January 2007 Archives

According to Australian Blogs we are the 327th noisest blog in the land. Well, that's great and welcome to all the new readers pouring in through that link, hope we have something to offer that 1 through to 326 hadn't covered.

The BBC report that there is likely to be a milestone in this weekends British music charts as English rock band Koopa enters the Top 40 without a record deal. The band which only makes it's single available through internet download will be the first non-record company act to crack the chart since the rules were changed at the beginning of the year. Why should we care about this is the worlds of film and television? Well, the music industry is leaps and bounds head off us in terms of digital distribution, what if the way we present the television ratings were to inlcude the number of people who watch 'Rocketboom' each day or had a way of assessing the content viewed through bit-torrent. What is the real picture of what people watch? What can a record company offer to a band like Koopa? They are already selling records, being famous and are in the charts. If record companies can't figure out how they assist and artist like Koopa they will become redundent. If television companies can't work out how to lure quality content from the interent onto traditional broadcast, what wuill happen to them? Maybe by looking at what record companies do, television stations can follow their lead.

The big tech news of the last 24 hours is the launch of Apple's new i-phone, it's looks pretty snazzy and is another big step along the pathway that is seeing the convergence of computing, telephones and entertainment. We don't have much to say about the i-phone, as every single tech website is probably talking about it. The general recption around our office though was that we 'really want one'. Take a look at the phone here, and read Mark Pesce's piece here, and this great post from Steve Johnston here.

In the USA cable network A&E have paid a huge amount of money for the rights to screen 'The Sopranos', in ADVERTISING AGE they outline their approach to recouping costs through advertising revenue, at a time when advertisers are slowly deserting television and turning to other forms of online media and radical approaches. There proposal is simple, they will show less adds but charge the client more for them, figuring that viewers will be attracted to a show that is interupted less than other shows. It's a chicken and egg scenario, the advertisers will have to be banking on the less - adds gradually attracting higher viewing numbers. As rating information becomes more complex, could broadcasters start to see a model where individual eppisodes of shows advertising rates are priced specifically. Could advertising during re-runs of classic episodes of 'Seinfeld' cost more, or would they cold less, cause we've all seen classic ones? Could advertisers ask for refunds if a shows viewership dropped bellow a certain point? The less adds - more cost model could also work effectively for Cinemas, when I went to Hoyts Carousel on Boxing Day there was 35 minutes of advertisements before the show and the audience was so incensed some of them started shouting complaints.

The media discussion board Know First is reporting that Channel 10 will be the first Australian television network to offer free downloads of a television show BEFORE it airs on television later this year when they make episodes of the popular series 'Supernatural' available. The 'before broadcast' availabilty will only be for the first episode of the series and will be available for 5 days prior to the series return. The technique has been used in the US to promote new programs and returning titles. However if 'The O.C.' is any indication, simple old fashioned basics still apply. The latest season of 'The O.C' was the first established show to get online distribution to re-new and maintain audiences attention, but it still got axd by the end of the season.

