CBC News Sunday Earns Misplay of the Week

Back on February 24 I pointed out that, apparently, more journalists need media literacy when it comes to 'scientific studies.' Today on CBC News Sunday I learned that the problem runs far deeper than that. Aside from bad health and science reporting - arts reporting was today called into serious question.

On News Sunday today Evon Solomon and Caole MacNeil along with two guests (didn't get names, I think one of them was from cbc.ca) were discussing Susan Boyle's appearance on Britain's Got Talent. There were three chief points in this discussion that I think are meaningful.

• 1. That we were set up for the reaction to Boyle's performance because reality television is heavily scripted.


• 2. That we expect our musical performers to be better packaged - pretty, well groomed, well dressed and well marketed


• 3. That we are not used to natural talent - we are used to people who sing with digital enhancement etc.,

Point one is obvious. I just hope that journalists repeat it more often. There is very little that is real about reality television. It is just as scripted and packaged as comedy and drama. There are no surprises in reality tv.

Points two and three are deeply troubling and call into question whether arts journalists are actually doing journalism anymore. It was unclear who the 'we' they were referring to was but it obviously included themselves. It certainly does not include the people at CBC Radio - who have been doing an excellent job of covering Canadian music (especially Radio 3 and the new Radio 2). If the people at CBC sunday expect or are used to pre-packaged artists, who use digital enhancement and have large marketing teams then they have no idea whatsoever what is going on in Canadian music. It indicates that they are relying solely on press releases and marketing contacts for information and that they aren't actually practicing any journalism (in the sense of going out and doing their own research and finding things out for themselves.)

This wouldn't really be surprising. Canadian television does, on the whole, an incredibly poor job of covering the arts in this country. They are far more likely to cover the latest American blockbuster, the latest U2 tour, and anything that enables them to say "Hannah Montana" than they are to cover Canadian film, music, art, literature etc. They will say that this is because they have to appeal to a mainstream audience but that in itself is appalling. The 'mainstream' as it is called, is just another niche audience and they know it. The group referred to as mainstream is, due to audience fragmentation, no larger than the gay community in Canada - it is probably not that big (9.5% of the country at the best of times.) That everything on television is intended for less than 10% of the country may help explain the current financial woes of Canada's broadcasters.

Taken all together, the bad (or lack of) arts reporting combined with the narrowness of focus, it is certainly the "misplay of the week"

Associated Press Declares Itself Obsolete

Considering the line of work they are in it's somewhat ironic that the Associated Press has, apparently, not being paying much attention to what is going on in the world for the last few decades. That is, apparently, the case though. From Bill Doskoch and the New York Times comes word that the Associated Press has adopted litigation as a method of protecting it's intellectual property from the internet.

"Taking aim at the way news is spread across the Internet, The Associated Press said on Monday that Web sites that used the work of news organizations must obtain permission and share revenue with them, and that it would take legal action against those that did not.
A.P. executives said they were concerned about a variety of news forums around the Web, including major search engines like Google and Yahoo and aggregators like the Drudge Report that link to news articles, smaller sites that sometimes reproduce articles whole, and companies that sell packaged news feeds.
They said they did not want to stop the appearance of articles around the Web, but to exercise some control over the practice and to profit from it."

Asking for compensation from people who copy their articles in whole is fair and reasonable but going after those who link to articles, or who quote them and link to them shows a complete lack of understanding of how the internet and the modern information economy works. It is a policy that essentially says that if you do free advertising for them, they will sue you. Perhaps when visited by the AP's lawyers Google should ask for compensation from the AP for all the publicity they have been getting?

In the interim, until the Associated Press figures this out or goes out of business you might want to find another news source to link to online.

CBC Cuts go Deep, But Radio 3 Lives On

Steve Pratt has a Radio 3 site outlining the changes coming to CBC Radio 3 but the important part is that it will go on.

Live recordings will be less, the budget will be lower and there may be staff reductions (they won't know until May) but the important part is that Radio 3 will remain. Thanks to everyone who chimed in, emailed the CBC, joined up on Facebook, signed the petition, posted to your blogs and did whatever else you did to help make this happen.

From Steve's post (do read the whole thing for details on the changes):

"This is a bad day for CBC Radio 3. There is no doubt about it.  However, it could have been much worse and for that I think we are all thankful.  We are moving forward with a very strong radio station, a brand new version of the website coming within a couple months, and a powerful, passionate community of artists and music fans.  Despite today’s bad news, I’m personally very confident that Radio 3 will continue to grow and prosper in the future and that impact of the cuts to our budget has been minimized at best as humanly possible.

I would personally like to thank each and every one of you who raised awareness online about the risks to Radio 3 since the infamous ‘unload Radio 3’ quote was seen in the media.  Your support and the visibility of that support was heard loudly inside the company and I hope was a factor in making today’s news considerably less than it might have been otherwise."

The rest of the CBC is also sharing the pain. Cuts are coming to news, radio, sports, drama and regional programming. A full list of the damage is available at http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/03/26/cbc-layoffs.html?ref=rss.

NxEW.ca

Writer's Guild Supports the CBC

Denis of Dead Things on Sticks has posted the statement from the Writer's Guild of Canada on today's cuts to CBC.

