I admit it, when Katie Couric signed on to anchor the CBS Evening News, i tuned in. And while i can quibble about this or that (sitting cross-legged on the side of the desk - pleeaaase) overall i thought she did a good job.

But that was before what is rapidly becoming the Free Speech Debacle.

Naming a TV Segment Free Speech isn't something execs do lightly. I know this from experience. At MTV my pilot, first named 'interact' became UN Filtered only after i lobbied passionately for the title Free Speech. Too much like homework i was told. Too bad.

So CBS has the field all to themselves. They can name a segment free speech and 'own' it. The only thing is - it's a constitutional right so it's not a term you can fool with.

Or so i thought.

First, there is the question of how the segment works. First, CBS goes through it's rolodex and picks out people who they know from the world of media, print, politics, or entertainment. People who's words you've heard before. And it offers them a bit of air time.

Already - they've got it all wrong.

You can't dole out free speech. Remember the gated in pens called "free speech zones" at the National Political conventions in 2004? Shameful.

So then CBS Producers invited Bill Mahr to submit a few ideas for a segment on Free Speech. You can read his account of the interaction here. But suffice it to say - Mahrs segment isn't going to see the light of day.

Then CBS reached out to Jeff Jarvis. His account is even more jaw dropping.

The thing is - when you give people Free Speech, they get to say what's on their mind. People aren't puppets willing to morph their thoughts and feelings to fit into CBS's 22 minute ideology-free zone. Bravo to Bill and Jeff.

CBS Should have taken a page from UNfiltered. Invited speakers to write/call/email their ideas for what they would talk about. Put up the submissions on their web site, and let visitors vote on who they think should be heard. They could filter for obscenity, defamation, or any other specific issues they don't feel should be given an open forum (as long as the rules are transparent - guidelines are fair).

UPDATE: Blogger Steve Garfield has taken action! and created a site for people to submit their own comments at sayittokatie.com. Bravo.

Yahoo's New Current Channels.

Well - it arrived. (and sooner than i thought it would).

While the
YouTube traffic numbers keep growing... the media din around the arrival of web video has more more people turning from their TV's to the web for short form programming.

And so today we're seeing the first step to filtered, communities of user-generated videos.

The Current/Yahoo deal is interesting on a number of levels. First of all, it's got a bunch of Google/Yahoo/Al Gore intrigue. But i'll leave that for now.
More importantly, Yahoo is trying to figure out how to add editorial value to it's UGV offering.

That's the good news.

The implementation is weird. It's got the Current 'hosts' and branding - way too much graphic packaging and editing that leans too far toward style and away from substance. Some of this is just an MTV hangover. Some of it is old media ideas leaking into new media. The bottom line is that there is a significant difference between push and pull media. And when people click on the "automotive" channel on Yahoo/Current to see videos they don't need to be 'sold' on the topic or presented with zippy graphics and such.

The missing question at Yahoo/Current is the information vs. entertainment quotient.

Current is still living in the TV world - where people need to be lured into pausing their clicker, and then constantly 're-sold' in order to keep them tuned in. But in the new world of web video, that packaging is extraneous, in fact it has the opposite effect. I've told you i want to see your videos- now get me to the content faster, and without host happy talk.

Which isn't to say that Current/Yahoo won't do well. They will. And as they continue to lear from the audience, they'll get real time information about what kinds of videos people want to see (and what they don't). I suspect that this kind of real time information for TV folks who are used to getting unreliable Nielsen ratings (for cable, often not even that) will be quickly addictive.

Yes, i know Current had a web site before - but Yahoo will be a fire-hose of traffic - and the results should be explosive.

Community driven content has arrived. And there will be more - not less - as groups of enthusiasts discover that they can program to each other, and leave the middleman out of the equation.

ps. TechCrunch has a post today refering to the Current conent as "better". Hmmm... not sure that's a very web 2.0 way to look at it.

Steven Starr isn't your average internet CEO.

After all, how often can you hear a guy talk about Advertising, how much he Loves Creative Commons, and the fact that DRM is the Devil, all in the course of 40 minutes?

As i said, not average. Far from it.

In fact Revver is more than a technology company or neat trick to generate Ads for Kevin Nalt's CubeBreak site.

It's a movement. And you know this when an audience of more than 150 filmmakers at the IFP conference listen with rapt attention as Starr preaches the gospel of Creator Empowerment. And you get the sense that he really means it.

