why are media executives so dumb?

the new york times has an interesting story about youtube today

YouTube’s Video Poker

the article is about youtube’s future, and how it is going to deal with media companies and their possible copyright infringement claims. the times talked to a lot of media executives, and provides some detail on how warner is working with youtube to make their recently announced media sharing deal work. that deal is quite interesting since it shows how one media company realized that what they have are individual brands (their music stars, their tv shows, their movies). warner is not a brand that matters anymore, but green day or the flaming lips, they are brands that matter. and music videos are a good example of how some media execs twenty years ago created a new art form that in itself did not generate money since fans did not buy videos, but music videos created buzz, they made an artists (or brand) more visible, get more air time, which then would lead to more album and concert ticket sales. so in today’s wold where we live with youtube these music videos have just found a new channel and why does it matter if a fan posts it or an mtv? it will actually get more street-cred if a fan posts it.

that leaves us with tv shows that are frequently posted on youtube. a good example is the saturday night life skid that got big only because of youtube. who would have heard of lazy sunday without youtube? did saturday night life’s ratings go up the weeks after the skid became one of the hottest internet videos? i bet it did. and what did nbc do? tell youtube not to post snl videos anymore. can anyone explain this logic to me? here you get free advertising and brand building by your fans and all nbc can think of is to deny it and force people to go to nbc.com. the problem with this is that nbc doesn’t matter anymore, it is snl that is the brand, and youtube is the site people go to look for videos. if snl is not on youtube it is just as if the snl brand doesn’t exist on the web. media companies have to stop thinking about umbrella brands and try to force users to their sites first.

nbc has an interesting quote in the article which just shows how much they care about their fans…

“The yin and yang of working with YouTube is you want to use them as a way to promote our programs but we don’t want to give away the store,” said John Miller, the chief marketing officer of NBC Universal television. NBC has bought advertising on YouTube and uploaded clips promoting shows like “The Office.” And it has also actively demanded that the site take down clips from “Saturday Night Live.”

yes, it is ok if youtube is just another channel that is owned by media companies, but if the media consumers want a say, well then the whole thing is becoming a bit tricky, the best thing is to have a dumb client, and that is how they view their customers.

the daily show and the colbert report seem to be getting it (at least so far), no caring much about fans posting parts of the show online. what they seem to realize is that by allowing it the brand of the two shows is increasing and spreading, expanding their audience. and thanks to the innovative developments at youtube daily show clips are integrated into blogs (like this one) and are made part of conversation and discussions.

youtube should be seen as a blessing to media companies, but all media companies can see are lost revenues, but that is not the case since those revenues that they think they are loosing, they actually never had (or would get), but the brand building they get from youtube is going to increase the brand revenue, although the brand has changed from the media conglomerate to the actual product.

and finally colbert’s take on the clinton interview

i posted the original, olbermann’s response, the daily show’s response, and now here is colbert’s response …

dopey look on right wing nut’s face … priceless

this clip of fox new’s scarborough country [correction, as it was pointed out to me, scarborough country is not on fox news, but msnbc, my mistake] is just priceless. trying to go after smear campaigns of the left (btw, after all they did to clinton and kerry one has to wonder if the right can really be this stupid to actually complain about smear campaigns) and then being confronted to actually name one, all they can do is chuckle and give a deer in the headlights look.

poor design in every day life: car exhausts

while waiting for my bus after work tonight a car stopped in front of me, at the curb, letting out a person. the car stood there for a while with the engine going. after a while i could smell the fumes of the car and i looked at the back of the car and saw that the car’s exhaust was on the right side of the car, pointing to the side-walk. i thought, wow now that is pretty poor design, since in every country where people drive on the right side, having the exhaust on the right side will mean that the exhaust will point right to the side walk, where people are walking. so i started looking at other cars, wondering if this was just one car or just one brand, or one model that was poorly designed. and then after some time i realized that all european cars i saw actually had their exhausts on the left side of the car (with the exception of those european cars, like porsches and some audis, that had exhausts on both sides, left and right), while most american brands and nearly all japanese brands had their exhausts on the right side. i thought about the japanese cars and was wondering if that is because in japan they drive on the left side, but then they are able to switch the steering wheel, so why wouldn’t they be able to switch the exhaust too? and why do american manufacturers put the exhaust on the right? just to annoy pedestrians? another thing to look out for is that most SUVs that i saw, didn’t only have the exhausts on the right, but they actually had them turned to the right side of car, not just straight out the right side back of the car, so actually directly aiming at the side walk.

i don’t know but is it really this hard to think about the environment a car is going to be in when designing it?

richard dawkins on the existance (or better non-existance) of god

just found a story about richard dawkins’ new book the god delusion on boingboing.

