This show doesn’t follow that show

Rather than just me, or other better-informed people, simply theorising about what may happen with online video content, a study says up to 80% of television viewing will be done on-demand within seven years.

Study: Linear TV on its way out for many – Lost Remote TV Blog
People in the 18-39 age group will consume 80 percent of their television/video via the internet, VOD, DVR, IPTV or other on-demand platforms in 7 years time, predicts a study by Solutions Research Group. “Networks have to think about a future where everything is nonlinear, more or less, and everything is picked out to watch on any and all platforms,” said Kaan Yigit, an analyst with the company.

News Video

For anyone interested in online video – here’s a good rundown of what newspapers in the UK are doing.

UK Newspaper Video : Starting an Overview : Andy Dickinson.net

Where will you be?

Advice for TV

Remember that you are not in the local tv station business – you are in the business of delivering product to people’s homes to generate ad revenue.

As Rosenblum points out, people who are able to will increasingly get that content to their home via online. As online speeds get faster and more affordable, the number of people who are able to access online content will also grow, feeding the delivery process.

I do still question where the world outside of technological advancement lies. Does the third world get left behind in news access or local content?

And from a Western viewpoint, are news consumers simply ‘ad revenue’? Probably, although I wish news could just be about informing people, not generating money.

The technology of small HDV cameras and they will get both smaller and better and laptop edits no one seems to argue with this one, will give rise is already to a generation of very good journalists who can shoot, edit and deliver online with no problem.

This is going to happen. It is happening now.

The job opportunities for young journalists who can work in this way will be limitless.

If it turns out to be true, sweet.

Brisbane Times launched

Today Fairfax launched their competition to News Ltd in Queensland, the Brisbane Times. I’ve only just seen it now and don’t have time to really check it out, so there you go, have a link.

More on WPVJ

Michael Rosenblum makes an interesting point about the Washington Post video journalism structure mentioned last week.

For those who think that newspapers are not going to compete with television news in the realm of video. A Washington Post with 50 cameras in DC also makes it potentially the biggest local TV news station in DC.

Breaking news, or waiting?

Lost Remote links to Michael Rosenblum, an apparent despiser of those afraid to embrace new technology. Steve Safran at LR defends his views on the grounds that:

TV newsrooms are firing people every week. That’s the reality. That’s not the fault of technology, it’s the fault of people who don’t see the benefits of it and don’t adapt to it.

Rosenblum writes in his post, Breaking News:

About 10 years ago, when The New York Times was first starting NYTimes.com, most of the newspaper’s senior staff were nervous about the web. They did not feel anything should appear on the website until it had already been published in the paper. Of course, the paper only comes out once a day, and that is directly antithetical to the notion of ‘immediacy’ for an online site. It took the newspaper years to come to accept that the web came first, the paper followed.

Newspapers were the first ones hit by the impact of the web, but now it is coming to television as the web goes to video. Yet even among our own clients, some of whom are local TV news stations; they can only see the web as a place to put stories after they have aired on their programs.

I know it’s a long quote, but important to note the NYTimes website is much more advanced than most. I also love a bit of thought provocation, so with post titles like Why TV News Sucks, he gets added to my scanner.

More news video

Just a quick link to Lost Remote with some more for the “video content on the web”, Newspapers vs Television debate.

Lost Remote: Behind the scenes of newspapers’ video efforts.

Then I’m off to Sydney for the weekend to see my newest niece, Jenna! Until next week.

Media Posts

There are several hundred posts still Uncategorised, a large number of which should come under the Media category. As of yet I haven’t had the time to properly categorise them all, hence the apparent lack of Media postings.

New York print not dead after all

Apparently New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger is going to clarify to employees his supposed lack of concern about the continuation of a print edition of the Times.

From a pre-released excerpt of his text:

“It is my heartfelt view that newspapers will be around–in print–for a long time. But I also believe that we must be prepared for that judgment to be wrong. My five-year timeframe is about being ready to support our news, advertising and other critical operations on digital revenue alone …whenever that time comes.”

Good thing digital revenue continues picking up.

ABC reorganisation

There’s been a big shakeup at the ABC, with a new digital media strategy announced by managing director Mark Scott.

“Digital media is now integral to everything we do. It is not an add-on, it is not a novelty, it is the present reality as well as the future,” Mr Scott said.

Possibly the biggest announcement is their intention to pursue revenue through digital offerings like podcasts and video. Already one of the biggest producers of quality digital content, they have until now not charged for it. It seems they may continue to not charge for most of the material, but rather archived audio or video content would be available to download at a cost.

I mentioned some time ago that the ABC could make some revenue from their podcasts, seeing as they were some of the most popular downloaded from the iTunes Music Store. Even if downloads dropped, only one person willing to pay makes revenue the ABC otherwise would not have had.

Another big announcement, at least in my world, is the integration of ABC News Online with their news and current affairs divisions. I’m not sure how this affects my chances of a week-long internship since I had hoped to go to the ABC Online division, which is based in Brisbane. As it is, I’ll still be off at the Courier Mail for a week starting tomorrow.

The Australian: ABC to create digital earner

Crikey: Traditional content divisions the big winners in ABC shake-up

Crikey:Will the ABC now carry advertising on-line?

ABC: ABC announces digital media strategy

ABC Media Release (pdf)

Australia

Happy Australia Day everyone.

A Week in Paradise

It hasn’t really been Paradise this week, but neither has it been an Inferno.

