... and music, music, music
April 29, 2003
RIAA Turns to IM in Anti-Piracy Fight (atNewYork, April 29, 2003): Still bristling over a surprise court ruling that the Grokster and Morpheus P2P networks could not be held liable for copyright infringement, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has taken up instant messaging as an anti-piracy tool. Starting Tuesday, millions of file-swappers on the popular peer-to-peer networks are getting IM warnings that there are "real consequences" to the illegal sharing of copyrighted files. Both networks use a publicly-accessible IM function. [...] And if that's not a strong enough warning, the RIAA is tossing in the message that file swappers "are not anonymous and you can easily be identified." [...] [RIAA President Cary Sherman] said the decision to go to the source of the problem was part of an education campaign to "enlighten consumers as to other risks and consequences" of file-sharing, including the security issues involved with exposing PCs and private files to everyone on the Internet.
Right.
Because, you know, blunt threats are always considered so educational!
Thing is, the RIAA won't make any headway from their view until they start proving that they can and will identify small-scale individuals. The sort of person who may download only a few songs. If they keep going after people who do large scale uploading and downloading, most people will just think, "Well, I don't do anything like that. This doesn't apply to me."
And, of course, once people start believing that the RIAA will go after small scale downloaders, that may actually work. Of course, it will also highlight the RIAA as an extremely petty organization and increase people's resistance to paying for music.
It will be interesting to see if Apple's iTunes project works. The Mac audience will only be useful as a pilot; 5% of the computer audience just isn't enough to be anything more than somewhat indicative. If they really do get iTunes running on the PC in the next four months, and if they can increase their music library to include not only the labels they have under contract but also purchasing the Vivendi Universal music holdings, then that may go some way to making the service workable. (Although one wonders, if Apple does buy the label, what happens with emusic.com and what happens with mp3.com, both of which are included in Vivendi Universal's music holdings. MP3.com may be left alone -- it's not a direct competitor -- but emusic.com is indisputably a direct competitor for iTunes' audience.)
If nothing else, the next few months promise to be vastly if peculiarly entertaining.
Posted by iain at 10:59 PM
spike? ... SPIKE?
April 15, 2003
TNN changes its name to Spike, seeking male viewers (SFgate.com, San Francisco Chronicle, Tuesday, April 15, 2003 ): Spike is no longer just the name of a famous film director or a volleyball move. Now it's the name of a cable network, too. Struggling TNN -- which just two years ago changed from The Nashville Network to The National Network_ announced Tuesday that, effective June 16, it will call itself Spike TV and become the first network aimed specifically at men.
I think I may voice many people's thoughts when I say: what the hell FOR? The target audience for pretty much every channel everywhere, with the exception of Lifetime, Oxygen, WE, Nickelodeon and Disney, are men 18-35, because men 18-35 are damn stupid with their money, and far more likely than any other group to buy things on impulse. Why on earth would you need to focus an entire network on that group? (And what are ESPN and FoxSports, chopped liver?)
"We just like the idea of having a guy's name," said Albie Hecht, network president. "We thought that was smart and fun and irreverent."
No, it's stupid and silly. Depending on how you look at things, they've just renamed their network after either a little rascal or a vampire on a girls-kick-ass type show. Either way, probably not quite what they were aiming for.
The marketing issue is clear, up to a point. Getting rid of the TNN moniker will keep people from thinking of them as The Nashville Network, at last. That part makes sense. However, using the name "Spike" to compete with "MaximTV" really doesn't, unless the naked/scantily-clad woman quotient of TNN is about to jump considerably.
In any event, unless they change the channel programming radically -- and that does not appear to be in the offing -- they won't increase the number of male viewers. With that sort of explicit focus on males, they're likely to alienate female viewers, in precisely the way the Lifetime, Oxygen and WE alienate male voters. However, those three channels don't, in general, care that they alienate male viewers, and TNN/Spike reportedly doesn't want to drive away women. (Really, given their strikingly low viewership, they can't afford to, can they?)
They're trying to combine things that really don't fit together. And being impressively stupid about it withall.
Posted by iain at 10:21 PM | Comments (2)
scare tactics redux
April 1, 2003
She isn't living the "Charmed" life any longer, but Shannen Doherty is still involved in scary stuff. The actress returns to weekly TV as host of -- and occasional participant in -- "Scare Tactics," a half-hour series debuting Friday, April 4, on Sci-Fi Channel. The show sets up unwitting people in elaborately staged situations fully intended to panic them, until they find out the joke is on them. In one segment, Doherty supposedly is kidnapped from a hotel room while interviewing a woman to be her new assistant; in another, a man at a firing range accidentally "kills" Doherty's uncle, played by an actor.
Well ... on further consideration, not only do I no longer think that the current lawsuit against "Scare Tactics" is bogus, but I do not even vaguely begin to understand how this show made it past the SciFi/USANetworks/Vivendi Universal lawyers. Surely they were able to see, at first glance, the legal morass this show could be.
SciFi has started heavily promoting Scare Tactics during their other shows. From what I can tell in the promos, they make people think that someone they know is dead, that the person has run someone down with a car accidentally, and that someone has been contaminated by radiation. How each and every one of those has not led to major lawsuits is beyond me. Being a good sport is one thing; being led to think that you have committed murder or are about to die through contamination is something else entirely.
And what sane person would sign the release for those tapes?
Truly, utterly baffling.
Posted by iain at 08:59 PM | Comments (2)