December 2005

Dashboards and Menus

Once dashboards were in cars and menus were in restaurants. I was reminded of this today while reading an ad in "Network Computing" magazine. 'Dashboards' are a big buzzword these days in high-level management reporting and CRM systems. Deeper and deeper menus are proliferating on more and more broadcast equipment now that small LCD and plasma displays are inexpensive and 'button per function' devices are disappearing. And oh yes, even good 'ole MacOS 10.4 has a dashboard !

The ad that sent me off on this tangent is from IBM Tivoli. It shows the guy from IT wearing boxing gloves, standing not in front of a bunch of blade servers, but in some kind of a TV master control area. Ever see two DigiBeta decks in a server room? (OK, it's going to happen soon. Network-size AVID Unity installations look just like server rooms.)

Prognostication

A lot of sites and blogs are doing 'Predictions for 2006' or the "Best _ _ _ _ _ of 2005." I'm not smart enough to do either of those. I simply think it is important to read the enrties refered to in "De-Ba’athification, Italian-style" and "The Unbundled Newsroom." I couldn't have said it better myself.

De-Ba’athification, Italian-style

Some time in the past year or two, the New York Times had an article of what happens when the forces of 'democracy' invade a country and oust its dictator. (I think it was in "The News of the Week & Review".) Basically the article said that 1/3 the time the country became more democratic, 1/3 the time it remained about the same and 1/3 the time things were worse.

Surmise how things are going in Iraq by reading this article:

" Cold Hands" by John D'Ulisse.

The Unbundled Newsroom

This web article has been around for a while, but today I came across a link to it in an e-mail I had sent a friend a few months ago:

" The Unbundled Newsroom" by Terry Heaton

Sense and Sensibility

Being an electrical engineering school dropout rather than a J-school graduate, I developed my news chops by observing some of the best men in the business. (And yes, they were all men back then.) These guys had standards and their pearls became the policy book.

Why Live?
So I don't understand why, even in todays competitive environment, why anyone would want to show the landing of a disabled plane (or a high speed highway chase for that matter,) live without adding a few seconds of delay. If one of these jets (and there have been at least four nationally televised incidents since September 22nd,) were to explode live, I'd call it pornography, not breaking news. In todays server environment, it's so easy to add a delay.*

Perhaps it's only me that thinks that the post-WWII advances in the quality of journalism were permanent. I guess everyone in the control room and in the executive suite are yellow. (See Wikipedia.)

"This instrument, television, it can entertain, it can inform, yes, and it can even inspire. But it all depends on the will of the humans who operate it. Otherwise it is just lights and wires in a box." - Edward R. Murrow

UPDATE: 12/27/05 - Incident Number 5 - Enough Already ! Today it was only a cargo plane.

(*Note: Yes, it's much easier to just take the remote live. But as someone who strung two inch videotape from one VTR to another for a seven second delay - things are so much easier today.)

Kiss ISDN Remotes Goodbye

From: i love radio.org

The STL-IP Connect system & software makes the dial-up or ISDN radio remote extinct.

And I'll never forget how I poked Norbert Eksal in the ear while cuing him (at a CCNY hockey game.)

"I'm Just A Bill, Yes I'm Only A Bill...

... and I'm sittin' here on Capitol Hill."

Yes boys and girls, it looks like there's an agreement on the end of analog TV transmission. Early this morning (12/19/05) the US House of Representatives approved a House /Senate compromise of a hard cutoff date of 2/17/2009. (H.R.4241) & (S. 1932)

Took long enough !

You Can Fool Some of the People Some of the Time...

... and half the people all the time: " Results show that nearly half (49%) of HDTV owners surveyed are not taking full advantage of their HD televisions, as defined by receiving HD channels and having special equipment to watch HD programming..." (Source: Scientific-Atlanta) So half the people ain't seein' HD on their HD sets !

Gee, stations and networks could save millions just by putting an "Avilable in High Definition" super at the top of each show !
(Don't forget that ABC has a Prime-Time show whose segements are shot on VHS...)

Convergence?... No, Just Evolution

To those of you who thought we'd all be watching TV on our computers (or using keyboards on our TV's) - the future is coming into focus, and it's divergence. Here are the some of the signs:

• Craigslist is cutting into classified advertising revenue in Bay Area newspapers.
• A news aggregator (Yahoo News), not a news gathering organization is the top news website. (Source: Nielson - Net Ratings)
• People are paying to download last night's TV shows to their iPods®.
• Beginning January 3rd, ABC News will use its Evening News anchors to anchor a Webcast.
  

And some signs of desperation as entertainment / media companies scramble to retain share:

• Good Morning America will have a satellite radio edition.
  http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=1409392 
• Everyone and their mother is doing VOD cell phone deals, HBO is the latest.
  http://www.prnewswire.com/mnr/cingular/23356/ 

At one network, the left hand said one thing but the right hand did someting else.

So, just as radio news changed the newspaper business and television changed the radio and motion picture businesses, technology is changing the way we consume media. OK, that's obvious... but a seismic shift? No, just evolution.