Flash (not Gordon) in Your TV in 09

OK, file this one under “convergence in the home.”

At NAB, Adobe announced that they were working with partners to get Flash into home TV sets, with sales of such units to start later this year.

Snore, you say?

Well, it is quite a movement forward.

1.  Flash drives about 98% of all video on the Web (e.g., YouTube).

2.   It is a lot easier to make content in Flash than it is in most other authoring tools.  Hollywood likes that.

3.  True multi-platform migration (create once, distribute over many platforms) becomes possible.

We often under-estimate the importance of tools;  this one brings us closer to the mantra:

Any content any time anywhere any platform.

Repeat that twenty times as you go to sleep.

And get out those “Flash for Dummies” books now and polish your skills.  Hollywood will find a shortage.

Site Scraping Gets Rough

Why this matters:  traffic=ad revenues.  Scraping gets riskier.

Last month, the New York Times Corporation settled a suit brought by Gatehouse Media Inc., which runs websites for 125 Massachusetts newspapers.  The NYT’s Boston Globe was essentially scraping the Gatehouse sites.

Technically (and this distinction is important), the Globe site was returning readers TO the page of the article.  Gatehouse complained that readers were bypassing the ads on the home page.  This is interesting.

Intuitively, one would think that a large number of readers who were returned to the Gatehouse site (albeit at a subsidiary page) would in fact go to the gatehouse homepage.  But no, Gatehouse wanted more (rightly or wrongly).  It also turns out that Gatehouse could figure out how to block this process, which probably led to the NYT offering to settle–so as to avoid case law that goes against them.

So what?

Sites regularly scrape or otherwise link to other sites–usually to the subsidiary pages.  We get a lot of people asking of us if they can do it.  Well, this case—though settled and therefore not an opinion for purposes of precedent–suggests (to no one’s surprise) that doing so will subject you to legal challenge that will cost a lot to defend.

It makes sense, too.  Again, no opinion as to whether it is right or wrong, legal or not, but common sense should tell us that people who own the rights and go to the trouble of posting content where they want it posted should be able to control access to it.

Of course, Google is another matter.

The Paper Is Dead! Long Live the Paper!

As of St. Patrick’s Day, much had already been written about the “death” of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer print edition, which the parent company, the Hearst Corporation, shut down on that green day. The paper is now web only, with twenty in the newsroom, down from about 160.

This is not the only news about newspapers these days but, to me, what is most important is the content plan of the P-I site.  Here’s my take:

Little original content (weird).

Include existing blogs (good but unstable;  if they are that good they will leave for a better gig.)

Links to other sites: While many news sites do this, is it really wise?  Link to other sources within the Hearst family (see below).

Local government officials as columnists:  Now there’s a thriller.  Snore.

Hearst magazine content:  This is a good idea.  Hearst owns numerous magazines.  Repurpose the content AND link to the magazine sites.  Keep the traffic in the family. This is probably a good idea.

How they will differentiate themselves from the sites of local TV stations remains to be seen.  At least the inclusion of commentary may make it fresh.

What seems to be missing from the reports of the plans are social networking and UGC functionality.  Local Little League teams or AYSO teams should be invitted to create their pages there.  It would cost the P-I little to enable such additional pages to be created.

In that approach, they could become something of a virtual community center.  But whatever direction they take, they should build a brand–or build on the brand they have, which is a pretty good one.  And, the good news in all this:  the newspaper industry now has a testbed–one of many more to come in the very near future, like the next couple of months, given the  terror felt (rightly or wrongly) by newspaper corporate owners.

Long live the paper!

Full disclosure:  a variation on this blog will be (or has been) posted on the blog “Convergent Realities” at www.thectcnetwork.org.

Mobile TV to Include Over-the-Air Simulcasts

One more step towards true convergence:

The Open Mobile Video Coalition (OMVC) has announced plans for 60+ stations in 20+ cities to start simulcasts of OTA programming by the end of 09. Cities scheduled thus far include New York, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, DC and Philadelphia.

This should boost sales of the iPhone and other devices with large screens. Imagine the opportunity now with WiMax being deployed—conversely, imagine the network overload.