of material that can seem pretty homoerotic once it's strung together.
The tribute is yet another illustration of the degree to which fans have gained the tools necessary to create fairly complex and well-edited videos using texts from the show's archives. In this case, this fan has created, in particular, an alternative reading of the show, so to speak, that largely only has appeal to other fans who will understand the various scenes depicted. In other words, these videos invite fellow fans to deconstruct the editing process.
Of course, in my mind, nothing will top the classic fan-reworked movie trailer for The Shining. If you have never checked it out, it remains a must-see.
After a nostalgia DVD about ECW exceeded expectations and a reunion pay-per-view sold really well, the company has seen the profitability in bringing this brand back. In fact, the company's demise actually seems to have played into its mythic status, as the WWE content about ECW sold far more than ECW ever did. After all, low ratings on TNN was one of the contributing factors to the original demise of the company.
It remains to be seen how fans will react to this re-launching and if they will buy WWE's version of ECW as a valid descendant of the original. WWE has assigned the former owner of ECW, Paul Heyman, to oversee this incarnation, which may buy the project quite a bit of credibility with fans. One thing's for sure--the company has gained a surge in stock price after adding ECW to its already successful RAW brand on USA and Smackdown brand on what will soon be the CW Network.
However, one major question that fans have--how will ECW fit in with the Sci Fi Network? It was assigned there because WWE is only allowed to air its products on NBC-affiliated networks, and Sci Fi was the only network significantly interested. However, many Sci Fi fans are, shall we say, skeptical as to whether a pro wrestling show can really fit in with the mantra of the network, since wrestling ostensibly has only loose connections at best with science fiction (and The Undertaker won't even be in ECW!) But Sci Fi President Bonnie Hammer has worked with WWE in the past and feels confident that ECW will fit in well with Sci Fi.
The ECW weekly show will debut on Tuesday, June 13. Dave Meltzer reports that some rumors have circulated that the network may require ECW to have a science fiction storyline at any given time, a move that would likely anger hardcore ECW fans while doing nothing to appease the Sci Fi fans, since it would obviously not be a natural part of the wrestling product. However, Meltzer has found that the only current plans are to include a group of wrestlers that are vampirish, something that actually has a history in the WWE with The Brood.
USA Network will air a special on Wednesday night related to ECW, and the next reunion PPV is next Sunday, all leading up to the program's debut the following Tuesday. WWE has already moved one of its bigger RAW stars, Rob Van Dam, and arguably the greatest wrestler on Smackdown, Kurt Angle, to ECW full-time, in an attempt to bring a significant number of new fans to the ECW brand. But what will be the repercussions of airing the program on the Sci Fi Network? Will their be a backlash among hardcore Sci-Fi fans to the wrestling programming? How will hardcore ECW fans react to the reincarnation? And can ECW attract new fans on a full-time basis?
Since WWE only had the Sci Fi Network to choose from, it seems worth the risk to explore the selling power of the ECW name and to use the brand to create new stars and another alternative brand to its RAW and Smackdown shows. If the brand remains viable, it will be great for the wrestling business, with three WWE full rosters in addition to the TNA wrestling promotion airing on Spike TV and owned by Panda Energy.
But will it be successful? We'll begin to find out next week.
Study Released on Television Viewing Among Infants, Young Children
A recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 61 percent of infants watch an hour of "screen media," primarily television, a day, while 90 percent of children 4-6 watch an average of about two hours of television.
The results of this study highlights recent developments in the television industry, such as the creation of BabyFirst TV, the first television network for infants, coming off the popularity of the Baby Einstein products.
My cousin and his wife regularly babysit for their friends and claim that Baby Einstein is intellectual crack for babies, as it almost always captivates the child. This phenomenon is undeniable. However, camps are divided about what that means. On the one hand, there are media effects theorists who cringe at the very thought of infants being subjected to the evil dumbing down of America and exposed to commercialism at such a young age. For instance, I have a couple in my extended family, both of whom are doctors, who will not allow their child near a television for her first few years of intellectual development.
Then, there's our director Henry Jenkins, once quoted in the San Jose Mercury News as saying that not allowing children to watch television is a form of child abuse. (The comment was meant a little tongue-in-cheek, of course, but that context was lost in the quotation.) But the theme is essentially close to how I feel. Media literacy is important, and television that appeals to the learning patterns of infants is not harmful and potentially very helpful in the conceptual process, since we live in such a media-saturated environment. Learning how to understand and cope with that media is important, and media has truly become the way we communicate as a culture. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that we are moving television intiatives into even an infant market.
While the thread was started and maintained by a few ATWT fans who are also members of the gay community, following the message board's reaction to the show over several weeks shows how the storyline was able to draw non-fans in. Some of them mention that they don't watch the whole show but only the Luke scenes, but they are beginning to get familiar with much of the cast, as Luke interacts with 10 or so other characters on a regular basis.
The thread is a demonstration of how fan communities within a niche audience can begin to proselytize and recruit other members of their social group to watch the show as well. First of all, members of the online gay community may have never become aware of the ATWT storyline if they were not already fans of the show without the active posting of some fans of the show. Further, their continued updated discussions of the show, made friendly for newcomers, has brought several regular posters on the Dreamcaps site to become regular viewers of ATWT as well.
The discussion about the Luke storyline starts morphing into a dicussion of the distinctive elements of the soap opera genre and its emphasis on dialogue and slow-moving action paced out over several days with multiple storylines juggled simultaneously. Posters begin encourgaging each other to not just watch the Luke storyline but also check out other current stories as well. And the thread has now gone to 17 pages over the past few months as people continuously follow ATWT.
A great example of the power of the fan community, particularly when a show taps into a niche "surplus" audience that is not its primary demographic, which is women 18-49.
As I mentioned in post back in February, the Luke Snyder character also has his own blog, as the show attempts to extend into multiple storytelling platforms.
Thanks to Alex Chisholm with Interpublic for passing this along.
The piece, called 10 Things I Hate About Commandments, is a trailer for a teen drama featuring Moses and Ramses fighting over the same girl. While a parody of sorts for both the older film and the teen drama form, as well as a parody of movie trailers in general, the piece is more a celebration and send-up spoof than a biting critique and is an example of the ways that fan-generated content can bring new excitement to long-existing pieces of work. When I first watched the trailer early this morning, the trailer already had over 600,000 views. While some Christians may be offended by Samuel L. Jackson's language in his version of The Burning Bush, I don't read this as a criticism of the original film or the biblical story, save its the camp value of some of the acting and costuming.
More than anything else, though, this trailer demonstrates the tremendous power of fans to generate "poached" content in ways that look as professional as a real movie trailer, for the most part. The use of quotes from the actual Ten Commandments shows the time and energy put into conceiving, piecing together, and executing a trailer like this. I can't help but be continually amazed at the expertise and dedication of fans.
As you all have probably heard by now, half of the big studios and networks are suing Cablevision for their DVR service, due to copyright issues. The disagreement here relates to how the service that Cablevision offers is defined. By Cablevision's definition, the company is offering a DVR service, with the only difference being that, instead of allowing customers to record shows onto a digital hard drive or a disc, it is stored on secure customer space within Cablevision.
All the companies who file the suit say that this is not DVR but instead video-on-demand because the "recorded" material remains in the hands of the company instead of recorded directly by the consumer. They claim that such movements will cause damage to all the new and innovative services that they are offering, such as mobisodes, iTunes downloads, web streaming, video on-demand, etc.
To me, though, this just seems like displaying insecurity with their own technology. If they are confident that viewers want web streaming or mobisodes or any of these other products, then Cablevision's technology won't be a major factor. True innovation won't be protected by stifling the innovation of others. Of course, I may not be grasping the whole story here, but it seems like yet another prohibitionist move motivated by scared companies who are worried about giving up too much control.
Turner Classic Movies Reaching for Younger Audience
Turner Classic Movies will be reaching out to a younger audience with an attempt to refine its brand. According to announcements last week, the network will begin airing programming including a cult movie feature that will come on late at night, hosted by Rob Zombie.
Zombie's show will be called "TCM Underground," according to The Television Forum.
Zombie's show is one of several recent ventures by TCM to reach out to younger viewers. I personally don't see any conflicts with these types of projects, as long as they retain the overall intent of TCM. When brands try to stretch themselves so far that they lose any sense of their raison d'etre, they run the risk of losing their key constituency.
While some of their other original projects may be taking some of the focus away from the "classic" part of Turner Classic Movies, the idea of using current cult stars to look into former cult film favorites is perfect, especially considering that Zombie's own films have been greatly influenced by cult classics of the past. The project should attract new and younger viewers while not straying so far from the focus of TCM that it would anger the fans of classic movies that support the network.
It will be interesting to see how well the show is received by new fans and by the existing TCM fan base.
Thanks to Siddiq Bello from our partner Turner for passing along information about a review of a Web site called What Is A Piece of Strange?.
The site is a fan-created examination of the album A Piece of Strange, by southern hiphop group Cunninlynguists. The review, written by Rafi Kam, appears on the Oh Word blog and focuses particularly on the site as a blog marketing case study.
Rafi's in-depth discussion of the album and the positives and negatives of the fan site's execution of studying the debut of this new album is interesting and appears in great detail, looking at the strong start for the site that fizzled due to lack of updates and a lack of starting places for nascent fans. However, what I found at the end was far more interesting, with both someone who posted for the site and a member of the band joining in the conversation.
While I'm not personally that familiar with this group or even the genre of music, the Web site is proof of something I wrote about last December, the limits that mainstream taste often put on our understanding of fan communities and transmedia content. People choose not to look very often outside of what is perceived as mainstream taste, for instance at an underground fan marketing campaign for a southern hiphop group, even if this may be an example which gives the rest of much to learn about.
Also, it's proof of what I labeled in February as the most important discussion in the entertainment industry today, that being the relationship betrween fans and producers. As with the example in that post, this blog post by Rafi Kam became a site in which fans, critics and the artists themselves all come together to debate and discuss these issues openly. From the example that the comments to Kam's story provides for us, we see both the rationale for fans working on fan sites, the perceived relationship of performers, and Kam's theories about where fan sites like the one for A Piece of Strange need to be headed in terms of creating the most impact, both for the group and for the fan community.
NBC's news network is the first to launch onto iTunes. Could news potentially be something that people would be willing to watch on the run or in transit, thus making it appropriate for iTunes? It will be particularly interesting to see how the "time capsule" style programs do. News has been a type of content whose archives are incredibly hard to market, particularly because of the prolific output of news deparmtents of programming that is so time-specific. For the sake of archiving, all of this news content is kept, but there's been little attempt to capitalize off these products.
NBC, however, is farm from alone in launching into online content. While the "big three" networks have been accused for years now of shying further and further away from any comprehensive look at international news, ABC is hoping to rectify that--to some degree--by making short ad-supported clips from BBC News available through the ABC News Web site.
The newest project is a longstanding continuination of the relationship between ABC and the BBC, with ABC being announced, according to an article in TelevisionWeek, as "the exclusive reprentative for on-demand broadband and wireless in North America" for the BBC.
This particular conversation seems appropriate on the heels of our discussion of transmedia in the news environment that we have had with Aayush Iyer here on this site and on his own site. For NBC, iTunes is being mined as a place to market the expansive news archives, while ABC is hoping to expand its international coverage online. Will either, or both, be successful? The BBC clips may be of great benefit to those who don't have access to BBC America, and the NBC clips could draw well both with history buffs and with students doing research. Any thoughts?
Not that long ago, I had a discussion with a seasoned veteran of television writing who was not happy with orders from above of blatant product integration in the show that person was writing for.
It's been a common and growing complaint, so much so that the Writers Guild of America East recently released a statement calling for regluations of integration and inclusion of actors and writers both on the process of deciding appropriate uses of product integration and also to be included in the benefits.
According to a story by Jon Lafayette for TelevisionWeek, the writers called for a distinction to be made between "product placement" and "product integration." In this case, they are arguing against the use of blatant product placement versus natural product placement, an issue that has been close to our reserach over the past year, particularly through the research of my C3 colleague Alec Austin.
Some television programs allow for product integration, using the WGA distinction, more than others. Particularly, it seems that reality television shows or sporting events are not as badly hurt by the extensive use of sponsor names because it doesn't seem as absurd. Both are already controlled environments and in fact gain their narrative drive from that contrived situation, whether it be a game or a reality competition.
However, in fictional dramatic or comedy series, product integration can easily destroy the viewer's suspension of disbelief in a way that detracts from viewer involvement and the perceived aristry of a show.
Yet, episodes of Seinfeld and Sex and the City prove that episodes can have a particular brand name or product involved deeply in an episode without detracting from the power of the show, if it is not something imposed on the writers but instead something the creative team is a part of from the conception.
So, I don't see the WGA's call for inclusion as a threat but rather a great benefit to the future of effective product placement. When creative teams are saying that they see the economic reality of product placement but only object to it being done poorly, it seems they've found a mantra that the entire industry should get behind.
Convergence Brings Old Companies to New Media, Reverse Effect
In the past week or two, we've seen major moves by established "old media" corporations to further in-roads in digital technology. But, of course, I use the designator "old media" for television networks only loosely because it's becoming increasingly difficult to define networks as "television oriented," considering how rapidly almost every major name is moving content in different directions.
For instance, there's our partner here at C3, MTV Networks, and their new URGE product, cashing in on the cultural cache of MTV, CMT, and VH1 with a digital downloading service that offers exclusive content from the established "old media" names.
Or look at ABC's initial success with streaming ad-supported content online, annoucing that tests with streaming content to 2.5 million views in under three weeks led to an 86 percent recall rate for advertising. Each ABC program downloaded included three advertisements.
Conversely, Google has now expanded into video ads online, and CBS and AOL have announced an unprecedented plan for a transmedia reality television experience with their fall Gold Rush, a reality show that will be launched among multiple platforms and will allow people across the country to participate in a search for piles of gold. For those interested in alterative reality gaming, Mark Burnett's Gold Rush should be a fascinating experiment.
With new experiments being announced almost every day, the power of "old media" or established "new media" companies is obvious, and companies should be applauded for taking the risks to see what consumers will and will not respond to. Sure, ABC's dumping of content is a lot safer of a move than Gold Rush, but both are indicative of a trend across the industry.
Will the value of various MTV Networks carry Urge to success, and will ABC capitalize on their discovery of initial success with streaming by offering more content, original content, archived content? Media companies are realizing that those that discover the most successful new formulas for transmedia storytelling and new platform distribution will be standing strongest once we eventually reach a point of convergence stabilization. But, in the meantime, we have an exciting job trying to make heads or tails of what's happening in the midst of this age of media transition.
Forget Gold Rush. It seems that it's the moves by the company themselves that's the most fascinting multiplayer reality game of all...We've just yet to see who leaves with the stacks of gold.
Fenway Park, Fan Tourism, and The Experience Economy
Few entertainment organizations understand the experience economy and especially the use of tourism among the fan community as well as sports franchises.
In the latest Journal of Popular Culture, Michael Ian Borer writes about the power of the sports arena as a tourist attraction. His essay, entitled "Important Places and Their Public Faces: Understanding Fenway Park as a Public Symbol." The essay, which appeared in the latest JPC (39.2, April 2006, 205-224), focuses on The Boston Red Sox and their beloved Fenway Park. (Well, I'm a Bostonian now, so I guess I should say "our" beloved Fenway Park.)
Borer points out that, since 1912, the park has taken on a sacred meaning, not just for Red Sox fans, but for fans of Major League Baseball in general. The arena's meaning has changed through each season, and it has lasted as a symbol of baseball's history so that it is now one of the greatest tourist attractions of any arena in the country. Borer writes that, as one walks outside the park, "you get the feeling that you are treading on sacred ground, andthat by being there you are doing something important" (205). This is the essential feeling for an experience economy and illustrates the way in which Fenway Park has become a quasi-religious symbol for fans to make a trek to, either to watch a game or for an off-season tour of the park.
Fenway is not only valuable as a tourist attraction but also a symbol in the narrative of the Red Sox. As fans construct and constantly adapt this narrative, the meaning of Fenway may change as well. Borer writes that, when the Red Sox won the final series game in 2004 and became champions again after a winning droubt that had lasted almost 90 years, "in that very moment, the ballpark took on a new meaning or at least a meaning that had not been connected to Fenway Park since 1918: Home of the World Series Champions" (222).
For those of us interested in understanding the experience economy first espoused by Pine and Gilmore and the meaning behind fan-constructed narratives, Borer's essay is illuminating both as a detailed look at the image of Fenway Park and as a reminder of the power and unerstanding the sports world has had for years of fan tourism and the importance of physical spaces in the construction of fan narratives.
I want to thank Siddiq Bello from Turner Broadcasting, one of our partners here in the Convergence Culture Consortium, for passing along this really interesting example of the power of fan-generated content and the abilities of a remix culture--
YouTube has become a vibrant outlet for fan-generated content. (You can even find a video of my managerial services at work in a Universal Championship Wrestling pro wrestling card in Owensboro, Ky., filmed by someone in the audience and posted on YouTube.) A recent example, and this is a real kick of nostalgia for those of you from the He-Man generation like me, but YouTube features The Skeletor Show, which creators describe as "a heartwarming story of the most evil man in the universe" made "in the style of Sealab 2021."
The episodes, usually about three or four minutes in length, use visuals from the original Masters of the Universe cartoons to create a show from the perspective of the antagonist, Skeletor. The series is going to be in line with most fan-generated content, in that it becomes a community of creation based around the original product.
