Is the television industry's glass half empty or half full?

The current state of the television industry can be compared to the idiom, “Is the glass half empty or half full? The pessimistic view is that the end is nigh and television is on a steady decline with internet technology as its biggest threat. But there are many who take the optimistic “glass half full” approach and are looking for opportunities for television online.

Television’s once unassailable mass media dominance has been significantly reduced in recent years as networks have been squeezed by falling rates and the fragmentation their once loyal audiences.

Viewers can now choose between a growing number of digital channels, subscription TV and internet downloads of their favourite programs. They can skip the ads using personal video recorders like FoxtelIQ and TiVo, or once gain by downloading the programs.

And that’s not to mention the multitude of other devices competing for viewers attention, especially as new generations are being raised glued to mobile devices and 2 minute videos on YouTube.

The sun has set on television’s glory years and many in the industry lament its steady demise. These are dire times.

Or are they?

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A series of short posts with the latest facts about our digital economy and lives. Use them for your presentations, blogs, homework or trivia nights.

• 37% of American homes have Digital Video Recorders. Source: The Economist

• More than 8 million visits were made to news websites every minute, on the night Barack Obama won the US presidential election. On the first day of the 2010 Football World Cup, there were 12 million visits per minute. Source: BBC News

• 668,000 dotcom sites are registered every month. Source: BBC News

• Apple recently announced that its App Store now offers 225,000 apps which collectively have been downloaded 5 billion times. Source: The Economist

• The amount of reading people do, previously in decline because of television, has almost tripled since 1986, thanks to all the text on the internet. Source: The Economist

Announcement from Austereo:

The Hamish & Andy show will be a little smaller in size but equally as tasty in 2011.

Hamish & Andy and Austereo announce today the boys will do a free weekly podcast that will air a 2-hour radio show once a week on the Today Network and syndicated stations. There is also the option left open to pop up and work on additional projects with Austereo throughout the year.

Hamish & Andy said: “The idea of giving up the show completely was never considered as it is the most fun in the world. In addition to that, the listeners create the show just as much as us, so if we were to stop, we’d have had to consult every one of them. That’s an expensive phone bill.”

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A series of short posts with the latest facts about our digital economy and lives. Use them for your presentations, blogs, homework or trivia nights.

• Apple recently announced that its App Store now offers 225,000 apps which collectively have been downloaded 5 billion times. Source: The Economist

• In 2009, Facebook’s traffic grew by 66% and Twitter’s by 47%. Source: The Economist

• China’s internet population has reached 404 million, up from 384 million at the end of 2009, and the number of people accessing the internet with mobile phones there has reached 233 million. Source: AdAgeChina

• More than 8 million visits were made to news websites every minute, on the night Barack Obama won the US presidential election. On the first day of the 2010 Football World Cup, there were 12 million visits per minute. Source: BBC News Technology

• The number of members of LinkedIn with the title vice-president grew 426% faster than the membership of the site as a whole in 2005-09. Source: The Economist

Source: Radioinfo

Those close to John Laws report that the radio legend is not taking retirement all that well and is desperate to return to his natural habitat, the padded walls of a radio studio. In all likelihood, that studio will be at 2SM.

Sources say that Laws has lunched with Supernetwork owner, Bill Caralis, on two or three occasions over the past six months and that a deal has been struck for golden tonsils’ return on the 39 station network that covers much of NSW and southern QLD.

Channel 7 has announced a third channel to be named 7Mate. The station will be squarely focussed on the male 16 to 49 demographic with a range of shows like Family Guy, American Dad, 30 Rock, How I Met Your Mother as well as more as the much maligned Jersey Shore and Punk’d.

The big question is how Seven’s regional affilliate, Prime, will react. When Seven launched their second station 7TWO , Prime took quite a while to respond, allegedly due to unhappiness over the name not being suitable for affilliates.

Will it be called Prime-mate?

A series of short posts with the latest facts about our digital economy and lives. Use them for your presentations, blogs, homework or trivia nights.

• Over 8 million tablet computers are expected to be sold in 2010. Source: The Economist

• Facebook flashed more than 176 billion banner ads at users in the first three months of this year — more than any other site. Source: Time

• Sales of music in the form of digital files grew by 9.2% to exceed a quarter of total sales during 2009. Source: The Economist

• Five months after it was launched, users of Blippy – a Twitter-like service that broadcasts what people buy – share $1.5 million in transactions every week. Source: The Washington Post

• The average YouTube user spends 15 minutes a day on the website, compared with 5 hours that the average TV viewer spends in front of the box. Source: The Economist

I’m looking for a junior web developer to join the team at Sticky. We’ve had a solid year of growth and new client wins and it’s resulted in the necessary expansion of our team to keep up with demand.

We encourage a fun, dynamic environment so the most suitable person will balance the required skills with the right personality to be a good fit.

Please check out the position available and indicate your interest by Friday 3 September 2010.

Australia needs to join the high speed broadband revolution

As usual, the current Australian government has done a poor job at explaining the benefits of one of their major initiatives and as a consequence it is being largely ignored and risks being totally abandoned if they lose power. I’m talking about the National Broadband Network.

Unfortunately, the cost of the Australian government’s planned $43 billion National Broadband Network has become the issue rather than the benefits of high speed broadband for the country. The Opposition has focused on the cost, perhaps with good reason, and claim that the project is a White Elephant, yet they haven’t offered any viable alternatives.

Meanwhile the Government has failed to sell the real benefits of the NBN to the public and potentially negate the argument against.

I’m no infrastructure expert and I don’t pretend to know the best way to deliver high speed broadband to the nation but I do believe we as a country must have a high speed broadband network as soon as possible.

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Last week I was on a panel at the Australasian Media & Broadcasting Congress where we were discussing the future of advertising. One of the questions I was asked was whether I thought 3D TV was the future of television advertising. My response was an emphatic NO.

Masterchef winner Adam Liaw

Nonetheless we did discuss many concepts that probably going to be a big part of television and advertising going forward and it seems to me that Masterchef has them in spades.

1. A good storyline will always be successful, even if its not alone in guaranteeing success. Masterchef cleverly builds towards a climax like most reality TV shows but really allows us to follow the growth of the contestants over the series. We get to know them and see them improve.

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