Revver 1.0 - launched last week - is hunting big game. The goal is to set a lofty goal for the video content business - and create such a demand for shared revvenues (revv - get it?) that others like YouTube will follow suite. The industry may get there, but for YouTube's Chad Hurley - they're more focused on providing an economic solution to the bigger fish in town - many of whom have made noises like they may be preparing to file suite if YouTube doesn't come up with a payment system for rights-holders pretty darn quick. That leaves the creator payment market wide open right now... and Revver isn't letting any grass grow under its feat.

The new site has a clean look, new flash video, and a widget creation toolset that makes content sharing easier and economic.

This is good news for Magnify.net. As more and more sources of User-Generated Content come into the market, the need to search, organize, and monetize it becomes more acute. (MSN just released SoapBox today).

The event was the IFP "How Creators Can Monetize Content" panel. And I was invited to talk about Magnify.net, and the importance of building creator payment solutions.

While panels can be pretty boring (and i've been in the audience and on the stage at plenty) this on had the energy of change. There was a spirited debate about LonelyGirl15 ("Prank or Art"), the future of music on user-created video (Virgin's Jeff Kempler: "call me!") and a the question about when Kevin Nalts of Cubebreak.com can quit his day job and 'video for food.' (hint: he has four kids - not too soon).

Jeff Howe from Wired Magazine was the moderator - and he really did keep everyone on their toes. At one point he challenged the panel as to why 'low quality' is so much in demand. And i responded that i thought the audience was going for 'authenticity.' Jeff Kemple from Virgin called my answer 'Elitist' and - as i think about it - he's right. Quality has always been a metric i've resisted, since anything that quantifies what the audience likes or doesn't like by it's nature implies a gatekeeper.

To Jeff's point - LonelyGirl15 was wildly popular, and that is more important than and made up destination about high or low quality.

But the important thing that I took away from the panel is just how impressive it is that Revver has created a conversation around Creators - and is laser-beam focused on keeping it that way.

Revver Launch Party w/Steven Starr & Oliver Luckett

Posted to DocuBlogTV on September 20, 2006

View Details

What i like best about post is that Jeff is willing to say what lots of people were thinking... is this really an innovation or just 'me too' network johny-come-lately play... you decide...

--

NBC thinks it is entering the distributed world of media with its new National Broadband Company — but is riddled with cluelessness. The venture, first announced in April, was outlined today by Saul Hansell in The Times. Cluelessness and outmoded controlfreakishness includes:

* They will not allow us, the people, to put stuff on our blogs. They want control.

* They will not accept video from us the people. Not up to their standards.

* They take a shameful share of the revenue: 50 percent (30 percent goes to the video’s creator, 20 percent to the site running the video).

Clueless quotes from Randy Falco, president of the NBC Universal television group, in the Times story:

* “We want to create new tools to allow NBC Universal to do what it has always done: to deliver quality entertainment experiences to as broad an audience as possible,” Mr. Falco said. “In short, we are going back into the broadcast business on the Internet.”
No, you are not in the broadcast business. The internet is not about broadcast. It is not about you telling me what to watch. It is not about you making the selections for me. I have that power now. You just don’t know it.

* “If we really want to compete with big aggregators like Yahoo and Google, we need our video in as many places as possible,” Mr. Falco said.
No, if you wanted it as many places as possible you would follow the YouTube model and let us distribute it for you. But you don’t trust us. Odd not to trust the people who make you money.

READ THE WHOLE POSTHERE

By Lucas van Grinsven, European Technology Correspondent

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - An increasing number of television viewers are producing their own shows, and the TV industry is frantically trying to figure out how to combine broadcasts, Internet movies and home videos into one package.

Internet video sharing sites like YouTube and Google Video have surged in popularity over the last 12 months, with YouTube now serving 100 million videos a day, and mainstream TV distributors see a need to improve their offering.

French communications equipment maker Alcatel, working with Microsoft, showed at the IBC broadcasting convention in Amsterdam how it has integrated personal video channels into its Internet television system, bedded between the usual national, news and sports TV channels.

Personal TV channels can contain home videos and programmes shared amongst family members or sports buddies.

Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) is a major topic at IBC, because it enables telecoms operators to become TV distributors by sending programmes over their broadband Internet connections. Close to 50 million households are forecast to have IPTV by 2010, according to market research group Gartner.

9.11.06 - The fifth anniversary of a terrible attack on America.

9.11.06 - The first day of third grade for my son. His first day wearing a tie to school.

9.11.06 - The day before the New York Democratic Primary.

9.11.06 - The Day before Apple's big "It's Showtime" announcement.

9.11.06 - 8 Weeks before the mid term elections?

9.11.06 - A day for somber remembrances of those who lost their life on 9.11.01

9.11.06 - Part Two of the ABC Docu/mini/drama/fact-based fiction series: The Path to 9/11

9.11.06 - The first time that George Bush has slept overnight in New York (that I can remember).

