DVrepublic News

ET starts a weekly news program

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 15:10:23

]]> BET starts a weekly news program on Friday described as a cross between Keith Olbermann and Bill Maher with a black perspective.

Called "The Truth with Jeff Johnson" and airing at 11 p.m. on Fridays, the program stars a BET personality who has also been an activist for the NAACP and People for the American Way. Its debut is timed for the Democratic National Convention.

BET, the most-watched network aimed at blacks, will also air Barack Obama's speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination on Aug. 28 live, just like its competitor TV One. Neither network, however, is airing John McCain's acceptance speech at the Republican convention the next week.

Besides election coverage and commentary on the week's news, Johnson said he wanted "The Truth" to address topics like the use of vouchers for private schools and health issues particularly relevant to African Americans.

BET has been criticized frequently in the black community for cutting back on news-oriented shows. But Johnson said much of the criticism comes from people who don't watch BET, and don't see how news has been incorporated into existing shows. BET was one of the few networks to cover Darfur in depth, he said.

"I have been encouraged by the direction we've been going in," he said.

On the four nights of the Democratic convention, BET will run news specials focusing on how ex-convicts can't vote, on the top 10 issues facing black Americans, on the key moments leading up to Obama's nomination and on whether Obama could be considered a manifestation of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech.

While TV One is carrying live convention coverage for four nights and an "afterparty" of social commentary, BET's only live coverage will be of Obama's speech. BET's reporters will deliver convention stories inserted into other programs, Johnson said.

The networks' focus on Obama is understandable given polls showing overwhelming support for the Democrat among black Americans. (A poll taken in June for The Associated Press and Yahoo News found blacks favoring Obama by a margin of 90 percent to 3 percent, with 6 percent unsure.) But is it necessarily fair?

Paul Porter, a former BET program director and news anchor who now runs the Web site Industryears.com, said it isn't fair. He also believes the networks' coverage decisions are being made for financial reasons, not journalistic ones.

"I'm happy they're doing it, but I know that it will be gone after November," Porter said. "You'll never see politics or information on any of these networks."

That's pretty much the case with TV One. Johnathan Rodgers, the network's president, said he tried doing some news programming when he was an executive at Discovery and the audience preferred to get their information elsewhere. He said he suspects the same is true at TV One, that audiences consider it an entertainment network. TV One is not covering the Republican convention at all.

Both Rodgers and Johnson said they're covering Obama's speech live not necessarily because it's a news event, but because it's an historic moment for African Americans.

"If we had no news division, it would be important to show that speech," Johnson said. "There's no telling when it will happen again. It certainly hasn't happened before."

Even though there are no specific programs scheduled about it, BET will send reporters to the Republican convention, Johnson said. He said "it's important for our viewers to be able to see both sides."

To that end, Johnson said he's still hoping to secure an interview with McCain for BET; Obama and Hillary Clinton both spoke to the network early in the Democratic campaign.

He said he's betting on McCain coming through.

"He's been pretty courageous about going into places where he wouldn't expect to have a lot of support," he said.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

'Tropic Thunder' plays with fire

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 09:28:23

]]> The "Tropic Thunder" team always knew they were playing with fire; that was half the point of parodying war movies. But the satire isn't sitting well with those who don't see the humor in a white actor appearing in blackface -- or with the Special Olympics, which objects to using the word "retard" to describe people with disabilities.

Co-writer Justin Theroux says what those groups don't realize is their target is the same as the filmmakers': Hollywood.

"Our first concern was we didn't ever want the jokes to be on vets or war or the horrors of that," says Theroux. "That's where we calibrated our scopes: How do we constantly keep the jokes on actors, Hollywood and how Hollywood works?"

Toward that end, "Tropic Thunder" needles how many scripts stereotype certain characters, with much of the criticism aimed at celebrated 21st-century actors who tackle borderline-offensive roles in pursuit of awards. In the film, Robert Downey, Jr. plays self-important Australian thesp Kirk Lazarus, a five-time Oscar winner with startling blue eyes and a bad-boy reputation who's so committed to his craft that he undergoes a skin pigmentation procedure to become black.

"We were just careful to always keep the humor where it belongs, which is on the lunacy of Hollywood and the way things are cast and the fact that that guy could get that role even today, as Laurence Olivier did when he played 'Othello,' " Theroux says.

