Monthly Archives: September 2007

| TV, Video

Emmy “Interactive TV” award just a gimmick

Al Gore was just on stage at the Emmys to receive an award for “outstanding achievement for interactive television” on behalf of his broadband “TV” network Current.tv (Gore actually got the website’s name wrong, calling it “current.com”. That website quickly crashed under the load of Emmy-watching visitors.) The presentation of this inaugural award came complete with a lame live video feed from MySpace’s Tom Anderson (is he too good for the Emmys already to be there in person?).

The show wasn’t clear on what exactly “interactive television” is. Its call for entries for the award is somewhat more specific, but still leaves a lot of questions. Here’s their explanation for the three categories they have in this area:

  • Interactive television “Program” is defined as a single show, originally aired or transmitted during the eligibility year that is delivered via broadcast, cable, satellite, broadband, or mobile networks, and that incorporates one or more participatory interactive features that enhance the viewing experience.
  • Interactive Television “Series” is defined as episodic programming that has been or continues to be available during the eligibility year and delivered via broadcast, cable, satellite, broadband, or mobile networks, incorporating participatory interactive features that enhance the viewing experience.
  • Interactive television “Service” is defined as a television network or other distributor of programming offering one or more participatory interactive features that enhance the viewing experience across a range of programs or series, and that have been or continues to be available during the eligibility year and delivered via broadcast, cable, satellite, broadband, or mobile networks.

So an interactive show is defined as a “show” (how specific), delivered by just about any medium, with “participatory interactive features” which are also not explained.

If the Emmys want to get into online videos, that’s one thing. Then everything original uploaded to YouTube could be eligible for an Emmy.

But that doesn’t seem to be what they’re doing here. Instead, they go after the mainstream web publishers like Current, have them pay the $600 entry fee, and then explain to the judges what’s so great about their “interactive” programming:

(Entries must include) A linear / non-interactive video recording that demonstrates the viewer experience and highlights the features and functionality of the interactive television program, series, or service. The video recording must not exceed 6 minutes in length and must be submitted on Beta SP or Digi Beta tape format. It must provide a minimum of either two minutes of, OR the combined total running time of, the interactive elements in the program, series, or service, whichever is shorter, and must include the interactive feature(s), either contiguous or edited, in an order that is closely representative of the actual viewer experience.

The academy needs to decide if it wants to include online-produced video in its eligibility criteria (fortunately, it’s at a point now where there’s still a dividing line between television and online video). If it does, then why not include DVDs, advertisements, wedding videos, or any other form of video? If not, then it needs to stick to television as we know it and stop with the stupid gimmicks.

| Blogosphere, TV

The right way and wrong way to blog the Emmys

There’s nothing better on tonight (except re-runs of Family Guy/American Dad on Global, Anchorman on ABC, the NFL’s New England Patriots on NBC/TSN, and the Weather Network’s long-term forecasts), so I’m watching the Emmys.

Of course, it’s not enough to be watching the Emmys, you have to read someone liveblogging it too. Something to keep you entertained during Ray Romano’s monologue. (It’s clear why some of the awards were previously presented, because they needed more time for long, unfunny monologues and skits.)

There’s a few options for Emmy liveblogging, but I’ll point to two with opposite mentalities:

FOX has five people you’ve never heard of sitting in the audience with blackberries in their hands, contributing to a blog on its website. The blackberries apparently prevent them from using punctuation, capital letters, or from spelling anyone’s name right. Here’s a sampling of some of the comments:

  • “ray remono is a comedic genious he had the audience in tears”
  • “I’m quick like a squirrell.”
  • “whod of thought eva l could get any hotter”
  • “hahaha yay justin!”
  • “queeny is in the house”

Most of the other posts have about the same level of insight and grammar.

On the other side of the spectrum, The Gazette’s Basem Boshra is sitting in front of a TV liveblogging the Emmys for the Inside the Box blog. A sampling:

  • 8:47: Biggest upset of the night so far as Late Night with Conan O’Brien snags the writing in a variety, comedy or music series trophy over heavyweights such as the Daily Show, Colbert Report and Late Show with David Letterman. (Although the winner for best goofy video to accompany the list of nominees – always one of the high points of any Emmy broadcast – goes to the team from Bill Maher, for their priceless send-up of the Sen. Larry Craig mess,)
  • 8:59 p.m.: A grizzled-as-ever Robert Duvall spends a little too long extolling the virtues of the western after winning the award for best actor in a minseries or movie for Broken Trail, presented to him by Heroes’ Ali Larter and 24’s Kiefer Sutherland, the latter who was in full-on Sutherland-gravitas mode.

