Wednesday, July 10, 2002

Lunch with a Celebrity Today, I had lunch with Elisabeth Hendrickson, well-known author and testing consultant. I very much enjoyed our conversation, which covered a number of testing topics. One of my favorite moments, though, was when she was taking a tour of our test lab, and commented that this was the first place she had seen where we needed to maximize the number of monitors per system - quite the reverse of the optimization most test labs strive for. No wonder I've been having such a tough time investigating benches. [A QA Guy's Radio Weblog] 1:48:51 PM    trackback []     Articulate []

Great Commentary On The "Stealing Commercials" Debate. Treating Viewers as Criminals "Remember blipverts? The 1980s science fiction series, Max Headroom, depicted a society "twenty minutes into the future" ruled by powerful television networks locked in ruthless competition for viewer eyeballs. Concerned by the growing trend towards channel surfing, the blipvert was developed as a rapid-fire subliminal advertisement which pumped its commercial messages directly into consumers' brains before they had a chance to change the channel.... I could not help but think about blipverts the other day when I stumbled across the recent comments of Turner Broadcasting System CEO Jaimie Kellner, who asserted that television viewers who skipped commercials using their digital video recorders were guilty of "stealing" broadcast content. Kellner told an industry trade press reporter that "Your contract with the network when you get the show is you're going to watch the spots." He conceded that there may be a historic loophole allowing us to take short breaks to go to the bathroom but otherwise, we are expected to be at our post, doing our duties, watching every commercial, and presumably, though he never said it, buying every product. Kellner's intemperate rhetoric is, alas, characteristic of the ways that the media industry increasingly thinks about, talks about, and addresses its consumers in the post-Napster era. Napster may—and I stress, may—have been legitimately labeled piracy, but now all forms of consumerism are being criminalized with ever-decreasing degrees of credibility. Once going to the bathroom or grabbing a snack on a commercial break gets treated as a form of theft, the media conglomerates are going to be hard pressed to get consumer compliance with their expectations, making it impossible to draw legitimate lines about what is and is not appropriate use of media content.... I don't know about you but I want to renegotiate my contract! There has been a significant increase in the number of commercials per hour since I first started watching network programming. Consequently, my workload has doubled or tripled, while my compensation—the programming—has gone down in quantity, if not in quality. One wonders whether it isn't time for television viewers to form a union, demand that people like Kellner sit down at the negotiating table, and cut a better deal with us, if they continue to expect viewer loyalty. And given research linking extensive television viewing with obesity, perhaps we might have some way of holding the networks accountable for their workplace safety violations as well, before some of us start to spontaneously explode.... If the networks stopped at name-calling, that would be one thing, but they didn’t. Last fall, the networks sued SONICBlue, the manufacturer of ReplayTV, and convinced a Federal Magistrate to force the company to collect data on thousands of individual consumers: what shows they watch, what commercials they skip, and what—if anything—they forward to their friends. Not content to wait and worry, the networks are now invading our privacy to ensure that we make good on Kellner's imaginary contract. Thankfully, the order was subsequently stayed by a higher court. Confronting such hostility, consumers are increasingly committing acts of passive resistance (flush often!) and forming organizations, such as DigitalConsumer.org, which is making the case that consumers have rights and interests in the negotiations that occur between media producers, technology companies, and policy-makers. To borrow a line from Network, "we are mad as hell and we aren't going to take it anymore." We are now witnessing scorched earth-style warfare between consumers and networks, as the old institutions resist change and hold onto old approaches up until the last possible moment...." [MIT Technology Review] As Hilary Rosen said, if the networks can't anticipate the cost of their business-model, maybe they shouldn't be in this business. [The Shifted Librarian] 12:48:57 PM    trackback []     Articulate []

Okay so what's next?. Strangely enough being made redundant on Monday was not the most unnerving that has happened to me this week. What is more unnerving is my decision not to look immediately for another job.  Instead I have made the decision to see if I can make an adhoc mixture (as I see it now) of blogging, k-logging, knowledge management, intranets, collaboration and communities into a compelling business proposition and make a living from it. For some time now I have wanted to strike out in my own direction.  To lead rather than be led.  It seems fate just handed me my chance. This is not a risk-free strategy, and I'm just beginning to admit to myself what I'm letting myself in for. So from here onwards I will happily entertain any offers of work, suggestions about what works (and what doesn't).  Ideas, novel solutions, novel problems.  It's all good.   I've also got an acre of understanding to do, here goes! Suddenly I feel like I am growing into my weblog title. Matt   [Curiouser and curiouser!] 12:04:33 PM    trackback []     Articulate []