The process began by riffing on the cliches of the war-movie genre. "There's a whole slew of bad stereotypes that comes out of those movies, especially in the more inferior films," says Theroux. "There's always the grizzled, slightly older sarge; the young Jewish kid from Brooklyn; the black guy from Detroit who's always listening to some bad transistor radio; the fat guy who's lovable and almost gets them all killed because he can't run."

Theroux and co-writers Ben Stiller and Etan Cohen took those two-dimensional character types and then imagined the worst possible actors to play each part. "It's almost like reverse fantasy casting," Theroux jokes.

"The public sort of understands that certain movies just have certain people in them. If it's an action movie, it's going to be one of five people. If it's a dramatic part with a guy who has to transform and put on 50 pounds and make his hair gray, it's going to be one of five people." (Case in point: the recent announcement that Brad Pitt will star in Quentin Tarantino's World War II epic "Inglorious Bastards.")

"It's not the riskiest thing in the world, casting huge-budget movies," says Theroux. "It's not like they're giving cracks to guys out of Juilliard. What would have been shocking is if they'd said it was someone who had just done three Broadway shows in a row."

Within that context, "Tropic Thunder" pokes fun at studio execs (embodied here by a foul-mouthed Tom Cruise, unrecognizable in bald-headed, pot-bellied prosthetics) who soothe their own risk aversion by casting in stereotypes. The "Tropic Thunder" roster includes the insecure action star (Stiller), the Russell Crowe-styled "serious" thespian (Downey), the gross-out comedian known for juvenile antics (Jack Black) and the new discovery fresh off the festival circuit (Jay Baruchel).

"Eventually we struck on the idea, 'Wouldn't it be funny if it was an awards guy who was going so in-depth to play this part that he actually got the role of the African American sergeant Lincoln Osyrus?' " Theroux says.

The ensemble includes a second black character, rapper Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson), who helps put the Downey-as-Lazarus' performance in perspective. When asked why he took the part, Chino says, "Maybe I knew I had to represent, because they had one good part for a black man and they gave it to Crocodile Dundee."

In a sense, the blackface gag is (relatively) safe since the taboo was phased out of film in the late 1930s. Riskier is the film's decision to parody the still-acceptable tradition of films that exploit handicapped characters.

As Tugg Speedman, Stiller plays a marquee star still trying to live down an ill-advised turn in "Simple Jack," one of those sepia-toned Hollywood fantasies that romanticize characters with intellectual disabilities. It's a shrewd critique of an ongoing trend, one that will likely seem every bit as tacky 70 years from now as blackface looks today.

Also noteworthy is the fact that Theroux and Stiller, both successful actors in their own right, penned the politically incorrect exchange between Speedman and Lazarus. This gave them the opportunity to editorialize about the way audiences and Oscar voters alike appreciate performances like Dustin Hoffman in "Rain Man," Tom Hanks in "Forrest Gump" and Peter Sellers in "Being There," in which actors portray the more endearing aspects of mental impairment without going all the way. "You never go full retard," Lazarus warns. "You don't buy that, ask Sean Penn, 2001 (in "I Am Sam"): Went full retard, went home empty-handed."

"Some people have been upset about that particular joke and I understand their concern," Theroux says. "We're not putting mentally challenged people in our scopes. Again, the focus is on the movies. We've seen hundreds and billions of them -- some of those movies are wonderful and then there are others where you think, this is clearly someone's vanity project, and they're doing it for a very particular reason, and people should be just as offended at that. So we wanted to tee that up and take a swing at that as well."

Special Olympics has been working directly with Hollywood to reeducate the public about the "R-word" in much the same way that the NAACP, GLAAD and other groups aim to eliminate hate speech from the media. The Farrelly brothers, Matt Parker and Trey Stone are known for outrageous, envelope-pushing humor, but all four have been especially progressive in their depiction of disabled characters, constantly striving to keep audiences laughing with -- rather than laughing at -- such individuals.

After incorporating actors with various impairments into "There's Something About Mary," "Shallow Hal" and "Me, Myself and Irene," the Farrelly brothers produced "The Ringer" with the Special Olympics' seal of approval. Parker and Stone oversaw the documentary "How's Your News?," which assembled an unlikely news crew of five special-needs reporters and found humor in the way unsuspecting bystanders don't quite know how to react to people with disabilities.

But "Tropic Thunder" has a different agenda. Instead of trying to create empathetic characters, the comedy pokes fun at serious actors who challenge themselves with stunt roles. In that sense, "Simple Jack" and Lazarus' over-the-top dedication to an African-American part are no different from the fake trailer for Lazarus' next movie, the award-winning gay-priest drama "Satan's Alley," a tone-setting joke that hasn't drawn criticism from special interest groups -- yet.

