The Good Old Days (Part 2)

Back in January of 2006, NPH started a conversation about an initiative called One Laptop Per Child (OLPC).

Today we continue our review of blog highlights by revisiting that post. Find it here.

What made this post a highlight was the level of serious discussion it created among a number of different voices, including Ryno, Michael, and Stephanie.

*Update: read the Wikipedia entry about OLPC to learn more about the initiative's history, goals, and future.

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It's A Good Sign, But . . .

Alana Semuels has a story in today's LA Times about junk food companies, including Coca-Cola and Hershey, who have publicly taken a voluntary pledge to stop advertising their products to kids. Sort of.

The pledge restricts television ads on shows aimed at kids 12 and younger. The problem is that kids watch a lot more on TV than those shows.

Critics of the move have no faith in food companies to look out for the wellbeing of kids at all. here's the money quote:

"We shouldn't be counting on the food industry to safeguard public health," said Susan Linn, a Harvard professor and co-founder of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. "Corporations are bound by law to increase shareholder profits, not to promote the well-being of children."

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Commercials as Entertainment

NPH is on vacation this week, enabling him to indulge in such luxuries as American Idol. Incidentally, the real entertainment during Fox's broadcast last night was not the parade of magnificently mediocre Idol wannabees, but rather Oleg the Cab Driver, the star of Fox's innovative eight-second commercial pods.

Viewers were treated to Oleg talking to Rosie O'Donnell and Oleg ripping on Donald Trump's hair. The spots actually started the night before on Fox's broadcast of 24, and the network plans to continue through the rest of the week.

Read about it here.

And watch two clips here:



What NPH finds intriguing about the spots is that they're not attached to any advertiser. They are original programming content run during the commercial breaks with the sole objective of keeping viewers from changing the channel or skipping through the ads via their DVR. Of course, their launch runs strangely close to the start of the Nielson ratings blitz, which has some people calling it nothing more than a stunt.

But NPH is intrigued. We think there's a real possibility here for television advertising time to be changed into something else. Could it be that viewers habits (aided by new technology) of skipping out on ads has finally caught the attention of programmers, so that the 30 second ad spot will soon be a thing of the past?

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Do You Really Want To Win?

Forbes magazine has a piece up about the mechanics of American Idol exposure for those who compete. Particularly of interest is the cut that producer Simon Fuller's production company takes from contestants' subsequent record sales, which is upwards of 50% when the industry standard is 15%. Further, contestants are sworn to secrecy regarding what they're actually paid by Fuller's company (19 Entertainment), whether in record sales or in revenues from live concert appearances. Tellingly, most of the past winners have severed ties with 19 as quickly as possible.

Also of interest is this chart from The Church of The Consumer, laying out the viewers and voters from year-to-year compared to actual album sales. Obviously, the former consistently go up and up, while the latter don't do the same. What determines how many records a given winner sells? Could it have something to do with the way 19 Entertainment mis-handles and mis-markets the Fantasia Barrino's and Taylor Hicks' of its competition?

Note: this post previously said that 19 Entertainment was Simon Cowell's production company and not Simon Fuller's. Thanks, Matty, for the correction.

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The Anti Advertising Agency

Culture Jammers at work. NPH marvels.

Check out The Anti Advertising Agency.

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Video Pancakes

A couple of weeks ago NPH featured 39 Second Single, a web-based video serial about a 39 year old single woman in New York. We're now pleased to share with our readers Video Pancakes, the video blog (or vlog) of 39 Second Single's producer. NPH has been enjoying Video Pancakes for about a month now, and we're always impressed with the simplicity of the production and the poignancy of the subject matter. There's something authentic and sincere about this that impresses us greatly. Enjoy.

Click To Play

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Politics and The Internet

BuzzMachine takes up a new report by the Pew Internet And American Life Project in which the 2006 mid-term elections are analyzed in terms of the role of the internet. Read the full report here. Here's the article abstract:

Twice as many Americans used the internet as their primary source of news about the 2006 campaign compared with the most recent mid-term election in 2002.

Some 15% of all American adults say the internet was the place where they got most of their campaign news during the election, up from 7% in the mid-term election of 2002.

A post-election survey shows that the 2006 race also produced a notable class of online political activists. Some 23% of those who used the internet for political purposes – the people we call campaign internet users – actually created or forwarded online original political commentary or politically-related videos.

What NPH finds most interesting about this is the new content being created and distributed. That internet video technology allows people to have a more active role in the political process, even if it means simply being the guy holding the camera when George Allen utters a racial epithet.

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Pirate Ads

Variety has a story this morning about Wal-Mart placing banner ads on The Pirate Bay, one of the most popular P2P sites for bit-torrent downloading of copyrighted material. On the face of it, this seems to not make sense, since the patrons of bit-torrent sites are obviously choosing the run 'round media retails and not through them. Does Wal-Mart think that a tech-savvy 16 year old looking for the latest episode of "Prison Break" is going to stop what he's doing to purchase old episodes (one's he's already got) on DVD?

But the real issue here, as pointed up by blogherald, is that of a conflict of interest. How does the Motion Picture Association of America feel about a retailer of its product getting in bed with an outfit that's illegally distributing is?

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