Back in March 2007 I received an email from a friend telling me about the plight of Eric Volz. If you remember, he was sitting in a Nicaraguan jail accused of murdering his girlfriend. Although this bit of news happened to be true, I was initially unconvinced and it took me a fair amount of time to figure it out. I chronicled this episode on my blog in an article entitled, “Searching For News.” The thesis was simple, we live in the information age and unbranded information, even if received from a trusted source may not be true.

“Now we are entering (some would argue that we have been in one for a decade) a world where emails from friends with seemingly real news stories and seemingly real references may be casually passed along and consumed as facts. We’ve always trusted our friends as good sources of info. We’ve grown up (even the digital natives) in a world of trusted news brands — why shouldn’t we be conditioned to believe what we read if formatted like news, is, in fact, news?

This is just the beginning. UGC as video content has made all the news this year, but the real story is just bubbling under the surface. The moulin of user generated news is about to seep under the branded news glaciers we believe will never melt or fall into the sea. Let’s just hope the melting ice doesn’t redraw the map to the point where we won’t recognize the coastline.”

In recent weeks there has been an inexplicably high amount of misinformed news … seemingly more than normal. While this is nothing new (Remember Jayson Blair?), the nomination of a relatively unknown politician as John McCain’s running mate has spurred all sorts of unsubstantiated rumors; from the baby factor, to drug use, drunk driving, guns, political kick backs, affairs, the list goes on and on. It would make a good soap opera but for the fact that the story is too trite and the characters are too stereotypical.

First, there were blogger accusations that Mrs. Palin had covered up her daughter’s pregnancy by claiming it to be her own. Some claimed that four-month-old Trig, who was born with Down syndrome, was Bristol’s baby, not Sarah’s. As we all know, Bristol is five-months pregnant, which debunks this rumor. However, the rumor hasn’t evaporated and there are certainly thousands, if not more, who still believe Sarah was covering for her daughter.

It’s not just bloggers getting in on the action, “real” reporters (whatever that means) can’t get enough either. So much so that the fine folks at Bloomberg have hosted several rather comical, absurd articles in the past few weeks. First was their inclusion of the Steve Jobs obituary on August 27th. . While it is commonplace for major news outlets to pre-write obituaries of famous people, Mr. Jobs opened his speech at Apple’s “Let’s Rock” event this week by proving he was not dead. If that’s not bad enough, Bloomberg also had a hand in publishing the Sarah Palin drunk driving report, which, it turns out, isn’t true. It was her husband, Todd, who was arrested for a DWI, 22 years ago. .

In a similar instance, a 2002 story from the Chicago Tribune on United Airlines filing for bankruptcy was mistaken as new by Income Securities Advisors Inc. and subsequently picked up by Google News and, you guessed it, Bloomberg News. The story effectively tanked United Airlines stock, causing a 76% drop in share value. All this just two years after United emerged from bankruptcy protection.

One of the most popular of the Sarah Palin stories, and there are a handful of good ones, is the infamous American flag Bikini/AK-47 photo. This photoshopped masterpiece spread through the web like wildfire, so much so that CNN reporter Lola Ogunnaike commented that Palin “looks good in a bikini clutching an AK-47, but is she equipped to run the country?” Too bad it’s not the Governor and it’s not even an AK-47!

Another piece of Palin intrigue was the open letter written by Wasilla, AK resident Anne Kilkenny, who has supposedly known Palin for years. The letter highlights Sarah’s rise to power and her actions along the way. Kilkenny is objective, and honest in her assertion that she herself has sparred with Palin in the past, specifically over the banning of books in the town library. This letter was picked up for publication by The Nation, The [Illinois] Daily Journal and the Anchorage Daily News. But, as with the Eric Volz story, I received an email about this letter from a friend in Upstate New York who told me that he had received it from two different people that morning. Were his sources credible? Was this letter real?

My imperfect solution was to check the letter out on urbanlegends.com and snopes.com. They said the AK-47/bikini pic was fake, the list of banned books was fake and the letter from Anne Kilkenny as partially true. The open letter from Ms. Kilkenny, a lifelong Democrat who supposedly attended every city counsel meeting during Palin’s first year in office, was even featured as part of an article in the New York Times. Partially true?

We media professionals have slid down the slippery slope of journalistic integrity much farther than I could ever have imagined. Some of our most trusted news sources are using User Generated Content as source material and have no more ability to check their facts than average Internet users do.

