Friday, April 05, 2002

Mary Lu Onair NAB Streaming The International Webcaster's Association and TV Worldwide.com are hosting the streaming video live from NAB. The site to launch your browser is at http://www.tvworldwide.com/event_020408_nab.cfm  Real Video and Microsoft Media Player Formats will be supported. So pick your poison folks. Also everything including some papers and speakers materials will be available to launch from that site. Good Luck. Back to packing... 8:03:43 PM

Countdown to OnAir: Less than 24 hours-- In less than 24 hours NAB2002 actually begins with the pre-conference seminars and schools. This means in less than 24 hours we begin the drive to Las Vegas.  Press Conferences, what we call the Meet-and-Greets starts Sunday morning and goes through well past 8PM. In a period of less than 14 hours I meet with Sony, Panasonic, JVC, Avid and a raft of over 12 companies and professional groups who are all vying for my time.  Many are old friends in the industry whom with meet with at least 1 or 2 times a year to catch up with on the latest industry news. Everyone has a story to tell, products and services to announce, and cooperative agreements to tout. In essence: It's a zoo. However this year the buzz is growing around CARP, DMCA and CBDTPA. It should prove to be very interesting to experience and cover. It's time to gather all the press releases, schedules and business cards. Hang on for the news as it happens-- we will be blogging live from NAB2002 in less than 24 hours. Oh yeah-- one more thing: Paul McCartney is appearing live at the MGM Grand Friday and Saturday night. Here's a great article Doug Elfman's done: A Day in the Life: (Las Vegas Review Journal): Paul McCartney visited George Harrison on his deathbed last November. It had been nearly 38 years since the Beatles began defining pop music with their first hit, "I Want to Hold Your Hand." In a way, their lives had come full circle, as McCartney remembers their final, tender moment: Wonder if I can get a couple tickets? hmmm? 1:25:59 PM

Welcome to Hell: The Devil's in the Details [Editors Note Full Disclosure: My family has been involved in broadcasting holding FCC licensed television and radio stations for over 50 years. This past week I reviewed the CBDTPA proposed Bill and what it meant with some of our accounting and management folks. Have you ever seen an accountant turn white? I did. Welcome to an insiders perspective.]     Mary Lu's  A reality check: The radio station you are listening is probably playing music and commercials off a computer. In the era of mega-corporations buying up nearly every radio station with a pulse and a reasonable Arbitron, cost cutting has become the rule of the day. Cost cutting in the radio business comes in many flavors and for those of us who like our local DJ's flipping records or CD's on the air, most of what we hear on the air tastes like cardboard. One major way the pencil pushers cut costs are to automate a station completely.  Meaning: everything from the commercial spots, through the voice-overs setting up the intros and onair yack is completely canned and sitting on a computer or computer controlled system. The announcer may not even be in the city the station resides. One way you can tell if your station is canned is to notice that the announcer tells you the time by saying something like, "It's seven-minutes after the hour..." then they cue the commercial or go right into the play of a song. They never say the exact hour. News is national syndicated feeds with no local news. And weather & traffic? Forget it. Cost savings: priceless. The other way the pencil pushers chop at the bottom line is to partially automate a station. Meaning: the announcer is live, but all the commercials, music, promos, news, weather, traffic and PSAs are off a computer system. This chops about 2-3 people off the payroll of producing a show.  Cost savings: acceptable. Commercials, promos, and PSAs are produced by a central production and editing group for the entire group of stations on nonlinear (computerized) editing systems from recorded CD's, tape, internet streaming sources, and mini-disk. Cost savings: acceptable if done for a large group of stations. Okay-- So what does this mean? Think for of the a moment.  If Senator Holling's "Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act" (CBDTPA) were to pass: How would stations get material legally into their online automated systems? Remember computers will be neutered, unable to copy material without a digital content management key. If record companies start to copy-protect their CDs, how will stations get music edited and into their automated systems?  The media is going to be copy protected and again the computers are neutered. Transfer online? Not likely because of the vast amount of storage (think Terabytes $$,) required to hold a station or group of stations music library. If this goes through, it's not a pretty picture for broadcasters and their pencil-pushers.   Something to think about. And now our PSA of the day... 2:19:02 AM

Mark your calendar: Sam Donaldson's Live Webcast at NAB2002 Okay, go get your Real Player upgraded. Take the freebie and get ready. You have been warned. On next Tuesday, April 9th from 3-5 PM PACIFIC TIME, Sam Donaldson, the first major newsperson to regularly webcast, is holding a town meeting live from the floor of the Las Vegas Convention Center.  Inside sources are telling me that his guests will include FCC Chairman Michael Powell and a discussion of CARP has not been taken off the table to discuss. Also we have been told that Sam is accepting questions by email from the 'Net to be asked on the show. the link is on his site listed below and will begin accepting questions on Monday afternoon. Don't say you haven't been told. A PSA or WORD OF WARNING: Be sure to log into the webcast via the link http://abcnews.go.com/onair/webshows/webshows_index.html  through IE or Netscape. NOT the link via your REAL PLAYER SCREEN. A nasty little thing is... REAL is pushing their premiere $ervice$, and if you log into the site via the Real Browser in their new "ONE PLAYER" they want you to anty up with your credit cards. (BS!) Go directly to the site through your browser then click on the "CLICK HERE TO SEE THE SHOW." It won't cost you a thing. ;-) And now back to our regularly scheduled programming... (cue tone & bars! on 3 - 2 - 1! beeeeeeep!) 1:13:07 AM

© Copyright 2002 Mary Wehmeier. Last update: 4/5/02; 4:36:40 AM.