What the Heck Is Hulu?

I noted the spate of stories last spring when NBC Universal and News Corp. launched a joint venture called Hulu. I grasped that it had something to do with TV and the Internet, but I never quite figured out the real deal. This story from the Los Angeles Times unwraps the mystery. Hulu lets you watch TV shows, clips and episodes on your computer -- much as you can on network sites, but the links are all in one place. The story calls it a department-store model as opposed to a single-label boutique -- Nordstrom, not Abercrombie & Fitch. It's like Joost, only better and less intrusive. I got rid of Joost--too many annoying e-mails. I went on hulu.com after I read this story, and I liked what I saw. Also worth noting: Hulu signed a deal with rival Viacom allowing it to show complete episodes of "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report."

Obama's Views on Media Policy

Barack Obama discusses his positions on net neutrality, media consolidation, the digital-TV transition and other communications policies with Broadcasting & Cable magazine.

The bird whisperer

This is too cool to miss, especially if, like me, you enjoy watching birds. Corey Kilgannon has a phenomenal eye -- or in this case, ear -- for the offbeat story. Students, take note: There are stories all around you, every single day.

Another hint of hope for newspaper revenues

Google CEO Eric Schmidt says he hopes that DoubleClick, which his company recently acquired, will help newspapers increase their online revenues. He sees "a huge moral imperative" to help newspapers survive.
Besides, where else is the news on Google News going to come from?

Thoughts on Hillary Clinton's Achievement

Presidential campaigning isn't my usual topic, but I can't let the end of Hillary Clinton's presidential bid pass without comment. I had been ambivalent about Hillary for years, but I made up my mind that I could not support her over the winter after reading Carl Bernstein's biography, "A Woman In Charge." He portrayed a passionate idealist who began to cut ethical corners as soon as she and her husband took power in Arkansas. The unpleasant traits and tendencies he described carried through her White House years and were already beginning to show in the campaign, and I decided that I didn't want the two of them and their psychodramas back in the seat of American power.
But now that her campaign is over, I feel nothing but pride. As a woman, I feel empowered by her courage, her stamina, her intelligence, her conviction. Sure, she made some mistakes, and she got me pretty riled at times, but now that she's ended her run, I'm enormously proud of her. She has made history. The gaffes and exaggerations and sneaky, line-crossing comments she made won't be what people will remember in 25 years. We won't dwell on those things, no matter how annoyed we were at the time; only the political historians will keep those mistakes in focus. What we'll remember, what will stand out as clearly and sharply in 2043 as it does in 2008, is the image of her powerful presence, her success in redefining presidential politics to include the clear possibility of a woman nominee. Bravo, Hillary.

Digital TV Deadline

Come February, when analog TV signals go off the air, viewers with in-home antennas are in for a rude shock. They'll need to buy roof-mounted motorized antennas or subscribe to a pay-TV service. See this piece in Broadcast Engineering.

The End of The Beginning

In my darker moments, I believe that Zell's blindly destructive moves at Tribune are the end of the beginning of the dismantling of America's newspapers.
Zell is a businessman with no sentimental, patriotic, moral or ethical ties to newspapering -- no sense of newspapering's nobility. He sees only the balance sheet. How else could he base staffing decisions on his bizarre idea of "productivity"? Does he really think an investigative reporter, a feature writer, a beat reporter who covers, say, health care or real estate will-- or should be-- in the paper as often as the cop-shop or city hall reporters?
But fewer and fewer newspapers are owned by people who get it, who understand and cherish newspapering as practiced in the United States for the past 150 years. And the mass of owners, the ones who don't get it, are likely to follow Zell's lead because they think only in balance sheets, too.
So while we've seen the death by a thousand cuts at Newsday, the San Jose Mercury News, the Baltimore Sun and too many other once-great papers, now, I fear, we're upgrading to the guillotine.
Randy Michaels as Madame DeFarge, knitting messages to his followers as the condemned mount the steps to the blade?
The bloodletting up to this point has been pinpricks compared with what seems likely to happen now at Tribune. I don't think the tumbrils will roll everywhere. I think the biggest and best papers (all three of them?) will hold off, sticking with the pinpricks as long as they can, until the repeated falling of the guillotine's blade leaves the rest reading like Gannett papers.
But I may be wrong. FishbowlNY keeps a running total of the journalists who have accepted, or been forced to accept, buyouts at the New York Times. Each day's list hurts a little bit more. Maybe the Times has already moved beyond pinpricks -- not quite to the guillotine, but maybe as far as the switchblade.