Entries Tagged as '500 channel universe'
March 8th, 2007 · Comments Off on See-Span Run
Taking a bold leap into the 21st century and keeping with its initial mandate to bring the inner workings of government to the people,
C-Span has decided to change its copyright policy — a policy modeled after
the Commons. The Public affairs cable channel will now “allow noncommercial copying, sharing and posting” on the Internet of its coverage of events sponsored by Congress or any federal agency.
The New York Times reports that this decision will cover about 50 percent of its programming. This is something of a 180 for a C-Span so fiercely protective of its intellectual property that it sent a cease-and-desist letter to Nancy Pelosi for posting a clip of a committee hearing speech on her Website.”Given our background and our history, an open approach is the most consistent with our mission,” said Rob Kennedy, C-SPAN’s president. “We are now saying under the new policy that that will be OK for her or any blogger or citizen journalist” to post C-SPAN video online.
C-Span’s new copyright policy makes its public affairs– as they should be — public. And C-Span has also come to a realization that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Scienes hasn’t yet realized. If you have compelling video content people are going to want to post it elsewhere, even if you don’t and with or without your permission. So why not adopt the Commons approach and let the inevitible postings by bloggers, journalists and the Speaker of the House of Representatives go up, provided there is appropriate attribution.
But before you go crazy ripping and posting Congressional Oversight Hearings to your blog, keep in mind that C-Span may be willing to let its coverage of government governing go out with attribution, it’s still going to hang on to its rights for its network’s studio productions, all non-federal events, campaign and political event coverage, and the network’s feature programming, such as Book TV and original history series. C-Span has the savvy it seems to know what to give away and what to keep close.
For example,
Stephen Colbert’s legendary speech at the White House Correspondent’s dinner will still be the network’s exclusive property. Some argue that C-Span didn’t go far enough, but it’s a good move for now. The Colbert link is live on Google, but C-Span has a nice little link inviting viewers to buy a DVD of the Colbert speech. And why not? Even C-Span knows when it has comedy gold and a marketable product.
Although this is one small step for Creative Commons, I think I’m inclined to agree with the
The Daily Kos , who wonders if all government proceedings should be in the public domain. At the dawn of cable time, back in the 1970s and 80s, cable companies bidding for city contracts were requried to give at least one space on its line-up for a “government access channel.” Maybe its time to rethink C-Span’s mission entirely and reconfigure it for the broadband age.
Tags: 500 channel universe · Copyright Law · Creative Commons
March 6th, 2007 · Comments Off on Oscar: A case of wasted talent
As most of you know by now, and has been confirmed by The Hollywood Reporter, Esq. (isn’t that a great name?) The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has asked YouTube to take down all the clips from the Oscar Telecast a few Sundays ago, citing copyright issues.
But not in Spanish, apparently.
The Academy, in its wisdom [sic], scrubbed Jerry Seinfeld’s hilarious introduction to the Best Documentary Film Category which includes a cool riff on movie theatre etiquette. However, a version dubbed in Spanish, survives. But if you’re Spanish isn’t that great you can hear Jerry in English under the voice over.
The Academy may be legally correct in demanding the take-downs, but it’s just so old school. Couldn’t the Academy 1) anticipated this was going to happen ( I mean come on people — Jennifer Hudson and Beyonce singing live, Martin Scorcese finally winning an Oscar, Al Gore — America has TiVo and by gosh they are going to use it); 2) Provided their own clips, which they could have teased for weeks on the site 3) Directed viewers to the ABC or perhaps the Academy Web site to see officially sanctioned highlights. If you can watch Grey’s Anatomy and Ugly Betty on the ABC site, why not some Oscar highlights. And you get to make money from interstitial adversiting, fellas. Oh wait! There are some clips from the Oscars on Oscar.com, but they are you know … lame. And Go Fug Yourself has Oscar fashion complete with the snarky comments we were all saying at home … only you know .. funnier.
Oscar missed a — pardon the expression — golden opportunity– on both its own Web site and on YouTube to provide a second look the actual highlights from the show: the the watercooler clips, like Jerry, Jennifer, Marty and Al. Like it or not, media companies like Viacom and the Motion Picture Academy are going to have to develop media plans that include distributing, relevant clips to the Web, or rent another floor for their soon to be exploding legal department.
Oh, and if you hurry — you can still catch the Scorsese acceptance speech and the Dreamgirls medley. I’m listening to them right this second.
Tags: 500 channel universe · must-see TV · pop culture
January 22nd, 2007 · Comments Off on You’ve got five hundred channels and a Web site. Use them!
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.
Tags: 500 channel universe · pop culture
