As I expected, he’s a thoughtful and well-spoken guy. I won’t quote the letter in full but I will give you this, because it’s important.

i think you should include the REASON why we don’t allow our show to be filmed:  we don’t own the synch rights to the songs we perform, so we do not have the right to be filmed performing them.  if someone films us doing so, we get held responsible and liable.

Don’t think this is a minor point. The music industry has sued a 12 year old girl, an eighty year old woman and a laser-printer in a campus office for downloading music illegally. Cheese has every right to protect his livelihood.

He also adds this:

i didn’t “spit a glass of water” out into the audience.  This implies that a full glass of water was sprayed, which it was not.

Quite so. It was about the same amount of liquid in a typical spit take (see the work of Danny Thomas or John Ritter for reference) which is roughly half a swallow. Point taken, sir.

He also adds that he does the camera confiscating thing at a lot of his shows, whenever someone is watching him through a device instead of just, you know, watching him. He says he’s never broken a camera or damaged a cellphone in the five years he’s been doing the act. And contrary to what I’ve read around the ‘net, he didn’t wreck any hardware the night I was there. I was pretty close, and I’d have heard the crunching.

As a side note, Cheese also pointed out that I left out the word “like” in my previous entry, as in “a voice LIKE Steve Lawrence.” I have corrected this. One other thing I left out because it simply wasn’t apropos: the guy does an eerily accurate impression of Bjork. Seriously, it’s creepy. Check him out live sometime. But for God’s sake, remember that the only round glass thing between you and him should be a highball tumbler.

-daniel k.

Consumers Hanging Up on Cell-Phone Video

Few people are watching clips of television shows and other videos on cell phones, according to a report by research firm Diffusion Group reported in today’s (Monday) New York Times. “All our research keeps pointing at a lack of interest among consumers in viewing video on the mobile phone,” according to the report’s author, Michael Greeson. The report also noted that only about 10 percent of adults who have PCs capable of downloading TV shows and movies actually have done so and only 1 percent use any of the downloading services frequently.

Taking a track that is hopefully obvious to readers of TPN:BOW I looked up the original article, knowing I wouldn’t find it because they’re making things up again. But find it I did. Knock me over with a french fry. This article indirectly leads closer to the source, a press release from TDG Research/ The Diffusion Group.

I want to work for these guys. You apparently get to create for-sale reports about things anyone with common sense already knows. In the case of the above-mentioned article, people generally don’t want to watch Lawrence of Arabia on their cellphone. Not even on an iPhone, which you can turn sideways for a more pleasing aspect ratio. They would rather watch full-length, widescreen movies on the flat-panel TV they just bought, from the comfort of their couches. Wow. To repeat a nearly antiquated idiom: Stop the presses.

This illustrates an aspect of video distribution that has confused me for a while. New media seems to be pulling in opposite directions: to the biggest and smallest screens possible.

Theatrical films, even low-budget slashers, are lovingly crafted to look stunning projected digitally or shown in 35mm. The latest digital post-production methods allow even modestly budgeted films to have excellent effects and sumptuous DI (digital intermediate) color and image correction. High-end scripted television shows are also designed to exploit everything 1080 HDTV has to offer.

Yet cell-phone companies and online distributors also constantly try to push the same content for viewing on teeny little screens. There are very few broadcast TV shows I can think of that work well that small. The audio-heavy and visually static “American Idol” comes to mind: “The Daily Show,” with it’s emphasis on well-written desk pieces, is another. The Transformers Movie on my cellphone? Forget it.

Computer-based downloads are a step up from cellphones, and if shown well can emulate the big-screen experience in a small way. (and if you have an AppleTV box, you can go all the way to your flatscreen.) but there is something out of step about movies on computers. They really weren’t designed for it, and the whole experience is somewhat uninviting and lonely. Movies are best experienced in the dark, with an audience. They open up more realistically, and in the case of comedy or horror, a crowd magnifies the experience. Even television works better as a hearth, in a living room with family or friends. That’s what commercials are really for: discussing the plots while the ads roll. Computering (for lack of a better word) is a solitary activity: one person, one keyboard. Great for the low-expectation or de-contextualized videos of YouTube or let’s say, more private viewing experiences, but I’ve never seen a family gathered together around the ol’ desktop, watching the latest episode of whatever.

This all begs the issue: Where is the middle of this trend? Where is the equivalent of the 19″ TV? The nineteen-inch (measured diagonally) was the great median of television. It was a grand size for the 50s, measured up well in the 60s and 70s, and was still the small-room set of choice into the new century. If you could afford it, you went with a 27″ In the living room and the 19″ in the bedroom. Television shows were designed with these sets in mind.

In any case, there are medium-sized flatscreens for sale, but they tend to be so expensive for the size most people still tend to think big. The median flatscreen size is 42″. So we’re in this strange place with content presentation: see it big and life-sized, or see it tiny.

