Digital Celebrities

partridge writes "Carson Daly's simulacrum is the new Max Headroom. I guess this makes Clear Channel Communications the current embodiment of Network 23? Now we just have to wait for the blipverts to start making consumer's heads explode."

Comments

Re:simula- wha?

[Planesdragon]

Simalcrum: from the D&D spell (and maybe from wherever that came from.)

In AD&D, a "Simalcrum" was a lesser form of a "clone", made of snow & ice and a bit of the caster's flesh.

I'm sure that there's a bigger Sci Fi reference, but I wager that most of /. (and a good portion of the net) gets the vocabulary from AD&D.

And on that note--why doens't the Jargon File mention RPGs? AD&D Trolls are most vulnerable to fire--which has always struck me as the most likely reason why "Trolls" are attacked by "flames." (I think "flame" came first, and "troll" came second.)

The long, slow, death of the DJ.

[Fugly]

The on-air personality is inches away from being a thing of the past. I have a lot of friends that work in radio. Most of them have had the stations they work for bought by clear channel. Most of my friends that are still on-air personalities (many are unemployeed these days) are being pumped out to at least 3 stations with little tweaks being done to the audio to make it sound like they are local. Frequently celebrity interviews are mocked up from a stock tape of the celebrity answering questions with the DJ's voice dubbed between even.

I keep hoping that eventually people will notice how sterile, packaged and crappy it is and that independent stations will be able to compete by way of superior programming. However, apparently people don't give a rats ass. They don't even notice how shitty radio is these days.

Re:The long, slow, death of the DJ.

[rob-fu]

A Clear Channel station in the Dallas, TX area is doing this right now; there's a radio 'personality' who used to be located in Dallas and does a show every night from about 7-10, I believe. In actuality, he's physically located in Florida (Miami, I think), but the station gives the illusion that he's actually in Dallas at the time of the broadcast, which he isn't.

The funny thing is that the station doesn't tell the listeners that this is the case, so logically people will try to call in to get on the air with the DJ, only to find that there's simply a guy running the board playing the tape, and he has to explain to the caller that the DJ is 'busy' or 'can't come to the phone' or 'not taking calls'.

Clear Channel is a disease to radio stations...all the playlists are preprogrammed and sent from somewhere else. There are no true DJs at these stations, just people who push buttons. And if you have 2 Clear Channel stations in one market, chances are you can find them playing the same songs simulatenously more often.

I stand corrected...

[Dolemite_the_Wiz]

....I formerly thought this was the main sign of the impending apocalypse for the music industry.

Seriously tho, Carson Daly's show will promote piracy even more due to the creation of specific shows, of specific music, aimed for specific audiences.

Dolemite

porn stars

[AssFace]

I don't understand why this isn't done across the board with porn stars. considering how far they have come in 3d these days - just scan in a model for cheap and then they can do far more work.
hell, you could even get rough mo-cap done once at a franction of the cost of needing her around all the time.
the audio is obviously even easier than the carson thing.

hell - you could have a system where you customize it so that the person watching it can choose what they want - color hair, skin tone, % bodyfat, etc.
or even to the point of doing famous people, etc.

is it still cheaper to pay real people to do it all?
I could see if the technology wasn't there, but it would seem people would line up even at the level of playstation is right now.

then again, I'm not really all that much into porn, so perhaps this is already out there and I'm just out of the loop.

Re:porn stars

[stratjakt]

>>Is it still cheaper to pay real people to do it all?

Let's see..

CGI rendered porn model - millions in development, artwork and rendering time, plus expensive render farms to do the computations.

Drug addict in her late teens - $20 worth of crack and a Sony Handycam.

Yes, it's cheaper.

Re:porn stars

[AssFace]

well, yeah - were that the case, then yes that would be cheaper. but on the higher level porn - they aren't crack addicts working for $20 - they are working at $1000/hr and up.

but to do it at the level of a game in terms of graphics (real time rendering) it would not cost nearly that - not to mention that once you have one model developed - you effectively have an infinite number (changing their look is easy once it is there).

I would put it more at development of a solid model and perhaps viewing engine at $100,000 and a year.
Once done you could do a crapload of stuff and make it customizable, as well as making a subscriber interface (EverQuest with sex).

I have worked with the game technologies and know what is there, and have talked to people on the outside of porn well enough to know that your view of it is misguided (not saying that there aren't drug addicts in the industry - eps at lower levels).

Re:Did I miss the point?

[Fugly]

So... what's the BFD as long as he doesn't soound like a Speak N Spell?

If you work in the industry, the BFD is that one guy just did your job in 20 different cities. It sucks for you because the number of available jobs has now shrunk to nothing. It sucks for the public because now they're all getting the same canned crap. There's one thing for dinner and if you don't like it, tough luck. It sucks for the public because there are fewer local on-air personalities that truly understand the experience of being a New Yorker, Clevelander, Los... um... Angeleser... um... whatever.

It's great for Clear Channel though because they just eliminated 19 paychecks. It looks great on the books and looks great to the stockholders. It's a shame that over the last 50 years it's destroyed one hell of a brilliant creative medium.

Turning test?

[MountainLogic]

If a generic local DJ can be replaced with such a simple tool then we are not loosing much. If the most brain-dead table look-up can pass the Turing test then perhaps local DJs need to do their homework, learn more about their community and really have somthing to offer.