It’s not like the latter tells me much I couldn’t tell from simply watching the show. But at least it doesn’t treat me like an idiot.

UPDATE: From Sunday’s Gazette:

Jon Stewart

Sacrilege! How could they get the name of his show wrong?

| Blogosphere, Media

Big media is stealing your photos

Local blogger Julie Belanger is peeved at 24 Heures. They published a photo of hers, without permission or credit, to illustrate a story.

It’s the kind of stuff you expect from amateur operations. Do a Google Image search and copy whatever looks good. Take a stock photo from Getty Images or iStock without paying for it. Or just go on Flickr, ignore the copyright or copyleft notices and use a photo for commercial uses, with or without attribution. TVA isn’t above it.

What makes this case interesting is the response she got from the editor: The photo was sent along with a press release, so they’re not responsible.

Bullshit.

Whether or not this was done (the organization that sent it denies that any photo was attached and the release on Telbec backs them up), it’s the newspaper’s responsibility to ensure that photos and text they publish are not protected by copyright. Just like you can’t get away with having stolen merchandise just because you bought it from someone dirt cheap in good faith, you can’t simply pass the buck on copyright infringement.

If the organization sent the newspaper a photo and made it clear that there was no problem publishing it, then the newspaper should sue the organization and the photographer should sue both.

Sadly, because these photographers don’t have copyright lawyers on retainer, big media can simply screw them over.

| Media, Web design

UR abdicating ur responsibilities

The Sudbury Star (an Osprey Quebecor paper) is launching a new user-generated web portal, lamely called “UR Sudbury“. As they describe it, it’s a “supernova” of journalism, taking advantage of “citizen media” to expand the newspapers’ coverage and bring the community together.

But to media critics, it sounds like the Star is telling the community to “do it yourself.”

It’s another example of what happens when media managers read about “Web 2.0” from marketing books and fail to get what it’s all about. They miss that whole part about building a community and get right to the part about “crowdsourcing” and how that’s going to save them money.

But crowdsourcing journalism abandons the very strengths mainstream media have: fairness, reliability, fact-checking, sound news judgment and professionalism. It’s not so much a problem with community event listings or stories about grandma’s 100th birthday, but once it starts moving into the area of real news — even local news — then it’s attaching the paper’s name to anonymous postings on a web forum.

Right now, UR Sudbury isn’t a “supernova” or a revolution. It’s a badly-designed Craigslist.

| Business, Media

MédiaMatinQuébec: Changing the face of labour stoppages

This blog supports MediaMatinQuebec

On the occasion of MédiaMatinQuébec’s 100th edition, blogger Tetoine is encouraging bloggers to show support for the Journal de Québec employees’ alternative paper.

Since the workers at the Journal were locked out (or began striking in sympathy for locked-out workers) in April, what might seem like a simple labour disruption has truly taken on a life of its own. The workers, who wanted anything but picketing outside the offices of the paper where no one would see them, started their own paper, giving it away free.

In the months since, the Journal has been trying to use the courts to shut MédiaMatinQuébec down, claiming that it’s disloyal of striking employees to start their own paper. Quebecor lost that battle last week.

To keep the Journal running, management has been running wire copy, unedited press releases and stories from the Journal de Montréal (despite objections from the journalists writing them), and producing the paper with the help of 14 extra managers they suddenly decided to hire just before the contract expired last year. (The employees won a case last month getting four employees declared “scabs”) To show how seriously they take this matter, they also cancelled employees’ subscriptions to the Journal and banned MédiaMatinQuébec from what few stores they control.

The workers, meanwhile, have been busy. Producing a free paper every day hasn’t been easy or cheap, but they’ve been getting a lot of financial and moral support from labour unions, politicians (PQ, NDP) local businesses, fellow journalists, and of course the Quebec City reading public. They’ve handed out millions of copies, and launched a website at mediamatinquebec.com. They’ve even started stealing away advertisers.

But when it comes down to it, the only real winner in all this is Le Soleil, which is taking advantage of the strike to position itself as the Quebec City paper, and starting to recoup some of the readership it lost to the Journal after Le Soleil’s workers went on strike 10 years ago.

I don’t necessarily blindly support the workers in this case, and I certainly don’t support the Journal. But it’s hard not to be impressed with what’s been done and how they’re still going five months later. Stoppages at transit authorities and cemeteries stopped only after threats from the government. Since the populace doesn’t care much about a paper not producing original journalism, this stalemate looks like it could go on forever.

