Tries To Run But He Don’t Get Far Hosted on ZooomrArchive for May, 2007
Tries To Run But He Don’t Get Far Hosted on ZooomrAs a digital TV blogger, I spend a lot of time writing about where I think television is heading. Given the impact that technology is having on the television experience, it hard enough to know what is going to happen next week, let alone 25 years from now.
This is why I was surprised at how eerily familiar things seemed, when I was reading Paleo-Future’s review of the The Omni Future Almanac. The book was written in 1982 by Robert Weil and offers his vision into what the television industry would be like, in the 21st century.
We’re only a few years into the 21st century of course, but considering that it’s been 25 years since the book was published, I couldn’t help, but be impressed with how many of the predictions he got right (except for the whole people loving westerns thing, he was way off base on that one.) In looking over the list of predictions, here are a few, that I think we’ll continue to see throughout the rest of this century.
“*Instant classics will be created by increased Hollywood hype and intensive advertising. Aggressive marketing techniques will also be used in the promotion of pay television and home video media.”
It’s no longer about the quality of the content, it’s about the marketing. A third of most film’s budgets goes towards commercials, billboards and hyping the films on the net. As we see the barriers of film distirbution break down, marketing will play an even more critical role.
“*Trends at the theater concession stand may come and go, but popcorn will remain America’s favorite movie-going snack.”
Even with the spike in corn prices popcorn is still ridiculously cheap for movie theaters. The gross margins that they earn will ensure that popcorn stays a part of the movie theater experience for as long as people keep seeing films.
“*Movie studios will continue to become electronic entertainment conglomerates. With their vast financial resources, these will be the only organizations capable of funding the giant spectaculars of the future. The trend is already exemplified by Universal, Paramount, MGM and Warner. Smaller experimental movies, on the other hand, will flourish with the availability of video to independent producers.”
The Omni future almanac could not have nailed this one more perfectly. Media companies will always have an insatiable thirst for consolidation. It’s part of their DNA. It’s hard to see how this one plays out when you look at the explosion of consumer generated media, but there is little doubt in my mind that the conglomerates will figure out a way to buy into it, if they can’t build it themselves.
I guess the more things change, the more they stay the same. No matter what effect technology has on the film industry, people will always love movies and there will always be people willing to make them. How we make them, how we distribute them and how we sell them may end up changing a lot, but at the end of the day, there will always be an audience, regardless of how the economics work out.
Car
May 2
Kidzone Sucks Hosted on ZooomrTiVo has launched a new ad campaign emphasizing the many different ways that you can personalize your TiVo. 
They’ve already uploaded a couple of the new commercials to YouTube and have also launched a website where they are encouraging users to share how TiVo is unique to them.
On the website, fans can upload photos of themselves and they will add a TiVo attenna to your picture 
I uploaded my own photo, but sadly it still says pending when I log in. Later, I received an email that said my profile was being “moderated”, so I’m not very optimistic of my chances of sneaking an upset Kidzone Davis past their ad agency. In all fairness though, I was going to title my profile Mom won’t give me the password to get out of KidZone, but there wasn’t a place to add it on my profile.
One of the concepts that I love about TiVo, is that even though all of our television feeds are so different, everyone still gets to see exactly what they want to watch. There are some people who would look at my Now Playing list and hate it, but because they are shows that I have personally told TiVo to record, it brings me more enjoyment then any Thursday night lineup ever could.
To help build buzz for their new campaign, TiVo has announced a a user generated contest where you can upload your own TiVo videos to YouTube, for a shot at winning a TiVo series 3 + a lifetime subscription + a 42″ plasma. The professionally produced TiVo ads are funny, but I will be more excited to see what shows up on YouTube. Never underestimate the power of collective intelligence. Already there are plenty of fan videos on the site, but with the added bonus of a series 3 at stake, I bet we see creativity step up another notch. I will be looking forward to watching the contest.
It’s hard to tell whether TiVo’s new message will resonate with consumers, but the campaign does do a good job of explaining the major differences between TiVo and their generic competitors. It’s hard to emphasize the more subtle advantages (like being able to stop at the right moment when you hit play), but TiVo continues to innovate and it’s good to see them showing off, all of their hard work.
This week’s site of the week(end) contest was really close, but in the end the Hype Machine ended up winning the honor, despite a last ditch write in campaign to try and give Viva Radio the spot
The Hype Machine is one of the more controversial picks to win site of the week because, one of the many things that the site lets you do, is search and listen to pirated music on the internet. Hype Machine takes the position that they aren’t pirating themselves because they do not provide downloads to listeners, but they are rather just pointing streaming links to .mp3′s that other bloggers have loaded onto the internet.
Regardless of whatever ethically grey issues people have with the site, the Hype Machine is a great tool for finding new music and they really do encourage their listeners to support the bands by buying their music, if they like it. In addition to being able to stream many songs, you can also download an mp3 a crappy DRM infected file from either Amazon or iTunes, directly from the site. If you aren’t willing to pay for a DRM file, then the Hype Machine also lists upcoming performances for each band, so that you can support your favorite bands by seeing them live.
Hype Machine is a lot like TechMeme, only for .mp3s. They have a pretty extensive list of bloggers that regularly blog .mp3 files and whenever one of the bloggers adds a song, it automatically gets added to the front page of their site. Unlike Techmeme though, the hype machine actually tries to strip out the duplicate links to try and keep the site clean.
One bad part about the Hype Machine is that they only have .mp3′s and don’t do podcasts. Most people using the site are probably looking for music to begin with, but it would be neat to be able to see which podcasts were being talked about. It would help listeners better figure out which ones are worth taking the time to listen to and which ones we should take a pass on. There are of course other sites that specialize in podcasts, but personally, it’s a feature that I think that the Hype Machine should have.
Getting access to a bunch of great songs is cool, but one of my favorite parts of the Hype Machine is that they let you monitor the music by creating RSS feeds for bands or songs that you are looking for. This is a great tool for finding b-sides, covers or new music by your favorite artists. It also helps to serve as a good reminder to keep coming back and checking out the new stuff that shows up.
Congratulations to the Hype Machine on winning this shortened site of the week contest. The nominies for this week’s contest are listed below. You can vote in the sidebar. Voting will close on Friday morning, so get you votes in early. If you have a site you’d like to nominate for the site of the week, send me an email to Davis AT davis freeberg . com and it will be considered for nomination.