Making it an Amazon Night

A week after Dish Network Corp. announced that it would close the last of its Blockbuster stores, Amazon announced today that has partnered with USPS to begin Sunday delivery of Amazon purchases. USPS, seemingly stumbling forward, Blockbuster-like itself, is adding Sunday delivery.

Amazon has moved far beyond its original incarnation as an online bookseller and is now a prominent seller of digital content, but the deal with USPS suggests the continuing importance that people place on getting things and having them in their hands.

Unfortunately, we outside of Amazon cannot know just what it is that USPS will be delivering to Amazon customers on Sundays. As Farhad Manjoo has described:

We don’t know where Amazon expects to make money from in the future. Indeed, we barely know where Amazon makes money from now. The company refuses to divulge even the most basic stats about its business. Amazon’s earnings calls are a comedy of opacity and misdirection; you’d have a better chance getting a guard at Buckingham Palace guard to crack a smile than to get an Amazon exec to accidentally tell you about the company’s business.

So we don't know how many of these Sunday deliveries will include the DVDs that Blockbuster couldn't get people to rent anymore, or CDs or books or other physical media that have become technological underdogs. Is Sunday delivery a meaningful sign of their continuing relevance? Or is this really about people ordering toasters, or pet food, or any of the other thousands and thousands of products available via Amazon?

The announcement's proximity to Christmas shopping time suggests the latter. But as Amazon continues to build and improve its infrastructure for fast and cheap delivery of physical goods, it can help to keep physical media a practical alternative to their instantly acquirable digital counterparts.

Hulu Plus, Netflix ,and the Future of Online Advertising

Among its frequently asked questions, Hulu Plus includes "Why are there ads in Hulu Plus?" Hulu's frequently given answer reads, in part, "We have found that by including a modest ad load, we can keep the price for Hulu Plus under eight bucks, while still providing users with access to the most popular current season shows on the devices of their choice."

Those who aren't satisfied with the answer can climb into the Hulu discussions page, where complaints are registered in ALL CAPS. 

Hulu's official line on ads likely leaves many subscribers unsatisfied because the ads are a jarring contrast with the ad-free subscription content provided by Netflix, and for that matter, Pandora and Spotify.

Why, though, should we expect a paid subscription to fee us from commercial advertisements? Netflix, Pandora, and Spotify actually look like exceptions here, standing out against pre-web subscription media services. Broadcast TV stations and most cable channels that come with a cable or satellite subscription carry ads. So does satellite radio. And so do magazines. And don't forget that major daily newspapers, which carry a cover price, were so dependent on ad revenue for their survival that the decline in newspaper advertising revenues has driven many publishers into bankruptcy.

The easy answer to why Hulu includes ads with its paid subscriptions is that consumers are willing to pay for the service, even with ads. This, though, is not an answer that Hulu will include in its FAQ.

A more interesting question is what separates Hulu Plus from Netflix, Pandora, and Spotify. 

With its focus on new network and cable TV programming, Hulu's service is more like turning on a TV than is Netflix's service, which -- with its focus on movies and older TV content -- is more like popping in a DVD. For that reason, Hulu subscribers might be more willing to accept the television norm of ad breaks. 

Perhaps a better explanation is that while Netflix, Spotify, and Pandora were created by media outsiders, Hulu is owned by the corporate parents of NBC, FOX and ABC. These media titans are accustomed to selling ad time, and they benefited from the lessons learned by newspaper publishers, who were initially eager to put content online for free and have only recently begun wresting it back from spoiled audiences. 

In this sense, Hulu's ad-model is a stake in the ground for ad-supported TV content in its inevitable digital forms. As more content moves to and is consumed over the web, the prominence of old media organizations vis-a-vis  the new frontier of tech startups may determine whether consumers will continue to pay for ads online.

See? 3D Printers are Cool

I dropped into the Microsoft Store at a mall in suburban Chicago yesterday, which of course, looks and feels vaguely like an Apple Store. A key difference, which could have been a one-time-visit fluke, was that a sales rep kept asking me questions after I said I was just looking.

As in, "Are you looking for business or personal use?"

Neither. I just want to fold this laptop back and forth like on the commercial. And I'm kinda curious about the Microsoft Store.

Speaking of plastic replicates, Microsoft Stores across the country are demoing the Makerbot Replicator 2 3D printer. At the Woodfield Mall store, the machine sits inside a transparent case, where you can see it working, spitting out little plastic sharks. You can also handle the little sharks and a wrench and other products of the Makerbot.

With a sticker price of around $2,200, many, many more people will be trying to figure out what these machines are than will be buying them at the Microsoft Store. That's a big deal, though. Introducing 3D printing to consumers as something that really exists and can be seen and bought at the mall is a step on the road toward 3D printing being the disruptive communication technology that it can be.

And, hey, it also makes the Microsoft Store a place with something cool to check out.

Is Aereo a Major Disruptive Force in the TV Industry?

It seems that the broadcast networks are scared. Two, anyway, have proclaimed that they might give up their access to the broadcast airwaves and retreat to paid television models. What would lead networks to consider -- or more likely, threaten -- such a drastic move?

This, it turns out:

Image from Aereo press kit. (aereo.com)

No, not the dime, the television antenna that it is next to and smaller than. A service called Aereo has thousands of these tiny antennae and is selling remote access to them as a way to deliver television content over the internet.

Now restreaming and selling someone else's copyrighted content is generally illegal, but Aereo has employed some conceptual brilliance here. By dedicating a tiny antenna to each paying subscriber, the product being sold is more like a computer peripheral, linking a personal antenna to a device, than it is illegal resale, or public performance, of content. That logic prevailed with a federal appeals court last week, where a dissenting judge described the service as "a Rube Goldberg-like contrivance, overengineered in an attempt to avoid the reach of the Copyright Act and to take advantage of a perceived loophole in the law.”

The service is currently only available in New York City, and it seems like paid mobile access to broadcast channels would have limited appeal. After all, a lot of people don't bother to plug in antennas for free access to broadcast TV. The New York Times report on the court decision suggests that Aereo might see its future in deals with cable networks, like that penned with Bloomberg TV. If so, the service could develop into a paid TV provider, like a cable or satellite system for mobile devices. The success of such a system would limit broadcasters' own ability to profit from mobile distribution of their programming through services like Hulu Plus or Netflix.

Another major threat to the broadcast networks is the possibility of existing cable or satellite systems beginning to use technology like Aereo's for retransmission of network content. As the Times reports, these carriers pay to distribute network content, and they might be interested in an alternative that legally allows them to opt out of such payments. I'm not sure, though, how such a move would comport with must-carry restrictions. Cable operators are required by law to carry the content of local broadcasters, and it is through this system that payments are being made. It seems like an effort to circumvent that system could violate the must-carry rules.

In any case, we should expect broadcasters to be talking with Congress about Aereo soon.

You Can't Do That on Television (?)

Winning their division, achieving a winning record for the first time since 2005, and the star power of Robert Griffin III got the Washington Redskins a lot of hype last year. Hype that led a lot of people, I think, to wonder, "can you say that on TV?"

Whether it is appropriate to even speak the team's name on broadcast television is part of a novel argument for changing the team's name, which was advanced in a letter to team owner Dan Snyder, signed by former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt and other former FCC officials.