The initial creators say that, "for those of you who have written to me interested in writing, I am developing the show bible now and will have it available by next week (I hope)." I'm going to be interested in following The Skeletor Show over the next few weeks to see both if there is any negative reaction from any copyright holders and also to see if other fans join in on remixing footage from their childhood favorite. Yet another example of the power of the creativity of fan communities and how new tools help facilitate and spread that creativity.
Aayush Iyer, a regular follower of our blog and who has an intriguing blog of his own called The Voice of A, has written the beginning of a primer on transmedia. Aayush comes from a publishing background, and, since I come from a journalism background, I found his emphasis on blogging, community journalism, and the importance of print media to find its place to be pretty useful.
In Aayush's case, his definition focuses strongly on the ways in which print media, visual media, and Web media should work together. In the case of journalism, each medium must realize its own strengths and weaknesses, and the use of transmedia in journalism allows each to augment the other to create a stronger whole.
The principles here apply pretty strongly to transmedia in the entertainment industry as well and even to transmedia storytelling where, in a perfect world, transmedia storytelling experiences would fully utilize the powers of each particular medium. As I'm sure Aayush would agree, professionals in the world of journalism and in the world of storytelling (aren't those two worlds pretty similar, though?) are only beginning to scratch the surface of using transmedia to its full potential, but activities like Aayush's--spending some time thinking of exactly what we mean when we say "transmedia"--are valuable steps in the right direction.
A quick look through the top news items for TelevisionWeek this week reveals that fury with which the industry is moving toward the adoption of new delivery services and just how hard it is to keep track of what moves everyone is making.
For instance, CBS will be offering the finale of Survivor free on-demand through a few Comcast markets, with General Motors sponsoring the episode, marking the first instance of a major network show being sponsored and offered for free on-demand. Fox, meanwhile, is beginning to launch some of its most popular series for download on iTunes. And NBC Universal is restructuring its corporate hierarchy to make the push for digital distribution more seamless.
Meanwhile, Bravo is launching BrilliantButCancelled.com, a broadband channel which will air short-lived series that had cult followings, while VH1 is unleashing an online gaming site dedicated to VH1-branded games, in addition to a package of classic games.
CEO Eric Schmidt has announced a refining of video-sharing capabilities and improved search options for Google, while Yahoo en Espanol and Telemundo are combining their online sites to create Yahoo Telemundo, in an effort to better target Hispanic consumers.
Warner Brothers is now teaming up with BitTorrent to offer Web-based downloads of its television shows and movies, available for a fee the same day Warner Brothers properties are released in retail stores. The downloads will be able to be burned onto DVD but must remain on the hard drive of the computer it was downloaded on.
The moves within the industry are coming daily now, and the partnerships of Yahoo and Telemundo, for instance, or BItTorrent and Warner Brothers show how many top companies are beginning to think further and further outside the box and through new linkages in order to come out of the rush to new platforms and new distribution methods on top.
We're currently wrapping up here at the C3 conference with a tremendous brainstorming session of our own research priorities as we look toward a second year of research for the Convergence Culture Consortium. Of course, the nature of that aspect of our work remains internal, but our thoughts are greatly influenced by an illuminating series of speakers this afternoon.
Joshua Green, a post-doc at CMS who will be taking over the position of research manager for the consortium in the coming year, looked at how American programming was marketed in his native Australia, particularly what did and did not work and why.
This was followed by a session looking at business opportunities in multiplayer game worlds featuring C3 business manager David Edery, Harvard Business Review's Paul Hemp, C3's Ilya Vedrashko, and Chris Weaver, a visiting professional and professor here at the Comparative Media Studies program and a faculty member with C3.
The nature of convergence culture and the current state of the media industry is in flux right now, and the type of engagement and discourse we have had here on the blog and within C3 is refreshing, considering how little time there is to stop and think about the implications of what is currently happening in the industry and the possibilties for the future.
While in this reflective mode, we would likewise like to see any feedback readers might have regarding our focuses here on this public face of the Convergence Culture Consortium. We are grateful for those of you who engage in our dialogue. Feel free to e-mail us or continue in our public dialogue on these issues as you are. In true "convergence culture" form, we want this site to be a forum of discussion, not just a top-down message from us to you but a true discourse.C
We are currently engaged in an in-depth discussion of teasing out particular issues of media convergence this morning and have just broken for lunch. And the morning's sessions has provided a lot of food for thought that people are mulling over while consuming their actual foodright now. Our four speakers this morning have provoked a lot of discussion, both from the academics gathered here today and the folks from Turner Broadcasting and GSD&M who are visiting today, as well as the C3 team.
We began the morning with a great discussion of Web 2.0 by Shenja van der Graaf. Shenja, an associated academic member of the Convergence Culture Consortium currently pursuing her Ph.D. at the London School of Economics, is examining the shift, both culturally and technically, in the way the Web is utilized and what it means for the current media climate.
Anthropologist Grant McCracken, another member of C3 and one of our most active off-campus asscoiated faculty members, engaged everyone in an in-depth discussion of the history of the concept of entertainment and its current fate today. His discussion merged his very conceptual analysis of the very idea of entertainment with a business-focused "where are we now?" question that turned into a great conversation with both the academic and industry communities in the room.
Recent MIT Media Lab graduate and new Comparative Media Studies post-doc Hugo Liu, who will be engaging in work with C3 in the future, made a fascinating presentation about using tools to filter, recommend, examine, and organize cultural and social preferences. Considering the endless amount of content online, the way these tools allow us or could allow us to navigate, interpret, and come to develop an undersatnding of what's going on is a rich area to think about as we move into an unparalleled age of information online, thinking back to Shenja's presentation earlier in the day.
Finally, John Edward Campbell presented on his in-depth work of online gay communities and understanding these forums as a forum for political discourse. His work looks at how these sites bring to the forefront debates about free speech, concern for liability for sites hosting these debates, and the divide between consumer and citizen on online sites.
While the power of this week's retreat seems to be the intimate discussion we are having here while brainstorming as a team, and a lot of the content of those discussions aren't available for public consumption because much of the research we do is specific to the interests of our faculty and corporate partners, I feel that the general theme of these presentations and the discussion is very much open for public debate by all of you that follow this branch of C3. And, for those of you who are here at the conference who read this, feel free to comment on or complicate what I have taken away from the morning's presentations.
We had very productive conversations yesterday at the first day of our Convergence Culture Consortium (C3) conference/retreat for several of our associated faculty and representatives from some of our corporate partners as well. We've been talking about the nature of convergence culture and how it affects the media industry, fan communities, and those studying the media.
What's great about this environment, where distinguished academic minds from around the world come together with some of the most innovative thinkers in the media industry, is that a genuine dialogue bridging the gap between academics and the industry we are studying begins to take place. Sure, as Henry Jenkins pointed out in our introductory notes yesterday, business people have a language of their own, and academics often speak a language that seem to have little to do with English, but we have seen those linguistic obstructions to be hurdled throught the past day.
Henry's comments and William Uricchio's insights about historic media in transition, one of his areas of specialty that he has published on several times, set the stage for an illuminating panel that was open to Comparative Media Studies students, in addition to conference attendees, here at MIT last night. Since that session was open to the public--whereas the earlier sessions and all of today's sessions are private for our C3 team members, we can go into a little more detail about the nature of yeseterday evening's presentations.
Ian Condry, an anthropologist on the faculty here at MIT, joined Rob Kozinets, marketing professor at York University in Toronto, participated in a discussion with Henry Jenkins about some of the current meanings of convergence for both fan communities and brand communities. Both Ian and Rob are associated faculty with C3.
Ian's presentation looked at fan subtitling of anime that has not yet been marketed in the United States. Ian has been researching this community and the anime industry in general for several years.
Rob focused on the changing nature of looking at brands in the experience economy, tied to his in-depth research on Burning Man, the annual celebration of art and humanity that takes place out in the Nevada desert.
What was interesting was in seeing how attitudes in fan communities and brand communities, as presented by Ian and Rob, both converged and collided, and the discussion that ensued about how the existing media industry can learn from and make decisions based on these communities and activities.
Both Ian's and Rob's sites point to their related published research on these topics, but they started a vibrant discussion last night that has everything to do with what we blog about every week here on the C3 site, and we'd like to extend this discussion to our extended C3 family here on the site, if anyone has any thoughts on these issues...
For those of you who follow this blog regularly from the academic world, you all know the struggles of interdisciplinary interests in academia. And for those of you from industry or from fan communities or just with a general curiosity, you can imagine how the idea of convergence at it is taking place in the media industry is in some ways being mirrored in the academic realm.
Where do you study media studies? Where do you study popular culture? Is it sociology, anthropology, literary studies, history, communication, broadcasting, etc.? At MIT, we have a department dedicated to interdisciplinary study related to the media--Comparative Media Studies. But, of course, we only have a handful of faculty that works full-time in our department and then a plethora of associated faculty in most of these other areas, who are officially parts of anthropology or literature departments.
On April 14, I was a member of a four member panel at the National Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association conference in Atlanta, where we discussed these very problems, of how academia can reflect these changes and can adapt outdated molds of distinctive "disciplines" that never meet and that define themselves often by being "NOT" the other disciplines, with specialized argot and academic rules to keep boundaries clear.
My presentation was about "breaking those walls down," but...as people wonder with convergence, whether in the media industry or in journalism (both of which are talking about convergence endlessly), if we break those walls down, what do we have left?
Henry Jenkins, in his new book Convergence Culture, warns about what is called "The Black Box Fallacy," where people believe that everything will just become one. Journalists fear the "uberjournalist," that corporations are going to try to make one person do broadcast, print, Internet, etc. But these situations are not what convergence is, and the same is true of academia. Blurring distinctions doesn't mean that the anthropologist, the literary critic, or the historian doesn't exist. It just means that we will have a more open flow of communication.
We had about 25 or 30 people present for an hour and a half discussion, a great turnout for an academic panel. My colleagues from Western Kentucky University, Ted Hovet and Dale Rigby, and my wife Amanda Ford, all participated in the panel, and we discussed how academia needs to make these interdisciplinary links by reconceptualizing the way that the idea of "disciplines" work.
Does anyone have any thoughts about how this idea of "convergence" affects the academic world in terms of disciplinary boundaries?
Preparing for C3 Retreat: An Eye Toward Transmedia, Archive Distribution
Today begins our retreat for both faculty and corporate partners of the Convergence Culture Consortium (C3). We'll be discussing many of the issues that we look at in the consortium and discuss here on the weblog. A lot of the time will be spent as a private brainstorming session for partners at C3, but we hope to include some of the relevant insights available for public consumption here on the blog.
As a precursor to today's events, though, I've been traveling a lot in the past several weeks I've met with members of research and development at Turner Broadcasting and MTVN, two of our partners, along with World Wrestling Entertainment and some of the folks working with As the World Turns, at CBS and at Procter & Gamble Productions, in addition to members of the actual ATWT team.
What I've found is a growing industry awareness, at least in the areas I'm interested in, both in the importance to current story and product to promote past shows in the archives, and a related need to find more ways for fans to immerse themselves in the world of the entertainment. Herein lies the place for digital distribution of the archives in true Long Tail form, the place for transmedia storytelling, and the perfect platform to launch into new media. I've demonstrated recently here on the blog how this can work both in new media forms, such as the WWE's mobile service, and in a very old media form, such as Oakdale Confidential.
I hope what we're seeing right now is signalling a focus on these factors, that new technologies won't end up being used just to make new ancillary content that adds no real meaning to the main product or else just a dumping of old content without any thought given to how it relates to current products. If producers keep their eye on refining their goals and methods, they may serve to expand story worlds in ways that are both profitable for the company and meaningful for fans.
Today's Metro here in Boston had a great story on Channel Frederator, which lists itself as "The World's Original Cartoon Podcast." The site, for "mature audiences only," produces cartoon programming for adults, a market that founder Fred Seibert feels remains unjustly underserved.
What's so interesting about the podcasted cartoons is that they not only produce their own work but also accept work from amateurs, which--if good enough--becomes distributed by Channel Frederator, making it a true community of production where the line between cultural producer and fan becomes a little hard to distinguish. The editorial function remains with the producers, who decide what does and what does not get distributed, but Channel Frederator seems to get that fans want content generated by them to not just be considered ancillary but to be featured as well, at least the best of it.
Amber Ray's story in the Metro, "Fan-cast-ic," mentions that some viewers of the site complains about the sometimes-amateurish quality of some of the fan-generated content, but the founder retorts by pointing out that the drawing quality of great animated series such as Beavis and Butthead and South Park does so on much less "beautiful" pictures as cartoons like Looney Tunes.
The weekend edition of USA Today had an intriguing front-page article about the resurgence of faith-based films specifically targeted at the Christian community in America.
The article, written by Scott Bowles, touches on some of the aspects of grassroots marketing in Christian communities that I have posted about before in relation to Christian marketing and debate surrounding C.S. Lewis, which was utilized effectively in marketing the recent Narnia film.
Christian communities have powerful methods for word-of-mouth, with preachers and outspoken church members spreading the word about products. Christian bookstores are another powerful way to target the Christian community, and products from the Left Behind series to Veggie Tales have had strong support from Christian consumers, not to mention The Passion of the Christ.
The article details moves by companies such as Fox, who have created Fox Faith as a division of the company marketing to the Christian consumer. The site even includes materials for church disucssion on Fox Faith films, serving the all-important Christian literature market that bible bookstores are run on.
Fox Faith serves as an important reminder not to forget about the power of concentrated marketing and the unaparalleled grassroots power of American Christianity.
The top story in Friday's USA Today Money section focuses on the announcement that not only are the surviving members of The Beatles participating in a remastering of all of The Beatles' CDs but also that those remastered tracks will be made available for legal download once they are finished.
According to the story, the group's music has been held off from the the legal download market because they did not want to push their old tracks out when they were in the process of creating aesthetically superior work that better reflects the music.
The story, by Jefferson Graham, includes statistics from the Beatles/Cirque Du Soleil performances in Las Vegas that claims that the Beatles "are bigger than ever," according to Martin Lewis, a "Beatles expert" who hosts a Beatles show on Sirius radio.
The story discusses the frustration of Beatles fans of having only one recourse to have digital copies of Beatles' music--buy the CDs and then transfer them onto the hard drive and then onto the iPod--which has led to estimates of "hundreds of millions" of illegal downloads of Beatles songs.
Of course, plenty of people will be downloading the music for free even after these are made available, and it could be too little too late, but the promise of quality tracks being released may make enough people, especially Beatles fanatics, to be willing to chip in to buying the remastered CDs or the new tracks.
Is it "too little, too late" for The Beatles? Have they lost too much profit already? Or does the promise of owning the music legally and remastered copies make this a shrewd move? I am wondering if the wait for the remastered copies was worthwhile, considering the profits lost in the meantime. And, will the average person be willing to pay to download Beatles music they already own to have the remastered copy?
Either way, the reprecussions of this release should greatly shape how other music currently held in the archive is viewed...what is the value of remastered copies, when it comes to digital downloads? If The Beatles fare well, it will probably encourage even more growth in remastering old tracks for digital distribution. But, if The Beatles' doesn't do well in the digital realm with remastered songs, can anyone?
The top headline in Wednesday's USA Today looks at the way cable companies are looking toward online and cable game profits--online profits alone are projected to reach $3.5 billion by 2009.
In the story, David Lieberman looks at the buzz in the annual cable operators convention in Atlanta centering on pay-for-play broadband games, noting that if cable doesn't jump on the bandwagon to do everything possible to support online game play for PCs and for digital cable, that telephone companies won't hesitate to fill the need for the service.
Already, multiple cable operators are rushing to provide customers with extensive backlists of titles. In the story, Cox, ReacTV, and Comcast are quoted. While I'm in town here in Atlanta for the PCA conference, I was able to learn more about Turner's initiative. While the newest games are not being made available for such services for fear that it would cut the need for people to purchase the titles for themselves, the services are already proving that a lot of games can be pulled from the archives and provided to players, who are interested in the games for nostalgia, to grasp the history of gaming, and...the biggest reason of course--because they are intriguing games.
But the question is what the buzz is from the other side--the people who are jumping on board these subscription-style services or the on-demand pay-for-play services. Is this a fad, something exciting for technology's sake but whose power will taper off once people get used to the service? Or is this the beginning of the new way to play games? And what does that mean for those who provide the platforms or who benefit most from retail sales of games, as these services begin to introduce other possibilities?
Of course the cable industry is very high on the idea--they have the most to win, providing a product for a niche that is currently not being served. But, for other players, what is there to lose? What is there to fear? And, most of all, what does the consumer want? For those of you who are hardcore gamers, is there something special about "owning" the game versus playing it through a subscription service? And, as these services become more elaborate, will there come a day where interest in owning your own game is minimal?
World Wrestling Entertainment has started their own Mobile Alerts service that will send fans regular text messages of late-breaking news from the company, as well as polls and trivia. The news portion of WWE Mobile Alerts blends both legitimate updates--wrestlers who are suspended, hired, or fired, for instance--with the capability to use the service as a way to extend the storytelling world.
WWE is uniquely situated by being able to combine what many sports franchises are already doing in the realm of sports reporting--sending game score updates, for instance--with the WWE's fictional world because wrestling is one version of television entertainment that predicates on being a part of the "real world" in a way most other fiction shows don't.
The service costs $3.99 a month. We'll see in the next few months how many fans decide to plunk down the modest fee to be on the cutting edge of the WWE's storylines. If they get a hardcore fan base developed around Mobile Alerts, it could become an essential part of the storytelling device, similar to how the company is using its Web-only video programming to supplement the televised shows.
