Media

Podango

About a year ago, as an experiment,  I uploaded some audio onto Podango, the podcasting start-up.  Today I received an email saying that sadly, their future is in doubt:

Our ability to continue operations past the end of this year (2008) is in question. We do not want any of you, or any of your shows to be negatively affected by this uncertainty and so we are encouraging you to begin taking all necessary steps to secure your data or begin moving to another hosting provider.

The truth is that podcasting isn’t profitable enough to support more than one or two major service companies. As far as we are concerned, Libsyn is the only game in town. They offer unlimited bandwidth and cost-effective hosting for audio and video based on the amount you upload and store every month - and they make a profit out of it. Through their parent company, Wizzard Media, they arrange sponsorship deals for podcasts. Wizzard is listed on the Nasdaq, and Libsyn seems to be a rare instance of a company that hasn’t lost its user-friendly start-up ethos after selling up to a bigger company.

Unfortunately, not many other podcasting service companies are going to survive the downturn.

By Hugh | Also posted in Blog Home, Examples | Tagged | Comments (1)

Can Newspapers please link?

Slightly more on-topic, but still McCann related (for whom my sympathy grows ever day), I do wish that when newspapers and news agencies like the Guardian refer to a blog - in this case Gerry McCann’s - they could give us the link.

By Hugh | Comments (0)

Blair, Brown, Bond?

Does James Bond accurately reflect the British mood?  I’m switching off my brain and watching “The World Is Not Enough” on TV.  It’s from 1999 and stars the slick Pierce Brosnan.   Nowadays, 007 is played by more rugged Daniel Craig.  Does this mirror the Blair to Brown transition?  Does it reflect the current public taste, and does it suggest the best strategy to convince the public in today’s world?  A smooth act isn’t quite so trusted.   A few rough edges are considered more ‘real”.

By Hugh | Comments (0)

Cost of Filming in London

I was asked by an overseas film company to look into the cost of filming some tourist vids in London. Here’s some costs for permissions from the authorities.

If you don’t have permission, the minute you set down a tripod a van-load of Bobbies will descend on you, and cart you off the the Gulag.  This goes even for open spaces.

The Royal Palaces charge £350 + VAT (17.5%) per hour for filming. They also say that normally we would film before or after opening hours. The Royal Palaces include:

Tower of London
Hampton Court
Kensington Palace
Banqueting House
Kew Palace

Royal Parks Charge Between £750 and £1000 + VAT for up to 4 hours. They include:
Greenwich Park
St. James’s Park
Hyde Park
Kensington Gardens

Trafalgar Square run by the Red Mayer of London is the biggest rip-off of all. It costs £500 + Vat per hour. They said that it can take 4 weeks or more to turn around a permission.

I’m yet to get a reply out of Westminster Council as regards spaces such as Covent Garden and Piccadilly Circus.

These costs might within the budget of a Hollywood Major company, and they might even be within the budget of our potential client - though I await their reply with interest - this is the YouTube age. “We” are the media now, and that means that a video made by one camera operator and a dog can get half a million or more downloads. But whose YouTube can afford these prices?

Come on London. Film-makers want to encourage visitors. Don’t let rip-off Britain scare them away.

By Hugh | Comments (1)

Glasgow Bomb Irony

Oh the irony !   Helen Bowden,  the BBC manager who decided not to cover the July 7 bombs two years ago, but to keep reporting the official  London Transport’s “delays on the line” message, while Sky was telling the world all about the biggest terrorist attack on London, has redeemed herself somewhat.  She’s on the scene at Glasgow airport where a burning car has just rammed the entrance.

Even so Sky News is still beating the BBC on this breaking news story, with dramatic pictures from phones while the BBC shows library pictures of  the airport on a boring day.

BBC managers are in love with 24 hour news, but I’m still not quite sure that they ‘get it’ - or anything that can’t be planned ahead in a meeting.

By Hugh | Comments (6)

Blair, the humble PR GOD.

If I was a PR man, which thankfully I’m not, Tony Blair would be my Way, my Untruth and my Light. He would be my Great Lord and my Inspiration.

His genius, I believe, was to invent political humility. Alright, it was probably fake humility, but it convinced more often than not. The quality was evident in his self-authored epitaph which he declared yesterday: “I did what I thought was right.”

There is something winning about a leader who admits he is an ordinary, fallible, mortal, who is simply doing his best. I noticed it years ago, when I saw Blair, the young opposition leader, walking around the BBC’s Broadcasting House. He was talking to a producer and a presenter, sprinkling his star dust on them, but really talking to them. Other politicians who came round were more other worldly. They weren’t rude, but they were somehow like other beings. They sort of swept in and out of the BBC. There was something regal perhaps even super-natural in their bearing.

I can tell you something about Gordon Brown. He is never going to say that he thought he was right. When Gordon is forced out to face the public, which not that often, he bangs on about how everything does IS right. He just goes on and on about his record which is not just right, but is THE BEST.

