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"Tell the chef, the beer is on me."
A touch of irony: There’s good news in the #nbcfail fuss for the network and all networks: The channel is not dead, not yet.
If I went too far — which, of course, is what I do for a living — I might argue that once we could get all the sports from the Olympics live on the web and apps, then we’d abandon old-fashioned broadcast channels and fragment ourselves silly. The channel, I’d argue, is a vestigial and artificial necessity of scarce broadcast spectrum, so who needs it?
But, of course, that didn’t happen. NBC is getting record ratings for its old-fashioned channels — even though it is airing an incredible volume of video online and even though Twitter, Facebook, and the web act as gigantic spoiler networks assuring that every result is known by every American hours before prime time.
Here’s the silver lining, then: Viewers still want channels and the value they add. That is precisely why they’re so mad that NBC is not showing the hottest contests live, because that’s what they expect a great channel to give them: the best, right now.
So NBC could take the #NBCfail fiasco as a Valentine. Not only would I argue that all the spoilers and chatter online are driving audience to prime time but the audience is telling NBC they’d prefer to watch a well-produced channel than the internet.
Take that, Jarvis and all you internet triumphalists!
Listen hard, NBC. Serve your audience well and maybe you’ll keep an audience.
A few issues have popped up in my reading round the web that make me think that if online video has fallen off your agenda then it may be worth thinking again. A few things make me think that.
Engagement with HTML5 by publishers means that the idea of cross platform (web, tablet etc) video becomes a reality. The recent announcement by FT that they were moving away from the apple fold to deliver their apps from a web base shows a certain maturity in that area. It may not be universal but those publishers who engaged with apps with half an eye to html5 and associated tech are starting to see the benefit. They also have an exit route from Apple’s walled garden.
The announcement that the WSJ is upping it’s online video would, on the surface, seem to be a simple illustration of the point. But theres a bit more to it:
The Journal has expanded its video content in spite of its contract with CNBC, the leading business news network on television, and in spite of the fact that The Journal’s parent has its own business network, Fox Business. The CNBC contract expires in about 15 months, but already Journal reporters tend to appear more often on Fox than on CNBC.
The shifting approaches of print in particular to the challenge of keeping your voice in a spreading market, often rests on the idea of impartiality. An alignment to Fox is as blunt a move to prove the point as you can get. But if you want to establish a ‘voice’ then video can be a key part of that changing ‘brand’.
Newsless broadcast
But there is also a shift on the other side of that relationship. There is a very clear by broadcasters towards product and not a service focus. That will leave a gap that print will have to backfill. Yes there is a big investment in online delivery services but the commercial driver is very much a product proposition. Most of the large broadcasters are seeing a real benefit in exclusive and value-added programming online. The ‘watch again’ of the iplayer-like channels, the webisodes and web exclusive episodes are all examples of how broadcast has ‘finally’ found its feet online.
I think that news is low on the agenda in a broadcasters strategy. For broadcasters, news is very much a service. It’s often something they have to do as a requirement to a license or a sop to public service. It’s easier to advertise around the x-factor than it is news at ten and that’s where the money will go. Non-broadcast providers will pay the price for that.
If you buy in your video from a third party, expect the prices to go up and the quality, range and relevance to go down.
LocalTV
Here in the UK, we also have the looming Spector of localTV. There is obviously a new market to explore there. I’m skeptical about the range, depth and return that market will have for journalism but, hey, it never hurts to consider it.
So video gives you a good opportunity to extend your identity and cut free those ties with an increasingly newsless broadcast sector. Just invest a little in understanding the technology underlying the new platforms.In the long run it might be a better investment than simply paying to be on those platforms.
PC Mag :: Slate's Farhad Manjoo, makes an eloquent argument for raising Twitter's character limit. He argues that you can't say a whole lot in 140 characters. He's right that Twitter's character limit is tied to the service it was launched on, the SMS text messaging system, which, after message handlers and the sender's name, left just 140 characters to speak your mind. But then Manjoo makes a leap. "The 140-character limit now feels less like a feature than a big, obvious bug."