"THE WRITERS GUILD OF CANADA is extremely disheartened by the CBC’s announcement today that it will cut 800 jobs in order to balance its budget. The WGC asks: why has it come to this? We have known for more than a decade, through successive governments and through a variety of official reports, that the CBC is underfunded – the economic downturn and the resulting decline in advertising revenues have only exacerbated what was already a tenuous financial situation."

read the whole thing here. They point out, quite rightly, that this has been coming for awhile. There have been repeated calls by private and public studies, boards and commissions for years and that no government has done much about it.

The problem isn't that the CBC is biased, the problem is that the CBC does journalism and investigative journalism. They ask questions and analyze answers and this can be problematic for those in power, whoever they are. So those in power tend to not want to give them more money so that they can do even more reporting.

Personally I believe that the extra money for the CBC should come from Conservatives since they are the ones who get the most benefit out of it. What would conservatives do for entertainment if they didn't have the CBC to bitch about?

Exposing The Bias at the CBC

Ok so the CBC's conservative detractors continually say that the CBC has a left wing bias. It's the same stuff that conservatives in the states say bout the media in general and PBS in particular.

These same people claim that the majority of the public doesn't support the CBC - never mind that the polls disagree - that a slim majority of Canadians, including 41% of conservatives support more funding for the CBC. These people will still say that the overwhelming majority of Canadians think the CBC should be shut down.

These Canadians come from the Fox News school of reality. The Fox News school of reality goes like this: Rather than do research, or read a book, or even think about things much you just say the first thing that pops into your head. It should be something short and punchy that sounds good and that reinforces what you already think. (government is bad, tax cuts are the only thing governments should do, hand guns are a good toy for toddlers etc).

Then you repeat this silly thing, whatever it may be, over and over again and get your friends to do the same (in the states they refer to said friends as dittoheads - they are called this for a reason.) So once you have repeated your invented 'fact' often enough that you and your friends all firmly believe it's true. Then you go on the offensive against anyone who disputes them.

So, if you turn on the CBC and they say thing like

Evidence suggests that the world is more than 6,000 years old

Evidence suggests that toddlers should not play with hand grenades

Apparently there were no WMD's in Iraq

According to recent polls the majority of Canadians think the government should do more to end poverty

This means that they are obviously biased against conservatives - obviously. Because you know the 'facs' and they ain't reportin em. And you know that no Canadians support the CBC because you axed your dad, your mom and your sister and neither of them like it.

Fortunately the majority of Canadians do read books, listen to scientists on questions of science and clergy on issues of spirituality and not the other way around and the majority of Canadians do support the CBC (and health care, and welfare, and employment insurance etc.)

This rant has been brought to you by the National Post - not the article itself, but the comment section where there is so much venom and so little knowledge that I didn't know where to start.

But by the time the current economic depression recession is over I'm pretty sure that 3 things will be true:

1) The CBC will still be around (though it may be bloodied)
2) The National Post will not still be around.
3) CBC News will still be biased in favor of reality!

A Few Random Thoughts on the Shifting Media Landscape

Still working on creating the forum for that Future of Media discussion group. But since these issues have been in the news alot lately I felt the urge to throw out a few thoughts on what is going on in media triggered by recent coverage and observations. Some of these things I've said before but nevertheless:

What is facing media is a media revolution that will make the invention of the printing press look like the invention of the salad shooter, unlike every previous media revolution the only barriers to entry are literacy and a set of computer skills that an average person could pick up in a day.

The recession didn't cause this, it has accelerated the shift but didn't cause it.

This isn't really a public policy issue, there is very little that Parliament or the CRTC can do to change it. They could, if properly persuaded and if they wanted to spend a fortune throw up roadblocks and barricades but it would be an incredible waste of resources, the barriers won't hold back the flood they will only create an adversarial relationship between old and new media. I will always fight for network neutrality and against silly, intrusive copyright laws like C-61 but not because either of these would change anything. If I lose these fights people will find a way to beat the system, things will go on as they are, but the level of animosity created by excessive traffic shaping, or copyright protection would kill just about every current mass media company.

Many in media have criticized the Detroit 3 for being out of touch, not competitive with newer companies and failing to make products that consumers want. Ironically these are the same criticisms that have been leveled at much of the main stream media.

The claims of tradition in the media hold no water. Other than book publishing Journalism is the oldest of the current mass media and Journalism has only slight claim to tradition. The concept of Journalistic objectivity didn't emerge until the 1890s (less than 120 years ago), and the first Journalism school in the world turned 100 last year (2008). I know people have short memories and short attention spans these days but traditions that go back 100 years are hardly sacrosanct.

Don't get me wrong. I don't want media to go away. I don't think it will but the ground has shifted dramatically and people who currently work in media have to understand what has changed and adapt. They have to re-learn much of what they know and they have to learn to compete in a world where many of their "competitors" are operating with little or no budget and few resources. Many of these "competitors" in fact don't even see you as a competitor, they don't analyze in that way. They do what they do because they enjoy it. They cultivate and communicate with their audience and pay little or no attention to what traditional main stream media is doing.

One of the most frequent mistakes I see people in main stream media, including new media projects that are attached to MSM make is placing themselves on a pedestal. The new audience doesn't want to read your resume. They don't care about your education, experience or credentials - only the quality of your output and it's value to them. If you demand acknowledgment and respect from the audience based on what's written in your CV they will likely ignore you completely and, though they won't notice, you will go away.