Is it possible to be both sad and angry? Somber and outraged? Overwhelmed with information and desperately hungry for truth? In the new world of the information echo-chamber, a moment like 9/11 has all the sources of political 'content' operating at full tilt.

How do we process this?

To be open to the politics, the metaphors, the sorrow, and the meaning is to be the victim of all of it. To be oblivious is to be something less than human.

There are no doubt real emotions here. Uniquely personal feelings of loss. And each of us has reason for this day to mean something personal.

But the larger themes at play effect us too.

Freedom. The message that loss of privacy is the essential trade off for safety is a message that has been driven home from all corners of the media universe. As someone who - before 9/11 - refused to take his belt off at an airport, being a patriot now means submitting to any and all scans, searches, puffers, and chemical detection. We trade privacy for safety. We trade individual rights to travel in relative anonymity for the promise of a bomb free airplane and terrorist free travel. The success of this trade off can only proven in the negative. Nothing happened, therefore the measures worked. We are safe.

Justice. The ABC docu-fiction presented two NYC cops warmly chatting up one of the 1996 WTC bombers... and reminding him that we "don't torture our detainees" here in the US. It's meant to be a cautionary tale of just what happens when you don't use torture to elicit information. The editorial message isn't hard to comprehend. Back in 1996 - our naiveté allowed us to revel in our constitutional rights. But now – the ABC Mini-Series would have you believe -- we know better. The subtext of the film suggests that the constitution isn't a shield, it's a permeable document. And our enemies are using its protections to attack us. In what is now referred to as the “post 911 world” They’re saying we can no longer afford the simple minded freedoms afforded to us by our constitution. Day after day we're reminded that our democracy is based on concepts that can't hold up under the pressures of a new terrorized word. This thesis – created and delivered in the shadow of mourning and remembrance is all the more disingenuous.

Religion. The separation between Church and State has always been a distinction that drew lines between reason and beliefs. Belief is - by its nature - not something you can debate or analysis. Your God, My God, or no God are all very personal and deserve the ultimate protection. But historically, elected officials haven't been able to legislate their personal religious beliefs into the law of the land. Our Government was created to be an objective, deliberative body that would err on the side of inaction before taking an advocates stance on issues that were primarily ideological. Legislating morality is a slippery slope, and one that politicians have stayed away from.

But today – that’s changed. The purposeful and public attempts to centralize power in the Executive branch moves ideology to center stage.

Riding the subway with my 17 year old son on Saturday, we found ourselves talking about the whole issue of civil rights and how it’s possible to know where the line is between freedom and security. New York was displaying all its multi-cultural plumage. There was a man with a huge python wrapped around his neck standing out in front of the "Snakes on a Plane" poster at the Loews on 84th street. There were schoolteachers and janitors marching up 5th Avenue for the Labor Day Parade. There were Saris and Turbans and Yarmulkes - a walking UN of beliefs and cultures. And I said - without thinking much about it - "The Media/Industrial Complex is selling the Fear/Freedom story hard this week." He looked at me and said: "Where did that phrase come from?" The truth is I suppose I made it up. Echoes of the Military Industrial Complex that was so presciently exposed by Eisenhower in 1961. Knowledge is power. The tools that distribute knowledge are the most powerful force to create real democracy around the world.

Freedom is messy. Totalitarianism is neat.

I'll try and remember that the next time I tell my kids to clean their rooms.

Monday, September 11, 2006

Highlight: 7 Days in September
"7 Days in September"
From Google Video Blog:

Posted by Steve Rosenbaum, Director

"Five years ago, I found myself watching a heartbreaking disaster from my office window that seemed like the world was coming to an end: The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center as they burned and crumbled. Out of a desperate need to do something useful, I gathered some members of my team and we began to film. After weeks of staring at the buildings burn [on the tapes we shot], I realized that these attacks needed to be told by a community of voices, with a multitude of perspectives.

"7 Days In September" is the result. It's a work of collaborative filmmaking, a collection of voices, cameras, and perspectives. It begins on the morning of 9/11, and ends the evening of 9/18. Those seven days are full of fear, anger, pain, loss, and a deep sense of community. I'm told that the film touches people in different ways, and that there is no single message or point of view. I hope that's right. It isn't meant to be an answer, but rather a sounding board that may help people to ask deeply personal questions.

On the fifth anniversary, we had many options for this film. We could have put it back in theaters. We could have played it on television in the U. S. and around the world.

