| Cyn Wkndr 3/8/07 |
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Cynopsis:
Weekender 03/08/07 Good afternoon. It's Thursday, March 8, 2007, and this is your Cynopsis: Weekender edition. Below are a handful of industry stories - with which you may agree or disagree. If you'd like to be heard - put together your own 350 word submission! Details below. After many requests, Cyn opsis Weekender College Edition is coming back! We did this once before in November 2005 and it was wonderfully successful, so we'll do it again on April 26, 2007. We will accept 350 word editorials from current college students all around the country and the world. The four most insightful, original, humorous and/or well-written pieces on any topic relating to TV will be included in a single edition of Weekender , and each winning editorial will be awarded the standard Weekender writing fee of $350. College Professors, moms and dads - encourage your students to participate, they might just win! Deadline: All entries must be sent via emailed no later than midnight on Friday, April 20th to me at , SUBJECT: Weekender College Edition. Be sure to include your name, age, college, college year, and major (if you know it), and how you can be contacted. Good luck! Programmers Chase Social Networking on Cell Phones by Daisy Whitney Cellular video experts are betting that social networking will be the next big thing on mobile phones. After all, MySpace came out of nowhere to command nearly 5 percent of all Internet traffic. That same consumer desire to interact is likely to fuel growth in cell phone video. In fact, research firm eMarketer recently reported that mobile social communities-a grouping of like-minded people interacting on cellphones-should grow from 50 million users worldwide today to 174 million in 2011. TV networks are beginning to explore the possibilities to market their shows via mobile social communities in the same way that networks have promoted their shows on MySpace. Discovery is evaluating the capabilities that GPS-enabled devices could present for social networking in connection with Discovery and Discovery Travel Media, said Clint Stinchcomb, executive VP and general manager of HDTV and new media at Discovery. Mobile content provider GoTV Networks already enables messaging among users and plans to add the ability to share and send video clips as cellular technology improves, said David Bluhm, chairman and CEO of GoTV Networks. Mobile video company MyWaves currently lets users share their own pictures and videos with a circle of "friends" and also share videos from other mobile channels. Also, MyWaves lets users invite their friends to watch the channels that they find interesting just by entering a friend's phone number. So far, consumers have demonstrated a high degree of interest in social communities that exist today on cell phones. Mobile software company AirG creates "mobile communities" and counts more than 10 million users worldwide, with more than 6 million of those in the United States. Carrier partners include Sprint Nextel, Cingular, Verizon and T-Mobile. This early interest and activity suggests that social networking could be the tipping point for the adoption of mobile video. Here's why. According to research firm Compete, 47 percent of people who engage in social networking online do so to find interesting content, like photos and videos. With that sort of broad interest in social networking, TV networks and cellular video programmers that weave socialization into their cell phone video may have discovered the winning formula to push mobile video beyond the five million people who subscribe today. The Blinding Pain of Television or the Soothing Oasis of the Web by Hank Bordowitz You know the times they are a-changin' when you see an item in Cynopsis for a company that promises to save "your eyes from the blinding pain of television." The item dealt with MTV working online with VBS.tv bringing linear programming together with such web 2.0 specialties as blogs, Flash videos, and YouTube-like submissions from viewers. Right now, on the new web, everything seems to have a viral video component. YouTube has brought about a cultural sea-change, turning the computer from a data access point to a viewing portal with a billion channels. How ubiquitous is YouTube? According to "competitive intelligence" company Hitwise USA, traffic at YouTube has exceeded traffic at all of the television network websites combined, even after Viacom pulled all it's content from the site. Being the big dog in the junkyard has made YouTube a target and a bellwether. All that content withdrawn from YouTube by Viacom will wind up on Joost, the new online viral video "channel" launched by the folks who brought you Skype. With content from the MTV Networks, Comedy Central, and Paramount Pictures, they hope to reach a demographic who have seen viewing future and know it is online – tweens, teens, and young adults. To reach that same demographic over at the BBC's website, they've created two new shows expressly on the Web for teens and tweens. Watch for the US networks to follow that suit with more than webisodes and leftovers. A surge in broadband penetration hasn't hurt video-on-the-net viewing. By the end of the year, according to Parks Associates, the US will finally reach the tipping point, with more than half of the households in the country surfing on broadband. As speeds get faster, video buffers quicker and views smoother. You can click and view almost instantly. This is going to have an effect on every aspect of the viewing audience. For example, Adams Media Research predicts that consumer spending on internet downloads of movies and TV shows will be almost 40 times greater four years from now than it is today, rising from $111 million last year to over $4 billion in 2011. Get that netflix stock while it's hot. It's going to get a lot hotter. The Redirection By Louis Chunovic Perhaps you think voting doesn't make a difference. The Association of National Advertisers does not share your view. With Democrats in control of both houses of Congress for the first time in a dozen years, albeit by the narrowest of margins in the United States Senate, the "marketing community faces a dramatically altered political landscape," and that means new dangers, according to Daniel Jaffe, ANA executive VP and the trade group's chief Washington lobbyist, who spoke at the organization's Advertising Law and Business Affairs Conference earlier this year. Veteran Democratic satraps, including Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, a critic of advertising targeting