Does anybody know of similar instances where a "news reporting" mobile service is employed develop a fictional storyworld on a regular basis?
For those of you who saw my previous post about Oakdale Confidential, here is a brief update now that the novel is out. During my recent travels, I've had a chance to read it, and I've even weighed in on the book myself on some of the soap opera message boards.
Oakdale Confidential is standard fare as a quick-read murder mystery, but the way it has been woven into the plot of the show makes it a more valuable purchase for ATWT viewers. On television, then novel is treated as a fictional story that nevertheless reveals some secrets about people in town--and people that are not exactly public figures. So the book and the identity of its author has become an Oakdale town scandal.
The mystery on the show is who wrote the book, and everyone is walking around with their copies, while viewers are also able to buy the book and read it, not just to enjoy for the sake of the story in the novel--which could be readable for a non-ATWT fan but likely not nearly as enjoyable--but even more so because the book gives you clues about who wrote the book and gives you the chance to directly own and consume an artifact from the story world.
What makes the book most intriguing is that viewers are looking through the text and examining shows carefully to get clues as to who authored it. There are several factual discrepancies in the book from what we have actually seen on screen that are illuminating for close watchers of ATWT, and my thoughts on the message board look into those parts of the text that stray from the "truth" we've seen on the screen in detail to get a better sense of who might be the author and why they may have either gotten facts wrong or deliberately chosen to omit certain things in their rendering of the story.
From a transmedia storytelling standpoint, the attempt has been a great success. Oakdale Confidentialis currently ranked the #7 book on Amazon, up from #10 two days ago but down from #5 yesterday (the numbers are updated hourly). Message boards have come alive with debates about who wrote the book, and we have yet to see if Nielsen numbers reflect a surge in viewership based on part-time fans having an interest in the book or even new readers becoming interested in the show through picking the book up (and, if the Nielsen numbers don't reflect a major difference, is this really an indicator that it isn't happening?)
While the experiment shows how much more coordination is needed between the real author of the book and the television writing team to really exploit all the possibilities of taking the story from one medium to the other, the one thing that Oakdale Confidential has demonstrated quite powerfully is that such an attempt at transmedia storytelling is becoming more and more profitable and that viewers are eager to join into a deep transmedia experience. I am hoping that the experiment not only shows the people at ATWT that this was a good idea but also what to do better the next time around.
Interesting Books on American Culture: Mark Twain, Madonna, and Jesus
While looking through the latest version of the American Culture Association's Journal of American Culture, I found reviews for a few good books that have just come out which might be useful for the work we're doing here at C3 or for people interested in related matters.
Tsuyoshi Ishihara published Mark Twain in Japan: The Cultural Reception of an American Icon in 2005. With all of our talk about a global international culture, influential Asian markets, and pop cosmopolitanism, it's sometimes easy to look only at film, television, and new media and not think back to what has traditionally been the most open cultural expression of ideas--the translation of literary texts. The well-known popular culture scholar Ray B. Browne provides a review that makes the book sound very applicable for those interested in understanding both the traditional and the contemporary problems with international markets and particularly American/Japanese cultural translations.
Another heavyweight in popular culture studies, Marshall Fishwick, provides an in-depth review of Karlene Faith's 2004 book Madonna: Bawdy and Soul. Faith's book looks at the way Madonna crafted her star image, both extrapolating from and breaking the molds of previous performers. She has been one of the most talked-about and studied modern musical performers, but there is much to learn about all her culutral metamorphoses, both for the student of popular culture as well as the marketer. For Madonna to remain relevant in American culture and to survive as a performer from generation to generation provides an effective case study for how a star image must adapt and change with the times.
But the master of an adaptable star image has to be Jesus Christ, which is the subject of Stephen Prothero's 2003 book American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon. Jesus has become a relevant figure to all strands of Catholic and Protestant Christianity, as well as Judiasm, Hinduism, Buddhism, and a variety of other religions. I've said it before and will say it many times over--understanding the marketing power of Christianity and studying it throughout history may be the most powerful way to grasp an understanding of basic marketing principles as anything I've seen, and Kelly Baker's review of American Jesus indicates that this book provides an in-depth analysis at how the use of Jesus Christ as an image has changed throughout American history.
The three books might be worth a look at if you are interested in the issues they touch on, and The Journal of American Culture is always a great place to go to find some of the books academia has to offer on issues currently relevant to American culture and entertainment.
Volvo has launched a new television spot parodying a broadcast news report about how the population is expanding and people are living longer. What's to blame? Volvo, of course, becuase of the safety features of their cars.
I first saw the ad while watching a rerun episode of Saturday Night Live and thought it was an SNL-produced commercial for a little while until I realized that it was from Volvo.
I personally found it pretty engaging and creative, a great way to catch the viewer with an entertaining commercial clearly linked the product, so as to avoid the problem that shows like this often run into by having a creative commercial that people remember without the product itself being an essential part of the message.
On the downside--I've always considered Volvo a car whose price isn't accessible to everyone, so the idea that people are living longer becuase Volvo is protecting the life of the population does undermine one message that Volvo has often sent--that of being a car to aspire to, a car that not everyone can own. Maybe they are trying to change their image in that regard, to be considered a more mainstream car than before.
But, overall, an effective campaign. Anyone else have any thoughts on it?
Talk Shows and Soap Operas Make You Stupid? Or Do They Just Indicate That You Are Losing Your Cognitive Abilities?
For those of you who follow my posts here on the C3 site regarding soap opera, and for those of you who care about the way television is viewed in general, you'll love this gem that was published yesterday evening in a story by Amy Norton on Reuters about an upcoming study to be published in the Southern Medical Journal.
A test proves that watching talk shows and soap operas is somehow tied to "poorer mental scores" in the elderly. Although a causal relationship can not yet be identified, the test indicates that those elderly people who chose "talk shows and soap operas" as their favorite programs tended to have lower cognative abilities than those who chose news programs, for instance.
I don't even think I have to respond for you to know what I think, but I wonder how "talk shows and soap operas" can be considered a category of television in the first place, or if a lot of other factors should be taken into consideration--for instance, as has happened with wrestling in the past, many viewers with a higher education level are less likely to admit their passion for genres like soap opera and talk shows (two separate genres, again, which the study does not distinguish between), even if they are, in actuality, one of their favorite shows.
Among my favorite quotes:
Dr. Fogel, who led the study, says that a preference for talk shows and soap operas "is a marker of something suspicious" in the health of patients and encourages doctors to ask elderly female patients about what might be their favorite TV shows as a way to indicate potential cognitive decline.
Considering, the constant switches, the intricate plots, and the sheer number of characters you have to keep up with, I have a hard time believing that mastering a soap opera can lead to cognitive decline. But I guess we should be happy that people have found such a great new use for television--as a way of proving a lack of brainpower depending on what people's favorite programs are.
Dr. Fogel hypothesizes that elderly people who are losing their thinking power watch soaps and talk shows because of the "parasocial relationships" that the shows encourage, so that people who can't think as clearly can revel in the emotional connection they feel with soap characters and talk shows and can thus pay attention, despite their diminished mental capabilities.
Fogel says that this doesn't mean these shows are bad for you but rather than they could signal "a possible problem."
But don't worry. Fogel finds that, while watching talk shows and soap operas might indicate diminished mental capacities, there might be some television programming out there that can benefit the intellect and help viewers manage stress.
Good. I was starting to get concerned that all our studies were for naught.
Thanks to Jenny on the As the World TurnsMedia Domain message board for posting the link to this story there.
The essay, "Mister Sparkle Meets the Yakuza: Depictions of Japan in The Simpsons, written by Hugo Dobson from the University of Sheffield in England, provides an intriguing case study into some of the very aspects of pop cosmopolitanism my colleagues and I have mentioned here on this site before. The Simpsons actually seems very interested in depictions of international culture throughout its run, and its an international popular culture phenomenon.
For Dobson, this means that tracking the way Japan has been depicted throughout the run of the show has all sorts of implications, on images of Japan in America. Considering the influx of Japanese animation in America, how might this relationship to Japanese characters in American animation be compared?
Pop cosmopolitanism has multi-directional flow, both import and export, and these have implications that are not always directly economic, although everything is an economic factor it seems. Hugo Dobson, a self-admitted Simpsons fan and a scholar on Japanese culture, is interested in the cultural implications and accusations of racism in The Simpsons, but his insights have a wide variety of implications on pop cosmopolitanism (especially juxtaposed with all the articles several months ago about The Simpsons' launch into Arabic-speaking countries).
It's well worth a look if you're interested in these issues, and I would love to spark up some debate about the essay here, if anyone else has a chance to look it over.
Soap Actor Reaches Out to Daytime Fans to Lobby Together
People within almost any industry often debate the value of the online fan community and the fan clubs of a particular show. A few weeks ago, I posted an argument on the Procter & Gamble Productions message board between moderators with PGP and fans on the board regarding the importance of the hardcore fan base versus obtaining general viewer impressions.
One actress that seems to be convinced of the importance of the most ardent fans of a show is Ellen Dolan with As the World Turns. Last week, Ellen sent a letter to the ATWT Fan Club explaining her problems with the way the character had been written and female characters more broadly on the PGP soap over the past year or two. Ellen's letter was quickly posted on message boards dedicated to ATWT across the net and became the talk of the fan community this past week.
In her letter, instead of taking the line others have that active fans represent such a miniscule number (although a number that far outweighs the Nielsen's, eh?) that they don't matter, Dolan points to the prior successes of the fan club. She points out that Trent Dawson, who was one of the favorite recurring actors on ATWT, was given a contract after being cheered on at the last annual fan club gathering.
She also makes the case that her character was originally one of the few female detectives on daytime but her professional duties have been stripped from her character, in a trend she seems to find where daytime, while once progressive with putting women in the workforce, is actually scaling back now that primetime is offering up female detectives and business leaders.
"Do you remember when Margo was a strong, independent woman and not a sniveling,cat fighting, high school girl craving for a football hero?" she asks before further asking why longtime ATWT actor and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit star Tamara Tunie can't seem to get a story of her own and longtime character Lucinda Walsh, a powerful businesswoman in town, never gets any stories about her professional life on the show these days.
"The character is being dismantled. These characters are your characters and I think valuable to the show. I need your support. I need you to help save Margo Hughes! I need you to write and ask for Margo back. I have attached a list of names and addresses for you to write to. Tell them how you feel about this character. Please guys, 'cus I love Margo and I want to keep giving her to you. Not to mention that my kid is only six, I've got many years to go."
ATWT is one of the best written shows on daytime television, but it doesn't mean that Dolan hasn't found one of the points that online fans constantly bring up as their frustration with the soap's content--the lack of workplace stories. While the show's producers can't be happy that what would essentially be a backstage argument has disseminated throughout the fan message boards, the direct plea and the grassroots campaign Dolan is trying to begin shows some recognition of the most active fans having the most power and the most investment in the show.
And Ellen hits on a very powerful message regarding the moral economy surrounding the characters, the feeling on behalf of the fan community that they have ownership of the characters, when she says, "These characters are your characters" and implies a fan duty at protecting the quality of the show by doing their duty and writing in.
Following this situation and the response of PGP should provide an interesting window into where things stand with the company's view of the fan community.
WWE Attempting to Expand Brand to "Cool Hunter" For Young Men
It's no surprise that the WWE wants to expand their brand. In the 1990s, it was the failed World Bodybuilding Federation that they tried to expand with, followed by the XFL at the turn of the millennium. The WWE has since realized that the "WWE" brand name is an important part of expansion of the product and has cut down on their expansion. They nixed a WWE Records idea and are expanding slowly on the WWE Films project, primarily with films that star wrestlers on their roster.
Now, the company is planning a WWE men's lifestyle magazine to complement their WWE RAW and WWE Smackdown monthly magazines they currently published. Since WWE courts the young adult male category and those who aspire to keep up with the trends in that category, even if they are older, the magazine may hit the core demographic in a powerful way. Since I have heard very little about the project so far, I'm not yet sure what this means. But it should be an interesting story to follow.
In the 27 February 2006 edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Dave Meltzer points out that the company must be careful with ventures
into building brand awareness if they don't have a strong enough economic impact on their main product--selling pro wrestling. "A few years back, the WWE did its own Super Bowl commercial with the same thing in mind. In hindsight, the results of those adds were that they added nothing to company business, nor did they end up building any noticeable long-term awareness for the companies that purchased them. In many cases, tests showed consumers would remember the best ads, but would have no memory of who the ads were for and the companies gained nothing from them. Tons of research done to prove what should have been obvious from the start."
So this brings up the very real question at the heart of what we're doing here at C3...How do you build brand awareness, be creative, reach out to the fans, expand your product, etc., yet in a way that doesn't waste away major capital with no economic upside. In the case of the men's lifestyle magazine, it will likely be all in the handling. As Dave points out, the product must expand well beyond their core product of pro wrestling but contain enough markers back to their product that it makes it acceptable to their core base. This may be where WWE learned their lesson with failures such as the XFL and are hoping to improve by making WWE Films about smaller budget with WWE stars making appearances in the movie. The key is to find ways of expanding the convince the current fan base to be willing to expand along with the company, even while bringing in new fans with these expanding ventures.
My Alma Mater Getting (Unwanted) National Attention
All right...I've stayed silent on this one long enough.
For those of you who don't know, I am a proud graduate of Western Kentucky University. The school has a highly respected journalism program, a top-notch communication department and an English and film studies faculty that includes many of the brightest and most discerning minds I have ever known. And there are scores of other talented folks at Western who have been doing everything they can to foster the growing national reputation of the university, including President Gary Ransdell, who I have personally seen in action, dedicating both day and night to preaching the good deeds of WKU and doing more good for the university than anyone could have imagined.
And, then, there's the school's Alpha Chi chapter of the Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity who made national news while I was visiting Kentucky when police searched their fraternity house during a party and found a goat locked in the closet, the victim of several animal rights abuses--some obvious and some alleged. The goat is believed to have been used in hazing, although the extent of use is up for debate.
I don't feel like repeating the story again for the sake of all of us in the WKU community who are hanging our heads in shame and also those of us who are sensitive to animal rights issues. For those interested in knowing the full story, the multiple-time Hearst winner WKU College Heights Herald has given this story the most extensive and balanced coverage of anything I've seen, and those stories are available here (you may have to register with the site to view them).
As Andrew McNamara records, those at WKU feel that this is just the story that comedians are always waiting for to deride "The Bluegrass State" as being full of hillbillies who love on their sisters and their farm animals. And everyone--from late night talk show hosts to news sites around the world--have picked up on the story. Bloggers are having a field day as well. See this post from Sensible Erection, this post from Jesus' General and Bob Reno's Dumbass Daily. These are only a few of many examples of the blogs written in response to this story.
University officials have been scrambling to cover this the best that they can, and I don't post it in this venue to try to further the mockery of a great school like WKU but rather to bring the discussion to a community of branding experts. What do you do in this situation, when something happens that does nothing but reinforce the very worst stereotypes about a place you are trying hard to build up? So far, they have made it clear to distance themselves from and punish the fraternity involved and have otherwise kept their mouths shut. But this is the type of story that will stick in people's minds.
Sure, the story is already starting to die down to some degree, but it is not going to go away and will lie at the back of the public's memory because of the way it has been spun and because of the stereotypes it feeds off of. The fact that the goat was used for hazing in the first place is an example of a local group trying to play off their own stereotype--AGR was (not surprisingly, based on their initials) an agriculture fraternity.
The local AGR chapter is obviously all but done for and doesn't deserve saving. They have been suspended and denounced by the national AGR organization and suspended for three years as a fraternity by WKU. But the larger question is, from a branding perspective, where does WKU go from here?
The Convergence Culture Consortium would like to extend its sympathies to the family and friends of Larry Robinson, who passed away last Sunday. Robinson, an Owensboro, Ky., based CPA, and his wife Marianna have been dedicated readers of the C3 Weblog during the past few months and have even sent our entries to family and friends for further discussion. We are saddened by his death and wish Marianna and his family the best during this trying time.
What caught my eye in particular was a detail that borders somewhere between parody and product placement. The situation got me thinking about what IS product placement...
The Pixar car has written across the tires "Lightyear" in the same font and placement as Goodyear Tires. For those familiar with Pixar's history, you will know that the "Lightyear" is a reference to the first Pixar film, Toy Story, in which one of the primary characters was named Buzz Lightyear.
The detail shows Pixar's creativity in every corner of their work, but it also bolsters the idea that Goodyear is the big name in tires...When can parody be product placement? Would a company be able to get a company to shell money out to parody its name in this fashion, when no direct product is even placed in the picture?
At the time, everyone who posted on the thread agreed that product placement would be more effective, more natural, and possibly the only way for soap operas to survive, longterm, and people began to debate particular issues about how product placement should be handled.
Fast-forward a few months, and the same board has had a small mini-discussion with a few close watchers of ATWT regarding a particular case of product placement this past week.
One of the characters, Margo Hughes, came in with a bag of groceries, filled with Procter & Gamble merchandise. Only a few astute viewers even picked up on the fact that the majority of the items in her grocery bag were P&G items, which is the company that produces ATWT. In this case, the script called for her to be unloading her groceries in particular, and the types of items inside were completely plausible for a trip to the grocery. The items were never referenced directly, but it just felt natural--especially compared to the "Brand X" products used too often in daytime television.
These characters in the Hughes family live in the same branded world we do, and that's the type of realism that product placement done correctly can bring.