As part of the FCC's mandate to regulate broadcasting, it has been granted the power to levy fines for indecency. And the letter argues that casual use of a racial epithet in reporting might fairly be considered indecent and kept off the air like other offensive language:

"It is impermissible under law that the FCC would condone, or that broadcasters would use, obscene and pornographic language on live television... Similarly, it is inappropriate for broadcasters to use racial epithets as part of normal, everyday reporting. Thankfully one does not hear the "n" word on nightly newscasts."

Even if courts or the Commission decided that the word was not indecent, Hundt suggests in a Washington Post op-ed that using the word could violate broadcasters' obligation to serve the public interest. Using the broadcasting regulation angle is creative and, given our national concern over halftime nudity emergencies, perhaps a convincing argument. Broadcasting & Cable points to a previous effort to change the team name, though, that was aimed at Washington-area broadcasters and went nowhere.

This subject predictably riles people up. I think its insane that some team names and logos still exist and people wear them on hats on purpose. That said, I think it's incumbent on individuals to not be racist, and would prefer that they act on their own moral or financial interests to make a change.

And in case there is any doubt about the term "redskins" being derogatory and hurtful instead of somehow honorific (from the letter to Snyder):

"As it became increasingly difficult for trappers to transport masses of rotting corpses, colonial governors agreed to pay for Native Americans' scalps and skins. Trappers subsequently began using the term "redskin" to symbolize the bloody skin and scalps they collected."

Forty Years of Cell Phone Calls

Pew marks the 40th anniversary of the first cell phone call with some data on phones' proliferation and people's habits with them. Now 87% of adults in America own a cell phone, up from 75% about five years ago.

The good thing about all these phones is that people are learning to be a lot less annoying with them. I think there are some generally accepted norms about not talking in line, turning off your ringer in a movie theatre, and that kind of thing that didn't exist when the technology began to take off. There are still people talking in lines and now there are custom ringtones, of course, but I don't think the amount of annoying behavior has scaled with the popularity of mobile phones.

Another annoying part of the cell phone lifestyle is getting calls. That may seem counterintuitive, but getting a call in your pocket wherever you are, whatever you're doing is obtrusive. Most people think the alternative of being harder to contact is worse, but being interrupted to drop whatever to talk at any time is burdensome.

Enter text messages, which also allow immediate, anywhere connection, albeit in a much less disruptive way. Pew found in 2011 that among cell phone users who text, 31% prefer to be reached by text and 14% said that it depends on the situation. Also counterintuitive, but I think the rise of text messaging might be attributed in part to people's desire to be left alone.

So, 40 years on, the turn toward text communication, along with Internet connectivity for the web, Facebook, Twitter, and email, shows how far the cell phone has moved from something for voice calls toward a sort of all-purpose connection device.

Why Don't the Network Newscasts Cover Climate Change?

Media Matters is once again doing God's work (assuming God cares about the future of the human race) by drawing attention to the lack of climate change coverage on network television. It turns out the three network newscasts aired a combined total of 12 segments on the subject in 2012. Yikes.

Media Matters is asking its readers to sign a letter to the executive producers of the network newscasts asking for greater coverage of the issue. That can't hurt, but it raises the question of just what would lead to greater coverage.

One major obstacle to increased coverage is the politicized nature of the issue. Of course, science and the future of humanity shouldn't be politicized, but with the economic interests in ignoring the problem of climate change, politicization is inevitable. One of our major political parties is obviously willing to bend to those interests, but must our commercial news media?

The challenge here is familiar: with Republicans and Democrats largely on opposing sides of the issue, the media are restrained by twisted notions of objectivity and fear of criticism for violating that objectivity. These are real obstacles to covering climate change, but only real in the sense that they can go away if TV journalists and executives ignore them.

Viewer petitions like the one promoted by Media Matters could help a bit in that regard. But that letter to executives points to a bigger problem. That is, the content of TV newscasts is largely determined by what interests a profitable audience. So if the target audience for newscasts doesn't care about the issue (or want to hear about it) some other pressure would be required for coverage of that issue to get on the air. (This pressure could come from journalistic standards that say our impending doom is an inportant story, audience interests be damned.)

The networks likely pay attention to detailed ratings information and other reseach letting them know what viewers want to see. But that clearly didn't convince them to air more than 12 stories last year covering climate change. That suggests other means of expressing viewer interest (like a successful petition) or changes in politics or journalistic standards will be necessary before climate change gets adequate coverage.

MSNBC and a Decade of Change

Chris Hayes, who begins a new prime time show on MSNBC next week, was interviewed on Fresh Air yesterday. When asked about his new time slot, airing opposite Bill O'Reilly, Hayes explained that he doesn't see himself in competition with O'Reilly:

"...When people say, well, you're up against Bill O'Reilly, I just - it's really unclear to me - it's genuinely unclear to me whether that's true in any real sense, which is to say if we are competing for the same pool of viewers. I genuinely don't think of myself as in competition with Bill O'Reilly or in relationship to him in any real way. I think of myself as in - having a relationship with the viewers, building a viewing audience that I have a relationship with and trying to grow that. I mean believe me, I want as big an audience as possible, but the conventional wisdom about this being a competition with Bill O'Reilly is not necessarily accurate."

I think Hayes's idea about not competing for the same viewers is right on and is a clear statement about how cable news has evolved over the past ten years. There are some casual viewers and waiting rooms that might just put Fox News on because it's the news or maybe even because of an interesting guest, but anyone with well-formed opinions about politics or public issues will likely have an ideological preference between Bill O'Reilly and Chris Hayes. And in that sense, there is no real competition between the two; however entertaining or informative Hayes's show is, much of O'Reilly's audience will remain uninterested.

Those in charge of programming at MSNBC know this and are using it as a business strategy. This is an evolution from a not-too-distant time ago when it seems the idea was very much to compete for a homogeneous audience. It was ten years ago that MSNBC fired Phil Donohue because, as a critic of the Iraq war, he was too liberal for prime time:

"An internal MSNBC memo leaked to the press stated that Donahue was hurting the image of the network. He would be a “difficult public face for NBC in a time of war,” the memo read."

That passage is from a recent article by Chris Hedges, who isolates the day that MSNBC fired Donohue as indicative of "when commercial television decided amassing corporate money and providing entertainment were its central mission, when it consciously chose to become a carnival act."

I agree with much of Hedges's critique of corporate media and it is worth reading. It is true that the economic interests of giant media corporations constrain debate on television, limiting the topics of discussion and points of view to what can attract profitable audiences. Hedges's article misses the change that has occurred at MSNBC over the past ten years, though. While its prime time lineup remains cable news and corporate journalism, with all of its flaws, the change has been dramatic.

By counterprogramming Fox -- seeking a different audience -- MSNBC has expanded the range of debate on cable TV. Sure, the debate remains within corporate bounds, but Chris Hayes is editor-at-large for The Nation. Giving him a prime time slot -- as part of a liberal prime time lineup -- is quite a distance from removing the network's only anti-war host because of his views.

I Want to Believe

There's a lot of crazy stuff on Facebook, and much of it is wrong. The same is true of the internet generally, of course. And aside from factually inaccurate information you can find dark things in the internet's so-called dark corners. Like, say, a cannibalism forum.

