Category Archives: New Media

PressReader: All Your Favorite Newspapers in One Application

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PressReader PressReader brings over two thousand three hundred daily newspapers into one application. It has a direct relationship with all the newspapers that are available through its application. At first it was hard to get the newspapers to agree to the model. However once they saw how well it worked they were more than happy to participate. Most of the newspapers appear in the app before they are delivered. Unlike many newspaper’s websites, the PressReader shows the actual newspaper including the ads. PressReader is a default application on many devices. Some of the newspapers included in the PressReader application are the New York Times, LeMonde and many more. PressReader is available on every mobile operating system including iOS, Android, Windows and Blackberry. It does work on older devices however there are more features available the newer the device is. PressReader is optimized for the device it is on.

PressReader will translate newspapers into your language. You can have the newspaper read to you. PressReader will go into text only mode. You can search for keywords through all the newspapers and you can also create your own personal clipping service. You can purchase a single newspaper for ninety-nine cents each. A full subscription to PressReader is twenty-nine ninety-five a month.

Interview by Andy McCaskey of SDR News and RV News Net. and by Jamie Davis of the MedicCast and the Health Tech Weekly

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New Media Expo University Offers Scholarship

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The folks over at New Media Expo are offering a scholarship to the New Media Expo University to up and coming content creators.  This is a great opportunity for someone just starting out podcasting, blogging & web streaming that may not have the financial means to get to New Media Expo this coming January in Las Vegas.

I have been asked to judge the entries that are being submitted in the podcasting category. While I will not be commenting on the process to pick the winners, please review the guidelines laid out on the site to apply. I look forward to reviewing the entries submitted.

New Media Expo needs to be commended in stepping up to the plate like this, it shows their support for the podcasting space and their commitment to the podcasting community.

What is the Future of Television

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 At the NAB show New Tek had a panel Broadcast Minds: The Future of Television with Leo Laporte of TWIT.TV,  Kevin Pollak, Award winning Actor and Comedian, Jeff Jacobs, Vice President, Production Planning, Strategic Initiatives & Business Operations of the MTV Music Group,  Bill Chapman, Vice President of Creative Development/Emerging Technologies of Turner Studios and Jeff Hawley, Director, Customer Experience Group. Yamaha Corporation of America. They discussed the future of television and media, if you are interested in media and where it is going you need to watch it. Among the areas they discussed are:

  • The importance of live streaming as an event.
  • People need to feel like they are a part of a community.
  • Engaging the viewer on the various platforms they are on.
  • Creative people are only limited by their own imagination.
  • Creativity drives technology and vice a versa.
  • Anyone can build an on-demand library of content.
  • The ability to store and send big data is a major cost concern.
  • Social Media has become an integral part of the whole process from creation to distribution.

This should only be the start of this dialog and it needs to continue both online and off.

Independence USA Reality Show

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Do world events have you rattled? Ever thought of learning to live off the grid?

Follow Frank Belcastro as he attempts to drag his family (sometimes kicking and screaming) toward his goal of being able to live completely on their own, off the grid.

“Independence USA” premieres on January 18, 2012 exclusively on GBTV.Com, Glenn Beck’s new streaming Internet-based television network. “Independence USA” is produced by GBTV and The WorkShop, L.L.C. whose team has produced shows for History, ESPN, ESPN Classic, Animal Planet, HGTV, trutv, Travel Channel, Lifetime, Discovery Channel, TLC, The Golf Channel, and Broadcast Syndication. The show will air weekly on Wednesdays.

The “Independence USA” trailer has hit reality show written all over it. In my opinion this is going to be a real game-changer for the concept of streaming video and new media. This is the first professional-quality TV series aimed at a mainstream reality TV audience produced exclusively for an Internet-based television network. Though networks have played around for years with streaming re-purposed television shows and movies, this is the first time a network is being built from the ground up, one module at a time to create a pay TV network for exclusive distribution on the Internet.

Will people subscribe to an Internet-only high definition TV network? The answer is, yes they absolutely will subscribe provided that the content is there. It’s highly likely that the addition of the “Independence USA” reality TV series will get many people over the hump and cause them to pay.

People already in the new media/streaming media space should welcome GBTV, because it is going to be a game-changer. It’s success will likely cause a bit of a land rush towards streaming. Devices such as the Roku are in a great position to reap those land rush benefits. The presence of professional level TV networks on the Roku will potentially have a bit of a “halo effect” for existing new media creators.

The Master Switch

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Once in a while, a book comes along that contains ground-breaking insights.  Such is the case with a book I’ve listened to over the past couple of days, the Audible audio book version of ‘The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires” by author Tim Wu.

“The Master Switch” is a compelling look into the history of major information industries such as the telegraph, the telephone, commercial broadcast radio, the commercial movie business, and commercial broadcast television. The book points out an identifiable, slowly-repeating cycle obviated by the fact that these industries were able to gain and hold monopoly status. Each in turn became quite adept at retarding disruptive technological innovations that threatened their respective business models.

