Jay Rosen has some more great input on the Karen Ryan / HHS "news" report originally discussed here. Looks like she's been interviewed a couple times and is feeling like she's scapegoated. Kind of funny that she's out in the wind right now and no one's pulling her back in the window.

"But the trouble is she is a sort of fraud, and what collapsed for her was a style of video fraudulence she happened to be good at. It may be commonplace in politics, but if so then Ryan is just a more common type of fraud than some who find their way into the news pages. There is no rational interpretation, professional ethic, or angle of vision in which the sentence, "From Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting" looks like anything other than a simple lie."

The key to it all, for me, is that she was purporting to be a reporter from every angle - and that's just wrong. Kind of like how a lot of bloggers use a "full disclosure" note when they write about something they might have worked on, etc., Ms. Ryan looked like a reporter when she actually wasn't. And even though the cop-out of "the producers aired, it, so it's their fault" might seem cheesy for her, they deserve some of the blame. These same producers are running news now where people are talking about how much they feel duped by the Karen Ryan "report". So the "media" deserves some of the blame here, too.

Wonder if we'll ever see any of this type of material in this format - ever again.

ResearchBuzz leads us to Marketer's Portal... You'll never guess what kind of information is available on that site...

Well, yet another source to add to the growing list of reads....

CNET's Stefanie Olsen writes that 180solutions (perhaps you've removed their software once or twice) is going forward with new adware-lite, as one might call it. Yet another way to get free music downloads while ads make their way across your screen.

And, amusingly enough, this article opened up to a window-sucking Verisign advertisement that I couldn't get rid of fast enough.

Props to the folks at Dead Parrot Society for pointing out how funny it is when someone leaves something good behind in public and then it lands on the Internet.

Here is the UPI article about Pentagoner Eric Ruff leaving his notes on how to rebuff Richard Clarke's statements about the Bush Administration's tactics towards al Qaeda. Wonkette chimes in as well.

This morning I had seen on the television news that EMI was making some big changes, namely getting rid of 1,500 jobs and outsourcing (oooh, buzzword) a good portion of their work...

But most interesting is not only that they are getting rid of jobs, but they're dropping 20% of the artists on their label.

[I finally found the " key. It's where the ~ usually is.]

So I have a few minutes to check in online this afternoon from the in-hotel cyber cafe place, and what do we have in the history but Gawker and Gothamist... I got a big kick out of that.... So some New Yorker is down here, probably at the same event I´m at!

Eszter at Crooked Timber is writing about the use of the terms “weblog” and “blog” in media sources.... And is looking for some assistance from the number crunchers in the audience to see how many “mainstream” publications refer to weblogs as sources..... Any thoughts from the peanut gallery?

I always wanted to have a `blogging away message´ before, and now I do, sort of.

I´m in Brazil for a couple days on business, so I won´t be on the usual schedule (whatever that means)... All I know is, I gotta figure out what to do with the lack of a quote key on these keyboards. Kinds of throws your HTML coding out the window, doesn´t it?

CNNMoney reports that Viacom has decided to wake up and join the party, and has tasked MTV honcho Tom Freston to create a plan to launch what might be (if they get it done fast enough), the first gay-themed network in the U.S.

I think this will be a boon to advertisers and marketers who have already harnessed non-selective advertising and realize that the demographics available on the gay population are astounding. What I would be more concerned about even before getting the net on the air is that the programming doesn't come off as just pandering for the sake of doing so. But hey, when would we ever accuse networks of doing that.

That's what Rory O'Connor is saying about news networks in an article over at mediachannel.org. What's disturbing is, quotes and theories we all have in our heads about how the news is giving us....well, news are painfully unrealistic. In the article, CBS News President Andrew Heyward says the most important issue is that "opinion has begun to drive out fact-based reporting -- especially on cable television." Ain't that the truth. While Fox News is an easy target for its rightward lean, all the stations have programs that are based in opinion rather than "news reporting" which dominate their lineups. Apparently people are eating it up, though, so what's a network to do?

If you happen to get the "New Jersey" section of the New York Times, then you should turn to page two, where Debra Galant writes about bloggers from the state of New Jersey, including Jeff Jarvis, Robert Recchia, Lizbeth Finn-Arnold, The Soup Lady, and myself! All as a result of the blog MeetUp that nj.com sponsored....

I even got a quote in there from this post from March 17th and a link to the Bloomfield Journal blog I'm doing at nj.com.