Mistakes happen, UAL was serendipitously taken out to the woodshed and their share price with it. It could have happened to anyone. But having a CNN reporter think, for a second, that the picture of a woman in a bikini holding a rifle could actually be Governor Palin and reporting it as such is truly inexcusable for a professional news organization. Anyone with a minute of training could tell you that the weapon was not an AK-47 and that the picture was most likely “fun with Photoshop.”

In these times of ubiquitous communications tools, video production, audio production and graphic arts capabilities, it is incumbent for professional news media outlets to exercise above average judgment and demonstrate a higher standard of editorial decision-making. Otherwise, it will all just be noise.

Shelly Palmer is a consultant and the host of MediaBytes a daily news show featuring news you can use about technology, media & entertainment, Managing Director of Advanced Media Ventures Group LLC and the author of Television Disrupted: The Transition from Network to Networked TV (2006, Focal Press). Shelly is also President of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, NY (the organization that bestows the coveted Emmy® Awards). He is the Vice-Chairman of the National Academy of Media Arts & Sciences an organization dedicated to education and leadership in the areas of technology, media and entertainment. Palmer also oversees the Advanced Media Technology Emmy® Awards which honors outstanding achievements in the science and technology of advanced media. You can read Shelly’s blog here. Shelly can be reached at shelly@palmer.net

In case you haven’t noticed, the business of broadcast television is in trouble. Ratings have been trending down year over year for more than 30 years and there’s no end in sight. Most pundits blame this audience fragmentation on outside forces like the proliferation of cable channels, DVDs, video gaming, DVR’s and most recently online video, personal video and wireless offerings.

People, who should know better, constantly parrot misinterpreted data about the deleterious effect of TiVo (the noun describing the entire genus of DVR’s) on commercial advertising and how the :30 second spot is dead. Others like to call the medium a vapid wasteland of unwatchable programs. All of the professional explanations for the decline of broadcast television ratings seem to agree that the problem comes from outside forces and an unavoidable changing landscape. I disagree.

Yes, the business is not what it once was, and yes, there is a bit of empirical data to support the idea that enhanced consumer control over media consumption has had a significant impact on viewing habits since the introduction of the “included with purchase” electronic remote control in the mid-80’s. But, none of this has had even a slight impact when compared to the business culture and business rules that have evolved over the same 30 year time period.

According to the New York Post, Ben Silverman, co-head of programming for the NBC Television Network said the following: “We’re managing for margin and not for ratings.” There is nothing technology can do to help or hurt this strategy. It is truly the end of broadcast television.

If you want to see TV ratings improve, the business improve and the ROI improve, try investing in programming, not margins. It will be a refreshing twist for the 21st Century. And, it is really the only thing that will turn the business around. The recipe for profitable broadcast television is pretty simple: Develop large audiences that you can accurately measure and sell them to advertisers who need to reach them. The shows that do this even have a name, “Hits.” If, on the other-hand, you want to sunset an organization and squeeze every last dime out of it before it gives up the ghost, manage for margins.

By the way, Ben Silverman is a personal friend of mine and I both respect and admire him. His success is laudable and he is a great guy. In fact, what I love about Ben is that he actually had the guts to come out and say something that no one else in his position would ever have the guts to say. This is not an NBC problem; it’s an industry problem. Ben just held up the mirror. The title of the Post’s article was, “Silverman Channeling Jack Welch.” Not only is this is not a compliment for a television programming executive, it portends a dismal and disturbing future.

Winston Churchill once said, “The farther you look back, the further you can see into the future.” So, let’s look back a few years to the “golden age” of radio. Back then, disc jockeys ruled. They became the stations’ program directors because they had their fingers on the pulse of the audience. As the business evolved, very successful program directors were promoted to station management. It was easy to spot a station with a GM who came from programming. Talent was treated with respect, content was king and audiences came first.

As the business of radio matured, professional business people started to look closely at the cash cow and you could see the focus of management turn to sales. Radio became extremely competitive from a commercial point of view (it was always creatively competitive). The new superstars of the business were the sales guys and you saw a shift in senior management to sales-oriented executives. It was easy to spot a radio station that was run by a former GSM, it was all about sales and promotion. These execs knew where the money came from and managed the stations differently than their programming predecessors. But the industry kept growing because sales and programming had always been in a surrealistic paso doble that, when properly managed, produced excellent financial results.

Ultimately, sales-oriented station management caught the attention of pure money people from the outside world. If a well programmed station was a cash cow, a fully sold out, well run station was a cash machine and pure money people like that kind of ROI.

