Social media companies drew only 2 percent of the venture capital headed to Internet-based enterprises last quarter" while "Big data and cloud companies" appear to be the hot plays now in Silicon Valley.
Read more at Business Week.
Saturday, July 27
Monday, July 22
Streaming Audio, Video Surges In 2013
Online audio and video consumption surged in the first half of 2013, according to the latest figures from Nielsen SoundScan and Nielsen BDS, which tallied 50.9 billion audio and video streams in the first six months of the year, up 24% from 41 billion streams in the same period of 2012.
Read more at Media Post
Read more at Media Post
Broadcast TV, Local Cable Ad Spend Up Double Digits
Broadcast TV advertising spending rocketed up by strong double-digit percentages in the second quarter. Standard Media Index says broadcast TV spending was up 16% in the second three months of 2013, and 10% through the first half of the year. By way of comparison, national cable TV advertising moved up more slowly in the second quarter, for a 6% gain.
Read more at Media Post
Read more at Media Post
survey: 1/3 say First Amendment goes too far
One out of three Americans think the First Amendment “goes too far in the rights it guarantees.” That's the finding of an annual survey conducted by the First Amendment Center. More than a third couldn’t name any of its guarantees at all, and just four percent named the right to petition.
Read more here
Read more here
Saturday, July 20
Can Photojournalism Survive in the Instagram Era?
In his new book Bending the Frame: Photojournalism, Documentary, and the Citizen, photographer Fred Ritchin tackles these developments and more as he explores what the digital revolution means for his trade.
It’s not a competition, but a question of synergies among all media, particularly on a digital platform. Multimedia is not more media, but the employment of various kinds of media (and hybrid media) for what they each offer to advance the narrative.
Read more at Mother Jones
It’s not a competition, but a question of synergies among all media, particularly on a digital platform. Multimedia is not more media, but the employment of various kinds of media (and hybrid media) for what they each offer to advance the narrative.
Read more at Mother Jones
Pay-TV execs open up to portable devices
If television chained entertainment-junkies to the couch, online video has now released their shackles. Faster broadband, the rise of mobile phones and tablet devices, and services like Netflix, Hulu and YouTube that stream shows to people anywhere with an internet connection have freed viewers to watch programmes wherever they wish.
Pay-television executives have also chosen to take part in this liberation movement, by offering their subscribers “TV everywhere”. Their companies give their customers an access code that lets them watch channels streamed live—or individual shows on demand—on their mobile devices, much as they can on Netflix or Hulu.
So far TV everywhere’s rollout has been slow.
Even so, new competitors are trying to grab the remote control. This week the Wall Street Journal said Google (which owns YouTube) was seeking deals with television companies to set up its own internet-streaming service. Intel is expected to launch a similar service later this year. Netflix, Amazon and other online distributors will plough a combined $750m this year into making their own exclusive shows, to differentiate themselves from each other and from cable channels.
Read more at The Economist
Pay-television executives have also chosen to take part in this liberation movement, by offering their subscribers “TV everywhere”. Their companies give their customers an access code that lets them watch channels streamed live—or individual shows on demand—on their mobile devices, much as they can on Netflix or Hulu.
So far TV everywhere’s rollout has been slow.
Even so, new competitors are trying to grab the remote control. This week the Wall Street Journal said Google (which owns YouTube) was seeking deals with television companies to set up its own internet-streaming service. Intel is expected to launch a similar service later this year. Netflix, Amazon and other online distributors will plough a combined $750m this year into making their own exclusive shows, to differentiate themselves from each other and from cable channels.
Read more at The Economist
Tuesday, July 16
Newsroom staffing stagnates: TV staff size up but number of newsrooms down
The total TV staffing was virtually unchanged from a year ago -- down just 48 to a total local TV news staff of 27,605. Overall, there are now 717 TV stations originating local news ... running that news on those stations and another 235 stations ... for a total of 952 stations airing local news. That's down eight stations originating news from last year's 725, and they're running news on seven fewer additional stations than last year. Most of the stations that stopped originating local news are involved in some form of consolidation.
In contrast, the latest numbers from the American Society of News Editors (ASNE) found that newspaper newsroom staff fell 6.4% from a year ago. That's approaching three times the previous year's drop of 2.4%. That takes the total daily newspaper news staff down from last year's record low of 40,600 to a new record low of 38,000, spread among nearly 1,400 newspapers (twice the number of local TV newsrooms). The average U.S. daily newspaper now has 27.5 news staffers; the average local TV news staff is 38.5.
Read more here
In contrast, the latest numbers from the American Society of News Editors (ASNE) found that newspaper newsroom staff fell 6.4% from a year ago. That's approaching three times the previous year's drop of 2.4%. That takes the total daily newspaper news staff down from last year's record low of 40,600 to a new record low of 38,000, spread among nearly 1,400 newspapers (twice the number of local TV newsrooms). The average U.S. daily newspaper now has 27.5 news staffers; the average local TV news staff is 38.5.
