Björn Jeffery

Lisbeth Knudsen, editor-in-chief at Berlingske Tidende, one of the three big old traditional Danish newspapers, today announced a new strategy “The new Berlingske Tidende” (in this premium content article in Danish from Borsen.dk). The strategy follows her taking office some two month ago, and has, according to herself, “earthquake” like dimensions.

All journalists online
The radical new step is a plan to make all journalists employed at Berlingske Tidende bi-medial, writing for both the web and the print edition, with the web as the first place of publication, and as the place where stories are supposed to be followed up during the day – and presumably also night.

Jon Lund points me to an interesting change in strategy for Berlingske. But calling this an “earthquake” says a lot more about the newspaper industry than it does about the change itself.

Web first, print later. If this is an earthquake it’s going to be a bumpy ride ahead.

tags technorati : berlingsketidende newspapers media2.0

tags bloggar.se: berlingske tidende, dagstidningar, media 2.0

One of the blogs I run, Discobelle.net, just won three out of ten categories of the Swedish podcast awards. Beating the Swedish newspaper DN in two of them. I thought I should mention it (so I could have a chance to illustrate it! 😉

Tim Guest just wrote a book called Second Lives, and came here to talk about virtual worlds and television. I’m keeping this a bit shorter as I think the readers of this blog probably know Virtual Worlds 101 anyway.

Guest made an interesting comparison with the American emigration, and thought the incentives to move into virtual worlds today where pretty much the same. A sense of liberty, identity and the possibilities to start something new. Philip Rosedale, CEO of Linden Lab, said that “Second Life was an antidote to TV’s “Faustian Bargain” – experience without risk”. A life without death, gravity and real loss. Interesting angle.

Some short stats:
* Guest said that Google valued Linden Lab to 1.4 billion US dollars. An impressive sum, considering they only spent 20 million so far.

* IBM have 3000 active participants in virtual meeting. An IBM exec told Guest that the shift from the internet to virtual words was as large as the one from the command line to the desktop.

Over to TV and Virtual Worlds then. Guest listed three strands:

* “Machinima”: filming for real TV in virtual worlds. Guest showed a clip of film made in Second Life for regular television. The easiest way to merge to two obviously.

* Using virtual worlds to extend TV properties. Apparently, CSI are creating an island where viewers can log on and see more of the set from the episodes. Therefore they meet other viewers and also can continue the experience after the programme is sent. Guest also showed the first live broadcast in both regular TV and in Second Life, a project made by himself and the consultancy Rivers Run Red.

* Virtual worlds as a medium for TV itself. The example Virtuallife.tv was brought up, where you can watch real TV together with others in a virtual world. It connects with the thought of the modern campfire that was mentioned in my previous post.

A good presentation, many interesting slides and clips were shown. Hope someone is filming this.

tags technorati : timguest hd highdefinition svt movingimages2007 virtualworlds secondlife

tags bloggar.se: tim guest, hd, highdefinition, svt, movingimages2007, virtuella världar, second life

Next up – Peter Siljerud from Kairos Future. They recently spent 1000 hours in 16 homes to understand how people consume television today. One of the lessons learnt, according to Siljerud, was that the TV was the modern campfire. This was a fact that Eva Hamilton also mentioned.
Their study showed that 63% of the 16-25 year-olds often, or always, watch television together with others.
The equivalent number for 26-45 year-olds was 44% and 31% for the group 46-64.

And what are the most important factors when it comes to television? Apparently quality, not content, is king. High image- and sound quality was the most important, followed by high content quality and then a large amount of choice regarding the amount of channels. Remarkable! Can this be true? Sounds strange to me.

Kairos also asked a panel of 90 media experts (no disclosure of what’s needed to qualify as an expert) when niche channels would be available for all interests. The median year listed was 2013, and 14% (err, I think) of the experts said that this would never happen.

A lot of stats and listings here, but bare with me – it hard to blog graphics 😉

Then on to the question of mobile tv – on-demand or broadcast? 46% answered that downloading video clips was the was what they wanted. 54% wanted to see regular TV channels broadcasted. The analysis here was that both parts were needed.

This seems to be a really odd way of posing the question I think – why compare video clips in mobile device to regular channels? What about downloading full programmes to your mobile phones instead? I think they completely mixed up content and distribution here. Either that or I misunderstood the presentation of the stats. A lot of things were very unclear here when it came to the posing of the questions, as pointed out by someone in the audience as well.

The picture is from the discussion that followed the presentation. It was entertaining, but no real rocket science was presented.

On another note, I seem to be the only one with a laptop here. That says something in itself.

tags technorati : petersiljerud hd highdefinition svt movingimages2007 kairosfuture

tags bloggar.se: peter siljerud, hd, highdefinition, svt, movingimages2007, kairos future

I’m at Malmö Högskola where the third Moving Images conference is taking place, organised by SVT (Swedish National Television). The theme for this year is HD and high resolution. I thought I’d live blog chosen parts of it.

