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Television ratings service Nielsen said Oct 29's numbers will be delayed because of super storm Sandy. That was to be expected. Not only is Nielsen based in the East Village of New York City, one of the area's hardest hit by weather and power outages, the number of local East Coast television stations preempting network programming for storm coverage will make it incredibly difficult to figure out who was watching what. Nielsen hopes to release numbers later Tuesday. Fortunately for Nielsen, much of its actual number crunching is done in Florida.
Sandy takes down Nielsen
On Oct 29, three people showed up to watch a taping of Telepictures’ Anderson Live – about 207 fewer than sit in Anderson Cooper’s studio audience most days. Two of those guests lived nearby and tweeted the New York-based show to ask if they needed people in the audience. They did. Despite the then-looming Hurricane Sandy, Cooper and guest co-host Ashleigh Banfield went on with the show, including giving viewers advice to stay safe. In New York, only Anderson Live, CBS Television Distribution’s Inside Edition and Disney-ABC’s Live with Kelly and Michael were in production as planned.
Sandy Puts a Crimp in NYC-Based Shows
Stuck inside with only the Internet, responsible web citizens are doing what they can to inform and aid during the storm. The Internet has created a bunch of projects to help us through Sandy, by either making it easier to parse information, or by providing places for people to send and collect more relevant data. It's pretty incredible what the Web can do, while Sandy has rendered movement useless. Below we've put together a list of all the online projects popping up in light of the hurricane:
- Google's Crowdsourced Crisis Map
- SandyFeed
- Hurricane Hackers
- Collect Water Samples for Science
All the Internet Projects That Help Us Through Sandy
[Commentary] Thanks to the remarkably effective Facebook page “Hudson Valley Weather” I feel I am as prepared as one could reasonably be, both practically and emotionally. I owe them a significant debt for the information they provided, as well as the resulting peace of mind that comes from being prepared. Hudson Valley Weather, known on Facebook as HVWX1, describes its purpose as “provid(ing) localized and detailed forecasts for the Hudson Valley.” And that they do. They really get right what they do, both the weather forecasting and how to use social media to suit their purpose. I actually think they’ve stumbled on a secret sauce for how to leverage expertise for maximum impact: have expertise, enable activity both online and off, support (not create) community.
How A Facebook Page Prepared A Region For Hurricane Sandy, And What That Teaches About Social Media
Several big news services have put public service ahead of profit by doing away with their paywalls for the duration of Hurricane Sandy.
The New York Times allowed unlimited sitewide access from Sunday afternoon, and spokeswoman Eileen Murphy told Poynter that the paywall would not be reinstated until the weather emergency is over. The Wall Street Journal and Newsday have also removed their paywalls. Visitors to The New York Times now have unlimited access to several interactive maps, can contribute their own photos, watch live video and updates, and read a steady stream of ongoing reporting. Many other organizations are also using Sandy as an opportunity to put their technological capabilities into practice, with some impressive results.
Newsrooms’ digital Sandy coverage
Finally, here's some good news for U.S. newspapers, for a change: the Audit Bureau of Circulations has issued its twice-annual newspaper circulation report, and it shows that overall circulation held steady as papers’ efforts to expand their digital distribution paid off.
The standout was The New York Times, whose total circulation grew more than 40 percent to 1.6 million. Its digital circulation more than doubled in the past year to 896,352, the result of an aggressive push to grow its paid digital subscription base via its paywall, which went up more than a year ago (though it wasn't enough to cure all its revenue ills). With the increase in digital, the Times’ online daily circulation now tops its print circulation, which comes in at 717,513. The Times’ Sunday circulation also sharply increased, from 27.7 percent to 2.1 million. Archrival The Wall Street Journal, with a more established paid site, grew its total circ 9.4 percent to 2.3 million as its digital circ surged to 794,594 from 537,469 a year ago. Overall, the Audit Bureau report showed daily circ decreased 0.2 percent while total Sunday circulation increased 0.6 percent, with digital circulation now accounting for 15.3 percent of total circulation, up from 9.8 percent a year ago.
Newspapers' Digital Circulation Climbs
France has set Google a year’s-end deadline for agreeing to voluntarily pay news publishers — or it may legislate that it must pay a levy for the privilege. Google chairman Eric Schmidt met French president François Hollande at the Elysée, which, in a statement, says:
“(Hollande) stressed that dialogue and negotiation between partners seemed, to him, the best way – but, if necessary, a law could intervene on this issue, as with the current project in Germany. The development of the digital economy calls for an adaptation in taxation in order to better understand the value of sharing and funding the creation of content.”
A unified policy from Europe’s two big axes, France and Germany, against Google’s view — that it crawls news stories but publishes only excerpts – could be a big problem for Mountain View.
Google News wars are here again: Schmidt vs France on ‘news tax’ French president backs publishers, says Google should pay for snippets (ars technica)
This year, candidates, PAC groups and “issue” advertising are expected to account for $3 billion. Yes, that’s billion. With a “B.” And, several sources say Americans will be bombarded with up to 4,500 messages each DAY in the last 30 days of the election cycle. Just the other night, every single commercial break in prime time was filled with competitive election ads. Many for candidates I’ve never heard of. So is it worth it? How can an average person make sense of so many messages simultaneously? The human brain can only process a limited number of messages; and the more commitment required by consumers, the more targeted advertising needs to be. Most mass marketing of political candidates appears to stem from a “spray and pray” mentality. If I shout louder than my competitor, I'll win. That argument used to hold water. But today, people are multitasking more during viewing and thus have more ways than ever before to tune out.
It's Political Season - Where's The Remote?
In the race for the presidency, the little guy is winning -- at least among Minnesota broadcasters trying to profit from campaign commercials. While a record-breaking $3.3 billion is expected to be spent nationwide on political ads this season, relatively little of that cash is flowing into the Twin Cities TV market. But it's boom times for Minnesota stations in smaller markets along the borders of battleground states Wisconsin and Iowa.
Campaigns have spent less than expected in the Twin Cities because President Obama appears to have a sizable lead in the metro, said Rob Hubbard, general manager of KSTP, Ch. 5. "TV advertising is not going to make someone a 40-point winner, but in close races, TV ads can swing things a percent or two," he said. Unfortunately for Hubbard, only 4 percent of his audience lives in hotly contested Wisconsin. That helps explain why Twin Cities TV stations have collected a relatively modest $3 million from commercials supporting either Obama or Mitt Romney, according to data from the Campaign Media Analysts Group and interpreted by the Washington Post.
Political ads make a run for the border
In fall 2009, Comcast planned to launch an Internet service for the poor that was sure to impress federal regulators. But David Cohen, the company’s chief of lobbying, told the staff to wait. At the time, Comcast was planning a controversial $30 billion bid to take over NBC Universal, and Cohen needed a bargaining chip for government negotiations. “I held back because I knew it may be the type of voluntary commitment that would be attractive to the chairman” of the Federal Communications Commission, Cohen said.
The strategy was quintessential Cohen. The hard-charging 56-year-old veteran of Philadelphia politics and Democratic campaign bundler is Comcast’s chief dealmaker in Washington. In Cohen’s decade at the company, Comcast has ballooned in size through a series of mergers that he has steered through government approvals. Today, with $58 billion in annual revenue, Philadelphia-based Comcast is the nation’s biggest provider of broadband Internet and cable television and the owner of network television programs, a movie studio and broadcast stations across the country. Any company doing business in media or technology crosses paths with Comcast and usually comes with hat in hand, eager to reach the cable giant’s 22 million customers.
David Cohen may be Comcast’s secret weapon, but in D.C. he’s a wonk rock star