It’s all about the frequency

No this isn’t a post about radio - it’s one all about blogging and more specifically how frequently you need to blog in order to reach a level of notoriety.

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A churnalism solution

In Flat Earth News, a book that is one of the most controversial about journalism in the last few years, Nick Davies suggests that - due to an increasing work load (more pages to fill, podcasts to produce, blogs to write) newspaper journalists in the UK have become nothing more than churnalists.

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More media to come

In a recent blog post for the ever interesting BBC Internet Blog - BBC’s New Media supremo talks about IPTV in 2008 and what he thinks will happen and change over the next twelve months.

One point he makes is “the rights clearance framework will enable full-length BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Five content to be made available free (with or without ads) over the web.”

Is this different to what is currently in place? My understanding of the current situation is that there is a seven day Window that lets the BBC, Channel 4 and ITV offer its shows on demand without extra cost for a week after broadcast.

Ashley’s quote is basically saying the same thing but is written in a context of change. So maybe there is a fee or level of negotiation involved in the way things currently work - maybe in 2008 the cost and negotiation will be removed and replaced with an understanding that EVERYTHING broadcast will be available for seven days on demand?

And taking the impressive figures published by the BBC for the first month of the iPlayer (1 million viewers watching 3.5 million shows for an average of 25 minutes at a time) I can imagine a LOT more is set to come.

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Time for change

The baby has yet to arrive so I’ve had a little bit of free time to work on the new look for Up Your Ego - this blog. I’ve designed to create my own custom theme from scratch - it’s the only way I’m going to get exactly what I’m looking for.

That and it will give me a chance to brush up on some long since rusty design and developing skills - things I used to do on a daily basis before making the leap from design to journalism.

So I’ve create the look - I’ve been playing with Photoshop and I’ve create a couple of PSD files that show what I want the homepage of the blog and an article page to look like.

Here is the main homepage of the blog - the first page you’ll come to when you type upyourego.com into a browser or follow a link from someone elses sidebar.

As I explained in the last post - big orange box at the top will be a promo space - somewhere I can show off other things I’m doing or posts I want to make sticky.

Underneath you have the most recent post in a promo space on the left and on the right hand side the most popular post (based on the popularity plugin for wordpress).

Underneath that you have the bulk of the page - two or three stories (or at least the first few paras of the story) on the left hand side and on the right - at the top links to the next five stories (just headline and date) and underneath that the usual sidebar stuff like tags and links.

I haven’t included space for ads yet on this page but Google ads are making me so little at the moment that it wasn’t worth the stress trying to fit them in - they’re not exactly asthetically pleasing.

Now the actual story page. This is what you go to when you click on one of the homepage headlines, get to a story directly from Digg, Google or the like - or even through some link love in somebody elses blog feature.

One thing I’ve always looked for in a blog template is that the story page is different to the homepage - not so fundamentally different the whole look and feel is changed but enough that you know you’re somewhere else on the site.

I also like to have the right hand menus of story pages used to show content related to that story - this template does that at the moment but I think it could be improved on.

So I’ve kept the green menu bar, logo and search box as standard navigation features but I’ve removed the big orange promo space, the second green bar and the two promo spaces underneath that.

I’ve kept the basic layout structure as well - you have the full blog post on the left hand side, the Story Tags and share this links next to the story and then on the right you have links and information related to this particular blog post.

The example shows related links, related articles etc… but it could also include Flickr images, video clips or even snippets of information from Wikipedia.

The Comment box is a darker colour with the form on the right and the comments on the left (similar to the one used for the template I’m currently using).

I’m either going to have the comments shown as standard - just a list of all comments or use Ajax to show one comment at a time and a small circle bound arrow to scroll through them.

CLICK THE IMAGES ABOVE FOR FULL SIZE VERSIONS

Development

Now I’m VERY excited about all this and I’ve done the bit I enjoy - the easy bit - the design bit. Now I have to get on with the side of development that normally causes me to give up - the actual development bit.