We choose to do neither. Instead, we are sharing it on Google Video for free. For those of you who choose to watch, we hope it helps you connect with feelings that are productive rather than simply painful.

And if you have your own video or footage to share, we hope you'll use our CameraPlanet 9/11 Archive site to post your own videos and thoughts. This archive is built to gather and protect the images, video, and stories of 9/11 for future generations. We hope this memory helps bring context and understanding to future generations."

Posted by Google Video team at 12:00 AM / Permalink /

Last night, Pam and I went to see a preview of the Photo Exhibit presented by the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation.

It was far more than i expected.

First, the exhibit is being held on the 45th Floor of the new Silverstein building "7 World Trade". The floor is empty- raw space. And the windows look out on the WTC construction site - as well as having extraordinary views of midtown and the Hudson. It's been a very long time since i'd seen these views - and it was pretty intense.

Then, the presentation included a talk by author Pete Hamil. A true New Yorker, Hamil wove a story of New York's toughness. He hit hard on the fact that while America is closing its borders, New York is truly the melting pot of the world. His voice, his manner, his sensitivity and his warmth were a welcome surprise.

And final, the pictures themselves. Photographer Jonathan Hyman took a journey across the country and photographed 'tribute' images. Towers. Flags. Tears. Tattoos. Passionate and wounded - for New Yorkers who don't know how deeply 9/11 was felt across the County... it was an eye-opening journey.

I recommend it- it's open to the public.

I didn't take pictures of any of Hyman's work, seemed disrespectful. But you should see them for yourself. They deserve to be seen as the artist presented them.

http://www.buildthememorial.org/site/DocServer/5th_Anniversary_Exhibitions.pdf?docID=1881

Hollywood, TV, even music and books are driven by 'push' marketing.

Right now, everyone is pushing 9/11 on me and I don't like it. I don't like feeling like the complicated emotions and issues around 9/11 have been turned into a 'to do' list by networks, newspapers, and magazines.

And I don't like feeling like the bizar tango between September and November (every two years) turns the elections into a referendum on safety, terrorism, and war.

9/11 is unfortunate on so many levels. The tragedy for the families of the victims. The emotional anguish for anyone who was witnessed the events. And the scars created for our country that continue to cause terrible pain.

But there are other things that make 9/11 difficult.

This year, 9/11 is my younger son's first day in a new school. There will be a reception for parents. And rather than the wonderful new adventure that my son deservers, it will be a quite somber day. It breaks my heart. 9/11 has forever turned the ritual of end of summer, labor day, last few days of freedom, into a time fraught with memories and sadness. It can't be taken back.

So the push media will do what it must - and 9/11 will flood the airwaves and pages for the next five days. It will be impossible to ignore. And in that - impossible to manage or avoid.

I've already got my guard up. I didn't see the Oliver Stone movie. I want to. Just couldn't do it. I didn't see Flight 93 or United Flight 93 (there were two of them).

And I'm planning to not see the film on Spike or the new shows on Discovery or A&E or ABC or any other network. I just can't .

And i shouldn't have to.

But at the same time - i've got to be respectful of the fact that people DO want to see, to experience, to engage. On their own terms.

So i've decided to learn something from my experience with Google. More than 1.7 million people have watched clips from The CameraPlanet Archive on Google Video.

LINK: www.video.google.com/911anniversary.html

Clearly, people are searching for something.

And that seems like the right way for them to find what they need, how they need it.

So i'm taking my film "7 Days In September" and putting it up on Google Video. I think it deserves to be found - but not put places were people don't want it.

If you haven't watched MSNBC recently - you may not have seen Keith Olberman. And in the hour long form i sometimes find him insuferable... but if you look at his crisp commentary - as it is being excerpted and shared across the web... you'll see a body of work that is taking this Administration to task with a determination and seriousness that is hard to ignore.

See all the Keith Olbermann Channel HERE

Olbermann Delivers Powerful Commentary on Rumsfelds Attacks

Posted to KeithOlbermann
on September 02, 2006

View Details | Hosted At YouTube

I've just spent 3 weeks on the East End of Long Island, where cablevision has the franchise. The house had their high-speed internet... and it was out twice - both times for the better part of a day.

When we called Cablevision they seemed concerned, but not in any urgent sort of way. Pleasant, and the scheduled appointments both times to send a repairman out. (we told them it wasn't on ourside as we'dl troubleshot the router, modem, cables, etc). But they rolled a truck anyway.

What was interesting was how central the web is to our family. My wife has a laptop, and do i, and my old son brought his desktop computer. We use it to plan our days, figure out the weather, email (of course) as well as Skype and IM. It isn't a luxury or a work tool - it's part of how we conduct our lives.

