May 2006 Archives

A new report on the role of the internet in political campaigns has been released.   The focus is on the 2006 cycle.   Here is the blog post that introduces the study:

We recently completed a study that assesses the utilization of the Internet as a tool for 2006 political campaigns. The study, a follow-up of the 2002 version, examined how 2006 senatorial candidates used the Web to publicize information about their campaign platforms, personal backgrounds, and volunteer opportunities. We looked at a number of Web campaign tools and made comparisons based on party affiliations, importance of particular races, and whether candidates were incumbents or challengers.

The results clearly showed that while Web use by political candidates increased dramatically since 2002, politicians are still failing to take advantage of all the Internet has to offer. 96 percent of this year's Senate candidates have active websites, while only 55% of candidates had websites in 2002. While most candidates use a set of core Web tools, the majority of candidates are refraining from using newer and more sophisticated Web strategies, such as blogs and podcasts, on their campaign websites. Only 23% of Senate candidates are blogging, just 15% offer Spanish alternatives to their websites, and an even smaller number of candidates, 5%, maintain podcasts. In contrast, between 90% and 93% of candidates offered biographies, contact information, and online donations on their websites. It is obvious from these results that despite a general increase in the use of the Internet for political campaigns, candidates are still hesitant to pour finite financial resources into new campaign strategies.

You can download the full 38-page report and the data sheets here.

A New York Times article this past Sunday profiled a company, Virtual Chocolate, that is developing games and applications specifically for mobile phones.   Deep down in the article was this  interesting nugget:

AT the media company that is arguably embracing the mobile world most aggressively — ESPN — there appears to be no limit to the amount of personalized information that consumers demand. It has made a big bet on Mobile ESPN, deciding to sell a special phone under its own brand name and to handle all the customer support.

For monthly fees ranging from $39.99 to $199.99, subscribers can get game updates, breaking news and other material. To watch video and to get news alerts, they have to pay an additional $24.99 a month.

Even though the editors and product managers understood that the first buyers for this phone would be die-hard sports fans, "I don't think we realized how voracious sports fans are," especially those in fantasy sports leagues, said J. Kieren Portley, product realization manager for Mobile ESPN.

As Mr. Portley, the Mobile ESPN editor Anthony Mormile and others adapt material to the phone, they have learned some tricks of the trade. Wide-angle shots are to be avoided, while slow-motion clips are to be welcomed. The sweet spot for video clips appears to be between 45 and 75 seconds. Short clips of confrontational conversations, like the big finish on the talk show "Pardon the Interruption," are popular, and the network's hosts and guests can satiate users' hunger by providing punchy, informal commentary that they do not have time to deliver on the air.

ESPN has more content avaialble to it than almost any entertainment or news property out there.   But the lessons they have learned can be applied to anyone who is looking to program content for mobile phones.   Simply put, mobile is not a medium where you can simply repurpose your existing content and expect success.   But it is a medium where you can continually generate new content and push it out to your audiences.  

Read the article.  

