Karim Bakhtiar's Blog

Thank God For The BBC Licence Fee

Does your dog yawn when you do? Have you managed to catch this habit on camera? Are you and your pet alike? Send us your pictures of you and your yawning dogs.
- quote from BBC News Online

Some doubters suggest that the BBC ought to be funded by voluntary subscription, rather than by a monopoly tax enforceable by the threat of jail. But can you really trust the market to keep you informed of Dog Yawn Science? I think not.

Such 'market failure' is unacceptable and demonstrates why we must be willing to jail selfish poor single mothers who laughingly believe that food, clothing and shelter would be better uses of their limited funds than would media production subsidies. Jail them, I say. Jail them all.

Fox News's Dirty Little Secret

At 3am, when all its conservative viewers have  gone to bed, American centre-right news channel Fox News gives the air over to a show produced by cynical mentally-deranged drunken teenagers. Or, so it appears.

Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld revels in its shameless focus on the irrelevant. It asks the questions no-one else dares to (or cares to). Questions such as "Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan - who'll die first?" and "Are David Beckham and Justin Timberlake the new targets of terrorists?"

NewsHounds (a site where humorless unemployed Democrats feed their persecution complex) describes the show as ..

"An offensive, stomach-turning pastiche of sewer humor.... the cesspool of ... smut and snark."

and

"the worst show ever!"

You have been warned! Only morally degenerate UK residents will be setting their Sky+ boxes to record the Fox News Channel, Sky channel 510, at 8am on seemingly random days of the week.

You will also wish to avoid visiting the archive of monologues in which Gutfeld parodies the commentary provided by other Fox News anchors at the start of their shows. He explains why George Bush should convert to Islam to get an uncritical press from the BBC, and how McDonald's value menu is the key to solving world hunger.

I love the show. Watching it is at first a bit of a culture shock. First you think

"WTF"

then

"I can't believe he just said that"

then

"I can't believe this is on a major news channel"

then

"I can't believe this show is still on the air"

and

"I can't believe there hasn't been a letter-writing campaign from outraged Christian Republicans demanding that this be cancelled."

Fox News commissioned the show, and got the show they wanted. But then Red Eye changed. It became darker, odder, dirtier and riskier. The black sheep in the Fox News Channel family, hidden away at 3am.

In many ways, Fox News have accidentally created a post-modern news show.

The latest Hollywood stumblings aren't reported with fake concern, but with derision and open admissions of schadenfreude.

When reporting Scientific surveys, the host openly admits he doesn't give a damn about their scientific validity, merely their entertainment value. He changes the topic when he gets bored.

In place of a bland vanilla-esque host, there's Gutfeld, a flawed human. When was the last time you saw a TV news presenter admit to getting drunk? Or smoking pot? Or failing to pick up women? Gutfeld admits that he's short, ugly and that having "completely stopped exercising" he's developed "tits. Fucking tits".

He admits that he's surprised that the show hasn't been axed, and that every morning when he comes into work, he half expects to find his Fox News pass deactivated. When the show was moved from 2am to 3am he quipped "I have every reason to cry, people."

Update 2008-04-07: Alas, some humorless pathetic losers have succeeded in pressuring Fox News to drop Red Eye in favor of something bland (at least when it comes to international syndication). For UK residents, The War on Strippers has been replaced by the War on Terror. And without Red Eye, there will be no more broadcasting of videos of dancing midgets impersonating Hillary Clinton. Thank God I had the foresight to set up a Hillary Clinton impersonator dancing midget video stash while I still had the chance!

Update 2008-04-10: It's back, following internal lobbying!

Newspapers' Digital Challenge

A year ago, I spent two hours every day catching up on news and analysis, reading The Guardian, the London Evening Standard. And watching Sky News.

Fast forward a year, and I still spend two hours per day catching up on news and analysis. But the Guardian and the Standard barely figure in my reading. They've been replaced by over 100 news feeds.

I'm not the only one switching to online media consumption. Newspaper circulations are falling. And that's scaring the hell out of most media executives.

