'Media' Archive
Hoover’s is lucky to call Austin, Texas home and we are happy to share our fine city with some of the most talented, witty, and entertaining musicians in the country.
Leave it to long-time local folkies The Austin Lounge Lizards to perform a new song that lampoons the current economic mess we seem to have gotten ourselves into. (You see, The Lizards have made fun of everything from hillbillies to immigration reform since the group was founded in 1980). The band’s latest musical dig, Too Big to Fail, carries on the tradition of timely teasing to proclaim, “I wanna get what rich guys get/I wanna chef and a corporate jet/and a house in the Hamptons if it doesn’t upset Ben Bernanke.”
I couldn’t help but giggle when I first heard the track being played on a local radio station. Come to find out the song also has its own video featuring the band wearing nothing but wooden barrels. The track also will be available beginning July 1 as an iTunes download.
“The Lizards’ songs and their take on the human condition has given me new insight on how important it is to laugh at ourselves and life’s absurdities,” the group’s newest member and fiddle player, Darcie Deaville, explained on the band’s Web site.
The Austin Lounge Lizards probably aren’t the first and surely won’t be the last act to capitalize on or make fun of the state our economy. We all need a nice reprieve from all of the horrible news of late, so why not sing about how horrible things are. And at 99 cents per download The Lizards may have just found their latest cash cow. At least there is still a market for humor.
Last week, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences announced it was expanding the list of nominations in its Best Film category from five movies to 10. It’s the first time this category has been tweaked since 1943.
Sure, this news was eclipsed by the deaths of a popular singer and actress, but for movie buffs like me, this caused quite a stir.
Most consider the expansion a good thing. After the 2008 nominations were released, many complained (including yours truly) about the lack of crowd-pleasers such as The Dark Knight and Wall-E. These movies would’ve almost certainly been included on the expanded list. And as the saying goes: When box office champs are nominated, more viewers tune in, ratings rise, and advertisers high-five.
What’s the down side? The annual telecast already runs around four hours. By stuffing the running time with additional clips of nominated movies, you run the risk of turning an already extensive broadcast into a prolonged, star-studded mini-series of celebrity back-patting.
Roger Ebert weighs in: “I suspect (1) more indie films will be nominated than the Academy expects; but (2) that the larger field will fragment the vote, so that the Best Picture winner will be a major studio picture.”
So next year look for some of your favorite mainstream films to be nominated. But even though it has made precisely one gazillion dollars at the box office, don’t expect to see Transformers 2 on the list.
Because Best Picture nominations still have to be, you know, good.
The anecdotal consensus that blogs and social networking sites can give traditional news outlets serious competition was undeniably proven yesterday during coverage of Michael Jackson’s death. TMZ, the fairly trashy celebrity gossip site, was the first outlet to report that Jackson had died — many hours before old school media like the LA Times, CBS, and CNN had confirmed the King of Pop was gone. Facebook, MySpace, and other social networking sites were filled with news of his death throughout the early afternoon, forcing so many people onto the Internet that it slowed to a crawl.
I think my own steps toward learning of Jackson’s death displays the incredible speed with which our wired world moves.
- I saw a crawl on CNBC late in the afternoon that Jackson had been rushed to the hospital. People go to the hospital all the time and I’m not a Jackson fan or anything, so I didn’t think much of it.
- Right before I left work, I checked my Facebook page and saw many status updates from contacts along the lines of, “Is it true? Can he really be gone.” I thought, “Uh oh. Must be bad.”
- I headed over to CNN.com to see what was up, but all they had was the “Jackson rushed to the hospital after cardiac arrest” headline. No word on if he had died. I checked around to the other main news sites and they all had the same version of “Stay Tuned.”
- I pointed my browser at TMZ and they claimed, “Michael Jackson Dies.” I was shocked by this. Either TMZ had just scooped the big boys, or they were seriously jumping the gun. Either way, that’s huge from a journalistic standpoint.
- I then embarked on a bit of a morbidly curious experiment to see which news outlet would be the first to report that he was dead. I kept refreshing all the news pages to no avail before I had to leave work to pick up my kids.