Amusingly enough, my blogshares (which I had never claimed) for this site went up significantly today, so I think someone out there had insider knowledge.... [grin]

Hey, it's International Blog Comment Day as per Spanglemonkey, so get off your non-commenting butts and hit those keys!

[via Debra Galant]

Philadelphia Mag's Sasha Issenberg lays out New York Times columnist David Brooks in an article from the April issue of the magazine. Issenberg seems to have fact-checked Brooks to a t, down to seeing what markets are hot for QVC shoppers, where Doris Kearns Goodwin's books sell the best, and which U.S. cities watch NASCAR the most. The most telling statement in the article was " As I made my journey, it became increasingly hard to believe that Brooks ever left his home."

Ouch.

The coup of the whole article was Issenberg's confrontation of Brooks on the telephone. Brooks seemed a little upset by this, and said that the research was "totally unethical." Unfortunately, if Brooks is in a position where he is actually being accepted as creating a "definition" for cultural aspects of our nation, then I think what he has to say might need to be based on reality, not just statements like "one goes by one's life experiences." Yes, one can write on life's experiences, but when you write something like this - opinion column or not - you're framing something like it's real and true and tangible. But if the "red states" are more well read than the "blue states", and some of NASCAR's top markets are in "blue states", and Spa Lady doesn't exist in the region of the country where you're representing it as such, then it's not a "joke", as he referred to the "Spa Lady" reference, it's incorrect, and IMHO, misleading.

Obviously I've not spoken with Mr. Brooks and have just read this article at phillymag.com today. But I have seen Mr. Brooks' work before - and if someone is writing something based off of their experience, then it would be nice to know if someone says they have a hard time spending x dollars in a market but s/he hasn't tried or investigated all the opportunities or that generalizations and stereotypes are being translated into bigger stereotypes and classifications without actually looking into it (or so it seems), then I'm annoyed.

This morning I read this article by the Ombudsman at the Washington Post. The article is entitled "When Bad Apples Fall, Examine the Tree," and leans a little bit more heavily upon the publications and the industry "push" rather than the individuals who become "bad apples".

Now I don't believe this is to say that the Jayson Blairs, the Jack Kelleys, and the Stephen Glass-types aren't responsible for their own actions. But I think that there is probably something to the "environment" aspect that we've heard about. Namely, that if you're in a place where a system is in place where writers decide it's their time to become "famous", rather than the task at hand - then there is the potential for the situations mentioned above.

"Or is a star system within newsrooms, tacitly endorsed by management, driving more practitioners than we want to believe to seek fame and fortune in the expanding multimedia spotlight by embellishing?"

It's not that any writer/editor shouldn't have the ability to reach whatever level of fame they deserve, but it's kind of like blogging for money. If you really go into it on day one thinking that's what you're going to do, then it's not necessarily a good thing - focus on the task at hand - getting good content out there and show your skills. If it's in your head as a "goal", then keep it there. If it happens, it happens. But do your "job" first and go from there.

On Thursday I had tried to briefly touch on the "environment" subject, namely that if anything that Howell Raines was saying about "not hearing" about Mr. Blair's actions for some time was true, then the world around the staffers at the times wasn't conducive to "fixing" problems. I fail to believe that as a whole - perhaps things didn't reach him, but I can't believe no one heard anything about the writer in question in advance of the public hearing about it.

VH1's "Best Week Ever" would give journalism a "downgrade" this week, and that's unfortunate. I think the Times, USA Today, and other publications out ther e realize this is an issue and aren't sitting on their hands. We might not hear about things going on in the inner sanctum of these places, but in speaking with various people over the last couple weeks, I know this is the case. Perhaps two years from now we'll talk about the "upgrade" in journalism as a whole and won't be wrangling over who made up quotes about what.

Tonight I was invited by Debra Galant to attend a gathering of local writers and editors (spouses and bloggers were also apparently allowed past the bouncers!) in the Montclair, New Jersey area at a place called Diva Lounge. The group hosting the event is called MEWS (Montclair Editors and Writers), and its creator is Pamela Satran, who wrote some baby-name books you've probably heard of, among other things. The group has a newsletter that keeps everyone apprised of what's going on in the area, including book signings, job postings, etc. - so it sounded like a great chance to mingle with the locals, if you will.