"Cartoons get away with way more than live-action does," says Theroux. "If you look at 'The Simpsons' or 'Family Guy' or 'South Park' or 'Team America' -- make any of those sequences live-action, and I guarantee you buildings would be burned down in some spots. I think it's fair game if it's in American pop culture or culture in general. Good satire is constantly riding that edge, and hopefully in our movie we get to ride it a couple times and have it understood for what it is."

Read the full article at:
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117990457.html

In a Generation, Minorities May Be the U.S. Majority

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 06:59:29

]]> Ethnic and racial minorities will comprise a majority of the nations population in a little more than a generation, according to new Census Bureau projections, a transformation that is occurring faster than anticipated just a few years ago.

The census calculates that by 2042, Americans who identify themselves as Hispanic, black, Asian, American Indian, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander will together outnumber non-Hispanic whites. Four years ago, officials had projected the shift would come in 2050.

The main reason for the accelerating change is significantly higher birthrates among immigrants. Another factor is the influx of foreigners, rising from about 1.3 million annually today to more than 2 million a year by midcentury, according to projections based on current immigration policies.

No other country has experienced such rapid racial and ethnic change, said Mark Mather, a demographer with the Population Reference Bureau, a research organization in Washington.

The latest figures, which are being released on Thursday, are predicated on current and historical trends, which can be thrown awry by several variables, including prospective overhauls of immigration policies and sudden increases in refugees.

A decade ago, census demographers estimated that the nations population, which topped 300 million in 2006, would not surpass 400 million until sometime after midcentury. Now, they are projecting that the population will top 400 million in 2039 and reach 439 million in 2050.

So-called minorities, the Census Bureau projects, will constitute a majority of the nations children under 18 by 2023 and of working-age Americans by 2039.

For the first time, both the number and the proportion of non-Hispanic whites, who now account for 66 percent of the population, will decline, starting around 2030. By 2050, their share will dip to 46 percent.

Higher mortality rates among older native-born white Americans and higher birthrates rates among immigrants and their children are already driving ethnic and racial disparities.

A momentum is built into this as a result of past immigration, said Jeffrey S. Passel, senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center. In the 1970s, 80s and 90s, there were more Hispanic immigrants than births. This decade, there are more births than immigrants. Almost regardless of what you assume about future immigration, the country will be more Hispanic and Asian.

With the Census Bureau forecasting even more immigrants, other demographers estimate that the proportion of foreign-born Americans, now about 12 percent, could surpass the 1910 historic high of nearly 15 percent by about 2025 and may approach 20 percent in 2050.

According to the new forecast, by 2050, the number of Hispanic people will nearly triple, to 133 million from 47 million, to account for 30 percent of Americans, compared with 15 percent today.

People who say they are Asian, with their ranks soaring to 41 million from 16 million, will make up more than 9 percent of the population, up from 5 percent.

More than three times as many people are expected to identify themselves as multiracial 16 million, accounting for nearly 4 percent of the population.

The population of people who define themselves a black is projected to rise to 66 million from 41 million, but increase its overall share by barely two percentage points, to 15 percent.

Whats happening now in terms of increasing diversity probably is unprecedented, said Campbell Gibson, a retired census demographer.

Several states, including California and Texas, have already reached the point where members of minorities are in the majority.

Within the conventional definition of race, of white, black, Asian, minority vs. non-minority, this is a big change, said David G. Waddington, chief of the Census Bureaus population projections branch.

All the projections are subject to changing cultural definitions. The share of Americans who identify themselves as white, regardless of their ethnicity, will remain largely unchanged, declining from less than 80 percent in 2010 to about 76 percent when the majority-minority benchmark is reached in 2042.

The way people report race 20 or 30 years from now may be very different, Dr. Waddington pointed out.

The Census Bureaus projections are likely to fuel debates over immigration policy, overpopulation and the changing electorate, and recall earlier eras when the Irish, the Italians and Eastern European Jews were not universally considered as whites. As recently as the 1960s, Hispanic people were not counted separately by the census and Asian Indians were classified as white.

William H. Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution, said that by the 2028 presidential election, racial and ethnic minorities will constitute a majority of adults between the ages of 18 and 29 for the first time.

