headlines

A few links of interest that are somewhat related to this course, maybe:

A New York Times story about the Junie B. Jones books is here. Apparently, parents are just now discovering that these childrens' books have creative spelling and grammar, and they think kids shouldn't read that. Guess they shouldn't be reading anything else with incorrect grammar, like run-on sentences (there goes Faulkner) or phonetic spelling (bye bye, Mark Twain).

An interview on MediaBistro with Jesse Thorn is here. The answer to #6 is particularly interesting.

And my favorite entry for today is here. I like it so much I'm going to write a little commentary about it. Ready? Here we go.

In short, I am part of a wack-job demographic. A demographic of people that want flexibility and fun from work. A generation that has to be tutored not to text message senior partners at work to ask if they should wear a bra. Great.

But I don't think I'm one of these people.

Sure, I believe that there are people out there in the 18-24 demographic that are, for lack of a better word, spoiled. This is the generation that first had "helicopter parents." This is the generation that grew up with cell phones and Napster and doesn't believe in intellectual property rights. They call it Gen Y in the article and it makes me want to vomit. When the kid in the article says job interviews are for you to tell your potential boss what your requirements are, it makes me so mad. I'm not like this, and I don't want to be thought of as one of these people because I'm their age.

Not to brag, or whatever, but starting next month, I'll have a full-time job (where, in September, I'll probably work a 60+ hour week and most weekends), a part-time job (teaching at another college), plus two classes and regular freelance writing work, and a thesis to get cracking on. I take work very seriously. I'm on time. I try hard not to spend my workday sending text messages. I leave my iPod at home. I dress like I'm 35. I don't want to work at a place that would allow my coworkers to be what I'd call slackers. Apparently, that means in 15 years, I won't want to work anywhere.


I'm still reading the Keen book. I'm so mad I didn't find it before this class started or reviewing it would have been one of my assignments! Hmm, maybe if I can change my next assignment some, I can work it in. Just reading the first two chapters made me want to quit blogging and using Wikipedia. I've been blogging since 2000. Almost seven years. That's more than 1/3 of my life.

cult of the amateur, part one

My library hold was taking way too long, so I went to Barnes and Noble and bought Andrew Keen's book, and something telling happened while I was in the store.

At first, I couldn't find it. I scoured the "cultural studies" section (which was mislabeled, and what was labeled as "cultural studies" was actually authors A-G in "African-American studies"). I scoured the "current affairs" shelves and the "new nonfiction" area. Nope.

I go get in line at the information kiosk. The guy in front of me, a 14-15-year-old kid with his mom, was ordering Uncanny X-Men books. Does he not know you can order anything you want from the Internet? And they bring it to your house? And usually it's cheaper? Guess not. Maybe the information age hasn't quite reached everyone yet. I wonder if that kid has a MySpace page.

The guy helping him is probably my age, and at oldest he's maybe 27. He finishes with the other guy and motions me up to the counter. I'm hoarse from this cold/sinus infection I've had for 10 days so I have to lean in to be heard. "I'm looking for a book by Andrew Keen, K-E-E-N." "What's it called?" he asks. I tell him. He types it into his book-locater computer.

"Let's go take a look in our Science and Technology section." And there it was, on the bottom shelf, three hardback copies under the "Chemistry for Dummies" selection. He picks up a copy and hands it to me.

"If you read it, come back and let me know what you thought of it. I just wrote a review," he said.

"Oh. I read that this guy was a has-been that's kind of wrong and really full of himself," I said. I mean, I had read that. It's not really what I think, but I wanted to see what kind of reaction I'd get out of this guy.

"Maybe you're not old enough," he says, and purposefully walks away. I hope he meant he thought I was a teenager, and that I was part of the Googlegeneration, with a Wikipedian world view that pays no mind to intellectual property rights or editorial hierarchy. I hope he meant that he thought I was so young I couldn't be helped (I mean, I guess I look younger than I am, and it probably didn't help that I was there in the middle of the day with a cold in jeans and a t-shirt). I hope he didn't mean that I looked stupid.


Anyway, I've read the first chapter and he's already said a lot of things I've said here in this blog, plus some other things. He's mentioned the monkeys with typewriters and the dogs on the Internet. He's talked about Huxley and Big Brother and Facebook and MySpace all in one chapter. I wonder what the rest of the book could be? I mean, it feels like he's already covered all the bases.

I'll keep you posted.

Oh, and while I was typing this, the library called. They have the Keen book for me. Crap.

Revised television article

I'm sick today. So instead of reading, I worked on the second draft of my television article, which is here, for your enjoyment. I'll be back to reading tomorrow.

Hopefully, the library will call me about that Keen book too!