I am in St. Louis for a conference about sports facilities and franchise development and marketing. As a part of the conference we get a guided tour of the new Busch Stadium. The tour is being led by Joe Abernathy, the VP of Stadium Operations. Most of his comments (and therefore my notes) are about revenue generating and sponsor engagement opportunities.
Here are my notes:
- This is the third ballpark in St. Louis. The first was Sportsman's Park (later became Busch Stadium when AB bought it). Then came Busch Stadium (opened in 1966, closed after the 2005 season). Now they have a new Busch Stadium (opened in April 2006).
- Construction planning started with an analysis of the old park in 1997. Tried to find all the ways that they could increase revenue. Five years of planning. 27 months of construction.
- Old and new stadium footprints overlapped by about 25%. Left field quadrant of the stadium overlapped - it was built with no service basement, three levels instead of four, etc so that construction could happen a lot faster. Last piece was built between December 2005 and April 2006.
- 46,000+ capacity. 4,000 seats smaller than the old Busch Stadium. Bigger than most of the new ballparks.
- 63 suites - all glass enclosed rooms, all behind home plate, two levels. Same number as before (the market couldn't support more). They have a better location and the suites are larger, sold out very quickly.
- Party Rooms - support group sales. Available on a game-by-game basis, include snacks and drink in ticket price, etc. 41 party rooms total.
- Home plate to the back wall is 52 feet - closer than the pitchers mound.
- Blue grass field, grown in Colorado. They are in a transition period to see if the grass holds. They have a specially designed irrigation system that pre-cools water to 55 degrees. That will lower the temperature of the root zone by ten degrees and keep the grass from dying when its hot/humid all summer.
- Cardinal Club: Supports the 600 high end seats behind home plate. Concept has been in use at Busch since 1996. All inclusive ticket includes parking, access to club, buffet, drinks, and the seats.
- Suites: Each has a unique memorabilia box (autographed baseball from Stan Musial, old World Series program, etc), some photos from the Cardinals history
- Flag flying over the field was flown by the Missouri National Guard
- Retired numbers - in center field underneath the scoreboard: 1, 2, 6, 9, 14, 17, 20, 42, 45, 85. There were complaints about how well they honored their players, so they have also added a wallpaper to the left field wall.
- The old manual out of town scoreboard from the old Busch Stadium is hung on the outside wall of the stadium (facing in) on the councourse behind home plate/suites. The view would otherwise be of the highway.
- Build-Your-Own-Redbird store (sponsored by Build-A-Bear).
- Redbird Club - Loge level seats, five-thousand square foot air-conditioned lounge area, concessions, etc. Custom baseball card design on the wall.
- They realized after they opened that they didn't have enough nacho stands. Been adding them since.
- Bank of America Club: Located directly above gate 3, known as the 'bridge club' - were trying to honor the history of the Eves Bridge, one of the first steel structures in the world. Ticket includes buffet, drinks (beer and wine, which is new for Busch).
Seats - New style 'gravity lift' padded bottom chair. Typical basecall simulated slat back. Fully upholstered. The best 11k seats (Founders Club, Redbird Club, and all field box seats) are padded.
- Rawlings 'Make The Game' experience - will make bats, balls, gloves, etc right on site.
- Ballpark is wired for wi-fi, but they haven't added the access points yet. They haven't decided whether or not to turn on the wi-fi. I hope they do (not that I would bring my laptop to the ballpark, because it would distract from the watching experience).
[All notes taken on my blackberry while walking through the stadium]

The New York Times reported yesterday  that Home Depot, and other companies, are starting to use interactive video to sell products:

One of the new ideas to make multimedia work for retailers is to make it interactive. For example, HomeDepot.com has built out an array of videos for multipurpose drills and other items not well served by a single photo and a short text description. When HomeDepot.com started selling large, costly appliances like ranges and refrigerators last year on its Web site, the company suspected the idea might not fly if the products were displayed with a thumbnail picture, a few lines of text and a price.

As a result, it started displaying a product demonstration alongside refrigerators and other items, with a twist. Rather than run uninterrupted video of someone fawning over a fridge, the company offered customers a way to click on various parts of each appliance to view short audio clips about distinct parts of the equipment. Macromedia's Flash technology, meanwhile, lends motion to otherwise static photos and helps romanticize the images.

Matthew Kumin, the EVP at car-sales site Edmunds.com was quoted in the article saying this:

"We're trying to incorporate video with what the Web's great at, which is interactivity," he said. "We're putting the user in control. The way others do multimedia online is old school — you put up videos and let people watch them. New user experiences need to be built."

Don't get me wrong, I am excited that The Grey Lady has decided to promote this very important topic.   I just wonder how many people reading the article realize this is nothing new.   Interactivity and user control are the core elements that have  driven online growth and  success - in retail, and every other sector - for years.  

What they should be writing about are virtual interactions that appear in online communities and games.   Imagine a scenario where a character you control in a video game finishes a mission, heads back to her house, walks up to the (brand sponsored) refrigerator, and gets a sweet tour while picking out a (brand sponsored) beverage) to regain strength before continuing competition.   That's not new either, but its a heck of a lot more sophisticated than what most people are doing.

Mark Cuban and I are on the same page when it comes to the value of newspapers.   Print newspapers continue to offer more substance than their online news counterparts.   This is what Cuban wrote on Blog Maverick  over the weekend:  

So if the choice came down to newspapers at the breakfast table, or regurgitation online. Newspapers at breakfast win.

