What is old news? It’s history. With more than a century of audio visual news in the library, why not make yesterdays available to educators? You might even make a little money in the venture. That’s exactly the concept for NBC Learn. While I question the journalistic integrity of NBC’s news division and the strong possibly of its bias being applied editing archives, the concept itself is brilliant.

NBC Learn is the education arm of NBC News. We are making the global resources of NBC News and the historic film and video archive available to teachers, students, schools and universities.

• NBC News Archives on Demand (K-12 and Higher Ed) unleashes the power of the NBC News archives and makes thousands of video clips available to teachers, students, schools, colleges and universities.
• What’s Your iCue? is the video trivia challenge that blends learning and gaming.
• Original video content from NBC Learn is engaging, innovative, and makes learning fun! (NBC Learn)

For the benefit of those that might not have been watching. Amazon and Macmillan got into a pricing dispute over eBook sales. Part of the trigger being that Macmillan cut an agency deal with Apple for the iPad platform that has a variable rate that is higher than Amazon’s pricing. It got so heated that at one point Amazon disabled purchasing of the entire suite of that publishers books.

Why do we care?

Well primarily because it might change the landscape for eBooks. But my gut says this will not play out like either party thinks.

Whose right?

Well neither. Remember this is at its core a contract dispute. So you have two parties haggling over price and terms. But one author did have an interest viewpoint –

If Amazon were a smaller retailer, this probably wouldn’t be a big deal. But Amazon pretty much, right now, has a monopoly on online bookselling. They’re huge. As a result, this becomes nearly a form of de facto price fixing.

source.

Which if not in word, at least in deed is probably the case at this point and time.

Is one price for a book wrong?

Well no. But if you think of a free market, single cost pricing may be efficient for the offerer but it forces a self selection from the buyer to only consider catalog items that have an intrinsic value more than the offer price. So ‘Gone with the Wind’ would sell well, but ‘Attack of the NanoAtomic Vampire’ from an unknown author would not.

So what’s the moral here?

Its all theatre. Here is why. There is no determined pricing for ePub books. Its all new. The book publishers want to set an expectation in the ~ $20 range, right below a mid-successful hard cover release. They want to protect their legacy infrastructure when for all purposes it is toast. To me that is as bad as Amazon trying to fix a one price strategy.

The reality is the following — ePub pricing will be determined on authorship, topic and audience. It will no longer have a printing component determining the floor price of the publication. That is what both parties are trying to avoid and they don’t want you to think that it might be possible to buy ‘Linear Algebra II’ from Knopf, Knuth and Rupert for $4.99. But that is entirely possible even with today’s technology.

ePub platforms are crude compared to what they will be like in say 5 years. Authors will be able to set their pricing, eliminate the Macmillan’s of the world, and sell pulp copies if need be through a supplier like Lulu.

That ladies and gentlemen is what the dust up is about. They don’t want you to know that very shortly there could be a door number 3 to choose from for all your reading.

It had to happen sooner or later. The UK based hypermart giant that is something of an analog to Walmart is beginning full length feature production.  I it is natural extension of the private label business to the extreme.  With Hollywood squeezing margins to less than a buck on $15 movies this comes as no surprise. There’s also the possibility that Tesco isn’t satisfied with Hollywood’s product mix.

UK retail giant Tesco is getting into the business of producing movies itself based on the books of some very famous authors. The movies will be direct-to-DVD and direct-to-the-internet, but the idea is for Tesco to use these movies to generate more traffic to their stores (both online and off). In fact, if you look at the retail business, music and movies have long been used as a loss leader of sorts, to drive traffic to get them to buy other, much higher margin, goods. This is really an extension of that, but all the way to the point of helping to fund the production of the movie itself. Also, while it will have a window of exclusivity at the beginning, it sounds like Tesco is quite open to other stores selling the movie as well. (Techdirt)

This could be great news for independent producers. The cost of making a full length HD feature is racing to Zero outside of salaries. Take way the incredible prices  that a list actors and directors are demanding and you have a business that has impressive profit potential selling cheap and in volume.  The time could be coming when indy producers will more easily find funding and distribution in Bentonville instead of Hollywood.