Facebook, though, is much more accessible than a cannibalism forum, and thankfully more widely popular. But there is a phenomenon of passing along bogus information, whether because of political or religious motivations, or a general lack of skepticism or understanding.

My favorite that I've seen recently is the warning that Obamacare will require us all to have the Mark of the Beast implanted in our forearms. Some key points:

"The US Senate has passed the Obama Health Care' bill into law. The implementation would commence on 23/03/2013. This bill would require all Americans to be implanted with a Radio Frequency Identification(RFID) chip in order to access medical care. The device will be implanted on the forehead or on the arm. This is to fulfil the prophesy in the Book of Revelation 13:15-18 concerning the MARK OF THE BEAST!
[...]
(1) Why is the chip being implanted exactly where the Bible says it would be. Why on the hand and forehead. Why not anywhere else?(2) Why is it being connected to your bank account? Remember the Bible says you won't be able to buyor sell without the mark. And guess what! The chip is connected to your financial details."

I think I know the answers to those questions. 

Hoaxes are nothing new, and I know much of this is passed around because it's funny. It is likely that in many cases these posts are the work of spammers, who know the kind of content that will attract attention and use it to their financial advantage. Misinformation can be destructive though, especially in an environment where the only arbiters of veracity are the trusted friends and family who pass it along.

More destructive than belief that the President is Satan, I think, is the development of a culture where all information is dismissed as maybe true and maybe not. A healthy skepticism about what we get from media is, well, healthy, but a world in which Facebook hoaxes in a newsfeed are given as much consideration as journalism posts is troubling. After all, some things actually are true.

3D Printing and the Future of Stealing

So I didn't know this was happening, but just learned by way of an Ars Technica article that 3D printing files are available at The Pirate Bay. Turns out that the site's "physibles" category has been available for over a year.

I think this demonstrates the totally logical link between the possibilities of 3D printing and the anti-copyright ideal. Digital has technology allowed for the infinite and cheap duplication of music and video, and sites like The Pirate Bay have developed to help with the illegal distribution of those files. With such infrastructure and the norms of file sharing in place, 3D printing simply removes the limitation of reproduction that it remain in a digital space. Users could concievably download and print duplicates of vinyl records.

Of course, users won't be limited to duplicating copyrighted works in the already disrupted fields of music and movies, which means that viable and widely used 3D printing has the potential to disrupt just about any industry that makes and sells physical objects.

Nielsen's "Zero-TV" Homes with TV's

The Nielsen Company's new quarterly overview of American media habits highlights the increasing number of households that don't watch TV on a TV. Nielsen reports that these households -- many of which have a TV but don't use it to receive broadcast/cable/satellite signals -- represent about 5% of the country and have increased from about 2 million to about 5 million since 2007. They skew young and don't see the value in paying for TV service:

"Cost (36%) & lack of interest (31%) are the main reasons for "zero-TV" homes, with only 18% of these households considering subscribing to television services."

This trend has some sort-of obvious consequences for the future of content distribution, but what stands out to me is these households' lack of interest in free television. I can understand having a preference for Netflix or iTunes or illegal downloads over paying for cable, but Nielsen reports that 75% of these "zero-TV" households have working TV sets.

That means that unless these people are living in the mountains, in caves, or in nuclear test zones, they could plug an antenna into their TV and get a free over-the-air signal, but they do not. Based solely on people I know, I have the impression that a lot of people don't know it's possible to get an HDTV signal for free simply by plugging an antenna into a TV and turning it on. I think that says a whole lot about what is available on broadcast television.

The use (and underuse and poor use) of the television spectrum is a pet concern of mine, and the increasing number of people who want new media content but opt out of free broadcast TV is a pretty clear sign that this public resource could be better utilized.

Rand Paul and the Self-Made Media Event

Senate rules require that any journalist or media personality discussing the talking filibuster must invoke the 1939 Frank Capra film, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, because that film serves as a shorthand for the romance and inherent Americanness of the political tactic. The film offers an ideal type of a"good" filibuster, where one man and his ideals are able to use the senator's privilege of unlimited debate to change the country for the better. The "bad" filibuster, which is now virtually practice on matters of importance allows a minority of Senators to prevent consideration of bills or nominations without putting their ideals on display or threatening embarrassing bladder or excretory problems.

Senator Rand Paul made news last week with a "good" filibuster, holding the Senate floor for nearly 13 hours in an (ultimately successful) attempt to get a straight answer from the Obama administration about how it interprets its power to use drone strikes on U.S. citizens within the country. Since Paul received a ton of media attention -- in what was regarded in some commentary as an attempt to establish his libertarian credentials for to the 2016 cycle -- why don't we see Senators do this more often?

For one thing, an essentially solo effort like Senator Paul's likely means not only a departure from the majority being obstructed, but also from the broader minority. We might expect senators to take such risks to comity or to their status within the body over issues about which they were especially passionate or saw a great political upside to championing.

How about, then, the routine filibusters that have wide support among the minority? Why do these senators prefer to block legislation and nominees without the media attention that might come with a talking filibuster? One possibility is that they would prefer to "quickly" delay or block some activity so that the Senate can get on to its other business. With the routine blockage of meaningful Senate activity, though, it's hard to believe that a properly functioning Senate is a major consideration. Another possibility, often raised by opponents of silent filibusters is that the obstructors do not want media attention focused on their efforts.

With cameras in the Senate chamber, along with the proliferation of cable news and of online news access and commentary, we might expect now more than ever that senators will need to see a lot of upside in order to engage in a talking filibuster. That perceived upside likely explains Senator Paul's actions last week.

Gently Used, Like New

The New York Times reports this morning Apple and Amazon are both planning resale markets for the digital media they sell. The systems reportedly under consideration would allow users to give up their access to digital books or movies and get (likely a cut of) resale profits.

Such a change would bring down prices, which music and book publishers wouldn't like, but the absence of a resale market is really an anomaly of the digital space. And if properly designed, a digital resale market could work well. As with physical media, some consumers would be motivated to pay full price for a new copies -- maybe to get them soon after release or when used copies available for sale are scarce. Those willing to wait or shop could get a better price.

So this all seems good, but the major problem with the plans of Apple and Amazon is that they remain the plans of Apple and Amazon. That is, these resale markets could (and it seems likely would) exist as products of license agreements with these vendors. That means that purchasers could be bound to resell their digital media within the terms set by Apple or Amazon, within their proprietary marketplaces, and with fees paid for the privilege.

Again, this could still be an improvement over the inability to resell purchased digital media, but this seems like an issue better resolved by public policy than by corporate policy. An independent digital music resale market called ReDigi is currently facing a lawsuit from Capitol Records. ReDigi allows resale of music purchased from iTunes by transferring rights from one user to another, and a court decision favorable to ReDigi could legitimize such independent marketplaces. In any case, Congress could act to clarify copyright law around digital media downloads and extend resale privileges to consumers.

Hip to be Square

Recently I wrote about the hour-long drama as a form that might last beyond the technology that required it. I think square-shaped art for music recordings might do the same thing.

With physical sales of music, the cover art has the obvious purpose of labeling the product, something that can be achieved with a simple line of text in digital space. But cover art does a lot more than label a product. In physical retail it is also designed to be compelling, or attractive, or somehow represent the music it's covering. I see no reason to stop attempting that as physical music sales disappear.

