Radar Waves

Junk Food Ads Spoil Kids'...Minds

It sems like every few years a group of concerned parents or (as in the case) doctors, send out the call to restrict children's advertising on television.  So far, the industry has (barely) self-regulated, and this will likely continue, despite congressional turnover next month. in this latest call for regulation: "The group is demanding that TV ads on kids' shows be halved and that junk-food ads be banned during shows viewed predominately by those under age 8. It is also requesting that alcohol ads be limited to product pictures and text and erectile-dysfunction ads be limited to after 10 p.m." ok, childhood obesity and its attendant health problems are reaching epidemic proportions - one that directly impacts the work of pediatricians. I'm not sure I personally agree with the limitations on alcohol and erectile dysfunction ads and its tougher to understand the impact these ads have on children's health - it starts to veer uncomfortably close to censorship. What seems to be missing from this latest round is any recognition on the impact of product placement in TV that is not specifically targeted towards children but is immensely popular with them. case in point: American Idol. I defy you to find a child dedicated to that show who can't immediately identify the 3 major sponsors. If the purpose of the proposal was not to directly affect policy but to increase the discourse around children's advertising (as I suspect it was), then the American Academy of Pediatrics has sorely missed a critical issue.

Variety's Eulogy: The Death of VHS

We all knew it was dying, Variety provides the euology for VHS. Who knew loneliness could kill a technology? Well, that and retailers sounding the death knell: "no longer shelf space." Here's to a fruitful afterlife on ebay, where it will be reunited with its friends Betamax (surely the two have mended their relationship by now), Colecovision and a large collection of laserdiscs.

WMG Chief in LAT -- He's talkin' loco, but I like it

Nice (if short) interview with Warner Music chief Lyor Cohen in today's LA Times.

This guy actually talks like a record exec -- not a bean-counting, fearmongering, customer-suing soap salesman. A few highlights:

First, he acknowledges that the end of CD album replacement -- NOT P2P FILE SHARING -- was responsible for the dip in record sales at the turn of the century:

Throughout the 1980s and early '90s, the success of the compact disc format allowed music companies to build enormous, expensive staffs. When the industry began to decline in the late 1990s, most companies decided that rather than cut staff, they would take shortcuts to sell more records. That's why Britney Spears, the Backstreet Boys and 'NSync appeared...

Second, he puts in a word for long-term artist development (although talk is cheap; I'm waiting to see the results):

[T]he industry needs to develop artists who are profitable over the long term, even if they don't start out big.

Finally, he big-ups new media and innovative distribution and business paradigms:

The digital revolution is baked into the very capillaries of our organization now, and we have to push experimentation every day.

I gotta say, maybe I'm just a sucker for good PR, but I'm feeling hopeful for the future of the music biz for the first time in a while. Not only is a major label chief talking sense, but consolidation might be reversing itself, what with the EU kiboshing Sony/BMG, the cessation of mating dances between EMI and Warner, ClearChannel spinning off SFX, etc...

I still hold out hope for Arrested Development

So MSN scored the syndication rights to Arrested Development, the first time a television show has turned to the Web to sell syndication rights. (HDNet and G4 scored the HD and basic cable rights, respectively). MS plans to stream the episodes for free, with an ad supported model. While details on the terms of the deal are sketchy at best (three years exclusive but no mention of money), I have to wonder if there may be a hope for Family Guy-style resurrection in the works. Perhaps I'm just unable to accept the idea of AD gone forever, and I'm grasping at straws, but its not inconceivable that AD might find a larger and more loyal audience online and on demand. (FOX did the show a disservice by constantly moving it around on the schedule). Sure, resurrecting an animated show three years after its cancellation is probably much easier than wrangling a live-action cast back into production, but a girl can dream, can't she? The viral power of the Internet, the ability to watch these shows for free and on demand, the proven popularity of video online - maybe all these factors will conspire to create a larger AD phenomenon online that FOX (or HBO, or Showtime, etc) will take note of - because watching the DVDs just isn't enough for me. I need my Bluths now.

Interview on Adtech Radio

I should have posted about this BEFORE the interview ran, so apologies. But I did a short interview yesterday with Susan Bratton on Adtech Connect Radio, archived here. In it we discuss upcoming radar research projects, what it was like working for jupiter at the height of the internet boom, and words of wisdom for kids trying to break into the business, which makes me feel incredibly old. here is the official description:

Title: Roving Eyes and Little People

Susan Bratton interviews Matt Wasserlauf, CEO of Broadband Enterprises; Marissa Gluck, Founder and Managing Partner of Radar Research and Len Ostroff, CEO of Rovion in a show focused on broadband, video, marketing mash-ups and more.

