tv & broadcasting

Today’s Digital Consultant Links for May 29th

These are my links for May 29th from 18:05 to 21:31:

iPlayer Makes TV More Social, Without Re-Inventing The Social Network Wheel – Two articles this week show the close entwining of TV and web as two supporting media: BBC's iPlayer is becoming more social, allowing viewers to connect with friends and live chat. Meanwhile, ITV are signalling the arrival of the world cup with more focus on 'two screen' TV (web supporting TV) experiences: http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-itv-formalising-twin-screen-strategy-first-stop-world-cup/
Stop The Presses: ‘Sunset’ For Print In Five Years, FT Sees – In the week the iPad hits the UK shops, forecasters are nodding to the end of the print press and distribution chain, as readers and mobile devices signal the end of tree-based media. Business-to-business publications (like the Financial Times) are likely to be the first to fall, with the timescale estimates ranging from 5-30 years. If you're working in B2B markets – are you ready for an online only content and marketing landscape?
Reputation Management and Social Media: How people monitor their identity and search for others online – According to new Pew Internet research, more young adults in USA are concerned with their online reputation, behaviours include increase searching of their own and their friends names online, and removing tags of themselves from online content.
Six Spaces of social media – An old (2007) but interesting means of categorising social spaces rather than by type or platform but purpose, like 'secret spaces' and 'publishing spaces'. A good way of thinking about user behaviours within the social platform you are working in.
Cloud computing is the new way to do business – A good 101 intro to cloud computing with this short video news features from the BBC.

Digital Consultant links for May 4th through May 9th

These are my links for May 4th through May 9th:

Interview With Will Page, Music Industry Economist – Great in-depth interview with a very clever man, Mr Wil Page, the Economist of the UK's Peforming Rights Society (music collection agency) on the importance of UK's successful digital sales industry, the weakness of the 'Long Tail Model' and why Spotify and Trent Reznor are worth investigating.
Digital Strategy: How To Develop a Digital Strategy: Part 1 – Great article by Rich Nadworny on the processes (methodologies and thought processes) he uses as a digital strategist. These basically form into two phases: research and intelligence gathering, followed by setting goals and objectives. For my own work I use a variation of these tools – essentially focusing on people and the organisation, followed by intelligence gathering then goal setting/measuring. I'll be blogging more on my own methodologies soon, in meantime sign up to Rich's blog for Part 2.
7 things people get wrong about the Internet and TV – An interesting take on why the internet is not killing TV: far from it, video/web TV needs the maturity of the TV model to succeed. I also read a report this week that suggest that when people are surveyed about their media viewing habits they usually underestimate TV hours viewed, and over-estimate web video. All in all, David Lynch was wrong – TV isn't dead (yet).
Digital Strategy: How To Develop a Digital Strategy: Part 1 – "Digital strategy, simply put, is a plan to use digital, two-way media to communicate with other people. The keys in that sentence are: plan, digital, two-way." Great article by Rich Nadworthy neatly summarising exactly what digital strategy is about: different areas of detailed research followed by setting goals and objectives.
Strategy’s Golden Rule – The one golden rule of strategy: don't try and beat the competition incrementally, but find out what they do badly, then aim to be great at that. Using the example of Apple's bad customer service and others, this is a strong lessons in reinventing the rules of disruptive innovation.

Digital Consultant links for April 8th through April 11th

These are my links for April 8th through April 11th:

The Collapse of Complex Business Models – Author and academic, and writer of "Here Comes Everybody" Clay Shirky write a good piece on simplifying bureaucracies and business models, using the example of user generated video and 'In The Motherhood', a small hit online drama that failed as a conventional TV series.
Forecast: TV, Internet Will Lead Advertising Back Up As Print Wanes – Predicted stats for advertising from 2008-2012 globally, showing that TV (after a fall) is set for growth to return to 2008 levels this year, and internet advertising will continue strong growth, whilst print, cinema and advertising are set for a slight decline in spend. Of digital, the strongest growth will be in paid search followed by display advertising.
Digital Economy Bill: Quick Guide To All 45 Measures – Great summary of the Digital Economy Bill, due to be passed as law this Monday, showing all 45 measures, and which have been withdrawn. Interesting to see that Channel 4 now have a remit of distributing film and supporting 'innovative content' and children's programmes as part of their public service remit.
What Social Media Will Look Like in 2012 – Insightful article by Freddie Laker on how social media will grow to become an intrinsic part of the digital experience by 2012, as the semantic web and user recommendation seemlessly interweaves with search, ecommerce and other web experiences. I like the idea of seeing aggregated realtime updates of users before you put in a phone call, and ratings as a core part of the e-commerce experience.
Bebo’s friends desert it – Business Analysis & Features, Business – Yet another social networking giant looks set to bite the dust.. as MySpace hangs in there, Bebo looks set to have its doors shut by owners AOL. Failure to invest and understand the needs of its youth demographic, particularly in failing to support social gaming, have led to the downfall of the fun site. Big shame as Bebo were once investors of online TV programming such as Kate Modern, and this gap, coupled with Endemol's recent annoucement of scaling down their digital team due to limited online tv investment, heralds the death-too-soon of pureplay web television.