In a desperate attempt to capture a larger slice of a diminishing pie, the Guardian has spent £80 million ($145m) changed its format. In an even more desperate act, The London Evening Standard is giving away two free cut-down versions of itself.

Digital cannibalization of newspaper sales shows no signs of slowing.

Newspapers can no longer survive by serving up barely edited bland news-agency copy. In commodity hell, you had better be the cheapest provider, or distinct enough to command a premium. As copious news available online, for nothing, the former option isn't even likely to work

So, what's a savvy newspaper publisher to do?

• Make your content available for free. If your readers are going to stop reading your printed product, you might as well get them to read it online, so you can keep some of your ad revenue, rather than let it go to your online competitors.
• Require registration for the more unique and valuable content such as Editorials and major exclusives. The registration data will let you sell Advertisers premium packages that reach just the kind of people they're after.
• Make your headlines and story summaries available via dozens of niche XML feeds.
• Buy, build, or lease a web-based feed aggregator. If you have an aggregator, you can use the registration data, feed subscription data, click-through data and text analysis to figure out the interests of your readers. You can then sell premium-rate targetted advertising packages based on this information to advertisers on your own content sites and any other sites on your ad network. For example, if you publish gardening news, but offer a feed aggregator, you can take a note of which visitors subscribes to Cricket news feeds from other providers. When those visitors click through to your gardening news site, you can display premium advertising for Cricket Coverage on Sky Sports. You thus sell some of your ads to advertisers who are targeting a niche audience for which your site doesn't cater. You can display targetted ads alongside others feeds. In the longer-term, you will be able to offer easy micro-payment solutions to your users that allow them to access premium content. You get a cut fo the subscription and pay-per-article revenue.
• Buy web sites that offer significant ad-inventories, user registration, and a focus that compliments your existing advertiser solutions. The groups behind The Mirror and the Daily Mail have already started hoovering up job sites. You're looking for ad-revenue and services that you can cross-sell to your existing base of advertisers. You'll also want to be able to offer small-scale low-price solutions to smaller advertisers, expanding your customer base. Many of these smaller advertisers may be open to buying bigger, traditional packages as they grow.
• Buy blog, podcasting and video-podcasting hosting services. Their ad inventories may be low-quality and untargetted, but the page impressions to such sites are growing rapidly. The age profile will compliment your existing base of older readers.
• Make your content unique, timely, insightful, relevant to your audience and offer depth on demand.
• Ensure that much of your content appeals to the kinds of people that advertisers want to reach. For example, target business budget decision-makers, high income individuals and those actively looking to make a purchase.
• Become a multi-media outlet, and make your content available on portable media players and cell phones. Large color displays, massive amounts of cheap portable storage, powerful cell phones and ubiquitous cheap broadband will conspire to make multimedia on the move a reality. Newspaper publishers shouldn't restricted themselves to text. They should offer audio summaries, recordings of interviews, polemics, discussions, and TV clips. Newspaper readership is being squeezed out of the home and office by online media. Public transport is, for the time being, their last refuge. Tabloid/Berliner formats may help newspapers retain readers temporarily, but as standard mobile phones, portable media players and gaming devices become multi-media friendly, newspapers will face competition from TV, podcasts, digital music, Internet access and games. To compete, media organizations need to offer bite-sized video and audio as well as text.

Whilst this is a nightmare for newspaper executives, it's great news for the rest of us. We're moving towards a future where we will get the media we want, when we want it, where we want it.

Sky News Rocks

I'm a news junkie, and for the UK news junkie there's no better channel than Sky News.

After the terrorists struck on September 11th, I would come home from work and watch Sky News's coverage for hours on end.

When Baghdad fell, Sky News Reporter David Chater was there to talk to the troops as they drove their tanks onto the square in which Saddam Hussein's statue would famously fall. Chater was the only reporter broadcasting live from the square.The pictures were simulcast on news channels worldwide.