And, with only a relatively brief foray into rectangular media, music has been sold on circles wrapped in squares for about a hundred years. This means that the great back catalog of cover art is square, and with no  physical limitation on shape or size in digital distribution, there is no reason not to continue using square art. The only thing the digital space will demand is consistency, and Apple, Spotify and others have already nicely integrated square image files in their music apps and products.



(Are you kidding?) The Beatles Sgt. Pepper's on cassette by Dave_McGurgan, on Flickr

Why I Saw the Heat, Knicks, Thunder, and Clippers on Sunday

If you ever watch NBA games on TV (especially on ABC), you might have thought, like I do, that the same small set of teams play each other in different combinations each weekend. And it's only a matter of guessing whether the Lakers will be playing the Knicks or the Celtics, and if they aren't, whether the Heat will be. Being a Milwaukee Bucks fan, I'm especially sensitive to this kind of thing.

Broadcasters and the NBA can only show so many games, so there will invariably be some criteria applied to decide which games get nationally televised on a Sunday afternoon. A team's success or star power are two obvious criteria to consider, but perhaps most obvious is each city's television market size. Airing games with the L.A. or New York teams will attract audiences in the nation's two largest TV markets, in addition to whatever other audience those teams attract across the country.

The success of the Oklahoma City Thunder complicates that simple formula, though. The Thunder have one of the leagues biggest stars in Kevin Durant, made the NBA Finals last year, and have their home in the country's 44th largest TV market. A quick look at the broadcast schedule on ABC, ESPN, and TNT shows that the Thunder get as much airplay as any other team. The table below shows the teams with the most scheduled national TV games and their market ranks.

This data suggests that market size is a big factor, but a team's performance can earn it big TV time. Perhaps though, team success is correlated with market size so that bigger cities have better teams. If that were the case, broadcast decisions based mostly on performance would still result in the big-city teams getting more airtime.

A simple test of correlation shows that's not the case. The number of television households in a team's home TV market has no significant relationship with a team's wins in either the 2011 season (Pearson's r=.04, p=.83) or the 2012 season as of March 3rd (r=.18, p=.34). That is, being based in a big city does not generally mean winning more games.

So what are the relationships between team success, market size, and the number of nationally televised games?

I built a (multiple linear regression) model to test these relationships, and I included the total number of scheduled TV games for the 2012 season, the number of TV households in each team's home market, the total wins in the 2011 season, and two other variables as measures of team success. 

The first of these is an index of 2011 playoff performance. On this index, the league champion Heat get a 1, the Thunder get a 2, those eliminated in the conference championship round a 3, and so on down, including a rank for those who missed the playoffs. This might be a better measure of success than the win records from the shortened 2011 season. 

The other success variable is the number of wins during the 2012 season as of March 3rd. This is intended to represent the potential for success that each team showed when the TV games were scheduled before the season started. Of course, using this measure assumes some predictive ability of the TV schedulers, but some prediction of success based on trades and retirements is possible, and I think it makes sense to include such considerations in this analysis.

The results of this analysis show that the playoff performance rank index is the strongest predictor of TV games (b=-2.69 p<.01). A decrease of rank by one (e.g. from champion to runner-up or from first round loser to non-playoff team) means 2.69 fewer TV games. This relationship makes sense from a programming standpoint because the top-finishing teams got the most exposure during the 2011 playoffs and had the most momentum coming out of them. As the table above shows, the top-finishing Heat and Thunder are among the four NBA teams with 25 scheduled TV games.

The wins to-date for the 2012 season also have a significant relationship with the number of TV games (b=3.88, p=.018). The model shows that each additional win during the 2012 season relates to about 0.4 more TV games. This suggests that, in addition to the other performance measures, TV schedulers' predictions of 2012 performance have a strong relationship with teams' number of national TV games.

Finally, getting to audience size, the model initially showed significant relationships for both market size and 2011 wins with the total number of TV games. When I considered the interaction between audience size and 2011 wins though, the independent effect of each disappeared. That is, it is the combination of a team's TV market size and its wins last year that has a significant relationship with TV scheduling (B=.021, p=.056). In this sense, winning a lot of games or being from a big market is not as important as winning a lot of games and being from a big market. It is that combination that has a significant relationship with more nationally televised games.

So that's sort of a first hack at this. Some factors left out here are the specific networks and days on which games are aired. Another potentially important variable is game time, because the desire to air late games on cable might increase the air time for West coast teams. The model considered above is pretty strong though, and it is able to account for about 79% of variance in the number of TV games among all the NBA teams.

Why China Aired its Execution TV Special

So I didn't see the live Chinese television prisoner execution special this week, but I did read an account of it in the New York Times. It's China, so this can easily be interpreted as the powerful state putting its state power on display. And it's worth remembering that the regime has a history of public executions.

There are other factors here too. One is that people in many cultures like lurid television. NBC's Dateline, in case you didn't know, has gradually transformed from a newsmagazine into a program that focuses almost exclusively on the drama of men killing their wives.

Another factor is nationalism. The Times story describes the executed (who were convicted of murdering Chinese sailors) as representative of the safety threat that Chinese professionals face when working overseas. In that context, the program was, while both lurid and an exhibit of state power, also a demonstration that threats to the nation and its people are being dealt with, and perpetrators punished. That is not totally dissimilar to live broadcasts on U.S. TV of bombs raining down on Iraq in 2003.

How About This?

In yet another permutation of the advertising/subscription/print/web business model, Variety is converting from a daily publication to a weekly and dropping the paywall from its website. Reduction in the number of printed editions is no surprise, but the switch back to free online content seems a bit strange. 

It's possible that this will ultimately be a bad idea, but it also suggests that there will be no one way for publications to succeed financially, and that the right model of payment and distribution will depend on each publication's audience and niche. The lack of a ready-made, one-size-fits-all model for success will mean a lot of experimentation and a lot of failure. 

Univision > NBC

A lot of people in the United States prefer Spanish to English -- or can only speak Spanish -- but it's hard to know whether that group will get larger or smaller in the coming decades. History shows that  immigrant populations have adopted English over time.

In the meantime, Univision is getting better ratings than NBC. Now, NBC is getting historically bad ratings, so that's not saying a whole lot, but it seems that NBC could have performed better during February if it had aired exclusively Spanish-language programming. Of course, its programming would likely need to be better too.

It could be that the major-network form is not long for this world anyway, but might a network adopt Spanish-language programming (as a wholesale change or for select shows or nights) as a way to stay viable? Partnerships seem a more likely way to reach Spanish-speaking audiences in the near future. After all, NBC and Telemundo are owned by the same corporate parent. And ABC News and Univision are partnering to launch an English-language network later this year. I'd expect to see more of this.

*Public* Research

On the subject of publicly funded research and the high-price journals that research is published in...

"In a 22 February memo, John Holdren, director of the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), gave federal agencies until 22 August to produce plans for making the data and papers from the research they fund more accessible to the public."

Nature reports that federal agencies will be required to make research available for free one year after its initial publication. The year is a concession to journal publishers, who will have exclusive rights to distribute the work during that time. That to me seems an unnecessary delay and giveaway, but even if flawed, this expansion of access is a great thing.

