[opendtv] Re: 20050627 Mark's Monday Memo

  • From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2005 08:32:10 -0400

At 11:11 AM -0400 6/28/05, Manfredi, Albert E wrote:
>True. International news could be heavily biased toward CNN.
>Still, these stats seem to contradict some of the "common
>wisdom" about TV news becoming extinct. One wonders who to
>believe.
>

Clearly the delivery of news via TV is not going to go away. It is evolving.

The talk of extinction is primarily related to broadcast Television, 
where the news audience has been in steady decline for more than a 
decade. The NYTimes graphic fails to make this point - the audience 
is down, even though their poll shows that it is up relative to 
alternatives. The one area most threatened with extinction is the 
evening newscasts of the broadcast networks. The audience for these 
shows is on average 60 years or older; the ratings are declining in 
proportion to the life expectancy of this demographic. At NAB there 
was a panel that I reported on that talked about broadcast news - 
this was the replacement for the FCC commissioner breakfast panel 
that Kevin Martin could not attend due to the death of his father. 
The members of that panel - Sam Donaldson, Jeff Greenfield and 
Charles Osgood all were talking about the potential extinction of the 
Network newscasts.

The TV news audience is now migrating to the cable news networks. 
These networks make it easy for any viewer to get a capsule of 
current news at any time of day. I suspect that the next step will be 
News Podcasts that will be delivered to your PVR. You will create a 
subject profile, and stories will be downloaded to cache when they 
match the profile.

Yesterday Apple announced full support for Podcasts in the new 
version of iTunes and the news iPods. More than 3000 podcasts are now 
listed at the iTunes music store, including content from major 
players including Disney, ABC News and ESPN.

We live in changing times...

Regards
Craig

 
 
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