May 2009

Newspapers No Longer Dominate Journalism Fellowships

Even though newspaper employees once dominated the top journalism fellowships, their share had been slipping for a few years, and in selections made over the last few weeks for the next academic year, it has plummeted. Four of the best-known programs — at Harvard, M.I.T., Stanford and the University of Michigan — chose 29 employees of American newspapers for fellowships in the year that is now winding down, and just 11 for next year. There have also been declines in the number of people from magazines and wire services, but not as pronounced. At the same time, applications to those four programs, for positions that are open to American journalists, jumped 62 percent this year, to about 600. The pool was swelled by legions of journalists who no longer have steady work, and by people from the growing nontraditional media. The slots that used to go to newspaper people are going, instead, to freelancers, including many who do some work for papers, and to people in online and broadcast media. Some programs are also giving more positions to journalists from overseas.

Final edition of Tucson Citizen hits street

Arizona's oldest continuously published daily newspaper put out its final print edition Saturday with a fitting last headline: "Our Epitaph." Saturday's 48-page commemorative edition of the Tucson Citizen was filled with individual columns by editors and staffers and highlights of the Citizen's 138 years of publication. The Citizen will continue as an online-only opinion Web site.

The Tribune is bleeding red ink

You might not know Lee Abrams by name, but chances are you know some of what he's responsible for. Abrams' work has included the redesign of Rolling Stone and he was involved in the creation of the MTV cable network. But his real claim to fame was in the radio business, where he is credited with inventing the modern radio format structure, including Album Rock, Classic Rock, Urban/Dance and New Age/Jazz. Abrams was also one of the colorful minds behind "Disco Demolition Night," a stunt that took place on a hot July night in 1979. In 1993, Abrams was named by Newsweek as one of America's "100 Cultural Elite." Five years later, he took on another major challenge when he became the chief programming officer of then-nascent XM Satellite Radio. In fact, Abrams had accomplished so much in his professional life, there seemed few challenges that he hadn't taken on. In April 2007, he joined the Tribune Company. One year into Abrams' tenure, it's unclear whether there's been any sort of paradigm shift at the Tribune Co. But Abrams has made his presence felt and, just like it was in the radio days, he has both fans and people who don't want to listen.

Clarity Is Missing Link in Supply Chain

The recession has exposed a harsh side effect of the supply-chain system. Because modern industry rewards suppliers with the leanest inventories and fastest reaction times, when economic crisis struck, tech companies up and down the line contracted as sharply as possible in hopes of being the ones to survive. Forced to guess at demand for their products in a plummeting market, everyone hit the brakes, hard. An examination of the electronics supply chain -- from retailers all the way back to makers of factory machinery -- shows that, at almost every stage, companies were flying blind as they cut.

The Traditional Tube Is Getting Squeezed Out of the Picture

Sit down, kids, and let Grandpa tell you about something we used to call "watching television." Why, back when, we had to tune to something called a "channel" to see our favorite programs. And we couldn't take the television set with us; we had to go see it! Ah, those were simpler times. Oh, sure, we had some technology we thought was pretty fancy then, too, like your TiVo and your cable and your satellite, which gave us a few hundred "channels" of TV at a time. Imagine that -- just a few hundred! And we had to pay for it every month! Isn't the past quaint, children? Well, it all started to change around aught-eight, or maybe '09, for sure. That's when you no longer needed a television to watch all the television you could ever want. Yes, I still remember it like it was yesterday . . .

PBS Weighs Separation Of Church & Stations

PBS stations are debating the limits of one of public television's basic commandments: Thou shalt not broadcast religious programming. The discussion, some station managers fear, could lead to a ban on broadcasts of local church services and other faith-oriented programs that have appeared on public stations for decades despite the prohibition. The Public Broadcasting Service's board is to vote next month on a committee's recommendation to strip the affiliation of any station that carries "sectarian" content. Losing its PBS relationship would mean that a station could no longer broadcast programs that the service distributes, from "Sesame Street" to "Frontline." The proposal is already having local ramifications.

Giants join forces to improve wireless system

Computer and home entertainment industry leaders, including Intel, Microsoft, Dell, and Panasonic, said that they're forming a new association to create an even faster wireless technology for zipping large files around the home. WiGig will be more than 10 times faster than Wi-Fi, and should be able to deliver high-definition video from computers and set-top boxes to TV sets without the need for unsightly wires, the companies said. The range will be shorter than Wi-Fi -- WiGig will work well within a room, and perhaps extend to an adjacent room as well.

Will Over-The-Top Kill the Video Star?

It is impossible to escape intense discussion of "over-the-top" (OTT) video these days, as it has gone well beyond user-generated content on YouTube. If you believe the Hulu-hype, we are on the precipice of abandoning conventional video services from Comcast or AT&T and instead, we will simply watch Gossip Girl on our PCs. Surely, this medium that has attracted 149 million U.S. users and more than 14 billion downloads in March alone must threaten conventional video subscriptions and/or ARPU. Here's what we know: OTT video is neat and convenient. Using services such as Joost, YouTube or Veoh, we can now watch TV shows when we forget to record a show on our DVR; we delete the recording, the DVR becomes full; others are using the TV; we're away from home; or we want fringe or foreign content. People like that the flexibility and user interface resemble the Web. And, TV networks are cautiously placing their content on their own site as well as on joint venture sites like Hulu.

Marketers Fight for Right to Buy Shows, Not Networks

Want your ads in CBS's blue-chip "CSI"? Then you'll have to run some in "Harper's Island." Eager to get your message to the devotees of ABC's "Lost"? Then you'll have to buy some time during untested debutantes such as "Cupid." That's how it's worked for decades. Marketers and their media buyers are forced to agree to TV networks' condition that they take ad positions across entire schedules if they want to be in the hottest shows. Marketers' patience with this system is, however, running out, and many are pushing harder than ever before to buy programs and not networks. Yet in this upfront, the networks will still ask them to once again buy across the board -- and pay a premium to really build their brands into a show's DNA.

Fox Brings Back 'Remote-Free TV' but Will Limit Use

The fight to keep viewers from zapping past commercials continues at Fox in the 2009-2010 programming season. After experimenting with running fewer ads in select programs and charging advertisers more for the privilege of having less clutter surrounding their messages, Fox will offer the technique -- known as "Remote-Free TV" -- in more limited fashion next season. The News Corp.

Benton

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