Of course, a few fans chimed in who were almost completely anti-P&G products being in the show, saying they were sickened by it, etc., but this seems to be more anti-commercialism rhetoric than anything. The majority of the viewers indicated that they found it natural, noticed but didn't pay close attention and some felt it actually added to the show to have those real products used. And most of them, the loyal and active viewers who post on message boards, also saw supporting product placement as a way to support the show and its sponsors.
Alec's the product placement expert around here, though, so I would love to have him weigh in as well...
I was watching my recorded version of As the World Turns the other day when I stopped briefly on a commercial from Post's Grape-Nuts cereal for their new cereal brand, Grape-Nuts Trail Mix Crunch Cereal. The tag line for this new food offering was "Tastes So Good, You Won't Believe Its Grape-Nuts!" Hmmmm...
I had a double-take, hit the rewind button and listened to it again. I didn't hear it wrong. Immediately, my wife and I started discussing the strategy here. On the one hand, maybe Grape-Nuts has a reputation as not being tasty and just being good for you, so they are showing that they are light-hearted and willing to perform a little self-deprecation. But when it comes to attacking the taste of your staple product, and taste is one of the most important features of food (even health food), I don't know if self-deprecation is the right method.
What were the people at Grape-Nuts thinking?!? No disrespect to the cereal--I even have some sitting in my cabinet right now--but the last thing you need to do is create a new product that mocks the taste of the main product of the brand. It directly contrasts with the main page for Grape-Nuts, which calls the cereal "great tasting." Is this type of contradiction bad? Or am I wrong?
Just seems to me that, if they believe the Grape-Nuts brand is worthless enough that the own company needs to start putting down its taste prominently in advertisements, shouldn't they just drop the Grape-Nuts brand and move on? When does a brand identity become of little use?
Other people have different takes on it--I found that Tom Peters had blogged on the ad as well, and many of the people commenting there found the ad refreshing and/or brilliant. So maybe I'm just not seeing it. Anyone out there who could enlighten me? Maybe even someone from the Post division of Kraft Foods is lurking out there who could make this clear to me.
New Advertising Technology Allows Ordering Products Directly from TV Commercial
Dave Meltzer, who single-handedly writes the Wrestling Observer newsletter every week, had an interesting blurb in the 13 February 2006 issue. I waited a few days to post about it so that the Observer would have had plenty of time to circulate, but I haven't read about this anywhere else. According to Dave, World Wrestling Entertainment is preparing to "showcase a new digital prototype technology that may prove to strongly increase business, and when copied, strengthen the value of television advertising greatly."
This new technology will be tested in WWE On Demand content such as WWE 24/7 and special events PPVs. According to Meltzer, "it would allow people watching a TV commercial, whether it be for a PPV, DVD, or other house show, to click to an icon on the screen to make an immediate purchase" and will also give them exclusive footage free for using the technology.
This is exactly the kind of model that maximizes advertising impact and makes advertising cease to feel like an intrusive hindrance to the programming but instead a focused and useful tool brought to the viewer. If done correctly, if used sparingly enough, it could be a milestone in the media industry. It's exactly the kind of thing you can do online, but digital cable provides every opportunity to do the same.
Has anyone else heard of similar technology being implemented on digital cable or satellite or in any other media form? For those of you who follow the advertising industry more closely, how long do you think it would take a trend like this to catch on?
As a wrestling fan, I see this having maximum benefit for wrestling-related merchandise and also for new movie releases. If it would be possible to view a movie trailer and immediately be able to click an options to see local showtimes and buy tickets online through Fandango or a similar service, I think it could be an extremely useful tool. The same goes for selling books, movies, and TV shows on DVD.
Of course, there are plenty of advertisers that this technology wouldn't effect, especially those that provide goods more along the lines of commodities, but those are the types of products that can be utilized in product placement, so the combination of this type of technology with an increase in effective product placement could move advertising toward a model much more reflective of the needs and wants of the consumer, again where everyone could potentially win.
It seems that this is the perfect fusion of commercialism and content, where independent directors are given a chance to produce content that is distributed by the company to help the director develop a name and film fans to get to see the work of unknowns, while also directly promoting the company. It's hardly an act of goodwill but is one step closer to a model of direct sponsorship. At this point, it seems to be a win-win situation.
Check out the Pop Secret page, and tell me what you think...
Maybe this is a little off-topic, but considering how focused we are on the entertainment industry and that it even involves one of our corporate partners in research here at C3, I just felt I had to write something, and this seems to be my best venue.
For those of you who don't know, I write a weekly column in The Ohio County Times-News in Hartford, Ky., called "From Beaver Dam to Boston," which follows my travels from Kentucky, the place where I was born and raised (kudos to O Brother, of course), to MIT. Directly under my column every week is a column by Dr. Dobson, sponsored by the local Lawton Insurance. No one is willing to sponsor my column at this point, so I don't know what that means...
Dr. Dobson's column this particular week was about today's music lyrics leaving negative impressions. He shows how the contempt for parents in modern popular music reflects a dangerous shift in societal values and respect toward elders, evidenced by this unshakable bit of empirical evidence:
When Dr. Dobson was young, one of the most popular songs was Eddie Fisher's "Oh, My Papa," an ode to someone's deceased father and how good he treated his children. Then, in 1983, Suicidal Tendencies released "I Saw Your Mommy," which documents the narrator's watching someone's mommy bleeding to death.
Dr. Dobson's conclusion includes this: "My point is that the most popular music of our culture went from the inspiration of 'Oh, My Papa' to 'I Saw Your Mommy' in scarcely more than a generation."
Who is the cause of all this? Why, MTV, of course, which "promotes the worst stuff available." Good to know that, while some people fear that a 20-some-year-old MTV now part of a corporate conglomerate will lose its edge, Dobson finds that the network is producing "the worst stuff available." And Dr. Dobson finds that "many of the problems that plague this generation, form suicide to unwed pregnancy to murder, can be traced back to the venom dripped into its veins by the entertainment industry."
What's the point of sharing Dobson's words of wisdom in this particular forum? Possibly because I got a letter pointing out to me how are columns are adjacent to each other...perhaps because sharing just makes me feel better. But I am a strong proponent of free speech, and Dr. Dobson can feel more than privileged to share this view, and Lawton Insurance can feel more than privileged to pay for it. Of course, he may be equally appalled to know that his article runs next to someone studying pro wrestling and soap opera, in a media studies program at MIT and...gasp...partnering in research with his dreaded enemy.
But Dobson's point has two major morals for those of us interested in studying the entertainment industry and mass media in a little bit more of a nuanced approach. First, there are powerful voices like Dobson's out there always calling for censorship and for restrictions on freedom of speech, but we are currently blessed with many great entertainment venues taking a stand for shows that embrace a variety of viewpoints, from The Passion of the Christ to Brokeback Mountain to Dr. Phil to Sleeper Cell.
And, second, beware of taking evidence at face value. This semester, Henry Jenkins has assigned my class to read Darrell Huff's How to Lie with Statistics. Yet there are plenty of people who offer "irrefutable evidence" as weak or weaker than Dobson's "proof" at the change in the music industry in a generation and plenty of people who believe it without skepticism. I'm not trying to deny that Dobson may not have a small point somewhere in his tirade. But his argument is like trying to balance a Mack truck on a toothpick's worth of evidence, and there are plenty of people who accept it without a second look...
No matter who we are, on whatever side of issues related to the mass media and the entertainment industry, we need to take a more nuanced approach, explore the gray areas and always...always...be skeptical, lest the Dobsons of the world always pass themselves off as the gospel.
Has anyone witnessed the new advertising campaign by Chrysler, whose Chrysler 300C is used in Harrison Ford's upcoming thriller Firewall (Richard Loncraine, Warner Brothers)? The company has a Web site dedicated to the film and has taken full-page ads in entertainment magazines telling viewers to "See the Crysler 300C in Firewall, in theaters now. Go for the ride of your life with the Chrysler 300C."
Is this a good example of getting the most bang for your advertising buck by building on product placements with advertising for that product placement, or is this bordering on going too far?
The Most Important Discussion in the Entertainment Industry?
A really interesting discussion has been taking place on the official Procter & Gamble Productions message board for Guiding Light, based on a comment made by a PGP moderator on the board on what the fans mean to the show in the overall business scheme, and where the online fan community stands in contrast to the Nielsen ratings. In many ways, I think it is a discussion that should be happening not on the boards of fan communities but in the offices of the sponsors behind these programs.
To give you a short recap. The moderator, Alina, stated that "a headwriter's job is to make the sponsors happy. They're the customers who pay the bills" and that "the only way to gauge fan happiness is ratings (message boards, magazine polls and Emmys are nice, but they mean nothing if the numbers aren't there)." Fans were upset by Alina's comments, believing that this process is backward and that making fans happy should in turn lead to maximum profit for sponsors, not the other way around. It's a case of someone wanting to shoot the messenger, though.
Alina responded by pointing out that "the 1000 or so people on this board are a tiny number compared to the overall audience, right?" She suggested that fans should "try to get as many people as you know to stop watching the show for, say, a week [ . . . ] and then see if it moves the Neilsen needle. That will give you an idea of the sort of numbers TPTB are looking at, versus what we on the boards are looking at."
Unfortunately, Alina has taken the brunt of fan anger on the board for the comments, but she is getting at the heart of what is happening in the entertainment industry. Alina is one of the people who "get it" the most in the entertainment industry and develops a lot of transmedia content for PGP. She was just stating the harsh reality of the way the industry works right now, for better or for worse.
Sure, it's unlikely that a significant number of the people posting on the boards are a large number of the 5,000 or so Nielsen households that exist at any one time. On the other hand, the question is how viable the Nielsen ratings are in an era when television viewing is splintered by so many choices. Sure, 5000 households may be a good indicator of what people are watching among three or four choices, but what happens when you have hundreds? The Nielsen's are still potentially viable, but can they really be the bible to base success by?
And are Internet message boards then not a viable measurement of a show's success? I guess it depends on what you're looking for. A message board of 1000 or so actual viewers is a bigger sample than 5000 Nielsen households, if everyone on the message boards are viewers of the show. And in the soap industry, fluctuations on a show and between shows are usually only by one or two tenths of one rating point, which would be caused by the change of a channel of a tiny number of Neilsen households.
The Nielsens are probably more flawed than the logic of some of the fans on these boards, but Alina has a good point--if it is what TPTB (sponsors and not creative forces in this case) accept, how do you change the logic that surrounds it?
If you accept that most involved fans are likely to plan their days around the shows and more likely to be more profitable for advertisers and, in the long run, more economic benefit comes from increasing the number of loyal viewers than there is creating a greater number of casual viewers on a particular day.
But Alina's point is important here...As long as the Nielsen's are accepted industry-wide as the guide to go by and as long as that is what sponsors are looking at, how do you change it? It is the sponsors that should see the value in expanding the data they look at beyond just Neilsen numbers.
Sure, a lot of the most vocal fans on the Internet aren't necessarily the best indicator. You can't write too much for an online audience who is likely to complain no matter what happens, and a lot of them will say they'll quit watching but hardly ever mean it, becuase their involvement with the show is so deep there is great opportunity cost in their minds to quit watching it considering how much time they've invested in the show over the years. On the other hand, it's important to keep the most loyal fans the most happy because they tend to be your cheerleaders, and word-of-mouth is still the best way to grow your audience.
The PGP Boards are a great example of fans and representatives of the company getting together and not discussing the company line but rather having a conversation, as a group of individuals. Sure, these discussions are not smooth, but the issues aren't really smooth, either, when there's so many transitions taking place so rapidly in the media industry.
The soap opera As the World Turns has begun a new story arc over the past several weeks. The son of one of the prominent longtime couples on the show, Holden and Lily Snyder, is gay, and he doesn't want to tell his parents. The son--Luke Snyder--is in high school and communicates his problems over the Internet on a blog, although he does not openly admit in the blog that he is gay but rather that he has secrets that he doesn't want his parents to find out.
The blog became part of the story when Luke's father learned about it and snuck onto his laptop while he was gone one day and stumbled upon the main page of Luke's blog. He then confronted his son about it, and privacy issues became an issue, as Luke did not expect his father to ever read the blog. (Holden doesn't seem to be that much of a whiz with computers.)
The same day the episode ran first mentioning the blog, a new blogger joined blogger.com--the same Luke Snyder, who has been updating his blog every day, corresponding with some of the events happening on ATWT. The blog makes no overt reference to ATWT, and the only direct connection is that a moderator on the official Procter & Gamble Productions message board included a link to the blog in one of her messages.
So far, the blog has attracted comments from people who do not realize that Luke Snyder is a fictional character and who are reacting to his troubles. ATWT fans have found the page and have joined in on the fun as well. Now, someone is blogging as one of Luke's friends from school, and several people have assumed the identities of characters no longer on the show but who are related to Luke--Luke's biological grandmother, Luke's uncle who was a child the last time he was on the show years ago, and several other characters from ATWT, many of whom have been gone from the show for years.
Sure, there are some people who feel really sly making reference to the writers of the show or something to destroy the suspension of disbelief, but the blog is an interesting way in seeing how integrated storytelling could potentially unfold for a daily drama like any of the daytime soaps.
Would it be permissible for someone to police the blog and eliminate any references that destroy the fictionality of it? I am not really one for censorship actions, but it seems that it might make all the difference to allow this to be a space for fans to roleplay as characters they have invented that fit into Oakdale or as former characters who might read the blog.
And, again, what are the implications on transmedia storytelling with a project like this? Right now, the blog is completely ancillary--But how easy would it be to have Holden stumble onto the blog but not say anything about what it said--so that viewers would be really curious and potentially seek out further information, only available in this form?
As the World Turns is preparing to celebrate its 50th anniversary--What can one of the longest-running shows on television do to celebrate its rich history? There is always a struggle between ratings and "doing the right thing" when it comes to anniversary shows like this...Long-time fans want to see a lot of old clips celebrating ATWT's history, while TV executives are worried about retaining newer viewers and not losing ratings on an overblown tribute to the past.
So far, ATWT head writer Jean Passanante has made it clear she wants to do more than one stand-alone episode, and two such episodes are planned--one that will be a parody or fantasy celebration of the show, while the other will include a lot of old clips, etc. There will likely be some storylines running during the spring that also feature the veteran actors a little more than usual as well.
Most interesting of all, though, is plans for Oakdale Confidential, a novel that is planned for release the week of ATWT's 50th anniversary. Apparently, the novel is going to be worked into the narrative of the show in some way.
Fans are already trying to figure out what the book might be. One of the characters on ATWT, Emily Stewart, run a tabloid-style magazine. Could the book be a novel released by her giving the dirt on all of the residents of Oakdale? Or could the character Emma Snyder, who long-term fans remember dabbling in fiction writing several years ago, release a book of some sort? Or could it be a character not even on the current canvas writing a tell-all about some of the more prominent residents of the town?
Whatever the case--this is another step in the right direction, if done well. How can a novel become a piece of transmedia? If done well, the television plot will in some way hinge on the contents of the book, so that the television show promotes the book but also requires viewers to read the book to understand the full implications of the impact the book has on the residents of Oakdale.
The show has been very tight-lipped about what Oakdale Confidential is, and Amazon's page on the book has next to no information about the contents...Which makes all of the fans all the more determined to find out what's going on. There's great potential here for an interesting experiment in transmedia storytelling.
A quick note about a really interesting little read in this week's Entertainment Weekly. Lisa Schwarzbaum writes, in the issue's large section on the Oscars, about adapted screenplays taken from novels. In Dr. Karen Schneider's "Literature and Film" class back at Western Kentucky University a few years ago, we discussed the inevitable bias people seem to show toward the book--the book always being "better," of course. And, as any good discussion of adaptation goes, the question eventually becomes what is "the story." If the "original" work is the story, than there could never be one better at telling it, could there be? Or, as my MIT Comparative Media Studies classmate Peter Rauch might question, is it possible for an adaptation to capture more of the essence of "the original" than the actual original work?
That's the sort of question posed here, except in much more concrete terms that most college classes would probably allow for and certainly more than Peter would. She tackles ten cases in which films picked up on the subtleties of a novel and ended up expressing the stories much better than the novelist, utilizing the filmic language much more eloquently than the authors did the written language. Her examples include The Godfather, Ordinary People and Sideways...
During this time of Oscar fever, I just thought it was an interesting argument to bring up and one that is very relevant to transmedia storytelling...Any other regular EW readers have a chance to check it out?
World Wrestling Entertainment has found an interesting new way to start searching for its talent pool online. Wrestling companies have often been criticized for not taking into account a knowledge of professional wrestling in hiring practices, as wrestling promoters often hire writers from television or Hollywood, sportscasters for local markets, and wrestlers with "the look," whether or not the talent has a deep and abiding passion for 'rasslin' or not.
What usually results? The hardcore fan base knows when someone is hired for cosmetic reasons versus actual ones, and the best performers turn out almost always to be the one with the deepest passion for the product. What does that mean? It means that the best potential wrestling announcers would probably be those kids who grew up watching wrestling and turned the sound down to pretend they were calling matches. The best wrestlers are the guys who grew up watching the competitors from years past. And the best writers are ones who actually know the history of professional wrestling. In short, the best talent pool out there is the fans. That's not to say that sportscasters, Hollywood writers, and college athletes aren't good in these positions--they already have a track record of being very talented. But it almost always makes a difference if they are also lifelong fans.