So to have cablevision see it as more of a add on than a critical service is a reminder that high speed internet (even in a place like the East End) isn't yet seen as a utility. It is true that things are more mellow out here... but non the less, if you're going to do your banking, calendar, maps, weather, and entertainment choices on-line then the person providing that service can't be casual about providing that service.

So here's the thing. I watched the VMA's on Thursday. They were ok... some of the star parings were funny... and the music and the staging was - as always - a big spectacle.

I was struck by a few things.

First, i watched - my 16 year old son didn't. Hmmm.

Second, on air there was an endless push to the web. A visit backstage to the MTV web site "overdrive", promo's that pushed MTV on computers, cell phones, etc. And promo's pushing on line voting for audience awards.

Said a recent Wall Street Journal;

"MTV Overdrive," a free video Web site featuring music videos, news and MTV's hit programming, attracts fewer than four million unique visitors a month, a small fraction of MTV's 82 million monthly U.S. television viewers. More worrisome: MTV's Web sites are being whipped by rivals such as MySpace, the new home of the MTV generation. MySpace gets nearly 55 million unique visitors in the U.S. a month. YouTube, a fast-growing video Web site, draws 16 million."

So it looks as if the MTV audience has already found new places to hang out, and now they're trying to figure out how to remain cool, boost thier TV audience, and push their viewers to the web. The truth is - they're facing the same issues that AOL is facing in trying to turn their dial up customers into free web users.

The audience has moved, and bringing them back to legacy brands won't be easy.

That said - MTV has a strong creative team and a huge brand, so it isn't impossible. But when i think of my son, who actively doens't watch MTV - i'm not sure how they'll get him back.

MTV Awards Suffer Big Hit in Ratings
By Anne Becker -- Broadcasting & Cable, 9/1/2006 7:26:00 PM

The downward spiral of the MTV Video Music Awards' TV performance continued Thursday night as the ceremony's audience plunged from last year and VMA fans headed online.

The show, once a ratings juggernaut for MTV, pulled in an average of just 5.77 million total viewers over its three hour telecast starting at 8 p.m., down 28% from the 8 million viewers it averaged last year, according to preliminary data from Nielsen Media Research. Just two years ago, the show brought in nearly double last night's audience-10.3 million viewers.

Click here!
While still about five times what MTV has averaged in primetime this summer, the show's TV audience last night is a shadow of the 12 million viewers it once earned. The numbers have to be frustrating for MTV executives who moved the show back to its former home, New York City, after last year's poor showing in Miami.

With digital media, including video-heavy Internet sites, competing for its core young audience, MTV has struggled to maintain its status as the coolest place for youth. Last night's show was widely criticized for being dull and lacking the sort of buzz-worthy moments of VMAs past.

The show averaged a 5.21 share with MTV's target audience of viewers 12-34, the network says. Illustrating that that audience is preferring to spend time online these days, MTV's broadband video site Overdrive saw its highest day of traffic ever yesterday with 3.9 million streams, up more than 200% over last year. MTV programmed the site, as well as its digital cable channels and other multimedia platforms, with more VMA extras than ever this year.

Lee Gomes in the Wall Street Journal has a great look under the hood at YouTube.

But i wonder if all his data warrents his conclusions.

The data itself is pretty remarkable.

The piece begins with the fact that Lee has 'scraped' YouTube to get data. Wow, a reporter doing real reporting in the tech space, how cool is that! He says his data shows that in one month's time the site went from 5.1 to 6.1 million videos posted. These number show 33,000 video posts a day (less than YouTube's public # of 70,000 a day - but still pretty darn impressive).

What Lee derives from this data (and the fact that key words Dance, Love, Music, and Girls) is that we've wasted - collectively -9,305 years watching YouTube.

He doesn't use the word 'wasted'. But that's his implication.

And i get his point. A quick glance at Google Video's top five reveals:

1. Sex in kitchen
2. Shakira - Hips Dont Lie spoof
3. World's Clumsiest Pole Dancer
4. GIRL CAUGHT CHEAT ON WEBCAM
5. Topless Car Wash

Hmmm... harldy high art.

But the fact is that Google video's top 5 isn't any more high brow than YouTube...

And what all these stat's don't reflect is that there are also millions of videos about Gardening, Race Cars, Home Repair, Mountain Climbing, Parenting, and tons of other really valuable data. The long tail doesn't suggest that the top of the curve is going to be anything other than mass market glop. But what happens out on the end of the tail is that nitch, smarter, more important stuff starts to get made - watched -and shared.

That's the really cool data.