I’ve built dozens of websites over the years - for everything from bands to government departments, I’ve even customised Wordpress templates and built Blogger templates from scratch - but any hardcore development has always fallen to a dev team.

So now I’m faced with a steep learning curve. The way I see it I need to:

1) Brush up on my CSS to create the gradients and layout
Until now I’ve only really ever used CSS for create basic styles for text and table headers. I’ve never used it for layout or creating gradient based header bars - I normally use images for that.

2) Brush up on my Javascript
I know a little Javascript, I can code simple things like form validation - but I need to learn a lot more (or at the very least learn how to integrate libraries) before I can do some of the things I want for the blog. Fortunately it will work without the AJAX stuff.

3) Get to grips with Wordpress
As I’ve decided not to customise an existing template but create my own - and some of the things I want to do (like having posts shown in four different ways in four different areas on the homepage) aren’t things that comes as standard. So I need to get reading wordpress.org and work out how to put it all together.

4) Brush up on my PHP
I know a little PHP but by a little I mean a very little - I can code a fair bit in VBScript but who the hell wants that? So I need to get myself a PHP book and start reading as I need to work out a way of getting the ‘RELATED’ content shown on the side of the Story template generated or at least inputted at the same time as creating a story in Wordpress - I’m guessing this is going to require a plugin of some kind.

So if anybody knows of any existing plugins that will do what I need or can recommend a good PHP or Wordpress information source then please do.

I’m also thinking about releasing the finished product as a Creative Commons theme for other people to use and adapt as they like. If I do - should I work out a way of changing the colour scheme and image through a Wordpress Admin page?

Anyone want to help with development of the theme?

Anyway - whatever way I decide to go about it I’m going to post updates on here as and when I do them or get time. If I write a piece of code I think might be useful - I’ll publish it.

You should be able to watch the evolution of a theme.

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Who needs TV

Theres been a long standing relationship between big business and commercial television - the television channel shows a promotional video for a big company in between its programmes and in return big business gives the TV channel a big chunck of money.

In the new media age, the era of Generation Y, the time when those of us under 30 (or around 30) are in control of the advertising budgets and what goes on to the TV screens - the roles are almost reversed.

Well actually it isn’t a case of roles reversed - its a case of the TV station being taken out of the equation completely.

A video on You Tube can get upwards of a two million views if its good enough - taking in account the number of people that turn over during the adverts or walk out to make a cup of tea - you’d have to advertise during something like Coronation Street or Doc Martin to get those sort of views for your ad.

The cost of getting millions of views for a clip on You Tube could be anything from sod all to thousands depending on how much you spend on making the advert itself as thats the only cost.

However the chance of getting millions of views on You Tube is pretty slim - first you need to build momentum for it by getting people to talk about it in blogs or message boards and then you need to cross your fingers and hope it strikes at the heart of the fickle new media audience.

The cost of getting millions of views for an ad on ITV (during Corrie) is probably around £50,000 for 30 seconds PLUS the cost of actually making the advert in the first place (which you’d have to spend to get it on You Tube).

But - an advert during Corrie is probably guaranteed to be seen by at least 1 million of the 10 million viewers it gets on average - so you’re paying for the guaranteed view.

So if you’ve created an Ad Campaign thats pretty good and says what your business does - the normal everyday traditional advertising campaign that you see all the time - spend the extra cash and run it during Corrie (if thats your target audience).

But if you have a really good idea for CONTENT - so something that ads a little extra to society whether it be a drumming gorilla, a half hour sitcom or Danny Wallace talking about every day masterpieces (new Fiat campaign) - get it on the web and hope for hte best.

The biggest mistake though is to only have the video available through your own site - at the very least release short versions or a few full versions of the videos on all the major social video sites and MAKE THEM EMBEDDABLE.

The mistake Fiat have made with what could well be a pretty good, rampant success of a viral video series - is restrict it to their site only. If they got the well produced, very funny videos out to the wider web (with a picture of their car in the bottom corner or something) it would be seen by MANY MORE people than just putting a few banner ads on popular sites.