What happened next was inevitable, but unfortunate. Management evolved once again. This time, accountants, bankers, lawyers and professional P&L managers from outside the radio business took over. They looked for efficiencies, consolidated divisions, rolled up station groups and turned the entire enterprise into a mass of M&A deals. The term “exit strategy” was the new goal and everything else was secondary.

Ben Franklin, who, among other things, is the great, great grandfather of mass media in America, once said, “Those who are unwilling to study history are doomed to repeat its mistakes.” If you look at the radio business today, it is hard to find a station that has made any meaningful investment in programming in the recent memory of man or beast. The business is about consolidated sticks, pre-canned, pre-formatted programming, sales of aggregated, de minimis audiences and margin. The industry is not about growth, it’s about holding on to what’s left.

The television industry has always followed the fortunes of the radio business. A quick rule of thumb is that changes in the video business are usually about 10 years behind similar changes in the audio business. I think this arm-chair research and the associated aphorism is supported with enough historical evidence to be taken seriously. “There’s nothing to watch on Saturday night.” says the viewer. “There’s no audience on Saturday night, so there’s no reason to invest in it …” says the margin-oriented television programming executive. This is a vortex of logical rhetoric. It is almost impossible to break free and stop the cycle. What can be done?

The answer is very clear. Super Bowl XLII (February 3, 2008) was the most-watched sporting event on record and the second most-watched TV program in history. Nielsen says an average of 97.5 million viewers watched the Giants-Pats contest. (The most-watched program is still the M*A*S*H finale, which drew 106 million viewers in 1983.) The big game also broke a record for total viewership, with 148.3 million viewers (persons age 2+ watching all or part of the game). The previous record stood at 144.4 million for Super Bowl XXXVIII in 2004. What this tells us is that if you put on a compelling piece of content, there actually is a television audience to watch it.

Is it unfair to use an annual emergent sporting event as an example? Perhaps. The job of television is to inform, enlighten and entertain. So, I will simply point to the last episode of M*A*S*H as the appropriate benchmark. You will immediately argue that every show is not M*A*S*H and that most entertainment shows will never find an audience of that size. I agree. Most shows will not ever attain that kind of rating. But I can also assure you that M*A*S*H, Friends, Seinfeld, etc. were not programmed for margin. They were programmed for ratings to the exclusion of every other benchmark.

Remember, people don’t have Internet rooms in their houses, they don’t have video game rooms in their houses, most don’t even have reading rooms – but most households in America do have TV rooms. And, in most of the 112.8 million television households, there is a TV in more than one room. TV technology is everywhere; it’s the programming that’s nowhere!

Shelly Palmer is the host of MediaBytes a daily news show featuring news you can use about technology, media & entertainment, Managing Director of Advanced Media Ventures Group LLC and the author of Television Disrupted: The Transition from Network to Networked TV (2006, Focal Press). Shelly is also President of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, NY (the organization that bestows the coveted Emmy® Awards). He is the Vice-Chairman of the National Academy of Media Arts & Sciences an organization dedicated to education and leadership in the areas of technology, media and entertainment. Palmer also oversees the Advanced Media Technology Emmy® Awards which honors outstanding achievements in the science and technology of advanced media. You can read Shelly’s blog here. Shelly can be reached at shelly@palmer.net

Consumers have demonstrated a preference for three basic types of online video experiences over the past few months: Video Snacking, Download-to-Own and Online Television. Each of these three consumer behaviors has a specific value chain associated with it. Video Snacks are hard to directly monetize. Download-to-Own files are hard to protect. But, Online Television is, for all intents and purposes, television using the public Internet as the distribution network. And people who have popular content are enjoying excellent financial results from making that content available online.

You can find examples of Internet Television at hulu.com, abc.com, nbc.com, cbs.com, fox.com. In fact, almost every major television network offers some kind of online viewing experience for their most popular shows. Which begs the question, “What does quality online video look like?” Should it look like Standard Definition Television? Should it look like HDTV? Should it have to meet “broadcast quality” standards as a benchmark?

We have come to the time in the transition from network to networked television where setting some minimum requirements for the online viewing experience would be helpful. I’d like to assemble a group of video professionals, compile a list of requirements and set-up some independent testing groups to play video watchdog for the industry. And, I’d like you to help me get it done!

To start the dialog, here are my suggestions for the subjective attributes of quality online video:

1 - The video has to start very quickly (like within a second of when you press the play button).

