Amazon Patent Reform Timeline and Jeff Bezo’s interaction with Tim O’Reilly.
Category: Media
A Closer Look at Plunging Circulation
As was widely reported, the six-month circulation numbers for U.S. newspapers released earlier this week carried plenty of bad news: an industry-wide tumble year-to-year of 2.8% daily and 3.4% on Sunday. There were much deeper losses in big metro markets like Boston, Los Angeles and Miami.
As grim as those numbers are, a deeper look into the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) reports and into some online data released by the Newspaper Association of America (NAA), makes the overall economic picture even a little bleaker.
True to their word, most companies and individual papers continue to burn so-called “junk” circulation, such as the category called “other paid” as well as third-party or bulk sales, all of it of little value to advertisers. That would support the idea that the business is pruning numbers, but improving the quality of its circulation.
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Take the six largest papers of Lee Enterprises (Lee owns half of Capitol Newspapers), the best circulation performer among public companies. Together they achieved a highly respectable daily loss of just 0.3%. However those same papers lost 25,000 circulation among those paying 50 percent or greater of the full price of the paper, a drop of 4.1%. At the same time, it added 13,500 in the 25 to 50 percent category, a 43.9% increase. That means the papers had significant losses among subscribers paying a higher percentage of the full price while adding readers who paid more steeply discounted rate
The Daily Show is as Substantive as the “real” news
The Daily Show is much funnier than traditional newscasts, but a new study from Indiana University says it has the same amount of meat on its bones when it comes to coverage of the news. The brand of news coverage Jon Stewart and the rest of The Daily Show’s staff brings to the airwaves is just as substantive as traditional news programs like World News Tonight and the CBS Evening News, according to the study conducted by IU assistant professor of telecommunications Julia R. Fox and a couple of graduate students.
The researchers looked at coverage of the 2004 Democratic and Republican national conventions and the first presidential debate of the fall campaign, all of which were covered by the mainstream broadcast news outlets and The Daily Show. Individual broadcasts of the nightly news and corresponding episodes of The Daily Show were analyzed by the researchers, who found that the “average amounts of video and audio substance in the broadcast network news stories” were no different from The Daily Show. Perhaps more telling, The Daily Show delivered longer stories on the topic.
Satellite Radio Answers the Question
i’ve not thought much about satellite radio (XM, Sirius) until a recent lengthy drive around central Colorado. Prior to satellite radio, if you wanted music while driving, the choices were:
- an iPod with an fm adaptor, or a cable plugged into the rental car’s radio, or
- Local radio
Hertz, perhaps via a Sirius promotion, included their service in my rental car. I was pleasantly surprised with the depth and breadth of music available (though Lefsetz says that XM is superior in this respect – and in reception quality).
Several of Sirius’s songs were a pleasant surprise: Elton John’s classic “Funeral for a Friend” and Willie Nelson’s acoustic “Crazy“, among others.
There were some disappointments, including replays (Coldplay) and the odd playing of the “Fray” in Sirius’s “Coffeehouse” program. I have to assume that they are paid to plug the Fray.
I was pleasantly surprised with the Sirius reception while driving in Canyons. The only places we lost reception were I-70’s Eisenhower Tunnel and in some deep canyons.
The satellite choices certainly are compelling, particularly given the same old, same old, played over and over on traditional stations.
Finally, I continue to be amazed at the quantity of 30 and 40 year old music played in restaurants, cafe’s and bars. Lunching on trout tacos one day, we heard Joan Baez, Steve Miller, The Who, the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin among many others. Is there nothing interesting from the 21st Century?
Alt Badger Broadcast
“Bielema is the only undeafeated Big 10 coach in conference play” is the sort of useful commentary one will hear listening to the Badger football squad on WSUM (Student radio) rather than the commercial options. Obviously, Michigan took care of that distinction handily Saturday.
“Emergence of Citizen’s Media”
Interesting. A forum addressing “citizens’ media” populated with no one actually practicing it.
Sort of like the big steel mill folks ruminating over the mini mills that over time dominated the industry.
A mini-mill is traditionally a secondary steel producer; however, Nucor (one of the world’s largest steel producers) uses mini-mills exclusively. Usually it obtains most of its iron from scrap steel, recycled from used automobiles and equipment or byproducts of manufacturing. Direct reduced iron (DRI) is sometimes used with scrap, to help maintain desired chemistry of the steel, though usually DRI is too expensive to use as the primary raw steelmaking material. A typical mini-mill will have an electric arc furnace for scrap melting, a ladle furnace or vacuum furnace for precision control of chemistry, a strip or billet continuous caster for converting molten steel to solid form, a reheat furnace and a rolling mill.
