Media Industry Archive

For a truly captive audience, it’s hard to beat your office elevator. For years, it was home to little more than forced smiles, awkward body language and eyes uplifted to focus on the sequentially lighted floor numbers as if they were the most captivating programming in the world. Those days have vanished forever in about 9,000 upscale office building elevators in the downtown business...

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Late last night, a curt message was posted FlyClear’s website: “Clear Lanes Are No Longer Available. “At 11:00 p.m. PST on June 22, 2009, Clear will cease operations. Clear’s parent company, Verified Identity Pass, Inc. has been unable to negotiate an agreement with its senior creditor to continue operations.” That’s too bad, you may say, but what has this to...

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In a world where practically all information has become so thoroughly mediated,  it is difficult for media companies to fully comprehend their own role in the narrative arc that develops in all big stories now, especially the current rebellion in Iran. This is partially because most of us– whether reporters, editors, cameramen, sound experts, advertising salespeople, marketing execs, web...

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No, I will not be watching tonight’s very special edition of “Jon and Kate Plus 8,” but as it has been so far in this season of this increasingly exploitative series, it’s a little hard to avoid its publicity, and the fact, that tonight, the once-happy-couple-with-the-eight-kids is going to make “an announcement.” The show’s teaser clip makes it clear...

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In the annals of media property makeovers, I can’t remember any that look as expensive as SCI FI Channel’s changeover to SyFy, which was met with loads of negative online commentary when it was first announced several months ago. I don’t know the dollar figure on the media buys, but I’ve seen the re-brand for months now on the sides of busses, as the front cover ad on...

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According to a poll released earlier this month, more American adults now consider the Internet their favorite (and most reliable) source for news than television, radio, and newspapers combined. Here is the breakdown: Internet          56 percent Television       21 percent Newspapers    10 percent Radio              10 percent The remainder apparently fell...

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Inside the highly competitive world of cable television news, programming decisions taken in the middle of events like those now occurring inside Iran can lead to significant business advantages over the longer term. Audience spikes during a crisis inevitably contribute to audience growth even after public interest in the crisis passes. The audience growth will include some converts who like...

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This is not a good time to hold a title like the “Supreme Leader” in Iran. For a week now, huge crowds of protesters have been defying Iran’s autocratic leadership to demand political change. Over that time, it has become clear that what started as a protest against the official results of a disputed Presidential election is actually something much broader – a challenge to the...

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According to a report released by Nielsen late last week, overall online video usage, measured as time per user, rose in May to 188.7 minutes for an annual growth rate of 48.9 percent over May 2008. That would be over three hours of online video viewing by the 133,797,000 users in the U.S., up 12.8 percent from a year earlier. Nielsen also reported that the total video streams watched during...

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Canoe Ventures, the vaunted leap by the cable industry into bringing addressable advertising, via set-top box, into 60 million homes, has halted the plan indefinitely — which raises the inevitable question of whether this was a viable idea in the first place. Backed by six of the major cable operators, Canoe was supposed to roll out a product any month now, which went by the moniker Community...

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