I’m going to keep going back to the Fiat site just to watch Danny’s Clips as he’s a funny guy but I’m not going to look at anything else on the site - but if you gave me the content in a way I could easily access then I might just take more of an interest - even if you put the info on the right hand side in the notes - or provide something ‘extra’ on your site in addition to what I can get from the You Tube clips.

Although - as the Fiat 500 looks like a pig ugly piece of crap of a car I don’t think I’d be that interested however much stuff they gave me on their site. Although I’m sure it drives wonderfuly and it does have that ‘cult’ appeal that will mean it will sell VERY well among a certain subset of society.

The same subset that loves watching You Tube videos while bored in the office - hello Fiat?

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iPlayer streaming

My blog seems to have been turned into an iPlayer love in lately - or at the very least a BBC screenshot fest. Well I might as well keep it up for a little bit longer.

Yesterday I brought you a screenshot of the iPlayer Radio - the integration of iPlayer with the old BBC Radio Player. Today, the first screenshot I have for you is the Radio button on the iPlayer website itself.

If you look closely at the screenshot above you’ll see that, instead of the usual small picture and download link you get with the iPlayer (well not in Firefox) you’ve got a big picture that fills the box and a Play button.

That’s because this is the Firefox friendly, streaming version of iPlayer - it’s basically using Flash and it’s not bad quality. Here’s another screenshot for you.

You can see above that you get a large flash video window, the network graphic (in this case BBC Two) and a brief bio about that episode and its duration. As this is in Firefox it tells me the download isn’t available. In IE it would give you a big download button.

You don’t need to install anything other than flash to watch shows on the iPlayer - this is how it should have been from the start. It’s now 100 times better than 4OD and ITV.com - I can just use it straight out of the bag.

The streaming is impressive, the flash video is pretty good quality and a good size as well (much larger than You Tube). You get the channel ident first and then the show itself starts. It takes a while to load properly but it must be a fairly large encode.

You can even share iPlayer videos - you can’t embed them but you can post the video to Dig, Facebook et al and you get a link to e-mail it to people or post it on your blog.

This is something the BBC seem to have been doing a lot on music based website lately - for example the Later with Jools Holland site lets you embed and share the link on social sites.

All in all this is a pretty good achievement - it’s what the Beeb should have done from the get go - I think the flash streaming is good enough that they could even just drop the download version. After all - why wait two hours to download something you could watch right now and will be there to watch anytime for up to a week.

The only reason I can see for downloading a show is if I know I won’t get to watch it for two or three weeks - the downloads will be alive for 30 days as long as you don’t start watching them.

It’s stream all the way for me - that’s why until now I prefered the 4OD and ITV.com - they basically let me press play and watch the shows straight away - even if Channel 4 do make me install their crappy software to do it. And the downside to ITV.com is that its Windows Media and requires me to install a codec or something first.

The iPlayer is now a thing of wonder - I go to bbc.co.uk/iplayer, find the show I missed, press play and watch it - that is how it should work, that’s the BBC working well. That’s brilliant simplicity.

UPDATE

Here is another screenshot of iPlayer working at full screen - just for fun.

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The Cult of 2

BBC TWO has long been known as the home of more alternative programming - it often either creates cult classics or airs shows that are already cult classics - it is basically the home of interesting programming, the opposite of the more mainstream BBC One.

The problem with One is that it has to be all things to all people - the new 8pm, 90 second bulletin can’t have music or scrolling text because it annoys a certain demographic, comedy has to be more restrained and shows have to fill the middle ground.

It is the channel of the popular, the shows that everyone watches even if they’ll never admit to watching it. Shows on BBC One (especially in prime time) are expected to average more than 5 million viewers a week.

The flip side of that (and for the purpose of this blog post I’m excluding BBC Three and Four as they’re really feeder or niche market channels), is BBC Two whose goal in life is to do something different, is to serve a niche, to provide programming for a mass (million+) but not mainstream audience (Three and Four don’t need to serve the ‘mass’).