In fact, it’s been much cooler than an inferno, with our air conditioner finally getting installed! The guy came on Monday, I helped him install it and had cool comfort that night. He came back Tuesday to ‘finish’ the job, but he’s not happy with how it looks. I couldn’t care less, it’s there and it’s working, that’s all I need.

Unfortunately he wants us to pay him. Our lease said the owner would purchase an air conditioner, and we would install it. To us that meant getting my brother-in-law and a friend of his who have installed several air conditioners to do it for free. When the owner’s tradesman/cousin said he would install it I thought that meant, ‘as part of my service to you since it’s almost a quarter of the way through the lease that this air conditioner was supposed to be a part of’.

But no, once we were done, with my help the entire time both days he was here, he’s asking for payment. When I told him we would have otherwise done it ourselves at no cost, he said he’d get back to me, billing some to the owner and some to us “given the rent situation”. Cool.

I started rugby training last Monday night at Norths in Brisbane. I had to eat late since we didn’t finish with the air conditioner until almost 5.30, and so my four years without fitness work paid dividends come sprints at 7.30. That is, my body rejected in protest the small amount of food I had eaten earlier. Wednesday night was a much more relaxed affair, with only some lineout and scrummaging work before a relatively easy 3km run to finish the night. Returning again Thursday night, training wasn’t as bad, but I had to pull over for 15 minutes on the way home because I thought I was about to throw up out the window while I was driving.

So while last week may have been the lower reaches of purgatory, I had expected this week to be a further descent. I’m working Tuesday and Thursday nights from 9pm to 5am, with Thursday’s shift following rugby training. Unfortunately, since training on Monday and Wednesday has been cancelled, Thursday is likely to be brutal.

And why has training been cancelled? Because the club makes more money from the touch football competition than it does from the rugby team. So the rugby team vacates the playing field. A strange scenario if you’re looking to field a well-trained team when the season actually starts.

At least this week is not as was expected: go straight to work till midnight from Monday’s training. Work 9-5am Tuesday night. Go straight to work till midnight from Wednesday’s training. Go straight to work till 5am from Thursday’s training.

It’s yet to be seen how we’ll cope.

Handyman

Blogging has been particular slack to start off the New Year, but that’s because I’ve been keeping myself extremely busy – and away from the computer.

That’s not entirely true, I’ve been on the computer, only without internet access at home. The free student dial-up allocation of 150mb never lasts through the month, but I managed to blow it out of the water in a record-breaking three days this time.

Now I almost feel like I’m caught up on everything I need to do! I’ve enrolled in what should be the last five classes of my university life, which I’ll show at the bottom of the post.

I’ve organised our unit so efficiently that everything – except one rogue filing box – has an allocated spot. It’s a whole new world without obstacles, where every room in the house can be traversed effortlessly. Not a hop, skip or a jump to be seen. I was going to say it was an unnatural environment and that I was out of my comfort zone, but I think it may only be the latter of those statements that is false. It is unnatural, but something I’ve found myself disturbingly comfortable with. The organisation may have whet the appetite of an obsessive compulsive personality lurking within.

As part of that cleanup I borrowed my parent’s vacuum cleaner, the merits of which have been discussed before. My brother managed to break it before moving south at Christmas, but a new belt only set me back $9 and a few minutes to fit it. On returning the vacuum cleaner I also managed to fix my parent’s in-sinkerator with the very technical know-how that is the ‘reset’ button. Need a handyman to do those ridiculously simple jobs around the house? I’m your guy.

We signed a new lease in November last year (previously discussed in detail), the terms of which included getting an air-conditioner and replacing the carpet with an as-yet-undecided alternative. Today, only two months later and after much nagging of the real estate agent, the property owner’s cousin came by to measure for the flooring and the air conditioner. I buttered him up with some plunger coffee and a bit of conversation, and we might even have some AC by next week. Bonus!

Next week I’ll start going to rugby training for the first time in almost four years. I haven’t played rugby because I’ve continually decided against committing myself to training twice a week, but I can’t resist any longer. My body is tired after one night back on night-fill at Coles, so it will be interesting to see how I cope with fitness work, but I’m looking forward to getting back into it. It’s probably a result of my complaining for the last three years that I’d rather be playing rugby, but my wife’s Christmas present to me was Queensland Red’s membership for the both of us this year. With their first game in just three weeks, we’ll be there for all the action. Without the injured Chris Latham they’ll have an even harder time winning than they have in the recent past

That looks like a fairly comprehensive run down of what’s been going on, so that just leaves my list of classes for this year.

• History
  • Europe 1200-1800
  • The Radical Right and Fascism in Europe
• Politics
  • European Political Issues
  • Introduction to International Inequality and Development
• Journalism internship (I don’t know where I’m going yet, but these are the preferences I gave)
  1. ABC Online Newsroom
  2. Courier Mail online newsroom
  3. 96.5 FM – Family Radio

Christmas shakedown

The dust hasn’t quite settled on the Christmas period for us. Before leaving for 10 days at my in-laws, we collected some presents from my parent’s house on Christmas Eve.

The presents we got then were numerous and great, but now we’ll have a few more from other family members to open when we go over for dinner Thursday night. After that, I think Christmas will be done and dusted.

As it is, several DVDs received as presents, including the first four series of Scrubs (12 disks), amounts to a grand total of 3136 minutes of viewing time. That’s 52 hours and 16 minutes of eye-shattering television watching. Not sure exactly how we’ll manage it, but so far we’ve made it through half of Season 1 of Scrubs, and an hour of Champagne Comedy.

2007

Hello, 2007.

Happy New Year!

Any resolutions? I have a few, including the age-old ‘work harder at university’. But for now, ring in the new year with festivities!

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