The Power of Networked Communication

I'm more eager to write this post because this man didn't actually eat his wife. The point of the New York Times story about him, though, is that he's being prosecuted for plotting online to eat his wife along with doing other horrible things to her and to other women he knows.

Something that comes up in this article is that the internet offers a space for fellow cannibals to meet and express shared interests. An expert in internet crime is quoted as saying, "If you were someone mildly interested in cannibalism 30 years ago, it was really hard to find someone in real space to find common cause with [...] whereas online, it’s much easier to find those people," and perhaps be motivated to act on terrible desires.

The thing is, this is true for more than cannibalism. The ability to find validation, support, and common purpose online has helped political movements to build in a way that was impossible thirty years ago. Whether the aim is to overthrow a government, pick a candidate for office, or improve neighborhood schools, the internet allows what might have otherwise been members of a silent majority to find each other. 

This can happen with intent, as in joining a discussion forum, or it can happen more casually by reading Facebook comments or a favorite blog. The point is that top-down mass media (like a published opinion poll or talking heads on TV) now have a smaller role in people learning that widely shared opinions are actually widely shared -- or conversely, in keeping that concealed.

Popular Culture and 1942

A report on WBEZ's Sound Opinions from a few weeks ago taught me that the earliest tracks recorded by The Beatles and Bob Dylan are, in 2013, now old enough to land in the public domain under European copyright law. It turns out though, that the EU -- like the U.S. -- is perfectly willing to just extend the length of copyright protection (from 50 to 70 years) in order to protect the profits being made on such works.

As I've discussed before, copyright law with public welfare benefits in mind will extend enough protection to content producers to make their efforts worthwhile, thus encouraging cultural production. Extending copyright protections an additional 20 years so the corporate owners of music, book, or whatever rights can continue to sell them exclusively does not do that. Is limiting the production of "Love Me Do" recordings for the next 20 years going to ensure that The Beatles have been adequately compensated? Or will continue to make music?

More pernicious than the lack of cheap "Love Me Do" records is what happens to "orphaned" works under a 70-year copyright regime. In a good report from On The Media last month, James Boyle, head of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain, explained that books, films, and audio recordings where the current copyright owner is unknown cannot be legally reproduced. No one is profiting from these works as it is, yet these pieces remain locked away as a casualty of our very generous copyright laws.

There is a real cost to our culture -- or at least some warping effects -- of keeping cultural products from the last 70 years more expensive than those which came before.

Late Night Audiences and Perspective

Simply for the sake of perspective/curiosity, here are the audience sizes for late night shows, via zap2it.com. These are the average number of viewers for the week of February 4th, ranked by audience size:

The Tonight Show with Jay Leno: 3.5 million
The Late Show with David Letterman: 3.5 million
Jimmy Kimmel Live: 2.5 million
The Daily Show: 1.8 million
The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson: 1.6 million
Late Night with Jimmy Fallon: 1.6 million
Nightline: 1.5 million
The Colbert Report 1.4 million
Last Call with Carson Daly: 0.9 million
Conan: 0.8 million

These shows air across the evening, but the total for viewers between 10:30 and 11:00 (central) is 11.8 million. Again, for perspective, Johnny Carson's average audience in 1992 was 12 million viewers. Looking at it this way, while the total audience size for late night comedy hasn't kept up with population growth over the past 20 years, it hasn't declined all that much either.

How to (Easily) Fix Our Electoral System

A segment on last week's Moyers & Company covered campaign finance law and looked specifically at New York City's system, which matches small donations with public money at a ratio of 6 to 1. One of the guests, an organizer and the executive director of New York's Working Families Party, Dan Cantor, argued that since money can't be kept out of politics, "(his) ambition isn't to keep private money out. It's to get enough public money in so that even when you have somebody who is not part of the system spending a lot, the other person gets to a threshold that makes it reasonable."

I agree with that sentiment, in part. Electoral competitiveness should not be determined primarily by access to lots of cash, but cash isn't going to be kept out of campaigns. There is plenty of evidence that campaign finance laws that limit spending, however nobly erected, will be circumvented, and the First Amendment creates a real and formidable barrier against limiting political speech, especially as it has been construed by the Roberts Court.

A strong pubic financing system is itself imperfect, though. Some of the strongest opposition to public financing comes from reasonable citizens who don't want to have their (tax) money given to politicians so that those politicians can air attack ads or otherwise advance their careers. Furthermore, public financing is, in effect, a public subsidy to broadcasters because the bulk of campaign money gets spent on broadcast ads.

All of this points to what I think is the best -- and also least discussed -- option for public support of campaigns: a requirement that broadcast licensees give airtime to qualified candidates. Television and radio broadcasters get their licenses from the federal government for free in exchange for serving the public interest. It's not hard to make the case that opening electoral competitiveness and reducing the need for endless fundraising by officeholders would serve the public interest.

The free airtime would not need to be used for droll infomercials or even given as part of news programming (though that could also serve as an improvement), but it could continue to be parceled out as thirty-second ads, with the only difference being that a better-financed candidate could not so easily overwhelm his or her opponent with them.

Just how the airtime would be distributed and how to qualify for it would need to be worked out, as with any other public financing system. Like other public financing systems, it would improve competitiveness in elections, but it would do it with no cost to taxpayers. Likewise, it would avoid the constitutional problems of limiting speech that other reform efforts can raise.

Broadcasters wouldn't like this plan because they make so much from selling campaign ads, but should we really sacrifice the integrity of our electoral system to safeguard the profits of broadcasters -- who get to use the airwaves for free?

So then, why not do this?

The Future of TV Ads

Intel is planning to release a video-streaming settop device later this year with a built in camera. Ad Age reports that the camera will be used to target content recommendations by recognizing its viewers. Beyond that, an Intel rep "was extremely hesitant to say that the camera on the device will be used to target TV ads more precisely."

But why, other than the (maybe only initial) feeling of creepiness, wouldn't it? I'm not sure that many people notice or care anymore that Google software scans their emails to serve up somewhat relevant ads. Matching viewing habits or other consumer data to a face is perhaps less intrusive. 

Now, it's possible that Intel plans to derive venue solely from subscription fees and hardware sales and won't run ads during streamed programming. Streamed ads can't be skipped as easily as with a DVR, though, and that in combination with ads targeted within a household could demand a premium -- as part of Intel's streaming service or some other in the near future. 

Why Bother with Journalism?

Broadcasting & Cable reports: "CNN Doubles Ratings With Cruise Ship Coverage".

Shutting Down the Used Game Market?

Sony has applied for a patent covering technology that could prevent video game discs from being played on multiple systems, thus potentially shutting down the used market for these games. Responding to that story and related rumors about Sony and Microsoft blocking used games on their next-generation consoles, this piece at Ars Technica offers both a Video Game Econ 101 and recommendations for how this change could work well for most parties. The recommendations start with cutting prices on new games to balance consumers' loss of resale value and to nurture demand among those unwilling to pay $60 for a new game.

If the console makers are indeed planning to limit game resale, it's interesting that they've only come to do so now. After all, used game sales become irrelevant with digital distribution, and I'd expect all-digital (or at least primarily digital) distribution of games has to be coming pretty soon.

It could be that the inability to share or resell downloaded games will impact consumer expectations enough that a block on sharing or reselling physical copies won't draw much ire. I remember some commentary on the limits of sharing Kindle books when that technology was new, but I think that limitation of e-books is pretty much taken as a given now.