[Lance Ulanoff:] Twitter was never intended as a conversation hub. Yes, it's for sharing, some engagement, but is, necessarily, a broadcast and share medium. Longer posts, even the 280 characters he suggests, would undercut that intention.
My vote? I join Lance Ulanoff: "Dear Twitter: don't change ... ."
Continue to read Lance Ulanoff, www.pcmag.com
TV News Check :: The beat system, under which reporters cover their beats — and only their beats — hasn’t existed in many TV newsrooms for years. And some believe that it's contributed to a decline in the quality of local TV news. Although the new economic realities of the business make the widespread return of full-fledged beat reporters unlikely, some are trying to bring them back in different and limited ways.
[Jerry Gumbert, CEO of AR&D:] News leaders have to realign priorities and reinstitute beat systems ... if broadcast journalism is going to survive. Otherwise, TV newscasts will become increasingly indistinguishable from one another — a phenomenon already underway — as they become outlets for regurgitated or old news, he says.
Continue to read Diana Marszalek, www.tvnewscheck.com
The second keynote of the ISOJ was by Meredith Artley, vice president and managing editor, CNN.com
She started by stressing the importance of journalism and showed dramatic images of the aftermath of the disaster in Japan.
Like for other news organisations, Japan has proved a major draw for CNN. In the 10 days since the Japan quake on March 11, CNN had:
Artley went on to talk about some of the work under way in CNN in participation, video and mobile.
One such initiative is “Open Story” that pulls together traditional reporting, user-generated content and data. Open Story is a collaborative story-telling interface, such as this one on Japan.
Another project to let users leave a video comment on stories will go live this summer. And potentially, said Artley, the videos could be used on air.
She also previewed a new video interface, with a more cinematic feel and video in HD. CNN also wants to create a more integrated viewing experience, so that video viewing can pick up from PC screen to iPad.
On mobile, CNN gets 174 million page views a month in February and these are expected to be over 200 million in March due to Japan. On the iPhone and iPad, CNN has had 5 million downloads.
Artley compared CNN’s strategy to Pilates: strengthening the core and stretching into new areas.
It can be hard to understand Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s seemingly delusional rantings. But this is a leader who has sought to turn Libya into a “jamahiriya” – his vision of a state of the masses.
During my time covering the North Africa for the BBC in the early 1990s, I visited Libya a couple of times. One of my TV reports from the time sought to explore how Gaddafi was trying to shape Libyan society.
Though it is from December 1994, I am sharing the video as think it helps us understand what life was like under the Libyan ruler.
…in this case, one I made more than a decade ago. The Internet was young and fanciful thoughts about what might happen to news were being bandied about when I came up with my wild concept.
Imagine a news organization that only employed a few anchors and reporters, but a ton of writers and producers. Imagine a breaking story…a plane crash. Rather than sending a team out, a producer does an Internet search (not even sure if Google was around at this point) and manages to locate a home across the street from the crash. Makes a phone call and tells the person who answers to hook up their video camera to their computer, point it out the window, and describe what they see. Almost unimaginable.
So what do we have today? Skype. Live streaming sites. Uh…it has happened, just not yet completely the way I guessed it might.
All this brought about by a discussion on b-roll.
What began as a discussion of the National Press Photographers Association contest and magazine has evolved into a discussion of the place of broadcast (read TV) members in the organization, how they are being served by NPPA (or not), and how the quality of broadcast has gone downhill – in terms of production values and equipment.
Sigh. There are a lot of anguished folks out there…who remember the “good ole days,” when a camera(wo)man could feel good about what they produced at the end of the day.
But financial hard times are a reality and we don’t always get what we want.
One of the lessons to be learned is from a very old, very tiny camera – the 35mm camera. For more details, check out the information on photo.net.
1914: Oscar Barnack, employed by German microscope manufacturer Leitz, develops camera using the modern 24x36mm frame and sprocketed 35mm movie film.