This may be the reason movies aren’t exactly selling on tiny monitors, and TDG may or may not have understood this. Still, TDG’s website has many other fun, “well, DUH!” articles like this. Did you know that many people have heard of Download-To-Burn movie services, but nobody uses them? Something about “sneakernetting” from burner to TV. Or the fact that now we are using Tivo and DVRs to timeshift viewing, we’ll be doing MORE of it in the future? Such a font of research knowledge, these guys. Or how about this one, summarized from “Movie Rental Behavior and Proclivity to Use Online Movie Services:”

Today’s movie renters have a myriad of options for shopping, selecting, and receiving their movies, including brick-and-mortar video rental stores (e.g. Blockbuster);Pay-Per-View (PPV) or Video-On-Demand (VOD) services offered through their cable or satellite TV service; direct-mail rental services (e.g., Netflix), as well as online movie download (OMD) services (e.g., CinemaNow, Movielink, or iTunes). While all of these services compete with one another, few consumers use only one type of service; most choose instead to use the one that best suits their needs at the specific time.

Thanks for the insight, Captain Obvious. Alright, I’m having a bit of sport at TDG’s expense: the reports they offer contain detailed demographic breakdowns and hard data that corporations and video professionals need to make sound decisions based on market share and such. Actually, at US$2500 a pop for each report, they had better contain such details.

Still, duh.

–Skot C.

Hawley’s unique and rather starkly honest observation: He points out that if the residual system for writers is curtailed or eliminated, the result will be the virtual elimination of middle-class careers.

It’s not the richest members of the guild who will suffer - the A-list writers and script doctors - it’s everybody else. Writers who earn their living staffing, or writing smaller films will find their incomes cut dramatically. The majority of writers in Hollywood are middle class. If the residual system as we know it disappears, we will see a writers guild that looks much like the rest of America, with one percent of writers controlling 90 percent of the wealth. This elite tier of creators will continue to realize huge profits, even in an Internet-only world, through a combination of giant script fees and profit sharing. But without residuals, without fair compensation paid each time their work airs, TV staff writers and the screenwriters of smaller movies will find themselves back in the corporate cubicles, just another employee punching a clock and dreaming of a better life.

This is a remarkable insight. It absolutely acknowledges that star writers like John August and Akiva Goldsman, those in the elite top crust of screenwriters who generally write every major motion picture, will continue to do well with or without WGA support. The gap between star “have” writers and wage-earning “have-not” writers will become a gulf. The WGA, in fact, is one of the few entities in Hollywood enforcing something like equitable profit sharing at levels relatively low in the food chain. Hawley is not just interested in getting a fair break from the studios: he wants to make sure the big fish don’t eat the small ones.

It also illuminates a question I’ve had about the WGA’s core issue: when did the current residual system start? I can’t imagine that back in Hollywood’s “Golden Age” writers enjoyed the long-lasting benefits of the structured deal they do today. Ben Hecht, Charles Brackett or Herman J. Mankiewicz probably got one check per screenplay (Two if they scored an advance), then they moved on to the next gig. I’m just going to put that question out there: maybe someone else has a definitive answer.

Anyway, Noah Hawley, before making the making a fine, significant point above, nearly blew it with the standard-issue “What about the Internet profits?” theme.

When first-run movies are released for purchase online the same day they premiere in theaters. On this day, all media will effectively be transmitted to your home by computer. There will be no such thing as a screenwriter or a television writer. We will all be Internet writers. And once that happens these media conglomerates will become, in a very real sense, the sole author and owner of our work, entitled to 100 percent of the revenues they generate.

According to this idea, in the near future stuff will stop coming out of your TV. The studios will all become webcasters and all the writers will be fired– replaced by, I suppose, robots.

The problems with Internet content-delivery structures are so profound it amazes me people still hang up over it. Almost all for-profit media centers on control over content: the theatrical release, the scheduled broadcast, the CD release, the DRM-controlled music file. The Internet is fully open, and as such is anathema to this scheme. Take, for example The Podcast Network: Box Office Weekly. Quality, thought-provoking content put out by two schmoes– who should be doing something more productive with their time– for no pay whatsoever.

The leading internet content delivery scheme is personified by YouTube. I do not think Hollywood really understands YouTube. Imagine if YouTube was an actual cable channel. This channel broadcasts anything it wants to, from any source they want. They tape shows from other networks and broadcast them. They also show any other kind of content they want, from camera-phone rants to pirated theatrical movies. And they really don’t care if they make any real money doing it, and they don’t care if the content originators get a dime. In fact, people are clamoring to get on the air for free.

The studio system is patently unready for this paradigm. Until a truly workable content-control scheme is developed, the Internet will continue to be great for viewers and terrible for studios.

The biggest danger to television these days seems to be the strike itself. Ratings are falling, the networks are refunding advertisers, and Rupert Murdoch, the cuddly teddy bear who runs Fox, is calling the writers out. Why shouldn’t he? He has “American Idol,” that writer-free ratings juggernaut, to get his network through this rough patch.

–Skot C.

This would be bad for listeners because typically the internet plays stuff you don’t hear on the radio; it would be bad for radio because they would lose a source of cheap market research and it would be bad for the music industry because they can’t break new artists nowadays. Most likely people will just lose interest in commercial music. It’s as if the AM radio cartel had found a way to squash FM in the late ’60s.

Look, I have my own music podcast and I want to keep doing it.

Congressmen have about 18 days to vote the thing down, and they’ll do it if they think they’d lose votes if they don’t. Tell ‘em. Check out SaveTheRadio.net for helpful congress-harassing tips. Kurt Hanson has some good information about this stuff too. Remember, if it wasn’t for internet music we might not have Lily Allen or AFI now. Do it for them. No, do it for me.

I love it, because I told you consumers would respond like this. And I told you I love saying I told you so in the title of the piece! I told you so!

I loved that.