LINK TV Love

If you are fortunate enough to receive your TV signal from satellite, either Direct TV or DISH, you have access to the coolest TV network in history. The best source of international news, LINK TV - Television Without Borders, also features eye-opening documentaries, world music videos; and, feature films.

The Author discovered many of the worldbeat acts highlighted in this blog on LINK TV. Musicians like Andrea Echeverri and Aterciopelados; Ojos Negros; Rokia Traore; Lila Downs; Habib Koite; Sa DingDing and Manu Chau.

Then there's the news. LINK TV broadcasts Aljazeera's "Witness" series; European news (Journal) from Deutsche Welle; Amy Goodman's Democracy Now, Eye on Tibet, and the network's own Mosaic - International News from the Middle East. Mosaic is a favorite, a very important news program that is entirely unique in that it offers news reports from independent and state-owned TV news stations around the Middle East. To best understand the viewpoints of all the parties involved in that volatile region, it is necessary to step out of the box and away from one's comfort-zone to watch and listen to the news from all sources. More data is a good thing.

We make a regular contribution to the user-supported network. Please consider joining us. LINK TV's celebrity sponsors include Danny Glover, Charlize Theron, Harry Belefonte, Taj Majal, Willy Nelson, Angelique Kidjo, and my friend Gina Smith.

Just last night, LINK TV ran one of their great foreign feature films. I was spellbound. The Algerian, Bent Keltoum (Keltoun's Daughter), was directed by Mehdi Charef.

Rallia, a young Swiss woman, returns home to her birthplace in Algeria hoping to find her mother, Keltoum. She meets a weathered old man who she learns is her grandfather (Brahim Ben Salah), who warmly welcomes her and tells her that her mother works far away in a luxury resort, but that she returns home each Friday. Rallia also meets her aunt Nedjma (Baya Belal) who is mentally challenged and ostracized by the community. Waiting for her mother to return, Rallia tries to participate in the family’s daily life and encounters the hardships of the desert. Finally, she decides she can no longer wait, and sets out on a trek into the desert with Nedjma to find her mother.

There's a list of almost 40 international films featured on LINK TV for sale at Amazon, here. If you get your TV via YouTube, LINK TV has a channel. So you can watch worldbeat vids or the news of the day from your PC, MAC or iPhone. LINK TV Twitter Link.

LINK TV
Independent Media
Television

Why the MSM Sucks and Nobody Watches

Thanks to Boing Boing for ferreting this excellent video out of the YouTube universe. Graphic and revealing evidence of the depths to which local news, in the country's second biggest market, has descended. Though happily embedded in southern Oregon for almost 20 years, The Author grew up listening to KTLA News. You know, back when there were a few real journalists among newsreaders and info-entertainers. And the MSM wonders why it is hemorrhaging viewers. Such cluelessness is hard to fathom. Okay, here's why the local news is losing viewers. Just watch as this "News Reporter" takes on the wrong gearhead and gets flamed. Sweet.


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TV News

XM - Sirius to Merge

The two players in the Satellite radio space have announced plans to merge. 14 million users are rejoicing, with few casting wary eyes toward the attendant loss of competition. That could be a sticking point, as current rules expressly forbid one company from acquiring the other. The expectation on the part of many pundits and analysts is to see a waiver of that rule. A newly merged broadcast giant will likely put additional pressure on already struggling local radio broadcasters. The complexion of media creation and distribution is undergoing tectonic realignments, as are the players and the content. Given the likelihood of robust growth in net-based content distribution, including streaming radio broadcast, the only long-term survival model for the satellite delivery systems was to merge.

Hate Radio Hacks

Since the U.S. election, conservative talk-show hosts have found themselves with diminishing audiences. Hey, the country is turning blue and progressive Democrats (the opposite of neo-conservative Republicans) swept both houses of the Congress and many state houses as well.

It seems, as a result, some hosts are seeking to hold their already questionable, fringe audiences by ratcheting-up the rhetoric. At least that's the case in southern Oregon where I live. In a Friday morning talk-show program, local hosts called some of my personal associates "bottom-feeders," and suggested they should be taken out and hung. Uh huh. That's right. As hard to believe as it is.

So while my colleagues were taking care of business, at work, at home, tending to their children in some cases, these hosts were slamming them on the air in really despicable language. Now that's brave, don't you think? Publicly picking on folks from a safe distance, without their knowledge and with little or no chance to respond. That's the American Way, according to this "entertainment" model.