Two major things came out of this event for me. 1> The area I live in has a fantastic concentration of "media" folks, and 2> there is so much content and information out there I could only hope to scratch the surface of it all. And talk about variety... I was able to chat with people who ranged from authors to individuals from the New York Times to someone at DC Comics to one person from Institutional Investor. Topics ranged from how people planned on marketing their next book to people asking me all about blogging and how they could get into it.

One of the coolest things (though somewhat of a bummer) was that I didn't even get to talk to 1/10th of the people in the room. There was only so much time to get around and speak to people, but what was great was that everyone had some starting point in common - they were into writing/editing and had some proximity in where they lived. So no need for icebreakers. Being able to have access to people such as these is a great opportunity, and is one of the reasons I've been promoting stuff like LinkedIn so much offline and on. Orkut is fun and all, but that's not what it's for.

So we'll see what kind of results are garnered from tonight's event. All I know is I'm leaning towards going to the BloggerCon event next month...

Whenever people ask me how I came up with the notion to blog about the "media", I always end up stating that "there so much content [read: plenty of targets] to choose from."

It's truly because I believe the impact "media" has on the world is simply astouding. And it's all around us - so what the heck. There's some Howard Kurtz-ishness in a lot of us, I suppose.

So when I read things like Elizabeth Spiers talking about the concept of media gossip that other media people were talking about, I can't help but laugh. You can thank I Want Media's Patrick Phillips and his chat with Bonnie Fuller of American Media Inc. for starting this meme - unintentionally, of course.

Think everything's all happy happy in the rap and hip-hop community? Think again. Most of America is blinded by the cars, jewels, and women that's seen all up in the videos cruising across their televisions to realize that they're only seeing a small segment of the culture and music as a whole.

Thanks to Eric at Stinkzone for posting a couple weeks back (yeah, it's dated but it's well relevant) about Taalam Acey's report on what's real in the world of rap and hip-hop. You might be surprised what you see and hear. Don't be. If you miss any of it, check the lyrics here.

My favorite part of the whole segment was...

"while record execs continue to puff on fifty dollar cigars looking at pop charts trying to figure out how they are going to make the next self-deprecating black star

and, because there is so much apathy in the ghetto, they ain't gotta look far

and, since talent is no longer necessary, no matter where they look, there they are."

And for those of you who didn't catch it, the track in the background is "Hip Hop" by Dead Prez, whose killer chorus is "It's bigger than...Hip Hop..." 'nuff said.

[via The Blogship. Thanks to Cal Ulmann for leading the way.]

There's a behind-the-scenes to everything you see, hear, and read - and sometimes it's just as interesting to see the finished product (a movie, song, or article) as it is to see the gears working behind that finished product as it is to get the result.

About a month or so ago I came across Buzz Bags while searching for something on LinkedIn and had to get the low down on the company. You're probably sitting there right now trying to figure out how this is at all related to the topics usually covered here - hopefully this post will make it crystal clear.

If you go to Buzz Bags' website, the first thing you see is the "Welcome" section. In it, they describe themselves as follows:

"We are a marketing and product placement company specializing in distributing fabulous, hip, cutting-edge and "must-have" products and gift certificates directly into the hands of trendsetters, A-listers and the media. Together, we create the buzz!"

I call them a fantastic aspect of product placement that really doesn't have a negative feeling to it. It's like the BASF thing - they don't make the products, they make them better. Buzz Bags do just that - create "buzz" about your products by getting them in front of people. From trend-setters and culture mavens to the glitterati on the red carpet, Buzz Bags is there.

As a marketer, I'm always looking for a way to get a product or service in front of people without offending them and staying "on this side" of the unspoken line of marketing/advertising. Buzz Bags' strategy is to get across the line in a way where you are actually getting a service performed just by being there and being who you are. You're at a movie premiere - Buzz Bags might be there. Riding on the Hampton Jitney - Buzz Bags are there. Why were you there? You were going about your business or making your way to something entertaining.

Yesterday I spent a few minutes on the phone with Buzz Bags co-founder, Jane Ubell-Meyer (at right with Ken Aretsky of Patroon and Cafe 92 fame) to get a brief glimpse into how the company got started and what their business was like. What I found interesting is that this was all that they do. Create buzz. Typically when you hold an event, your "event management" staff, either internal or external, will put together goodie bags on their own. But that isn't the focus of the event for those people. They're planning the catering, getting the guest speaker, and ensuring you're going to have enough chairs to fit 400 people into the room. The bags are important, but that's not what they are doing the whole time. The sales folks at Buzz Bags take a look at your event's audience, see what might be a valuable item to have in the hands of your guests, and work with their 3,000+ product-providing customers to get something relevant for your group.