Rather than describe this as wiz-bang tech, I'd describe it as poor content production by local DJs. Don't get me wrong, I do want good local content. I do not want junk generic content spewed by a "local DJ" (read moved in from out of state last week).

Always dislike ClearChannel

[burgburgburg]

Whatever else, it almost always is correct to come away from any situation disliking ClearChannel. They have single-handedly destroyed any notion of local, unique radio, radio with identity, personality, vision. They've also eliminated any actual relationship between the radio stations they control and the communities that they supposedly serve. Through economy of scale and massive undercutting if necessary, they can drive any actual local competition out of business. And while they didn't start the corporate focus group designed playlist, they have perfected it as a method of eliminating anything approaching quality in radio programming. The have blanded out radio to an unprecedented extent. Country is usually sited as the best example. Despite the acclaim and great sales of the soundtrack of "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou" and the Dixie Chicks "Home", any other examples of roots/traditional country music can't get two seconds of airtime unless they hold someone hostage. And that's difficult to do because most ClearChannel programming comes from centralized hubs that are mostly computerized.

Easy way to understand it: ClearChannel is like Microsoft, except there is no open source radio (except the Internet, which is being priced out of existence).

Re:What Clear Channel Communications has on it's s

[Anonymous Coward]

the truth out about Internet piracy and the terrible impact that it's having on
musicians.
What terrible impact is that? Realising that they really DON'T have to go through a label to get their music heard? God forbid that should happen.

We must protect our creative community even from well
meaning fans who just don't know that with every file they download or CD they burn,
they are undermining the future of the very music they profess to love.
Bullshit, you don't give a fuck about music. You are protecting your bottom line don't even pretend you aren't, fuckers.

Yes, I do know they can't hear my bitching, but what the hell. ;)

It's shit like this that pisses me off severely. Corporate morons thinking they know a fucking thing about what drives music and musicians. For the REAL musicians out there it truly isn't about money, it's just about making some noise. Record companies need to realise they're fucking doomed if they continue with this bullshit parade they're on. I'm still waiting for one of these ill-regulated banks (that is ALL a record label is) to nut up and dive into distributing music online for free. I don't mean SOME of it, I mean FUCKING ALL OF IT. There are MANY albums I own that I had as MP3's before I bought the album. I went out and bought the albums simply because I thought the artists in questions were worth supporting. According to the RIAA and other fucktards like them, I'm a damn weirdo because I prefer not to waste my money on total shit that they ram down our throats. When these labels stop promoting the next big thing and realise that there are THOUSANDS of excellent artists that would sell a SHITLOAD of records if they had some fucking backing, THEN maybe we'll talk. Until then, I think I'll go download Kazaa.

virtual porn stars

[No Such Agency]

I think the large start-up cost is probably one of the prohibitive factors. Nobody's going to finance a setup like that when it's entirely possible that the wanking public will HATE the virtual stars and avoid the videos like the plague (or more appropriately, gonnorrhea). Vivid Video aren't going to risk their current, wildly lucrative production model on the off chance that synthespians can make it in pr0n. From what I understand, a lot of pr0n consumers have favourite stars, whom they creepily worship and follow closely (literally, in some cases). None of that lot would likely take too well to virtual stars when they're used to the Jenna Jamesons and others of the current biz.

Also, as mentioned it's a small elite who command high prices for doing porn videos. There's a huge low-budget industry which consists of some guy paying a girl to have sex with him while _he_ films it. I mean - no cameraman - how much more low-budget can you go? Just a couple hundred to the girl, a few bucks for some pina colada mix* and poof! You have video you can sell or put on your own web site. And people are buying, so clearly the synthespians are not needed there either.

* yes, for that. How do I know all this? The diary of a low-budget pornographer (mostly not safe for work)...

From Clear Channel itself:

[dcuny]

I grabbed the following from the Clear Channel site. They appear to be quite proud of this technology. After all, it directly benefits us, the consumer!

• Despite Clear Channel Radio's far reaching geography, radio remains a live and local medium in every market the company serves.

Except, of course, when it's not actually live nor local.

• Clear Channel Radio's size, however, allows it to leverage state-of-the-art technology and large-market on-air talent to deliver premium programming to smaller towns.

"Leverage" is must be a euphanism for "use our market power to drive everyone else out of business".

"Premium programming to smaller towns" is a nice phrase... You certainly don't want any local DJ on the airwaves. Thank goodness for Clear Channel!

• Hugely popular shows can be broadcast all over the country, giving listeners the programming and diversity they crave no matter where they are.

Ever wonder what "diversity" means? According to Clear Channel, it's "everyone listening to the same thing."

There's a difference between "everyone is forced to listen to it" and "hugely popular". Pretty much everyone had to eat cafeteria food in my elementry school, but I don't recall it being "hugely popular."

• Clear Channel uses digital voice tracking and in-market feeds to deliver a sound that is live and local.

Except, of course, that it's neither live nor local. Oops, I'm repeating myself.

The biggest scam is that the audience is largely unaware that it's canned, which means that your profit stream is based on the idea of deceiving to your customers. Any what justifies this?

Oh, yes... Premium profits.

• Technology enhancements across the board are changing the way Clear Channel logs inventory, sells airtime, programs radio stations, bills advertisers and runs promotions. Result: Greater value for both advertisers and listeners.

Thanks again, Clear Channel! Those tunes sound so much better, now that you more efficiently sell huge blocks of advertising time through national markets.

It's pledge drive at my local NPR station. I'm suddenly feeling much, much more guilty for not contributing.