Posts from September 2006

The sun sets on Hollywood

September 25, 2006 by Jeff Jarvis
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Peter Preston writes in the Observer:

. . . Professor Jeremy Tunstall has just written a successor to his magisterial 1977 study, The Media Are American. It is called The Media Were American.

Tunstall’s thesis is simple, but jolting. Of course America still floods the world with movies, music and TV shows. And, of course, their combined value climbs higher and higher. But if we’re talking something different – market share – then the US is in headlong decline, and has been for nearly 50 years. Discount around 100 annual hours of bigbudget movies and the residue is a pitiful, shrivelled thing.

India, China, Brazil and Japan (to name but four) have media exports of their own that equal or outstrip any imports. China, with 1.3 billion people, relies overwhelmingly on home production in local languages. So, with a bow to Bollywood, does India. Egypt looks after the Middle East.

The bigger Latin American countries make most of their own popular media now – and export lurid soaps to Spanish-speaking channels everywhere, including the US.

So at last we can stop being accused of ruining the world with our tawdry entertainment.

Blather for sale

September 24, 2006 by Jeff Jarvis

Reinier Evers of Trendwatching says they use this not-so-humble blog to spot the occasional trend. I’m flattered. But he gets 130,000 subscribers to his newsletter plus events. Hmmm. What am I doing wrong?

Lipstick on a . . .

September 24, 2006 by Jeff Jarvis

Henry Copeland is amazed: Estee Lauder is buying blogsads.

I was invited in by one of the Lauder brands about two months ago to talk about blogs and I pushed them to advertise out here. I’m not saying I caused this buy (and besides, because I’m sadly not in the Blogads pool now, I’m not even getting the ad myself). But I did see that these people were vitally interested in figuring out how to build a relationship with customers via blogs.

Henry is quite right to be amazed because the cosmetics industry is perhaps the last to embrace online, let alone blogs. Cosmetics are pure brand: smoke for the mirrors, advertising in a bottle. They bought slick, fashionable magazines because they wanted to be slick and fashionable. But now even they are realizing, I think, that their brands live not on pages but with people.

Sunday morning all week long

September 23, 2006 by Jeff Jarvis
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The BBC’s Richard Sambrook (in his new, public blog) links us to a new internet opinion channel in Britain: 18 Doughty St. An interesting experiment. I don’t know that I’d hand out camcorders. Webcams would do the trick to gather the vox of the pop. Nonetheless, I like the idea. Here’s their trailer.

The Amandamobile

September 23, 2006 by Jeff Jarvis

Amanda’s road show breezed through our house last night and it was fun. I’ll give you atmospherics when she posts the piece.

Wacked hack, smacked and sacked, attacks

September 23, 2006 by Jeff Jarvis

Don’t miss the fun of watching a former New York Post hack go over the edge in the comments here.

Auf wiedersehen

September 23, 2006 by Jeff Jarvis

I was saddened to listen to the 400th episode of Schlaflos in Muenchen, for it is the last. Annik Rubens, the Valkyrie-voiced podcaster and princess of German podcasts I wrote about for The Guardian, said she will move onto something new after a two-week hiatus and she has other podcasts, like Filme und So. Still, she just tired of the form of her original podcast.

At the same time, the British prince of podcasting, Ricky Gervais, hangs up his microphone on his record-setting show.

What’s going on here? The death of podcasts? Naw. Step back from the keyboard before you start writing that made-up trend story. I sense that people (Winer aside) don’t flame out on blogs the way they might on podcasts and I think the reason for that is that podscasts are both more of a production and more of a performance. It’s harder. That’s also why fewer will start podcasts — and why I haven’t. It’s easier to blather through a keyboard than a microphone.

Like a cowboy without a gun

September 23, 2006 by Jeff Jarvis

Rafat, the fastest blogger in the west, has a broken finger. Rafat: Sounds like it’s time to start the podcast….. On second thought, audio posts would be better.