Dude, where’s my TV show?
How ratings miscount television viewers, no matter how they’re watching


In the 2006-2007 television season, the much-hyped program “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” premiered on NBC at #22. This means that for that week (Sept. 18), it was the 22nd most-watched regularly-scheduled television broadcast. Almost 13 million people watched it; roughly the same as the population of Illinois. For 2006, it was the No. 1 program recorded on digital recording systems (like TiVo) for “timeshifted” viewing. Three months later, however, in December, NBC announced the show would share its timeslot with another show, and in February 2007, announced that the last episode would air mid-month. Why the sudden change? How did a fairly popular show go from 13 million viewers to cancellation? One way: ratings.

From 1928 (when the first experimental television images were broadcast) until 1951 (when Nielsen started publishing ratings), television operated without much real, concrete knowledge of who was watching. In 1951, Nielsen announced that the Texaco Star Theater, a variety show featuring star Milton Berle, was the most-watched program on television. Why was this data important? Well, aside from the curiosity of broadcasters, it satisfied a need for advertisers. Broadcasters could more effectively price their advertising space. If more people were watching Texaco Star Theater than anything else, then advertising on that show should cost more. Ever wonder why commercials on the Super Bowl are so expensive? Super Bowl broadcasts are some of the most-watched telecasts. In fact, out of the top-20 prime-time telecasts of all time, half are Super Bowls. In 1982, more than 40 million households watched Super Bowl XVI, and a 30-second commercial cost $324,000. The prices are set by analyzing previous ratings, projecting how many people will be watching when the commercial airs and then charging accordingly. And the shows that nobody’s watching? Well, they get cancelled, since the network can’t sell advertising on shows without audiences. It really is a popularity contest. But how to they determine which shows are being watched?

In the beginning, the system was simple. Nielsen sent you a diary and you wrote down what you watched. Nielsen would send diaries to enough people to produce a statistically accurate sample to estimate the nationwide counts. But, in spite of its simplicity, there were numerous problems with this system. People didn’t send the diaries back on time, or didn’t fill them out at all, or lied when they filled them out. Why did they lie? Sometimes to make themselves seem smarter (it’s been published that people say they watch a lot more PBS than they really do), or to try to protect certain shows from being cancelled. In 2004, Nielsen came under fire for testing “Peoplemeters,” special remote controls each household member used to track demographic use, and a special box that sent all the information to Nielsen. You couldn’t lie and you couldn’t cheat, but somehow, the Peoplemeters were giving drastically different information than the diaries were, and most of the changes involved television shows with minority casts. The Peoplemeters were scrapped after testing revealed their flaws, and Nielsen has gone back to the (also flawed) diaries. The bottom line is that the ratings numbers aren’t right. They’re not only susceptible to fibbing viewers and bad counting, but samples are only measured for home viewing. Plenty of televisions are watched in airports, bars and restaurants, and those viewers aren’t accounted for. And what about all the rest of the ways we watch television programs, like on DVD or the Internet? Can they affect a show’s fate? Why, yes, they can … at least sometimes.

The animated comedy show “Family Guy” proved that networks are paying attention to the DVDs we buy. “Family Guy” was cancelled twice, in 2000 and 2002, but DVD sales figures and high syndication ratings convinced the FOX network to bring it back in 2005. According to USA Today, this was the first time a show was reinstated after cancellation due to DVD popularity. So, at least the networks are paying attention to what we buy, but how about what we rent? Or what we download? The simple answer is that they aren’t. As evidenced by the fact that “Studio 60” was the No. 1 “timeshifted” (that means TiVo-ed) program of 2006, but was still cancelled. The answer is simple: you can skip the commercials on TiVo, so it doesn’t matter to advertisers if the viewers are counted. Why pay for advertising on a show most people don’t watch ads on?

Some networks are capitalizing on the “timeshifting” idea and profiting by showing streaming video of shows on their Web sites and charging for advertising there. For example, you can watch the season finale of “Studio 60” on NBC.com, brought to you by the T-Mobile Sidekick. The episode is split into five short streaming video segments, each preceded by a commercial for T-Mobile. According to a recent article in TV Week, total advertising revenue for streaming video like this should hit $1.31 billion this year. It’s clear that advertisers know who’s watching, or they wouldn’t be paying more than a billion dollars for advertising on streaming video. The networks are counting too. NBC announced that it had delivered more than 300 million streams this season alone. It still isn’t enough to save some shows. Shows with steep production costs (like “Studio 60,” or another NBC hit “ER”) have to make up their costs in ad revenue, and sometimes they just can’t. Spending $40 on a DVD box set is one thing, but paying $1.99 to download a single missed episode from iTunes just won’t add up the same way. And there are no profits at all for illegally-downloaded episodes. Even though you can build a strong and dedicated fan base that way, to the networks, it’s just more lost revenue.

