A few years ago I started a blog when a former coworker and good friend told me a couple of times to start one. Now after a few years every time something comes to mind, I Post is here. Enjoy reading about my life.
In my last post I talked about new media. These posts are inspired by an interview I’ve heard of David H. Lawrence XVII. Less then 24 hours after posting the man himself posted a comment on my site. To say that I was exited is an understatement.
In that post I concentrated on what television networks can do to embrace new media. In this one I’
One of the traditional media groups is already using and embracing this new media.
Internet radio.
A lot of radio stations have a live radio stream of their broadcast. and there are a couple of Internet radio station that only broadcast via the Internet. These services can make use the advantages the Internet brings. It is easy to know how many pc’s are using your stream at the same time and you are not limited by geographical borders.
For example NOS news network in The Netherlands as broadcasts their content on the Internet. On their site you can watch or listen to the news clips. You can also subscribe to the news pod cast. Every morning before going to work I listen to the NOS pod cast.
At work I have the choice between every Internet radio station out there. Most of the times I listen to Dutch Internet radio stations or a few local once.
Now these radio stations have reached me even across borders. Now back to the benefits of using this medium.
Traditional radio has no real way of knowing how many people are listening. They can make an estimate based on traditional rating system. In most countries this done by doing a survey. Now with Internet radio it is possible to know exactly how many people are listening at what time. So you know exactly what radio show has the most listeners and is the most popular. The station can come to the advertisers with this info so they know how many listeners have actually heard the commercials.
The advantage traditional radio has over Internet radio is that you can listen to your favourite radio station with a portable radio. For Internet radio you need a Internet connection and in most homes this is on the pc. But with the growed of broadband wireless connections and new gadgets this obstacle is soon over won.
The Iphone and if I’m not mistaking the G-1 android phone are two examples of gadgets that use wireless Internet or gprs connections and are able to receive Internet radio broadcasts.
Pod casts.
This is a new form of getting the shows etc to the audience.
This was first done via email calling the service net casting. It was simply sending a mail with a sound clip as attachment to a mailing list. One of the first persons to do this was David H. Lawrence XVII. The guy I talked about in my last post.
Since then the service has changed and evolved to what we know as pod casting. You subscribe to the pod cast and every time there is new content you automatically download it to your pc. Because of the name a lot of people think you need a Ipod to listen to pod casts. This is not true a lot of audio programs have a pod cast subscription option. So all you really need is a pc with the right audio software and a Internet connection. The pod caster always knows how many people have subscribed to his pod casts. With these numbers he can easily step to a advertiser and ask to sponsor him.
Advertisers can also make use of the popularity of pod casts. Taking an example for my own experience. The tenth wonder is a pod cast about the nbc show heroes. This pod cast is sponsored by netflicks and Audible.com. Every time I listen to the show I hear the advertisement. And to be honest I went to the website to see if I can use the service. To bad it’s a US only service.
Most pod casts are still made by the ordinary guys, the hobbyists. Some broadcasting networks and other companies have started to use pod casts as an add-on service.
Most hobbyists or fan pod casts shows have embraced more of the new media. So through email, webforums etc it’s easier to get feedback from the listeners.
The most important benefit of new media is that it’s easy to know how many viewers/listeners you have at what time and where they are from. This goes for Internet radio, television, weblogs, pod casts etc.
I was listening to the tenthwonder podcast. This is a podcast about the show Heroes. And in this episode the Interviewed David H. Lawrence XVII, The actor playing Eric Doyle “The puppet-master” on of the creepiest characters on the show.
At this point you might ask yourself, If I’m posting about new media Why start with a heroes podcast?? Well the David H. Lawrence XVII is a pioneer in new media. He is one of the first people using a service netcasting with grew out to become podcasting. In the interview they talked about tv-shows being reached using other then traditional media. Heroes is one of the shows that is on top of the downloads. Which means that more people watch the show then the traditional rating system can detect. In the Interview he talked about networks not embracing this new media. They are doing anything to keep there shows on traditional media. Which is a dumb thing. The internet is here to stay. So embrace it or go down because you’re the only one not doing it.
Okey here a little explanation on new media.
Traditional media are radio, Television, telephones, dvd’s etc
New media are internet radio, Podcasts, Streaming audio/video, Im, blogging etc
New media is mostly using the internet as a carrier.
We all are guilty of using this new media to get our shows, movies or music. The power here is the coverage. Everybody with a internet connection can make use of this. For (live) streaming you need a broadband connection. So it will take a while before Suriname can really enjoy that.
Now the problem big networks are having with this medium is that a lot of services provide content without ads and commercials IN the content. A networks primary income is commercials. Every show has 4-5 commercial breaks. and the traditional rating system is used to estimate how many people have seen the commercials.
With the way it is now a lot of download sites etc provide shows without the commercial breaks. But at the moment the quality of the content is not guaranteed. For me personally I would download the shows from the official site WITH the commercials if quality was parented. Okay think of this taking heroes as an example. Heroes airs on Monday and on Tuesday it is available on the site with commercials. Now the traditional rating system will give you a estimate of how many people have watched it and have seen the commercials. Now after that you can see how many people have downloaded the episode with the commercials. The downloads don’t stop on Tuesday. So at the end of the week or month or even season you can show the clients just how many people have downloaded what episodes and how many times the commercial was shows to them.
