The NY Times with Katie Couric?

A little to the left….. a little to the right…. OK… wait….

Technologies have the ability to turn the world upside down without our even noticing.

Not too many years ago, TV signals came into your house through the air, and telephone signals came into your house through a wire.

Today, its pretty much the opposite. Almost all television signals now come into your house through a wire and most telephone calls arrive through the air.

A complete reversal.

The same ‘world turned upside-down’ phenomenon is now starting to take hold in the world of news.

Conventional TV news is in its death throes.  Katie Couric announces that she is leaving CBS Evening News after the November elections. Good move, Katie. Perhaps evocative of rats leaving a sinking ship ,but good move never the less,

TV news is on its way out.  The numbers (even allowing for Katie’s appalling ones) are universally downward, a trend that is likely to continue.  The total cumulative ratings for the three network evening news programs is now less than the total used to be for Cronkite, more than 20 years ago.  And the population of the county has increased by nearly 100 million since then.

What is happening?

Quite simply, no one is watching.

And why is no one watching?

Because the content sucks.

Not that news is not important. It is. But the way in which it is delivered has outlived its usefulness.

And not a surprise. The basic format of TV news (the guy at the desk and the ‘now this’ approach has not changed in 50 years)  If you have a minute, go over to the Museum of Broadcasting on East 53rd Street in Manhattan and take a look at the Camel Caravan of News.  Aside from the black and white, not a whole lot has changed.

If computer design progressed at the same pace as TV News design, I would be writing this on a Compaq the size of a sewing machine and my iPod hard drive would spin at 45rpm.

So TV News is dead.  But what will replace it?

This is where there is a really interesting window of opportunity for newspapers, if they have the courage to take it.

If.

Newspapers have always been the bedrock upon which TV news was built.  Every TV news production meeting started and ended by combing the papers for stories. And why not?  Newspapers traditionally put many more reporters on the street than TV news crews.

As papers move to the web (for their own survival), and the web moves to video, newspapers will also migrate to video.  And here’s the window of opportunity.

Television is going to go non-linear, and new video platforms, such as phones, are going to exercise an enormous appetite for instant video content.  Non linear video content.

Consumers don’t care who provides the content so long as it is a) accurate and b) high quality and c)immediate.

Here is where newspapers can step in and take the video world away from TV news. They have the stories already, they have the reporting staff, they have the brand.  All they lack is the means of production. And in a world of HDV cameras that cost $800 and FCP software that costs that or less, the means or production is at their fingertips.

Ironically, Dirck Halstead, of Platypus fame, sent me an email yesterday detailing how CBS News is now going to demand that all content be shot in HD and will not accept HDV as it is too complex for them to transcode it.

Just another nail in the coffin of CBS TV news.

Do you think viewers (particularly those watching on cell phones) really care if the piece has been shot in HD or HDV?  Do you think they can tell?

CBS’s decision simply means that they have cut themselves off from about a million people around the world who could provide them with content and at the same time upped their own cost of production.

(Attention.  From now on, all passengers on the Titanic will be required to wear cement underwear).

If newspapers are smart (and we think some of them are pretty smart); and if they can remember their core business is the gathering and distribution of news – not the ink part; they stand a good chance of filling the vacuum that the departing network news operations are about to leave behind.

Dalton Sports Radio

Don’t touch that dial…..dial? What’s a dial?

When I was a kid, I used to lay in bed at night, in the dark, and listen to WOR radio, 720 AM.

Every night, at 10pm, Jean Shepherd ran a show.

It was a talk show, but not like the kind of talk show you think about now. Not ‘Tyra!”

It was a show where he just talked into the microphone. He told stories. And boy, could that guy tell stories. He had an unlimited supply. His stories were all about growing up in Indiana during the Depression. They were about his family, his friends, his life. He wrote a book called “In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash”.

And one of his stories went on to become a made for TV movie. Is became pretty popular. It was the story where Ralphie goes to Santa and asks for a BB gun for Christmas and almost shoots his eye out, the family looses the Turkey and has Christmas dinner at a Chinese restaurant. You know the one. It airs every year.

It was an OK story, but not one of Shepherd’s best. Curiously, it survives.

In those days, listening in the dark, radio was magical.

The photo above is my nephew Brett. He’s a sophomore at Dalton, a private school in NY, but he’s on the baseball team. He’s also got his own online radio show: Dalton Sportstalk.

OK. He’s not Jean Shepherd, but then again, he’s 16. And sports, (not the Depression years), is his passion. But the amazing thing here is how at his age, he can get access not just to the media to create his own content, but also a global audience – for free. The barriers to access are not just coming down, they have been completely obliterated.

Now, anyone is free to take a crack at radio, or video, or filmmaking (or blogging for that matter) – all at no cost. Yesterday, the NY Times announced that for the first time in their history they are going to lay off 100 journalists ( or offer them early buy-outs). The Times is from an era when access to an audience was both difficult to achieve and expensive to carry out. That no longer is the case.

What is the new architecture of media in the 21st Century?

You can find it in NY, but probably not at the NY Times’ expensive and massive new building on 8th Avenue. I think its a bit further up….. maybe on a bench on a ballfield in Central Park?