A Change Of Venue

And now, the next bit o’ business in the tumultuous tome known as Content: The Once and Future King. Enjoy.

Herewith, the next installment of Content: The Once and Future King.

Yeah, I know - no posts for awhile. Sorry about that - busy time.

Year-end taxes for me personally plus two companies to sort out. I’m actually ‘wrapping-up’ one of my companies as part of that process. One company owns the other, so there’s really no reason to pay for two rounds of tax prep when one will do just fine (not to mention save me money!)

But to the post at hand…

On the right-hand side under PAGES you will see a new heading: Content Is King. I wrote this back in 2000 while I was working for a doomed dot.com. I re-read it recently and thought that it had a certain resonance to today’s Internet world - where we’ve been, where we are (or think we are) and where we’re headed.

But enough prattling. Just go to the link below to start the process. I’m certain you’ll find the journey fascinating - I know I did!

Now you could study Shakespeare and be quite elite.
And you can charm the critics and have nothin’ to eat.
Just slip on a banana peel, the world’s at your feet.
Make ‘em laugh,
Make ‘em laugh,
Make ‘em laugh!

There’s a little something special happening in TV news.  It’s been creeping into the living rooms through the mailslots and in between commercials.  It’s been happening late at night (mostly), but also sometimes during primetime.  You might call it ‘media insurgency’.

Former CBS anchorman Dan Rather, during a press conference a number of weeks back, kept other reporters in stitches with his ‘take’ on stories he experienced in his latter days at the helm of the News division of the ‘Tiffany Network’.

Charles Gibson, now the ABC anchor, revisited the set of ‘Good Morning America’ around the same time and did some schtick with the new guys.

We had ‘NBC Nightly News’ anchor Brian Williams appearing on Saturday Night Live’s ‘Weekend Update’ a few Saturday’s ago to resounding cheers and guffaws.

Fox News is reportedly creating a conservative version of ‘The Daily Show’ to begin airing early in the new year.

We have Robin Williams’ new movie, ‘Man Of The Year’, about a Jon Stewart-like TV host who becomes President.

All of this, and the new ‘Al Jazeera English’ channel that launched last week did so with a joke:

Two journalists don’t walk into a bar. They can’t. We don’t have any. We’re a Muslim country! Bwa ha ha!

Methinks the Jon Stewart effect is in play right across the board here. (more…)

The tone of televised political editorial has reached pulpit-pounding, evangelical proportions. All that smoke from the fire and brimstone is beginning to burn the eyes and ears of the viewers.

While the words challenge George Carlin’s “7 Dirty Words You Can’t Say On Television” for vocabulary, the syntax is addressing many hot-button issues in ways the good old ‘traditional’ media could never have dreamed of. And it appears it’s all happening on cable.

MSNBC has Keith Olbermann every weekday evening, while Comedy Central’s dynamic duo of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert book-end the political topics of the day four nights a week.

Tonight, HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” in a live broadcast to the east coast (tape delayed elsewhere), delivered what I believe to be the single biggest political, and politically incorrect, salvo I’ve ever heard anyone utter.

I have taken the liberty of stripping off the audio portion of Bill’s program-ending editorial entitled, “New Rules”, and presenting it here. After all, it’s the words that matter. Offered without comment.

Maher Editorial

Real Time with Bill Maher is Copyright © 2006 Home Box Office, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

The Internet — more specifically, the ‘Web’ — is still in its infancy.

What it will mean to the world and the way it works — the way we work — is still a moving target.

However, one aspect of the Net is becoming very clear. The buzzword that early adopters, think-tankers and geeks alike used to throw around in the ‘old days’ — convergence — is finally here. But not in the the way many would have predicted.

Convergence used to be defined as the combination of both television and the Internet - the idea that some day one device would serve both masters. You’d be able to change channels with either a remote control or a keyboard, and the results would pop up on your multi-purpose screen. If you received an e-mail or IM while watching that classic episode of “Seinfeld” on your ‘converged box’ (TV/computer), a little mail icon would flash in the corner. You could pause Kramer coming through the door, read and respond to the e-mail, and return to the laughtrack without missing a beat. (more…)