Today we take an open Internet for granted, but these same and other forces are looking to take over control of the Internet and turn it into a closed, much more tightly-controlled system.

The book is extremely well written and well researched. The Audible audio book narrator Marc Vietor brings the book to life in a wonderful way.

Mr. Wu does a fantastic job of laying out the often-fascinating histories of companies such as Western Union, AT&T, NBC, etc. As consumers, we think we know these companies through their consumer advertising. The real history of these companies is often quite different and very eye opening.

If you enjoy stories about technology and business, you will almost certainly enjoy “The Master Switch” by Tim Wu.

NHK World TV iPod App

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Like millions of others, I’ve been glued to news sources to get as much current information as I can about the ongoing disasters in Japan following the massive earthquake, tsunami and ongoing nuclear plant disasters. This has to be the biggest natural disaster that has occurred in my lifetime.

In pre-Internet days, we had to rely on newspapers and television for news. Those forms of information have their problems. This is the Internet age. I want current information directly from the source NOW, not later. I want current information of my choice, not what news agencies that aren’t directly on the scene think is or is not important for me to know. If I want 24/7 disaster coverage, in the Internet age that becomes possible, allowing me to completely bypass limited conventional coverage.

It took a while for me to find, but there’s an iPhone/iPod/iPad/iOS app from Japan’s NHK called NHK World TV Live. The app is free. Once the app is installed, it operates very simply. You simply open the app and the live video directly from Japan’s NHK World news service immediately begins streaming. Search iTunes for NHK World TV Live.

The service has an English translator that talks over the lowered volume of the original Japanese broadcasts. The English translators aren’t slick and you can hear them become a bit confused from time to time.

There’s also an app from the Al jazeera TV English news network that operates live out of Doha, Qatar. Al jazeera TV English is highly produced from a beautiful state-of-the-art studio. The on-air newsreaders seem to be British nationals. Though Al jazeera gives more news from the Arab world than the typical American is used to, they do a pretty good job of covering international news, including the situation in Japan. Search iTunes for Al jazeera English Live.

Savvy TV news agencies in today’s world have to make themselves available if they want to continue to be relevant. News agencies such as the BBC, CBC, CNN, Fox, etc. seem to be dragging their feet regarding available-to-anyone-anywhere 24/7 Internet TV broadcasting. I believe they are already losing world market share.

 

Media Buyers Ignoring New Media!

New Media

Over the past five years I have been down in the trenches working like a dog to monetize new media content. While I have had significant success with a number of companies, every month I leave 10’s of millions of new media impressions on the table unsold. This is not from a lack of trying that is for sure, but one thing that continues to haunt new media, is that most of the companies spending money in the digital advertising space aka the media buyers are ignoring opportunities to reach audience that have largely shifted away from mainstream content.

In reality if the media buyers that were selling to Radio and Television were allowed to sell into the digital new media space all of 10’s of millions of inventory not sold each month would be sold out for the next couple of years. While Digital buyers have claimed us, they don’t understand how to execute buys that are more closer to TV and Radio deals.

If I take our gaming category over at Blubrry.com, there are 336 shows that are reaching several million hard-core gaming consumers each month. Yet when we reach out to companies that would be a sure fit for that category, they seem to not have an interest in those shows, yet they will not flinch at buying an ad in a print magazine, that they will spend a small fortune on.  But when you propose a reasonably priced ad deal, that would run 90 days and guarantee reaching those several million hard core gaming consumers they refuse to break out the check book.

When media buyers do bring and ad deal to us, they want to spend generally less than $10k and want us to deliver a $100k worth of inventory. While we do get a higher CPM than what they are paying for at YouTube, I am also guaranteeing that we will be hitting 100% of the exact audience they want to reach.

Frankly I don’t yet fully get it. I think most media buyers have a stack of insertion orders that they just re-date quarter after quarter, year after year and they simply tweak the dollar spends.  I think most media buyers which are typically younger are scared to try something new or present something to their managers that their managers don’t understand.  On a recent ad buy that we executed for a new client, the media buyers, manager told me they were blown away by the response they were getting and could not understand how we were able to deliver the ROI that we were delivering and said something else must have influenced the response.

If I had a crystal ball I sure would like to know how long it is before digital media buyers start putting a small portion of their budgets on new media and give this largely untapped advertising space a try. Frankly I would have thought with the economy, their would have been some significant pressure to spend ad dollars more wisely.  Honestly I think part of it is that most of the media buyers are so overworked that re-dating the insertion orders is safe and lot less work and so long as the clients are happy, most media buyers are with a company less than 2 years and the media buyers want to get their time in without taking any risk and move on to the next job.

So if you have a crystal ball, when will the media buyers stop ignoring new media. If you are a new media buyer and want to talk to me about the 6500 new media creators I represent at RawVoice drop me a line and let’s talk. After all as Om Malik says it’s not really new media it’s new consumption and we have been delivering it by the tanker load for the past five years and it’s reaching millions.