So long as organized labour keeps funding MédiaMatinQuébec and puts food on its employees’ tables.

For more details, consult this timeline of events.

| Blogosphere, Business, Technology

Vinismo leaves an odd bouquet

Roberto Rocha today looks at Vinismo, the wine wiki which was first presented to the masses at DemoCamp Montreal 3. (See the video)

Co-founders Evan Prodromou and Nicolas Ritoux (who naturally both blogged about the article) have been selling the site trying to get some publicity (even to the point of emailing me and asking me to blog about it). I haven’t blogged about it for the simple reason that I’m not a wine critic. I don’t even drink the stuff. I have no clue what makes a good wine, so I have no idea if it needs a wiki.

But what I do know leaves me a bit skeptical. Wine criticism is a subjective thing, and trying to build a wiki around things people disagree about is a recipe for disaster. Of course, if anyone could make it happen, it would be Evan Prodromou, who built up the successful Wikitravel.

When it comes to wikis, Wikipedia is king. It’s the one everyone knows about, and the main reason other people think wikis will be successful. But it also means people are going to go there first. So to create a non-Wikipedia wiki, you need to fill a niche that Wikipedia can’t or won’t. And that’s tough.

There are three main reasons why information would be rejected from Wikipedia and it would make sense to build another wiki database of information:

  1. The information not encyclopedic in nature. This leads to things like WikiHow (the how-to guide), Wikitravel, A Million Penguins (the collaboratively-written novel) or WikiNews.
  2. The information is too obscure or too technical even for Wikipedia. It takes quite a feat to get information that specific when Wikipedia has over 2 million articles on subjects like Simpsons pop culture references. Nevertheless, this leads to such oh-my-god-get-a-life websites as Memory Alpha (the Star Trek encyclopedia) and Wikispecies. Wikispecies, which has more serious goals, also fits into this category.
  3. The information is subjective, biased or fictional. Conservapedia and dKosopedia fall into this category, as does Uncyclopedia (the parody encyclopedia).

If it’s #3, then there’s the problem of how people can trust it and how to avoid edit wars. #2 might make sense if there was a lot more than articles about wines, which are surely allowed in Wikipedia, and it will take quite a while for it to develop enough articles to become the default resource on the topic. And if it’s #1, then comes the question: What is it, exactly?

I hope the website does well. And if it stays out of the trap of becoming a simple subset of inferior Wikipedia articles, then it probably will.

| Blogosphere, TV

How many Gazette blogs can we take?

For the past month, The Gazette has been launching a new blog every week on average. Year One, Words and Music, In the Game. Good ideas which sadly use the badly-designed CanWest blogging platform instead of the proven successful formula of Movable-Type-based Habs Inside/Out.

The latest is Inside the Box, a TV blog featuring former TV critic Basem Boshra along with TV Explorer columnist Denise Duguay, Gazette online manager Asmaa Malik and blogging favourite Mike Boone.

It’s nice to see the paper get back to original TV coverage, and hopefully this blog will concentrate on local television instead of what’s coming out of Hollywood and start talking about local TV again. It’s something that’s been seriously missing since the TV column was outsourced to CanWest’s Alex Strachan.

| Uncategorized

Take 5, take forever

Take 5 I was a bit slow reading last Saturday’s paper and totally missed this one: The Gazette is killing its Take 5 section.

It makes sense. Take 5 never really had a purpose. It was just a section where they threw together DVD reviews, electronics, gaming, the puzzles page and comics. It wasn’t really clear what tied them together.

So after realizing that few people read the section (they had a survey about it earlier this year) and that even fewer people care, they’re gutting it and redistributing its contents:

DVD reviews join the Friday Preview section as a single page, though it keeps the funky Take 5-style layout, which makes it look out of place.

Mark Saltzman‘s electronics advertorials column moves to Thursdays in Arts & Life, where it will apparently be once every two weeks, rotated with other articles like those of photography columnist Martin Coles.

Tyler Todd’s In the Game column is being replaced by a blog of the same name. This makes sense considering the way Todd has been writing his columns. And considering they were always published in a tiny font, maybe this means people will be able to read it. (It also means Todd can do fun stuff like include pictures with his rants.)

Video game reviews, as far as I can tell, will no longer appear in The Gazette. That’s kind of a step backwards, but it’s another step in the continuing alienation between newspapers and younger generations, which will lead to newspapers’ downfall once the baby boombers die off.