If it's 150 people to 1,500 people - Buzz Bags can come up with a way to put your product on display to the audience best suited for you. Of course, having the contacts to do so is key. Ms. Ubell-Meyer spent some time as a television producer at ABC and in public relations, which definitely doesn't hurt.

So while product placement isn't necessarily considered "traditional" media, the Buzz Bags folks are working diligently to knock down the stereotypes that the nontraditional advertising and marketing worlds have been dealt.

Weblogger Sassy Lawyer writes about things she reads in order to put together her blog. While there's a lot of data out there (it's only data in a process-map sort of way), read what you find relevant and interesting. Digesting it all isn't feasible or smart. Ain't that the truth.

I think she would make a good candidate for J-Log's Media Diet.

David Weinberger at Joho makes an interesting point that the Internet is not a medium in the common use of the term.

I don't think I can add anything more poignant than what he had to say, so definitely read his post.

Well, you knew it was only a matter of time before Microsoft got its paws onto blogs somehow... Liz Lawley at the Corante-hosted Many2Many blog informs that this wonderful new service from Microsoft won't just give you all the news that's fit to blog, but will index "just the ones that MSN determines provide the most useful information..."

Umm, yeah. That sounds like a good idea. I don't really think blogs need a filter - just like I don't think news needs a filter. If you're telling me that MS won't index all blogs unless they've been up for more than 30 days or something so they aren't trying to keep track of every blog from the moment they start, I can almost understand that. But for MSN to decide what they think is important and go from there? The joke of it all is that they'll end up using like the Top 100 from Blogrunner or something.

For those of you who read Marketing Wonk, you'll remember the layout was a little quirky sometimes... Well now it's new and streamlined and clean and fancy and easy to read andandandand well I don't have anything else to say about it. Go look!

For those of you who haven't read Marketing Wonk before, then go do so now. You'll thank me later. Or not.

Oh, yeah - it's now officially "MarketingVOX | The Voice of Online Marketing".

Katrina vanden Heuvel writes about the upcoming Air America launch on March 31st, where Al Franken and company will take to the airwaves with a leftward lean. She certainly seems excited about the advent of this network....

I expect to see some interesting advertising in the first few days of next week in promotion for the programming going live. And to answer the question I posed earlier this month, it looks like Randi Rhodes will be talking it up from 3-7pm, matching wits against Sean Hannity for the drive-time slot. And I'm sure that Bill O'Reilly is just delighted that Franken's program is currently titled "The O’ Franken Factor".

I don't know how many of you have ever worked as a media buyer out there, but I have. I bought quite a few dollars of advertising, mostly print - some nontraditional, over a few years for a major international company in New York City. One major rule about buying advertising was placement. (Well, outside of cost, of course)

In fact, the fax order sheet that I used even had specific placement requests (read: rules) on our advertising. Right side only, first 1/4 of the publication, not in the middle of a "well" of ads, and no opposite pages to competitors. I don't know how many times I rattled that off to people. They all knew it was coming, and generally it worked out.

One thing I was continually getting calls about was so-called "discounted" advertising. Now let's be realistic. If you're buying $50,000 full page ads in the New York Times, and someone comes up to you and offers you "bulk" space in the same publication at a lesser price, there has got to be something with it, right? [ed: note, all prices hypothetical]

Some agree, some don't. I don't necessarily think that advertising follows the same rules that public relations does - "any news is good news", so to say. Just because I'm at the back of your book with the left hand page next to the classified-type stuff doesn't mean I'm getting anywhere. Put it next to the crossword puzzle and then maybe we'll talk - you catch my drift. If you goal is just to make big buys and get your name out there, then discounted advertising works. Absolutely - advertising is advertising. But, at least IMHO, prominence is worth the money you pay for it.

You're probably asking why I'm all over this topic - well, after reading this post by Steve Hall over at Adrants, I figured I'd comment. The post centers around MediaBuys, which is an online "discount club" for advertisers. It doesn't have the same look and feel of traditional "well" buying ad companies. Not for nothing, but bulk buyers make money - they're in business to do so and if someone offers you the Daily News at rate "x", when rate "x" is 2/3 the open rate, you're probably going to do it most of the time. What's interesting is that MediaBuys seems to be not quite an auction site for ad space, but more of a trading space, where Media can be somewhat commoditized based on the purchasing power of multiple buyers for a given publication or publication company.

