The Interested Observer

I have a guilty secret. I watch soap operas. Well I TiVo soap operas. Well just one really. “All My Children.” And I lurk like nobody’s business on the very clever AMC message boards. Unlike Aaron Sorkin’s paranoid fantasies of message boards filled with ignorant housewives in mu-mus and a dangerous fondness for Newport Lights, this board starts some interesting conversations include “rate a writer,” “WTF moment of the week” and suggestions for the writers and some of the characters. There are fans on the boards who’ve been watching since the 1970s (back when Susan Lucci was a teenager). This particular group of fans not only love the show, they want to make it better. And they want to keep watching. And sometimes, but not often, the writers actually appear to be listening. The give and take exchanges on these message boards are an interesting example of the new peer to peer media shift.
Now comes the news from both ABC and NBC that they are considering adding a third and fourth hour respectively to their morning news shows “GMA” and “Today.” NBC has already axed one of its soaps to make room for the extra hour and ABC, home of “All My Children,” “One Life to Live” and perennial favorite “General Hospital”could meet the same unpleasant and entirely unecessary fate. Message board fans admit its too soon to tell if ABC is gong ax one of its daytime shows or not. But there’s really no reason to ax anything. Here’s my reason why.

Back in days of yore — perhaps as far back as 1995– if a network’s program schedule was full programs had to be cancelled. There were only so many broadcast hours in a day, what else could you do. Now the networks have choices and they can’t see the new forrest for the old growth trees.

I watch catch up on several shows via my laptop. Most of the major networks including ABC will rebroadcast with very limited commercial breaks (every 15 minutes and there’s one commercial by one sponsor). This comes in quite handy when “The Office” collides with “Ugly Betty” as it does every Thursday night. Apple just announced a new platform that will let you play iTunes video download through your television. So quite frankly, I don’t see the need to cancel anything if there are other platforms available and an audience big enough to follow them. There is also a 24 hour channel called SoapNet. There’s no reason for ABC and NBC to consider cancellation as the only option for popular programming when there’s no question it could find a home and a revenue stream somewhere else. TV networks need to look beyond over the air broadcast. If they don’t think it can work, just ask Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert.

If someone like Jonathan Zittrain says the sky is falling, it could be a distinct possibility. Zittrain who teaches at Oxford and is co-founder of the Berkman Center did a short interview with Wired, he says he sees an Internet filled with so much dangerous spyware, badware and malicious spam that “smart users will be driven to dumber appliances like Blackberries, iPods and X-boxes.
“ My worry is that users will drift into gated communities defined by their hardware or their network,” he tells Wired. They’ll switch to information appliances that are great at what they do [email, music, games] because they’re so tightly controlled by their makers.”

Zittrain says it won’t take much to drive users into gated communites tightly managed by Apple, Microsoft or another proprietary maker. All it would take, he says is one more worldwide virus that knocks out corporate internets and erases hard drives. Wired asks him if the sky is really falling. He says yes. But he doesn’t say it to shock, it’s a matter of fact statement regarding where we are headed. And just to mix it up a bit, he says the shift may be so subtle, we may not even realize what’s happening.
[By the time] it falls,” he says, “It may seem perfectly normal. It’s entirely possible that the past 25 years will seem like an extended version of the infatuation we once had with CB radio, when we thought that it was the great new power to the people. ”

While waiting for the new book, check out “The Generative Internet” , which caused quite a commotion when it was published last summer.

In the past few days, I’ve become fascinated with the idea of ringtones as an expression of personality and identity. While I was reading a music blog, I came across this very interesting quote from U2’s The Edge who was working with the MIT h-lounge ringtone competion back in February, 2006 He said, among other things that he sometimes decides whether he will like or dislike a person according to how their phone rings. Among his turnoffs: the theme from “Swan Lake.”

“Music you do in private” he said, “But ring tones become a public display, like a pair or sneakers or a T-shirt. People are going to use ring tones as a real expression of what they’re about.”

This is something I had never really considered. Until know I have been using the boring old ringtones that come with my phone, because as much as I love Beyonce, I could grow very tired of her very quickly, if she started singing everytime my phone rang.

So I did a little digging into the h-com site and essentially anybody who wants to can make and upload their own original ringtones for download to a phone as an MP3 or as a Skypetone. (If I’m late to this particular party, please forgive me, but I’m here now.) The music is from ordinary folks like you and me. Some are professionals living in LA and some are 13 year olds cranking out tunes on a laptop.

It’s been a while since anything online has captured my attention as much as the idea of DIY ringtones that anyone can do and the notion that annoying cellphone rings (like the frogs or the duck. Now there are some people I could instantly dislike) could actually become a new form of personal expression that doesn’t come from Total Request Live.

It’s possible for anyone to try this themselves by downloading a number of programs including Hyperscore, which used to be free but will now set you back around $40 ($30 if you can get the coupon to work. Sadly I could not.) Hyperscore says you don’t need any music background. But be warned, I’ve been playing piano since I was 8 and all my ringtones sound like something a second grader would give up on a really bad day. But the challenge to do something original and have a place to share it with like-minded souls online is absolutely irresisible. That and the notion of making my own distinctive ringtone. If I ever come up with one, I promise to post it, but seriously, I think it’s going to be a while.