SVT:s CEO Eva Hamilton introduced the day by emphasising the importance of both audio and visual when it comes to HD. Far to often it is assumed that it is only a matter of picture quality. The HD development is one of SVT:s prioritised projects, along with on demand services. In 2008, the plan is to offer HD programmes between 18-23 every day. Interesting.

Andy Quested, responsible for HD strategy, from the BBC started by apologizing because the presentation was in English, that he was going to use Powerpoint and the first audience activity of the day. Everyone in the hall had to stand up, and only those with HD at home were allowed to sit down. 99% of the audience were still standing. Quested said, “How can we understand are audience if we don’t know what they are watching”.

So why is HD important now? The three points listed were:

1. Production technology – finally here, this has taken slightly longer than expected.

2. Consumer devices & flat screens – selling very well to consumers

3. Delivery technology – works today

These three all lead to the fact that HD services now are affordable, Quested said. And he consumer demand is what’s driving the market:

* Prices fell by 30-40% over the last year
* Consumers can get HD quality through many different sources – PS3 and similar devices.
* Competitors like Sky have driving the market forward.

Some stats:
Britain: 3.8 million HD-ready TVs (March 2006). Expected to hit 10 million in 2008.
Japan: 9.6 million HD TV sets, 19 channels broadcasting (end of 2006). 28,9 millions HD TV sets and 69 channels predicted by 2011.
US: 27.7 million sets, 42 channels. There was a prediction here as well, but unfortunately I missed it.

The BBC had made a survey to see where the HD technology gave an perceived benefit in the programmes. Wildlife, Sport and Film came out on top, while History and Comedy where in the bottom. Quested had examples where old comedies from the 70´s and 80´s that were still sent successfully, even if it was 4:3 and bad quality. The genre seems to be less sensitive to audio/visual standards.

Quested took up an interesting point regarding quality control. 1280×720 images (except the Varicam and HDX900) simply aren’t good enough. And this is because the material shot can’t be reused, or resold later on. Some of the nature programmes that are filmed today will have an even higher value further on, as the areas filmed now are off limits for media, and some of the species are extinct. Although, the scenes will probably be sold and used in small chunks, rather than full programmes. Makes sense.

tags technorati : andyquested hd highdefinition svt bbc movingimages2007

tags bloggar.se: andy quested, hd, highdefinition, svt, bbc, movingimages2007

I just thought I’d point you over to Web-Strategist.com where there’s an interview with me that was posted yesterday. Check it out! Collected a few other press clippings here.

I’ve been meeting with a lot of journalists lately, discussing the new role of journalism and media. My presentation at Hej!2007 and Reboot9 takes up the issue, but I thought I’d lift out one statement which really says it all:

Journalists need to go from being gatekeepers to being curators.

Old Media have been holding people and their stories out for ages. When I worked at Sydsvenskan, we had a person that only worked with keeping in contact with the readers. Sounds like a good idea. But often enough, the job was to keep people away from the journalists in question. Sometimes getting leads, but then following them themselves. A classic gatekeeper.

Let’s look at the opposite. Imagine an art curator running a gallery for instance. You don’t go to the gallery because you necessarily know the artist exhibiting, but you trust the curator enough to go anyway. You respect his/her taste and choices enough to check it out.

Today, what old media has is a brand which is (hopefully) filled with trust and credibility. This compared to your average blog at least. I think they need to leverage that trust and start becoming the hub about what’s going on in the world, rather than having to report about it themselves. If the newspaper says that a certain blog has a good post on the issue, people will click to read it. They could find themselves, but only with great difficulty and without guarantees of finding anything worth while.

A new type of journalism is evolving. Picking out the best stories, pictures, videos and anything else being produced – and then editing it together into a new piece. Adding context, background and analysis. If they start having that approach, I think old media is going to thrive in this information filled society.

tags technorati : media newspapers gatekeeper curator

tags bloggar.se: media, tidningar, gatekeeper, kurator

At Reboot9. Loving it. Don’t want to blog too much in order to focus on the presentations. Olof is doing a good job of it though, head over there instead.

I had my presentation yesterday. The Box Room was extremely hot and noisy, but it went okay I think. The topic was Old Media vs New Media: news narcissism and the end of having anything in common. If you missed it the slides are here below:

tags technorati : reboot9 conferences presentation media

tags bloggar.se: reboot9, konferenser, presentation, media

After a great day in Stockholm yesterday I’m off to Copenhagen and Reboot. I suggested a presentation but instantly got some negative feedback regarding choice of topic (the same one I had at Hej!2007). I guess if there’s any conference where it would be okay to be called out as “so last season” I guess it would this one 😉 Either way it looks like I’m holding it anyway, so please feel free to drop by and join the conversation.

The whole Good Old gang are going actually – all nine of us. Could be really good! Last year’s meet up was one of the highlights of the year.

tags technorati : reboot9 conferences copenhagen

tags bloggar.se: reboot9, konferenser, köpenhamn

I had a presentation at Lunds University about the whole web 2.0-movement this morning. I promised to upload it here, but the formatting through Slideshare will make it 235 slides long… Not exactly ideal for the web. But if you want it – just drop me a line and I’ll send over a PDF-version straight away. That goes for anyone that might be interested of course!