On BBC One you have Cranford, Waterloo Road, Eastenders, Casualty and Doctor Who. On BBC Two you have Big Wine Adventure, Ben’s Zoo, Nigella, University Challenge and the Tudors.

Oh and Top Gear. But like the Office and Extras, Top Gear is a niche program that seems to be watched by the masses. It has what is approaching a mainstream audience - albeit slightly, and only slightly male skewed mainstream audience.

I write a roundup of Top Gear ratings each week for the FinalGear forums and for the past two series Top Gear has been averaging around 6.5 million viewers and a 23% audience share. Those are numbers BBC One would be pleased with - but would putting Top Gear on the mainstream channel kill the show?

Some hardcore car fans already believe Top Gear is too mainstream and any comedy and cocking about should be removed as it distracts from the car - but over the last five years the show has built another hardcore fanbase of people that watch it as a light entertainment/cult comedy show and that group aren’t fussed about cars and so for them Top Gear on BBC One wouldn’t be such a big deal.

After all if it went to One it would probably get a bigger budget, it would almost be guarenteed the money to convert to HD and in turn would probably also get an inevitable BBC Two ‘extras’ show.

You’d have Top Gear on BBC One every Sunday evening and then when the show finished you’d have a BBC Two version - probably with more stuff about the cars featured/used in the ‘boys own’ stunts on the BBC One show. It could also include news and information about the car industry today.

That might be the best way for Top Gear to serve two masters - but would it kill it? Would moving to BBC One and focusing on the stunts rip the soul out of the car show or is it already that way anyway?

Does BBC One really rip the soul out of shows or is it just the ‘arena’ stage for the television acts that have gone treble platinum or have been around a while? Is BBC One really that mainstream or is it just a worn in perception?

Oh and Top Gear reached a peak of 8.5 million viewers last week (an average of 7.9 million).

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God bless PR

One of the things I have to do in my job is interview people, I’ve spoken to a wide range of people on an even wider range of subjects - from Jersey bands and politicians to CEOs of major companies and big UK bands/artists.

The Jersey bands are all cool, they come in, have a chat and enjoy the limelight - the uk unsigned bands do much the same - but the UK bands that have been signed, once they’ve reached a certain level of success have a barrier around them.

Don’t get me wrong - the band themselves are usually pretty cool, nice bunch of guys that just want to have a chat in the same way as an unsigned band would - but they often have a pitbull of a PR person who will 1) ask you what questions you intend to ask, 2) stand there staring at you to make sure you ask the right questions and 3) rush them away as quickly as possible.

Not all PR people are like this, some just want to help you out but others take the role of minder a little too seriously.

That can be seen in the latest video to come to You Tube from Channel 4 news where a reporter asks a red flag question - using the monopoly word and then has the PR minders step in.

This video clip doesn’t involve a band though - it’s Apple’s Phil Schiller who’s supposed to be asking questions about the iPhone.

As you can see he strayed off the pre-approved list of questions - as any good journalist would to be honest - and suffered the wrath of the PR team because of it.

I hate pre-approved questions but sometimes the only way you can get someone to interview is by giving your question list and sometimes you need to interview that person - I’ll try to find somebody else first, someone that can talk about it who won’t demand a list of what I’m going to ask - but failing that I’ll send them off - then throw the list in the bin and ‘wing it’ on the day.

You then start with the questions you know they won’t mind to get at least something that can be used in a story to give the basic facts - then you start by asking slightly tougher questions as the interview goes on.

So far I’ve never had an interview stopped but have had (no names) interviewees stonewall me or give me so much bollocks in the answer that its unusable. Another trick of bands in pre-recorded interviews is to swear so much when answering a tougher question they know you won’t be able to use their answer.

That didn’t happen to S Club 7 when they were interviewed on the late great Liquid News by Claudia Winkleman. She asked them a question about money (another red flag) and the PR attack dog stepped in to pull them off - this was on a live show.

It’s not uncommon and PR people are just trying to protect their brand - but it is one of the things thats led to so much duming down of the news agenda. The big companies, bands and products are at the centre of 21st Century life but their respective PR teams make asking difficult questions almost impossible - or at least getting an answer.

