AOL Could Be King on Online “Magazines”

There is a very smart, clear, article in TBI that looks at one of the cornerstones of AOL’s plans now that they’ve been spun back off of Time Warner:

The model goes something like this: Find a vertical with an audience attractive to advertisers, brand it (Daily Finance, Asylum, Lemondrop, Politics Daily), hire five to seven people to run it and plug in AOL’s traffic fire hose. Repeat.

It’s not like isn’t being done by others. Nick Denton’s mini-empire has a very similar model and, guess what, it remains profitable while the traditional dead-tree magazines are dropping like so many flies.  The main reason to think AOL might succeed here is that they are building a digital-age system from the ground up, not trying to shoehorn an old business model into a new universe.

They’re the antithesis of the kind of quality standards Time Inc. and Condé Nast tout, relying largely on aggregation, blogging and traffic-goosing tricks such as provocative slide shows. But unlike the print publications trying to port their cost structure to the web, these publications can be cash-positive from the start. In fact, one could argue these sites cropping up represent today’s version of the magazine launch — after the old, splashy kind died with Portfolio.

And, as TBI finally points out:

Then you’ve got an economic environment tailor-made to building this business. Traditional magazines are in disarray, talent is cheap, and audiences are splintering and accepting of new brands. AOL has more than 300 people producing these sites in New York and has contracts with about the same number of freelancers. In the past six months, AOL has hired more than 50 journalists from places such as the Associated Press, Washington Post and USA Today.

If you are looking for the future of news, you might get a good idea by paying some attention to that old internet warhorse, AOL.

Let’s just hope they don’t starting sending out those damn CD-ROM’s again.

Pre-Roll Ads Can Be An Effective Compromise

I just went to check out the weather for today and ended up, of course, at Weather.com.  There I decided to watch the actual video weathercast for NYC.  After clicking the link I was made to watch a 15-second ad for Pedigree dog food. And you know what, it wasn’t that big a deal.  In fact, it seemed like a perfectly fair trade-off since I was getting the video for free.

Now, had it been a longer ad, that would have been a different story.  I am always dismayed when a video provider tries to slap a 30-second spot in front of a 90-second video.  That is not a fair exchange.

Where people are eager to fast-forward through 2-minute TV ad breaks, it doesn’t seem worth the effort when it is just a 15-second spot.  There is a good lesson in here for all the advertisers out there.

Benny Goodman Shows How It’s Done – 50 Songs in One Day

I was listening to 89.9 FM in NYC last night and they were playing a tribute to jazz great Benny Goodman.

In introducing the next set of songs, the DJ said something pretty amazing.  He said that the next four songs would be from “one of the most productive recording sessions in jazz history,” during which Benny Goodman and a small band including Gene Krupa on drums recorded fifty separate songs!

Now, I have not been able to confirm this online, and it was late and I wasn’t completely paying attention at first.  If you want to do some digging, I believe the DJ said the date was June 6, but I can’t remember the year, and that the session took place in New York.

Anyhow, I am going to assume it was true if only to make the point that this is how artists succeed.  There is so much discussion today about how the business of music or writing is breaking down and making it so hard for people to make a living pursuing these careers.  The truth is that it has always been hard and the ones who truly make it do so regardless of the conditions of the economy or the state of the industry in which they work.

In Benny Goodman’s time, the real money was selling recordings to both make money and build audiences for live tours.  So, what did Benny Goodman do to suceed beyond being very talented?  He recorded FIFTY SONGS IN ONE DAY! How many aspiring garage bands do you know who are willing to make that sort of investment in time and energy?

Just as another example for this weekend post, take a look at Charles Dickens, a writer I don’t much enjoy but whose success is hard to question.  Where did he get his first big audiences? Not from publishing a best seller but from what was really not much different from an earlier version of fictional blogging. He published his stories in increments, making sure to include lots of cliffhangers to keep ‘em coming back for more.  While today we might think of Dicken’s work in terms of novels read in high school, during Dicken’s time he was likely very popular bathroom reading.

And there is nothing wrong with that.  That was the best way for him, at that time, to reach his audience. He didn’t whine about the fact that people were reading his work in drips and dribbles or that they were being published in a magazine instead of a leather-bound volume (ok, maybe he did but it didn’t stop him), he wrote for his audience and he was rewarded.

As we move ever deeper into the digital age, a few things will always remain true:

1) If you are really talented and really driven you have a much better chance at reaching your goals.

2) If you think you “deserve” to be paid you will likely be disappointed in the results.

3) If you are able to give the audience what they want in a way that can be easily and affordably consumed you will probably have a hit on your hands.

Lots more will remain the same, too.

People will continue to tell stories and share them with others.  People will continue to write and record music for others to hear.  The detailed dynamics of how one is able to do this while being fed and clothed will constantly shift, but that’s just opportunity for those who are paying attention.

Improv Everywhere Questions Tribune Co’s Journalism AND Ethics

ImprovEverywhere, the mischevious gang of merrymakers who brought us the Mall Musical, the Grand Central Freeze and the annual NYC silliness that is the No-Pants Subway Day celebrated April Fool’s Day with a really funny spoof of their own work in which they rounded up a large group to join a grave-side funeral for something they called “Best Funeral Ever”:

Of course, there were some people who thought this was an actual prank.  Not just regular people, but some newspeople at Tribune-owned CW11 who saw the video on YouTube and went to air with a completely unchecked report claiming the video was a genuine prank.

Charlie Todd, founder of Improv Everywhere, thought this was pretty funny so he posted the video of the newscast onto YouTube.  Shortly after, the video was pulled thanks to a takedown notice from Tribune.  As Todd says:

It’s OK for them to air content that we shot and own, but it’s not OK for me to upload their footage of the content they took from me? It’s “fair use” for the news to take a video off of YouTube and broadcast it, but it’s not “fair use” for a citizen to expose their poor reporting on his own content?

No, Charlie, it isn’t OK.  It is, however, a great demonstration of what is wrong with our current copyright laws and especially with the DMCA.

LINK

HP Blows Chance, Wastes Talent

Image via Wikipedia

As a resident of NYC and a creator and producer of “new media” I am a pretty constant visitor to the city’s two main improv theaters, The Upright Citizens Brigade” and “The Peoples Improv Theater” – both spaces are a hotbed of comedic talent and it was exciting to hear that tech giant HP was going to use this talent to help sell computers.

Seriously, it was exciting.  Here was a company ready to tap into and support exactly the sort of hip, funny people that they want to have buying their gear.

So what a complete disappointment to see the results – a series a poorly shot, barely lit improv scenes left to wither on the YouTube vine.  Here’s an example:

[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.748510&w=425&h=350&fv=%26rel%3D0%26border%3D0%26]
That is actually their most viewed video with a grand total of 504 views over the past 3 months.

I will never understand why a company will take the first big scary step to use edgy performers and web distribution and then shoot themselves in the foot with terrible execution and zero publicity.

Boo.