Sky News launched the world's first interactive TV video news service. It lets viewers choose what they want to watch, from 8 video screens. These can be viewed at up to full-screen size.

On election night 2005, Sky News viewers with Sky Digital will have 16 full-size screens from which to choose.

If you want to get a feel for Sky News (but live in the US, or do not have digital TV), check out Johnnie Larkin's authoritative site, SkyNewsCentre.

It appears as though I'm not the only fan of Sky News. The SkyNewsCentre discussion forum has 850 registered members.

Interactive TV and digital satellite broadcasting offer fantastic possibilities for creating TV that's controlled by the viewer, not by the editor or producer.

Why does this matter? Because most people get their news from TV, and as long as that's the case, we're all forced to make do with what the 'average' viewer wants. Our news consists of soundbites from news-makers, not their words in context. Every story that's of interest to you is excluded if it won't interest the average viewer. The time given to stories is cut down to that which the average viewer will accept without switching channels.

Interactivity offers depth, breadth, choice, genuine viewer feedback and active participation. Plus the ability to order pizza without leaving the sofa. As all countries move towards digital TV, Sky News is offering a glimpse of how interactive TV will transform your viewing of Television news.

Murdoch Gets It

Rupert Murdoch's speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors shows us why he's a billionaire. He's a clued-up change-embracing strategist of the highest order.

His entire life has been a case of betting big against the opinions of 'experts', and winning.

When British Satellite TV Broadcaster and TV Producer Sky was launched, the experts predicted failure. People wouldn't pay for TV. They didn't want it. Murdoch bet against them, and Sky is now the most popular, most choice-enhancing thing to ever happen to British Television.

When Fox News was launched, no-one believed there was space for a fourth network, lest of all one that broke all the rules of how television news 'ought' to be done. The experts were wrong, Murdoch was right, Fox News is now the most popular news channel in America. The others didn't know what hit them. Couldn't the stupid public see that Fox News was pro-military pro-republican pro-America? Why would Americans choose to watch such a channel (um, 'cause they're pro-military pro-American and half are pro-republican?)

Update: It seems that British Center-Right Broadsheet The Times is already following Murdoch's advice that NewsCorp newspapers need to start blogs.

Bloglines

The next generation of newspapers is here. And you're its editor.

You decide which type of story get covered. You hand-pick the columnists. You get the most insightful analysis straight from experts and those on the front line.

Your newspaper is tailored to you. It's everything you want from a newspaper, and nothing else.

This isn't some technical utopia. It's something that's available to you right now.

Visit Bloglines.com and sign up in 60 seconds. Then choose the people and sources you want to read. Available sources include the BBC, Reuters, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Register and 9 million blogs. If you see this logo, there's a feed you can add to Bloglines: 

Here are the news and information sources I read every day

They give me a mix of UK Business News, Political Rants, B2B Small Business Marketing Tips, Chess, Digital Media, Dilbert cartoons, Pop culture, Parody, Political Gossip, Quotations, Telecoms industry news and Geeky stuff that's far superior to anything I can get from a newspaper.

I suggest you sign up to the Bloglines service, which is free, and find a selection of feeds that  cover your own interests. http://www.bloglines.com/

Guilty Secret: I Love Car-Crash Television

The truth about American Idol, The Apprentice and Survivor is not that we want to see people win.
It's that we want to see them stab one another in the back, have heated arguments, then lose. Preferably in as humiliating a way as possible.

Or perhaps that's just me.

'Car crash voyeurism' is the foundation of reality-TV. Now it doesn't even need a game show.

The E!/Sky News co-produced reconstructions of the Michael Jackson trial make compelling television.It's sure soap opera. Kidnap attempts. Svengali Gay Porn Producers. Celebrity Entrapment. Death Threat Ruses. 'Crack Whore Mother' Smears. And, my God, that was just the first three days!

Call me shallow if you will, but this trash beats Newsnight any day of the week.

Jackson's lawyer Thomas Mesereau Jr. is outstanding. Anyone who wants to see a world-class master of rhetoric in full flow should watch the reconstructions.