Interesting: Both the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and the Wisconsin State Journal ran features today on new UW Football coach Bret Bielema.
I recently saw well tanned UW Athletic Director Barry Alvarez and Bret (also well tanned) riding around in Barry’s two seat convertible on a gorgeous Madison evening. Would have been a great photograph – had I been carrying a camera….
Wow, they’re going to do it. Or at least they’re going to think about doing it. That’s the first thing that came into my mind on a recent Friday morning when The New York Times reported that the parent company of The Wall Street Journal had created a committee “to reassess the ways it delivers news across all its print and online properties.”
Jeff Jarvis notes an interesting paradox:
At the same time that Nielsen announces that the TV networks had their lowest ratings in recorded history — averaging 20 million viewers at a time — YouTube announces that it’s serving 100 million videos a day. Insert apocalyptic punchline here.
The WSJ reports that AOL is considering making online access to its service–including, importantly, email–free. (AOL email users currently have to pay for one of the company’s subscription plans, although much of the rest of the company’s content is already free.) Per the WSJ, this move would vaporize about one-quarter of the company’s revenue, or $2 billion. The company estimates that it would also result in the loss of 8 million paying subscribers.
Blodget also notes that Vonage’s recent IPO continues to be black comedy (public at 17, now 8.25 after just a month….
As Racine has changed, so have its politics. Once, a ritual antagonism for business was a sure vote-getter among Democrats. But Mr. Becker was elected three years ago with a pro-development message, pledging to trim jobs from the public payroll to free resources to attract new residents and businesses.
Racine’s future, Mr. Becker believes, lies in forging stronger links with the regional economy and global markets. Reinvention can be unnerving, he acknowledges, but he says it is his hometown’s best shot at prosperity and progress. “In the past, Racine was a self-contained economy,” he said. “But that is not an option anymore.”
No local economy truly mirrors the nation. But for Racine and its surrounding suburbs, the last few years have been marked by gradually rising prosperity, in step with the national trend. And the recent history of Racine, like that of the nation as a whole, is also the story of how a community comes to grips with the larger forces of globalization and technological change.
I’ve seen a lot of WiFi models lately but this appears to be the first from a local newspaper. (You’ll let me know if I’m wrong, I’m sure.) The Pilot, which covers Pinehurst and several other communities in North Carolina, will provide free WiFi across Moore County. Publisher David Woronoff explains: “The Pilot’s mission is to serve Moore County and we think the technology has advanced to the point that we can help bind the community together in a dynamic and compelling way with The Pilot’s products and Internet service.” They’ve acquired WiFi equipment, hired a GM and will start the rollout with a transmitter on their own building in Southern Pines. This isn’t a value add for print subscribers — it will be accessible to readers and non-readers. The Pilot plans to launch a fee-based WiMax network later this year.
Fritz Attaway & Wendy Seltzer:
>Consumers now have the ability to buy digital versions of music and movies from a vast (and growing) online catalog. But that convenience has come at a price: Most of the digital content is packaged with technology called digital rights management, or DRM, a sort of copy protection that limits what users can do with the material.
The music and movie industries defend DRM as a means of protecting artists and publishers — without it, they say, it would be too easy for users to abuse copyrights by illegally swapping files over the Internet. They also argue that without DRM technologies, publishers wouldn’t have been willing to distribute their content in online music and video stores, such as Apple’s iTunes.
But some consumer advocates argue that DRM often goes too far, treating customers as would-be criminals and putting burdensome restrictions on what they can do with music and movies that were legally purchased. (ITunes, for instance, allows users to burn music to an unlimited number of CDs, but limits the number of computers on which users can play purchased music.)
It was a blast across GM’s bow that was unparalleled in its ferocity and malicious intent. For here was Thomas L. Friedman of the New York Times decreeing that, for the benefit of our nation and society, General Motors should fold. Friedman argues that GM is almost solely responsible for our country’s extreme gasoline demand, which in turn is why our troops are in the Middle East fighting the War on Terrorism.
Then again, few realize that only 40% of the oil America uses today goes into producing gasoline for the 200 plus million automobiles we drive. What Friedman did not rail against was our airline industry, which accounts for 7% of our petroleum use, or the 24% used by business and industry. I’m surprised he didn’t call out New Englanders, because of their inconsiderate use of heating oil in winter, the reason our troops are in Iraq securing crude supplies.
GM’s Brian Akre has much more:
I’ve spent much of the past week trying to get a letter to the editor published in The New York Times in response to the recent Tom Friedman rant (subscription required) against GM (see “Hyperbole and Defamation at The New York Times,” June 1).
I failed. This is my story.
For those of you who haven’t read it already, Mr. Friedman spent 800 words on the Times op/ed page to accuse GM of supporting terrorists, buying votes in Congress and being a corporate “crack dealer” that posed a serious threat to America’s future. He suggested the nation would be better off if Japan’s Toyota took over GM.
That’s a picture of the latest brilliant marketing idea – showing television commercials to people pumping gas. Gas Station TV has been testing this marketing idea in Dallas and is expanding the test to more markets with eye towards having 1,000 gas stations in 21 states by next year. Airing on GSTV will be 15-second commercials as well as news/entertainment content from the ABC television network.
For the week of the broadcast network upfront presentations, Bolt Media hopes this stat delivers a bullet to TV: Only one in four 12- to 34-year-olds can name all four major broadcast networks: ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox.
The finding comes via an online poll conducted by Bolt Media, a 10-year-old Web site that six weeks ago relaunched itself as a place for users to upload videos and photos. About 400 members responded to the questions, including one that asked how respondents spent their free time.
There certainly are some questions about this, given the source of the poll, however, the media fragmentation trend cannot be denied.