We here at ThirdPipe have long held the conviction that paywalls for content on small value product really are wrong unless you are providing the service as part of a larger offering. A good example would be the Apple Store iTunes as a conjunction with the Nano MP3 player. Or the paywall is a convenience factor to an already high value information source. Say Dunn and Bradstreet where all you have to do is register if you already subscribe to the service.

But to view a paywall as a new income stream? Bonkers man. Ain’t gonna fly. NYT found that out two years ago. Now NewsDay has found out the same thing –

So, three months later, how many people have signed up to pay $5 a week, or $260 a year, to get unfettered access to newsday.com?

The answer: 35 people. As in fewer than three dozen. As in a decent-sized elementary-school class.

That astoundingly low figure was revealed in a newsroom-wide meeting last week by publisher Terry Jimenez when a reporter asked how many people had signed up for the site. Mr. Jimenez didn’t know the number off the top of his head, so he asked a deputy sitting near him. He replied 35.

Now to be fair one has to consider the context of that number. NewsDay also owns the local cable franchise as well. Plus anybody who subscribes for the pulp get the online subscription free as well. So a large swath of the potentials already have access for free. But what it does show is that a paywall is a barrier unless one is linking it to something larger. There is too much free content out there to justify paying for it. Fact one concept that none of the papers yet fathomed is that they are third person before the reader gets to it. Customers are cutting out the middleman and reading the press releases directly now, removing the filter and hence the need for the paper itself!

We have said this before. If a paper wants to make a go of digital news content they need to follow an old Telco prescription. Offer the handset for ‘free’ and pay for it and your talk time as a bundle. In the papers case, you offer the Kindle II for free bundled with a 2 year subscription to the paper at $9.95 a month. Then you make sure the digital daily is on the machine everyday. Don’t require the reader to futz with a download, it has to be a push.

Its a multimillion dollar idea offered free.

Linky.

FastCompany has the latest developments on BB’s effort to make itself relevant. Personally I think they miss the mark. –

Perhaps conceived as a one-up response to the unexpectedly popular RedBox movie kiosks, the SD-card rental stations are meant to address some of the age-old problems with DVD rentals–namely that they’re easily damaged, and must be returned. With an SD rental, the user keeps the SD card, though the content contains DRM which sets a date of expiration. (Above, the taxonomy of SD cards; below, a Blockbuster SD kiosk.)

Here be the problem. Do I need to go to a BB store to get the SD of the movie? If I do then that is not an improvement over DVD’s in the convenience factor. I still have to get in my car. The other is, deploy in retail sites? That’s fine but at the rate the RedBox is deploying, BB may not have any opportunities left by the time they get the program rolling. All in all a very slow response to a serious threat to their long term prospects.

My take? BB is toast. Pass the butter and jam.

Linky.

One Vignette says it all —

“You wouldn’t believe how badly they treated her,” an insider friend told me of Sarah Palin not too long ago. I assumed this person meant the Republican establishment. One can only imagine what they’ve been up to.

So Thursday night the former Alaska governor posted the following on her Facebook page ^[1]:

The votes of every member of Congress affect every American, so it’s important for all of us to pay attention to this important Congressional campaign in upstate New York. I am very pleased to announce my support for Doug Hoffman in his fight to be the next Representative from New York’s 23rd Congressional district. It’s my honor to endorse Doug and to do what I can to help him win, including having my political action committee, SarahPAC, donate to his campaign the maximum contribution allowed by law.

Our nation is at a crossroads, and this is once again a “time for choosing.”

Palin has been sending a couple messages recently. First, she has, since stepping down as governor, started to communicate with the people not through the press but around the press. In other words, she’s speaking directly to the people through social media. She has had a couple well-timed and well-placed op-eds that have helped define policy arguments. However, most of the time she’s talked to the people via social media. (It should be noted that she’s been silent on Twiiter for some time — something I hope she’ll change soon.) This has had the benefit of letting the press know that she does not need them. Rather than go the Obama route and deny what is perceived as the one “enemy” to her aims, Sarah denies nearly everyone. And why not? The press trashed her with risible lies. Why give a dying breed ratings when she can reach the people herself?