What will happen to Channel 4 now is that they will find it VERY difficult to get anyone from Apple to talk to them again at least for a long time anyway. But I don’t think thats a bad thing - Channel 4 news is one of the best news services in the UK and they will find other, more creative ways to deal with Apple stories in future.

What annoys me most about all this PR bollocks though is that companies that stonewall difficult questions are also the first to shout, scream and whinge when a pissed off news service reports a ‘negative’ story about them.

Still - at least we have insider blogs to give us the story PR people won’t let us have.

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Not to adblock?

Every time I read the comments under a story, Digg post or forum thread that has even a small mention of adverts on web pages there is always at least one, but often MANY MORE, posts from people saying “I never see adverts” or “I use AdBlock so it doesn’t bother me” or annoyingly “what ads?”.

I can sympaphise with people that block ads, some websites go well over the top with the flashy, noisy, introcive banners and other sites aren’t using particularly trustworthy ad servers - so you could end up with all sorts of crap loaded on to your computer if you’re not careful.

But there is another side to this as well. I don’t normally contribute to threads about adverts on websites because my point of view seems to be the polar opposite of many others.

If you read some of these threads you get the feeling that they think everything should be free, there should be no adverts and they shouldn’t have to do anything to get what they want.

Content isn’t free though - ok it might appear to come online for nothing - this blog for instance doesn’t cost you a sausage and I can’t imagine anyone wanting to pay to read my ramblings - but it still costs me to host it, the domain name costs money and although I do it for passion - it still costs time to produce.

The same applies to other sites, especially newspapers and magazines where the content is written by professional writers who need to be paid, has heavy bandwidth that costs a small fortune and often includes images that have rights costs associated with them.

With this in mind I posted this simple comment to a thread on a message board about adverts on a popular magazine website recently “I don’t mean to sound harsh or anything but don’t you feel guilty about using adblock?”

My argument FOR leaving AdBlock off is a simple one - its the ads that cover the costs of running the website - it’s been made fairly clear that people aren’t prepared to pay for content online so the advertising model has been flourishing as a way of covering the costs of paying journalists, bandwidth bills etc.

At the moment not enough people use adblock for it to matter but if it does spread and nobody is seeing ads - do you think content on sites like topgear.com or guardian.co.uk will stay free for long?

I personally make a point of looking at ads on a site and if it interests me - clicking on the ad - after all - if I’ve enjoyed the content provided by that site - for free - then I think I owe them a little of my time in return.

If a website doesn’t get enough money to cover costs it will be forced to drop staff or cut services - nobody wants to see that from a site they enjoy.

Also - with advertising revenue and sales dropping through the floor in the traditional newspaper business - online revenue is going to become ever more important - that means showing adverts.

Good quality content doesn’t come cheap. Top writers charge a lot of money for their words, great photographers go to great legnths to get the photo and expect to be rewarded - musicians deserve some reward for their craft, talent and art - and so do film makers.

If everybody had the same attitude as some on forums, comments etc then nothing would get made. I do think we pay too much for some content - £15 for a DVD when it first comes out is rediculous - especially as the creatives behind the film see very little of the profit made in the end - Music is even more of a telling tale with most of the money going to the labels.

But we’re starting to break free from that now - musicians are releasing their own music and getting more of the final profit - indie films are becomming more popular and finding wider markets and soon we’ll see authors doing much the same.

Back to websites - A question I was wondering was “would you pay a monthly subscription for your favourite website in order to have the adverts turned off?”

For example - its very likely that people outside the UK are going to start seeing adverts across bbc.co.uk soon - the idea being that with half of the sites users coming from outside the UK, or people that don’t pay the licence fee that covers the sites costs - those people should contribute something.

Would you pay a monthly subscription of, say $5 to be able to view everything on bbc.co.uk without adverts?

Another question I was thinking about was “If a way was found for sites to be able to block access to anyone with AdBlock enabled - would you disable adblock to view the site or stop using it completely?”

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