WWE is taking advantage of this through the main page on its Web site, at least as far as in-ring talent is concerned. The main page has a "Tryouts" button, which links to a page listing WWE tryouts and requesting that fans who believe they have what it takes to fill out an online application and show up to the scheduled tryouts. The questionnaire emphasizes having experience in professional wrestling and "why you should be a WWE superstar." For me, I see this as a step in the right direction and exactly the kind of thing that the entertainment industry should be encouraging. Who knows a product better than the fans? And, contrary to popular belief, the fan base of pro wrestling includes not just kids and couch potatoes but a lot of motivated and talented people who could easily make the transition from "audience" to "performer"--which, in pro wrestling, can sometimes be a nebulous dividing line, anyway.
Stocks Down But New Developments Coming for Comcast, Electronic Arts
Peter Grant and Nick Wingfield had a pair of interesting articles in last Friday's Wall Street Journal about some major developments for Comcast and Entertainment Arts. Both companies had a sharp decline in their net profit in the last quarter of 2005. For Comcast, the decline was 69 percent, while EA's was 31 percent.
EA's decline was almost entirely attributed to shifts in the video game industry toward new gaming systems while there was simultaneously a shortage of Xbox 360s made available for the Christmas season due to a slowdown in production that didn't meet viewer demand on behalf of Microsoft. The company predicts that 2006 will continue to see tough trends like this, as the company is investing a lot of its capital into games for the upcoming Playstation 3 platform, so that a lot of money will be spent out on preparing for projects that will not see profit this year.
For Comcast, the decline was due to litigation and tax issues, as well as stock loss on the company's Sprint Nextel holdings.
The most interesting section of the Grant's article, however, is about the ways that Comcast is combatting this loss--becoming more competitive in the realm of telephone service, as cable and telephone providers continue to go nose-to-nose. We've written about this trend in reverse as well, such as this entry back in September about Verizon's entry into the cable market (based in another great article by Peter Grant). Discussing the importance os service providers just isn't as much fun as the interesting content of the actual entertainment creators (ah, but maybe that's my humanistic bias), but this could have a major impact on the communication industry as a whole...At this point, it looks like the major players in both industries are interested in trying to hang on by claiming dominance of both...Does that mean that an even fewer group of people go home with all the winnings, or is this going to create further value for the consumer--Are we headed for even more of an oligopoly or great old-fashioned capitalist competition?
Genre-Crossing and Pop Cosmopolitanism? Passions and Bollywood
Recently, the NBC soap Passions had a sequence that was done in Bollywood style. Passions is known as the fantasy soap, a show that is self-referential, a parody of sorts of some of soap opera's conventions, and the most popular soap amongst younger viewers, particularly teenagers. It revels in its excess, but it can hardly be lumped in the same boat as some of the cheesy-but-don't-openly-know-it soaps and more serious and well-acted soaps, like As the World Turns. (Is my bias showing again?)
I found the show to be a good example of what our fearless leader Henry Jenkins calls pop cosmopolitanism--(the link will take you to a splendid audio interview with Henry on Forbes about the concept). Basically, people are learning more about the world and being "cosmopolitans" today through popular culture--And what better example than a Bollywood-influenced sequence making its way into an American soap opera?
Bollywood and Passions is a perfect fit--They are both campy, celebratory of excess, and require the viewer to lower their expectations of realism. And, not surprisingly, the episode was a major success in that it garnered a lot of press for the show and a lot of feedback from the audience. NBC's daytime site has even devoted a section particularly about the Bollywood sequence. You can watch the Bollywood sequence, read reaction, backstage interviews, view photographs, etc.
Some of you all may remember a post I made a couple of months ago about a Passions episode that featured an animation sequence as well. At the time, I mentioned that the show is a great example of genre-mixing being very successful as well. By incorporating an international influence in this latest experiment, Passions is showing not only the value of mixing genres but also by mixing cultures in new and innovative ways.
If some of you all have the time, check out the Passions Bollywood site and let me know what you think...
The Potential Effect of Soderbergh's Bubble on Film Distribution
While the entertainment business keeps its focus on the announcement of the CW Network I mentioned here late last night/early this morning, Ty Burr covers out another story with a potential effect on the entertainment industry, in particular film distributors, in today's Boston Globe.
Steven Soderbergh's new film Bubble will be released in theaters, on cable, and in video stores simultaneously on Friday.
What does this mean? Bubble isn't going to be that big of a film, but everyone is going to have their eyes on what this means for it. Will it garner more total interest by being available in so many media forms simultanously? How much will this damage theater distribution? At this point, it seems that the company may not have much to lose, but theater distributors will most definitely be hurt by it.
What is your all's take?
Be sure to check out the excellent article on Bubblehere.
The big news in the entertainment industry today (well, technically yesterday now) has been the announced merger of the two newest American television networks, the WB and UPN. Both groups, who have competed consistently for the "number five" spot among Nielsen ratings, have had a few successes over the years but have lacked the ability to pull themselves far enough into success to avoid constant concern about folding.
The stations obviously hope that the merger will strenghen the lineup and make a fifth network alternative a permanent reality. At this point, the two stations will be taking the best shows in their lineup to put on the merged network in the fall.
Already, fan communities invovled in the various WB and UPN shows are concerned as to how this might affect their shows. The negatives is that some shows will have to be dropped when the networks are chosen. On the other hand, the positive is that the lineup for the new network--which will be called the CW Network--should be a much stronger contender.
How should the executives interact with the fan bases to decide what to keep and what to discard from the network lineup? What are the futures of shows that don't make the cut? Is this a place where transmedia could come in, where the network could promote shows that can't make the television lineup through the Internet?
Should the network think about branding itself in choosing content or instead choose the top shows from both networks, even if they don't fall into a consistent brand?
(Oh, and don't worry--it appears WWE Smackdown is safe!)
For more information on the big merger, see the full press release here.
For those of you that have read about the history of complex storytelling, many people trace the trends currently taking hold of television to the serialization of Charles Dickens' novels and other popular serials throughout the years (including those great 1940s Batman and Robin serial flicks I used to collect).
It's not as if this is a phenomenon that has gone away, though. That thought struck me as I was reading through this week's Entertainment Weekly, which included the first two chapters of Stephen King's CELL.
I'm not a big Stephen King fan, really just because I've never read any of his books, but my understanding is that he is an author that has quite a good grasp on issues like product placement and transmedia. He isn't afraid to share the first two chapters of his book or to try new methods of distribution (such as eBooks and releasing books a piece at a time). And I can't say that it's hurt him in the least when it comes to profits.
Has anyone else read through the stories in EW (where King is a regular columnist)? And for those of you who are probably far more experienced with King than I am, does he do this for a lot of his books?
For those of you who follow this blog even semi-regularly, you've probably caught a lot of my posts on the world of soap opera. In fact, my thesis here at MIT involves the soap opera industry's adaptation to new ways to communicate with their fan communities and instances of transmedia storytelling.
With that in mind, the soap opera I am a fan of, As the World Turns, officially began podcasting this past week, with the podcasts available for download to MP3 players. The podcast is the dialogue from the show without music or background noise and with an audio narrator to transition scenes.
The show began the service on Monday. Its Procter & Gamble Productions sister show, Guiding Light, has been offering podcasts for a few weeks now and are now including daily commentary from various actors on the show, as well as features on certain characters on certain days.
This is all a part of the CBS Netcast initiative. The network even provides an Internet-only talk show about soaps called CBS Soapbox.
It's a little too early to know where this is going, but the trend is an exciting one to help transition one of television's oldest genres into the 21st Century.
As you all may have already picked up on, reading through the week's Entertainment Weekly has become one of my favorite activities. And this week I saw some news that I wouldn't generally expect to see on EW: Gilbert Cruz's brief story on a challenge to the veracity of James Frey's memoir, A Million Little Pieces.
As a journalism major in undergraduate at Western Kentucky University and as a working journalist for several years now, I've always been interested in the impact that new technologies have on a form of media integrated in our country's very fabric: the press. And Smoking Gun's expose accusing Frey of several fabrications in his book is as good of an example as any of grassroots media outlets gaining power.
The Smoking Gun Web site would hardly be considered a traditional journalism source, with its using open records to show arrest reports of celebrities and other major stories. The site is instead indicative of the trend that Dan Gillmor writes about in We the Media, as journalism becomes more and more open source, and the relationship between the traditional press and the readers is becoming murky with the development of the citizen/journalist or the grassroots journalist.
The James Frey episode is added to the list of ways that show how the American public as a whole, a body with collective intelligence, can do so much more than the small number of legitimate or professional journalists covering an area; journalists shouldn't see this as a threat but rather a way to challenge themselves and make themselves better and continue to be a guide as a seal of quality for what's true and what's not. But one thing is for sure--these reader-driven voices must be paid attention to because they are where most of the news stories of today begin.
This week's EW featured two powerful and interesting ads, I thought, from various perspectives.
The first comes at the beginning of the magazine and is a two-page spread advertising all of the various Law & Order shows on NBC. They have all the characters from all three L&O franchises stretched across the page, appearing as if they are in the middle of an investigation. Behind them is a facsimile of Times Square, with several media properties particularly noticable--a Virgin sign, Loews Theatres, Planet Hollywood, Marriott, Kodak, and Novotel, with two huge ads in the background for the iPod and Universal's King Kong.
The ad is a success in two ways--both as not just showing transmedia but as showing crossover within the various television shows of a particular media property, L&O, with all of the characters appearing in one scene, despite being on their various shows. Further, it has product placement within an advertisement, something that is more and more possible but has only been utilized occasionally. I don't know if it has ever been done quite so well as in this ad.
Similarly, I thought the idea from L'Oreal Paris was interesting. They provide a pullout ballot for the Golden Globe Awards, with four L'Oreal ads appearing on the backs of the ads featuring Beyonce Knowles and two models. I've already torn the ad out and plan to use it for the Globes, so it was at least somewhat of a success. This may feel a little more gimmicky; I don't know. But it's an effective way to make it feel as if the ballot is "brought to you by L'Oreal."
The idea of cool hunters is not a new one, but one form of cool-hunting rising in popularity is finding out what tunes celebrities download to their iPods. A new form of marketing at least somewhat based on reality, the iPod playlists are simutalenously an advertisement for Apple's iPod and iTunes, the cool celebrity who is releasing the list, and all of the cool musicians on the list.
Is this just part of an iPod fad or a potential new avenue in advertising revenue, product crossover, etc. One would suspect this only works as long as you can be sure this is the authetic feeling of the celebrity and not something he or she is solely paid to say, but the trend is certainly getting the attention of consumers with placement like this.
The fan communities that generate fan fiction are quite serious about their work.
For those who dismiss the work as either either the writing of fringe "geeks" with no real talent or education or else just the shoddy stories of bored teens or unemployed young adults...Well, that probably does apply to some of the population, but, by and large, the fan community is full of talented and aspiring writers who are serious about the fan fiction they create and the larger community of fan fiction writers that they are a part of.
OneStone32 and those who respond to him are discussing the importance of labelling techniques in archiving fan fiction stories. The art of archiving shows the importance this fan community sees in their work as an extension to "official" content in a fictional series or else as a body of work all in its own, an official canon of work in a particular film series.
This type of information--the labels for what a story or group of stories is--is the paratext, and labeling what a story is and what it means to the stories that surrounds it is an important part of not only "legitimate" published writing but fan fiction as well.
Be sure to view this metacommentary on the art and rules of fan fiction, especially for anyone not well associated with the online world of fan fiction writing.
Reading through the year-end double issue of Entertainment Weekly, I began to think about the limits that mainstream coverage of the entertainment industry put on success in the industry. As you know, my main areas of interest are soap opera and professional wrestling, and it probably doesn't surprise you that this year-in-review recap include nothing from either of these places, despite their prominence on television.
Despite still being a dominant force in daytime television, even with the increasing competition for the daytime viewer and the change in composition of the daytime viewing audience, soap operas are completely ignored in the "Best of 2005," as a genre.
And pro wrestling is ignored in glaring ways. For instance, in their listing of the biggest entertainment stories of 2005, EW identifies the success of Chris Rock's Everybody Hates Chris for UPN, implying that it's the only major hit of interest in UPN's history and rejoicing in its capturing of the young demographic. Yet, WWE's Smackdown had previously aired in that same timeslot for years and was highly successful and remains almost as successful on Friday nights, despite Friday being a death day.
Considering the EW focus on sitcoms, that wouldn't be that surprising. But in its listing of the great entertainers of 2005 who died, 82 people are listed, yet the list doesn't include the death of Eddie Guerrero, one of the WWE's biggest stars, who died in his prime at 38 years old.
On the other hand, Legacy.com released its list of the Top 10 Most Euologized Persons of 2005, which found Guerrero trailing only Rosa Parks and Luther Vandross. The online funeral guestbook registered over 5,500 comments made on Eddie's page as of the end of the year.
Considering many of the ideas people now celebrate as complex television came from soap opera, and considering how much of an innovator WWE has been in transmedia storytelling and many other aspects of media convergence, it just makes me wonder how many other extremely popular and profitable areas of popular culture are ignored by most mainstream journalists, considering the two areas I study in particular were both completely shunned....
I believe a major part of it is that the fan communities surrounding these "fringe" entertainments, from the perspective of mainstream journalism, is chiefly misunderstood, even when the industry in general could still learn so much from these cultural producers and their fans.
Oldie television ads continue to prove how powerful retroactive advertising and appealing to fans along the lines of history can be.
The use of vintage footage featuring Orville Redenbacher in advertisements is the focus of Brian Steinberg's article in last Friday's Wall Street Journal entitled "Why Oldie TV Ads Make Comeback."
Sure, part of this is a drive on the part of advertisers, but the more important question is whether this is advertisers trying to create a trend or something that fans desire, and it seems to me that retro advertising and reviving old advertising lines remains very much in style and in demand from fans of brand communities.
What is the appeal of retro branding? There have been some great minds, including one of our partners Rob Kozinets and others, who have examined some of these very issues...It seems that honoring history is an important part of many fan communities and that such ads both reward longterm fans who have a memory of the brand at the point retro commercials initially aired and that newer members of brand community might feel rewarded with understanding the brand more by seeing its roots, so to speak...where it came from.
New media opportunities provide plenty of new ways to tell stories and to get fan communities interacting with media properties. However, as with any type of storytelling, the idea of convergence storytelling doesn't work if it isn't implemented well.
Sure, this seems like a no-brainer, but the fall in participation in fantasy football is proof of this. Fantasy sports, in theory, provide a great way to get fan communities actively involved in a media property, watching the actual games while strategizing and competing with their own fantasy teams.
But Kevin J. Delaney and David Kesmodel's article in last Friday's Wall Street Journal points out what happens when the technology isn't up to speed with the expectations of fans--it puts a bad taste in the mouths of fans who are starting to opt out of fantasy football, which was once the craze of many sports fan communities.
One has to wonder if fantasy football sponsored by ESPN, when the technology starts to fail, begins to have a negative impact on ESPN or on the NFL or college teams. How far does failure in one medium stretch over into negativity toward brands in general?
Mark Oppenheimer's article "The Fall of Standup" in last Friday's Wall Street Journal raises an interesting point to me. While it may be debatable whether standup is a media that rich for narrativity as compared to other forms of storytelling, Andy Kaufman has raised some degree of question as to whether standup can be used as a way to further narratives in other media forms, through his Tony Clifton/Andy Kaufman performances.
In this particular article, though, Oppenheimer points out that the movement of comics like Jerry Seinfeld and Jay Leno to television weakened the stand-up world becuase more talented comedians opted to skip the stand-up route and go straight to television writing.
This raises an interesting point in transmedia storytelling and likely provides one of the reasons why some companies are resistant to transmedia opportunities. If you know a genre well, you have control of your product. If you try to branch your product out into other storytelling forms, there is some danger in damaging the original media of the story by trying to spread it into areas that take the power more out of the hands of the "creator."
For instance, what happens when comic books inspire movies but the movie franchise becomes much more popular than the comic book. On the one hand, it may make the particular comic book more popular as fans of the films start buying the comic series. Or, is it possible that certain comic book heroes will come to be seen more as film heroes? Sure, DC or Marvel will still pocket most of the money in a situation like this, but there has to be some concern from breaking away from the medium that you've most clearly established yourself in in the first place.
I believe that transmedia done correctly will always be successful, but I wonder if this type of fear--this fear of losing the art of standup somewhere in the late night talk show or the sitcom--might be one of the reasons some companies who could benefit from transmedia storytelling have not embraced it
The technological changes are coming so rapidly these days, I can't even keep up.
For instance, I was flipping through yesterday's New York Times business section, only to find the following:
-an article by David Pogue on cell phones for small children that only has limited functions;
-an article by Thomas J. Fitzgerald on the dropping price of fast and elegant laptop computers, now easy-to-find for under one grand;
-an article by Adam Baer on Verizon adopting the popular Razr phone;
-an article by John Biggs on the Audex winter jacket that comes with cellphone and iPod capabilities built into the jacket, a crosspromotion by Burton and Motorola;
-an article by Andrew Zipern on a solar-powered charger for the iPod;
-an article by Shelly Frierman on LaCie's new Brick line of computer storage drives designed to look like children's building blocks;
-an article by Ivan Berger on a new, simplified memory card reader called the MediaGear 15 in 4 Camera Reader;
-an opinion column by J.D. Biersdorfer on the benefits of bluetooth and video files for Sony PlayStation Portable;
-an article by Ian Austen on the large profit margin for the BlackBerry;
-an article by Stephen Labaton on the Senate's approval of legislation to create a federal program to help American pay for equipment to help analog televisions work with the digital television conversion, to be completed by 2009;
-an article by Steve Lohr on IBM's buying Micromuse, a compoany whose software manages Internet-based networks for video, voice, and other types of data;
All of these processes make what some people would call pie-in-the-sky dreams by us academians of what is to come in transmedia approaching very rapidly, it seems. It's just hard to even begin to keep up with all of the innovation, even when your job is to track it...
