Slashdot Mirror
Will MySpace Disrupt Television?
newsblaze writes "In the Media space, the internet has been threatening to be a highly disruptive technology for some time now. So far it has done quite a number on newspapers, who still don't understand the internet. There are a lot of people who like to have the paper in their hands, though, so newspapers are holding on. Television has no such ties to a physical medium. When Murdoch bought Myspace, I wondered how long it would be before he either found something to do with it — or gave up. Now it seems Murdoch has found a way to leverage his position, and put a massive squeeze on television. How far can he take this — and what will be the result?"
Not a lot more online. Let's get out more.
There's nothing worth watching on TV
So MySpace will disrupt television then.
Many people who would normally watch 6 hours of TV a day are now using myspace for a similar amount of time.
I'd say myspace has already disrupted television and will continue to do so, since a large portion of hours of television watched are these kids who are now using myspace.
Comparing the two, it's hard to say which is worse. Customizing your myspace and/or writing in a blog can help one practice essential computer savvy and writing skills, whereas TV has the benefit of not being plagued with emos.
It also could be argued that myspace 'comments'--which take up most of the average myspace user's time--actually diminish writing skills and intelligence (seriously, read somebody's comments; anybody).
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to comb my hair over my forehead at an angle and take subtly sad photos of myself from a downward angle and blog about how 'indy rock' (emo) is 'the only joy in my desilate, sole-crushing, nitemarish, interminible, bleak, black, life.' [sic.]
Latewire
The linked article actually has worse editing than the slashdot summary. What is the world coming to?
I suppose asking the slashdot editors to link to high quality writeups is a little far-fetched, so I won't even bother.
I mean who the hell is going to watch game shows and reality shows on their laptop? If anything, leveraging MySpace means that TV eventually turns into YouTube length 'segments' e.g. the average television show will now be 10 minutes long and sponsored by one ad, just like TV was in the late 1940's early 50's
...and I've noticed a lot of MySpace references "worked into" various television scripts-cahoots or buzz scripting?
No.
I don't think of MySpace has a competitor to anything. Of course, all I know about MySpace is that's it's for personal blogs and such. It's only used by people who want to put their lives on the web, and mostly teens. Then again I've never even visited myspace.com, so what do I know.
If there's any real competitor to television, it's two-fold because it's on two levels: television networks (who buy/make shows) and show creators themselves (professional vs amateur).
1. It's the beginning of the end for "networks". The iTunes Store has the possibility of becoming a direct distributor between content creators and viewers/listeners. No need to pay for all those crappy "channels packages". I'll even mention the stupid fact that you're forced to get the "basic package" just so you can pay for the "extra packages" from which you only want two or three channels out of eight. It would also prevent networks from killing shows. The best example is the near-death of Family Guy, which Fox had neglected so much at the beginning that it's almost a miracle it survived. It would also prevent networks from continuing to poor cash into long-dead series like The Simpsons. Yes, Homer is funny, but let's get real, they're nearly two decades old now. We get a good episode for every ten crappy ones.
2. YouTube. Given that Google now control YouTube, and via such partnerships such as putting YouTube on the iPhone and the AppleTV, allows regular people to reach other people quite easily and (more importantly) beyond computer-only access. And now that YouTube is switching to H.264, the only thing preventing others to do the same thing as Apple is access rights to YouTube's servers.
...but I find it really hard to take seriously any news outlet that can make so many spelling and grammatical mistakes in a single story. Apparently the proofreader/fact checker has gone the way of the printed newspaper.
"Known world wide as the ultimate spot for networking..."
What? I thought this was the ultimate spot for 14 year olds to put up useless crap on the net.
And great, "my so called life" and something else is going to be played via myspace. Wow, taking over the world 10 years behind at a time.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Many people who would normally watch 6 hours of TV a day are now using Slashdot for a similar amount of time.
I'd say Slashdot has already disrupted television and will continue to do so, since a large portion of hours of television watched are these dorks who are now using Slashdot.
Comparing the two, it's hard to say which is worse. Customizing your Slashdot homepage and/or writing in a blog can help one practice essential computer savvy and writing skills, whereas TV has the benefit of not being plagued with nerds.
It also could be argued that Slashdot 'comments'--which take up most of the average Slashdot user's time--actually diminish writing skills and intelligence (seriously, read somebody's comments; anybody).
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to comb my hair over my forehead at an angle and take subtly sad photos of myself from a downward angle and blog about how 'Linux' (gnu) is 'the only joy in my desilate, sole-crushing, nitemarish, interminible, bleak, black, life.' [sic.]
Breakfast served all day!
Oh, you mean the screen where I plug the game consoles?
Circumcision is child abuse.
I read the first "sentence" (i.e. a collection of sentences strewn together with commas) and saw the "it's" at the end. At that point, I closed the tab the article was loaded in.
Please, for the love of $DEITY, don't let people who can't speak English write articles.
Peace sells, but who's buying?
The more people who use myspace or watch TV, the less people in my space - the outdoors. Thanks Murdoch, I hope you make some money!
I hate slashdot
That thing is the FCC. The FCC holds back broadcast technology, and in the end the medium, because it is too slow to diagnose where the market is heading and make changes to its regulations. This is done on purpose -- the FCC is provided for, and promoted, solely by those who previously controlled the distribution media like television and radio.