Two years later, when all the baby boomers will have turned 65, nearly 20 percent of Americans, compared with fewer than 13 percent today, will be over 65. By 2050, about 89 million Americans will be in that group, more than double the number today.

In 2020, the burdens of seniors to the white working-aged population become larger than the burdens of children, Dr. Frey said.

The changes projected by the census point toward a nation in which the older population will be whiter (deaths will outnumber births among whites, beginning in the 2020s) and where black Americans will still have slightly higher rates of infant mortality and lower life expectancy.

Steven A. Camarota, research director for the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors limits on immigration, expressed concern about congestion and other issues related to population growth driven by the foreign-born.

Gregory Rodriguez, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, a public policy institute, argued that while assimilation became a dirty word in the 1960s and 70s, America has always been evolving and becoming enriched by new cultures, whether from Europe or from South America and Asia.

Indeed, Dr. Gibson, the retired census demographer, once estimated that in 1492 about 96 percent of the inhabitants of what is now the United States were American Indian and the rest of Polynesian origin. Well before the English landed in Jamestown, the Spanish became Americas first minority.

When the first census was conducted in 1790, about 64 percent of the people counted were white, a bit more than half of whom were of English origin. By 1900, about 9 in 10 Americans were non-Hispanic white, mostly of European ancestry.

The share of Americans who can trace their roots to immigrants directly from Europe has been shrinking. The federal Office of Management and Budget now defines whites as descendants of the original peoples of Europe, North Africa or the Middle East. Hispanic or Latino people, according to the same government agency, are of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American or other Spanish culture.

We may be using the same words 50 years from now, said Mr. Passel, of the Pew Center, but I feel confident in saying theyll mean something different.

NEW YORK TIMES

The Passing of Bernie Mac and Isaac Hayes

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 02:53:41

]]> When Malcolm Lee got the call over the weekend that Bernie Mac had died, the director says he was overcome by grief. When he got a call the next day that Isaac Hayes also died, he began to question reality.

"It was surreal," Lee says. "It had to be some sort of bad dream that these two giants would die on the same weekend, and both would be in my movie."

Lee's film, Soul Men, featuring Mac, Hayes and Samuel Jackson, tells the story of two estranged soul singers (Mac and Jackson) who reunite to honor their deceased band leader.

Mac, 50, died Saturday from complications relating to pneumonia; Hayes, 65, died Sunday after collapsing at his home near Memphis. The cause of Hayes' death has not been released.

The movie, out Nov. 14, now shoulders the weight of being one of the last works by two icons. (Mac also stars in the Robin Williams comedy Old Dogs, out next year.)

Though Lee and distributor The Weinstein Co. have announced no changes to the movie or its release date, the director says he feels the pressure of creating a fitting farewell to the performers.

"This isn't like Dark Knight, where Heath Ledger died while editing was in its infancy," Lee says. "Most of our editing is done. We'll go back and see if there is anything we can do better. But (Mac) left us with an indelible performance. I think I got him at the top of his game."

Mac's game included keeping cast and crew laughing. Lee says the actor, who had sarcoidosis, a chronic disorder that can cause inflammation in the lungs, never let the disease cut his days short.

If anything, Lee says, Mac worked harder than most stars and practiced stand-up for crew and cast members on long days.

"He was always ready to perform," Lee says. "We'd have some days that ran 12 hours, and in between takes Bernie would be cracking them up, giving them an impromptu routine."

Lee says he regularly told Mac that he didn't have to entertain the crew and bystanders, but the comedian wouldn't hear it.

"He said, 'These people made me what I am,' " Lee says. "He said that if it weren't for the fans of his stand-up comedy, he wouldn't have the career he had."

Mac plays a wisecracking counterpart to Jackson's dour character, while Hayes plays himself in Soul Men. Lee says both roles "are emblematic, I think, of the men they were."

Lee, who first met Mac on the set of The Original Kings of Comedy (directed by Lee's cousin Spike), says Mac's character in Soul Men "is eternally positive, and that's the way he was in real life. (The movie) gave him an opportunity to be extremely raw and showcase his singing and dancing talent."

Lee says he didn't have Mac rehearse too often in the role.

"He liked to be spontaneous, so I just took the reins off," Lee says. "Comedians like to be fresh when they perform, and they know what's funny better than anyone."

Lee says he was initially taken aback by Mac's often coarse brand of humor.

"I remember a routine once when he said that once children were old enough to speak, they were old enough to be hit in the throat," Lee recalls.

"I remember thinking how cruel that was. Then I had kids."