- On my way home I listened to CNN on SIRIUS to see how much longer it would take before his death was reported. Unfortunately this meant listening to Wolf Blitzer — not to be confused with a reporter, he’s more an on-camera CNN promoter/cheerleader — bring on doctors to describe cardiac arrest and reporters who had covered Jackson in the past to talk about him, all while giving somewhat of a ghoulish play-by-play. “CNN has learned that he is in cardiac arrest. Now we’ve learned he’s in a coma. Now we’ve learned that the LA Times and CBS is reporting he has died, but CNN has not confirmed that.” (Presumably meaning it hasn’t happened.)
After about an hour of this, it was finally widespread knowledge that he had died. It was a strange journey through this new information age, with TMZ of all things at the head of the pack.
A weird end to a weird day.
$1.92 million. That’s what a Minnesota court decided last week in the case of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) versus Jammie Thomas-Rasset.
The RIAA originally sued Thomas-Rasset in 2007 for sharing 24 digital songs over the Kazaa peer-to-peer network, one of thousands of suits aimed at curbing illegal downloading. Unlike the vast majority of defendants, however, Thomas-Rasset refused to settle out of court, believing there was insufficient evidence that any of the songs she posted was ever downloaded by users.
The jury disagreed, to the tune of $80,000 per song. The verdict seems like a slam dunk for the RIAA, but whether it actually persuades consumers to stop illegally sharing music remains to be seen.
Fact is, digital piracy is as rampant as ever. An estimated 95 percent of all global music downloads are made illegally, according to the IFPI Digital Music Report. Add that to the fact that CD revenues are tanking (down 20% in May compared to the same month in 2008), and you have a pretty dismal industry outlook.
One bright spot may be poised to emerge, however. Major labels are finally bowing to the idea of stripping digital rights management (DRM) from digital content. Until recently, DRM has made it difficult — nigh impossible — to play digital song files across a variety of electronic players. Sony Music recently agreed to supply DRM-free music via eMusic in a move that some industry observers hope becomes the trend.
Is DRM-free media the answer to digital piracy? It’s early days yet, but I suspect ridiculous fines might become a thing of the past (and pirates less inclined to steal digital content) when labels finally stop restricting how consumers choose to play their music.
The Boston Globe is worth a dollar, according to news biz analyst Ken Doctor. That’s just a bit less than the New York Times paid for the newspaper back in 1993 – about $1.1 billion less. Essentially the new owner would simply assume the costs and the New York Times could walk away and stick to its own knitting.
The Gray Lady is also in trouble, in this not-so-exclusive club of major city newspapers on the ropes. Add it to the list that includes The Chicago Tribune, struggling after being bought by Sam Zell, and the Rocky Mountain News, which folded this year. Boston’s local competition, The Christian Science Monitor, went to a weekly print edition in 2009, shifting to an online-only model for its daily news. A recent New Yorker article on Mexican mogul Carlos Slim covered his investment in the New York paper and the possibility that he’ll buy the whole thing, if the Sulzberger family decides to sell. And they might. Every family has its price, as the Bancrofts showed us when they sold The Wall Street Journal to Rupert Murdoch.
While there’s a sense of betrayal about the Times selling or closing down the Globe, it’s not unusual. Back in the 1990s, San Antonio, Texas, was a two-newspaper town, with papers owned by giants Hearst and News Corp. Hearst acquired its rival paper, San Antonio Express-News, and shut down its own paper, The Light. There are still plenty of reporters who are bitter about that.
Even with a buyer, the Globe will have to revamp its operations substantially and may even have to follow the Christian Science Monitor example of shifting from print to online delivery. We’ve heard plenty about how readers are loathe to pay for online news, but someone is going to have to. I think in this respect that the Kindle and other e-readers will help. Kindle users are used to paying for content – how much different will it be to pay a few bucks for a book or for a newspaper subscription? News aggregators such as Google, likewise, will have to pay syndication fees for the news they deliver. Online delivery will also help solve another problem – the aging of the customer base that reads newspapers. This was an issue plaguing the industry and it isn’t going to go away. To attract younger readers, newspapers have to go where the kids are.
If newspapers can position themselves as news delivery services, and if the general zeitgeist can accept that one pays for information, even if it is online, the industry can overcome its current malaise and prosper. It might not be easy and it might not be quick, but it can happen. Let’s hope the Boston Globe will get an owner who will help it make that transition. Because we shouldn’t be losing newspapers, not now, not in this day and age. Information may want to be free, but when it comes to that, you get what you pay for.