Set aside whether you love of hate Palin. She does not seem to affect people any other way. The key is the delivery vehicle. Total news cycle bypass. It has also permitted the former governor to tap into a huge funding base. Long term –

• If you have the presence, a politican does not have to toe the news cycle. Fact they won’t even have to have their positions filtered. They just blast it out in a Twitter link to the relevant page on a data source on the Internet.
• It forces the news organizations to play catch up. Not once in a while but every time something is sent out. The politician’s base is receiving those Twitter and RSS feeds in real time the same time that a E.J. Dione or Krauthammer are. The reader can now make their own minds up on the position. The Press gatekeeper function is gone.

Whither then do things go? Well we are already seeing it. The news weeklies are almost gone. The cycle is too long to be relevant. We are also seeing the effect in the major dailies as well. Any winners? I can think of one class — think tanks. Organizations like Cato and Brookings. The voter might have received the latest missive from the politician. But…. the internet has fostered the idea of fact checking in much of the public. However most do not have the time to do the data mining to validate the concepts. Hence the think tanks have an opportunity if the democratize^ their content relevant to current events.

Its the classic story of supply chain collapse. Most of America is already used to the idea of not reading a pulp paper. So do us all a favor there MSM — die.

Linky.

^ As is typical, much of the content provided by think tanks are couched in the language of the Washington Beltway. To make such content palpable to rank and file Americans a serious scrubbing effort needs to occur.

There’s a big fuss raging over Google’s book deal making untold numbers of out of print titles available. The problem is in the exclusivity Google obtained from the government and big media in exchange for a large pile of cash.  Opposition to Google’s ploy can is well represented on Siva Vaidhyanathan’s blog. I agree that it’s a bad idea for searchzilla to have a dominant and uncontested position as publisher in the Third Pipe world. I see larger problem in that the most vocal of anti Google crowd want to give control of online publishing to Government. Given political agendas that are part and parcel of government, this is a very bad idea. The deal Google was able to strike is a perfect example of this.

If left to evolve without interference, the new world of publishing will take care of itself. The Internet Archive is joining the fray with its new Bookserver. Not only will it continue to offer out of copyright works, but will also operate as a platform for individuals, libraries and publishers to distribute electronically. This could be a game changer. No governmental interference needed thank you.

Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle told CNET News that BookServer is about creating an open system that allows search engines to index books that are available from a wide group of sources. Effectively, commercial publishers, lending libraries and even individual authors would have a way to index their work and offer easy digital distribution under BookServer, Kahle said.

Kahle said that he’s been thinking about such a project since before the advent of the World Wide Web, but that the technology has never been ready. But that’s changed over the last 20 years, he said. “We’ve now gotten universal access to free (content),” Kahle added. “Now it’s time to get universal access to all knowledge, and not all of this will be free.”

He explained that BookServer is built on the notion of a Web server, and that only a good indexing system is standing in the way of making all books digitally and easily available to consumers, whether they’re using a laptop computer, an iPhone, or a Kindle.

Today, he said, publishers, libraries, and others usually turn to outsiders to build them an online distribution system, and that each of those systems stands alone and unindexable. With BookServer, the Internet Archive is hoping that for the first time, consumers everywhere will be able to buy or borrow any text they want while leaving control over pricing and terms of such distribution in the hands of the content owners. (Cnet)

Texas businesses save big on electric power (advertisement)

Imagine pitching a Sony music suit on the idea of promoting and distributing music for gamers. I think you’d do better at the gaming division, although I’m certain that it would be a darn tough meeting to get. As the big music labels and broadcasters continue to search for relevance while promoting lots of music no one cares about, independent artists are finding audiences and thriving. One of them who is a devoted gamer who expresses her passion for gaming in song is Rebecca Mayes. Rebecca’s done what big music will never will learn to do. She’s found an audience she relates to, and she engages with them. She does it at little or no cost via the internet. Her loyal fan base is growing. Will Rebecca get rich? Probably not. Few musicians do. Even the ones handled by the big labels. She does have a chance of  earning a living from her music, thanks to her own talent and the internet. No music label needed.

