Tag Archive for 'TV'

MEDIA DIET: What I read & watch

Published on June 10, 2010 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

I’ve been enjoying the trail of MEDIA DIET posts over at The Atlantic and was especially thrilled to find out what Ezra Klein reads a few weeks ago.

I’m a bit of a news junkie myself, so I thought I’d take a walk through what I read on a regular basis with the help of Google Reader trends.  It is probably best to start by saying that I don’t own a TV, so  RSS feeds are the basis of my news world.

As a night owl, I do most of my media consumption between  7 p.m. – 1 a.m. because it’s uninterrupted reading time once I’ve made it home from the gym and whatever afterwork commitments I have on a given day.

I start any news dive with a visit to the Huffington Post to see what’s trending.  I love using it as a starting point because as I begin following the aggregated content back to its home source, I wind up pinging across a number of news sites I wouldn’t necessarily visit daily otherwise. It is also rare for me to miss the Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC (videos are released online about an hour after the show ends each weeknight), and I catch most episodes of The Daily Show.

As I write this post, there are 167 feeds in my reader, so this post is hardly exhaustive in reviewing what I read.  It is impossible to keep up with everything, but I find that each time I remove a feed, I somehow wind up adding a few more.  So I let my topics of interest ebb and flow over time.

For current events I follow parts of the New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, Mother Jones, ProPublica, Washington Post, Salon and TreeHugger.  For tech news, I head to TechCrunch and Mashable.

The blogs I read are disparate to say the least.  I read Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish, Center for American Progress’s Think Progress, BoingBoing, BigThink, Jezebel.

Paul Krugman, Nicholas Kristof, Ezra Klein, Michelle Goldberg, Robert Reich, Jon Taplin and Jay Smooth provide lots of food for thought.

In case you hadn’t noticed, I find  culture and politics fascinating, so Talking Points Memo and the latest Pew Research statistics are regular reads.

I also read for entertainment value – Indexed, ChartPorn and Joy the Baker.

The most surprising item in my reader is probably Michael Hyatt‘s blog.  He’s the CEO of a Christian Publishing Company who writes excellent posts on leadership.

I’m not a huge fan of print magazines.  They tend to stack up for 3 or 4 months before I finally flip through them. It is a rare day that I read a magazine cover to cover. Current subscriptions: Wired, Fast Company and Ode.

And, of course, there’s my 50-book goal each year.

In between all the reading, I keep up with some TV thanks to the Intertubes and Netflix: Bones, House, Vampire Diaries, 30 Rock and How I Met Your Mother during the regular network season and Rescue Me, The Closer, Leverage, In Plain Sight  and True Blood online and by DVD in the off season.

That’s a basic overview of my media consumption.  What about you?

How NBC could make NBC Direct a whopping success

Published on September 19, 2007 in Business and Entertainment. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

NBC announced a new, ad-supported, VOD service, NBC Direct, today. Starting in October, Consumers will be able download episodes of some new and returning programming to view on their PCs (episodes expire in 7 days). The subscription service allows people to automatically download new episodes as they become available.

At the beginning, this new software will only be Windows-supported; however, NBC expects to eventually let people flick their downloads to their iPods, so Mac-supported software is hopefully in the works.

Meanwhile, Hulu.com, the much anticipated collaboration between News Corp and NBC, has made nary a ripple. Except for being sued by LuLu.com over trademark infringement.

NBC Direct has potential if they take a few a additional steps.

1) Open all their primetime programming to this VOD service. Consumers like choice, and a couple of executives trying to think like tech savvy consumers, doesn’t tend to end well.

2) Invite the other major broadcast networks to join them: FOX, CBS, ABC, the CW. Let the other networks kick in for a share of ongoing R&D, whether by flat fee per quarter or by keeping a share of ad revenue for other network’s shows. My guess is that the former would be more lucrative for NBC to start.

3) Allow users to search for programming by genre and by show title. It wouldn’t hurt to add in a recommendation section that looks at how a consumer rates other shows they’ve seen past and present, to suggest other shows that might be worthwhile for that consumer.

4) Maximize portability. Don’t just allow a transfer to an iPod. Give users the option to slap it on a flash drive or to a Sling Box or to AppleTV. Let them take it and watch it where and when they want before the content expires.

5) Build forums and chats around each show, allowing fans to find each other and bond. These official forums provide free feedback to networks about what consumers like and don’t like, as well as create community, encouraging viewers to keep watching.

6) Brace yourself. Invite cable networks to join them: HBO, Showtime, FX, Lifetime, USA Network, TNT. Let’s face it, innovation in scripted programming happens in cable. They can cover more risque topics (I for one LOVE Nip/Tuck and Rescue Me) and take bigger risks because the FCC can’t touch them. At the end of the day, some people just aren’t going to pay extra for HBO, but there’s no reason not to reach out to them via other ancilliary distribution windows.

Take a look at film:

Theatrical –> DVD –> PPV & VOD –> network –> cable.

Home video pulls in more revenue for the film industry than theatrical runs.

Let’s look at TV

Full Original Season Run/Reruns –> iTunes/DVD –> syndication on cable (once 100 original episodes have aired)

Me thinks there might be a few untapped revenue streams here, say before Season 8 of Law and Order: Special Victim’s Unit hits DVD. An ad-supported digital release window that runs tandem with the original season run.

Basically, collaboration is key. Each broadcast and cable network can go it alone and design separate sites for their library of product, requiring viewers to visit multiple sites. Or, they can join together and bank it one place that’s easy to navigate. The odds are good if you like NBC’s Law & Order or CBS’s Without a Trace, you might like TNT’s The Closer. No one network would win in this scenario; all parties would get to pad the coffers.