The following farewell email went out last Friday to the staff of Channel 13, New York’s PBS station. It’s a scorcher.

From Sam Topperoff:

Farewell Address May 21, 2010

Farewells are inevitable. This is mine.

I’ve been here, mostly at WLIW but a bit at WNET as a producer, writer, director for twenty-one years, even though most of you wouldn’t know who I am. I’m the tall old man who ambles through the halls usually deep in thought, or trying to seem so. During two decades at PBS I’ve done some good work and, like most of us I suspect, some stuff I’d like to have a chance to do over.

During the past two years, many, too many, farewell e-mails have come to me in this building. Their tone has bothered me: It was invariably polite, cheerful, brave and tentatively hopeful. Since they were from people who had been fired, young and even middle-aged professionals, it would have been foolish for them to reveal their anger or their pain, and certainly not in their interests to burn any professional bridges when they said goodbye here. I’m free to do exactly that. I’m very old and have put aside enough money while I unburdened amble out the door to 33rd Street . So let me light a small fire in my bridge-burning farewell.

What’s happened at Channels 13 and 21 under the new management has been simply awful, comically grotesque, if indeed so many lives hadn’t been affected. It is the painful result of equal parts ineptitude, insensitivity, and arrogance of gross proportions. If the previous Emperor was a patrician windbag, this ambitious Emperor and his Ministers are bereft of any clothes. They are clever, and that’s about it. The suspenders hold up nothing, certainly not a hopeful future for our public television stations in New York . Many of us, of course, know this, but it feels wonderful to actually hear myself say it aloud.

Who among us could not have “saved” the company through extreme austerity and taking away the jobs of so many good and loyal workers? True leadership would have led us through hard times and transformed the company at the same time. It is one thing to “spin” a web on the stage at Loew’s and then get bailed out by wealthy board members, quite another to come up with brilliant and humane solutions to very difficult problems, but that is what remarkable people with true vision do in institutions under siege. Notice, of all the cut-backs that were offered, none was for reduction of executive compensation to save a few jobs. Do I expect too much? Probably, but forgive me, I’m old and may be slipping.

The fact is I’m worried about the future of the stations to which I’ve devoted my last twenty years; certainly there’s no reason for confidence based on recent management decisions. I remember being stunned at a Trustees Meeting a while ago when Mr. Shapiro compared the NET.ORG he envisioned to the New York Yankees, and 450 W33rd Street to Yankee Stadium, “Home of Champions.” Really. You can’t make this stuff up. (Does that make the Upper West Studio our new, very expensive Yankee Stadium? And where does that leave Mets fans?) Staying with the sports metaphor, he began a recent memo, “Television is a team sport….” Well, if so, on what team does a manager not know the names of each and every one of his fellow team members, or have to hire an outside consulting firm to find out what his teammates really think. Leadership? Really? I guess this is teamwork in the ultra-contemporary sense, and as I said, I’m aged and hopelessly old-school.

The most galling offense and the saddest part of the story is how bleak the future looks for truly “Public” television in this city. On my commutes to work on the E and F lines and occasionally on the Number 7 train, I’d ask people if they watched PBS. Almost no one does. They said there was very little on the air that spoke to their lives. The New York public is not merely the “Upper” East and West sides. It is these “Others” too, millions of them. And during those rare times we do program for this other New York , we do it embarrassingly, in stilted, patronizing “other” fashion. In spite of my left-wing bona fides and my high falutin’ Doctoral degree, I see our general programming for the wider public as elitist and offensive in the extreme. (Not many of us, you realize, can afford those good seats at “The Home of Champions.”) But of course, when stations run on very rich people’s and Corporate money, how could it be otherwise? And when the corporation is directed by those very clever and very ambitious fellows whose careers will float them to good places no matter what, what else could we reasonably expect?

But there is a second station here-Channel 21. How easy it would have been to grow a vast, truly public audience with it. And how inexpensively. Unless of course, we don’t see or care about that audience; unless the “Public” mission is directed by guys who take limos and cabs and never ride on the subway like most New Yorkers. Public television indeed.

So as I walk away I look back over my shoulder at some good work, some wonderful times, and some very fine colleagues. But also in the darkness behind me I see a fire lighting the sky. A bridge is burning. It looks beautiful. There is great contentment in knowing truth…and even greater contentment in saying truth.