Hayes, meanwhile, "had to be in the movie," Lee says.

"His impact on music is immeasurable," Lee says. "I've listened to his music my whole life; he changed what soul music could be. He's the man.

"They both were. I want my movie to be a tribute to both of them."

USA TODAY

The Lessons From the Kindles Success

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 02:40:09

]]> It seems that Amazon.coms Kindle is not the flop that many predicted when the e-book reader debuted last year. Citibanks Mark Mahaney has just doubled his forecast of Kindle sales for the year to 380,000. He figures that Amazons sales of Kindle hardware and software will hit $1 billion by 2010.

Amazon hasnt confirmed these numbers, but the e-commerce giant has said that of the 150,000 titles it now sells for the Kindle as well as in paper, more than 10 percent of the sales are in Kindle format.

Anecdotally, I know several people who are absolutely gaga for the Kindle. They happen to be exactly the sort of people for whom Amazon said it had designed the device: heavy readers who want an easy way to carry several books around with them. These Kindle fans are also delighted by how easy it is to shop for and download books onto the device using Amazons wireless store.

I think there are a few lessons from this. First you cant underestimate the miracle that happens when you make something really easy for people. Easy means fast, better than the old way and with very few annoying disappointments and delays. The Kindle device is a better way to carry lots of books (at least for some). Shopping is easy, with very few steps. And Amazons relationship with publishers has created a very broad library of Kindle books. Sure, there are lots of books you cant buy for it, but the disappointment factor is low.

The second lesson is, to quote a cliché, it takes all kinds. Steve Jobs dismissed the e-book market because people dont read anymore. That may be true broadly, but there could well be a $1 billion business for Amazon serving the tiny share of people who read a lot.

It will be interesting to see what lessons Amazon takes from this. Jeff Bezos, Amazons founder and chief executive, can be proud that he identified an audience and created an innovative product that served it. But will he feel victim to the temptation to believe that the Kindle is the only right answer and refuse to offer e-books for other devices?

I think that when it comes to the size and shape of devices, we are moving into an era where there will be many more choices that will increasingly be based on personal taste. People choose writing pads of all sorts, from big yellow legal pads to those little bound notebooks with graph paper. In the same way, we are going to have very personal choices about what sort of connected computer we want to use for communicating, reading, working and so on.

For some, the Kindle may be the ideal shape for reading books. The E-Ink screen has great battery life and can be read outside.

For others me, for example software to read Kindle books on an iPhone would be great. (Ive become quite fond of reading news on my iPhone. The screen is the width of a column of type, I can hold it in one hand, and I like moving through a page by scrolling the touch screen with my thumb. The battery life, however, is worse than awful.)

Others may want to read books on laptops, BlackBerries, Chumbys and who knows what else. It would be a mistake to assume everyone wants to read the same way.

NEW YORK TIMES

Web Firms Say They Track Behavior Without Consent

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 07:25:48

]]> Several Internet and broadband companies have acknowledged using targeted-advertising technology without explicitly informing customers, according to the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

And Google, the leading online advertiser, stated that it has begun using Internet tracking technology that enables it to more precisely follow Web-surfing behavior across affiliated sites.

The revelations came in response to a bipartisan inquiry of how more than 30 Internet companies might have gathered data to target customers. Some privacy advocates and lawmakers said the disclosures help build a case for an overarching online-privacy law.

"Increasingly, there are no limits technologically as to what a company can do in terms of collecting information . . . and then selling it as a commodity to other providers," said committee member Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), who created the Privacy Caucus 12 years ago. "Our responsibility is to make sure that we create a law that, regardless of the technology, includes a set of legal guarantees that consumers have with respect to their information."

Markey said he and his colleagues plan to introduce legislation next year, a sort of online-privacy Bill of Rights, that would require that consumers must opt in to the tracking of their online behavior and the collection and sharing of their personal data.

But some committee leaders cautioned that such legislation could damage the economy by preventing small companies from reaching customers. Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) said self-regulation that focuses on transparency and choice might be the best approach.

Google, in its letter to committee Chairman John Dingell (D-Mich.), Markey, Stearns and Rep. Joe L. Barton (R-Tex.), stressed that it did not engage in potentially the most invasive of technologies -- deep-packet inspection, which companies such as NebuAd have tested with some broadband providers. But Google did note that it had begun to use across its network the "DoubleClick ad-serving cookie," a computer code that allows the tracking of Web surfing.