This could be a really big deal, especially if it shrugs off the hesitancy some media buyers might have about the opportunity.

Debra Galant posts about Audible making the 9/11 hearings available for free download at their site. She is a customer of theirs and received an email news-item about this, and let me know via email.

You can go to http://www.audible.com/911hearings and download the items, although I think you have to "open" an account with them to do so. But for the amount of content, I'd say it's worth it.

[update] Okay, I just set up an account, took about 90 seconds. Definitely worth it.

On Wednesday, I had posted about the the announcement that Reuters would use FAST filtering technology to find sites that are stealing their work, and had expressed concern about its effects on bloggers. At the time, I had contacted Reuters through their website, and am happy to report that I received a response which everyone should be happy with.

I'm posting this without asking if I could post it, but did fully disclose what I use Reuters' services for. So that shouldn't be an issue.

Response (Webmaster (SP)) 26 03 2004 06:32 PM
Thanks for contacting Reuters. The purpose of the solution built with FAST technology is specifically to monitor Copyright violation. The tool has been designed to identify where a party goes beyond fair use of our stories - where they copy a full story and post it without license or they derive a story from our content without sourcing it.

Infringements of our copyright does not include where bloggers quote from and link back to our original story, or where sites display our headlines and link back to reuters.com. We are very comfortable with these practices.

Regards

Reuters Corporate Webmaster
www.reuters.com

Customer (Tom Biro) 25 03 2004 03:06 AM
Good day - today I read about Reuters plan to go after Internet sites which post Reuters data/writings without referring or without explicit permission (found here: http://p2pnet.net/story/1062 ). I understand that there is a subscription service that Reuters offers, but what about webloggers who post links to articles that have come from Reuters, either linking directly to you or to the newspaper/magazine sites they found it on?

I know for my site I'm generally giving credit where it's due (newspaper authors, wire services, etc.) but know that isn't the case for everyone. Do you see this being an issue?

Thanks,

Tom
tom@themediadrop.com

I think that sounds good to everyone, right? Credit goes where credit is due, and everyone's happy. Glad we cleared that up!

The Herald-Tribune reports (via AP) that satellite big shot DirecTV is selling its stake of just under 5% of the outstanding XM Radio shares. While it means more shares out there for the rest of us, it doesn't spell good news for XM, at least in the short run.

Hopefully this isn't DirecTV showing us their "true colors" on what they think XM will do in the future.

Phillip Coons informs that uber-attention lover Ashleigh Banfield of NBC fame is out after being "unable to agree on a new assignment" with the network, as the situation was described by an unnamed spokesperson for the network.

It's been awhile since MSNBC cameras were filled with Banfield's image. After 9/11, it was like MSNAshleigh for a while, and no one really complained. Until she decided it was time to be the next big thing on television. It's about news, not you - remember?

HollywoodReporter.com's Andrew Wallenstein reports on a study put together by Turner Broadcasting that shows basic cable topping broadcast at around a 50.1 to 47.3 share for the "season" beginning last September and ending this May.

Ouch. Quote of the day absolutely goes to Jack Wakshalg from Turner, who said, "Whatever they are doing with the reality formula, it is certainly not helping."

HA! Someone finally noticed?

The Cincinnati Enquirer's John Eckberg writes today about the recent shift to "wholesome"-ness in the radio broadcasting industry and how it has actually worked out for the best in some instances.

But what I got out of the article was that while the "coveted bracket of men 18 to 34 years old" can be reached by stations carrying adult-humour filled or more risque programming, allowing for "fast-food, soft-drink, and electronics companies, as well as concert and movie promoters" to become mainstays of advertising, changing ones tune can be good as well. The example given is about WRRM 98, which is family friendly and attracts a female audience in the 25-54 age range. This age group has advertisers like "grocery stores, automotive companies and retailers," Eckberg says.

So if by changing formats you aren't generally hurting your station (at least in the long term) when it comes to advertising dollars - you can always get *someone* to promote their company on your station. That doesn't spell good news for the so called "shock jocks" on stations across the nation. If the $27,500 fines start piling up, expect to see some changes on your dial - especially if the stations hit aren't owned by major players in the industry.

In the last couple week, flip flopping has been a popular topic. From Presidential candidate John Kerry being ridiculed by George W.'s campaign to Richard Clarke sometimes seeming to talk from both sides of his mouth down to former NY Times editor Howell Raines now deciding that there are big problems at the paper after supporting it time and time again.