See you on YouTube.

Good night and good luck,

Sam Toperoff

I really didn’t mean for these to appear in alphabetical order, but here’s a teaser for fellow student Mark Barroso’s film A Puppet Intervention. When I read about it I thought I knew what I’d see (seen lots of activist puppet stuff living in Philly, Eugene, Berkeley). These have to be seen to be appreciated. Obviously a nice light touch with the filmmaking and some cool verite moments.

“A Puppet Intervention” movie trailer from Mark Barroso on Vimeo.

Hyperlocal ‘news cafes’ are taking the Czech news scene by storm

In 4th quarter 2009, the time spent per week with online videos, social networks, blogs, and mobile videos combined was barely 3% as much time as was spent watching television on a home TV set. 

Why Online Video Fails To Meet Its Lofty Expectations

With television advertising being a $70 billion market and total online advertising weighing in at $22.7 billion for 2009, you can’t help but wonder why online video advertising only represents a $1 billion market. 

In fact, according to the IAB, video advertising grew from $734 million to $1.017 billion from 2008 to 2009 — or 38%.  That’s not bad, but when you consider that total video consumption per month has soared from 10 billion videos in July 2008 to over 33 billion in December 2009 (or 230%), you wonder why the revenue growth hasn’t mimicked the viewership.

For sure, economics tend to trail consumer patterns.  Moreover, the recession and advertising slump didn’t help either.  And yes, the so-called experts might not be all-knowing either, after all.

I personally think there’s more to it than that. 

The Genie is Out of the Bottle

In 2000, I worked at a search engine company.  We gave away our search engines for free and sought to generate revenue via advertising.  The Nasdaq crashed and took down the ad market, after which point we sought to collect licensing revenues for our technology.  With the cat out of the bag, it was impossible to get people to pay for the product afterwards.  Lesson learned: If you give something away for free, you can’t charge for it subsequently.CTD…

An argument that professional content will continue to dominate the audience’s attention and that the likely way it will be paid for is through ads. But will the ad revenue be enough to fund the programming we’re fond of? Maybe a reality show, but probably not Lost, or CSI.

Tribeca looks to expand notion of film festival

By JAKE COYLE (AP) – 6 days ago

NEW YORK — When British director Mat Whitecross was growing up in Oxford, only so many movies screened in his local cinema — and not the intriguing movies he read about playing at film festivals or elsewhere.

Whitecross estimates that 90 percent of the films that were influential to him — such as “Taxi Driver” and “La Dolce Vita” — he watched “on very dodgy, knocked-off VHS tapes” or on TV early in the morning with commercial breaks.

“Better to have seen them that way than not at all,” he says.

Whitecross’ experience guides the ninth annual Tribeca Film Festival, which kicks off Wednesday amid concern that the volcanic ash disrupting air travel in Europe might ground some of the many European filmmakers who were planning to attend.

. In an effort to help films find audiences, movies won’t just be screening in downtown Manhattan.

A new distribution company, Tribeca Film, founded by the festival’s parent company, Tribeca Enterprises, will make a dozen movies — including Whitecross’ directorial debut “sex & drugs & rock & roll” — available on TV by way of video-on-demand in some 40 million homes. A “virtual festival” will also stream eight movies and 18 shorts online for viewers willing to shell out $45.

…ctd

A win-win for indy filmmakers and indy-loving audiences who can’t get to Manhattan (or can’t get a ticket.) Get the films on VOD and watch in your home theater. Now I’ve got to convince my little cableco to sign up!

How I Lost the Big One, Bigtime

By Marvin Ammori, April 7, 2010

On Tuesday, the D.C. Circuit ruled on an important Internet law case I argued for Free Press on behalf of a range of “supporting intervenors” in the case. I wanted to post a few thoughts about the decision.