2 - Continuous, full motion video that looks sharp at full screen.

3 - Colorspace that matches or exceeds broadcast NTSC television.

4 - Stereo audio with a dynamic range that exceeds broadcast standards.

5 - No buffering after the initial picture comes on, no exceptions.

6 - No drop out, pixilated frames or other artifacts on the screen.

To achieve these subjective goals, we will have to create a set of test criterion that takes several things into consideration:

1 - Encoding, the art and science of master video files and making them available for distribution.

2 - The player software.

3 - The topology of the distribution network.

4 - Speed of the user’s broadband connection.

5 - The quality of the user’s broadband connection.

6 - The quality of the user’s computer.

With all of these variables, it is very difficult to maintain video quality from video publisher to consumer (no matter how you define quality). Mostly because there are so many components along the signal path that video publishers don’t control. But let’s press on.

If we were to start thinking about measuring the quality of an online video viewing experience here are a few things we might measure:

1 - Start Time: As measured by the average time it takes for video to begin playing.

2 - Quantity of Impairments: As measured by the number of impairments over a given length of time.

3 - Average Length of Impairments: As measured by the average duration of stalls or buffering.

4 - Wait Time on Seek: As measured by the average duration of buffering or stalls before the video begins to play from the seek points.

5 - Wait Time on Ad Break / Return: As measured by the average delay duration when programming cuts to an ad, or when an ad ends and returns to regular programming.

6 - Video Quality Delivered: As measured by average video bit rate delivered.

7 - Link Efficiency: As measured by the percentage of a user’s bandwidth consumed.

8 - Encroachment Test: Tiered scoring of the above tests as additional viewers move onto the network.

The list above isn’t complete, but it’s a start.

We also need to set standards that adjust for the type of broadband environment in which the video will be consumed. For example: ADSL at 768 kpbs down and 384 kpbs up or Cable modem at 5 Mbps down by 768 kpbs up. Unless you take the network environment into consideration, the standards will be hard to achieve. We will have to “handicap” our standards to the limits of each network.

So here’s the pitch. Online video is coming into its own. People are watching and, as in industry, we need to define a quality experience the same way that the broadcast networks do. We need to create testing environments and set standards of quality that each distributor can strive to achieve. I think it’s a job for everyone who wants to be involved. If you’re interested in helping out , send me an email. It’s time.

Shelly Palmer is the host of MediaBytes a daily news show featuring news you can use about technology, media & entertainment, Managing Director of Advanced Media Ventures Group LLC and the author of Television Disrupted: The Transition from Network to Networked TV (2006, Focal Press). Shelly is also President of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, NY (the organization that bestows the coveted Emmy® Awards). He is the Vice-Chairman of the National Academy of Media Arts & Sciences an organization dedicated to education and leadership in the areas of technology, media and entertainment. Palmer also oversees the Advanced Media Technology Emmy® Awards which honors outstanding achievements in the science and technology of advanced media. You can read Shelly’s blog here. Shelly can be reached at shelly@palmer.net

Neuros, which brought us the OSD machine that’s supposed to make it easy to record any digital media, then play it on any device, has released their new “Unlocked” standard they hope will catch fire.

Customers disagree about how good the OSD is, and how easy to use (which probably means it’s a techie device that techies like), but the concept can’t help but take hold, eventually. People want control of their music, movies, TV shows, etc. Why should you (or I?) be prevented from watching whatever, however and wherever I want? This is why I have PocketMac — to more easily get stuff from my Mac to my Windows Mobile handheld — why I put things on DVD, why I connect my computers and share files, and why I get pissed off every time I try to plug my daughter’s video iPod into a machine other than the one it was originally synced to. (Apple tells me I’ll have to wipe it clean to sync it up, when all I really want to do is drag one or two things I legitimately have on or off to or from another machine.) These kinds of restrictions piss off a lot of people, and while I understand the need and desire to protect, I also think openness over time will be a huge pull.

Dorian Benkoil is a senior consultant in digital publishing for Teeming Media, a New York-based media group. An MBA and award-winning journalist and editor, he was a foreign correspondent for The Associated Press and Newsweek, and handled editorial and business matters as managing producer for ABCNews.com and editorial director of mediabistro.com. He writes regularly for the Jack Myers Media Business Report. He also blogs at mediaflect.com.

Earlier this week, I was speaking at a private seminar that Naked Communications put together for executives at NBC/Uni’s Sci Fi Channel. I covered many of my favorite topics: online video, the potential impact of peer-assisted streaming mesh networks, mobile advertising, social media, etc. The goal of the speech was to help the audience understand how to think about the future, rather than to predict it.