The puzzles and comic pages will move back to Weekend Life, where they were before Take 5 was launched.

What do you think?

| Montreal, On the Net, Technology

Become part of the Google landscape

Google’s Street View is in the process of collecting pictures of Montreal streets. When complete, Google Maps will be able to show street-level photos of major cities in Canada like it does for New York and San Francisco.

Street View works by having someone in a car with lots of cameras on the roof drive through the city and take pictures. They’re then thrown into a giant database which creates a street view you can move around in.

Of course, if you happen to be walking along a street when the car passes by, you’ll become a permanent part of the view of that street. And that can lead to some embarrassing pictures.

Canada’s privacy commissioner has already raised concerns that, because Google doesn’t ask permission before taking photos, they might be violating Canada’s privacy laws.

| Humour, Montreal

2nd Annual Montreal Improv Festival

Next week at Comedy Works, the greatest of Montreal and Toronto-based improv troupes (Without Annette, On the Spot, Uncalled For, Theatre Ste-Catherine, Bad Dog Theatre) will go head-to-whatever-the-audience-says for five nights of unpredictable hilarity a the 2nd annual Montreal Improv Festival (Facebook link), Tuesday (Sept. 18) to Saturday (Sept. 22).

Considering that these groups individually are worth seeing, the combination is definitely worth the price of admission (between $7 and $12, depending on the night).

| In the news, Media, Montreal

The Dawson shooting: As it happened

(I don’t quite get this “as it happened” re-run news coverage fad going on. CNN did it last year with its 9/11 coverage, replaying tapes of that morning in real-time. MSNBC did the same this year. But if it works for them, I might as well dredge up something from my archives.)

One year ago today, a tall gunman went into Dawson College dressed in black clothing and a black trenchcoat at about 12:41pm, and fired an automatic weapon at random, shooting students. Anastasia DeSouza, 18, died on the scene, and 19 other people were injured, many seriously. They spent between a few hours and a few weeks in hospital. The gunman, Kimveer Gill, was shot in the arm and then turned one of his guns on himself.

I was at home that day on a day off from work. I first heard about the shooting a few minutes after it happened, when it was mentioned in passing at the end of CTV News at noon. What follows are my observations of news coverage of the incident as it happened that day. (The links are a year old, so some of them may not work anymore)

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| In the news, Montreal

I did it… wait! I’m suing!

It looks like Larry Craig isn’t the only person in the world trying to rewrite history by appealing his own admission of guilt.

Here in Montreal, former Concordia student Ashraf Azar is suing Concordia for the ludicrously high sum of $16 million $13.5 million after he admitted to “tampering with other students’ exams and assignments” and got expelled in 2004.

Azar, a recently engaged (congrats) biochemistry student who ran for student council twice and lost both times, wrote the lawsuit himself without legal aid, which probably accounts for the huge figure.

His argument is that he was pressured into admitting guilt by his CSU university-appointed (see below) advocate, who suggested that doing so would result in a lesser punishment. The fact he got expelled, which is the most serious punishment, suggests that didn’t happen.

Though the lawsuit is ridiculous and will probably be laughed out of court, there is a grain of real concern here. The obvious conflict of interest in a university both appointing advocates for students while simultaneously seeking to punish them is what led to the creation of the Concordia Student Union’s Advocacy Centre. The centre quickly got a lot of traffic, especially from international students who are highly pressured to succeed, have English as a second or third language, and are brought up on different rules when it comes to things like citing academic content.

Much like defence lawyers, CSU student advocates admit they’ve gotten guilty people off on technicalities, or at least had their punishments reduced. So I suppose that despite being guilty, Azar might have a point if he argued that having a student advocate from the student union would have resulted in a lesser punishment.

But he still admitted guilt, and he was punished for it. He doesn’t deserve to have a degree handed to him, nor does he deserve any money for his mistake, to say nothing of millions of dollars.

UPDATE (Sept. 19): The Link has an interview with more details on the story. Apparently the advocate was appointed by the CSU advocacy centre (which if true, means they have a lot of ‘splainin to do), and (see comment below) lawyers wouldn’t take his case because it’s “unwinnable”. Oh yeah, he also says he didn’t do it, and he’s being discriminated against.

| Media, Web design

Newspaper websites still doing things half-assed

Editor & Publisher has a special article on the lessons learned by newspapers’ online ventures. There are 12 in total, but they can all essentially be summed up in one:

The Web isn’t a free lunch. You have to put real effort into it before it can succeed.

But you need details, so let’s get into them. So here’s my take on those 12 lessons.

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