Matthew Phillips's blog

This Business Week Article is very interesting.

What blogging is doing is creating a 'real' conversation between businesses and their customers.. Professional PR and Marketing will have to revamp the way they've always created 'super steril' messages in the past. The public is now too informed to not know any better or simply just believe company press.

The Simpsons was created in December of 1989 and will continue through at least the 2005 season, as a popular show I might add. It's not considered 'intelligent TV, but based upon the Nielsen numbers it is entertaining to many.' I think it's rather amazing to consider where we all were in 1989... MOST, if not everyone reading this blog had NO CLUE what the Internet was let alone online community or interactivity. And many in Hollywood wonder why the young, affluent, well educated audience is no longer addicted to prime time broadcasts. Can someone (other than me) articulate the fact that the basic concept of TV has not changed since 1941 (63 years ago). Whereas, society is undergoing a massive restructering of information digestion unequaled in human history.

It's no longer about the newspapers, or radio, or TV, or gathering gossip at the country store, it's all about how the Internet is converging all of these and becoming the most powerful mass media, personal advisor ever.

I agree with this research and article below completely. eBay is great from a national even international standpoint, but traditional print and local broadcasting continue to dominate the local scene. It will be very interesting when those that SHOULD own the Internet step forward and claim rightful ownership. Namely traditional media businesses.

Searching closer to home

By Bambi Francisco, CBS.MarketWatch.com
Last Update: 11:30 AM ET Feb 12, 2004
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- Consumers are increasingly using search engines to find local information to buy products or services.

That's quite an expansion of search engine use from just checking on the weather, directions to a neighborhood restaurant or movie listings.

A new survey of more than 5,000 online buyers conducted by The Kelsey Group and BizRate.com shows that local searches with the intent to buy represented a quarter of all searches performed by online buyers.

http://news.com.com/2009-1043-5116866.html As the fall TV season kicked off this year, media companies got an unwelcome surprise: According to an influential ratings report, key parts of prime-time audiences--young men in particular--seemed to be deserting in unprecedented numbers.

Media moguls, loath to concede that such an important group of viewers was being drawn to other entertainment media, immediately blamed bad data and programming miscues. But analysts pointed to a far more troubling culprit in the form of growing competition from newer technologies such as the Internet, DVDs and video game consoles.

"Groupthink Revisited"... The Abstract reads... "This paper revisits Irving Janis’ theory of groupthink in the light of the ongoing debate on legitimate peripheral participation in communities of practice. We argue for a movement in perception from the linear development of community formation to a multi-dimensional model based upon the inter-relationship of the domains of community, practice, meaning, and identity. Janis’ theory of groupthink is outlined and communities of practice defined. From these definitions, we go on to examine the significance of in-groups and out-groups, applying

Study: Share of 18-34 viewers crossed over

By A.J. Livsey http://69.20.6.242/news2004/jan04/jan26/2_tues/news3tuesday.html

Ever since the huge losses among the broadcast networks among adults 18-34 became apparent earlier this year, the suspicion has been that many of those young people were exiting to cable.
Now there's some evidence to support that suspicion.
In the first half of the season, overall ratings for broadcast networks are off 11.6 percent among 18-34s from 2002, to a 12.9 rating, while cable is up 4.8 percent, to a 13.0 rating.
That’s based on Magna Global USA analysis of Nielsen Media numbers for the first 17 weeks of the 2003-04 season.

Surprise Winner Huge TV Money-Maker

January 17, 2004
By MEG JAMES, Los Angeles Times http://www.ctnow.com/business/hc-ameridol.artjan17,1,6261952,print.story?coll=hc-headlines-business

"American Idol" unfolds with youthful innocence as wide-eyed, underdog contestants try to beat the odds - and a snarling judge - to make it big.

The concept behind the hit show, which begins its third season on Fox Broadcasting Co. next week, has minted more than $2 billion worldwide. But initially, "Idol" wasn't even going to be on TV.

Five years ago, British entrepreneur Simon Fuller thought of tailoring a talent show for the Internet, where computer users could discover and vote for their new favorites. Back then, though, the Internet wasn't taking off fast enough for Fuller.

Network Campaign Coverage Increasingly Fails to Hit the Target By Daisy Whitney

A recent study on campaign news consumption sheds some light on where young men and women get their news.

Its conclusion: Cable is the leading source, and late-night talk shows and the Internet are also among the best ways to serve news to a young audience.

"Young people, by far the hardest-to-reach segment of the political news audience, are abandoning mainstream sources of election news and increasingly citing alternative outlets, including comedy shows such as the 'The Daily Show With Jon Stewart' and 'Saturday Night Live,' as their source for election news," according to the Pew Research Center report, released Jan. 11.

Has anyone seen this new magazine from Primedia yet? I'm curious -- http://www.primedia.com/pr/press/realitycheck1903/

This week's debut of Reality Check, a magazine focusing on reality TV shows and contestants, leads a lengthening list of launches in 2004.
Published by Primedia and put together by its Soap Opera Weekly editors, Reality Check has a cover story on "The Real Clay Aiken," the singer discovered on TV's "American Idol."

Other features include how to get picked for the shows and the lowdown on reality stars' fashion sense.

Its fate will depend in part on newsstand respons

So Google's Orkut (don't ask what it means in Finnish) is out of the bag now (it's actually old news but this new press release has fooled everyone). Here's a paper written awhile back on Stanford's social networking site. http://www.hpl.hp.com/shl/papers/social/social.pdf
Community Web sites are becoming increasingly popular – allowing users to chat, organize
events, share opinions and photographs, make announcements, and meet new friends. Several
prior studies have focused on characterizing these online interactions (Curtis, 1992; Yee 2001),
and others have attempted to measure the effect of the Internet on real life social interactions

I couldn't agree more with this article. As a representative of the key TV demographic, I've created an innovative new TV/Internet show.

While it's easy to pin the decline in network television ratings this season the emergence of the digital video recorder, or ongoing rise of cable, or Nielsen's ratings methodology, the real answer is some combination of each of these factors -- and more. http://www.marketwatch.com/news/print_story.asp?print=1&guid={89314E50-8579-42A6-8923-FFA42458F164}&siteid=myyahoo

The 2002-03 season has been one of the most lackluster in recent memory for the networks, with no new hits; a 7 percent drop in viewership among men 18 to 34 years old; and, after years of steady advance, cable networks overtook broadcast in total share of the television audience, with 53 percent of the aggregate viewers.