Friday, April 21, 2006

A U-Turn for Media Mindsets?

Media on the go was the main topic for the Media Mindsets group this week. U-Turn, an international company, had representatives on the Kent State campus April 17 and 18 to display its mobile media delivery platform and discuss opportunities for working with Media Mindsets and Kent State.

Jim Gaudino, dean of KSU’s College of Communication and Information, said, “A partnership would offer a lot of avenues for discussions of content and opportunities for research.”

A joint effort would include using the company’s Vizgo content management system to produce and deliver content to both campus and off-campus users.

Potential applications could include not only delivery of media content but also university information such as class and exam schedules, enrollment information and sports schedules. And, particularly of interest to anyone who has ever tried to explain to a visitor how to reach Taylor Hall and where to park, maps of the university.

A group of Journalism and Mass Communication majors sat in on one of the meetings and heard the company’s representatives talk about opportunities that included roles for student media. One example for cross-promotion cited in a Daily Kent Stater story: A contest on mobile phone that could drive people to student media Web sites to find out the winner and to TV-2 for an interview.

Dean Gaudino, quoted in The Daily Kent Stater, said, “(A partnership) fits right into student media.”

U-Turn has offices in Denver, the Czech Republic and Australia. Its primary U.S. venture currently is a partnership with WISC TV-3 in Madison, Wis. Viewers can get the station’s mobile report, C3K To Go, on their cell phones.

Follow Up

The Media Mindsets group will discuss opportunities for partnering with U-Turn and potential arrangements at its next meeting, Wednesday, April 26 at 3 p.m. in 317 Moulton Hall.

Anyone interested in the project is invited to attend. And you can post your comments on the U-Turn project and research related to it by clicking on "Comments" at the end to this posting.

Breaking the Rules

While we are exploring the future and encouraging students, faculty and professionals to think outside the box--or redraw the box, words from the Television Bureau of Advertising’s annual conference are worth reading.

“Conventional wisdom (is) an enemy at a time like this," according to Beth Comstock, president for digital media and market development at NBC Universal. “In media today, I don’t think think there’s a single rule that can’t—and frankly, probably shouldn’t—be broken.”

Quoted in a New York Times story (free subscription required), she added:

“It isn’t just about driving growth. It’s about staying in business.”

Other suggestions from the conference:

  • "Be like Google, in a constant beta state."
  • Cross-promote: use TV station content to drive traffic to the Internet.
  • Take advantage of user-generated/consumer-created content to build emotional ties with customers.
  • Offer opportunities for social networking (like MySpace), streaming video (like YouTube) and mobile marketing.

posted by Joe at 11:42 AM 2 comments

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

2 Conferences: Is the Sun Rising or Setting?

If it’s spring it’s time for . . . another media conference. In fact, if the dean’s travel budget could afford it, we could take to the road for March and April. Some media bloggers seem to do just that, reporting from one meeting after another.

AdAge.com has an interesting look at the Newspaper Association of America’s recent conference. AdAge.com's conclusion: Newspaper publishers, tired of hearing about circulation declines and lost advertising, are “really, really eager to change the subject.” Outgoing NAA President Jay Smith, president of Cox Newspapers, said, “The world changed a lot and we changed a little.” He added, “We need to stop whining and start winning.”

Reports from the cable industry have a much different tone. Clearly the focus at cable’s major convention, the NCTA national show, was on developing new content and new business models. As Comcast COO Steve Burke said, you can wish for the days of basic cable “or you can say, ‘What is the next business model, the next great way to create content and put it out there?’”

Broadcasting & Cable has a number of stories from that convention, and two in particular highlighted aspects of convergence.

In one story major executives from different factions of the cable industry called for cooperation throughout the industry. Broadcasting & Cable reported, “Asserting that cable is a healthy and growing medium, the panelists stressed that the key to their respective successes was sharing a symbiotic relationship, exploiting each other’s services to grow their overall business.”

Comcast Chairman/CEO Brian Roberts said, “There’s never been more new products to sell,” citing Comcast’s 6,000 shows on VOD (video on demand) as an example,

A second report from the final panel on “Converging on Change: What’s in Store and Who’s Behind It,” highlighted some of the ways cable has moved beyond TV—and ahead of their competitor, the telcos—in offering access to content in new ways.

Comcast‘s Burke pointed to the video-on-demand/mobile horror network that Comcast and Sony announced at the show as an example.

And finally a word on engagement from MTV Chairman and CEO Judy McGrath: “If you engage people and they want to share (content), forward it, blog about it, they’re more deeply involved with you. That increases the value chain.”

A Recruit for Citizen Journalism

Pioneering new media columnist Steve Outing has left the Poynter Media Institute to join what he calls “a citizen-media-based startup company, the Enthusiast Group. The company is based in Boulder, Colo., so Outing will face climate and generation shock among other things. (He’s apparently a devotee of mountain biking and his new group’s first site is about biking.)

Outing’s farewell gift is a group of six articles on citJ, i.e., citizen journalism. Among the topics he deals with are the growing acceptance of citizen journalism by the traditional media and business models for the citizen journalist. Together the acticles provide a good rundown on where citJ stand today.

What's Web 2.0?

We’ve mentioned the MediaShift blog previously, and Rosemary DuMont has posted material from it. The blog is written by Mark Glaser and posted on the PBS Website.

One of its occasional features is Jargon Watch. Apparently I haven’t been the only one wondering about the term Web 2.0. On Monday Glaser posted a good backgrounder that includes definitions, examples of Web 2.0 companies (as opposed to Web 1.0 companies) and people who love/hate the term.

Now if someone will just explain "rich media."

posted by Joe at 12:41 PM 1 comments