A New Era

Just want to point out that the audience for last week's premiere of Zero Hour was the smallest for an in-season prime-time scripted series premiere in ABC's history. This closely follows NBC's cancellation of its Dr.-Jeckyl-and-Mr.-Hyde-themed medical drama, Do No Harm, after two episodes and the worst audience for a scripted series premiere in modern television history.

It's possible that these two shows were not just bad, but exceptionally bad. It is also possible that breaking these kinds of audience records is going to start happening with increasing frequency.

Next on Netflix...

Variety explores the lengthiness of this year's Oscar contending films (8 of 9 best picture nominees run over two hours). While television shows have less freedom to run long -- or short -- it's interesting to note that episodes of Netflix's first season of House of Cards each run about 50 minutes. While the show's head writer has discussed his freedom from writing to a regular broadcast schedule, a decision was made here to maintain the traditional hour-long structure of television drama. Of course, there's no need to do this on Netflix, where clocks don't exactly matter.

Perhaps future TV broadcast of the series was in mind, or a desire to accommodate normal TV viewing habits. Maybe most importantly, the hour-long TV drama is a longstanding form and people have had a lot of practice telling and receiving entertaining stories this way. For that reason, it might stick around even as programming moves off of a traditional schedule.

Talking About the Weather

People like to talk about the weather and nothing makes that easier than giving weather events human names. News media like to cover weather too, and naming winter storms, which The Weather Channel has begun doing, makes it easier to package storms as entertainment/news events.

The National Weather Service has instructed its employees not to use the names in their work, and so has the New York Times. The Times reports though, that the name Nemo is catching on for the present storm, citing that tag's popularity on Twitter and its appearance in a statement by Mayor Bloomberg. And a Google News search for Nemo shows that the name is being used by large and small news outlets across the country.

I'd say that drawing attention to our increasingly freakish weather is not a bad thing, especially if we might be able to start publicly considering its causes. Having begun as a marketing gambit though, there is nothing to stop The Weather Channel's next winter storm from being named by a corporate sponsor, except perhaps taste.

Cheers was Filmed in Front of a Live Studio Audience, After All

It seems obvious that the trend of network television comedy is toward single-camera shows (like 30 Rock and Modern Family) and away from multi-camera shows, where you only ever see three walls and there are always people laughing. That's why it seems so bizarre that NBC is converting its single-camera comedy Up All Night to a multi-camera show. That conversion seems to have inspired series-star Christina Applegate to leave the show.

I say the trend seems obvious in part because of critical reaction (the last multi-camera show to win an Emmy for best comedy was Everybody Loves Raymond in 2005) and in part because of what I like to watch. But what about what other people like to watch?

CBS dominates the primetime ratings, and last week the only comedies to break the top 20 were on CBS. These were The Big Bang Theory and Two and a Half Men, both multi-camera shows.

Lorne Michaels is executive producer of Up All Night. He build a career on comedy in front of a live audience and it was his idea to convert Up All Night, based on his enthusiasm for the format. I have to think, also, that NBC -- which has difficulty cracking the top 20 with any of its shows -- might be especially willing to get ahold of what is happening at CBS.

Hook, Line, Sinker

Karl Rove's American Crossroads Super PAC has a web ad up attacking Ashley Judd, a potential challenger to Senator Mitch McConnell in Kentucky. Why does anyone know what American Crossroads has on its YouTube channel? Mostly because nearly every major national news outlet has reported on it, along with local media in Kentucky:



And its confidence in that happening is why American Crossroads didn't bother to spend any money airing the ad. The fact that the ad was never aired negates, I think, any news value in reporting on it -- much less airing it for free (and repeatedly) on a local news broadcast. It's not as if significant resources were spent on it or that any number of persuadable people would see it if not for this very news coverage. So what is there to talk about, other than the excitement of an early political attack on a celebrity, thus falling into a perfectly set trap that rewards a clever political operation with free airtime?

Considering Music Streaming Royalties

A report in the New York Times this week considers what Spotify pays artists for streaming their songs. From the Times: 

"Spotify declined to comment on its rates, but according to a number of music executives who have negotiated with the company, it generally pays 0.5 to 0.7 cent a stream (or $5,000 to $7,000 per million plays) for its paid tier, and as much as 90 percent less for its free tier."

These payments may not be sustainable -- in the sense that it could be impossible to survive as a professional musician from such royalties alone -- but I think how the royalties are characterized above understates their value. After all, these are payments per play, which is a different measurement from payments per sale. In other words, how much are you paying per play when you buy a CD or download a $.99 song from iTunes?

As a very rough generalization, if I like something I'll listen to it at least ten times, and if I really like it, many, many more times. So instead of me buying a track for $.99, I might listen to it 30 times and thus send $.21 in royalties to an artist. Again, this doesn't mean that streaming royalties are sufficient, but they may not be much less than royalties from traditional sales.

All of this points toward new considerations of what makes for economically successful recordings. MP3s and iTunes have already broken the album, allowing for easy and inexpensive purchase of individual tracks. Streaming royalties can, on the one hand, reinforce this trend by rewarding tracks with mass appeal and high replay. On the other hand, when free to the listener (or as part of a subscription), listening to full albums may regain appeal. Artists and labels could benefit from this different economic orientation of listeners by stretching their attention across multiple tracks. 

America's Most Watched Network

CBS, which will enjoy a giant audience for next week's Super Bowl, already generally crushes its competition for TV viewers. In last week's prime-time ratings, CBS had 17 of the top 20 programs. That's crazy.

Even with the biggest audiences, though, revenue from advertising is shrinking. That can explain why CBS is expanding its licensing of shows for streaming and leaning more heavily on carriers and affiliates for revenue (from CNBC):

"Moonves boasted that CBS , which was once almost entirely reliant on advertising, is now diversifying: This past quarter, a record 44 percent of its revenue came from non-ad sources, namely compensation for its broadcast and cable networks."

Cable and Competition

Matt Yglesias and others are discussing the impact of cable bundling (which generally means charging people for channels they don't want) on cable prices. There are sounds reasons and basis, which Yglesisas discusses here, for government action to increase competition in the wired television market.

Regarding bundling and and its effects on pricing, Yglesias notes that subscribers only really want to watch a few channels yet pay their full bill anyway. This suggests that even unbundled sets of channels could still command high prices, especially in markets characterized by little competition, and that unbundling alone would not reduce prices.

But that analysis leaves out those for whom a $60 cable bill is not justified by a few channels and therefore don't subscribe at all (like me). Cheaper, unbundled channels could attract new customers and help retain those who are beginning to see Netflix, iTunes, etc. as attractive, less-expensive alternatives. In this way, competition from outside could eventually make lower-priced, unbundled channels a smart move for cable companies.

Netflix and Numbers

Netflix made some news this week with big stock gains that followed release of its fourth-quarter earnings report. Part of the story is an increase in streaming video subscribers, so I thought it would be a good idea to consider some numbers and context.

The news is that Netflix now claims 27.1 million U.S. streaming subscribers. I guess that sounds good to investors, but what does it say about the place of Netflix in our media ecosystem?