Originally the mini-mill concept was adapted to production of bar products only, such as concrete reinforcing bar, flats, angles, channels, pipe, and light rails. Since the late 1980s, successful introduction of the direct strip casting process has made mini-mill production of strip feasible. Often a mini-mill will be constructed in an area with no other steel production, to take advantage of local resources and lower-cost labour. Mini-mill plants may specialize, for example, making coils of rod for wire-drawing use, or pipe, or in special sections for transportation and agriculture.
Broadcast Flag & Indy Media
Kevin Marks raises some great issues in his review of Apple’s iTV announcement:
Reading Paul Boutin’s coverage of Apple’s video announcements today, There are several questions that come to mind (and I know Jobs prefers not to answer questions).
[..]
In other words, will it play HD content made by independents cleanly, or will it require broadcast flag handshakes?
Facebook & Privacy
Facebook implemented a new feature called "News Feeds" that displays every action you take on the site to your friends. You see who added who, who commented where, who removed their relationship status, who joined what group, etc. This is on your front page when you login to Facebook. This upset many Facebook members who responded with outrage. Groups emerged out of protest. Students Against Facebook News Feeds is the largest with over 700,000 members. Facebook issued various press statements that nothing was going to change. On September 5, Mark Zuckerberg (the founder) told everyone to calm down. They didn’t. On September 8, he apologized and offered privacy options as an olive branch. Zuckerberg invited everyone to join him live on the Free Flow of Information on the Internet group where hundreds of messages wizzed by in the hour making it hard to follow any thread; the goal was for Facebook to explain its decision. In short, they explained that this is to help people keep tabs on their friends but only their friends and all of this information is public anyhow.
WSUM Continues to Impress
I listen to 91.7 (www.wsum.org streaming online) periodically, including yesterday – catching a pleasant Massive Attack piece.. Their musical depth and breadth continues to impress – in what is largely a sea of sameness, playing the Police and others over and over and over.
Incisive Questions
Three recent and often rare examples of reporters asking incisive questions:
- Cliff Christl:
What happens if Koren Robinson kills somebody in Wisconsin driving drunk or fleeing the police?
Green Bay Packers general manager Ted Thompson wore a smile late Monday afternoon as he prepared to meet the media in the Lambeau Field atrium to announce the signing of wide receiver and kick returner Koren Robinson. When that was the first question fired at Thompson following his brief introductory remarks, he turned ashen and somber as he tried to collect himself and provide an answer.
“Oh, I can’t answer anything like that,” Thompson said after a two-second pause. “There’s issues in his past that obviously he’s made some mistakes, but most of those issues are covered under the confidentiality of the NFL and the NFLPA. There’s programs set up and that sort of thing, and that’s where that lies.”
More on Robinson
- Bill Lueders:
I only asked because no one else did. When Kathleen Falk announced her candidacy for attorney general against fellow Democrat Peg Lautenschlager at the City-County Building on Monday, I thought it would be one of first things that came up. But while several reporters quizzed Falk about Lautenschlager’s 2004 arrest for drunk driving (Falk deftly evaded the question, saying voters would have to reach their own conclusions), none asked her directly about her own record in this area. And so I raised my hand, waited until Falk called on me, and popped the question.
Whether or not Falk choose to make an issue of it, I prefaced, the key reason Lautenschlager was seen as vulnerable was this drunk driving arrest, even though this is conduct that most people in Wisconsin have engaged in. And so I asked Falk point-blank: “Can you say whether you have ever in your life gotten behind the wheel of an automobile after consuming alcohol? Have you never done that yourself?”
- Jason Shephard:
The State Journal points to studies that suggest its readership is at sky-high levels. “The numbers for Capital Newspapers are absolutely stellar,” boasts an internal memo from the company’s marketing director, Jon Friesch. “In Dane County, 83% of adults read the Sunday Wisconsin State Journal, and 79% read the daily or Saturday edition of The Capital Times or Wisconsin State Journal.”
But while these numbers come from an independent company, Scarborough Research, they may be misleading, since they include even casual readers. The 83% number, clarifies Friesch, measures respondents who have read the Sunday paper “in the last month”; the 79% number is respondents who have read either of the two dailies “in the past five days.”