Single Female Voter FTW

So here is the video from the much talked about ambush of Dalton McGuinty by 22 minutes.



A very observant person pointed out to me that you can see reporters laughing throughout the exchange. Apparently though once back at their keyboards they decided that, upon reflection, it-wasn't-funny - in-the- least. Now I won't use the word disingenuous (oops I already did). I'll even pretend that the Sun is a real news organization (but only for this post). But it was funny - those who pretended otherwise in their columns were striking a pose.

Again there was nothing to hold Daulton McGuinty to account for. He didn't lay off any steel workers - what was the province supposed to do? Pay steelworkers to produce Steel that no one is buying? Build up a stockpile of steel so that even when (if) the economy recovers the price stays unnaturally low? Peter Kormos was hoping to score some points on the Premiere based on something over which he had no control and Hall's appearance changed the mood and lessened the chance of a lynch mob - thus the douchy reaction.

CBC News Sunday on the Death of Newspapers

CBC News Sunday did a report yesterday on the plight of newspapers.

"Newspapers are laying off staff and, in more and more cases, they're folding up. What lies ahead for this traditional bastion of journalism? And would the death of newspapers mean the death of news?"

There was some good commentary on what's going on with newspapers and what it means for the future of journalism and news. Obviously the death of newspapers does not mean the end of news. What's sad/funny/ironic though is that what was said about newspapers applies to all media. Just as the film and television industries didn't get that what started happening with the music industry over a decade ago was also going to happen to them CBC News doesn't seem to understand that what is happening to the newspapers is also happening to music, film, television, radio ...

This is not a newspaper issue, it is a media issue. One of their commentators said for example that it was primarily people over the age of 40 who were propping newspapers up. The same could easily be said for broadcast radio or television (probably DVD rentals too). It's not a holy grail, it doesn't explain all you need to know but try watching the video and insert radio for newspapers, or television, or insert 'drama' for news. Everyone's in the same boat but remember: a decade ago the recording industry claimed that it was all going to lead to the death of music (the big companies still make that claim.) They were wrong, music is alive and thriving. The large companies that would not or could not adapt are not.

Future of Media: An Idea Whose Time Has Come (apparently)

So I threw the idea out there about creating a forum for creatives, artists, content creators, journalists, media management folk, tech people and consumers to come together and chat about the things that need to be talked about. Namely how do we make it all work? How do we create a system that meets consumers needs, and is financially and technologically viable?

Ideally all of this would be 'off the record' in the sense that if someone says "I download all the movies I watch" you can't report them to the MPAA, you have to engage them without being insulting and say "Ok, but how are the movie studios going to get money to keep making movies for you to download?" and "I don't know" is an acceptable answer. It's probably the truth and at least you've given them something to think about, if you go on the offensive they'll just go away and nothing has been gained. We also don't want people to be afraid to tell the truth, it would defeat the purpose - we need the real lay of the land here, not judgement or recriminations.

So far today I've heard from dozens of people who are interested in having this chat, a software engineer who wants to design some custom solutions to facilitate it and a few people who are interested in taking it live (public forums and roundtables.)

So it looks like it's all going ahead - details to come.

The Future of Media?

After yesterday's decision to create the Canadian Media Fund I've decided to set up a discussion group on the future of media. The current models, TV, radio, newspapers etc., seem to be broken. The CBC is cutting back annually, local stations are going away, newspapers are laying off and folding and most internet financial models are still unproven.

Most mass media is less than 100 years old (tv, radio, film, recorded music, mass publishing, etc) so the obvious questions are

Is it going away?

Are there economic models that would make it work?

If it is going away and there aren't models to make it work what are we going to replace it with and how?

What are local markets going to do if everything is consolidated into national networks and big cities?

What is the future of public and public service broadcasters?

How is any of this going to work in a deeply fragmented marketplace where audiences are small and demanding?

Calls to increase funding to the CBC by you, me or the Heritage Committee appear to be falling on deaf ears, and calls to increase subsidies are meeting more and more resistance. So if people won't subsidize it, and won't pay for it at all if they can avoid it, how does/should the new model work?

So my question(s) are are you interested in participating in such a group and if so what works best for active conversation? A bulletin board? Facebook Group? Google Group?

If you're interested get in touch.

Is Mass Media Coming to an End?

These are desperate times in media generally. Layoffs, cut backs in service, and even closing the doors altogether are regular daily occurrences. Today the Conservative government, in the first indication that anyone in Ottawa understands what is going on in media combined the Canadian Television Fund and the Canadian New Media Fund into the Canadian Media Fund. I've said more times than I can count that for all intents and purposes there is no longer any difference between television, radio and the internet and this move acknowledges that.

Make no mistake, this is an attack on the CBC. There has, until now, been a part of the Canadian Television Fund earmarked for the CBC. This earmark has been stripped away and will no doubt mean an even lower budget for the CBC.

What all of this means is currently being discussed far and wide so I'm not going to go too deeply into what the CMF may or may not do. What I'm wondering about tonight is: Is there a workable model for mass media anymore? Across North America and around the world media companies of all types are in trouble (public and private). Television, radio, newspapers, publishers, record labels, and film studios (ok not today, wait six months and film studios will be laying off too.) At the same time nearly everyone I talk to is crying out for relevant media, especially smarter media.