Naturally, I took umbrage at the comments and did an extensive search on "talk radio"+incitement+negligence. I learned a lot. Read about the really egregious case of KSFO in San Francisco (ironically an ABC/Disney station) that resulted in a lot of very bad publicity, some firings and a lawsuit. In one of KSFO's many episodes, a drunk talk-show listener who had been angered by comments he heard called a state senator five times with death threats.

According to the Missouri Bar: "Negligence" is a well-known ground for lawsuits. More and more, courts are subjecting the media to negligence suits, making the media pay when they expose others to risk of bodily harm."

In other words, journalists and talk-show hosts encounter a measure of predictable financial harm to themselves if they fail to observe the doctrine of negligence as it applies to their broadcasts. Short of actual financial or tort liability, radio stations that feature hate-filled talk radio shows risk (1) bad publicity; (2) loss of advertising revenue; (3) reprimand and unwanted attention from parent corporations; (4) FCC Complaints; (5) local efforts to interfere with regular station licensing; and, (6) potential time- and resource-draining lawsuits. I am working on a draft strategic campaign plan that will make these real, meaurable risks.

To make matters even better for those of us with complaints in this area, Radio is suffering from a significant loss of listenership and market. That makes sense with the advent of satellite and IP radio. One can receive streaming broadcasts from sources worldwide. That gives us more leverage, because it amplifies the effects of our efforts. And, we've got allies like Media Matters for America. Here in Jackson County, we're evaluating our alternatives. Local Station management is not unresponsive to the community and we'll see just what happens. More later. Leave me a comment if you've had a similar experience.

Web 2.0 - Brave New World for Marketeers

The blogosphere is buzzing with posts about viral marketing. No surprise there. The whole marketing world is undergoing profound reconfiguration. Every part of the equation is changing, often 180 degrees. The changing complexion of marketing reflects larger changes in culture, connectivity, media and technology. Welcome to Web 2.0.

We've reached that disruptive moment when a new technology actually creates tectonic movement, displacing traditional topographies with entirely new landscapes. Wow. Bloggers are riding the crest of the wave, and I must say it is certainly exhilarating. At the same time, traditional media and information providers are in serious decline. Network television is loosing viewers to YouTube and IPTV; metropolitan daily papers with very famous names are hemorrhaging subscribers; glossy monthly magazines are in decline, and the very future of broadcast radio is in doubt. Now that's a sea change.

Many observers have identified the bottom-up, inside-out dynamic involved in this ongoing process. For marketeers, that is a key concern as well. Marketing has traditionally been a top-down proposition; driven by display advertising, radio and television spots, direct mail and public relations. Now, marketing is all about bulletins and buzz; instant messaging and "friending" practices; and consumer participation. I'm particularly impressed with the musings of social network marketing maven (and web Vamp) Danah Boyd - who pens apophenia - on bulletins and buzz.


These new marketing and consumer context development techniques are often referred to as "Viral Marketing." With respect to my colleague Mack Collier at "The Viral Garden," one of my favorite business blogs, I think we're better served by viewing the new market as "neural." Viruses, from my recollections of pathobiology, have only their DNA in common with their point of origin. Sure, there is a network of infecting vectors, but the connections aren't very permanent and it's difficult to talk infrastructure around the viral construct.

I think the nervous system model works so much better for visualizing the challenges and opportunities ahead. Nerves can create semi-permanent pathways that are strengthened by use and can interact in complex ways with surrounding systems and topographies. And nerves have trigger thresholds that are useful metaphors for creating and measuring the effects of buzz. When a key nerve nexus is engaged and fires, it sends impulses (bulletins) to all of its system connections ("friends"). Nerve pathways loose strength and system-wide relevance with disuse. The human brain is a content aggregator that does a remarkable job of tagging, weighting, organizing and storing data. These assets are made available to the rest of the body's systems not only on-demand, but in anticipation of need. Turns out the body doesn't have a rigid hierarchical structure with a top-down design and central authority - it is, rather, a collaborative cooperative. That's what web 2.0 marketing will look like, IMO.

I've had a few decades - on corporate and agency sides - to develop sensitivities to change in this arena. Since a lot of those years were spent in high-technology settings with latest-and-greatest products, I feel qualified to offer some observations and opinions.

I'm currently using some of the new tools, employing a number of web-based strategies and working in social networking spaces for a major project destined for PBS. As executive producer for operations and promotion, my day-job includes hours of online work, research, contact and tracking. Producer Mark DuMond recently interviewed me for a two-part podcast about emerging new marketing models and techniques. You can listen to part one and then part two for about a half-an-hour overview from my perspective.