Alan Davidson, Google's director of public policy and government affairs, stated in the letter that users could opt out of a single cookie for both DoubleClick and the Google content network. He also said that Google was not yet focusing on "behavioral" advertising, which depends on Web site tracking.

But on its official blog last week, Google touted how its recent $3.1 billion merger with DoubleClick provides advertisers "insight into the number of people who have seen an ad campaign," as well as "how many users visited their sites after seeing an ad."

"Google is slowly embracing a full-blown behavioral targeting over its vast network of services and sites," said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. He said that Google, through its vast data collection and sophisticated data analysis tools, "knows more about consumers than practically anyone."

Microsoft and Yahoo have disclosed that they engage in some form of behavioral targeting. Yahoo has said it will allow users to turn off targeted advertising on its Web sites; Microsoft has yet to respond to the committee.

More than a dozen of the 33 companies queried said they do not conduct targeted advertising based on consumers' Internet activities. But, Chester said, a number of them engage in sophisticated interactive marketing. Advertisers on Comcast.net's site, for instance, are able to target advertising based on "over 3 billion page views" from "15 million unique users."

Comcast spokeswoman Sena Fitzmaurice stressed that the data are gathered exclusively for advertising on that site.

In their letters, Broadband providers Knology and Cable One acknowledged that they recently ran tests using deep-packet-inspection technology provided by NebuAd to see whether it could help them serve up more relevant ads, but their customers were not explicitly alerted to the test. Cable One is owned by The Washington Post Co.

Both companies said that no personally identifiable information was used and that they have ended the trials. Cable One has no plans to adopt the technology, spokeswoman Melany Stroupe said. "However, if we do," she said, "we want people to be able to opt in."

Ari Schwartz, vice president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, said lawmakers are beginning to understand the convergence across platforms. "People are starting to see: 'Oh, we have these different industries that are collecting the same types of information to profile individuals and the devices they use on the network," he said. "Internet. Cellphones. Cable. Any way you tap into the network, concerns are raised."

Markey said yesterday that any legislation should generally require explicitly informing the consumer of the type of information that is being gathered and any intent to use it for a different purpose, and a right to say 'no' to the collection or use.

The push for overarching legislation is bipartisan. "A broad approach to protecting people's online privacy seems both desirable and inevitable," Barton said. "Advertisers and data collectors who record where customers go and what they do want profit at the expense of privacy."

WASHINGTON POST

Tape Delay by NBC Faces End Run by Online Fans

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 01:50:56

]]> NBC, which owns the exclusive rights to broadcast the Olympics in the United States, spent most of Friday trying to keep it that way.

NBCs decision to delay broadcasting the opening ceremonies by 12 hours sent people across the country to their computers to poke holes in NBCs technological wall by finding newsfeeds on foreign broadcasters Web sites and by watching clips of the ceremonies on YouTube and other sites.

In response, NBC sent frantic requests to Web sites, asking them to take down the illicit clips and restrict authorized video to host countries. As the four-hour ceremony progressed, a game of digital whack-a-mole took place. Network executives tried to regulate leaks on the Web and shut down unauthorized video, while viewers deftly traded new links on blogs and on the Twitter site, redirecting one another to coverage from, say, Germany, or a site with a grainy Spanish-language video stream.

As the first Summer Games of the broadband age commenced in China, old network habits have never seemed so archaic or so irrelevant.

The Olympics to me is a benchmark for how fast weve gone with technology, Brad Adgate, the senior vice president for research at Horizon Media, a media buying firm in New York, said. Thirty months ago, no one was talking about YouTube. Now, its a verb.

Two years ago, during the Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, NBC Universal, a unit of General Electric, offered only two hours of live coverage on the Internet. This year, it is putting a staggering 2,200 hours online in scores of video feeds.

But NBC, which paid $894 million for the exclusive rights to the Olympic broadcast in the United States, intends to show some premier events like swimming live on television only to reach a wider audience and charge higher rates for advertising.

Although the numbers are not yet available, NBCs tape-delayed version of the opening ceremonies will almost certainly be watched by more Americans than the live Internet streams. Steven J. Farella, the president and chief executive of the TargetCast TCM media agency in New York, said that if the question is, is this a big issue? the answer is, not yet.

Right now, people can go on the Internet to watch, but not enough will because its not the same experience, he added. People love TV and still like to get entertainment that way. However, he added, by the Summer Games in 2012, Olympic ad sales could be turned upside down.