I've said before that CBC Radio 3 seems to be doing well. I've had a much easier time generating support for Radio 3 than for the CBC in general but it is unclear, if it were forced to fend for itself, if Radio 3 would be vialble.

It is worth considering that financially viable media is a new concept, it is largely something that occured in the 20th century. For most of human history there was no 'media' except what happened around the campfire. There were also, within the last 1000 years, traveling troupes of actors and musicians (essentially buskers) who would performs in towns, cities and for groups of travelers in exchange for a little money. This is largely where the stereotypes of 'show people' come from. Books happened eventually but had to be hand copied and were primarily the media of monasteries and royalty. Even with the invention of the printing press books were so expensive that even well off merchants, if they were literate, could only afford a few books. Newspapers emerged late in the 18th Century but it wasn't until the 20th century that there was a 'Main Stream Media' - the big newspapers, radio, television, paperbacks, magazines, film were all things that happened in the 20th century and now the model is completely broken.

The internet has changed everything. The models that generated revenue for media in the 20th century have gone away. Everything is now free, or very low cost. People are no longer interested in watching commercials if they can avoid it, and they can. Public funding is still an option (as in the PBS model in the States or CBC in Canada.) But public support for giving these institutions the funding they will need to do what they do well is thin.

The first problem is that with so much media being available for free people are reluctant to devote tax dollars to the cause. The second and much larger problem is that the audience is so fragmented that broadcasters, public and private, are left with the task of being all things to all people.

With the emergence of the internet people have found opportunities to form communities very narrowly. If you like Neil Diamond cover bands, or Chinese films translated into english you can find friends online that agree with you. If media does not cater to your tastes you can all complain together and it gives the impression that "everyone" feels the way that you do. So media companies are faced with the expectation that they will meet the demands of a mammoth variety of groups and individuals. For the most part media companies cannot do it because the financial resources required to produce media are greater than what can be produced from any individual group.

It seems to me that the only viable approach is to target a niche and cater to that niche exclusively and well. Even when targeting a niche the reality is that others will target that same niche. I think that Radio 3, so far, has been successful because it has targeted a niche (fans of Canadian independent music) and has worked hard at community building which engenders a sense of loyalty and helps Radio 3 keep ahead of it's competitors. It seems that this might be a model which media companies could follow, creating inexpensive content and building communities around a variety of interests (other types of music, literature, history, politics etc.). It is unclear though, as I've said, if this is a viable financial model. If everyone took this approach would the overcrowding kill the financial viability?

I'm really asking questions here more than anything. It is entirely possible that 'mass media' was a blip on the radar, that it's window in human history is closing and that it will be replaced with an online 'virtual' campfire. Stories, songs and (unverified) information shared in the evening among people who do other things to make a living. And of course there will be the occasional traveling troubadours.

This may be far fetched. You may be saying 'no someone will find a way' or 'once people realize how serious the problem is they'll be willing to pay'. You may be right, I really hope so, but you also have to realize that most people aren't reading this or anything like it. Most people aren't thinking about it at all, they simply act in whatever way suits them best and 'the financial viability of media' is not a topic they are interested in.

There's No Good Timing Anymore: But We Still Need Funny

Denis McGrath has an excellent and readworthy post today about Geri Hall's ambush of Dalton McGuinty at a press conference yesterday. Apparently Hall tried to ambush agoraphobic Premiere Dalton McGuinty at a press conference about his new rule that reporters have to stay at least five feet away from him. It turns out though that the press conference was about job layoffs and the press gallery and New Democrat Peter Kormos collectively wet em. From the Globe and Mail:

In character as Single Girl from the CBC show This Hour Has 22 Minutes, Ms. Hall was attempting to poke fun at Mr. McGuinty's new rule requiring reporters to stand five feet back when they question him.

“I'm going to come a little bit closer and you tell me when you feel nervous,” she said.

“I get your point OK, because if a pack of guys I didn't know approached me every day, shoved their stuff in my face and expected me to just stand there while they recorded it, I'd be a little freaked out too.”

But there were few laughs as Ms. Hall vainly attempted to get Mr. McGuinty to hug one of the reporters after she walked into the middle of questions on U.S. Steel's decision to shut down the former Stelco mills in Ontario.

New Democrat Peter Kormos, who was visibly angry at Ms. Hall's routine, was on the outside of the media scrum yelling that thousands of layoffs were no joking matter.

“Get the hell out of here,” yelled Mr. Kormos as Mr. McGuinty, looking uncomfortable, stood beside Ms. Hall, who was arrested last year for trying to approach Prime Minister Stephen Harper as Single Girl.

Ok, sure, fine it was a serious topic, the timing wasn't great but really these days when is the timing good? Layoffs are daily and Mr. McGuinty didn't even lay them off. This was about steel layoffs in Hamilton.

This may be news to the press corps and to Mr. Kormos but the US economy collapsed. It's not a recessiosn, it's a free fall. It's also not coming back soon. I know that stock brokers and financial reporters are going on about how nothing can happen until the U.S. recovers but that is mostly wishful thinking. These are, after all, largely the same people who were trying to convince us it might miss Canada, it might not be that bad, the fundamentals of the economy are sound. I will, at some point, do a post about where I think the US economy is going but if you'd like a picture in your had think Russia after the fall of Communism. Things will get better eventually, but it will not be the same again. I guess what I'm trying to say is that things suck (that can be your headline tomorrow if you want). But we all have to keep our heads about us and if we lose our sense of humor things will be much, much worse.