THAT was just the beginning. The camera became commercially available in 1924 (Leica) and took off in the years just before WWII. By the 1960s it had pushed the standard high quality cameras into the background and for forty plus years became the standard in print news photography – and there it reigned until the advent of digital.
We seem to be poised on the cusp of another change in standards…whether broadcast shooters like it or not. While there will always be room for big bucks, high end, expensive cameras, I am convinced that the news broadcast standard is the 1/3 inch three chip pro-sumer camera…with of course, the requisite bells and whistles. XLR, manual controls, shoulder mount, good glass.
The audience may love high-end high-quality in their movies. But I suspect they will settle for excellent quality video in news and general programs. I just hope they also demand the highest production standards to go with it.
The UK TV network, Channel 4, has a comedy show starting on January 20 that takes a satirical look at the news.
10 O’Clock Live is described as “an intelligent, informative and – more importantly – funny take on the world of current affairs with a mix of debates, interviews, topical comedy, investigations and opinion pieces.”
The line-up of hosts is impressive: Charlie Brooker, Jimmy Carr, Lauren Laverne and David Mitchell.
The trailer is a delight, especially if you’ve worked in TV news.
It is official.
Newspapers have surpassed broadcast in numbers viewing online video. PLUS they are uploading more video.
The revised CBC guidelines on social media are to be welcomed. They are based on the principles CBC applies to other forms of media, rather than a detailed list of do’s and don’ts.
The guidelines acknowledge the importance of social media tools “for gathering information, as well as disseminating it.”
But add that “when using social media as an information-gathering tool, we apply the same standards as those for any other source of newsgathering.”
The guidelines advise against using social media to talk about unconfirmed reports:
We are consistent in our standards, no matter what the platform, in disseminating information. If we would not put the information on air or on our own website, we would not use social media to report that information.
In the section on sourcing, the CBC stresses that “our standards apply to all types of sources, including those coming via social media, when they are used for news gathering purposes.”
This suggests the CBC would do what the BBC did during the Mumbai bombing, publishing unverified tweets alongside material from its reporters.
The section on the personal use of social media also draws from general CBC principles. It implicit acknowledges how social media tends to blur the line between the personal and professional, advising staff to “maintain professional decorum and do nothing that can bring the Corporation into disrepute.”
Rather than forbidding staff from expressing their opinion on personal social media accounts, the guidelines advise that “the expression of personal opinions on controversial subjects or politics can undermine the credibility of CBC journalism and erode the trust of our audience.”
Some may see this as extending professional codes of conduct into personal social media spaces. One of the aspects of social media is how it combines both the personal and professional in usually publicly accessible platforms.
(Full disclosure: I am married to the director of digital media for CBC News, Rachel Nixon)
Frontline, PBS’s public affairs documentary series, has one of the best reputations in the business for the things that journalism values most highly: courageous reporting, artful storytelling, the kind of context-heavy narrative that treats stories not simply as stories, but as vehicles of wisdom. It’s a “news magazine” in the most meaningful sense of the term.
But even an institution like Frontline isn’t immune to the disruptions of the web. Which is to say, even an institution like Frontline stands to benefit from smart leveraging of the web. The program’s leadership team is rethinking its identity to marry what it’s always done well — produce fantastic broadcasts — with something that represents new territory: joining the continuous conversation of the web. To that end, Frontline will supplement its long-form documentaries with shorter, magazine-style pieces — which require a shorter turnaround time to produce — and with online-only investigations. (The site’s motto: “Thought-provoking journalism on air and online.”)
But it’s also expanding its editorial efforts beyond packaged investigations, hoping to shift its content in a more discursive direction. Which leads to a familiar question, but one that each organization has to tackle in its own way: How do you preserve your brand and your value while expanding your presence in the online world?