But as Internet users reaffirmed on Friday, some viewers are already willing to find some other source and watch what they want, when they want.

As dancers and acrobats whisked across the National Stadium in Beijing, anonymous users uploaded more than 100 video clips of the ceremony to YouTube, but the site, owned by Google, swiftly removed as many as it could. Similarly, some live video streams on Justin.tv, a popular source for international video, were also removed. According to International Olympic Committee guidelines, the television networks with the local rights to the Games are the only legal sources of video in each country.

But the media companies were almost always a step behind users who have a seemingly unlimited number of Web sites, especially when bloggers were sharing links to new sources. In Rhode Island, Aida Neary and a colleague huddled at her desk to watch a Brazilian television channels live coverage.

It wasnt the best quality, Ms. Neary said of the video feed, and Im sure it will be better on TV, but to watch that flame go up at the same time as the rest of the world was a beautiful, moving thing.

Most of the worlds other broadcasters with rights to the Olympics, including CBC in Canada, Televisa in Mexico, the BBC in Britain and NHK in Japan, broadcast the opening ceremonies live on television. The idea of watching a 14-hour delay is repulsive, remarked Tracy Record, a blogger in Seattle, who woke up at 5 a.m. to watch the opening ceremonies with her 12-year-old son on CBC.

Around the same time, American television viewers were treated to a taste on NBCs Today show and regular programming on NBCs cable sisters, MSNBC and CNBC. Parts of Today were taped hours in advance because Matt Lauer, who serves as co-host of the morning show, was due at the stadium to anchor the opening ceremonies with Bob Costas.

Gary Zenkel, the president of NBC Olympics, said in a statement: We have a billion dollars worth of revenue at stake here, so that means were not public television, for better or worse.

The International Olympic Committee is permitting networks to stream video this year because geographic blocking technology allows the companies to keep their broadband feeds within national borders. In some cases Friday, users illegally retransmitted the feeds. But in at least one case involving Germanys ARD broadcast network, the blocking did not occur.

ARD did not direct its Olympic stream through the geographic protection provided by the European Broadcasting Union, a conglomerate of dozens of national broadcasters that acquired the rights to the Beijing Games for $443.4 million, according to a memo sent to the International Olympic Committee and obtained by The New York Times. Gina Lundby, the sports projects coordinator of Eurovision, the broadcast division of the E.B.U., wrote in the memo that the German network had been prohibited from further streaming until this matter has been clarified and resolved.

Lorie Johnson, an information technology worker in Little Rock, Ark., benefited from the security lapse. She watched the torch lighting from her desk at work.

In the age of Internet (almost) anywhere, why be tied to a TV?, Ms. Johnson wrote in an e-mail message. Television networks no longer have the same viewer monopoly they had 30 years ago why dont they see that?

NEW YORK TIMES

Interactive One debuts three sites for news, entertainment, women's interests

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 07:00:08

]]> Interactive One, LLC the digital connection for Black America and the new digital division of Radio One, Inc., the largest African-American multimedia company, has launched three new content-driven websites: NewsOne, TheUrbanDaily and HelloBeautiful.

The three sites will join BlackPlanet, the social networking site for African-Americans, acquired by Radio One earlier this year, making it the largest online media entity for African-Americans reaching more than 6 million unique visitors monthly.

This announcement comes just a few weeks after Radio One announced the results of its "Black American Survey," the largest ever national survey of African-Americans. The survey showed that nearly 68% of African-Americans are now online compared with 71% of all Americans, proving that the digital divide is now closed. The study also shows that more than 16 million African-Americans are currently using broadband, a number that is projected to grow by 31% to 21 million by 2009.

Interactive One. "Interactive One's family of targeted content sites and our social network enables users to find original and intelligent content tailored to African-American's interests and needs and to engage in conversation with the Black community online," said Smokey D. Fontaine, Chief Content Officer.

NewsOne.com provides up to the minute, comprehensive coverage of newsworthy events relevant to African-Americans across the country and the world. NewsOne features a content from Associated Press and original news reporting from a nationwide stringer network.

TheUrbanDaily.com is a comprehensive destination for entertainment news, information, gossip and opinion and original celebrity interviews. Featured programming includes content on urban music, film, TV, fashion, style and pop culture. With an emphasis on rich media audio and visual experiences, TheUrbanDaily offers access to exclusive content distributed over all of Radio One's radio, television and print platforms.

