You’ve skipped explanations for your strawman drivel.

Netflix and Hulu aren’t available in Australia – are you a copyright thief?

You seem to ignore the funding system the BBC works under. (Hint – it’s the same as the ABC)

Please try to be succinct and compact this diatribe into something we can read without bleeding eyes.

x

I hate to break this to you but a digital channel is hardly digital innovation. Digital innovation is developing multi-platform content with a common narrative, it is incorporating social network, the audience and the conversations into relevant content & programming & channels. It is NetFlix streaming 14m movies & TV shows via the Xbox. It is HULU with all movies & TV programs available on demand online with a great & successful business model. It is innovative interactive TV, not the crap which FOXTEL passes off as ‘innovation’.

And before you or AdGrunt accuse me again of being someone who works for News Limited, I am not and I watch many programs on the ABC as I cannot stand free-to-air TV in Australia. Thank god for pay-TV, HULU and the Internet.

And by the way I am the first person to slam the commercial media around their lack of innovation.

Let me give you some small example of the ABC (and commercial media) paying 3 year behind the times lip service to digital….

QandA constantly promotes Twitter hashtags during their program and encourages people to ask a question via their website and then do not incorporate the Twitter stream or Twitter audience into the program. This weeks show they didn’t even use a question from the website! I mena I can’t even quickly share a video from the http://www.abc.net.au to either my Facebook profile, Twitter ot other social networking site and for most news sites, social networking link sharing is accounting for upwards of 30% of traffic. Facebook users share more than 2 billion pieces of content a week (mainly news stories, posts, videos) and ABC isn’t even embracing these opportunities.

Slightly left field example – Major League Baseball now earns some $450m+ per year through MLB.com through subscription passes to content, on demand content, advertising, ecommerce and much more. They now incorporate social media into digital channels and have been a pioneer. You can watch 4 TV angles online and follow Twitter reactions innings by innings. Their mobile apps are huge. MLB have embraced digital innovation and new media business models without any harm to their traditional broadcast rights – in turn the digital efforts have strengthened and increased the value of their brand and broadcast rights.

BBC has a Digital Innovation Lab and not only have they experimented and pioneered many things from interactive TV, on demand, digital marketing, social media and social networking but they are also focused on embracing Web2.0 / social networking within the enterprise. BBC has constantly sponsored and experimented with crowdsourcing (for 3 years now) whereas ABC just simply sponsors an event and maybe builds a basic website to support it or a program – outdated. They have been developing cross platform and mobile phone experiences for 4 years now.

Now, I could go on and on with hundreds of examples of both ‘traditional’ and ‘government protected’ media innovating and experimenting and also example of new media and digital innovation succeeding.

But once again, I come back to the point of my original post…..

For people to hold up someone like Mark Scott who leads an organisation which is entirely protected from the challenges it says ‘traditional media’ is failing to embrace or get, is just laughable. And in particular it is even more laughable in context of the fact that the ABC itself does not even remotely get or embrace digital, digital innovation, new media and or new business models itself.

I know producers who have and are working with the ABC and they are beyond frustrated around the the lack of ABC getting and embracing their new media ideas and opportunities. That comes from the top down and who is on top? Mark Scott – the pot calling the kettle black.

Now, if Mark Scott had of said everything he said 3 years ago and had transformed the ABC into an organisation which is a leader in digital, a digital and new media innovator & experimentor, a leader in developing successful new business models, had signficantly grown the ABC’s audience and embraced social media, digital marketing and social networking then I would be the first person here supporting Mark Scott. But, he hasn’t………

How can I have a sensible & mature debate with someone who is so obviously an ABC employee….

…touche

So ABC…News and Me. Sucked in by an old trick like that. It almost makes your ad hominem opener and subsequent and strawman arguments worthwhile. But not quite. In fact you sound like a troll, but hey this will help my hangover.

I make no false accusations. In fact I make no accusations at all. Nice strawman.

I didn’t say you disagreed with Mark Scott. Another nice strawman. I challenged your unsubstantiated assertions. Maybe you could substantiate them?

You deride general media landscape innovation, then flick the focus to non-DRM news. Another nice strawman, but ironically exactly what the Digger himself has been bitching about. Really, you must be a troll.

