MediaBizBuzz for March 24, 2008: Cleaning House: Confronting What's Broken In Politics, The Economy, Media, Healthcare, And The Web

It39s easy to feel mired these days Last week tested us on all fronts While John McCain was busy getting his Eurail Pass stamped Barack Obama arguably gave the political speech of his life The Fed worked its triage on Wall Street trying to stanch the bleeding as we approach this Thursday39s reveal of 4Q GDP if the decline39s two consecutive quarters we meet the textbook definition of a recession But are old benchmarks including Bernanke39s close study of the 1929 Depression outmoded themselves In hindsight we should have expected a correction We39re smackdab in the middle of systems and processes that are quickly becoming extinct and new approaches to thinking and economic models that are still in quotbetaquot Human nature being what it is speculation whether be they tulips or derivatives is inevitableWhile Rome BurnsJohn Q Public has been getting one helluva lesson on those financial instruments that the banking sector has innovated since the late 3990s As recently as last year Congressman Barney Frank met with former Citi head Charlie O Prince III and asked of derivatives quotWhy aren39t they on your balance sheetquot Indeed Transparency is a good strategy even for financial models On yesterday39s Meet The Press host Tim Russert had CNBC39s Maria Bartiromo and Erin Burnett explain the fix we39re in For an eight minute segment it39s to the point The short term looks rough The New York Post by way of Silicon Alley Insider predicts 50 layoffs at Bear Stearns John C Dvorak thinks that semiconductor stocks are undervalued particularly SanDisk Our own Jack Myers looks at the economic impact in the media sector Barack UnboundYou39d think this were a oneparty system what with the dominance of Barack Obama last week His Tuesday speech was sink or swim but he defied expectations and walked on water Not only on a rhetorical scale but ratingswise as well Four million folks tuned in for the midday speech and Silicon Alley Insider dubbed him President of YouTube based on the millions of pageviews of the speech It hasn39t gone unnoticed that online video is the secret sauce in this presidential primary cycle Feed39s Josh Warner deconstructs how an Obama viral video was seeded in AdAge while ValleyWag as is their wont lays out the quotdirty tricksquot strategy oppo staffers need as they mount the next Swiftboat campaign At Auction39s EndIf there was a singleminded coverage in politics policy matters in Washington all seemed to have their source in the end of the 700 MHz wireless auction with big winners Verizon and ATampampT Sidebar EchoStar bid 711M for frequencies so look for them to get into the wireless game The general counsel of alsoran bidder Google posted on its blog how the consumer was the winner with the C Block open to all even as paidContent39s mocoNewsnet reported that a definition of quotopenquot is demanded as the FCC and Verizon don39t seem to agree In the same basket are ongoing debates over Net Neutrality After Comcast admitted to stacking the last hearing at Harvard39s Berkman Center the FCC has finally agreed to an April 17 do over at Stanford The next frontier seems to be over ISP tracking and privacy issues the New York Times39 Bits blog gives an overview of the players in this field including Phorm and Front Porch Now Hear ThisThanks to the legacy of the RIAA the music industry continues to experience a painful evolution into its future self DRM seems to be on the wane but the economics of the space are skewed While singersocialist Billy Bragg writes in the New York Times that performing artists should see a piece of the action that social network Bebo39s founders enjoyed in their sale to AOL he was roundly ridiculed by TechCrunch39s Michael Arrington the latter saying quotRecorded music is nothing but marketing material to drive awareness of an artistquot This seems a fundamental misread from Arrington Just because the cost of a digital copy is close to zero does not mean that artists shouldn39t be compensated as the glue of social networks including Bebo Facebook and MySpace Bragg39s piece is more of a discussion about the way forward and the ethics of performance royalties Obviously both the recording industry and Apple see a value for their digital music as rumors swirl around an unlimited iTunes subscription 11th Commandment Honor Thy CustomerNo one ecommerce company should take that to heart more than eBay which has just announced a quotrestructuringquot bringing together customer service their Marketplace and PayPal while laying off 125 folks moments before Meg Whitman steps down on March 31st While it39s too soon to tell if these moves bear any relation to the recent boycott eBay is far from alone when it comes to misreading its community There39s indifference and then there39s contempt Not learning its rootkitlesson Sony was going to charge 50 to remove quotbloatwarequot from its hardware it quickly backpedalled Effective April 15th DirecTV customers will see their PPV39s deleted after 24 hours Given the mire that Comcast finds itself in with the FCC over traffic shaping here39s an eyeopener Gerard Kunkel its senior VP of user experience told NewTeeVee that they were testing embedding cameras in its DVRs to distinguish who39s watching And despite offering the fine In Treatment for free on iTunes HBO has introduced DRM that prevents subscribers from watching their John Adams miniseries more than once Way to go guys Six DegreesBut for each wrongheaded or creepy move there are evolutionary leaps forward Casual gaming A monster The growth of both social networks blogs and online video has been exponential While MySpace had single digit gains for last year Facebook more than doubled in size while LinkedIn grew 271 For the first time HuffingtonPost outpaced Drudge while NewsCorp39s Fox likewise whipped CBS Calling oneself an quotadvertising blog networkquot seems to be license to print Benjamins even in this scattershot economic climate Last week first TechCrunch first reported that paidContent was raising money Silicon Alley Insider then called kettle black on TechCrunch Federated39s John Battelle himself raising capital tried to calm expectations dissing Glam in the process Ever since Hulu left beta the major portals have followed their lead and begun offering full episodes of TV content Hollywood Reporter has the rundown on their offerings TechCrunch features PrimeTimeRewind while Warner Bros39 Jim Wuthrich explains why movie content remains few and far between on Hulu quotIt39s too early to have movies in that modelquot He better get with the program On Demand is estimated by Screen Digest to be a 11B market by 2012 Curiosly Veoh claims that network fare only accounts for 15 of its downloads Here39s class Apple recently sent an email to its iTunes Season Pass customers offering download credits for series that were yanked off the air due to the Writers Strike Just as Microsoft and Google are about to ramp up their healthcare efforts paidContent sponsored EconHealth Yesterday39s Sunday Times piece on health social network PatientsLikeMe is nothing short of remarkable it39s a must read It39s fitting to close with Vint Cerf39s tribute to Arthur C Clarke who passed on last Tuesday the night coincidentally of SciFi Channel39s Upfront The scifi author and futurist wrote about global warming in 1957 anticipated GPS and gave us 2001 A Space Odyssey He truly lived for tomorrow amp160amp160amp160

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MediaBizBuzz for March 24, 2008: Cleaning House: Confronting What's Broken In Politics, The Economy, Media, Healthcare, And The Web

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Jerry Weinstein

"About That with Carl Mayer:" Alaina Donnellon (Episode 10: Political Spending) - By Carl Mayer

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MediaBizBuzz for March 24, 2008: Cleaning House: Confronting What's Broken In Politics, The Economy, Media, Healthcare, And The Web

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"About That with Carl Mayer:" Alaina Donnellon (Episode 10: Political Spending) - By Carl Mayer

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