Now I understand that in Raines' former role at the Times he had to keep on the company face, so to say, but let's be realistic - you're in journalism, you're at the highest profile newspaper in this country and possibly a good portion of the world, and you don't expect people to know what's really going on?

The Agonist leads us to Paul Colford's "Raines tears into The Times" in the New York Daily News, which covers the much ballyhooed monster article in the May issue of Atlantic Monthly. In it, Raines takes some potshots - probably all legitimately - at editors and the politics at the Times as a whole. But I take issue with some of the things he has to say - which seem to be countering things he said at earlier times.

He mentions the "calcified front page" that he inherited from predecessor Joseph Lelyveld and says senior editors now in place, who include successor Bill Keller, "seem to be picking their way across a minefield, having seen the destructive power of a change-resistant newsroom."

While I would assume it would be tough to make changes at the paper, this article at TimesWatch seems to speak otherwise. In one example of a need for change managment in the newsroom, they report 2002's comments by Jonathan Landman, who wrote in an email, "We have to stop Jayson from writing for the Times. Right now."

Does that sound complacent?

Raines accepts responsibility "for the failure to catch" Jayson Blair - a reporter who plagiarized and fabricated stories - but claims he didn't know about Blair's error-prone ways until the writer left the paper.

He says no one told him.

If that's the case, then he should bear the responsibility, because after the comments about Blair's actions back in 2002 come out into the public eye, either someone did say something and nothing happened, or the Times culture frowns upon such suggestions by the staffers, therefore creating an unfortunate environment to have to work in.

It's just so funny how everyone likes blasting their ex-employers once they've found something new and exciting to do. If only we all had 23 pages of much-talked about magazine to fill.

Arbitron is looking to roll out testing of a new way to measure trends on listenership/viewership, specifically its Portable People Meter, or PPM. The PPM is a pager-like device you would put in your pocket if you were chosen to participate in their measurement. The PPM would keep track of the broadcast tags that are floating around in the air, and specifically would know what stations you were flipping to on your car radio or what was on in the restaurant you were lunching in.

This could be in a major city this year, and Houston might be the place, according to the Houston Business Journal. The value proposition is measuring all the television and radio signals that a person comes across in a day - in one place - without the user having to keep track manually, like in a journal.

Yesterday, I was contacted by the creator of Admyster.com and was asked to check out their site - they knew I had an interest in marketing / advertising, so I thought that was cool and figured I would check it out...

After reviewing the site (I sent some basic comments over to the owner, namely about loading time), I thought it might be a cool thing to post about it here - so here goes... The concept behind the site is to have users/readers create a commercial of their own for a product, upload it onto the site, and have viewers "rate" it as part of a monthly contest. The contest will offer cash prizes to the winner, and some site proceeds from advertisers and remaining entry fees will go to the Angel Network that Oprah Winfrey runs. And on top of that, you have a site where people can view your stuff in one place, rather than you have to pony up for the bandwidth.

Kind of look at it this way - there's always going to be advertising/marketing of some sort, no matter how many black spots are found around town. Why not have the advertisements fit what you're looking for if you're going to have some ads in front of you. The goal here seems to be centered around humor, and I think you can handle that. Funny commercials tend to get remembered a lot longer than deadpan ones. So get on it. It's $15 to enter (for each entry) and the first deadline is April 30th. Feel free to send me an email or post a comment here if you come up with something.

My challenge to you is to do an advertisement for "string" - yes, you know - string. I once saw comedian Steven Wright do a sketch about advertising, and how you don't see any for certain products - "string" being one of them.

Good luck!

According to this story, Reuters is using web filtering technology to "go after sites that post whole articles, or portions or paragraphs, without specific permission."

Wow. That's pretty wide-ranging, right? I totally concur with Rafat Ali from PaidContent, who posted this today and said, "It'll be interesting to see if [Reuters] goes after blogs..."

I've sent a question in to Reuters directly addressing the issue - let's see if we hear anything good back on this topic. I know that most bloggers try and make reference to what they're writing about, but know that everyone isn't as clear all the time as they could be - just by the nature of blogging. I'll post anything I hear.

I've often been reminded by friends not to underestimate the power of professional wrestling. No, not literally - but media-centrically. So I wasn't surprised to read the announcement here that World Wrestling Entertainment® was bringing something else to the table. Yep, you guessed it, it's all high-flying action, all the time at WWE 24/7.