One tool Frontline is hoping can help answer that question: Twitter. And not just Twitter, the conversational medium — though “we really want to be part of the journalism conversation,” Frontline’s senior producer, Raney Aronson-Rath, told me — but also Twitter, the aggregator. This afternoon, Frontline rolled out four topic-focused Twitter accounts — “micro-feeds,” it’s calling them:
— Conflict Zones & Critical Threats (@FrontlineCZCT), which covers national security and shares the series’ conflict-zone reporting;
— Media Watchers (@FrontlineMW), which tracks news innovation and the changing landscape of journalism;
— Investigations (@FrontlineINVSTG), which covers true crime, corruption, and justice — spotlighting the best investigative reporting by Frontline and other outlets; and
— World (@FrontlineWRLD), which covers international affairs.
The topic-focused feeds are basically a beat system, applied to Twitter. They’re a way of leveraging one of the core strengths of Frontline’s journalism: its depth. Which is something that would be almost impossible for Frontline, Aronson-Rath notes, to achieve with a single feed. So “we decided that the best thing for us was to be really intentional about who we were going to reach out to and what kind of topics we were going to tweet about — and not just have it be a promotional tool.”
Each feed will be run by two-person teams, one from the editorial side and the other from the promotional — under the broad logic, Aronson-Rath notes, that those two broad fields are increasingly collapsing into each other. And, even more importantly, that “all the work that we do in the social media landscape is, by its very essence, editorial.” Even something as simple as a retweet is the result of an editorial decision — and one that requires the kind of contextual judgment that comes from deep knowledge of a given topic.
So Frontline’s feed runners, Aronson-Rath notes, “are also the people who have, historically, been working in those beats in Frontline’s broadcast work.” (Frontline communications manager Jessica Smith, for example, who’ll be helping to run the “Conflict Zones” feed, covered that area previously, in cultivating the conversation between Frontline and the national security blogosphere as a component of the program’s earlier web efforts.) In other words: “These guys know what they’re doing on these beats.”
To that end, the teams’ members will be charged with leveraging their knowledge to curate content from the collective resources of all of Frontline’s contributors — from reporters to producers, public media partners to internal staff — and, of course, from the contributors across the web. The teams will work collaboratively to produce their tweets (they’ll even sit next to each other to maximize the teamwork). And some feeds will contain not just curated content, but original reporting, as well. Frontline reporters Stephen Grey and Murray Smith are about to dispatch to Afghanistan; while they’re there, they’ll tweet from @FrontlineCZCT. (They’ll tweet from personal feeds, as well, which @FrontlineCZCT curators will pull into the Frontline-branded feed.)
The broad idea behind the new approach is that audiences identify with topics as much as they do with brands. And there’s also, of course, the recognition of the sea of material out there which is of interest to consumers, but which ends up, documentary filmmaking being what it is, on the cutting-room floor. The new approach, it’s hoped, will give Frontline fans a behind-the-scenes look into the film production process. “You wouldn’t actually know where Frontline’s reporting teams are right now,” Aronson-Rath points out. “You only know when we show up.” Now, though, “when a team goes into Afghanistan, we’re going to let you know where they are. We’re going to give you some intelligence about what they’re doing. And it’ll be a completely different level of a conversation, we’re hoping.”
It’ll also be a different level of engagement — for Frontline’s producers and its consumers. It’s a small way of expanding the idea of what a public affairs documentary is, and can be, in the digital world: a process, indeed, as much as a product. “We think,” Aronson-Rath says, “that this is going to help keep our stories alive.”
The latest in a continuing series presenting the career highlights of famed journalist Keith Olbermann.
Video Rating: 4 / 5
The BBC News Editors blog has an interesting post from Nazes Afroz, regional executive editor for Asia & Pacific at the World Service, explaining how the BBC has been covering the ongoing Pakistan floods, keeping victims informed through local radio partners and sourcing stories from people calling the radio stations.
He said that as the floods continue to devastate the country the BBC had to adapt its coverage to suit a more long-term model.
When the disaster struck a month ago, it became apparent that the story would be very big, affecting millions of people. As the story became bigger within the first few days, we made the decision to start a “Lifeline” programme with essential life-saving information for the flood victims. The broadcasts contain information like fresh flood alerts, weather reports, how to cope with diseases, how and where to get aid etc (…)
[The radio stations] also decided to use a toll-free phone with voice recording facility and asked the flood victims to call and record their stories.