Right now, we have cable and satellite for TV, and for Internet, for am majority of households and businesses. Both solutions are antiquated, and ready to be replaced. WiFi routers have proven that small-band radio hardware can be shared in relatively small spaces. All of my neighbors have routers, and we all work well together without major issues. In large urban areas, there are more problems with routers, yes, but this is the FCC's fault for not opening up the spectrum. Imagine how well broadcast technology would work if most of the currently used broadcast spectrum was unlicensed.
The major television and radio networks are scared to death of what would happen if gigabit wireless because available in an unlicensed manner. "On-demand" would take on new meaning. Nielsen would be replaced with real-time, and accurate, statistics sold by Google Analytics or a variety of actual competitors (unlike Nielsen, who has no real competitors). Shows would make it, or break it, not just on mega-advertiser income, but also the chance to make an income based on direct viewer sponsorship (subscription), or a myriad of other income streams (AdSense, or who knows what else?).
It is the regulation of the spectrum that is killing television and radio, as free market capitalists look for new ways to get information to those who want it. PeerCasting is amazing technology, which I already use to broadcast live church sermons to communities. It works well, so much better than public "Channel 19" a week or two later. When you can PeerCast straight to your car or your portable radio, the commercial radio stations will be dead. When you can watch one of a thousand TV shows, and become a hub for 5 or 10 others to watch it, the need for huge servers and huge pipes out of a studio will be ended. But that day won't happen with the FCC mandating frequency use to what worked 20 years ago.
MySpace isn't the killer -- MySpace is just finding a way to be relevant using the tiny bit of wired connectivity they have available. Imagine a peercasted or torrented YouTube, shared by millions, anonymous, and unable to be regulated by the State. That's a future I'm ready for.
You can't take the sky from me...
A pretty good pile of non-sentences in a non-article about a pretty big non-story. TV will be killed by MySpace in the same way that it was killed by TiVo (only watching what the users wants?!) and by DVDs (which, with entire seasons of content being made available, was going to kill TV as opposed to increase overall viewrships), and by the VCR (content, when and where you want it?!), etc etc.
Meaning, of course, that TV will still be around long after MySpace goes the way of Geocities and Tripod.
While I agree the term 'indie' started from there, it's evolved to something different, and is closer to the term 'underground' than anything else. In musical terms (as opposed to film, in which the term indie has also changed over time) 'Indie Rock' is really an umbrella term (comparable to 'Electronica') that encompasses a variety of sub-genres such as lo-fi, pop underground, college rock, dance-punk, twee, indie-electronic, etc. while simultaneously describing a certain 'sound' that came out of the rock underground in the 90s exemplified by bands like Pavement, Guided By Voices, Built to Spill, Archers of Loaf, Olivia Tremor Control, etc.
It's a very confusing and subjective term, and is really inadequate for proper differentiation of musical genres, but we're stuck with it, and regardless of how it's used within the emo community, emo is certainly not synonymous with indie rock, it's simply a child of the indie node.
I don't know about the impact of MySpace, but the biggest disruption of established media has been with the news. People are no longer confined to just a few news channels and papers owned by just a handful of people. Things that were possible before, such as D-Notices (where the UK media are blocked from reporting something by the government) are now quite ineffective. However, Murdoch and the big outlets do have a big web presence and we should avoid them like the plague.
Using the UK Freedom of Information act, it has recently emerged that Tony Blair had 3 telephone conversations with Rupert Murdoch in the 10 days leading up to the invasion of Iraq. No doubt he wanted to know how much support he would get. War sells papers and increases viewing figures, so it would not have been a good business decision for Murdoch to oppose the war. Do you really want to sit there passively consuming Rupert Murdoch's political views, channelled though different newsreaders and outlets? We should be avoiding Murdoch's empire as much as possible. It's not healthy for so much of the media to be owned by so few people. Fortunately the net makes it easy to hunt around and find more independent outlets.
If anyone is interested, the FOI request was made by Lord Avebury and it took him a long time to get the information released.
Other regulation, like the ones of the FCC, help distribute limited resources. In the case of broadcast radio and television, the monopoly covers a section and locality of the public airwaves.In exchange for the monopoly, the business agrees to some limite. Complaining about it is like public companies complaining about the regulation of the stock market. Companies that do not want such regulation, and want to treat the companies cash like thier own private liquid accounts, can choose to be private. There is no law forcing a company public.
The boradcasters have been given a monopoly over the airwaves. They have given enough leeway in what to transmit. The only thing that has changed is that others have come in, and with much less public financing, created a competing system of content delivery. The broadcasters, coddled by years of monopoly status, are apparently unable to work in a free market. Sure they are less free than the paid station, but then they also have the only non subscription fee product. If they can't survive with the huge public subsidy of free bandwidth, then I can only assume that they are truly incompetent. No myspace isn't the killer. Softness from monopoly status is. Braodcast content is an extremely inefficient use of the bandwidth, and cannot support the bloated structure that seems to define most broadcast companies.
And who really cares if broadcaster go off the air. That should be seen as a success. Privately funded enterprises killing government subsidized monopoly. Who can be against that? With the broadcasters gone, the bandwidth can be used for something else, by entrepenuers who are willing to rent the space at auction determined market value. I must say that I do not look forward to paying for radio and television, but I also realize that it might be better that continuously hearing people bitch about how unfair the rules are. Give the airwaves back to the public. Let the market decide how to use them best in the post analog world. Even the threat of such a thing will have the whiny wussy broadcast executives going to the hill and saying how absolutely happy they are with regulation.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black