For example episode “company man” from season one had 16 million estimated viewers on Monday and it has been downloaded 50 million times within one month.
These number are just example. But that would mean the rating system is missing the 30 million viewers. Now if you embrace the new media and make those download official you can make commercials especially for the international viewers. The clients and the commercials will reach across borders. A good download server can log where the download clients are geographically. Or at least what country/state/city they are in. So if NBC knows that heroes is downloaded the most by people in Australia, they can customize the commercials for that region. Come to think of it you can have multiple versions of the show with commercials aimed at the clients from a certain region. Technically it is possible to force you to download the version with the commercials aimed at your region based on your IP address.
Now doing this would be using the internet in a smart way. If a guy in Suriname with not a lot of money can think of this and knows how to use the technology to do this, What can a billion dollar television network do??
I think the main hurdle the network have is the fact that anybody can put anything on the internet. With television you need permits, expensive equipment etc to put something on the air. So the networks have no way of controlling what is on this media. But why bother?? If you can guarantee quality entertainment for free or very cheap, people will use your service. Of course there are people that go for the low quality service provided by some internet company. But if you control your quality content online the number of viewers using the low quality “illegal” service is gonna shrink fast.
If you want to hear the interview with David H. Lawrence XVII http://media.libsyn.com/media/hancocklg/10w_ep73part2.mp3 This is a 1:06:41 long interview. This is the part where he talks about new media The second part he’s talking more about his character on the show etc.
Why an I talking about this?? well because I just had myself a little Children of the corn marathon last weekend. And I was thinking. Those old horror movies really scared the bejezus out of me. The new horror movies just don’t seem to do it for me.
So what is it about these old once?? The suspense. The Story.
The old Horrors have a good scary story. So the movie is not only scary in a visual aspect, but the story itself without all the blood and gore is also scary. In this case Friday the 13th is an exception. Because that is just a lot of blood and gore. But not a bad movie if you like horror/slasher.
Today’s Horrors are more about giving us the scary visual effects. The stories aren’t really scary. The visual effects are.
The movie companies have noticed this, I think that is the reason they green light all the remakes. Remakes that fail miserably.
I think if by some reason you NEED to remake a movie, get the creative team that made the original a success. Of course using moderne effects is cool.
I’ve heard there will me another “nightmare on elm street” movie. A reboot of the series. Now I’m asking myself, is this a new part of the series?? Or are they gonna remake the original movies? I hope it’s the first. To bad Robert Englund is not gonna be playing Freddy. I don’t know if there is an actor that is gonna be as scary and fun to watch as Robert Englund in the rol of freddy.
Here is hoping they do a good job.
Yep, I’ve started twittering. No it’s called tweeting. If you use the service it’s best to also use the lingo
Yep I’ve starting Tweeting. For those who don’t know what twitter is.
Twitter is a mirco-blogging service. You have a profile and send short messages to it, 140 characters. In a lot of social networks you have a status option. Myspace, Facebook etc have this feature. Twitter is just this feature. Now when I came in contact with this service I though I would never know what to do with it. My brother in The Netherlands started using it. And because of him I started using it to. We keep each other up to date about our daily activities using twitter. And yes it’s public so everybody can follow us.
I think the best way to use twitter is to install one those small twitter programs on a mobile phone with internet capabilities. That way you can tweet whenever something comes to mind. My brother has a Iphone and with his account he can use twitter anywhere anytime. My phone is a htc touch the same model I lost a while ago (Losing a Limb) The phone has internet capabilities but the telecom accounts with internet here are a little to expensive for my tast. So I have another option. My phone also has the capability to use a wireless network. So I added my phone to my very secured wireless network at work. Being the Systems administrator I can do it . At home I just plug my phone onto the computer. And having adsl that computer is online 24/7.
Every time my brother updates his twitter I know it within 4 minutes. That is if I’m home or at work. I’m following my brother and a few friends, but my brother is the one using it the most. (little hint to the other guys. You know who you are)
So if you want to follow my tweets there are two things you can do. My tweets are displayed at the right of my blog. So just come to my website often. Or if you have a twitter account you can add me http://twitter.com/rafiekslvr
Try it.
In this time of dishonor, greed etc I find comfort in a prayer I’ve heard in a movie. The movie is the 13th warrior with Antonio Banderas. The movie did not do really good in the boxoffice, but I really love it. My favorite part in the movie is just before the final battle the Vikings citate a prayer.
For some reason I always get strength out of this prayer.
The prayer:
“Lo there do I see my Father
Lo there do I see my Mother, my Sisters and my Brothers
Lo there do I see the line of my people
Back to the beginning
Calling me to join Them
Bidding me to take my place among Them
In the Halls of Valhalla
Where the brave
May live
Forever.”
Here is the soundclip of that movie. If you are reading this from my website and not the rss you can just click on the player and you’ll hear it. I don’t really know how it is transfered to rss.