There is a reason that by the time Bush left office, with the economy in tatters and two un-winnable wars that the most trusted name in American news was (and is) Jon Stewart. Yes the timing could have been better, but I don't think there will be alot of good news press conferences for awhile and while Mr. Kormos might want to 'hold Daulton McGuinty accountable' Mr. Kormos hasn't the foggiest idea how to fix it either. Regardless of which of our provincial parties was in power yesterday those steel workers would have been laid off.

So, here's to Ms. Hall and making the funny!

More Journalists Need Media Literacy

CBC Radio 3 points to a study by the American Journal of Preventative Medicine and picked up by the Canadian Press that says that there is an association between lyrics with degrading sex and early sexual experience.

First of all there are so many flaws with this study that I hardly know where to start. They don't really know what the kids in the study were listening to, they just asked some 9th graders in Pittsburg some questions - so the kids were self reporting. It's a small sample and they apparently didn't ask them about other factors.

Beyond that it is flawed in it's basic logic. If you ask people what artists they like and discover that homosexuals are more likely to like artists who are gay that does not mean that the music made them gay. This is a broader cultural issue. People from cultures where promiscuous sex and violence are a common part of the culture will like music that reflects the culture, often the artists themselves came out of the culture. It's the ultimate chicken and the egg question, it's a loop. Art imitates life which imitates life, which imitates art.

Remember that popular music in the early 20th century had little to no violent or sexual content but those years produced two world wars.

Ultimately studies like this one are attention seeking behavior on the part of organizations. It sounds good, it will grab headlines, it will please parents who don't want to blame themselves and it will please politicians who will find it far easier to blame musicians than to actually seek solutions to social problems. The Canadian Press story also contains the following piece of blather:

"...we can teach what we call media literacy, which is to help kids be more critical media users, or more intelligent media users, so that they know it's not in their best interest to be modelling sexually degrading images."

This quote is from "Jane Brown, a professor at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill," It seems to me though that it is not kids, or musicians or parents who need an education in "media literacy" it is journalists and editors who have a responsibility to the public, to filter information, to be critical and ask questions and not just try to grab headlines. These stories, based on faulty science and logic, are all too common in social, cultural, psychological and medical studies and the media (for the most part) just seem to gobble it up and send it out (with a catchy headline) as truth.

A Proposal on Making Free Content Pay

There is a post this morning from Bill Doskotch about a Toronto Star article (which also mentions other articles.) The basic gist of it all is how to make newspapers pay. Newspapers have been declining for decades now, very few of them charge for online content and quality journalism costs money to produce. There are alot of comments on the Star article of the 'evolve or die' variety and it's true that all media must evolve or die. This isn't advice, it's reality, if media fails to evolve it will die. However, media cannot going on forever producing content for which there is no way to get paid.

Doskotch wonders, in particular, about whether newspapers should charge for online content. They shouldn't. That discussion has been over for a decade. If, for example, the Toronto Star decided to start charging for content tomorrow they would get a few subscribers but most people would simply go to the thousands of online news sites that don't charge (especially in a recession.) So, how do you pay for all the work that goes into that journalism? Ads alone won't do it. Internet advertising simply doesn't pay that well. If it did news organizations wouldn't have been slashing budgets and staff for the last decade, but there is another way.

The Songwriters Association of Canada put forward another unacceptable proposal. They called for a fee to be added to everyone's internet bill to pay for 'illegal' downloads'. Their proposal is not acceptable primarily because the suggested fee would go to the SAC who would then decide on their own how to distribute it. How does the SAC know how many times a particular song has been downloaded? They don't know. They would have to guesstimate and what about Canadian musiciains who weren't members of SAC? They would have to join if they wanted to get paid and then - what about films? what about television programs? e-books? etc., do we set up separate fees given to various organizations to divy up as they see fit? The short answer, and the long one, is no. We simply cannot institute what would basically be a new tax to be distributed according to the whim of a private organization. However, they are not far off the mark.

What might work is a centralized fee for all content. So, let's say (as a starting point) that $5 / month was tacked onto everyone's bill. According to this there are 28 million internet users in Canada, the collected fees would come to 1.68 billion annually. So that is the pool to be divided. The Internet Service Providers would be required to pay the administration costs.

The administration would be set up as a bureaucracy that ran something like Google Adwords. The regulating agency would provide a snipit of code that would track your traffic - not just by visitors but by bandwidth. So large files would count for more than small ones. A feature film, or a new music album is incredibly time and cost intensive and it simply wouldn't be fair to only pay the hosting site for a single visitor when someone came and downloaded an entire feature film. So, bandwidth used would be measured and the site would be paid based out of the pool based on that.

Like Google's adwords there would also be rules. Sites that tricked people into visiting them, or set up robot software to artifically increase their traffic would be kicked out of the program. Sites that used other people's (unlicensed) content or sites that deliberately made their files larger than they needed to be would also be removed from the program. Sites that already charged for content would be intelligible etc.

Initially this would only be available for Canadian web sites but that could change. If other countries wanted to adopt similar rules, and if mutually acceptable guidelines could be found then the program could become international in scope. This would discourage the 'not available in Canada' messages we sometimes see.