But the conversational tone, which is exemplified by blogs, is now the modern way of communicating. You can spin or not spin, but you have to talk across to people, not down to them. This is why Gordon Brown cannot win a General Election.

By Hugh | Also posted in Media Relations | Comments (4)

New York Times Out of Print?

The owner of the world’s most self-regarding newspaper has been musing that his NY Times might no longer be in print in five years’ time,

Here’s what Arthur Sulzberger has to say;

“I really don’t know whether we’ll be printing the Times in five years, and you know what? I don’t care either… The Internet is a wonderful place to be, and we’re leading there.”

The Times’s online readership stands at 1.5 million a day besides its 1.1 million subscribers for the print edition.

But Sulzberger seems to think that people will pay to read his news online…. I doubt that somehow. News is a commodity now, and the NY Times doesn’t do it that much better than anyone else.

By Hugh | Also posted in Blog Home | Comments (2)

BBC Gets More into Downloading

The BBC Trust - which nowadays is the governing body of the state-sponsored broadcaster - has given the go-ahead for the BBC to offer more TV and radio programmes as downloads.

It’s not great news for those of us independents struggling to get established in the download business. However, I am glad that they are showing some restraint as regards audio books, as there might be unfair, state-sponsored competition with an established commercial market - not that that usually stops the Beeb doing what it wants. Overall I don’t think this is positive for audio or video podcasts. We might be faced with a deluge of lavishly funded, heavily marketed material pushing us out.

The danger for the BBC, though, is that when a show gets downloaded it is disassociated from the network, and the audience starts to get loyal to the show and its stars, without holding any affection for the broadcaster. This is a continuation of what’s been happening since the ‘golden age of telly’ back in the ’70s, when people still called the BBC ‘aunty’. In these multi-station days of the zapper, few of us know or care what channel we are watching.

By Hugh | Also posted in Blog Home | Comments (0)

Kawasaki on Social Media

A really interesting interview about what social media means for marketing with Guy Kawasaki on Podtech. He mentions a panel of teenagers who hardly ever see a TV ad, don’t use email much, but do send 1,400 texts a month. They still read magazines though, and buy products they read about in print online.

He reveals that he should work first on his book, then on his blog, then on his email - but he answers email first, then works on his blog, then works on his blook. (I recognise this - I find email addictive). He wants to write a book called “How to Change the World” (the new name of his blog). He says there’s a difference between “changing the world” and doing something BIG. It’s not just for megalomaniacs who want to build billion dollar companies - but it could be for a campaigning blogger. I think I’m going to read it - if he ever finishes his emails! By the way, he reveals that he makes $4000 a year in advertising from his blog - but it also brings people to him who want marketing advice, and he often takes 0.5% or 1% in options. He says, half jokingly, that it’s the new model for blogging. You build such credibility that people want to give you equity for advice.

By Hugh | Also posted in Blog Home, Marketing | Comments (4)

Charlie Higson Interview

Storynory - where we normally do children’s stories - has an interview which might interest a wider audience. It’s with Charlie Higson - who appears on TV as the used car salesman Swiss Toni - and who is also an accomplished thriller writer. He was chosen by the estate of James Bond creator Ian Fleming to write the Young Bond series of novels about the formative years of the secret agent. They are based in the 1930s, when Bond was a lad at Eton.

The title of his latest novel, Double or Die, was chosen by an interent poll over at the Young Bond site. There are also some excellent unofficial Bond sites that have been important in growing the popularity of the Young Bond series. In general, it’s pretty clear that the publishers of Children’s books, such as Puffin, are fairly clued up about the Internet. I think they are ahead of publishers for adult books, some of whom still regard the internet as a threat to their intellectual property. In fact, much of the marketing and public relations for children’s books takes place online these days - hence Storynory’s good relations with authors for young people.

We’ve also been working on a pilot of a new podcast, and have generally been keeping ourselves busy during the first week of the New Year..

By Hugh | Also posted in Blog Home, Marketing | Comments (0)

Fake Amazon Book Reviews

I must admit that I’m quite swayed by the book reviews on Amazon, so I was a little shocked to see this job posted on the Freelance Work Exchange.

Write Online Book Reviews

Description of project:

We need 5 reviewers for 3 of our newly released titles. We ask that you write a 1-3 Paragraph review with a 5 star rating (5 being best) of each of the 3 books. We will then ask that you forward the reviews over to us so that we can look over them before you post them on Amazon.com and Barns and Noble.com. Most of our reviewers are paid from $5- to $10 per review or $15.00 to $30.00 per 3 review book set. Unfortunately, Amazon has recently instituted a new procedure whereby you can only review books if you have an account that you have used to purchase books / products from them before, so in order to bid you must have an account with Amazon that you have used to purchased books with them from before. You are bidding on writing 5 reviews and posting them to Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com and lulu.com Long term work Ken.

Skill requirements:

Must have an amazon.com account and know how to write english well.

Seems like not very good money too!

By Hugh | Also posted in Blog Home, Marketing | Comments (0)