Reports coming in from the National Association of Broadcasters offer an interesting look at the evolving relationship between traditional media and DIY media. On the one hand you had David K. Rehr, CEO and President of the NAB, kicking off the conference by suggesting that broadcasters are being challenged by the Internet not because anything substantive has changed but because broadcasters are using the wrong words to describe why they old ways are better than the new ones:
Internet radio sounds like the future. Wireless sounds like the future. Digital television sounds like the future. High def sounds like the future. YouTube, Google, iBiquity sound like the future.
What does "free over-the-air broadcasting" sound like? I think you know.
We were wireless before it was hot, but we are captives of the language of decades gone by. The language of our past is confusing and perhaps obsolete. We need to update and clarify. We need to reframe and rebrand.
....
The NAB right now has a team working on finding the best words to define us and take us into the future. This will be a long and continuing effort. But, we need your help. We need your ideas. We need your self-discipline, so that we all speak the same language.
Pitiful. Sounds like when athletes and politicians blame the media for their failings.
Meanwhile, NAB members seem to be adapting by co-opting, aggregating and framing user generated content. At Lost Remote Cory Bergman tells the tale of television station WKRN in Nashville which created a blog, NashvilleisTalking, to aggregate information from local blogs already being produced in and around Nashville. In addition the station has launched other blogs under its own domains:
Our traffic has grown phenomenally. 60 percent of our traffic is WKRN and 40 percent is the blogs," he said. NashvilleisTalking â€" which aggregates content from 435 local blogs â€" averages 5,000 unique visitors a day (yesterday the number hit 9,000 due to the Virginia shooting). And what about revenue? "We're making more money this year than we've ever made," Sechrist said. "And it's from the pre-rolls on the videos." He said WKRN is averaging 600,000 videos played a month, and much of that success is due to video's exposure on the blogs (although he admits a reluctance to push too many ads to the blogs themselves.) But beyond money, Sechrist says "a lot of (our users) are never going to watch us on TV, but they'll come to us on the web when something big happens. We have a relationship now."
Meanwhile, programmers continue to try to graft social functionality on to traditional media. The Los Angeles Times has a story today about MTV's plan to attach online components to all it's programming:
The key for MTV will be developing shows that will drive viewers to spend time on series-related online games, in Web communities or on cellphones coughing up jokes of the day.
"We can either stay in the mass business," Graden said, "or we can be in the hyper-specialty business where the shows may not have broad appeal but in the Digital Age would better engage our viewers."
He said that the current series "Scarred" and "Human Giant" are examples of the new strategy. "User-generated content has to become reflected in our programming," Graden said. "Something like 'Scarred,' which tells the stories behind the Web's most gruesome clips of crashes, wipeouts and accidents, "is based on footage that may already be infamous, but it's our own narrative accompanying it."
It just may be that the tradition media players who thrive will be those who most effectively absorb socially created media, not those sitting around with PR agencies trying to figure out different words to use to describe TV and radio
Facebook to go Widget-Friendly, Direct Challenge to MySpace: Eliot Van Buskurk reported yesterday in Wired News that Facebook plans to open it's network to third party widgets, taking a precisely opposite approach from its chief competitor MySpace, which has declared war on third-party widgets. If it happens the effort will allow us to gauge the value of openness and widgets to social networking hubs. At Mashable, Pete Cashmore thinks open widgets are the best strategy for wresting the social networking crown from MySpace. I don't know if widgets will be the difference maker, but I and anyone invested in the widget business will certainly be watching to find out.
link to original post