Thursday, November 22

The BC 251 Homecoming Promo Assignment



BC 251 students will create Titan Radio promos for YouTube to invite alumni to Homecoming 2008.

Friday, November 16

Light Up Night LIVE on TV

Another Westminster College BC FIRST!
LIVE from New Castle...it's LIGHT UP NIGHT.
(More Pictures Here)

Jill, Pam and Chuck worked with Cindy at the Chamber of Commerce to create a holiday spectacle on live TV thanks to some portable lighting from PennDOT. Despite the damp, cold night Santa made his way to town on a fire truck. People came out with their winter wear and umbrellas, but the rain seemed to stay away except for some light drizzle here and there. The parade runs again on Saturday night at 7 and again same time on Thanksgiving evening.

Thursday, November 15

DVRs KILLING Appointment Television

Why watch what's on TV now when you can watch what you want to watch now and you don't need "video on demand" to do it. That's the marketing hook for TiVo and it works for a lot of peoople. For example, I have nearly 10 episodes of Heroes on my TiVo waiting for me to watch when I have time. Unfortunately, I haven't had time. However, that's the glory of the DVR. I watch what I want when I want. Now that DVRs have a 20% penetration into U.S. homes and Nielsen is accomodating for them in it's television ratings, some are saying TELEVISION IS DEAD.

LOST executive producer and writer Damon Lindelof is one of those proclaiming the death of TV. He's also one of those writers out on strike against the networks and studios so he's clearly working to garner some attention for his cause as he penned the following piece for the LA Times.

Mourning TV

By DAMON LINDELOF

Published: November 11, 2007

Los Angeles

TELEVISION is dying.

I should have realized this four years ago when I first got my TiVo box, but denial is always the first stage of grief. I simply couldn’t acknowledge that this wonderful invention heralded the beginning of the end.

TiVo stores your favorite movies and shows on its hard drive, allowing you to pull up last night’s episode of “The Daily Show” as easily as you click open documents on your laptop. In fact, once you download the original broadcast — sorry, I meant to say “record” it — you can watch it at your leisure. The next morning. Next year. Your call. Because now? You own that episode.

Best of all, you got it free.

Television has always been free. Sure, if you want all the N.F.L. games in high definition, you have to pay the piper, but the broadcast networks still offer their entire schedules for absolutely nothing. The only catch, of course, is that you have to watch commercials. Economically, it’s a fair deal. The network pays for the shows, gives them to viewers, and makes its cash back through advertising. Which regrettably brings us to the most wonderful thing TiVo does: It enables you to ignore the commercials that keep the whole system running.

Twenty percent of American homes now contain hard drives that store movies and television shows indefinitely and allows you to fast-forward through commercials. These devices will probably proliferate at a significant rate and soon, almost everyone will have them. They’ll also get smaller and smaller, rendering the box that holds them obsolete, and the rectangular screen in your living room won’t really be a television anymore, it’ll be a computer. And running into the back of that computer, the wire that delivers unto you everything you watch? It won’t be cable; it will be the Internet.

This probably sounds exciting if you’re a TV viewer, but if you’re in the business of producing these shows, it’s nothing short of terrifying. This is how vaudevillians must have felt the first time they saw a silent movie; sitting there, suddenly realizing they just became extinct: after all, who wants another soft-shoe number when you can see Harold Lloyd hanging off a clock 50 feet tall?

Change always provokes fear, but I’d once believed that the death of our beloved television would unify all those affected, talent and studios, creators and suits. We’re all afraid and we’d all be afraid together. Instead we find ourselves so deeply divided.

The Writers Guild of America (of which I am a proud member) has gone on strike. I have spent the past week on the picket line outside Walt Disney Studios, my employer, chanting slogans and trudging slowly across the crosswalk.

The motivation for this drastic action — and a strike is drastic, a fact I grow more aware of every passing day — is the guild’s desire for a portion of revenues derived from the Internet. This is nothing new: for more than 50 years, writers have been entitled to a small cut of the studios’ profits from the reuse of our shows or movies; whenever something we created ends up in syndication or is sold on DVD, we receive royalties. But the studios refuse to apply the same rules to the Internet.

My show, “Lost,” has been streamed hundreds of millions of times since it was made available on ABC’s Web site. The downloads require the viewer to first watch an advertisement, from which the network obviously generates some income. The writers of the episodes get nothing. We’re also a hit on iTunes (where shows are sold for $1.99 each). Again, we get nothing.

If this strike lasts longer than three months, an entire season of television will end this December. No dramas. No comedies. No “Daily Show.” The strike will also prevent any pilots from being shot in the spring, so even if the strike is settled by then, you won’t see any new shows until the following January. As in 2009. Both the guild and the studios we are negotiating with do agree on one thing: this situation would be brutal.

I will probably be dragged through the streets and burned in effigy if fans have to wait another year for “Lost” to come back. And who could blame them? Public sentiment may have swung toward the guild for now, but once the viewing audience has spent a month or so subsisting on “America’s Next Hottest Cop” and “Celebrity Eating Contest,” I have little doubt that the tide will turn against us. Which brings me to the second stage of grief: anger.