Read more here
Sunday, July 14
Simple tests can overstate the impact of search-engine advertising
A rise in sales after an ad campaign does not automatically mean that the ads worked... (but) Far from being an industry where cause and effect remain murky, online advertising may yet become one area where the dismal science can predict how to get costs down and profits up.
Read more at the Economist
Read more at the Economist
Saturday, July 13
How One of Google’s Best Customers Could Steal Away Search
Shopping is key to Google’s fortunes, Jordan writes in a commentary just posted over at Fortune. And search is central to what Amazon does:
Read more at Wired
Amazon is a vertical search engine focused on helping users find products. The overwhelmingly dominant way to find things on their site is the search box. Users enter a keyword phrase and are presented with results that match his or her query. The order of the search results is determined by algorithms that seek to optimize relevance and monetization. Sound familiar?The big difference between shopping on the two, Jordan says, is that the Amazon user experience is better, to say nothing of price, selection and shipping. “Buying on Google takes chunks of an hour, not an Amazon minute,” he says.
Read more at Wired
NSA Google Search Tips to Become Your Own Spy Agency
There’s so much data available on the internet that even government cyberspies need a little help now and then to sift through it all. So to assist them, the National Security Agency produced a book to help its spies uncover intelligence hiding on the web.
Read more at Wired
Read more at Wired
Wednesday, July 10
How to turn an iPhone into a professional video camera
The Telegraph used an iPhone to film, edit and upload instant video reviews from Glastonbury festival. Chris Stone reviews the accessories he used to do it.
Read the story here
Read the story here
it’s possible to automatically identify fake images on Twitter
A recent paper presented by researchers from the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, IBM Research Labs and the University of Maryland found that it was possible to identify tweets containing fake Sandy images with up to 97 percent accuracy.
“Hence, in cases of crisis, people often retweet and propagate tweets that they find in Twitter search or trending topics, irrespective of whether they follow the user or not,” the researchers write. This dynamic of out-of-graph retweets helps things spread rapidly, and it also illustrates how during breaking news events, social search can become more important than one’s social graph.
Another related piece of data in the paper is that fake images did not begin to spread rapidly until roughly 12 hours after they were first introduced on Twitter. The researchers note that “the sudden spike in their propagation via retweets happened only because of a few users.” So a fake will lay dormant until someone with the ability to amplify it comes along and retweets it. That’s what the fakers rely on, in fact.
Read more at Poynter
“Hence, in cases of crisis, people often retweet and propagate tweets that they find in Twitter search or trending topics, irrespective of whether they follow the user or not,” the researchers write. This dynamic of out-of-graph retweets helps things spread rapidly, and it also illustrates how during breaking news events, social search can become more important than one’s social graph.
Another related piece of data in the paper is that fake images did not begin to spread rapidly until roughly 12 hours after they were first introduced on Twitter. The researchers note that “the sudden spike in their propagation via retweets happened only because of a few users.” So a fake will lay dormant until someone with the ability to amplify it comes along and retweets it. That’s what the fakers rely on, in fact.
Read more at Poynter
Monday, July 8
Teens Care About Online Privacy—Just Not the Same Way You Do
The data suggest that teens care less about data privacy and more about more socially oriented forms of privacy, those designed to protect the integrity of a community.
But there is evidence in Pew’s latest data set that suggests the privacy paradox could be fading, primarily with regard to reputation management. Pew notes that more than half of online teens (57 percent) say they have decided not to post something online because they were concerned it would reflect badly on them in the future, and other teen social media users are more likely than other teens who do not use social media to refrain from sharing content due to reputational concerns (61 percent vs. 39 percent). While this isn’t the same as having personal information used to target ads, it indicates an increasing awareness among teens online that their privacy concerns may need to expand to encompass how their online actions will resonate beyond the confines of the strange social ecosystem of childhood.
Read more here
But there is evidence in Pew’s latest data set that suggests the privacy paradox could be fading, primarily with regard to reputation management. Pew notes that more than half of online teens (57 percent) say they have decided not to post something online because they were concerned it would reflect badly on them in the future, and other teen social media users are more likely than other teens who do not use social media to refrain from sharing content due to reputational concerns (61 percent vs. 39 percent). While this isn’t the same as having personal information used to target ads, it indicates an increasing awareness among teens online that their privacy concerns may need to expand to encompass how their online actions will resonate beyond the confines of the strange social ecosystem of childhood.
Read more here
TV Is Americans' Main Source of News
Television is the main place Americans say they turn to for news about current events (55%), leading the Internet, at 21%. Nine percent say newspapers or other print publications are their main news source, followed by radio, at 6%.