in the book dawkins questions the existence of god, and it looks that like most of his book it is a very well thought out argument, certainly something to look forward too. in a recent bbc interview dawkins talked about the book and his views:

i guess the question is what to do with the idea. i guess there is a fairly high probability that dawkins is right, and there should certainly be more of an acceptance of his kinds of views in society, but at points he sounds like he nearly wants to convert people who believe in god and turn them into non-believers. while religion has been the root cause of many of the most horrible things that happened in history (and today) i think that as long as people practice their believes for themselves they should be able to do so. and, this goes to both sides, believers and non-believers, they should not try to push or force people into adopting their own views. but again, believers are usually way worse when it comes to pushing their believes onto others.

olbermann on what makes an american … and it isn’t being a coward mr president

in today’s american there is a lot of talk about the so called liberal media, but in reality there are few non-conservative voices heard, and even fewer intelligent voices. an intelligent voice doesn’t have to be liberal, but it isn’t bill o’reilly and it isn’t to be found on the pages of the wall street journal’s editorial page, or in the washington times.

that is why it is so refreshing to watch the daily show, because in between the jokes there is real analysis, there is real research, there is real insight and questioning of facts. something that is missing from nearly all of the rest of the media.

for some time now keith olbermann on msnbc has started to become a counter weight to fox’s o’reilly and the like. and it was probably o’reilly’s annoyance of olbermann that actually brought olbermann into the spotlight. but where o’reilly and olbermann differ is that olbermann is less focused in spreading a party’s daily sound-bites, but rather question the authorities (which at the moment is the bush administration.

there have been many olbermann commentaries over the last couple of months, and the one he gave yesterday in response to clinton’s interview is just another one brilliantly countering the president’s and fox’s distraction tactics by blaming clinton for 9/11.

album of the week: out louder by medeski, scofield, martin & wood

i wouldn’t really call it a new feature of the blog, but it is something i plan to keep up, every tuesday, to post either the album i bought that day (after all tuesday is the day most new albums come out) or if i didn’t buy a new album the i will post the album i am listening to most often during that week.

so today i bought two albums. first there is metheny & mehldau, i think this is the first time the two of them play together as just the two of them (although from my early listening of the album there is at least one track where they have additional performers). a really great album, like the two would delivery anything else, but i have to listen to it a bit more.

which leaves me to my first album of the week: out louder by medeski, scofield, martin & wood. the album is great. while i think it is not as good as the last medeski, martin & wood “end of the world party” it is still great. “down the tube” and “miles behind” are so far one of my favorites, and i can’t wait to see them live later in november when they will come to the 9.30 club here in DC. scofield and medeski, martin & wood certainly fit together, a bit of funk (actually a lot), good beats, and unexpected twists in most songs.

on an aside, while this week jazz is clearly on the top of the list, this is not always going to be the case. there are few music genres i don’t like, so it could really be anything.

for real balanced news on the clinton interview… the daily show

we all knew it would happen, and couldn’t wait on how the daily show would cover clinton’s fox interview. and as usual, the daily show is able to do what none of the so called real news shows fail to do, get to the substance of the interview and actually be balanced and informative.

saying good-bye to .mac … it is not that easy

i have had a .mac account since the day .mac accounts came into this world. i used the .mac email a bit, and i posted a lot of pictures on my .mac web site. but when apple sent me an email the other day that my account was up for renewal at $110 (that is because i have a second email for my wife) i started to think about it. i already have two other email accounts one of which is free (gmail) and one that i pay for (well bbs) and i don’t want to give up. i use flickr next to .mac and i use my ipod for backup. in the past the part that made me renew .mac was the web site/web space and the email address (i somehow thought it would be quite hard to get rid off an email address i am using). but flickr has an iphoto integration so it is just as easy to post pictures to flickr as to my .mac account. and i realized that having two other email accounts makes it actually quite easy to get rid of one.

while .mac has been easy to use and a great service (kind of AOL for mac users) the one thing i am quite disappointed about is how hard it is to quit the service. i went to my account page and in good old apple fashion expected a cancel button, but there was none. after a while i went to my billing tab and in there i found a tick-off box about automatic renewal, which was ticked-off, so i un-ticked it. while i am not sure this is the way to cancel my .mac account i assume it is (or better i hope it is). it would be nice if apple would make it as easy to quit as it makes it to use .mac.

as always fox, fair and balanced … oh and stupid

former president clinton gave a fox news interview (the whole interview can be seen here: Clinton Sets The Record Straight On Terrorism, Smacks Down Fox News.

while clinton is certainly aggressive in the way he answers fox’s questions, he certainly has every reason for it since chris wallace is just amazingly unprepared. plus instead of talk about the clinton initiative wallace start off with asking clinton why he didn’t prevent 9/11. after the abc lie-drama and bush’s complete failure to do anything pre or post 9/11 without getting any tough questions (especially from fox) clinton’s reaction is more than understandable. to clinton’s questions about why fox has been so reluctant to play hard ball with the bush administration wallace has nothing to say, just sitting there repeating his sound bites.

but to promote the interview he gave a pre-view on some other fox time slot, in which he couldn’t understand clinton’s reaction, and the other fox news dumb-butt comes up with a lewinsky comment, and both absolutely not getting (or at least not on the air, but maybe they are just as dumb as they seem to be) clinton’s reaction.