October 5, 2005
Al Gore at We Media
(paraphrased and will edit later)
I am Al gore I used to be the next president of the united states. In the dec 1972, we debated at the API whether or not investigative journalism was dead. It is no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse – the marketplace of ideas is dysfunctioning. It’s strange that 33% of people still believe that Sadaam Hussein attacked us on 9/11. The OJ Simpson trial seemed like an aberration in 1994 – but really it was a new pattern of serial obsessions that take over our airwaves for weeks at a time. What about torture committed by American soldiers? Why are we not more outraged?
Why is apathy and lethargy increasing at the same pace as poverty and the disparity between the rich and the poor. On the eve of the Iraq invasion, Senator Byrd stood on the senate floor and asked: “why is this chamber empty? Why are we silent?”
“The invasion of Iraq will turn out to be the greatest strategic disaster in U.S. history,” said General Odem. But senator Byrd was right – what happened to the debate about something as important as the decisions between war and peace. Senators have come to believe that what they say doesn’t matter that much anymore – they also spend way too much time fundraising … for what? For 30 second television commercials.
In the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, for a moment, there was a vividness and clarity in our public discourse. But like a passing summer storm the moment faded. There was a time when discourse was much more vivid, focused, and clear. The founding fathers firmly believed in the value of a well informed citizenry. They took care to protect the openness of marketplace of ideas. The empire of reason was the aspiration of the day. The printed word allowed communication over great distances, they protected the freedom of the printing press in the first amendment.
Print has a respect for words and communicates in entire paragraphs. But the founding fathers had no idea that the time would end when the majority of news and information would be transferred by the printed word. Reading is in sharp decline – along with newspaper subscriptions. American’s watch TV 40% more than the global average – second only to japan. A majority of internet users are simultaneously watching TV at the same time. TV overtook newspapers as a major news source in 1963 – but for the first few decades of this trend, the TV news programs religiously followed the print standard that had been set.
Important elements of American democracy have been pushed to the sidelines during this transition. The marketplace of ideas no longer exists. The framework with which we apply reason has been completely distorted. The distortion of the marketplace of ideas is what has caused all the strangeness.
Knowledge as meant to be transferred based on some unspoken agreements.
1. there was structure around the receipt of information and the contribution of ideas
2. the fate of ideas contributed was dependent upon the meritocracy of those ideas
3. the rules of discourse were premised upon finding agreement.
How does our present public discourse work today? TV makes it impossible for the average person to participate. TV networks are uninterested in ideas contributed by everyday citizens. TV is accessible in only one direction – no interactivity and no conversation. Programming is a limited resource controlled by a few. An ever smaller number of corporations control all of the programming.
TV is an oligopoly with imposing barriers to entry. It is a refeudalization of the public system. It has de-democratized media. The movie network was presented as farce, but was really prophesy. The current administration has tried to control and intimidate the media – they gave a press pass to a former male escort and paid actors to make phony press releases and paid cash to reporters. The pay brownshirts to harass journalists who might seem critical of the president.
WSJ story on legislation to control what college professors may teach. Facts become battleground – questions of truth become questions of power. Recently the US press was found to be the 27th freest press in the world. The subjugation of news by entertainment has seriously harmed our democracy. As John Stuart said on crossfire: “the difference between you and me is that I understand I am an entertainer.”
It is no longer possible to participate in public democracy – this is cynical, but some believe it. We need to participate in a genuine and not manipulative conversation about reality. Let’s not resort to pseudo stories for the intention of clouding the public discourse. We need to blow the whistle on this.
The internet is the place to re-invigorate the marketplace of ideas. We call it viewer-created content (vc-squared) on current.TV – the bandwidth currently is not there for full-motion video. The internet’s capacity to carry TV will improve, but for the remainder of this decade the monopoly will be controlled – until we open up video content to the masses, our democracy is at risk.
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September 21, 2005
Micro-payments for Content in a World Without Advertising
I�ve been working several online units of traditional media publishers lately and have been thinking about the business model of advertising-supported content � and what�s wrong with it. A lot of print media (and newspapers, in particular) have been really nervous lately about their declining subscriber base. Understandably, they are hesitant to invest heavily in their online units because more often than not this is thought of as giving their content away �free.�
Of course, it�s not really free. The same revenue streams exist for online media as print: subscriptions, advertising, classifieds, etc. However, online revenue potential appears to be lackluster and hard to assess � there are a few reasons:
1. Highly profitable, direct advertising sales requires infrastructure and relationships between buyers and sellers that are not as mature as in print media
2. Although a healthy source of income, contextual ad placement by Google or Overture is not as profitable
3. Online subscriptions decrease traffic and hurt advertising potential � also this is extremely unpopular with customers and alienates potential readers
4. Syndication deals with portals like Yahoo! or MSN increase traffic (which increases advertising revenue) but the publisher lacks control of when this traffic will hit
So let�s play �what if� for a minute. Let�s take the direct advertising sales model out of consideration since it will most likely mature with time. Instead, let�s examine the subscription-based model assuming that there is no revenue from advertising.
What if?
Instead of paying for a subscription, customers instead make micro-payments for content as they consume it. An average CPM for most content sites is about $10, which amounts to one cent per page view. What if I were willing pay that penny directly to the publisher? Heck, I�d probably be willing to pay five or ten cents for an article I know I want to read. What if all my content views were aggregated into one monthly bill for that publication? One step further, what if all my content views across publications were aggregated into one monthly bill? How much would I be willing to pay? If I read 1,000 online articles a month (which is a gross overestimation), we�re still only talking about $10 to $50 monthly.
For the sake of taking this model a little further, let�s put advertisers back into the equation. How much would advertisers be willing to pay for access to metadata on all the aggregate content I had consumed that month? If they paid me, my �subscription� would then be free. Although fantasy, this model gives online publishers a more reliable revenue stream (in addition to advertising); it gives me the ability to broker my value as a consumer; and it gives advertisers better data with which to target ads.
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