"WWE is ready to move even more aggressively into the digital age by providing new services that will fit with the active lifestyles of our fans and meet their demand for new and innovative content," said Vince McMahon.

"Our fans want more WWE and classic sports entertainment programming, and we have demonstrated our track record of providing content of the highest quality and value. I'm confident we can move into this new distribution platform for television as successfully as we have for syndication, cable, broadcast and Pay-Per-View."

I'd say Mr. McMahon is probably dead on. Irrelevant of making it easier for other production outlets to get access to content, the linchpin to this announcement is the "subscription video-on-demand service that will feature highly-rated Pay-Per-View". Your digital cable provider wouldn't have a problem adding another channel to your lineup where you could now pull every single Wrestlemania(tm) event, or whatever floats your boat.

Every time this company seems to get beat down, it gets right back up and comes up with something new. Does this business venture have a positive future for McMahon and family too? (BW)

Last night I read a press release that New Jersey-based Audible was running a promotion where you get an instant $100 rebate on the purchase of an iPod at retailers like Amazon.com if you sign up for one year of Audible's services. The monthly charges range from $14.95 for the "BasicListener" product to $19.95 for the "PremiumListener" product.

Yes, I understand that by doing the math it'll cost you more than just the iPod's price, but you don't have to shell out that $100 worth of the Audible product cost right now, and you are getting something for that additional spend. I'd have to say that might be incentive enough for a lot of people to purchase an iPod, perhaps even those techno-folks who like their content to be a little longer than 3 minutes and 14 seconds and haven't purchased an iPod for that reason. (BW)

Errr... No holds barred in this article where the Federal Trade Commission (FTC for you acronym types) has slammed the QVC channel not for "misleading" customers, but for "lying". Yes, lying! In advertising! I never thought I would hear those words together again - I mean, it's not like everyone doesn't follow the Truth in Advertising laws, right? Oh, they don't?

I think it's great that this has happened. Seriously - there are a lot of people in this country who have a weight problem, in a lot of cases due to their own eating habits. Having a product where the claim is that the "pills prevent absorption of dietary fat" is kind of out there, isn't it? If something really did stop all fat from reaching your body, it wouldn't be on QVC, it would have its own channel and be in dispensers outside of all fast-food outlets.

This afternoon, the Chicago Tribune's John O'Dell writes about Howard Stern's recent discussions about moving to satellite radio to avoid the FCC's fine-tuned ears and do his show in peace. Many have speculated that this would be a boon to XM and Sirius, the two companies currently providing satellite radio service. Stern's listenership far outweighs the total listeners on both of the providers, and could translate to new subscribers - but first we'd see if people are willing to pay for Stern.

Hugh Panero, XM Satellite's chief executive, pooh-poohed the possibility, saying he doubted whether XM or Sirius could afford the reported $20 million Stern pulls down a year through his contract with Viacom Inc.'s Infinity Broadcasting."

Well howabout this idea - Stern goes solo, and both Sirius and XM pick up his feed, giving both systems his show? I think Stern has the clout, knowhow, and contacts to have his show self-produced and "sell" the rights to the stations. If "normal" radio stations wanted to buy in, they could, but would suffer the consequences of whatever Stern had to say. I think the latter is least likely, but why couldn't both satellite radio folks team up on something like this? It's in Stern's best interests to be involved in both if he's truly gung-ho on this idea, so why not give it a whirl?

[update: 10/6/04] It's a done deal.

I thought I had breezed past this article last night, but wasn't positive until I read about it again on makeyougohmm.com this afternoon. TiVo is thinking of having commercials/advertising while I'm skipping the advertising? Ugh. I'm in agreement with TDavid, if it's available, I'd pay more to have TiVo for no commercials/advertising.

The reason ads are on television isn't because the marketers came and said "hey, you have an audience, let us on your networks!" - it's because the networks said "Hmmm, we have this 'free' programming we're showing - how do we make money on this again?" - even if the marketers came to the networks first, it's still because the nets needed cash. Does TiVo need this cash to stay afloat? If the answer is yes, then they need to appeal to their customers and change their pricing. If the answer is no, then they're bowing to the pressure being put on them by advertisers and the networks that flow through your set-top box.

I'm not happy to hear this as I ordered TiVo last night through my DirecTV and it's coming next week. Not a good way to start off a relationship, methinks.