Imagine you are a studio exec, who just flew into Bentonville, AR on the corporate Gulfstream. The product manager for Wally World tells you in private that your shelf presence in WM will be cut by half. Do you –

A) Barf up the $250 of Thailand Prawns on the PM’s desk.
B) Quickly recalculate your retirement valuation.
C) Have a stroke right there knowing your life insurance is paid up and the kids will be ok.

A recent shift in merchandising strategy by the world’s largest retailer spells more trouble for DVD sales and the entertainment industry that depends on them for profits.

As part of a larger effort to clean up its aisles and appeal to higher-end shoppers, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is doing away with display cases to promote the latest hot movie titles.

The move comes as major film studios are reeling from declines in revenue from DVD sales as cash-strapped consumers turn to low-cost rental services and digital downloads for home movies.

“We think the new strategy implies Wal-Mart no longer sees DVDs and Blu-ray discs as traffic drivers,” J.P. Morgan analyst Imran Khan said.

Studio chiefs dispute that conclusion, noting the importance of DVDs as a sales category for Wal-Mart, but none would speak publicly for this story.

Wal-Mart, which accounts for nearly a third of DVD retail sales in the U.S., didn’t respond to inquiries for comment.

Is it really that bad for the studios? Yes. Consider that WM represents a third of DVD sales. WM is equivalent in the DVD game as Tower Records was in the world of LPs/CDs. Losing that shelf space will represent a sizable loss of revenue.

Surprisingly, DVDs and BluRay is a convenient format. You can do a million unit press run, get the best price in town for the press, ride the long tail over 5 years to burn through the stock and only eat up a small pallet in the warehouse. Presuming you keep the disks wholesale wrapped and only box set them as demand needs it.

Disks also represent a decent profit margin for the studios. Much better than returns via NetFlix or Pay-per-View. A magnitude better profit than what the returns are from RedBox. So the Studios have a serious problem on their hands. Keep in mind that BlockBuster is scaling back by about 1/4th their store presence. Used to be Box Office could turn a profit for the studios. Production costs soon made that an impossibility. With the advent of VCR, then DVD/BluRay sales, Box Office paid for production and the studio lives or dies profit wise on the disk sales. Now it looks like that is becoming a problem as well.

What will they do?

WSJ article here.

The following video is longish at ~30min but worth it. –

Lessons from the Rocky Mountain News - Presentation at the UC Berkeley Media Technology Summit at Googleplex in Silicon Valley from John Temple on Vimeo.

At the end he lists the 10 takeways any business should know, let alone a newspaper organization. But of it all, he missed a few items.

• Economic Disparity. Does not even address it. But the fact is distribution in the ether is magnitudes cheaper than distribution in the physical. A strategic disrupter that blows away the older paper model.
• Strategy. Important? Sure but don’t let it blind you. Many a company ended up a success providing a service that was never in the original business plan or was consider an ancillary product or service. Yet that ‘it’ became the source of all profits.
• Know Your Competition. The speaker covered that? He did? Only in passing. Your competition is not just the guy with the other masthead in your local market. Craigslist is out to steal your classified revenue. That’s a competitor too. AP, something you are a member of, is also your competitor now. Not all your competitors have rotary presses rolling in the back room.
• Markets. Papers no longer serve a particular market. They can specialize in a particular region of local coverage, thats true. But their scope and those of their competitors is national. Given the right developments, a paper in the East could just as well cover the Berkley City Council meeting as the local Berkley paper. Such is the reach of technology and Open Source Journalism.

Even with my observations, it is a informative talk on the path to oblivion that the press is following. May some of them wake up soon.