My point for comparison and contrast is that those commercial ventures who have even ventured towards off-air downloadable entertainment content have delivered a woeful offering and probably driven more people to bit-torrent even than revenue-driven scheduling changes. I really hope this changes and there are some promising signs.

Having spent much time not only in the US and UK, but elsewhere, I can assert that a very few parts of the world are ahead and many others behind. The reason the UK is so far ahead is that the BBC, a similar entity to ABC, is leading this charge. I’d say the ABC in Australia is very close behind to be honest. I can certainly find nothing similar on any News or FOX related site.

The rest of your post is unsubstantiated tripe, which leads me to believe even more that you work for News, or a troll. Do feel free to put a bit of meat, substantiation and reference to avoid looking silly.

John, my succinct counter-point would be – well why don’t they indeed? In fact I dare them to. No, I double-dare them to. If they hate Google, whose business is far from that of news aggregator, then why not? With Google News, you get a link to their site – broader exposure and increased viewing stats – what more could they ask for?

One last thing. I found an interesting stat from Google News. Type in “News is evil” and look at the news stats from end-1995 to 1996. A huge jump. Which correlates precisely with the launch of FOX News…

That is all as I require Eggs Benedict.

BUT … I simply can’t condone comments attacking another media owner when 80% of your income is a government handout of $833m in FY 2008 (2009 has not been released yet). I’d like to see Mark Scott run the ABC on the other $224m! Don’t get me wrong … I’d LOVE to see the ABC get a billion of taxpayer funds … make it even more!

And AdGrunt … hve you ever considered what would happen if all the news services stopped tagging their sites to allow Google to crawl them – the reverse of what you were tossing into the ring. Now THAT would upset the apple-cart. And why shouldn’t they … they’re getting bugger-all ad revenue by virtue of search so why not keep 100% of ad-revenue generated from their own work.

Like a free newspaper, websites are about getting into/onto peoples screens, a free service will generate 100′s of times more traffic than a paid site, and that is what will bring the revenue. The whole Fox belief is nice if your a top exec at Fox hoping the world hangs on every one of your words, but simply, we dont, we are not Fox’s choir boys who have to listen to the sermon of egotistical maniacs.

That said, I appreciate what Murdoch has achieved, but he’s officially now out of touch, and if this plan was a good one, he wouldve have to tell us his plan (hopingwe jump on board) it wouldve just been launched and done with success, but he hoping other media outlets now do the same thing as him so he’s not alone, but they see opportunity is staying free and picking up all the traffic.

The Simpsons not withstanding, what’s Uncle Rupert done for you lately?

The latest innovation I saw on The Australian website this week was a full screen pop-up ad blocking all the page… hardly something worth bragging about. (…and yes, Fairfax sites aren’t any better)

Rupert Murdoch made his fortune thanks to tits on page three and now makes it peddling fear and loathing throughout the world. Fox News divides America more every day and pushes the war agenda – it’s a disgrace.

…and in case you’re guessing, I don’t work for News!

And since you take my broad suggestion so personally I guess you are a News employee, no? Sucked in. .

It’s Friday and I’m down the pub (as should you by the sound of it) so I’ll read your expansive post during tomorrow morning’s oblutions.

Fortunately, the world is made up of lots of very sane, respectful and rational individuals who have a variety of opinions. Thankfully, most people don’t make unfounded and childish accusations about other people just because you interpreted their online post one way or another and or disagree with them. The essence of maturity and democracy is to respect dissent and alternate opinions.

If you would please re-read my post I did not say anywhere that I disagreed with any of the opinion or analysis of what Mark Scott said. The point I was making was, that it is very easy for someone like Mark Scott to parrot everything which has already been well said around the world about the state of the media business for the past 2 years and that the hubris coming from him is particularly amusing as it comes from someone who runs a government protected entity which has no accountability or obligation to develop and execute a business model in this new world of media.

If the only reference you can point to about digital innovation at the ABC is iView (not having DRM is hardly innovation – no US or UK news media site has it either) and a mobile website which should have been done years ago, then I feel very sad for my fellow Australians. There is not even any option on the ABC news pages to share a video link easily to either Facebook, Twitter or any other social network website – digital 101.

I think you need to spend some time in the US or Europe my friend to really understand what digital innovation is happening amongst old and new media organisations. Australian media is years behind and still doesn’t get it…….sadly, there is absolutely zero media innovation coming out of Australia.