There's an interesting story over at COOL HUNTING, Artist and Theatrical Director Robert Wilson has created a series of Video Portraints he has titled called Voom Portraits, they are of a range of celebrity figures such as Winona Ryder, Brad Pitt and Robert Downey Jnr. To create the video portraits each candidate and to sit quite still and think about nothing. As the technology such as DVD, Video and Flat LCD and Plasma Screens becomes cheaper and more widespread, will it become common place to have a a short film of a loved on playing on the wall, or images that change through out the day, like a scene out of a Star Wars film. As digital media progresses and become more mainstream we are definately seeing a proliferation of content creation that is reminicent of times past. The mass blog posts and viral jokes of YouTube feel like the home video explosion of the 1980's, while the increase of experimental film and film art is reminicent of a decade or two earlier. Shortly after reading about Robert Wilson's Voom Portraits a colleague emailed me, and everyone else in the office, a video of babbies vommiting on their parents, naturally half the office were abhored and the other half had to take some 'sick minutes'. The juxtaposition of the two reminded me of this recent post that proclaims The Warshaw Curve. Doug Warshaw co-founder of video editing and sharing site MotionBox noted that since the rise of online digital media has taken hold the viewership. We are increasingly more likely to watch specialised content - which is begging to lead to a downfall of generic mass market broadcasting, things like the local nightly news. The hugely successful British Comedy show, 'Little Britain' demonstrates the 'Warshaw Curve' very effectively, each episode a man walks into a shop, the shop's specialisation differs from week to week, the man asks for a very particular item, like a book about knitting from 1923 that is exactly 182 pages long or a board game about dragons suitable for 8-12 year olds. The Man behind the counter can find a 184 page book from 1922 or a dragon game suitable for 7-11 year olds but the client always wants the impossible. I think a good term to use to describe the future is 'superfragmetation', everybody is searching for exactly the thing they like, while many Content Producers at first got excited about The Long Tail as they hoped to re-sell and re-purpose all their previous creations, this situation may only be around for a limited period of time. If the generic creations continue to decrease, will their be a long tail to exploit in the future, or will all product start to become more globalised? During the Planning Sessions for Screenwest's Strategic Plan last year, one of the themes that was highlighted as Western Australia's strength is our unique location - nowhere on earth looks like the West Coast of Australia. However to make full use of this advantage, we really have to put effort into understanding storytelling from a global market perspective, Australian content with an Australian voice, looking at Universal themes for a global audience. As long as we remain in the mindset of Australian stories for Australian audiences we will continue to struggle and fall. What is becoming very clear is that the mid-range content in terms of value, budget and quality is the middle market area that looks likely to disapear and successful productions will be at one extreme or the other of the scale.

In February I've been invited to give a seminar at The City of Stirling's annual 'Mind Your Art' seminar series. In the workshop we will be showing how artists from all different backgrounds can use blogging technology to promote their work and create attention. Last year through the LEARNSCOPE project between the ABC and FTI we learnt a lot about New Media and Cross Platform storytelling, one of the outcomes was this XMediaWA blog. It's great to be able to go and share some of the underlying things we discovered though that process.

It's going to be a 'hands on' workshop and should be a lot of fun. If you like to come along download the form from The City of Stirling, the link is included below.

Yesterday we reported on an advertising system in the UK that puts screens on buses and links them to GPS, to play advertisements that are related to the buses location. Today, Advertising Age has an update on the introduction of a television channel to taxi's in New York.

Where else can we put screens for content, sattelite television in the back seat of the car for the kids is an obvious one, planes is already common place, what about education on the bus on the way to school, screens in toilets, Dentists chairs, Doctor's waiting rooms, the newly decorated McDonalds resteraunts now often have televisions, there is of course 9 screens playing at my gym, cafeterias, bank waiting lines..

Cameron Banga just started his blog 'Confessions of a Teenage Fanboy' and his first three posts have all hit the del.icio.us.com list of most popular posts. Cammeron's observations on Computer Games, The Nintendo Wii's marketing strategies, are surprisingly insightful.

DAYLIFE a new centre for news and information has just been launched and the response so far has been mixed. TechCrunch descibed it as 'underwhelming'. As the Techcruchers highlight it uses editor control to select the articles like an old fashioned print paper, and while it allows users to save articles, they is no room for community discussions. If you don't have broadband it is also incredibly painfully slow. On it's plus side it has a really pretty design and great images. However without RSS and I can't see it slipping into my regular reading material. It's worth a look though.

Happy New Year to all the readers of X-Media-WA, by the way congratulations on winning TIME Magazine's person of the Year.

Well, we're starting off for another year, at the moment the internet seems to be filled with people's lists of New Year resolutions and lists of the best whatever, best games of 2006, best new music for 2007, top 10 predictions of celebrity marriages and divorces. We're currently working on list of the ten best lists on the internet but in the mean time we hope you enjoy some other stuff we stubbled over recently.