Networks explain why Prime Time TV viewing is off

This is from today's USA Today. Old media is scrambling for why viewing is off, other excuses included the fact that daylight savings occurred earlier and therefore people were outside longer (?). It might be also that alt media on the web is replacing the commercial ladened shows are getting usurped by dvrs and downloads.

clipped from www.usatoday.com We can't really examine things in the same mind-set that we did a year ago," ABC research chief Larry Hyams says. Trouble is, advertisers so far are refusing to pay for all those procrastinating viewers, arguing that many skip commercials. So Nielsen is testing ways to measure audiences for commercials, not just programs. Still other observers worry the shortfall may mark a tipping point as networks lose share to the Internet, cable and other media. "When you put it all together, it snowballs," says Starcom Media's Sam Armando. Yet hope springs eternal as the finale-filled May sweeps begins: "In another month we can have turned the corner."

From Andy Kessler's Blog in the NYTimes

clipped from kessler.blogs.nytimes.com Don’t get me wrong. The Internet will soon deliver all our video clips — sitcoms, sports, the whole shebang. But whoever creates and controls this content is who will make the big returns from it. Google is tops at search. It’s not yet obvious it will be tops in video. The game of lifting video clips made by others is almost over. If Google wants to stay in the game, it will need to ramp up its spending on video big time.

From David Denby in the New Yorker

clipped from www.newyorker.com Storytellers, relying on sequence and causality, make sense out of nonsense; they impose order, economy, and moral consequence on the helter-skelter wash of experience. The notion that one event causes another, and that the entire chain is a unified whole, with a complex, may be ambivalent, but, in any case, coherent meaning, not only brings us to a point of resolution; it allows us to navigate through our lives.

neuromarketing

Whaddyaknow! Marketers are using neuroscience to sell. I think storytelling (myth, fable, fantasy) and the connecting of neurons are as powerful as the science.

about story from KQED

From the KQED Digital Storytelling Initiative:

"The restorying process can be used as an agent for personal change and the transformation of a negative experience into a positive one. As a therapeutic application, storytelling is a technique that encourages people to analyze events and relationships clearly and put them into perspective. This process grants permission for a negative or stressful situation to be developed into a positive or resurrective narrative. The concept is simple: you can't change what happened, but you can change where you stand in relation to that story. That is, you don't need to stand in the victim's place. If you retell the story, you become the author. Through that reauthoring process, the story gets rewritten according to your version of it."

New Yorker Article on State of Cinema

Great piece in the NYer regarding cinema by David Denby, one of my favorite film critics. I do dislike 99 percent of Hollywood productions BUT I LOVE THE BIG SCREEN. It is different than the tiny web screen. I watch most of my media now in little, tiny 320x240 screens on my computer. I am as enthralled and bored as I am with big pictures. There is real psychology to where and how you watch. But if you become engaged in a story, no matter how big of a screen you are watching, that shows the real power.

Interviewing Problems and Solutions

In this month's GQ, correspondent Chris Heath gives us a delightful insight on what to do when an interview goes bad. He didn't intend for this to happen, but in his interview with De Niro he had to show us behind the scenes to explain the dearth of material.

The article really goes to show how important the relationship is between the interviewee and the interviewer. Sometimes even the best can be foiled by reluctant interviewees. Heath has guts though and presses on!

Link

Sarnoff Quote from 1950

“When Television has fulfilled its destiny, humanity’s sense of physical limitation will be swept away, and boundaries of sight and hearing will be the limits of the earth itself. With this may come a new horizon, a new philosophy, a new sense of freedom and greatest of all, perhaps a finer and broader understanding between all the people in the world.”

David Sarnoff
Chairman of the Board
RCA
1950

A.O. Scott in the NYTimes 11/22/06

"In narrative art, nothing is more artificial than an ending — life, after all, does go on — and Mr. Altman’s endings often serve two purposes. They bring the artifice to a dazzling pitch of virtuosity while exposing it as a glorious sham. They revel in plenitude, in throngs and spectacles, but there is a throb of emptiness, of incompletion, in the midst of the frenzy."

Aging Thoughts

From AOL Headline about lack of programming for the 40 plus age set:

"One statistic he's sure to cite: The survey found 51 percent of the postwar generation describe themselves as "open to new ideas." Meanwhile, only 12 percent of young adults think the older folks feel that way.

Why does that matter? Jones said the average media buyer or planner is under 30. Many are undoubtedly hired for their know-how in appealing to a specific generation, and it isn't the baby boomers.

"There is this huge perception versus reality situation in the marketplace," he said.

Jones is pushing the idea of a "middlescence," about 40-to-59-year-olds who don't feel young anymore but don't feel old, and have plenty of discretionary income."