I’ll begin with how the decision affects you: It’s really bad news. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but I’m sure you’ve heard (from multiple news sources). The court decision is a stunning, sweeping defeat for the FCC and for its ability to protect consumers, foster competition and innovation, and preserve the Internet’s role as an engine of free speech and democratic discourse. It means, essentially, that the largest phone and cable companies can secretly block dozens of technologies used by large corporations, nonprofits and individuals to speak and organize, and the FCC can do nothing to protect us. (The subject of the Free Press-Comcast case, which this decision ctd…

I’m a little late posting this one, but a fascinating study that shows we like to surf and watch! (and I thought it was only me…) The two media can and will stand side-by-side for quite a while.

Written by Ryan Lawler

Posted Monday, March 22, 2010 at 8:30 AM PT

Nielsen: Media Multitasking Catches On

People are watching more TV than ever and using the Internet more than ever before. So how do they find the time? Mainly by doing both at the same time, according to new research from Nielsen. In its latest Three Screen Report, Nielsen found that 59 percent of consumers watched TV while simultaneously surfing the Internet, up from 57.9 percent in December 2008. The amount of time they spend doing also increased dramatically; on average, Americans spent three and a half hours on the Internet while also watching TV in December 2009, up from two hours and 36 minutes just a year before.

In December, the average American watched an average of 35 hours of live TV per week, with an additional two hours of timeshifted TV, Nielsen reports. The amount of television people watch is up about two percent from the year before, but DVR usage is up about 28 percent. In addition, Americans spent about four hours of their week on the Internet, including watching 22 minutes of online video and four minutes of mobile video.

The amount of online video consumers are viewing has grown 16 percent year-over-year, and it appears that much of that viewing is happening while people are at work. Approximately 44 percent of all online video viewing is happening in the workplace, according to Nielsen, a stat that probably won’t be too surprising for those who follow events like March Madness on Demand, which has been made available live online by CBS Sports. CBS saw a huge spike in traffic during the first day of the tournament in the hour after 2 PM EST, during which it delivered 533,000 streaming hours of video for the full hour.

While the amount of time Americans spent viewing mobile video remained flat, the number of users that watched mobile video increased dramatically. With an increase in the number of smartphones on the market and in user’s hands, the number of consumers watching mobile video increased 57 percent year-over-year, from 11.2 million to 17.6 million.

1 comments:

Colin Powers said…

Like John, I’m interested to see how the dialogue develops on some of your provocative ideas. Anyone involved in the PBS system who doesn’t feel the pain of investing heavily in distribution technology with ever-shrinking lifespans is in denial or in the dark. And no one wants to do away with pledge drives more than those of us who have to go on air and conduct them.

A content driven model is hugely desirable, but I need to understand just how the funding flow would change.

I’ll describe the situation I know best and maybe you can help us find ways to repair or replace it… we need the ideas!

Our station has more filmmakers, journalists, editors, videographers and educators creating local content and providing hands-on educational outreach to the community than it does administrators, technicians or management. I’m not sure how much leaner we could be as a pure local content provider with a lighter technical burden. We’d still need a studio, edit bays, field equipment, engineers to maintain them and some sort of master control room to insert the local programs into the stream you imagine we’d feed to the commercial tower. Plus, we’d have to sacrifice our multicast channels that our audience has decided they really like. We would save on transmitter and other transmission costs.

Unfortunately the content creation side of media is expensive… just what the newspapers have discovered – and they don’t record in high-def!

I suppose we could transition to some system whereby national content fed via a national television feed and local content was strictly available via web, but I see two issues with this: First local content would hit that digital divide – back to the “people who need PBS the most” point. Second, local stations tailor their programming to suit the needs of their community – this would go. It would be Nova, American Experience, History Detectives nationwide at the same time every week. Convenient for branding and promotion, but not very reflective of regional tastes. Our station runs local content in prime time 3 or more nights week – much more on weekends and daytime.

Also, even a web-based local public media outlet requires the same facilities, equipment and personnel that I outlined above – especially to deliver professional content that will draw eyeballs in a cluttered media environment.

Finally, this discussion (and others on the web) have focused heavily on programming content and journalism, but few have addressed the value of station-based education departments that provide tens of thousands of hours of early childhood literacy, media literacy and teacher professional development training to school children and school districts throughout the country. Your pledge dollars support these activities, too. Where do those resources go in the FPBS?

April 14, 2010 11:50 PM

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Here is my response to the provocative site PBS revolution and the thoughtful post by John Proffitt posted yesterday.