Not that long ago, I posted an entry about the marketing opportunities between Banana Republic and the new Sony Pictures release Memoirs of a Geisha. However, the fashion/cosmetics industry and the entertainment industry are constantly in the process of cross-promotion. For instance, my wife has the Sarah Jessica Parker perfume Lovely setting in her shelf.
And, this past week, a story and an ad really lept out at me with a message--the promotion goes both ways.
Case-in-point: Virginia Heffernan's story in Wednesday's New York Times focuses on the new Style Network talk show Isaac, featuring clothing designer Isaac Mizrahi as the host. The fashion guru-turned-Target designer is attempting to further brand his fashion products by becoming a television personality somewhere other than his ads.
Is this just shameless cross-promotion to sell stuff or a spin-off of transmedia storytelling, using a broader definition of the term? A good move by Isaac Mizrahi? What about AMC? Does this encourage the trend that we're pushing for here at C3, or does it make us groan? For me, the jury is still out. Turning a soap opera into a scent borders a little close to the stench of marketing, pun intended, and the succes of Isaac depends on the quality of the show as far as building a personality.
But the broader question really is whether fashion should be seen as a form of storytelling? It seems to have very little narrativity, but we've seen a lot of moves toward moving fashion and cosmetics and storytelling into the same space...Does it work?
Fellow C3 member Ivan Askwith accompanied my wife and me to dinner last night, where we had a heckuva time getting the attention of the parking attendant, who was busy watching Telemundo. The incident made me think back to a news brief I read in The New York Times on Wednesday, written by Kate Aurthur.
Beginning next week, Nielsen Media Research as announced that it will begin measuring the national numbers for Spanish-language Univision. The companies announced this decision jointly on Monday. A story by Katy Bachman in MediaWeek this week covers the announcement in more detail.
According to The Times, Univision is the first Spanish-language network to subscribe to the Nielsen tracking numbers and hope to be able to get a better idea of the viewing practices of Hispanic viewers.
Then, on Wednesday, Telemundo announced that they would be joining the Nielsen National Television Index along with Univision.
Considering the growing importance of the Hispanic market, the move might make a change in how Hispanic consumers and Spanish-language channels are viewed in American culture. Most television programmers are still quite unsure how to handle the Hispanic market. For instance, Vince McMahon's WWE has, at times, produced some of the top-rated English language programming among Spanish-speaking viewers but the company still seems unsure of how to tap into that market completely while retaining their overall audience.
Nielsen has a National Hispanic Television Index, which Univision and Telemundo were subscribers to, but that index only calculates the Hispanic audience of the networks. The new move could have major long-term implications on the measurement of audiences of Spanish-speaking programming, an audience that is likely to continue growing heavily in the coming years. And, from our point of interest, how might acknowleding this Hispanic audience change the scope of television programming to reflect this audience? Should be interesting to see what happens...
I've been keeping you up-to-date about my participation in an Internet effort in trying to get the television show Mama's Family released on DVD. I have signed petitions and joined the online effort on the Web site TV Shows on DVD to try and get Warner Brothers to release the show.
Right now, the only place to watch the show is through its daily airing on our partner Turner Broadcasting's TBS Network. However, fans are increasingly wanting to own these shows themselves as a sign of support, a lovemark for the brand. So it is with Mama's Family.
A "news story" from the TV Shows on DVD Web site indicates that the move to put the show on DVD may have come from the heavy show of support for Mama's Family on the Web site, where it remained #11 of the most requested shows yet to be released on DVD.
With fans continuing to request so adamantly these archived TV shows, one has to wonder how powerful the market of looking at fans as reviving retro shows and brands can really be.
And keep your fingers crossed for me on my quest to bring the Harpers closer to my DVD shelf.
Over on Michael Gill's Media Domain Board for As the World Turns, one thread of the discussion has focused on product placement in soaps. Since my thesis project at MIT involves looking at the soap opera industry and ways in which the companies can change their methods of advertising and storytelling based on changes and new trends in television and entertainment, I found the discussion to be illuminating.
Everyone who posted on the thread were in agreement that product placement would be more effective, more natural, and possibly the only way for soap operas to survive, longterm. The majority of the argument singled not on if but on how product placement should be done...As several of the posters pointed out, product placement in soaps, where most of the scenes take place in people's homes or in public spaces, would be easy to incorporate into the show. The local coffee place could become a Starbucks or some similar chain. And kitchens could be filled with actual food products.
When this is a serious discussion in the fan communities and seems to be widely accepted, one has to wonder why CBS and P&G have not embraced these opportunities. I'm going to look into this very issue much further in my research over the next couple of years, but what do you all think? Is product placement the logical next step for soaps regarding advertising?
You would think a company like P&G would be better at naturalistic product placement than they are. Thanks to MaryHatch for starting this discussion, by the way.
According to the latest Entertainment Weekly, Joss Whedon sees the Buffy universe as an ongoing property, albeit not in the broadcast television medium in particular.
The short article by Jeff Jensen, focused on the success of Whedon's cancelled TV series Firefly being released on DVD and the disappointing box-office performance of Whedon's Serenity but also examined some of Whedon's upcoming projects.
He declares the comic book series he is currently working with to be "the eighth season we never made," which has interesting implications for transmedia storytelling.
Furthermore, they pbriefly mention the possibility of straight-to-DVD films featuring characters from the Buffy universe, such as Spike.
Whether you're a fan of Buffy or not, do you think there is some promise in extending the life of the Buffy property through these DVD films and the comic book series? Whedon seems to be on the cutting edge of mainstream cultural producers who are experimenting with what transmedia can do, but what do you all think?
We can sympathize with Dunn as he sarcastically makes a pitch for Trojan to launch the "Kongdom" or for Survivor: Skull Island because product tie-ins and crossovers shouldn't work along the lines of thinking the more, the better.
There is an emotional backlash that the audience feels when they start to realize that King Kong's face is stuck on products everywhere they go. Instead of clever tie-in or creative synergy, it starts to feel like...well...overbearing corporate propaganda that viewers can't get away from. That's not to criticize Universal in particular, but it seems to me that quality is much more valued than quantity when it comes to product tie-ins like this and that too much of a good thing can even make ardent supporters cringe at the sight of your brand on yet another box.
In Steve Daly's "Lexikong" in this week's Entertainment Weekly, though, he reveals that Peter Jackson wanted to recreate Times Square as accurately as possible for 1933, including a Columbia Pictures sign. However, Sony Pictures refused to allow the Columbia logo in the film without getting paid for it, so Universal just replaced it with their own logo.
So, imagine this...The producers of King Kong, a film getting massive amounts of hype and guaranteed to be seen by a huge audience, want to put a big sign for Columbia Pictures in their film, despite being competiton, but Sony refuses this prominent product placement because they want to get paid?
The authors contacted DC Comics and received several unpublished fan letters written in about the issues in question, examining how the gender issues were handled and the implications on readers not just from the issues but primarily from the response of the Green Lantern fan community.
The authors found several responses, including praise for bringing current issues into public view, criticism for allowing homosexuality to creep into comic books, and concern about the use of vigilante justice to be used in response to a hate crime. The latter group is especially important, as they expressed concern that the Green Lantern's actions in these issues went against the moral integrity of the character and urged the writers to make changes, encouraging a collaborative model between producers and consumers.
What is refreshing to me, though, is the way that the piece is then turned from more than just a political discussion or a discussion of GLBT issues but becomes a focus on how readers have appropriated this content for their own purposes. The piece is well worth a look for anyone interested in seeing how studying fan cultures through qualitative research can have an impact on understanding an audience and understanding how that audience processes and understands things.
The 16 December 2005 Entertainment Weekly has a great piece of coverage on all of the changes in the television industry for mainstream readers, introducing them to all the rapid changes in technology, what is driving it, and what this might mean for advertising, for the way shows are promoted and distributed, etc.
The article, "The Revolution Will Be Televised," by Jennifer Armstrong, provides a list of the 10 things readers should know about changes in the television industry, including a prediction that most of these changes will be in full effect by 2010 and a savvy comment that this differs from WebTV because, with TV on demand and new digital technologies, the market has been driven by consumer demand instead of companies trying to show off new gadgets.
In my opinion, these types of articles are major steps toward seeing these changes take hold for mainstream America. And the article reflects the networks' ambivalence and producers' ambivalence about these changes quite accurately for a short and broad piece like this.
A major move made by Golf magazine is leading to a somewhat unusual arrangement to try to bring in advertisers after a fairly significant slump in ad revenue for the Time-Warner mag.
Next May, the magazine will have two one-hour episodes on CBS television, immediately before a golf tournament, airing a golf challenge among everyday players for a grand prize of $250,000 for making difficult shots.
The move isn't being made for purposes of cross-media synergy, though. Instead, it was specifically to offer an ad package to provide an advertising block that includes time during the program, product placements, magazine ads, and Web site ads. Already, Johnson & Johnson's St. Joseph aspirin has signed onto be the title sponsor, according to a Monday Wall Street Journal story by Brian Steinberg.
Is this a smart move for a magazine struggling to retain advertisers, or is this just beating consumers over the head with brand names to the point that it will turn them off?
For those of you who have been following intellectual property issues, some of the attention is being diverted from music and film companies and toward the digitizing of books and who owns the rights to those digitized copies.
If you've been following the news this week on these issues, you may have seen that, at the beginning of the week, HarperCollins announced that it will be entering actively into the digital book market by digitizing its active backlist of an estimated 20,000 titles "and as many as 3,500 new books each year," according to Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg and Kevin J. Delaney with The Wall Street Journal.
HarperCollins appears to see this as a preemptive strike after Amazon has already not only made money with the options for readers to search individual pages and see digital pages of a book they might potentially buy but has then charged $1.99 extra for customers to have access to digital copies of books it buys. HarperCollins questions whether retailers should have the ability to have that type of control over content owned by the publisher and are thus going to provide digital copies that will be available to Google searches, for instance, but will remain in a digital warehouse on the HarperCollins server.
This could provide great revenue opportunities for the company in the future and could be great ways to access titles long after the physical properties have gone out-of-print. In this way, there's no way that the decision won't be a benefit for all involved. However, all of the intellectual rights issues surrounding this decision are still very much left hanging in the balance, as players like Google, Amazon, and publishers continue to try and decide who has rights to what when it comes to digital print content.
In a recent post, I discussed the recent moves toward pay-per-channel at the FCC, driven, among other things, by a conservative push toward greater regulation on what programs are coming into people's homes.
Continuing in this strain is the move toward "family friendly" tiers of programming. The FCC has been pressuring cable companies to provide packages of programming that would be more acceptable to family viewers, although cable programmers have tried to resist such governmental pressure.
Now, Comcast and Time-Warner are considering creating these packages which offer no channels that show "risque programming," while Cox and Insight are pondering doing the same, according to a Monday article in the Wall Street Journal by Joe Flint, Peter Grant, and Amy Schatz.
In the meantime, The Benton Foundation continues to follow this story closely and has a lot of details as to various articles and reactions published on the matter.
On the one hand, I agree with consumer power and see great benefit in letting the consumer have choices about what comes into their home. I think, if people want to just watch i, let them have i.
On the other hand, this raises some important questions. Who defines what is a "family-friendly" channel? Once you become a "family-friendly" channel, how closely are you monitored for content? Such questions might cause a network like Lifetime to shy away from doing pieces like their recent movie on the international human sex trade, for instance, in fears that they might lose standing as a "family-friendly" network. When the government becomes involved and outside forces start getting to make regulatory decisions like this, we might be opening television up to a whole new form of censorship, in which everyone is afraid to tackle any serious issue because...well...the real world isn't always "family-friendly."
My concern here isn't with the cable providers, who should listen to demand and do as they please, as long as it's legal. If these companies want to offer such a package to families, etc., it is their perrogative.
My concern here is a governmental power that is trying to put pressure on these companies to "voluntarily" provide these family-friendly packages. After all, something was invented long ago that can help people avoid watching television programming that offends them--the remote control.
To my colleagues and to the readers--what's the danger here? How could this limit all of the progress currently being made toward transmedia storytelling, toward more complex television, toward product placement, even? Are we going to end up with television deals like many European countries and Canada, where we allow the government to push for further and further censoring power over violence, etc.? And what are the dangers, then, to free speech? Am I reading too much into this, or could this be a major turning point in television, depending on what happens?
Troma Entertainment: Long Tail benefits for small-time companies?
All of our talk about convergence and major transmedia crossover can sometimes overshadow the fact that there are still plenty of small-time players out there content with a smaller piece of the pie, that may not have the resources of a major conglomerate to tell their stories but also have less to lose in being experimental.
The piece is well worth a read and serves as a reminder of those companies who could benefit not from the big-business potential of The Long Tail and transmedia storytelling but from the alternative distribution methods such new theories of media distribution and storytelling allow that could benefit these smaller players.
What do you think these potential shifts in media distribution models could have for B-horror producers like Troma?
NBC soap opera Passions had an interesting week from Nov. 11-Nov. 15, running a series of animations as part of a fairy tale storyline throughout each episode during the week.
Becuase Passions has framed itself as a fantasy soap, with storylines including vampires and all sorts of other supernatural situations, fans seemed to accept this major break in soaps-as-usual.
The episodes were critically acclaimed and seemed to indicate potential new avenues for soaps. The move got quite a bit of press for the show, which is the lowest rated of the nine daytime dramas in overall viewers.
The success of the episode reminds me of one of our reserach partners at the consortium Jason Mittell, in his book Genre and Television. Jason looks at the TV show Soap and the cartoon The Simpsons as examples of genre crossovers. In this case, the soap opera managed to do quite a bit of genre crossing, ironically using the same company that produces The Simpsons for the animated sequences.
What do you all think of the potential in moves like this, if done occasionally? Is it groundbreaking from a transmedia perspective?
What power is the world of weblogs having on society as a whole?
Just a few days ago, I posted an entry on the commentary from the Wall Street Journal in which Lee Gomez questions whether a few blogs will become powerful, leaving the rest to float in ubiquity. As Kurt Squire has responded, I think this viewpoint has some validity.
Blogs aren't just making new names more powerful though--they are also giving a new space for already established names to enter. Case in point would be all of the journalists who are now taking to blogging...or bestselling author/pro wrestler Mick Foley.
Those who know Foley's career know that he isn't much into new technology--he speaks at college campuses about the lost art of writing by hand and prides himself on handwritten manuscripts.
However, he says that the temptation to have a weblog had just become too much.
Is this going to be a trend that enters all spaces of mass media? For Foley, the blog becomes incredibly interesting, as his television character Mick Foley and the real person Mick Foley becomes very complex in this space, where he is blogging about his life. Which Mick Foley is this? What is the distinction? Can we claim to be seeing the backstage of the character, or should we consider the blog a performance as well?
Interesting questions, not just for academic concerns but for understanding how fans comprehend materials and why they are driven toward them. The celebrity blog is a space that remains quite a mystery in many ways.
And, to my friend Mick Foley, although he'll probably never read this since he claims not to use the Web--welcome to the sphere, fellow "Web log writer!"
Procter & Gamble soap As the World Turns has taken a novel approach to promoting--surprising, of course, since soaps usually do very little to promote themselves other than on daytime television and through soap opera magazines, preaching to the converted, so to speak.
However, the soap is hoping to show its artistry and complexity in a way that breaks out of the conventions of soap opera; several of the actors filmed a dance video that is currently airing on 1,400 movie screens before films, promoting the CBS show.
Several of the ATWT fan boards have members asking where these videos are airing, as most of them have not seen them.
Is this a good idea? Will it really lead to increased viewership? How can a traditional soap opera like ATWT break through the stereotypes that soaps have against them?
Actor Michael Park, who plays Jack Snyder, says, "Any time we can transcend different mediums, that's the name of the game. We're trying to reach as many people as we possibly can."
The show has featured many actors over the years who have gone on to do well in Hollywood--Meg Ryan, Julianne Moore, Parker Posey, James Earl Jones, , Jason Biggs, John Wesley Shipp, and myriad other actors began on the show. The current cast includes Michael Landon's daughter Jennifer and a lot of young actors who have great possibilities for the future, as well as very accomplished television and film actor Tamara Tunie, accomplished stage actors like Scott Holmes, and veterans who have been on the show up to...well...50 years.
Nevertheless, is there anything that soaps can do to draw in viewers who already have such preconceived notions about them?
And what are the benefits to the crossover with Evan Olson?
The world of professional wrestling is full of hyperbole, so, when I heard a while back that former WCW World Champion and WWE superstar Diamond Dallas Page was going to sue Jay-Z for stealing the DDP hand signal that Page apparently copyrighted (a symbol of excellence since 1996, DDP's Web site claims), I didn't think much of it.
What to say? The issues that we are discussing always open up concerns for copyright infringement, but I haven't heard much about theft of hand gesture in the past. There are so few signals one can make with the hand that one would think that nothing is being done that hasn't been done before. But, if a hand signal has been copyrighted, hmm...
Any legal eagles out there who might be able to give some context to this? For the rest of us normal folk who have no clue how this might play out and what the precedents are, what is the implication on art and media if this case has some validity? Constant fear of doing anything because no one knows for sure what might be done before?