One relevant comparison would be to the number of paid subscribers to Hulu Plus, a similarly-priced competing service that offers streaming television shows and movies. On the company blog last December, Hulu claimed "more than 3 million paying Hulu Plus subscribers." Amazon Prime membership also includes streaming video, but Amazon doesn't seem interested in releasing subscriber numbers.

Another apt comparison might be between Netflix customers and cable network penetration. The top cable networks (including TBS, ESPN, and CNN) each had just over 100 million subscribers in 2011, according to the cable industry.

Netflix content can't replace the experience of cable networks that include live news or sports, so maybe a better comparison would be with HBO subscribers. HBO and Netflix might both serve as a premium add-on to cable. It happens that HBO has around 30 million subscribers, just ahead of Netflix's 27.1 million.

Meet the New Boss

Mark Zuckerberg is undertaking his first public, partisan political activity, and it is a fundraiser for Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

This might suggest that Zuckerberg is himself a Republican or a conservative, but Christie currently enjoys wide popularity and Zuckerberg has named Chirstie's education ideas specifically as the reason for his support. So who knows. The Huffington Post reports that support for charter school expansion "puts Zuckerberg well in the mainstream of billionaire tech executives like Bill Gates, who pump millions of dollars into efforts to encourage charter schools and put pressure on teachers' unions."

Zuckerberg's specific political preferences aside, this fundraiser is a reminder that he is a modern media mogul who is worth nearly $10 billion and is the head of a media giant that connects with one out of every seven people on the planet. 

The fact that he is a modern media mogul complicates what his political impact might be. He does have the money and public profile to pay for or promote political activities outside of Facebook, but what he can do with the content of Facebook is different from what, say, Murdoch can or Hearst could. The user-generated content of Facebook isn't shaped by hiring or editing decisions like at a cable network or newspaper. 

The kind of content allowed on Facebook and what happens to it are shaped by policy, though, and that policy can have either political motivations or social consequences. One frequently recurring example at Facebook is the company's eagerness to sell advertising based on access to its users' personal information. Another privacy-related concern is the prohibition of pseudonyms on Facebook, which might protect users from retribution by employers or violent governments. 

In any case, it is worth remembering that Zuckerberg has ideas about how the world should work (and how Facebook should make money), and he has a major role in how we communicate with each other. 

Democracy Progress Notes

The "advice and consent of the Senate," prescribed by the Constitution for presidential appointments, is a process that now includes advertisements against the nominee on cable news networks. (A conservative group is airing ads on CNN and Fox News attacking the ethics of Chuck Hagel.)

Political opposition to nominees is not new in our history, but it is worth considering the role of campaign-style ads aired by an independent group in a nomination fight. The mechanism for these ads to be effective is for the constituents of vulnerable Senators to contact them and express their dissatisfaction with Hagel. This may or may not have an impact on any Senator or the ultimate outcome in this case, but this case does illustrate the ability (and likelihood) of independent spending on ads to spill over from elections onto individual issues.

One impact can be greater public participation on issues, which you may or may not like. Another is the introduction of the familiar distorting effects of money and its tendency to be concentrated on one side of an issue. (The Hagel case is likely an exception to that dynamic, but issues like gun control and climate change are not.)

The Forms of Television, continued

Because Fox has entered a suicide pact with broadcast TV viewers, it is encouraging them to set their DVRs for its high-profile new series, The Following. Actually, it probably doesn't hurt to acknowledge, internally, that people don't like to watch ads. Also, if people record the show and watch it, they might like it.

Netflix, meanwhile, is pretending to be a DVR with its first original series, House of Cards, which will premiere its first season in its entirety in February. All 13 episodes will be available at once, allowing people to watch the series how they watch other series on Netflix -- all at once. A story in the New York Times quotes the show runner as saying that the release format allowed them to write the show in an unconventional way:

"“We approached this creatively as a 13-hour movie,” said Mr. Willimon, who eschewed cliffhangers at the ends of some episodes because, well, he could. “Knowing we had two full seasons in advance, I didn’t feel the pressure to sell the end of each episode with superficial cliffhangers or shock tactics in order to keep coming back, in order to jack up the ratings week to week,” he said. “I hope our version of a cliffhanger is compelling, sophisticated characters and complex storytelling.”"'


Contrast this experience with that of The Following creator Kevin Williamson, who reportedly struggled with “how to make something scary when you’re writing to a commercial break." 

As the differences between cable and broadcast allow for different approaches to content, full-season releases like that of House of Cards have the potential to further change the television series form.

It is also notable that, according to the Times, Netflix agreed to the series based on its subscribers' viewing habits (the popularity of other work by the show's creators, similar subject matter, and its original BBC version). This helps to explain why Netflix picked up the upcoming new season of Arrested Development, a series which I've cycled through a few times on Netflix myself.

CNN Not Teaching to the Test

Media Matters jabs CNN, which has some trouble explaining the causes of climate change itself, for reporting that Americans are confused about the causes of climate change.

There's an interesting dynamic here, where people get their information and understandings from media and then media poll and report on what people know. As if a teacher reported back to her math students that half the class doesn't believe in fractions and then just left it at that, moving on.

A question about the causes of climate change is different from one about attitudes, because it is assessing knowledge, not opinion. Granted, CNN doesn't give its viewers all of their information about climate change (and not all of the poll respondents were CNN viewers), but climate change reporting is systematically bad and news outlets generally are a primary source of information about the world. Poll results like this should be a sign to CNN that something is wrong, not just a story about the political environment.

What We Read and Where, pt. 2

The National Review's Media Blog shows newspaper front pages from conservative states with Democratic Senators, after President Obama's gun control proposals last week. The implication of this post is that the local news coverage both illustrates the political environment these Senators face and might influence the Senators' perceptions of their constituencies.

Of course, legislators can be influenced by public opinion to varying degrees on different issues, but such a look at local coverage of an issue offers some insight. Much as Washington journalism can reflect a conventional wisdom with boundaries and assumptions that politicians can fall into, politicians are likely also reading coverage from back home with a reinforcing or competing conventional wisdom. Just as with voters, it matters how elected officials learn about the world and public issues.

UnPublished Polls

Israel has parliamentary elections on Tuesday and today is the last day that public opinion polls can be published in that country. The idea, I think, is that polling results can reduce turnout, either of a confident majority or a dispirited minority.

Of course, the First Amendment prevents any such reporting ban in the United States. What we do have is agressive polling and poll reporting for presidential elections up until Election Day and then voluntary constraint among mainstream news outlets, which don't release exit polling for a state until voting there has stopped. Early exit polls, though, are leaked online.

Two interesting things happened within this environment during the 2012 presidential cycle. One is that Nate Slver was able to collect and analyze the profluence of political polling to correctly predict the outcome of the presidential race in all 50 states. So, quite unlike a public ban on poll reporting the weekend before an election, American voters knew the exact outcome if they chose to believe Silver's analysis.

The other interesting thing that happened in 2012 was that many refused to believe Silver's analysis. There was a widespread belief on the right that the polls were just wrong -- had to be -- and, as an example, a website called unskewedpolls.com popped up, offering adjusted poll results that showed Romney with a comfortable lead.

It's hard to know what motivated all this rejection of evidence -- it could have been real optimism or skepticism. It could have been cynicism too, and fear that too-accurate polling before Election Day would reduce turnout among a dispirited minority. With a ban on poll reporting impossible, one way to ally fears about turnout effects is to discredit the polls.