On the whole this would allow consumers to pay for content without even thinking about it - no forms to fill out or credit cards. It would also encourage content producers to put their best stuff online. It would encourage, for example, television producers to put their shows online, it would encourage recording artists to put their music online and it would make all internet content pay, without the content producers actually having to do much - no ad sales required, no elaborate licensing contracts - you put good content online and you get visitors and when you get visitors you get paid, automatically.

I think that a program like this would answer the questions asked by Bill Doskotch and countless others almost since the birth of the internet: "How do you make money providing free content ?" My answer may or may not be the best one, but it is an answer - if you don't like mine, please tell me yours.

Why the Internet Beats Television for News and Information

I'm something of a news junkie but I must be a different type of news consumer than most of the television audience. Last night, in case you missed it somehow there was a plane crash near Buffalo, New York. Fifty people were killed in the crash, it appears to have been an accident. For me, that's all I need to know but the reporter on CBC Newsworld just said "this is our only story". What else is there to say? It's not an ongoing story. It was an accident and it is certainly a tragedy but it's over and there are other things going on in the world.

There is a difference with an ongoing story. Take the Mumbai attacks for example, or the Israeli attack on Gaza those stories are complex, ongoing and political. There is are a number of different aspects and angles to cover. For a freak accident though or a crime story there just isn't much to say. Perhaps I'm not curious enough, or interested enough in trivia, but there just isn't that much I need to know. The biggest example of this was the O.J. Simpson trial (the first one.) What I needed to know was that O.J. Simpson was accused of a crime, what he was accused of, when the trial started and what the jury decided. That's all. Like the plane crash in Buffalo it was tragic, but just isn't that important to my life.

On any given day, somewhere in the world there are crimes and accidents - there is constant tragedy but it's a big world and there is a good deal going on in. If it is an ongoing situation I'll follow it. If it is a recurring systemic problem I'll look at the problem but if it's a one time incident I just can't devote that much time or interest.

So, for me, given that television news likes to dwell on such incidents the internet is far better. I can get the basics of dozens of stories, and even look at a few in greater depth in the time it takes television news to interview the neighbors about the sound of the explosion. There is a ton of information produced in the world:

"The world produces between 1 and 2 exabytes of unique information per year, which is roughly 250 megabytes for every man, woman, and child on earth."

This was as of 2000 - the amount has grown exponentially since then. To me this means that there must be some discrimination. If you're going to absorb the information you need you have to decide what is important and what is not and be ready to move on as soon as you have the information you need. Television does not allow for this, the internet does. Generally when there is a story like the plane crash all of the television news stations are covering it simultaneously - on the internet there are enough different 'channels' that you can always find some interested in something else and even if every web site in the world decided to cover this story, you can skip that part of the web site, there will be other information there as well.

The customization, the ability to skip around and the interactive capabilities are what ultimately will allow the internet to absorb television rather than the other way around.

How Not to Use Twitter: For Journalists and Media Types

Torontoist has all the screencaps from today's Twitter conversation between David George-Cosh, the tech writer for the Financial Post and product marketing consultant April Dunford. It would appear that Ms. Dunford failed to return a call to Mr. George-Cosh. The Twitter world didn't really see how it started, but did see how it ended.

Again you can have a look at the conversation on Torontoist or Mediastyle.ca (probably elsewhere by now too) but a snipped includes such gems as

"sirdavid: @aprildunford hey april - fuck you. seriously. fuck you.

sirdavid: @aprildunford if u can’t handle any heat from what u post and immediate hang up, fuck u. u know my number. u call if you want to settle. 

aprildunford: @sirdavid Re-read what you have just Twittered. Then re-read what I Twittered. Deep breaths David. Calm."

If you work in journalism or media you should print the screen cap and post it up on the wall, just to remind everyone that Twitter is a public forum and probably not the best place to have a blow up with a source.

A Guide to the New Rules for Media Orgs That Aren't Quite Dead Yet

To those of you who are young, or those of you who are tech savvy, what I'm going to say is going to be pretty obvious but given what's going on with main stream media outlets it apparently needs to be repeated.

When I wrote the post on the dying days of big media I said that you had to start thinking of your media, regardless of the type of content, as a website. At the time I didn't go into much detail on this so just in case people out there didn't understand (and I've heard from a few who didn't) let me explain:

First look around the web. Web sites do not discriminate by media type. Audio, video, and text are all welcome and good web sites use all three. In future when people visit you they won't turn to your television station or your radio station or pick up your newspaper or magazine - they will navigate to an address. As I said there will be no difference between a TV, a radio, a laptop and a portable media device (people used to call them cell phones). So people will visit you the same way they visit a web site now and your content should be ready when they get there.

The first thing you need to do is get rid of your schedule your visitors won't care about your schedule (they don't care now.) So your content is either available right now, or it's not and if it's not your audience won't be happy - you're operating on their schedule now.

Second, stop protecting your content. Streaming is fine, but people may want to take your content with them - let them. If you don't someone else will record your content and share it. Will people cut your content up and do things with it you might not approve of? Only if you're lucky. The reality is that if people don't want to take your content with them, share it with their friends or make their own edits and mash ups of it you're probably not going to survive, so make it easy for people to do these things - they'll appreciate it.