One person has a definite opinion, one that's pretty harsh in its stance against DDP and questioning the true origin of the hand guesture. Check out Nick Mamatas' response to the issue.
Perhaps even more interesting is the way the blogosphere is reporting the news--half frame the story that DDP is suing rapper Jay-Z (bloggers from the wrestling world or former wrestling fans), while the other half write that Jay-Z is being sued by a wrestler (hip-hop bloggers, no doubt).
Because of some recent frustration in company performance, some feel this will at least be the most successful attempt at a buyout in VNU's history.
Several of us from the consortium recently participated in VNU's "The Next Big Idea" conference in NYC. Seeing the power that VNU holds in the media industry through its various partners, it's still unclear as to what effect a buyout might have on the media industry as a whole. I'm sure, though, that everyone will have their eye on what's happening here as we enter 2006.
On the same page in today's WSJ, Merissa Marr reports that Viacom's Paramount Pictures is preparing to make a bid to buy DreamWorks, competing with General Electric's NBC Universal. DreamWorks, of course, is Steven Spielberg's company and has been part of many major films over the past several years.
What do you think are the implications if VNU is bought out or DreamWorks becomes part of yet another major media conglomerate, whether it joins the NBC camp or the Viacom camp?
The posting focuses on the wrestling organization TNA which airs on Spike TV and their licensing of a new video game, to compete in the market with all the releases from World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE).
The WWE, under Vince McMahon, is an exemplar in many ways in using various media effectively, and this posting features reasons why the WWE has made such a name for itself in the video game market in particular.
The WWE games were revolutionized in recent years by offering various modes of play, including not only the player vs. player match option and a career option, which allows the player to enter the complex area of building a WWE career, etc.
Currently, TNA offers a successful alternative to the WWE but only on a small scale. It will be interesting to see how their reputation in the video game industry develops. If their property is attempted to be constantly prepared to the WWE and their accomplished development of video games, it might not be fair.
Do any of you have any thoughts on the video game/wrestling crossover or have any experience of your own? Since I am the least inclined to play video games of our fellow posters, I have only experienced these games when playing with friends. After all, I know that if I ever started, it would be like eating Pringles...I'd never stop.
NBC is the latest to jump on the Apple iPod bandwagon.
According to an article by Brooks Barnes and Nick Wingfield in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal, the company is joining ABC by providing content that can be downloaded on the video iPod.
This movement takes Apple farther into the emerging market of video downloads to portable devices, as the company attempts to gain control of content distribution through iTunes.
Again, what might this mean for potential transmedia storytelling?
Cingular Wireless is now offering Web access for laptop users via cellular signals, according to an article by Sara Silver in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal.
The company's BroadbandConnect service is being tested in 16 U.S. cities appears to be working well.
Because of relatively high costs involved at this point, though, Silver writes that the majority of early customers for the service have been businesses.
Boston is one of the cities the service is currently available. What impact might this have on the intersection of these various technologies? The important question is how this might have an impact on people's lives? Do you consider using cellular signals a good model for future companies to profit off Internet access?
Lee Gomes has written an interesting commentary for Wednesday's Wall Street Journal that appeared on the front page of the Marketplace section.
In "Tech Blogs Produce New Elite to Help Track the Industry's Issues," Gomes asserts that the idea of a mass revolution of bloggers offsetting the top-down approach of traditional journalism is flawed because, as blogging becomes accepted, only a small number of bloggers appear to be followed widely as credible, so that the old elite are only replaced with a new elite.
Understanding the elitism in blogging communities is an interesting assertion but is important for understanding the social function of these communication technologies. Is it really fair to say that blogging only replaces one cultural elite with another?
Gomes writes that "the difference between the old media elite and the new blogging elite is that the latter gets redefined much more frequently. All it takes is attracting links from other bloggers."
Again, interesting to keep in mind as we here are creating our own blog and hoping for it to gain credibility. Why did we choose a blog? How is this blog positioning itself against other blogs that cover these various issues and technologies? And what stake do we have in competing with these other blogs?
A move by some of the biggest Internet sites to make Web sites more accessible to mobile devices could help push public acceptance of using Internet tools in mobile technologies.
According to an article by Jessica E. Vacellaro on the front page of the Personal Journal section of Wednesday's Wall Street Journal, sites such as Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft are making key changes that are allowing for greater use of the sites on portable devices. eBay and Mapquest are also joining in.
It comes as no surprise that these companies are beginning to accept the technology, especially since such a move could stand to expand profit exponentially in providing another new platform for companies to use. It is also important to find ways to make sites work on the smaller screens of these mobile devices, as design issues change dramatically due to the much smaller scale, although Geoff could probably address this aspect of Web design to a much greater degree than I could.
The consensus seems to be that this is the wave of the future. I currently only use my cell phone for old-fashioned conservations, but maybe I'm just the luddite of our squad. I'm fully aware that I might be embracing these technologies along with most of America over the next few years.
Another interesting Jenkins, the Holman W. Jenkins Jr. of Political Diary fame, had an insightful commentary in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal entitled "Decency Is Overrated."
For those of you who haven't followed the FCC's recent comments regarding the cable industry, the government body's new interest is in promoting the right for customers to pick and choose which channels they want without having to buy whole packages.
Jenkins feels that the problem is in this argument being fueled by concerns of decency and that this governmental decision will end up driving several small networks out of business and move the options back down from the diversity that a mandatory subscription rate currently sustains.
Jenkins claims that such a battle is "for the future of TV."
What do you all think? Is the business model for allowing customers to choose just the channels they want detrimental to providing true variety and quality?
Julia Angwin and Kevin J. Delaney examine, in detail, the potential advertising partnership between AOL and Microsoft in an article on the front page of Wednesday's Wall Street Journal.
AOL's advertising partnership is currently with Google, and Google and Time-Warner are continuing their talks, despite rumors that AOL might switch to using Microsoft's search engine and partnering to provide ads to thousands more online customers, even though the services would remain under the authority of both of their owners.
The question as to what impact this could have to online advertising and search ads remains up in the air, as AOL hangs in the balance, enjoying this bidding war against three of the most key actors in the current electronic media landscape.
According to Angwin and Delaney, "by joining their two systems, Microsoft and AOL could sell ads that would reach as many as 140 million Americans each month--or about 80% of all Internet users." The number is almost 20 million more users a month than Yahoo and over 50 million more users a month than Google.
What could this mean for the future of online advertising?
C.S. Lewis Spurs Discussion in Christian Community
Yesterday, the conservative Christian community and specifically popped up regarding the boycotting of Ford for their ads targeting the gay community.
Today's Christian Science Monitor covers the Christian community at large and their reaction to the legendary C.S. Lewis, who has once again become a major name in the news due to the upcoming release of the first Narnia film.
Lewis, in addition to being a well-known novelist, was an Oxford professor who wrote on English literary history and Christianity. Christian denominations across the spectrum are competing over visions of Lewis, each trying to claim him, while some want Lewis to be viewed as someone who defies differences amongst the various denominations and encourages looking at the Christian community as a whole.
The article serves as a reminder that Christian groups, with their grassroots marketing efforts, have become an incredible area for studying the ways in which fans care about and define themselves by writers, performers, and texts.
Electronic Arts is opening a Singapore development studioo to customize current video games for Asian markets, according to a brief in the "Global Business Briefs" section of yesterday's Wall Street Journal.
EA will redesign the game for at least five different Asian languages at the studio, whichwill have 20 workers from across the continent, as well as the Netherlands.
The decision reiterates much of the current research being done toward the potential profit modifying existing products for distribution in Asian markets. Will the move work for EA as well as it has some other companies in the past few years?
There is sometimes a dark side to brand communities.
We have often advocated the importance of making products appeal to more than one niche market simultaneously or making appeals to multiple demographics or audiences through various channels at the same time.
However, an article by Jeremy W. Peters in Tuesday's New York Times reminds us why this multiple marketing strategy can sometimes back companies into a corner.
Ford Motors has positioned itself as, among other things, an American family brand.
It is precisely an extreme section of this fan base that is reacting against the company's ads in gay publications specifically targeted that audience.
Conservative religious group American Family Association has successfully pressured Ford to pull ads for its Jaguar and Land Rover brands in magazines after the group called for a boycott against Ford for "supporting the homosexual agenda."
With a market of many audiences, the concern with keeping them all happy has to be a constant one for marketing. And, marketing to conservative Christians can be a particular double-edged sword, as they are a group with an incredible word-of-mouth network, which can both spread good will and just as quickly call for a boycott.
Banana Republic has released a line of Asian-inspired clothes to help promote the upcoming film.
Sony has also entered into tie-ins "with cosmetics company Fresh, luxury candle brand D.L. & Co., and the Republic of Tea, among others," according to Missy Schwartz, author of "Asia Miner," the EW article.
This marketing ploy, coupled with the traditional media spots to air versions of the trailer or print ads, brings to question what the value of these loose tie-ins might be, as the measuring system for such things still remains largely speculative.
Music has been the talk of the hour in some entertainment circles. For instance, people like Ben Wright are debating the musical choices that FX has been making to promote The Shield.
For wrestling, music and entertainment has been a long-term cross-promotional vehicle, as a different band's song is the "official theme" of each month's PPV. For instance, for the WWE show that just happened a couple of weeks ago, "WWE Survivor Series 2005", POD's single "Lights Out" was the official music.
What's different here is that WWE original music is being used to promote other television series? What does this mean in terms of cross-promotion? What might be the advantage here for both WWE and The Shield? I'm not sure, but does anyone else have any thoughts?
Product placement often seems to be most easily integrated into comedy, and the WWE often finds a way to put product placement in its programming very blatantly but in a way that makes fans laugh instead of gag.
WWE Owner Vince McMahon acted as judge and was biased against Bischoff, his long-time enemy. For instance, when one witness for Bischoff finished talking, McMahon admitted he hadn't heard any of it.
Instead, he revealed he'd been listening to his new iPod, which he showed to the audience, and then said that Ashlee Simpson music really sucks.
Later, "prosecutor" Mick Foley opened his old-school Batman lunchbox during a recess and pulled out an RC Cola and a Moon Pie, an homage to the stereotype of the south but embraced by the fan favorite in a way that got a chuckle out of the fans.
When product placement ends up being part of the most entertaining parts of a show, you know a company has found a potential landmine in profit while still retaining a show's integrity for its loyal fan base.
The site is a listing for people to lobby for the shows they enjoy the most to be released on DVD. I originally became aware of the site when I joined a group of fans of the 1980s TV show Mama's Family that have been rallying for the show on the Web site.
Basically, people join and list all of the shows that they would buy on DVD if they were released. So far, the Mama's Family rallying has gotten it up to number 12 of all unreleased shows with almost 3,000 households voting for it, from what I understand. And, it will be moving up farther because three shows ahead of it on the list, which I believe are Wings,"SeaQuest, and The Adventures of Brisco County Jr., are all being released on DVD.
The Web site reminded me very much of Chris Anderson's Long Tail theory that has gained so much attention in the entertainment industry. I voted for less popular shows, such as Benson, that I would buy if they were released on DVD, yet there was no show that I voted for that didn't already have votes. Sites like this prove that there are markets for all types of shows, and the Long Tail theory is beautifully shown through the rankings on TVshowsonDVD.com. If you haven't checked out the site, you should do so, and vote for whatever strange favorite you might have.
And, while you're there, feel free to vote for Thelma Harper. If you help me get the show released, we'll all take a trip to Raytown, stop at the Bigger Jigger, and I'll buy.
Since I study the soap opera industry regularly, I thought I would post something about the partnership between Tyson Foods and As the World Turns, the soap that I "study" (am an avid fan of).
Barbara Ryan, who has been a regular character on the show played by Colleen Zenk Pinter since 1978, is one of the most recognizable stars on the show. In the past couple of years, her character--who has long been the neurotic head designer of fashion company BRO (Barbara Ryan Originals)--has gone of the deep end and has become a soap villain of sorts.
Tyson, a regular advertiser on the CBS daytime lineup, somehow borkered a deal with the producers of ATWT and shot the following commercial:
Barbara walks into the kitchen of her aunt and uncle's home (Bob and Kim Hughes, the core family of the show), on her cell phone and says the following:
"What did I do today? Well, I took the kids to school, foiled a kidnapping attempt, took my son to his psychiatrist's, picked up the drycleaning, divorced my eighth husband, went to lunch and played bridge, recovered from the explosion, went to the grocery store, and sabotaged a fashion show. You?"
At the bottom of the screen, Tyson's logo appears, along with its new catch-phrase "Powered by Tyson." These were a great departure from the more conventional "families powered by Tyson" commercials, but the fans of As the World Turns began talking about the commercial regularly.
Later, Tyson featured Barbara Ryan's character in a second commercial with similar results, as she walks into the same kitchen and says:
"What have I been up to lately? Well, I flew out of a second-story courtroom window, confessed to a murder that I didn't commit, foiled an attempt to brainwash my son, sent my enemies to a Swiss spa and aged them 40 years, and crashed my car into a mental institution? And you?" Again with the Tyson information appearing.
As opposed to blatant product placement within the show, the fans have accepted this spot as brilliant and regularly bring it up on message boards, etc. I think this is one way that producers could market their products along with entertainment in intriguing ways. The spot cost nil to produce, as it was filmed on the show's set with one of their regular actors, and yet it created a much stronger link between the fans of the show--As the World Turns--and the product. Now, Tyson seems to be a "hip" product in-line with what soap opera is really like, rather than a frozen food and chicken company trying to hock its products at the stereotypical housewife.
NBC's longtime soap opera Days of Our Lives may have just celebrated its 40th anniversary last week, but there is talk, evidenced by an article in this week's Soap Opera Digest, that the show could end up on the cutting block around this time next year.
According to the article, the soap may soon have to consider other distribution options. The President of NBC Entertainment, Kevin Reilly, addressed the cast and crew at the meeting, claiming that Corday Productions and their partner Sony Pictures Television should consider other options, like Video iPod feeds, mobile phones for distribution, etc.
"We're going to be working very hard trying to figure out how we will keep this great franchise alive," Reilly said, noting the constant flux of the main networks these days in trying to keep content fresh that involved constantly shifting lineups.
NBC indicated that they were in constant conversation with Sony about alternate distribution methods should the show be taken off the network but said it was Sony's decision, since NBC doesn't own the show.
Ken Corday signed with NBC in 2003 for a three year deal with a two-year option, meaning that the end of 2006 may see DAYS attempting these new forms of distributions we have been discussing in the consortium.
These rumors come at a time when soaps have settled into a much lower ratings than they had 20 years or even a decade ago, as cable competition for daytime programming proliferates. DAYS remains a fairly popular soap in comparison with its competitors and almost always does better than most in the key young female demographics.
However, these threats reflect an overall downsizing of the soap opera industry with lower ratings than in former times and what many perceive as a major drop in quality of the DAYS show in particular.
What do you all think? What are the implications if a major TV franchise like DAYS, with a 40-year history, starts using the iPod or mobile phones as the primary means of distribution?
As with Branded, the book attempts to study the current pattern of consumption in America today and what might be driving this desire to constantly own and consume.
However, once again, it appears the work looks at the advertising process and commercialism from a perspective that puts all of the power in the hands of the advertisers, with the drive for consuming becoming an obsession for customers who are ultimately not fulfilled by their constant rate of purchasing.
As with its predecessors, this book demonstrates the current lack of understanding of fan communities and the empowerment fans receive from these brands and properties.
Fans have gained many new ways and avenues to demonstrate their power through their use of brands in fan communities, whether that be fan fiction, discussion boards or clubs, videos, parodies, or the endless other ways fans have gained in power, sometimes much to the chagrin of companies who are uneasy with what fans might want to do with their copyrighted material.
Books such as Point of Purchase, despite their potential merits, demonstrate the lack in most analytical works at this point to look at fan communities in a meaningful way.
Members of the fan fiction writing community are invited to write in and join a conversation of thinkers who are debating greater themes within the fan fiction community.
As the home page details, the The Fanfic Symposium has been around for a few years now and has become a respected place within the community to discuss larger themes and issues of fan writing.
This piece in particular is a good introduction to the language people use for fan fiction.
For instance, Eros shares her thoughts on OTC (One True Character) and OTP (One True Pairing), issues in the fan fiction world of one particular element of a story being more true to a canon than others, in this case a core character or an inseparable relationship.
Fans become attached to particular characters and particular pairings, whether they be a sexual bond or a friendship (which fans will often then turn into a sexual relationship through their fictional writing).
The essay gives quick insight into the elaborate ways the fan fiction community has developed its own language and ways of thinking of its writing traditions.
The book is in the same line of Naomi Klein's widely read book No Logo in asserting a disconnect with the loss of public space and the continued branding of most of American culture.
Although, as with Klein, the book seems to present some compelling evidence of some of the negative aspects branding might have when entering schools, the book seems to be in the vein of most anti-corporate rhetoric in trying to separate commercialism from intellectual discourse instead of seeing brands as an integral part of contemporary American culture.
Although such approaches may be in many ways antithetical to many of the tenets of our labs and our projects, it is important to remember the concerns of the other side, those worried about the effects of branding on culture.
However, what this study ignores, in many parts, is the active ways in which people interact with brands.
Branded is not afraid to point out when people becoming active in demonstrating AGAINST brands, but it ignores the important ways that people actively become involved in fan communities.
The section which seems most beneficial for further reading is on "Peer-to-Peer Marketing," even though the work, on the majority, overlooks the varied ways people become involved with their entertainment and products. The link provides suggested assignments from the publishers of Branded that includes thoughts on the PTP marketing chapter.