Towards the end of my speech, I asked the following question: “If we wanted to travel to Alpha Centauri (the nearest star system to the Earth) when should we start the project?”

Located a mere 24 trillion miles from downtown Manhattan, Proxima Centauri, the dimmest orb in the Alpha Centauri star system, is actually the nearest star to the Earth. It takes light, which travels at 186,200 miles per second, 4.22 years to make the trip.

Now, the Voyager spacecraft is generally considered to be the fastest man-made object traveling in space. It is heading out into interstellar space at a blistering, 38,000 miles per hour.

So, if it was pointed at Proxima Centauri (which it is not) it would take Voyager approximately 73,000 years to get there.

Let’s think about project management for a moment. Most of the technology we need for this journey does not yet exist. My rocket scientist friends estimate that it will take mankind approximately 1,000 years to build the ship. Inside that 1,000 year time-frame, let’s assume that technological advances allow us to travel four times faster than Voyager’s top speed. If we start today, we could reasonably expect to arrive at Proxima Centauri in about 20,000 years.

However, if we wait 10,000 years to start the project, technological advances might allow us a four-fold increase in speed for each 1,000 years we wait which would reduce travel time to about 2,000 years.

Which brings us to the Alpha Centauri paradox. If we start the project today, it will take us approximately 20,000 years to get to Proxima Centauri, but if we wait 10,000 years to start the project, the whole trip will take about 12,000 years.

Yes, in the race to the nearest star, waiting 10,000 years to start will get you there 8,000 years ahead of the people who start building technology today. Would you wait?

At The Cable Show ‘07, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts personally demonstrated the next generation of ultra-fast, wideband cable modems. The technology is about 25 times faster that current cable modems.

For the geeks in the audience, we’re talking about a 150 Mbps broadband connection. For normal people, just imagine downloading a movie or television show file from the Apple iTunes store. Using a current technology cable modem, a typical 300 MB file takes about 15 minutes to download. The new DOCSIS 3.0 modems will download the same file in 15 seconds.

We are well out of the “if” phase of the business and totally immersed in the “how to” phase. So how should we be thinking about incremental technological improvement and its sociological impact?

Let’s think about what businesses might benefit from blindingly fast, fixed, wired, broadband connections. Movie downloads are obvious. Does this mean that there is a day and date release model in the near term? Actually, it is neither closer nor farther away. The only thing preventing day and date release of new theatrical motion pictures are the business rules associated with the traditional model. Comcast will most likely make this type of content available over traditional VOD or PPV as soon as they get the deal done. Technological advances won’t impact it at all.

OK, what about older movies and movie libraries? Certainly a faster broadband connection would help those businesses, right? Yes, faster is better, but movie files are pretty big and there’s really no way to casually manage large media files and move them around the house. A super-fast broadband connection is only a very small part of the value proposition of the download-to-own video content business.

How about good old fashioned browsing? Nope, that’s not going to feel much faster unless users upgrade their video cards and Ethernet cards. Not much value there.

What about over-the-top, cable-bypass, consumer file sharing and peer-assisted streaming mesh networks? Spot on! A big pipe into your house will allow you to enjoy lots of streaming content. With a very fast broadband connection applications like VoIP and IPTV and alarm-system monitoring can all work simultaneously. More bandwidth, more applications — more applications, more productivity.

So when should we start building business units to take advantage of superiorly fast cable modems? Now would be a good time. Two years ago (about 10,000 years in Internet time), it would have taken millions of dollars and thousands of programming hours to create a rich media-enabled website with social networking tools. Now, you can practically create one with open source code. And, even if you need to build out your concept with enterprise grade commercial software, it will cost you a fraction of what it cost two years ago and take far less time to accomplish.

If you start building your new business unit now you are very likely to achieve critical mass before older, more established companies with existing and legacy infrastructure get to market. That’s the Alpha Centauri paradox. They started years ago but you can start now and beat them to profitability. Just don’t start a project to get you to Proxima Centauri, for that you’ll have to wait.

Shelly Palmer is Managing Director of Advanced Media Ventures Group LLC and the author of Television Disrupted: The Transition from Network to Networked TV (2006, Focal Press). Shelly is also the 1st vice president of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, NY and Chairman of the Advanced Media Committee of the Emmy Awards. You can read Shelly’s blog here. Shelly can be reached at shelly@palmer.net