Whats the moral of the story ? Depth and differentiation beat speed and regurgitation.   I read the NY Times business section with a grain of salt, knowing it can be less than factual, but I read it every day. I   know that they differentiate themselves by finding topics of interest to me that I cant find anywhere else. If they find something I care about, the net, among other tools, allows me to find out more. The NY Times business section gets my business because their stories are different from the stories I read anywhere else.

During the playoffs, I make sure to read the local newspapers because they have made the decision to differentiate their coverage to include depth and in some cases differentiated information, far beyond what is available online. If they invested the same effort during the season, I would be sure to read it every day. Im sure fans of other sports and topics would feel the same way.

I love the speed and access to news online as much as anyone, but I read because I want to learn something.   Until the online news business model  prioritizes content over aggregation, there will always be room for thoughtful reporting, analysis and commentary.   Since  print journalists seem more committed to producing that kind of content, there will always be room for print newspapers as well.

The Wall Street Journal asked readers what they wanted their news of the future to look like.   They responded:

Readers want more context and background included in news reporting. They want new ways to receive their news, on next-generation handheld devices, for instance, rather than simply on a Web page. They want fewer ads — especially the kind that animate or show up in popup windows.

It turns out that they also want more-telegenic news reporters.

The full article is here.

No surprise that print newspaper circulation continued to decline, according to data released on Monday.   In fact:

Of the 25 biggest papers in the country, 20 reported drops in circulation. Of the five that did not drop, the gains were all less than 1 percent. Those were USA Today (2,272,815), The New York Times (1,142,464), the Chicago Tribune (579,079), The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., (398,329) and the Detroit Free Press (345,861).

I start each morning reading newspapers — the Washington Post, Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Boston Globe and Boston Herald, the LA Times, and the  Chicago Tribune — but I read all of them  online.    I do read the New York Times and Wall Street Journal in print,  but only  because I like having something to read while waiting for the bus.   On days when  I drive into the office, I read those papers online.   Its just a personal choice to have something in my hands for the commute, not a deliberate choice to support print.  

Newspaper publishers spin the drop  saying it is part of a strategy to push more information online where advertisers find greater value.   If that is true, then the strategy is working becuase "newspaper-run Web sites had an 8 percent increase in viewers in the first quarter," according to an article in the Tribune. "The data ...found that newspaper Web sites averaged 56 million users in the period, or 37 percent of all online users in the period."

Here is more coverage from the Boston Globe, Seattle PI, and LA Times.

US Representative Rosa DeLaura (D-CT) delivered the commencement address at the University of Connecticut on Sunday.   According to the Boston Globe, DeLauro told the graduates that while society seems to increasingly lack faith in its ability to tackle big problems and that institutions from the government to the media to corporations are letting people down, they must "resist the impulse to tune out in the face of daunting problems."   An excerpt:  

"Where college dared you to take risks and face problems head on, and supported you when you did, the world out there is more likely to encourage you to play it safe, to change the channel, put on the iPod headphones and tune out...

"And so today, I ask you to turn off your iPods for a moment, and think about the stake you have in the challenges we face. I ask you to not simply accept that responsibility, but embrace it with that uniquely American spirit that affirms our belief that even in an environment of mistrust and indifference, big solutions are possible."

Commencement season is one of my favorite times of year.   The rhetoric shared by speakers at schools all across the country is at a premium.  And the optimism that graduates carry into the real world is (or should be) infectious.  

A bi-partisan group of bloggers and other online thinkers have come together to craft an "Online Integrity Statement of Principles."   It is online at http://onlineintegrity.org/.

I am in London this week for the We Media Global Forum, a two-day conference (May 3 - May 4) exploring the impact of technology and the internet on media and society.   The event is co-sponsored by the BBC and Reuters and hosted by The Media Center.

I will be moderating the online  conversation at the Forum  – helping to make sure the opinions and insights of  the media, organizations, bloggers, and others who are watching  and participating from near and far are heard as a part of the conference.    I will also be  helping to lead a wiki-storm, the outcome of which will be a call-to-action for conference participants, and others who are interested,  to support bottom-up media.   More on that later.

More information about the conference - and a link to the online chat - are available online at http://www.mediacenterblog.org/events/06/wemedialondon/home/.