I often watch the video podcast version of Australian Broadcasting’s Media Watch mainly because I’m amazed that the format works. Who’d think that media criticism, especially of print and even of online, could work on video? But it does, thanks to the tough attitude of the host, Monica Attard — I expect to see her come out in leather and studs some week — and to their entertaining conceit of having different people voice the clips they’re talking about, with attitude. Even its slogan is cheeky: “everyone loves it until they’re on it.” ABC Radio, too, has pretty good criticism and reporting in the Media Report, which is also available as a podcast. I have Aussie media on the mind because I’m talking at Murdoch’s Carmel confab of his worldwide editors this week. But even aside from that, I enjoy checking in with Australian media — as I do UK media, of course, on the Media Guardian podcast — because it’s interesting to see our parallel issues around the globe.
This week’s Media Watch has a great segment — with the best collection of examples I’ve ever seen — on unfortunate adjacencies of content and ads on TV and especially online. I pulled put two segments together here:
Note, too, that this is one of the inherent problems with contextual advertising. No machine will ever truly understand the context. Better to talk to people than around content, eh?