Find out about a dog whistle only teens can hear, be in-the-know about the latest practical joke on YouTube and an intelligent new scoring index for Web 2.0 companies. Emotion meets accountability with hotspot and borderless streaming video ad formats you might actually like…plus cool little talking web people.

Youtube NOT hacked

I stand corrected, although apparently YouTube's cryptic message confused a few of us:

YouTube: Our humor, not our hack

update Engineers at video upload site YouTube.com played a practical joke on fans late Thursday evening as they prepared to roll out new site features.

 

YouTube, which hosts homemade videos, took down the site and posted a cryptic and grammatically incorrect place-holder message written in capital letters: "All your video are belong to us."

The inability to get on to the site and the poor grammar, a likely reference to a poorly translated video game that evolved into an animated Web phenomenon some years ago, had some YouTube fans believing that the site had been hacked. At around 10:45 p.m. PT, an additional sentence appeared that let confused users in on the hoax: "No, we haven't be hacked. Get a sense of humor."

Sure, the message made me laugh, but would it have been that hard for YouTube to add a line referring to the site maintenance? humor is all well and good, but reliable, honest customer service goes a long way to building goodwill.

Youtube hacked?

what do you get when you combine hackers, an Internet meme spawned by video game Engrish, and the world's most popular viral video site?

I'm chuckling but I doubt Chad Hurley is right now.

New new media: tongue-based VR

First read about this a year or two ago, but now that DARPA's investing, it seems like it'll become a reality: scientists are using the tongue as a computer interface. The initial app I read about was helping vision-impaired people to "see" by delivering video information encoded as bumps on the tongue. Now DARPA's delivering infra-red vision through the same method, and allowing soldiers to control devices sans fingers.

The reason they can do this, apparently, is because the brain has its own form of machine code, and all sensory experience can be reduced to this level. This means that ANY sensory experience can be transcoded into ANY other sensory experience.

Is anyone else thinking what I'm thinking? Let's see, how do all new media technologies get their start? First, you get a bunch of academics trying something out. Then the military invests. Then, early consumer adoption is driven by... Anyone?...

We're folding up our shutters, selling our stocks and putting everything we've got into tongue-porn. Imagine the possibilities! Seriously, though, this is way cool. Except for the goofy green hat and the mile-long tube sticking out of the user's mouth. Someone call Apple and start them working on the iTongue.

Porn Addendum: Burger King's Balls

I just want to quickly add to Aram's post on porn leading the way - yet again. When it comes to techological innovation, the porn industry is usually front and center, figuring out ways to harness technology rather than suppress it. Technology presents opportunity, rather than a threat for many in that business - although to be honest, I don't know enough to comment on particular companies - how incumbents are affected versus start-ups willing to embrace new technologies.

but I wanted to point out that it is not just in the realm of distribution and delivery that the porn industry leads the way - its also in the fields of content and marketing. Or rather, brands on the cutting edge often co-opt the semiotics of pornography to resonate with (typically younger) consumers. As Burger King's "subservient chicken" made its way across the internet, it was pretty clear BK's agency Crispin Porter & Bogusky was channeling porn into the mainstream - a grubby basement (love the stucco ceiling!), grainy camera and a chicken willing to do whatever command you entered. the implications are clear. and we're not the only ones who thought so, with wired referring to the campaign as the "porno hen."

sure, porn making its way into the mainstream isn't entirely new.  Calvin Klein has almost singlehandedly championed that cause for the last two decades. what's new is the way technology is now integrated into content for marketing purposes. As marketers attempt to get more and more creative, (as well as more desperate to make an impact), expect to see greater infiltration by, well not porn per se, but porn-esque signifiers into mainstream marketing culture.

Selling Off Our History - To Showtime

This will go down as one of the most egregious forms of privatization of our common culture:

As part of a near-exclusive deal with Showtime Networks, the Smithsonian Institution is restricting filmmakers' access to its scientists and archives, prompting another outcry over the museum's attempts to make money.

Filmmakers who have relied on the vast holdings of the Smithsonian, and typically pay to use historic film or copy an artifact, have raised objections to the new policy of limited access to the public collections. Now most filmmakers will not have in-depth use of Smithsonian materials unless they are creating work for the Smithsonian/Showtime unit.

And to make matters worse, its taxpayer money, $800 million of it, that funds the archive, thus effectively enriching the coffers of a private company at the public's expense.

Sadly, I fear this will also be perceived in the media trades as one of Viacom's savviest deals yet. Let's hope the media understands what is actually at stake here in terms of our artistic, scientific and cultural futures.