The good news is that, according to Nielsen, new methods are being developed to measure what is being watched on portable media devices like iPods and cell phones. This is called “placeshifting,” Nielsen plans to study ways to accurately track not just what people are downloading to watch on these devices, but actually what they are watching. One of the many potential problems here, which would affect more than just one show, is there’s no accidental viewing. For instance, when you’re watching a television show on television, there’s a chance you can accidentally happen upon another show (the show before or after what you’re watching, or on a nearby channel). You might find your new favorite show this way, or at least something else to watch. With downloading, however, you only download the shows you want, so there’s less of a chance you’ll ever try anything new. Which only adds to the possibility of new shows being cancelled from low ratings, because people won’t download them on a whim. Of course, there are many more potential problems, and I’m sure the Nielsen researchers will try to overcome them, but it just might not be enough.

Of course, there are still the old-fashioned ways of trying to protect your favorite show from cancellation: letter-writing campaigns and petitions, but they aren’t working anymore. Letters and petitions aren’t dollars, and when there are so many media competing for our eyes and ears, money is the only thing that talks. In the 50s, the original Nielsen company didn’t have to deal with cable television options, satellite radio or the Internet stealing away their television viewers. Even show quality doesn’t necessarily matter. “Studio 60” was just nominated for five Emmy awards (in casting, directing, cinematography, and two for guest actors), but even that won’t save it from cancellation. Sadly, shows that aren’t winning Emmy awards are consistently rated at the top. For 2006, the top three most-watched shows were Tuesday and Wednesday’s “American Idol” and “Dancing with the Stars.” It seems like quality is being sacrificed left and right for high viewership numbers, and it’s all about the money. Being a Nielsen test subject and watching the show is the only way to make a difference, Just like always, you’ve got to put your money where your mouth is.

Hard reading

Today, I read a pretty difficult essay. Partially it was difficult because the book it’s in uses 8-point type, and no pictures or graphs. My new-media-spoiled brain craves interactivity and visuals. Or maybe I’m just lazy.

The first, McKenzie Wark’s “The Weird Global Media Event and the Tactical Intellectual,” is complicated. It’s about the strange paradoxes in the concept of “Global Media” and “Global Media Events.” Wark uses the events of Sept. 11, 2001 to illustrate most of her points. These events were global media events, and how they’ve played out in the media (and are still playing out). A few of her most interesting points are:

Wark writes “It proves remarkably difficult to think back from one’s experience to the causes of the event itself.” She explains that even in The New Yorker magazine, where some of the “most distinguished writers in town” were charged with recording their experiences produced “banal” results. The writers, including “stars” like Jonathan Franzen and Adam Gopnik provide “richly detailed versions of their whereabouts on the day, connected to nothing but trivial remarks about the more abstract forces at work.”

Is this paradox a product of the technosphere’s influence? We have the capability to be more connected to more people and more information than ever before, yet, when “Global Media Events” happen, we stake a claim on our individuality by writing about where we were and what we were doing when we found out. This makes me think of something Chuck Klosterman wrote. In his book “Killing Yourself to Live,” he writes "When people want to go into detail about what they were doing on 9/11] "You have to listen, because that person is actually trying to show you that they can talk about life without the safety of ironic distance. September 11 is one issue every American can be completely earnest and unguarded about." When I read this for the first time, in 2005, I was thinking about it in context. It’s in a chapter about a Radiohead record, I think. But now I wonder if there’s some technological voodoo at work here. This sort of relates to what I think is Wark’s second interesting point:

Theydom and Wedom. This comes from John Hartley, and Slavoj Zizek and Edward Said. The “they” in Theydom is the other. “They” are not like “us.” Zizek explains that we don’t like “them” because “they” either want “to steal our enjoyment (by ruining our way of life) and/or has access to some secret, perverse enjoyment.” But now “Theydom” and “Wedom” has started a war. Isn’t this also opposed to the “Global Village” mindset? If we can contact these people and access information about them from the comfort of our laptop computers, does that make us more or less likely to blow them up? Wark says it like this, “The frightening paradox of September 11 is how this attack on actual human lives in New York and Afghanistan is at the same time merely an attack on abstract signifiers of Wedom and Theydom. This is an interesting, albeit scary, point.

I guess both of these points kind of make an argument for the futility of the “Global Village” nomenclature. Things, at least things like this, haven’t really changed. We aren’t really a village at all.

Tomorrow, hopefully, I’m going to read another hard essay, “Imperceptible Perceptions in Our Technological Modernity” by Arvind Rajagopal.

In other news, over the weekend I watched all three “Back to the Future” movies. In the fictitious 2015, there were fax machines and hoverboards and videophones and flying cars and “Jaws 19,” but there wasn’t an Internet. I don’t know if I would have even noticed that if I hadn’t been working on this course.