I still wonder why the under 40 set is bought at $300 a minute while the older set is bought at $100. Age is so "long tail" there is more money to spend and more money to spend for a longer time.

In the world of television I would be concentrating much more on the 40 plus demographic especially as the under 40 flocks to the internet. That is not to say that the over 40 is not capable, perhaps the over 40 just doesn't spend its time investing in mindless entertainment.

This study shows what it the ongoing paradigm in TV advertising: statistics and perception really don't add up.

Lobes

"Movies can't work with the frontal lobe," says Mr. Kidd. "We can't tell the audience what to feel. We can only figure out what we want them to take away from a scene, and then use the camera to suggest where the undercurrent is going."

--NYTimes 10/25/02, Dylan Kidd

Kiki Smith in NYTimes

“Also, the hardest thing is to get past your taste — past your own formulaic way of doing things. Otherwise you’re stopped by what you know, which is limited. Chance is what a lot of artists use. In my case, I’ll arrange ways for things to be unpredictable. That’s what’s nice about working on prints. You’re working with other people so you have to let go of some of your own ideas. Almost everything I do involves collaboration.”

Kiki Smith

Critical Thinking Matters

"I am inclined to believe that the logic of images is the prime mover of constructive imagination."

Théodule-Armand Ribot
French Psychologist

Quote from Suzan-Lori Parks in the NYer

"When you wake up and look at your lover or husband, or whatever, that's a way of honoring your commitment. But then you get out of bed and say another kind of prayer when you sit down at your desk. 'Yes! I'm a writer.' When you make that commitment all sorts of things move toward you."

From the Blog of Brown Trout

Same thing with writing. Storytelling, behind sex and food, is the third most direct way of communicating with fellow hominids. Music, dance, visual arts all follow after. When you read something that's written well, or when you hear a story told, you are living inside the author's brain. You are swimming with their soul. You are experiencing what it is to be human and alive. And let me say that I'm not talking about Tom Clancy here, or anything that is written with any consideration for a market.

Ken Burns in NYTimes

“The essential DNA of all my films issues from still photography,” Mr. Burns said. But Mr. Liebling’s influence on his work, he said, reached much deeper, to a personal and ultimately philosophical level that has guided many of his choices of subject and approach.
“It was this broadly humanistic mantra that he instilled in us,” he said, adding: “Jerry turned me and made me look inward, and it was not always a comfortable thing. I changed as a result of it. It was like molting.” He also taught, Mr. Burns said, that “all meaning accrues in duration — sometimes you have to just slow down and look.”

Kundera wrote a book about slowing down: "Slowness."

What Art Video is not

I have come to realize that so many people title video that fits nowhere else as "art video." OK, maybe so, but it usually fits in the sub category of "BAD art video."

Fair use and Copyright

The thing is about copyright is that I follow the laws as best I can but watch so many break the laws. I feel like I am missing out. I can't help but to think that all of the videos posted that use copyrighted music and materials will one day pay for their misuse. I also feel that the users who break the laws and post copyrighted material are potentially ruining the free web for the rest of us.

Don't get me wrong. The laws are ridiculous. The Constitution wanted to give protection to original work and thinkers, but it is written in such a way that eventually these products will return to the public to build upon (really, are there original ideas or just mash ups of other ideas). Congress continues to extend what constitutes public domain every few years. I don't know the truth of this, but I have heard that copyright control has been extended everything Disney's Mickey Mouse comes up to be entered into the public domain. Whatever, copyright seems to protect greed more often then fair use. BUT, I do believe in the concept. Our execution of the law has much to be desired.

Courts have begun to sue copyright breakers by fining per dub of copyright infringement. I suppose this could extend to per download. With fines, set in law at a minimum of $750 per infraction, this soon amounts to a lot of money.

The Center for Social Media has published a short document on what is their idea of fair use and appropriate use. This is not legal advice in as much as it is a guideline to help keep one from furthering the scrap in greedy pockets.

It is upon us to police ourselves and push our creativity to avoid breaking copyright laws. In the best case it helps other artists like ourselves. In the worst case it prevents the greedy from getting richer.

What are first videos

It is interesting to note (in my experience at least) that what eventually appears in most new video student work is:
1. Shots of driving
2. Shots of an eye
3. Shots of the videographers feet walking.

Deeper Meaning Usefulness

Knowledge is the recitation of fact.
If you know something you do not necessarily understand it.

Understanding is the application of these facts.
If you understand something it is not necessarily meaningful.

Meaning is the value to you or others.
If you know meaning you know something.

If videos are not meaningful I am usually quite bored.