New New Media



Pop couture

21 December 2008 | 15:25 - By Stefano Boscutti

Sometimes the web is most satisfying when it confirms a cliché from the world offline.  Like those captivating street-style photoblogs, which display snapshots of chic pedestrians in cities around the world.


Such blogs exist for Tel Aviv, Stockholm, Moscow, Sydney, Seoul, Berlin, Dublin, London - you name it. Survey them one morning over coffee, and you'll feel like a boulevardier of the whole world, breezing past one stunning creature after another, free to cruelly assess or dumbly gaze - at supreme leisure and invulnerable to reciprocal scrutiny. What can be learned from a global anthology of fantastic-looking people? First off, looking at people on city streets is almost a perfect allegory of

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Japanese billboard watches you watch it

21 December 2008 | 15:22 - By Stefano Boscutti

If you've ever been to Japan-or seen a picture-you'd know that the entire surface of cityscapes is basically one giant advertising mosaic.  So how do advertisers know which ones people actually gawk at?


Japan's NTT Communications is testing a new billboard setup in January that has a built-in pair of cameras hooked up to image detection software that determines how many people are in front of the ad, and just how many are looking at it. It doesn't try to identify individuals, or tailor the ad to specific demographics. Well, not yet.

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China back to blocking websites

21 December 2008 | 15:17 - By Stefano Boscutti

The Chinese government has quietly begun preventing access again to websites that it had stopped blocking during the Olympic Games in China in August.


Liu Jianchao, a spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry, said at his semi-weekly news conference on Tuesday in Beijing that the Chinese government had a right to censor websites that violate the country's laws. He added that "some websites," which he did not identify, had violated China's law against secession by suggesting that there are two Chinas - a reference to the Beijing government's longstanding position that mainland China and Taiwan form a single China. The New York Times website was o

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NPR allows you to roll your own podcast

21 December 2008 | 15:14 - By Stefano Boscutti

Too many podcasts too little time?  NPR now allows you to mix up your own podcast using their content.


You can now slice through the npr.org archive to create custom podcast feeds based on virtually any aggregation (or combination of aggregations). Who says radio is dead?

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MTV plans 16 new reality shows

21 December 2008 | 15:12 - By Stefano Boscutti

In trying to keep its hold on young and fickle audiences, MTV over the decades has undergone some fundamental programming shifts, but never before on this scale.


The cabler's recent ratings declines include a 23% fourth-quarter drop in its core demo of 12- to 34-year-olds. So MTV is embarking on a major programming overhaul, with 16 new unscripted series over the next four months. The series come from high-profile producers including Sean Combs, Matt Stone & Trey Parker, Donald Trump and Nick Lachey. And they represent a major thematic shift for the channel -- more toward the meta-scripted reality of MTV's "The Hills," one of the cabler's few success

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Study: Young people watch less TV

21 December 2008 | 15:08 - By Stefano Boscutti

Put another way, the older you get, the more you watch, according to a report from Deloitte indicating that "Millennials," the generation of 14- to 25-year-olds, watches just 10.5 hours of TV a week.


That compares to 15.1 hours for those belonging to Generation X (ages 26-42), 19.2 hours for Baby Boomers (43-61) and 21.5 hours for Matures (62-75). Lest one assume Millennials are shunning broadcast and cable in favor of watching DVDs on their TV screens -- they're not. They spend less time watching DVDs of movies and TV shows on television sets, 4.8 hours a week, than do Gen Xers. They are, though, spending more time watching DVDs on a computer -- 1.9 hours a week -- than any other age gro

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WUSA switching to VJs, slashing salaries

21 December 2008 | 15:03 - By Stefano Boscutti

Gannett's WUSA-TV in Washington D.C. is replacing its crews with one-man-bands, or videojournalists, who will shoot, edit, write and report.  And that's not all: VJs will be paid 30 to 50 percent less than traditional reporters.


"We believe strongly that this will raise both the quality and quantity of the product we're putting out on TV and on the internet," said Allan Horlick, the president and GM. WUSA is the first network-affiliated major market station to make the switch. Naturally it will be watched very closely by an industry under unprecedented financial pressure. Meanwhile, as the Washington Post story points out, the VJ experiment at KRON and WKRN weren't exactly glowing success stories. Stay tuned.

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Tribune's downfall is industry warning

15 December 2008 | 9:29 - By Stefano Boscutti

Tribune is a classic textbook case on how not to take a media company private, especially in hard times.  But the real tragedy will be if Sam Zell adds insult to injury by failing to use Chapter 11 restructuring to give it a new lease on life.


Tribune's daily newspapers include the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Newsday (Long Island, N.Y.), The Sun (Baltimore), South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Orlando Sentinel and Hartford Courant. The company's broadcasting group operates 23 television stations, Superstation WGN on national cable, Chicago's WGN-AM and the Chicago Cubs baseball team. Undertaking a dramatic digital reinvention of its diverse operations would provide a template to other media companies that desperately need to transit

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About this Blog

New New Media looks at how our mediascape is exploding to bits. How the latest technology and the internet are changing the way we live, work and play. How the latest media is shaping us all.

Stefano Boscutti is an executive creative director and strategist. He's like a better looking version of Todd Sampson. He also has an abiding faith that stories and wordplay (and not powerpoint presentations) will change the world.

 
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