MediaFlect

I can remember David Westin, ABC News president, crowing a couple of years ago when Good Morning America’s viewership was within “a stadium full’ of people of Today — about 50,000 people separated them , because that was considered very close to the leader. Now we’ve got the networks at only about 250,000 from each other in the 18-49 category, according to the Wall Street Journal (subscription). About 20 million total.

That says something about the state of the broadcast networks, and their ability to attract an audience. Especially considering that shows like Sex and the City, on a subscription channel like HBO, could sometimes attract 15 million or so for just one episode.

Newsweek, in a Web exclusive, writes about HBO exploring the possibility of delivering some shows on cell. Hope they do — but also they do it right for the medium. It’s a clunky experience so far.

I wonder why no one has come up with a better way
to view on the cellphone, such as
a) the expandable cellphone screen – something you can pull out or unroll
b) a projection device in the phone that lets you see what you want to on the back of a seat or any flat
dark surface
c) attachable glasses of some sort with headphones to give you a real immersive experience. (I know
folks have played around with this, but don’t think it was attached to cellphone.)

Parody of Arianna Huffington’s group blog. No posts in August?

One of the things I’ve always loved and hated about living in New York City is being bombarded with media ads. They’re one way I can keep up with what’s going on, especially in entertainment. I suspect a lot of the ads are not so much about getting audience, but just as much about showing media buyers and sponsors that a show’s being promoted.

Recently there’ve been a spate of ads for “reality” TV shows. We can, I see from a Times Square billboard, watch the daily lives of Venus and Serena Williams. A subway ad on the wall of a station on the Upper West Side — a bastion of the media elite — tells me I can watch the comings and going of music impresario, husband and father Bobby Brown (they don’t have the wife-beater part on there). At the same station today, I saw fleetingly that there’s now some game show of battles between reality TV characters (can we really say “stars”? This page has more on the upcoming series, like Brown’s, on Bravo.

Aside from the irreality of it all — someone getting paid just for “Being Bobby Brown” — I wonder when someone will coin a better term than “reality.” And how many more of these can we take? Are we heading for an all-Reality channel? How about a further niche: All Reality Sports Stars. (I bet All Reality Porn might do some business — as long as it’s just as “real” as all the other “reality”. Real reality would be boring and maybe even a turnoff.)

So, we’ve got a drama starting tonight on FX about a war that, for the first time, is on WHILE the war is happening. M*A*S*H really being about Vietnam aside, is it really that surprising? How soon until some solders get a little stipend to give us a “helmet cam” view of what they’re doing and up to? How commercial could it get? Maybe helmet cams could be a way to defray some of the cost for taxpayers?

I hope you’re wondering whether I’m kidding.

With U.S. senators about to demand that the makers of Grand Theft Auto close a backdoor that allows characters to have sex, maybe sales of the game will spike as folks rush to get it before the door is closed. (Brilliant marketing that. And any sexual innuendo in previous sentences is unintentional.)

My friend Daniel Gross points out the absurdity of letting our young folk blow characters up, but G-D forbid they be allowed to have them make love. Is it cuz Danyell and I are both children of the 60s and 70s? I think we’re both just rational.

CBS MarketWatch a couple of days ago wrote: “Concerns are mounting that DVD sales and rentals will take on even more prominence — and that the timelag between the theatrical debut and the home video release will close.”

I guess that makes Hollywood tremble because it’s less “box office.” But if they can figure out a way to release movies in a secure way in High Definition TV to homes, and the fee is right, why not do it? Just that scenario was suggested today at the Kagan VOD summit, which I covered for PaidContent. In fact the story says that entrepreneur Mark Cuban “has contracted with Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh to make six films that will be released on home video the same day.”

Reading James B. Stewart’s “Disney War,” struck by how much of the first part of the book, in which former CEO Michael Eisner and other top execcs spend their time visiting other top execs at their homes, for dinners, etc. I know it’s a schmooze-fest, and it’s all Hollywoooood, but it’s fascinating to me how even in this electronic age, the execs spend so much time doing one-to-one human relations. Now there’s a problem for media to solve.