After being taken on by the BBC Worldwide’s local partner stations, the service was able to be offered in Pashtu as well as Urdu, opening it up to an audience of between 60 and 80 million people. Their stories have provided first-hand accounts of events for the BBC’s overall coverage.
See his full post here…Similar Posts:
Thanks to tvspy for the link to this study about video viewing habits.
Check out full details by reading the full article, but summarized in their headline:
Live TV Is For Old People: Time Shifting And Online Make Up Nearly Half Of All Viewing
Following the growing trend for animation re-enactments of news stories in Taiwan and Hong Kong TV broadcasts, Time Magazine this week detailed the successes of one of the companies behind these videos, Next Media Animation.
According to the report, the Taiwan news service produces more than 30 computer-animated re-constructions every day, from Lindsay Lohan’s prison term to Gordon Brown’s rumoured bullying to the actions of Steve Slater, the US air steward who abandoned his plane by emergency slide after an altercation with a passenger.
The company reportedly had a bid for a cable licence denied last year, due to “the sensational nature” of some animations. As a result Next Media launched as an online news channel and has been live for around two weeks, according to the feature.
Next Media’s commercial director Mark Simon is quoted by Time Magazine as saying that in the near future “if you don’t have an animation in your news sequence, it’s going to be like not having colour photographs in a newspaper.”
Following the Time Magazine article, Lostremote.com picked the story up and asked whether animations like Slater’s slide exit, which it reports is receiving more than four million views a day on Next Media’s site, could become a hit with Western audiences.
I can imagine it starting with tabloid TV, but can’t rule out some station using a variation of animated news. After all, we use some animations already (think of an animation showing a plane going down a runway, taking off and crashing). This is another step entirely. While it’s clear the stuff is animated, will that be enough to keep news from crossing the line into fiction? Judging from the popularity, it’s clear the audience likes this stuff. But is it local news-worthy?
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Broadcast journalism used to be restricted to TV and radio only, but now the Internet plays an integral role in the field of broadcasting the news through blogs, videos and station Web sites. Understand the definition of broadcast journalism with insider information from an award-winning former TV news anchor in this free video on television jobs. Expert: Glenn Selig Contact: www.ThePublicityAgency.com Bio: Glenn Selig currently owns and operates The Publicity Agency based in Tampa, Fla. Filmmaker: Christopher Rokosz
Looking beyond the hype that normally accompanies news from Apple, the new iPhone 4 has the potential to put a multimedia production suite into the hands of journalists.
One of the most significant improvements is the 5 megapixel camera, with the ability to shoot video in 720P HD.
The more powerful A4 processor and the new screen resolution will also make it easier and faster to edit video on the go.
At the UBC Graduate School of Journalism where I teach, we have been one of the journalism schools trialing multimedia editing apps created by Canadian company Vericorder.
The latest version, called 1st Video, offers the ability to record, edit and send video, as well as photo slideshows and audio.
Using an external mic, such as this mini mic sold by Vericorder, the quality of the sound recording was very good.
A device that you carry all the time loaded with a mobile multimedia editing suite is a powerful combination for a journalist, let alone people caught up in news events.
Oone of the main limitations has been the quality of the video that the iPhone 3GS could record. At best, it was 640 by 480 resolution.
The new camera addresses this limitation. Of course, there are still questions over the actual quality of the video and it is not going to replace professional or prosumer HD camcorders.
But it might just out of the newsroom the pocket HD cameras from Flip or Kodak, with a quality good enough for broadcast.
"Tell the chef, the beer is on me."
"Basically the price of a night on the town!"
"I'd love to help kickstart continued development! And 0 EUR/month really does make fiscal sense too... maybe I'll even get a shirt?" (there will be limited edition shirts for two and other goodies for each supporter as soon as we sold the 200)