Digital Consultant links for March 29th through March 30th

These are my links for March 29th through March 30th:

BBC – Research and Development: The Mythology Engine – representing stories on the web – A very interesting article on a new BBC R&D experiment into the 'mythology engine', basically an online way of following the story universe of long-running drama. I could have done with this lately when I was trying to work out how to catch up on many gaps years of Eastenders storylines (answer: you can't. Wikipedia non-linear character profiles next best bet). I had no idea BBC was researching these kind of transmedia storytelling concepts – very much look forward to an eventual roll out.
Crossing the digital threshold – DIGITAL OPPORTUNITIES – This is an article I wrote for Arts Professional magazine for their 'digital opportunities' edition. It's about a current client, Threshold Studios (a media training organisation) and how they are meeting challenges of entering the digital space for both comms, marketing and training their beneficiaries. Some other good articles in the magazine too including an experiment with Twitter as a social tool by Pilot Theatre. This content is usually behind a paywall so have a look at it quickly…
Google wins AdWords trademark case – There seems to be quite a bit of wrangling going on with copyright holders trying (rightfully) to protect use of their trademark whilst (wrongly) restrict others to use their trademark name. This ruling ensure that all words – trademarked or otherwise – are fair game in the online advertising space.

Today’s Digital Consultant Links for March 29th

These are my links for March 29th from 01:03 to 01:35:

Taking The Tablet: 15 Ways Publishers Are Re-Imagining The Magazine – Great set of video and text articles looking at how publishers are creating new work and experiences for tablet readers (including Adobe AIR and iPad) which provide rich, multimedia ways for users to interact with texts and advertisements to create enhanced experiences which complement the high value and branding associated with the magazines. The aim being not merely to provide content but experiences which can be monteized.
The Democratization of Video Content Creation – Visible Gains, the monetizing video service, sing the praises of cheap, portable HD cameras like Kodak Zi6 and Flip as a source for creating competitive advantage in the organisation: "buy handheld high-definition cameras and distribute them to your best spokespeople and writers. Today’s evolving marketplace requires that you create compelling content to engage your clients and prospects. These are wonderful tools that jump-start the process." My own HD camera weapon of choice is the affordable Kodak Zi6 (c.£70), an HD camera recommended to me by several video bloggers. With free edit software included, there really is no excuse needed to star video blogging and reporting on what your business does.
Mediacamp Nottingham: social reporting from CreativeNottingham.com – Yesterday I was live reporting the Medicamp Nottingham (a digital media barcamp) event for my online community site CreativeNottingham.com. This was my first experiment in 'social reporting' – using online tools to capture and disseminate an event. Our experiment was all about real-time reporting – capturing as close to live reports as possible. This included using 'CoverItLive' to live blog key talks (which were updated in realtime on the website), very quick event reports (my the end of the day I'd worked out how to report, photograph the room and upload the blog post by the end of each session), short audio and video interviews with speakers and delegates and photographs uploaded throughout the day. We used our community website www.creativenottingham.posterous.com as a repository for media content. A good (tiring) day, lots of lessons learnt as to how to do it better next time.
Does The Times’s New Paywall Add Up? – June 2010 (presumably after the election) will see a landmark event in UK online publishing: The Times will sit all their content behind a paywall costing online readers £1 day (the same cost as the print edition. Ouch). Commentator Nick Thomas at Forrester Research looks at the economics, which is likely to see a reduction in readership to a tiny 60,000. The Times believe the niche, commited readership will still attract quality advertisers. This is a significant event as other news publishers will be likely to either follow suite or move to freemium based models (under discussion for The Independent) embracing building larger pools of readers and online audiences. Murdoch may be a brave fool with this move, yet he may also have hit on a way to change the online economy – force those who value to pay.
Women in TV: the missing 5,000 – A shocking report from the Edinburgh TV festival showing that 5,000 women left the TV industry last year, versus 750 men. The festival's panellists irated the audience by suggesting freelancers should pull themselves together, whereas many women feel the inflexible working practices mean that women are simply forced out of the industry when they want to start a family. The TV crisis is unlikely to see any major changes in working practices but hopefully sparking a debate will put the issue at the forefront of agencies like Pact and Skillset.

Digital Consultant links for May 4th through May 9th

Digital Consultant links for March 29th through March 30th

Today’s Digital Consultant Links for March 29th

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