ABC Sends the NFL Out With A Bang

Sunday's big game is ABC's last NFL production for many years to come. NBC now has the NFL for six years, thanks to the $600 million it paid for the rights to one game a week (the Monday Night Football game). But it won't be showing the game Monday night - it will be on Sunday night prime time.

Anyway, back to the Super Bowl. ABC is going all-out with some neato gizmos and high-def goodies to make sure you don't forget this game. TVTechnology.com talks about the wireless high-def, new Canon lenses and other goodies here. Here's a snippet about the "rigs," or those big eighteen wheelers that park outside with all of the cables going into them:

"Sports is always at the cutting edge of hi-tech on television," said George Hoover, senior vice president of engineering at NEP Supershooters, the mobile division of NEP Broadcasting in Pittsburgh that will bring three trucks to Super Bowl XL. "Since the first super slo-mo cameras five years ago, the NFL is generally a driving force for new TV technology." NEP is bringing Supershooter 26, the HDTV rig used to shoot Monday Night Football on ABC for the past three seasons, to the event. NEP also is bringing in Supershooter 20, the HDTV truck used to shoot Sunday Night Football for ESPN.

The three-and-a-half hour pre-game show and the shorter post-game show will be shot in HD using Supershooter 18.

Yep. Three rigs. Two more than most events. Each of these rigs has millions of dollars of equipment in it. Each one. In other words, a good portion of the high-def equipment in the US will all be situated next to Ford Field in Detroit this week.

Cool stuff. Gonna love it in HD...

Via Gizmodo.

-aB

Amazon's New Podcasts That Aren't

Amazon is getting some heat in the blogosphere for not allowing their new weekly original programming "Amazon Fishbowl with Bill Maher" to be available for download.

Personally, I like the idea of this program (from a marketing standpoint). And I bet it will convert to sales.

When you're a site like Amazon that has several million visitors stopping by the site every hour, anything that can keep consumers on the site 3-4 minutes longer (and listen to product pitches) is a windfall. And with Maher, they have (in my opinion) the right mix of entertainment/pitchman to make it work.

And I can understand why Amazon doesn't want it to be a podcast. (Yet.) They know from research that the buyer's attention span is pretty short. Every second that goes buy where you don't click the "BUY NOW" button, you're that many times more likely not to buy. If you're not in front of the BUY NOW button at Amazon.com when you're listening, they've lost their "call to action" and sales conversion opportunity.

They want you there - on the site - buying stuff - while you're listening. It's not that much different than those time share places in Florida where you get the free gift certificate for the lobster dinner if you go and listen to the real estate sales spiel. Same thing here - if you want the free entertainment (the lobster or Maher, your pick), you'd better be sitting in front of our Web site at the time.

Jeff does bring up a very good point - the idea that the volume of listeners would increase exponentially if they opened it up for download. My guess is that they want to see if the show can put "seats in the pews" first before allowing you to listen to the sermon from home.

-aB

Spy On Yourself. For Profit?

Seth Goldstein wants you to be able to sell your Web stats. He wants to create a new software category, called "myware" that can allow all of your Web tracking, cookies, time spent online, favorites, etc. to be sold to the highest bidder. Snippet from a CNNMoney.com story:

"Everybody else is spying on me," he says, "so I want to spy on myself."

But Goldstein wants a better copy of his online behavior than anyone else has, and he wants to have complete control over who gets to see it. Instead of spyware, he calls the software that will let him do this "myware."

I thought Nielsen MediaMetrics was already doing this, albeit for their small selection of online Nielsen families.

Interesting idea, but scary. I agree with the story that the "return" we as cosumers get from cookies and other tracking mechanisms isn't worth the invasion. (As a Web developer however, the data is quite valuable to making Web sites and user experiences better.)

Via Slashdot and CNNMoney.com.

-aB

SEE ROCK CITY. Now v.2.0.

Growing up in the South, it was almost impossible to go down an interstate or highway without seeing a barn roof with the words "SEE ROCK CITY" painted on them.

As the Web site Two-Lane.com shares:

It all began in the 1920's, when Garnet and Frieda Carter developed a garden walkway on their estate atop Lookout Mountain, in northern Georgia, overlooking Chattanooga. America was in the Great Depression when the Carters opened their gardens to the public in 1932. In what would become one of the most unique advertising gimmicks ever, Carter hired Clark Byers to paint "See Rock City" on hundreds of barns located along highways leading to Chattanooga.

Clark Byers died February 19, 2004 at age 89. From 1937 until his retirement in 1969, Byers painted over 900 barns in 19 southern states.

Seems as though roof advertising is coming back in vogue, although in a slightly different fashion thanks to Google Maps. Got a big, flat roof? Free advertising thanks to the Google "eyes in the sky!"

Via Gizmodo, TheInquirer.net and Adverlab.

-aB

Behind The Scenes At The Simpsons

Via Slashdot, The Seattle Times has a great article on how an episode of The Simpsons comes together. Snippet:

Each week, it begins at the "table read" on the Fox studio lot. Here, cast members try out a new script as writers and producers take careful notes, sometimes based on the reactions of the roughly three dozen guests ringing the room in padded blue chairs.

Part assembly line and part creative gestation, it will take another nine months for the finished episode to see the light of a television screen.

And you thought putting a "Simpsons" episode together was some chaotic laugh riot thrown together in a week?

If you're a Simpsons fan, check it out.

-aB

Do You Squidoo? I Do.

Squidoo.com is a new spin on consumer generated media (CGM). It's not a wiki, it's not a blog, it's something somewhere in the middle.

Those who write on Squidoo.com are called LensMasters. What they write are called Lens.

I took a stab at writing a Squidoo Lens a few weeks ago on Personalized Media. You can take a look at it here at www.squidoo.com/personalizedmedia.

As we start 2006, it's going to be interesting to see where consumer generated media is going. CGM is a lot of work for writers. Are today's blogs going to become the GeoCities or Tripod ghost towns of this decade? Remember those? Free Web sites! Many set them up (or just registered for them) but never went back to update.

I like the Squidoo.com idea. I don't quite understand the revenue model, but I am sure that Seth Godin and Friends have thought about that.

-aB