If you're worried about the bandwidth of all those downloads, use BitTorrent. If people like your content enough they'll be willing to share it and they will absorb some of the bandwidth required at no cost to you. Yes this means that it will be harder to track the number of viewers, listeners etc., but media is going to have to grow up and find new ways of tracking popularity. The reality is that if your content has an audience smart advertisers will know and will be interested in working with you. If your content is not popular they won't.

So, again - your web site should now be the focus of your organization. All of your content should be there. It should be easy to find and easy to get at. It should be available on your audiences schedule and at their convenience. It should be available in whatever format they want, and they should be able to subscribe to it easily. If you are going to charge for content make it inexpensive and make it easy to pay - be aware thought that if you charge at all you should not also have advertising.

On the flip side if you are going to have advertising (don't charge obviously and) make the advertising unobtrusive. If you put 30 minutes of advertising into a one hour program people will go to the trouble of editing it out and sharing the ad free version. Do not, whatever else you do, integrate the advertising into the content - you will lose your audience.

Above all be true to your audience. If you are, for example, a news organization your integrity is all you have. You are now in competition worldwide - if the audience gets the sense that you are not honest and reliable you will lose them in droves.

On a final and related note. I also mentioned in my last note that organizations would be "smaller, more flexible and more focused." This is not just an economic requirement. Technology and media technology changes rapidly and will continue to for the foreseeable future, when things change you have to change with them. This means watching your audience and changing to meet their needs but it also means that when the next Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc., comes along you can't hold meetings and strategy sessions to find out if you should be there. You should be there. The goal will be to get there quickly and in full force - no time for debates and meetings. If it takes you a year to formulate a strategy to meet the new environment, you're too late. You might get some small benefeit from going forward but ultimately you just have to hope you can catch the next wave.

I know some of you won't believe this or don't like it and want to change the approach but this isn't a strategy, this is reality. You are living through a media revolution that will make the invention of the printing press look like the dawn of the salad shooter and will make the arrival of broadcast look like the ShamWow. Large media organizations in the music industry, the film industry and to an extent the television industry (mostly in the U.S.) have made to colossal mistake of seeing this as a negotiation with the audience. It is not a negotiation, it is a colossal shift in the way people create and consume media and you can't negotiate with it any more than you can negotiate with an earthquake.

New handbook for cyber-dissidents

Via Art Threat comes word that there is a new edition of the 'Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-dissidents' the guidbook published by Reporters Without Borders

"The handbook offers practical advice and techniques on how to create a blog, make entries and get the blog to show up in search engine results. It gives clear explanations about blogging for all those whose online freedom of expression is subject to restrictions, and it shows how to sidestep the censorship measures imposed by certain governments, with a practical example that demonstrates the use of the censorship circumvention software Tor."

The new handbook is available here.

Yes We Can vs. Put on a Sweater and Shut Up

Personally I don't want to hear any more about Obama unless it's about something he actually does. I'm actually a little disturbed by the extent to which the press is cheerleading for him. Fortunately up here in Canada no leader is, or is likely to get the same treatment. Here's a clip from last nights 'This Hour Has 22 Minutes':

How to Fix the CBC and How Not Too

The National Post has an interesting piece up this weekend on how to fix the CBC. Articles on 'how to fix the CBC' are almost an annual requirement for every news organization in this country (except the CBC) but this particular one isn't written by a TV critic or political pundit. Instead they asked people with a stake in the future of the CBC how they thought it should be fixed: Among the respondents: Director Bruce McDonald, actor Nicholas Campnell, ex-BBC journalist and current UBC journalism professor Alfred Hermida, fashion designer John Fluevog and talent agent Amanda Rosenthal.

Bruce McDonald's reaction was, to an extent predictable - urging that creative talent have more input.

"We need to be smarter, faster, quicker and braver than other programmers. Give artists permission. Then set them free."
- Bruce McDonald

That it was predictable though doesn't mean it's wrong. I find alot of the CBC's new programming feels like it was created by a calculator rather than a person. Given it's federal subsidies combined with it's ad revenue the CBC can afford to take risks that no other media company in Canada can, but they don't. They seem for the most part to be the best funded but least brave or creative of Canada's 'big media.'

Also predictable was the response from Amanda Rosenthal, president of Amanda Rosenthal Talent Agency Inc. who talked about how Canada needs a 'Star System'. I've heard this argument frequently and don't think much of it. Even the U.S. seems to be tiring of it's star system. The reality is that Canada has a star system and that we will always lose talent to the United States.

I heard it said once that the British have their own star system: That there are alot of 'stars' in Britain who the rest of the world wouldn't have heard of. The same is true in Canada. The biggest TV Star in Canada is Don Cherry - not because he does alot of photo ops and late night interviews, but because he is himself - brash, politically incorect, opinionated and unapologetic.

Beyond Cherry we have Peter Mansbridge, Rick Mercer, Bruce McDonald, Feist, Nicholas Campbell, the various members of the Kids in the Hall, Sarah Polley, David Suzuki, and a great many others. All of them are well known, and respected and have survived Canada's 'tall poppy syndrome' by not getting too tall. They are humble, talented, experienced and hard working and Canadians respect that. In my experience at least Canadians recognize talent and hard work but have little appetite for pretense, garish wealth or celebrity culture.

