Michel Marriott has this longish piece in tomorrow’s New York Times about the prevalence of Wi-Fi piggybacking. Why so much ink over a trend that is by now way-old?
The idea of taking a free ride on somebody else’s unencrypted Wi-Fi network is a firmly entrenched concept. But, as the article points out, most people still don’t even bother to encrypt their home networks, opening up all kinds of potential problems, including connection congestion and theft of data from wide-open PCs.
While most of those users are either totally trusting or lazy or uninformed about the dangers of unsecured home Wi-Fi networks, the article points out yet another reason some folks keep their networks open — they want to “stick it to the man.”
Some users say they have protected their computers but have decided to keep their networks open as a passive protest of what they consider the exorbitant cost of Internet access. “I’m sticking it to the man,” said Elaine Ball, an Internet subscriber who lives in Chicago. She complained that she paid $65 a month for Internet access until she recently switched to a $20-a-month promotion plan that would go up to $45 a month after the first three months. “I open up my network, leave it wide open for anyone to jump on,” Ms. Ball said.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 7:11 PM | Print | Comments (0)
Commenting on recent news from Yahoo and an LA Times piece, Cynthia makes the point that “business models don’t transfer from an old medium to a new medium.” After following her link to Chris Gaither’s LA Times story, I thought I’d continue the discussion by excerpting a few items from Gaither’s piece that underscore Cynthia’s point and offer up partial answers to his question “What defines a hit on the Internet?”
In January, ABC canceled its new sitcom “Emily’s Reasons Why Not” after a single episode because only 6.3 million viewers tuned in. But Daniel Myrick — who produced the 1999 independent film “The Blair Witch Project” — says he would be thrilled if “The Strand,” an online series he is developing, would attract one-fortieth of those viewers. “If we had 150,000 people,” said Myrick, “then we could continue making episodes forever.”
NBC…plans this summer to launch “StarTomorrow,” an “American Idol”-like search for music talent. NBC plans to release video clips of 20 bands or singing groups each week for eight weeks, then let users winnow the field until a victor emerges. Executive producer Dave Broome said that because production costs on the show were one-fifth those of a network series, NBC probably would be more patient about letting the show find its audience.
Giather points out that new shows being developed by AOL, “will rely not only on video but also on e-mail and instant messaging to pull viewers into the plots.” And he quotes AOL programming head Jim Bankoff defining an online video “hit” based on “how engaging was the content and whether it takes on a life of its own.”
Gaither notes that, with the online ad market growing nicely, and with video ads accounting for only $225 million of the $12.9 billion in U.S. web ads last year, and lagging far behind the $60 billion pulled in by cable and local TV ads, “many top Hollywood producers are creating “webisodes” and other entertainment fare for…[online] distributors hop[ing] to cover their costs with advertising revenue.”
But Gaither also notes that “ad dollars aren’t the only way to recoup investments in Web programming.”
Amazon.com…is developing a TV-style talk show specifically for its website. “Amazon Fishbowl With Bill Maher” will be judged not by how many viewers it gets, but whether those viewers buy more books, CDs and DVDs.
He also cites a new web program being developed by Fox Interactive Media (FIM) based on its animated TV hit “Family Guy.”
The idea of the Web show…is to appeal to the largely young and computer-savvy fans of the TV show. To [FIM president Ross] Levinsohn, success will be measured not in number of viewers, but in how well the talk show promotes the “Family Guy” franchise. “We’re not looking to create a mega-hit,” Levinsohn said. “We’re looking to continue to extend that brand, to have a way to market and promote our core assets: the TV show and DVD business.”
Then there’s Yahoo’s “Keven Sites in the Hot Zone,” which Gaither says has had difficulty attracting sponsors “because of the controversial subject.”
That doesn’t mean Yahoo didn’t benefit. Even though only 5% to 7% of Yahoo News visitors watched Kevin Sites, they were much more active than other users, viewing 23% to 26% of all Yahoo News pages served up each month, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.Posted by Mitch Shapiro at 6:06 PM | Print | Comments (0)
For a staid British institution, the BBC is an innovator in web-delivered video. The latest move: the BBC has put its natural history video archives on the web for viewing at no charge. This move follows the Beeb’s decision to put its news video archives on the Internet.
Not only is the content from the BBC’s Open Earth Archive available on the web, but the broadcaster is encouraging others to use the film clips to create their own non-profit content under an open license.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 11:38 AM | Print | Comments (0)With Yahoo’s retreat from its ambitious agenda of creating original TV shows for the web, the post-mortems are already rolling in. And some of them, including this piece from the LA Times’ Chris Gaither, are starting to zero in on a fundamental truth about the rise of a new electronic medium: business models don’t transfer from an old medium to a new medium.
By that I mean the Internet is a different creature from television which was a different creature from radio and on and on, so it’s foolish to think you can do the same thing on the web that has proven to be a success on television. Television broadcasters learned this kind of lesson early when they attempted to develop new programming for TV by simply taking radio dramas and comedies and televising them.
That wholesale transport of radio to television didn’t work. And while the analogy breaks down a bit with the Internet, the traditional TV model won’t work on the web for the very same reason. Different media require different kinds of content.
Or as an entertainment entrepreneur says in Gaither’s piece
“If you’re trying to create ‘I Love Lucy’ on the Internet, I wouldn’t want to be in that business,” said Joel Wright, a former Yahoo executive who last year founded SlingShot Media, a talent agency for digital projects.
As Gaither’s piece points out, web-based video is a success with just a fraction of the audience that traditional TV shows require to be deemed successful. Moreover, the rise of cheap user-generated video is hammering away at the high-cost production model that dominates TV.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 11:08 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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