Read more at Gallup
Read more at Gallup
Wednesday, July 3
Mobile Boosts Email
Email open rates rose to 31% in the first quarter -- representing an 18.6% increase year-over-year -- which analysts are attributing to the mobile boom.
“We expect to continue to see increased open rates as more consumers … manage their inbox on-the-go via mobile phones and tablets,” said Judy Loschen, vice president of digital analytics at Epsilon.
Read more here
“We expect to continue to see increased open rates as more consumers … manage their inbox on-the-go via mobile phones and tablets,” said Judy Loschen, vice president of digital analytics at Epsilon.
Read more here
Local TV Stations Snapped Up In Buying Sprees
The Chicago-based Tribune Company, newly out of bankruptcy, is trying to sell off its newspaper holdings. Yet even as the company withdraws from print media, it's making a big push into local television, following the lead of other major media players.
Local broadcast news delivers audiences which absolutely dwarf CNN, HLN, ESPN Sports Center, the Weather Channel and Fox News combined. It is a service that people want.
Read more here
Local broadcast news delivers audiences which absolutely dwarf CNN, HLN, ESPN Sports Center, the Weather Channel and Fox News combined. It is a service that people want.
Read more here
Tuesday, July 2
Salaries decline in local TV newsrooms
For the first time in four years, local TV news salaries have taken a dive. The latest RTDNA/Hofstra University survey says pay was down on average by almost 2% in 2012. If you factor in the rate of inflation, real wages were down by about 4%.
Just two years ago, TV salaries jumped by more than 7%... Median salaries in almost every job category not only went down last year, they have failed to keep up with inflation over the past ten years.
Who made more? News writers and news assistants, says researcher Bob Papper, but only because the relative few who were hired got nice jumps in pay. The reverse is true in some other job categories.
In fairness, the median salaries of some positions fell because more of them were hired (like executive producers and meteorologists), and new hires tended to be staff expansions filled with lower paid, less experienced people.
Read more here
Just two years ago, TV salaries jumped by more than 7%... Median salaries in almost every job category not only went down last year, they have failed to keep up with inflation over the past ten years.
Who made more? News writers and news assistants, says researcher Bob Papper, but only because the relative few who were hired got nice jumps in pay. The reverse is true in some other job categories.
In fairness, the median salaries of some positions fell because more of them were hired (like executive producers and meteorologists), and new hires tended to be staff expansions filled with lower paid, less experienced people.
Read more here
Forget New Media: Why TV Stations Are Back in Vogue
The bigger factor driving new interest in broadcasters — such as Tribune Co.'s TRBAA +5.45% $2.73 billion deal, announced today, to buy Local TV Holdings LLC’s 19 TV stations — are the fees paid by cable and satellite operators for the right to air local TV station signals.
Tribune’s publishing operations, including web sites related to its newspapers, still account for nearly two thirds of total revenues, according to recent financial disclosures from the company. But the bottom line contribution is a different story.Operating profit from publishing was just $88.8 million in 2012, compared with $366.47 million for broadcasting. In other words, publishing’s operating profit margin was 4.4% while broadcasting’s was 32%.
Read more at the Wall Street Journal
Tribune’s publishing operations, including web sites related to its newspapers, still account for nearly two thirds of total revenues, according to recent financial disclosures from the company. But the bottom line contribution is a different story.Operating profit from publishing was just $88.8 million in 2012, compared with $366.47 million for broadcasting. In other words, publishing’s operating profit margin was 4.4% while broadcasting’s was 32%.
Read more at the Wall Street Journal
Tuesday, June 25
Radio, Newspaper Revenues Dip
Overall, advertising revenue was basically flat -- with a 0.1% decline from the first quarter of 2012 to the first quarter of 2013, to $30.2 billion, per Kantar Media. Radio advertising declined 1.7% in the first quarter of the year -- reflecting both the absence of political ad spending and weakness in local advertising, long the medium’s mainstay.
Newspaper ad revenues fell 4% in the first quarter, with a 9.2% drop in national newspapers and a 3.3% drop in local newspapers. Elsewhere in the print world, magazines eked out a modest 0.6% increase.
Read more here
Newspaper ad revenues fell 4% in the first quarter, with a 9.2% drop in national newspapers and a 3.3% drop in local newspapers. Elsewhere in the print world, magazines eked out a modest 0.6% increase.
Read more here
Sunday, June 23
13 Utterly Disappointing Facts About Books
1. In a 2012 survey, almost a fifth of children said they would be “embarrassed” if a friend saw them with a book…
2. …and 54% of those questioned said they preferred watching TV to reading.
Read more at Buzz Feed
2. …and 54% of those questioned said they preferred watching TV to reading.
Read more at Buzz Feed
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