Archive for the ‘Media Control’ Category
Michael Wolff on Vice Media: Why Hollywood Is Drinking the Kool-Aid
This story first appeared in the Sept. 19 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.
NancyDubuc, JeffBewkes, James Murdoch, Tom Freston and Martin Sorrell are media executives cut from a similar button-down, corporate-culture cloth. So perhaps it is thrilling or titillating for them to meet someone like Vice's Shane Smith, 44, who is all showman and promoter, a media type more reminiscent of the wild old days than the constrained new ones.
In late August, A&E Networks president and CEO Dubuc invested $250 million for a 10 percent interest in Vice, valuing the company at a whopping $2.5 billion (A&E is owned by Hearst and Disney). A tech venture firm, TCV, followed with $250 million for another 10 percent. Bewkes, Time Warner's chairman and CEO, was set to do a deal with Vice at the beginning of the summer that would have valued the company at $2 billion but Vice's valuation rose more quickly than Bewkes' ability to act. Murdoch bought 5 percent for $70 million in 2013 on behalf of 21st Century Fox and got a seat on the board; Sorrell, CEO of WPP, put $25 million in; and Freston, a former Viacom CEO, invested his own money early on and signed up as one of Vice's key advisers. One might be forgiven for thinking of Zero Mostel in The Producers selling a Broadway show many times over.
In theory, these executives are drawn to Smith's purported Pied Piper ability to attract that most sought-after and hard-to-reach (nearly always modified by "hard-to-reach") demographic: distracted young men, more reliably playing video games than consuming traditional media. But they also are drawn to his Pied Piper ability to attract ever-more media executives and the ever-larger multiples they and their colleagues seem willing to pay for a piece of Vice.
Arguably, the latter has been proved out much more completely than the former. These days one can attach many superlatives to Vice it might be the hottest, savviest, coolest, richest, Brooklyn-est (according to Smith, it is the biggest employer in Williamsburg, the epicenter of Brooklyn-ness) new media company on the block but one thing it does not necessarily have is a supersized audience. Vice makes a torrent of YouTube videos, but most, according to YouTube stats, have limited viewership. The New York Times, in its coverage of Vice's TCV deal, seemed eager to believe in Vice and at the same time was perplexed by it, quoting the company's monthly global audience claim of 150 million viewers but, as well, comScore's more official and low-wattage number of 9.3 million monthly unique visitors. BuzzFeed, with an audience many times greater, has been valued at less than a third of Vice's $2.5 billion.
That is, of course, part of Smith's showman appeal. Even with his company's obvious limitations YouTube is an unreliable platform he has boasted of producing a range of superhuman business-model breakthroughs.
It doesn't much matter, for instance, that Vice has low audience numbers because it does not sell the usual CPM-based advertising. Instead, Smith sells high-priced sponsorships marketing the Vice idea, in other words, rather than the Vice numbers. What's more, playing coy, he does not seem to sell advertisers very much, often offering big consumer brands like Anheuser-Busch modest sponsorship credit at the ends of videos.
Then, too, Vice's growing profits come in part because it continues to act like an outsider and pay young workers catch-as-catch-can alternative-media wages, even though it now is a richly funded enterprise.
Another of Vice's accomplishments has been to position itself as a cutting-edge technology company rather than a media company, thereby achieving a techlike valuation. But Vice really has few tech skills beyond Final Cut Pro, running much more by old media seat-of-the-pants instincts and aggressive salesmanship than new digital algorithms. (Vice, with its many fledgling music writers looking for a byline, often is compared inexactly to BuzzFeed, with its ever-growing staff of engineers able to game the social-media world.)
Smith also, counterintuitively, has launched his company into the news business, making it a veritable Zelig of multiple international conflicts. Its tipping-point moment might have been Dennis Rodman's Vice-sponsored embrace of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il and its step into legitimacy with its earnest HBO world-report show. But this is at a moment when it never has been more difficult to monetize news programming. Indeed, so bizarre is the notion that Vice's young-male audience will watch international news that puzzled media minds only can seem to conclude it must be true and another epochal media disruption. (YouTube widely advertises Vice as a type of new-wave 60 Minutes.)
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Michael Wolff on Vice Media: Why Hollywood Is Drinking the Kool-Aid
Media Control Panel: TV Station Spotlight – Video
Media Control Panel: TV Station Spotlight
A short video demonstrating the TV station feature in the Media Control Panel.
By: CastControl
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Media Control Panel: TV Station Spotlight - Video
'Tighter control over media to check divisive groups'
He said some political groups were still staging activities that could bring about more rifts in the country. Three orders of the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) - numbers 79, 97 and 103 - would be strictly observed.
The orders ban media operators from featuring people connected with political parties. The content must not be critical of the NCPO or the government; programmes must be recorded in advance so they can be checked for content before broadcast; there must be no phone-ins to any programmes, even to entertainment ones such as music programmes.
He said the department would keep a close watch on 147 radio stations and all newspapers, Facebook and Line. "Please be patient because our country is suffering from a serious illness and we need a surgery to be healthy and happy as we were,'' he said.
Apinant said the government must tighten its grip on the media, including community radio, and if it allows the situation to go back to square one, attempts to restore peace and heal the rifts would be in vain.
He added that some community radio stations were allowing advertisements of drugs that do not have the approval of the Food and Drug Administration, placing the health of the public at risk.
First Army Region deputy director Colonel Suthat Nakpan said authorities needed to step up checks and controls against any group aiming to instigate public revolt through the use of media. He said he did not expect a crackdown on undercurrents to be easy but officials must ensure their continued efforts and get the public to understand and use their judgement when consuming media.
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'Tighter control over media to check divisive groups'
Caixin Online: Chinas video-streaming apps are disappearing
BEIJING (Caixin Online) Two more video-content providers said on Sept. 1 they would remove their Internet TV apps from online stores, after the countrys media regulator moved to tighten control over content that can be shown on Internet TVs and set-top boxes.
LeTV Media & Technology Co., which provides both content and devices, sent a notice to the third-party stores, asking them to remove the app that allows TV viewers access to online videos.
LeTV stopped taking orders for its TV set-top boxes a month ago. It has also suspended sales of its video content.
LeTV said it made the moves because of requirements from the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television. Its public-relations personnel did not answer questions about when it might resume sales.
Baidu Inc.s BIDU, -0.25% online video service iQiyi, which is similar to Google Inc.s GOOG, +0.36% YouTube, has also withdrawn its app from the online stores.
Many net companies have stopped selling content and devices. The companies include Youku Tudou Inc. YOKU, -1.03% the countrys leading online video provider; streaming website PPTV.com; BesTV New Media Co. 600637, +0.09% ; and China Network Television (CNTV).
In June, the media regulator told the industry to remove apps that allow viewers to watch content from the Internet that doesnt come from seven licensed providers. Those companies are China Network Television, Shanghai Media Group, Wasu Group 000156, +0.83% , Southern Media Corp., Hunan Television, China Radio International and China National Radio.
The next month, officials from the media regulator met with representatives from the seven providers in two groups to set out requirements for fixing problems in the Internet TV industry.
The requirements banned the providers from offering apps for Internet TV and set-top boxes to allow viewers to watch content from commercial websites. The companies are also not allowed to make deals with telecoms operators and firms being investigated by the media watchdog.
LeTVs app had attracted many viewers due to its large amount of content. Viewers had access to 7,000 movies, 100,000 episodes of TV dramas, 10,000 hours of family programming and live broadcast of sports events through its app.
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Caixin Online: Chinas video-streaming apps are disappearing