I am angry because I am accused of being greedy by studios that are being greedy. I am angry because my greed is fair and reasonable: if money is made off of my product through the Internet, then I am entitled to a small piece. The studios’ greed, on the other hand, is hidden behind cynical, disingenuous claims that they make nothing on the Web — that the streaming and downloading of our shows is purely “promotional.” Seriously?

Most of all, I’m angry that I’m not working. Not working means not getting paid. My weekly salary is considerably more than the small percentage of Internet gains we are hoping to make in this negotiation and if I’m on the picket line for just three months, I will never recoup those losses, no matter what deal gets made.

But I am willing to hold firm for considerably longer than three months because this is a fight for the livelihoods of a future generation of writers, whose work will never “air,” but instead be streamed, beamed or zapped onto a tiny chip.

Things have gotten ugly and the lines of communication have broken down completely between the guild and the studios. Perhaps it’s not too late, though, for both sides to rally around the one thing we still have in common: our mourning for the way things used to be. Instead of fighting each other, maybe we should be throwing a wake for our beloved TV.

Because the third stage of grief is bargaining.

And bargain we must, because when television finally passes on, there will still be entertainment; there will still be shows and films and videos, right there on a screen in your living room. And just as the owners of vaudeville theaters broke down and bought hand-crank movie cameras, the studios will figure out a way to make absurd amounts of money off of whatever is beaming onto whichever sort of screen.

And we’ll still be writing every word.

Damon Lindelof is the co-creator and head writer of the television series “Lost.”

Tuesday, November 13

Familiar Faces Drop By Campus

Melissa Batulis (Class of '03) and Tandi Lane (Class of '05) dropped by my office as they visited campus on Friday. Melissa even introduced me to her beau, Sean. It was great to chat and visit, but it never seems like we ever get to spend enough time to catch up. I hope we can do it again soon and take time for a meal and more. It was nice meeting Sean and great seeing Melissa and Tandi!

Friday, November 9

Mock Convention Pictures!!!



www.flickr.com





2007 Mock The Vote

It's over! Delegates nominated John Edwards for prez and Stephen Colbert for veep.

Saturday, November 3

Dying Blockbuster


We talked about the pending demise of Blockbuster years ago when we still had BC 101 at Westminster. That's when Paramount was looking to unload the property. We talked about it again last spring in Mass Comm as we considered the death spiral of Hollywood. Looks like all that talk was accurate.

SAY GOODBYE TO BLOCKBUSTER
It looks like the bottom has finally fallen out of Blockbuster. After numerous failed attempts at attracting new customers, the company is finally spiraling out of control.

Sad as it is, the end is near for Blockbuster, and all that pressure it has been placing on Netflix will be lifted.

And in the end, Netflix will be left standing to fight another day.

Although Blockbuster tried everything it could to create a compelling reason for us to use the service, the company could not overcome its downfall. For years, it was hated by those people who saw it as a monolithic organization that enjoyed charging exorbitant late fees and had little or no care of what the customers wanted most. So when Netflix offered an entirely new service, the dynamics of the industry was inexorably changed, and Blockbuster was left playing catch up.

According to the company's third-quarter results released Thursday, Blockbuster's revenue slid 5.7 percent and the company harbored a net loss of $35 million. Worse, it has closed 526 stores in the past year, and the number of employees will be reduced to offset high overhead costs to the tune of $45 million. Blockbuster's injured stock price continues to fall and was priced at $5.06 at Thursday's close.

But if that's not enough to signal defeat, Blockbuster Chairman Jim Keyes admitted that his company's focus on Netflix was damaging and has decided to pull the plug on his demand for higher Total Access membership. Instead, he wants Blockbuster to focus on increasing overall membership.

Sorry, Jim, but I think you're out of luck.

Much like the print media and retail stores refusing to change, Blockbuster has been a victim on an online company finding new and inventive ways of bringing a product to a customer. And due to its size and outdated corporate culture, there really is no salvation for Blockbuster at this point. Try as it might, the future of Blockbuster is bleak, at best.

Sure, the company still enjoys revenue that climb into the billions of dollars, but with an ever-increasing net loss and a public refusal to focus on Total Access--the area where Netflix continues to dominate--what is the impetus for us to jump on the Blockbuster bandwagon?

Simply put, Blockbuster is doomed. And while many of us have known it for a while now, it's amazing to me that the chairman of the company admitted this in a not-so subtle way, as well.

For Blockbuster, there is currently no prospect for growth. Not only is it incapable of breaking the Netflix shell, the brick-and-mortar stores are failing, and there is little chance it will be able to capitalize on the future of movie rentals--downloading.

The way I see it, Blockbuster has two options: sell off the company as soon as possible or spend huge sums of cash on research and development and strategic partnerships with distribution companies to make downloading movies a viable alternative to Netflix.

But unfortunately, I simply don't see this happening. I think Blockbuster will try to stay the course in the hopes it can find a way out. It won't.

I'll give it two years before this company goes under.

Originally posted at The Digital Home.

1936 Mock Convention Flashback