Some Content Can Be Free

The death of Aaron Swartz, who was being aggressively prosecuted for illegally downloading articles from JSTOR has brought some worthwhile attention to the costs of academic journals.

In general, I'm not too amenable to the "content is meant to be free" argument. A lot of people and businesses are motivated by financial incentives to produce and distribute content. Still more people just want to be paid for the work that they love to do. Protection of financial incentives for the purpose of encouraging technological and cultural innovation is the historical reason for intellectual property protection -- which is one of the few specific legislative responsibilities addressed in the U.S. Constitution. None of this is to suggest that patent and copyright laws are perfect as they are now (Yglesias shows here the impact of copyright laws on literary culture), but the bottom line is that if all content were free, we'd have dramatically less rich -- or at least wholly different -- cultural production in this country.

Having said all of that, academic research is one form that could do quite well under a different economic model. Scholars and researchers have motivations for publishing their work beyond immediate economic gains from issue sales, including requirements from their institutions to publish research or a personal interest in developing a profile in their field. This suggests that academic work would continue to be produced and distributed without high-price journals. The facts that much good could come from wider public distribution of research and that much of this research is publicly subsidized through grants or through university salaries suggest that moving beyond the current model would also be more equitable and provide greater public benefits.

The Quality of Cable Programming

The success of Girls and Homeland at last night's Golden Globe awards illustrated the continued dominance of cable over broadcast network programming quality. Quality is pretty subjective, of course, but one measure for it is awards and award nominations. Girls (HBO) and Homeland (Showtime) won for best TV comedy and drama, respectively, and cable accounted for four of the five nominees for best drama.

One interpretation/explanation of this success is that cable programs can get away with content, language, and themes that just aren't permissible under broadcast regulation. Regulation has something to do with it, but from what I've seen of Homeland so far, 24 had a lot more torture. Another major factor on premium cable is freedom from advertiser concerns (about audience demographics and program content) and the ability of cable networks to aim for a niche audience.

One simple, but perhaps very important, difference between broadcast and cable programming is the length and timing of seasons on cable. Whereas broadcast networks aim to fill 2-4 hours nearly every night with original programming, cable nets like HBO, Showtime, and AMC do not. For that reason, a broadcast network will be motivated to squeeze as much as it can out of a successful program as quickly as it can, instead of devoting its resources to developing, producing, and trying out ever more shows to fill its broadcast hours. Broadcast network seasons typically include over 20 episodes.

In contrast, cable series tend to have about a dozen episodes per season. This alone greatly improves the potential for TV programming quality. It's hard to imagine, for example, Breaking Bad being nearly as exciting with a season story arc stretched out or diluted over twice as many episodes.

Mocking the Platinum Coin

So Krugman doesn't like the way that The Daily Show mocked the platinum coin idea last week. I think this critique is -- believe it or not -- similar to those the makers of Zero Dark Thirty are facing. Even if your game is entertainment, if you set yourself up as an information source to people you have some responsibility to either disavow that reputation or live up to it, like it or not.

The Future of Leaks

Following the prosecution of Bradley Manning, accused of leaking classified information, Glenn Greenwald warns:

"The theory being used to prosecute Manning would convert almost every government source for newspapers into a traitor. Given that, it's extraordinary how relatively little interest, let alone opposition, large media outlets have expressed about this prosecution."

Selective prosecution of leakers is one thing, but the threat to journalism and public accountability that would come with government leakers being prosecuted as traitors is quite another. 

The New Deficit Reality

Krugman presents a chart from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities showing that with the sequester and other recent budget cuts and tax increases, the country's debt to GDP ratio is set to stabilize over the next decade. He explains that, long term concerns about entitlements aside, "at this point reasonable projections do not, repeat do not, show anything resembling the runaway deficit crisis that is a staple of almost everything you hear, including supposedly objective news reporting."

So not heading down the road to Greece, then? Lets see if these effects of the fiscal cliff resolution make their way into reporting on deficits.  

Insights from Time Travel

I was listening to a lecture on iTunes U last night about the history of Christianity. In general, I'm impressed with the ability of anyone with an internet connection to sit in on college courses like this. I was reminded while listening, though, how much college courses themselves have changed in the past few decades.

The recording was from the late '80s -- and it included a warning at the beginning that it would stop when the tape needed to be turned over. I didn't make it that far, but I did hear the instructor telling his students which books to look for if they wanted more information on the subject.

And he meant it. Because in the 80s, you'd have to find these books for more info, unlike now when you might be able to download them, or find a journal article online, look at Wikipedia, or find an iTunes U course. The internet has dramatically transformed in a short amount of time what is possible in a college course and what can be expected from students.

Outside of classrooms, some basic resources and education are needed to access and exploit the vast information available now, but it has certainly made acquiring information less expensive and more universally possible.

Can PBS Compete?

PBS is not a TV ratings powerhouse, but last weekend's premiere of Downton Abbey drew 7.9 million viewers. This isn't a huge audience, but it is four times the primetime audience that PBS enjoys on average, and it is comparable with the major networks' audiences for the same night.

PBS isn't exactly lowering its standards or reaching for mass appeal with Downton -- on the contrary, superficially it's about exactly what you'd expect a public TV drama to look and sound like. On Sunday night, though, it was about as popular as what the major networks were offering.

With the fragmenting of audiences, we may reach a point where the audience for a PBS drama like Downton is only as niche as is the audience for network sitcoms. That could mean a higher profile for public broadcasting in this country, which could attract more funding and make it a more competitive force.

Brief Thoughts on Zero Dark Thirty

I'm not too upset by the depiction of torture in Zero Dark Thirty as a 24-esque dark necessity, but it's not a good thing. The filmmakers seem to have been a bit careless with the facts, at least according to Jane Mayer, who is an expert on the subject. Artistic license becomes constrained when you open your movie with a statement that the film is based on real events.

Moviemakers can generally do what they want, even if it's irresponsible, and that's fine. It is unfortunate that this movie, as a movie, is actually pretty good and it was made by a talented and popular director, so lots and lots of people will see its misrepresentation of some terrible events in our recent history. Many will be inoculated by their own knowledge and skepticism against taking its depiction as fact, but many will not.

Trouble with the Cost Curve

The Milwaukee Journal Sentiel reports on a new study that finds about a third of doctors will a prescribe a name brand drug over its generic equivalent if patients ask for the name brand drug.  Is this because their patients are also doctors? The story doesn't say, but probably not.

The study finds that doctors who meet more regularly with pharmaceutical reps or take more giveaways are more likely to prescribe the name brand drugs, which makes sense. An expert interviewed for the Journal Sentinel story argues, though, that the biggest factor in these unnecessarily costly prescriptions is consumer advertisements for prescription drugs:

"Deyo said it is easier and faster for doctors to acquiesce to patients' demands for an advertised drug than to spend time explaining the disadvantages of doing so. That's especially true among doctors who don't want to alienate their patients, he said."

So a consumer who doesn't understand that a name brand and generic drug are equivalent learns about a drug from TV and successfully requests it from his or her doctor, who doesn't have the time for or interest in educating the patient. This system doesn't work, which is likely why direct to consumer drug advertising is banned in all Western countries other than the U.S. and New Zealand.