children, and Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, a critic of direct-to-consumer (DTC) drug advertising, are now in charge of key committees. And many of those newly enfranchised policymakers "have a very negative view of the role of advertising in our society," Jaffe said, adding that, for the first time, "major mainstream groups," including the Institute of Medicine (IOM), the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the American Psychological Association also have stepped forward with "attacks on advertising." As Jaffe sees it, even the Jeremiahs of global warming, with their new-found Oscar-winning cachet, may make it hot for marketers, as the battle to contain greenhouse gas emissions leads to "calls for taxes or restrictions on marketing for a broad range of products, from light bulbs to automobiles to energy sources." But the hottest of the hot button issues that Jaffe fears will burn ANA members involve children's and DTC advertising. The IOM, for example, has called for congressional legislation if the industry doesn't shift voluntarily within two years to marketing only "healthy" foods and beverages to children, Jaffe said, while the AAP has called for legislation to decrease the amount of children's advertising by 50 percent. On the DTC front, the IOM recently called for a "moratorium on advertising new drugs for two or three years," Jaffe said. One way to preempt legislative and regulatory bans and limitations, according to Jaffe, is more stringent self-regulation. Another, ironically, is better communication about the communicating industry's own efforts to deal with issues, a view that was supported by Deborah Platt Majoras, a 2004 Bush Administration appointee to chair the Federal Trade Commission, who told the ANA gathering that the "self-regulation story in your industry is one of enormous success." A third tactic Jaffe recommended is "becoming more active in the political process – and supporting political leaders who understand the value of advertising." With twenty months still to go before national-election voters cast ballots, expect both champions and critics of the advertising industry to take that last bit of advice to heart. 7 Words, 35 Years Later by Rickie Gaffney An advisory recently came across the transom under the letterhead of a major television broadcast group. It's a reminder to their stations and content providers that the FCC doesn't like certain words, and stations may pay mightily if they are used on air. The broadcast group offers helpful instruction on exactly which words to avoid. The one-page advisory reads like the scribblings of a sexually-charged adolescent, so to see it on corporate stationary was startling. Even more startling: the biggest taboos are exactly the same "Seven Dirty Words" that made headlines in the 1970's. In 1972, the brilliant and provocative comedian George Carlin created a monologue called "Seven Words You Can't Say On TV". (In code they are: S…P…F…C…CS…MF…T. Or you can Google "7 Words" and get the full spellout.) His comic observations were not only accurate in those distant times, but a huge hit with his live audiences. Trouble came when a radio station aired a recording of it a couple of years later. Complaints came, the FCC ruled, appeals courts overruled, and finally … the Supreme Court narrowly (5/4) ruled in favor of the FCC's objection to the broadcast of the comic routine. That newly-issued corporate memo helpfully guides its readers beyond the original "Seven Dirty Words", now called Clearly Restricted Language. Another 16 words/phrases are deemed merely Restricted, including "Middle Finger". Another 7 are o.k. for one-time-use, many of which are anatomical, heard routinely in news and informational programming. And finally, 11 words are deemed Permitted only in dialogue, and you can hear most of those most days in daytime, nighttime, chat shows, sitcoms, and dramas. What's indecent and who monitors it has evolved over the decades. Broadcasters once did, the NAB Code helped, network Standards & Practices departments were vigilant, but now the FCC, and the attendant fines and lawyers have taken the wheel. The Janet Jackson incident and Bono's enthusiasm at the Golden Globes cast the spotlight, as did December's Court of Appeals hearing (broadcast on C-Span!) in which Fox and FCC lawyers and the judge quoted some of the "7 Words" that celebrities "accidentally" uttered at live awards shows. The "Seven Dirty Words" haven't changed since George Carlin outed them. The Supreme Court has changed, except for one - Justice Stevens, who wrote the majority opinion in 1978. Wonder if he's ready to hear them again.
* WEEK'S RECAP *
Friday, March 2, 2007
SUBMISSIONS / AD SALES/ SUBSCRIBE & UNSUBSCRIBE Cynopsis Ad Sales - Mark Bohn - 203-583-1224 / Article submissions for Cynopsis: Weekender are welcome, provided they are no longer than a maximum of 350 words. News articles used are paid at the rate of $1/word. Not all submissions are used. Editorials (also 350 word max) may be submitted but are not paid, and not all are used. Send submissions to Cynopsis at . The Weekender edition is published every Thursday and includes a few items to ponder over the weekend, as well as the highlights from the week. It is delivered to the entire Cynopsis subscriber list, unless you specifically request to be unsubscribed. To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your email subscription, go to the Cynopsis website, www.cynopsis.com and click on the subscribe tab. Emails to the Editor: subject E-Mails to the Editor Copyright Cynthia Turner 2006 Later -- Cyn 03/08/07 What's On This Weekend: Saturday: 8-11p, March 10, 2007 ABC: Movie: The Sixth Sense CBS: CSI:NY [r], Shark [r], 48 Hours FOX: Cops, Cops [r], America’s Most Wanted ION: Movie: The Lonely Guy, Movie: The Man with Two Brains MNT: World Music Awards NBC: NBC Movie: The Italian Job PBS: My Music: The British Beat, My Music: The British Beat TELE: Seguro Y Urgente, Musica Pa Ti, En Concierto: Gloria Trevi UNIV: Sábado Gigante Sunday: 7-11p, March 11, 2007 ABC: AFHV, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Desperate Housewives [r], Brothers & Sisters [r] CBS: 60 Minutes, Amazing Race II, Cold Case, Without a Trace FOX: 'til Death, The War at Home, The Simpsons, The Winner, Family Guy, The Winner ION: Kung Fu, Movie: Mad Max, Kojak NBC: Dateline, Grease: You’re The One I Want, Deal Or No Deal, The Apprentice PBS: Great Performances: Beverly Sills, Great Performances: South Pacific In Concert from Carnegie Hall TELE: Cine En Familia/Estreo, Cine Millomario/Estreno UNIV: La Hora Pico, Bailando por la Boda de mis Sueños |