HelloBeautiful.com, currently displayed in Beta, will celebrate the lives and style of African-American women with a dynamic daily mix of fashion, beauty, entertainment and relationship content. The site will serve as an on-line gathering place for urban women looking for a daily online destination that they can trust and enjoy. Featured bloggers will drive conversation on topics from hair to make-up and celebrity styling, provide insight and access to top talent and foster Black women's ability to live life to its fullest.

"We are growing rich online experiences across our network of sites, serving the multitude of demographics within the African-American community," said Alfred C. Liggins III, CEO Radio One, Inc. "This is a critical and growing part of our media platform that reaches over 20 million African-Americans every month across radio, TV, print and online."

In April, Radio One's Interactive One unit acquired the social networking company, Community Connect Inc., a family of social-networking brands including BlackPlanet.com, MiGente.com, and AsianAve.com. Community Connect's leading social network, BlackPlanet, was launched in 1999 and has consistently attracted the largest online audience of African-Americans. The network draws in over 17 million members, with over 6 million monthly unique visitors and 400 million page views per month. BlackPlanet features member aggregated news, events, video, photo sharing and social networking, along with groups, forums, and blogs.

As part of the Interactive One family, BlackPlanet will be integrated into the social networking experience on all of the sites. Longtime BlackPlanet users will now benefit from access to the news, information, entertainment and style tips that the other sites detail while new users to any of the sites will discover an incredibly rich community.

Interactive One was launched by Radio One in 2007 to complement Radio One's existing portfolio of media companies targeting the African-American community.

FCC Receives Comments on WiMax

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 08:55:04

]]> Comments filed with FCC over whether some top cable operators, Google should be able to team up with Sprint Nextel, Clearwire to provide new WiMax-delivered broadband service.

Free-market think tank The Free State Foundation weighed in Monday, saying that it will boost competition and adding that it should "eliminate" -- or at least reduce -- the calls for imposing network neutrality on broadband providers.

The group also said the backing of Google and the cable operators should ensure that it has the capital to build out its network. "Comcast, Intel, Google, Time Warner [Cable], Bright House [Networks] is an indication that if the applications are approved, New Clearwire will have the capital and other resources required to make it likely that the new venture actually will be able to carry out its plans," it said.

Sprint Nextel and Clearwire want to combine their WiMax spectrum, with the backing of those companies, to create a new wireless network that would deliver broadband and data services. That would serve twin FCC goals of promoting competition in the wireless space and hastening the rollout of broadband.

The venture received the blessing of community-college presidents and other educational institutions that said it will be a way to advance broadband and usher in the next generation of wireless services.

The transfer was opposed by incumbents like AT&T, however, which argued that since the new company would compete directly with AT&T and other wireless carriers, the FCC should consider Sprint Nextels and Clearwire's current holdings in other spectrum when considering whether to allow them to pool spectrum to create the new service.

If it does so, AT&T suggested, the FCC would have to deny the request to combine their spectrum licenses to create the single national mobile-broadband provider.

Free inspiration

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 12:02:38

]]> MTV Staying Alive believes that in teaching young people about HIV and AIDS, the message is more important than the money. Hard as it may be to believe, giving TV programmes to broadcasters for free is not an easy business.

That's according to Georgia Arnold (left), senior VP of social responsibility at MTV Networks and head of its Staying Alive HIV and AIDS prevention campaign, who is in the business of doing just that.

"It's amazing how suspicious people are," she says of programme buyers' reactions when they are approached by Staying Alive's distributors. "It is quite difficult to give our content away. People always expect strings to be attached."

There are no strings. In fact, not only does Staying Alive give its programming away with no rights restrictions and at no cost, it also allows broadcasters to sell advertising space during transmission, meaning that they can literally get money for nothing.

Staying Alive began as a one-off documentary that HIV and AIDS activist Arnold executive produced for MTV Networks to air on World AIDS Day 1998.

"We didn't really have a strategy to grow this into a campaign, but we offered it to all of the MTV channels around the world and they all picked it up," she says. "Then the next year I got a call from a channel saying, 'Well, what are you delivering to us for World AIDS Day?' - and I suddenly realised that there was a really good opportunity here to get out really strong messaging around HIV protection."

Since then, Staying Alive has produced a steadily growing catalogue of programming, mainly one-off documentaries and shortform series, with the release of new projects usually coinciding with World AIDS Day, on December 1. The campaign is constantly looking for new ways of publicising its catalogue and encouraging broadcasters to pick shows up for free. A suite on C21screenings is one of those.

C21 SCREENINGS.NET