Gillam, who is active in both writing and in discussing greater themes of fan fiction, tackles gender issues in the fan fiction writing community, particularly when it comes to slash and other often female-oriented writing styles of fan fiction.
The piece provides not only a good example of how much the fan fiction writers see themselves as a collective community with several niches inside of them but also how issues that have affected society at large--issues such as gender equality, the perception of reverse discrimination, etc.--become a part of the political side of the fan fiction community.
The essay and its responses provide a great window into the fan fiction world and some of the issues that fan actively debate their mark on new material generated from characters or pieces they have appropriated and remediated from the mass media. It is a good demonstration of how important this community comes to be in some people's lives and in the formation of their identity.
In a letter published in the Star Tribune Tuesday, I wrote about the death of pro wrestling superstar Eddie Guerrero.
Since Eddie died in Minneapolis, the local paper has given a lot of coverage, including both the story of his death and a short followup on the grieving of Eddie's fan base and his fellow performers.
I was compelled to write in because I saw the hardcore wrestling fan community grieving in a way that most entertainers would not be mourned.
As a wrestling fan myself, I was amazed at the number of people I heard from who I hadn't talked to in months or even years. Newspaper reporters, university professors, several professionals from different walks of life, some pro wrestlers, and a lot of my childhood friends all called or e-mailed to participate in a process of collective grieving.
Fan communities, especially in a niche market like the WWE's, can share powerful feelings, as the WWE fans are doing right now.
For grown and sometimes (hyper)masculine men like the WWE performers to cry on television and show their vulnerability and their sorrow demonstrates the power of the connection between wrestling fans and performers.
Most of my friends, myself included, shed a few tears along with them, grieving the loss of possibly the best performer in pro wrestling today.
The WWE has already been flooded with over 100,000 e-mails that will be compiled in a book and given to Eddie's wife as a memorial from his fans. They have invited feedback here.
And, in Eddie's online funeral guestbook, there are currently almost 5,000 signatures on his online funeral guest book from all over the United States, Canada, Central America, and around the world, including India, Portugal, South Korea, France, Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom and many other countries.
I think this past week was a powerful demonstration as to why I believe WWE is a primary place to look for a company that creates lovemarks through its performers and develops emotional ties that have a real impact on people's lives.
A couple of weeks ago, I had a letter published in TelevisionWeek, the Halloween edition. The letter was based on a TV Week article by James Hibberd on the WWE's new online service that shows viewers what is happening while the live televised show is on its commercial break .
Several advertising agency types claim that the tactic is costing advertisers viewers, as people tune into the Web site instead of staying in their seat and watching the commercials.
My take is that the opposite is happening and that tactics like this is as close as you'll get to saving the 30-second spot in the long run.
By providing content during commercial breaks, the WWE is, in effect, encouraging fans who have TiVo and similar capabilities not to record the show and watch it later sans commercials but to watch it in real time and find out what's happening during the commercial breaks.
In my opinion, that actually keeps fans in the room and with the commercials on instead of flipping channels or TiVoing the content.
In the latest edition of BrandWeek, Sonia Reyes writes about recent developments in the cereal industry to expand the brand. Since researching Kellogg's was a project of mine for a recent class, I was particularly interested to see what information the article had for the development of the cereal company. According to Reyes, profits have risen steadily since 2002 and are higher than ever in January through October 2005.
This is led by a development into healthy cereal lines, as Kellogg has put $15 million into a new Yogurt Bites product that will be marketed heavily, along with a Special K Fruit & Yogurt creeal. This is a big jump in health food cereals, which appears to be the big new market with all of the health (and weight) conscious Americans.
While this marketing strategy differs from their line for children, it does show how clearly products are marketed to different groups, despite all of it being cereal given to customers in boxes. The marketing and branding of these boxes, however, reflect the pervasiveness of cereal companies to produce products that reach almost every demogaphic.
An article by Brian Morrissey in the latest AdWeek entitled "More Agencies Probe The Wireless Frontier" looks into the addition of wireless campaigns in advertising campaigns, specifically through text messaging.
Advertising agencies are already starting to gather forces for new wings of agencies to cover the mobile technology front, and advertising through text messaging may triple to $760 million by 2009 if current trends continue.
The market seems to show the biggest potential for growth in the United States.
The question is whether traditional advertising agencies can handle these new campaigns or will the development of new agencies better handle these campaigns?
This potential for new marketing models echoes some of our prior reading, particularly at the intersection of Madison and Vine. With entertainment companies infiltrating marketing content as well, what might be the potential tie-ins in our future?
According to Morrissey, "Entertainment companies, which already have ready-made content, like music ringtones, have been the most active wireless marketers, but other brands are pushing their own content." What will be the intersection of these brands and mobile technologies in the future?
At "The Next Big Idea" conference last week at New York City that I attended with Henry and Ivan, one company executive who specialized in product placement discussed a new automatic tape measure from Black and Decker that was sent to all of the sitcom producers for this season and was encouraged to have it used during products.
According to the product placement executive, the product has already appeared in two shows and will actually play a role in a storyline in a third.
I was just wondering how aware the class was of these attempts at product placement and the prevalence that these agencies have. Based on the models I've seen through Steven Johnson's < a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1573223077/103-2067775-3390264?v=glance&n=283155">Everything Bad Is Good for You, and J.D. Lasica's Darknet, etc., the traditional commercial may be on its way out and product placement here to stay. Do these firms stand to gain an early great footing in what may be the major emerging market of the future in advertising?
This post may be evidence that my demented mindscape is expanding in strange and contradictory ways, considering my previous posts deal with pro wrestling and soap opera, but a thought struck me a couple of days ago while I was looking around Boston's Saks Fifth Avenue over at the Prudential Center.
No, it wasn't dismay at all of the goats around the store, tugging on the cashmere scarves of the mannequins, although I do admit it was a bit disorienting, but it was the prices, which were even more disorienting.
I was shopping for my wife's birthday, and I realize that, even if I wanted to channel all my funds into one particularly great gift, the prices were rising to the point it would be impossible. From Manolos to Puccis, the prices seemed to be up across the board.
But I think I gained a little insight while reading this month's Vogue (again, don't ask). The article, by Robert Sullivan, traced the path of a various buyers for trendy stores as they go to Europe to purchase outfits for the upcoming fall season, which has turned out to be one of the most expensive fashion seasons in many years.
One buyer, Jeffrey of Jeffrey's in New York and Atlanta, named not only a diminished "trendiness" of the dollar in Europe but also a rising desire to buy for their customer base fewer items but with higher quality, or, as he put it, a higher "passion factor."
"I had to really look for a passion factor," he explains. "I had to put myself in my customers' stilettos and ask, Would I pay $4,500 for those shoes, $1,800 for that boot? If I felt the passion factor was there, then I bought it."
This argument relates closely to the theory of the Experience Economy espoused by B. Joseph Pine and James Gilmore. Pine and Gilmore examine the need for companies to shift from selling goods to selling experiences in order to keep their product less like a commodity and more like a lifestyle. The clothing labels are understanding this and capitalizing on this more and more, it seems, and buyers are purchasing outfits with the experience in mind.
"I think price is an issue only when it's a basic replacement item, like a gabardine suit," another buyer, Penne Weidig of Tootsies in Texas, said. "If that was $1,500 before and now it's $2,000, there may be some slight rumblings. But if it's something that is fabulous and over-the-top and they have an immediate emotional response, then price is not going to be an issue."
Of course, this is a line of thinking that clothing brands have probably come to realize much sooner than most other companies. But the current patterns will likely continue. As Grant McCracken argues in Culture and Consmption II, pricing is a major way that companies can manage meaning, and a higher price simply means that the product is more valuable in the eyes of the consumer. While this line of thinking apparently won't work for such "commonplace" items as a gaberdine suit (I've always heard that men who wear them are spies), it apparently will work for those products that provide an emotinal response. And the companies that can manage to focus on that experience factor while adjusting pricing to manage their meaning, they will allow that "passion factor" to kick in, a frame of mind where customers will apparently "sell the ranch" to buy their daughters a wedding dress, as Weidig puts it.
Public Service Announcements as Product Placement?
I recently saw an interesting trend while watching As the World Turns, the CBS daytime serial drama.
One of the longtime characters on the show, Lucinda Walsh, has been diagnosed with breast cancer, and the show has frequently covered the real risks and medical procedures associated with the disease, followed by ending the show with a public service announcement.
In another recent case, a character who smoked and worked two jobs while pregnant followed several episodes with an ending PSA urging viewers to visit a Web site which detail the dangers of not taking care of one's self while pregnant.
This past week, the writers of ATWT went a step further in working a PSA directly into the storyline.
Dr. Bob Hughes was met at the hospital by his wife, Kim Hughes, who runs one of the major television stations in fictional Oakdale. She explained to Bob that she was had stopped by the hospital because she wanted to work on a PSA announcement for her station and needed a medical expert for the spot, clearly indicating her husband. She then went on to tell Bob that she was concerned about the continued epidemic of AIDS in Africa and had some startling statistics, which she read off to him.
Bob replied by saying that the numbers startled him and that, for the price of a cup of coffee, most Americans could probably make a real effort into testing and prevention education for these countries.
Kim said, "Now, if only I could have you come down to our station and say that on television. That's exactly what our viewers need to hear."
The self-reflexivity of the scene made me think that this might be more effective than just an end-show PSA announcement. Viewers wouldn't be able to as easily fast-foward through it, yet it was still worked effectively into the characters and their various stories.
While PSAs are different in advertisements in their purpose, they both still face continued danger of not being seen by consumers. So, similar to product placement in the fictional worlds, these embedded PSAs may start to take the place of the traditional end-show PSA announcements.
For those who have been following any of my postings on professional wrestling through this site, I thought this past few weeks' events have been particularly illuminating with the WWE's use of its Internet site as a storytelling tool.
The WWE's announcer for the past several years has been Jim Ross, an Oklahoman who has been in the wrestling business for many years. Rumors abounded these past few weeks that others in WWE management felt that J.R. was not the announcer for the demographic they were hoping to attract anymore and the company did enter in negotiations with the head announcer of the UFC to bring him into the pro wrestling world.
The UFC announcer decided not to take the offer, but WWE played on all this on last Monday's RAW when Vince McMahonVince McMahon's family publicly fired J.R. and humiliated him in the ring. Because of all the stories of J.R.'s being demoted in real life, there was a great fan backlash to the storyline on all the fan sites.
So far, the company has played off this in several ways. They have used the scenario to make the McMahons into greater villains, with usually straight matriarch Linda McMahon explaining why she kicked J.R. in the groin at the close of Monday's show in a Web exclusive, revealing plot lines that were not explicit on the TV programming. Then, the WWE's Web site featured an exclusive interview with J.R., where he heavily criticized the company for several of the things that Internet fans criticize it for: treatment of women as sexual objects, etc.
Then, the company muddied the waters by announcing that J.R. would be undergoing colon surgery, beginning new rumors that this was all a "work," or a storyline, to begin with and that the whole thing was concocted because J.R. needed surgery.
To further the confusion, the company posted several fan letters on the front page of their Web site denouncing the company for its treatment of J.R., including letters saying that the company was despicable and that several viewers would never watch the programming again.
Basically, by doing all this on the Web site, the company has taken a storyline that detested hardcore fans at the close of Monday's show and created a new and fascinating blurring of reality and fantasy that has fans hooked. This is the aspect of WWE programming that Henry Jenkins IV writes about in Steel Chair to the Head, what Sharon Mazer writes about in her ethnographic studies of online wrestling fans, and what Ben Wright, in his thesis at Wake Forest, called "hyperreality" in wrestling--that questionable line between reality and fantasy.
The company is starting to realize that, by using its Web site to create new ways of transmedia storytelling, the television product takes on new meanings and nuances for fans who consume the online entertainment as well.
Well, you all may have noticed that I trumped USA Today by about a week, posting about WWE moving two of its shows to exclusive Web-only content.
WWE has been a revolutionary Internet provider for a while. At first, it established a relationship with AOL and was one of their hottest "in-house" sites, with WWE chats from time to time even crashing the server and with a lot of downloads of themes, photos, etc.
Later, WWE.com became one of the most innovative Web sites. Vince McMahon's son Shane works with global expansion and new media, and he has pushed to take content and put it on the Web. The great move here is that the first hour of Smackdown mentioned in the article that got 500,000 views and the Velocity and HeatTV shows were not featuring a lot of big name stars. But, because there is an interest in Web programming, there is a good chance that moving them to the Internet could eventually make them MORE popular than they were.
On TV, these shows were the "B" shows. Now, they are the flagship shows of the Internet, giving fans a chance to see some of the smaller stars in wrestling matches that don't make it to the big show. The company is aggressively promoting its Internet now in a way that would fall right into the business practices suggested by the Pokemon movement, to make other flows of information coincide with and complement the main narrative.
By providing articles that give context to the main show, exclusive programming that complements the main show, etc., the WWE's Web site begins to function much like the Web site for Dawson's Creek did....It allows viewers the chance to choose what information they want to consume and to become lost in the fictional universe of the characters.
In last Wednesday's physical copy of The Wall Street Journal, I read an article about Verizon's plan to offer 140 channels for $36.90. As Peter Grant points out in the article for WSJ, the phone companies are struggling to compete and are increasingly finding that, with the infrastructure already in place, they can offer cable to customers much cheaper in many cases than the cable companies offer them for. The company is testing in a few markets right now but are having trouble trying to get approved from state-to-state.
The argument reminded me of some media theorists' arguments that old media producers will just continually find a way to move from one product to another to stay on top of the curve, and we have constantly seen old phone service providers such as BellSouth do just that, so that, even with new technology, most of the familiar faces are still in charge.
The FX show Nip/Tuck made an interesting move, although I doubt it was completely unique, in hyping its season premiere.
The premiere was 1.5 hours instead of the usual 1 hour program, and it subsidized this by, instead of the traditional commercial breaks, having the entire premiere sponsored by Sony Pictures, who hyped some of their upcoming films: All the King's Men, Memoirs of a Geisha, and Fun with Dick and Jane, among others.
I found the idea to be a strong one because, with a film buff like me, I had almost as much interest watching the commercial breaks as I did watching the show. Also, with a show that has quite a bit of critical buzz and high production values, being supported by in-depth film trailers was not a bad move. I don't have any figures as to what Sony paid for the spots, but I thought it was a great way in trying to market the advertising a little more directly so that fans who had the opportunity to fast forward through the commercials, as I did, chose not to and willingly watched them.
Do you think this is the trend that programs could go to in providing fewer commercials but longer spots that reach a very specific audience?
Another in a series of WWE related posts, but this one deals with the WWE's other program (they are considered separate divisions), Smackdown on the broadcast network UPN.
WWE started airing Smackdown on Thursday nights on UPN in 1999, and it has been consistently the most popular or second most popular show on the network, which has struggled at points to survive. WWE usually finished fourth and occaisionally third for the evening in its timeslot amongst the six networks, which is fairly successful considering UPN's penetration and the stiff Thursday lineup.
However, UPN decided to change its lineup around and dedicate its Thursday lineup to a comedy block, thus moving its longest-term most popular show to Friday nights from 8 p.m. until 10 p.m., what most people would consider a death sentence. The WWE was not happy about it, and wrestling fans thought it showed a lack of disrespect from UPN.
However, becuase Smackdown only draws in $30,000 per 30-second ad since advertisers have a stereotyped view of who the wrestling audience is, the network wanted to have the chance to bring in larger ad revenue for Thursday nights. So, they created a new lineup based around the Chris Rock show, Everybody Hates Chris.
What most people believed was a dumb move, moving their most popular long-term show to Friday nights, has proven to be brilliant so far. Barring several big pre-emptions due to baseball playoffs in Boston, New York, and a few other key big market cities, the Friday version of Smackdown is drawing identical ratings of the Thursday version. So, UPN is now faring very well with Friday programming, while the Thursday lineup has been more successful than anyone could imagine.
Anyway, I just thought it was an interesting demonstration that the Friday night death slot may not always be so, especially since they are moving a programming in that has such a dedicated following. It looks like what many media critics were criticizing UPN for turned out to be a stroke of genius.
I have several examples I'm going to post today of some interesting things relating to branding and promotion. The first comes with the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment)'s switch from Spike TV to USA. For those who don't know, which may be all of you, WWE was on USA network from the early 1980s on and grew up with the cable industry in a lot of ways.
Five years ago, Viacom gave the WWE a better deal, so they switched their show to TNN, once The Nashville Network and then The National Network.
Eventually, the executives decided that, with RAW as their highest-rated show, they should focus their whole network around the young male demographic, so they created Spike TV.
The WWE's deal was recently up, though, and they had soured somewhat on Spike, so they are now returning "home" to USA.
This Monday's live RAW broadcast was the final one on Spike TV. WWE has been promoting next week's homecoming show for several weeks but have not mentioned that it would be on the USA Network. This being the last, week, though, WWE decided to formally announce that they were moving to USA.
Vince McMahon, the WWE's owner, came out at the beginning of the program and said that the WWE and Spike TV had been good tag team partners and had grown up together and thanked them for their time together but that it was time to go home. At that point, Spike TV cut RAW's audio feed.
An infuriated McMahon had his announcers go off on Spike TV in subtle jabs throughout the night, slipping in several references to USA, with Spike trying to mute the audio at every chance it got.
Starting next week, Spike TV will counter USA's RAW with UFC and another wrestling group called TNA. But I thought Monday night's show was a surreal battle between content producers and the network and shows the power Spike TV believed even mentioning the other network would have.