The U.S. has ten times Canada's population. As a result they have larger budgets, more production and can pay higher salaries. That will always lure many of Canada's best and brightest south. This is not only true in the arts but in science and medicine, sports, business and technology etc. This is not only a Canadian problem - Great Britain, Australia, India, and essentially the entire english speaking world lose talent to the United States.

We do need to make it easier for Canadian talent to stay in Canada, but in most cases that just means making the arts financially viable, we have to enable our artists to stay and make a living, not stay and become ridiculously wealthy - that we can't do. I have with publicbroadcasting.ca have tried in many ways to work on this problem. I know though that no matter what I or anyone else do some will stay in Canada and accept less than they could make in the States, some will leave and some will go back and forth.

Fashion designer John Fluevog helps my case:

"Sometimes, I get a sense CBC is justifying its existence. That, because of government harassment, it has to prove it's ‘Canadian.' CBC has no need to apologize. It's not our culture, that's too much pressure. It's the glue that holds Canadian culture together. Hip is being yourself, it's a naturalness of owning who you are. Be quirky and offbeat, but don't try to be cool - young people smell that a mile away."

The CBC does not need to be like the US, it does not need to be hip. Cool is over. Society, as an early affect of modern technology, is fragmented - everything is cut into niches now and each niche has it's own sense of what is and isn't cool. On the whole I find that those who try the hardest to be cool are the least popular. People respect individuality and creativity and talent and that combination is the closest there is to a definition of cool in 2009.

Take for example the the Bucky Awards. Radio 3 is the CBC's coolest brand. The Bucky Awards are Radio 3's annual music awards. In this years awards, as voted by the audience, Laura Barrett - a talented young musician (who plays the kalimba, an african thumb piano) wears large glasses and doesn't wear makeup was voted Canada's Sexiest Musician - welcome to Canada and the new definition of cool.

The CBC's two biggest challenges are still left: Technology and the Government.

"CBC must stop thinking of itself as a broadcaster. It's a content provider. Of course, in every organization there's inertia. CBC is a cruise liner and there's an iceberg approaching; it takes time to get that ship turned. There will be resistance. At BBC, new media was met with suspicion: Why are we going online? So we found the journalists, editors and producers interested in exploring - we got the early adapters and worked the edges of the organization. Then it spread.

"Newsrooms are notoriously reluctant to change. When change comes, the initial reaction is defensiveness. But BBC changed and so can CBC. It starts with strategy. Don't blog because everyone else does. Innovate! In 2007, the BBC iPlayer streamed programs to hand-held devices which proved tremendously popular - think about getting content out there so it suits the audience. CBC is in the process of re-invention. They have to change how, not what, they do."

Alfred Hermida, assistant professor of journalism at the University of British Columbia

"If Ottawa wants to find a way to get rid of it, CBC only has a 50/50 chance to survive. I got told by a member of Parliament that Paul Martin began planning on how he'd spread the savings once he got rid of CBC. And Jean Chrétien was the worst. I love him, he didn't even call me by name, he'd just yell, ‘CBC!' He'd get so mad talking about it, I'd have to calm him down. He thought they ambushed him at a press conference and made things hard on everyone and brought morale way down.

"There's a prejudice out there against them, like it's CBC so it's not very good or it's a copy of American things. Talking with Don Cherry, he'd say Da Vinci is so good I thought it was American. I'm like, ‘Don, man, that's the worst thing you can say.'

I love CBC and I'm willing to fight for it. Loyal, patriotic Canadians should have something that blows their minds."
- Nicholas Campbell

The CBC has no real political allies - at least the Liberals and Conservatives are not exactly fond of it. It is only public support that keeps the CBC up and running. In order to keep that support the CBC does not need to become cooler, or more American - it needs to remain deeply relevant to Canadians in terms of what content it delivers and how it delivers that content. The way people consume media is changing rapidly and the CBC must accommodate those changes. I've heard a few people say recently that "TV is for boomers" and that is a perception that the CBC cannot allow to stand. I'm sure the temptation is great. The baby boomers had the least exposure to the internet in their youth and are the slowest to adopt new technologies - as a result they make up the bulk of the traditional television audience so the easiest thing to do is to program for them but this is terribly short sighted and would kill CBC television in the longer run.

So going back to where we started - with Bruce McDonald who said the CBC must "give artists permission. Then set them free." The CBC must take the same approach to new media. Even if they start small they must give their new media people permission to try and fail, permission to experiment and be bold. This cannot be an afterthought, these people will create the CBC of the future and there will be trials and pitfalls and colossal failures along the way but that is the only road from here to there and the CBC needs to give some brave explorers permission to go down that road.

On a final note the CBC certainly needs more money from Ottawa. The mere fact that both the Liberals and Conservatives dislike and distrust the CBC means that they are worth keeping around and making stronger. Beyond that if the CBC needs more money in order to experiment and give license to it's creative talent, lower production values are absolutely acceptable. Internationally people are willing to accept lower production values if the ideas are good. In television shows like South Park and the Simpsons started with low production values that grew over time. The original BBC version of 'the Office' and the original Saturday Night Live both had very low production values and films like the Blair Witch Project and Roger & Me have shown that films made on a shoestring budget can be internationally successful. In technology and new media this is especially true. Facebook, for example, was started by a few students in a dorm room. What is holding the CBC back is not purely financial, there is far more 'won't' than 'can't' causing the problems.