Monday, April 1, 2013

Blog post (from readings) #15: (Due Monday, April 8) Ch. 16 and 19 in The Master Switch. Post thoughts or questions about the reading to the class blog for discussion. What struck you as interesting? What did you learn that you think you might remember five years from now?

11 comments:

  1. The story of media mogul Ted Turner is certainly an interesting one. The mere fact that he was able to take a fledgling black and white UHF station in Atlanta and eventually create the first cable network is certainly remarkable, especially given the fact that the thought of starting your own network beyond the already established ABCs, CBSs and NBCs was inconceivable at the time. The amount of infrastructure required to build your own network is massive (something that I never really gave thought to), and it is really a testament to Turner's ingenuity and business savvy that he could make his media empire happen.

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  2. The chapter on Ted Turner was interesting it almost felt like those pioneer stories we’ve already heard for lone inventors. In this case, people had already tried out some version of cable (HBO) but Turner was the first to be daring enough to want to create a fourth national network (through a cable network). The chapter also talks about how people criticized cable for dividing the nation and making stations that were targeting certain demographics. I like how this book is set up to bring up criticisms or widely held beliefs and use history to explain otherwise. Even though we learned it in class, I had forgotten that national stations like NBC and CBS had changed the form people watched TV long ago, making a more nationalized audience. Cable seemed to revert back to targeted programming (thought not solely through localized programming).

    I was too young to know or even care about the AOL Time Warner partnership. Time Warner’s case seemed like a perfect example of old media being driven out by not understanding new media. I wonder why the company hadn’t jumped on the bandwagon at that point. Most of the time, large companies will align themselves with new inventors/inventions to stay close to it, either to stifle it or use it to their advantage). At the end, I wonder if Case really understood the internet, especially when he said that if he could go back, he would buy Google. Wu seems to make the case that the internet is an open medium and only companies who keep it under that guise do well, while mergers (and companies that wish to fully control it) don’t. I wonder if this will always stay true.

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  3. I know Ted Turner primarily from TCM and owning the Braves, so it was interesting to read about how he got his start. It's always incredible to hear these stories - that person in the right place at the right time who had an unbelievable amount of motivation and drive - where people improbably make it to the top, and that appears to be the case with Turner. To be able to take what he had and turn it into the empire it is today is frankly remarkable.

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  4. I really enjoyed learning about how Ted Turner built CNN and made the Braves one of the most popular baseball teams in America by giving them a platform on his national network. I never knew that he bought the team to fill content on his super-station.

    I think Wu asked a particularly poignant question at the end of his introduction to part V: Which is mightier: the radicalism of the Internet or the inevitability of the cycle?

    I knew a bit about the AOL Time Warner disaster from reading New York TImes coverage of it. Below are two links to NYT articles about the merger. Both are worth a gander. The top link is an interactive multi-media piece and the lower link is a "In Retrospect" piece about the merger a decade after it took place.

    http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/01/11/business/20100111-merger-timeline.html

    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/11/business/media/11merger.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

    I do recall the days waiting for the dialup connection to get onto AOL. (We were a lot more patient back then)
    Ted Turner lost most of his personal fortune, $7 billion, on the deal because AOL became extinct as soon as broadband became ubiquitous. Basically, as Wu says, TIme Warner paid billions for a pop-up ad.

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  5. I know Ted Turner as being the founder of CNN. I found it interesting to learn about how Turner got his start and how he ended up where he is now. What I took away from this chapter in particular is a quote from Schumpeter. "You only have one life, you might as well make it a great one." This is an untimely quote that everyone across the globe can relate to, one way or another.

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  6. Ted Turner made a bold claim that “television has led us… down the path of destruction.” But Turner has made such a dent in the television market that I believe it has created a competition that could be far more destructive for the industry. After all, companies are competing with each other to own the best shows and have the most compelling material. Television has strayed from its original educational intentions. In today’s society, people are rarely getting their news from television anyway. Television has turned into a square that people blankly gaze into to quench their thirst for mindless garbage. I wouldn’t put this blame on Turner, but he knows his networks have to keep up with the shift of society.

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  7. I think it’s funny and a little ironic now looking back on what AOL has become. Like AT&T, and also RCA, AOL was one of those companies that simply dominated their industry. In a sense, AOL basically controlled the Internet. They were, at one point, the largest service provider in America, and everybody was simply buying in to this new craze of the Internet. Now around 15, 20 years later, AOL, like those companies mentioned, are not as powerful, and simply do not control the market like they used too. Similarly, like most events in history, especially in broadcast history, AOL simply could not keep up with the demand for new technology. That technology, as Wu mentions, was broadband. Since AOL was provided and founded on a system that flourished through dial-up service, it was difficult for them to keep control of the market while meeting the demands of the public. Broadband destroyed them.

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  8. Chapter 16 almost makes me want to read a biography on Ted Turner. Turner seems like a crazy but extremely interesting man. Founder of CNN, pioneer of the cable network, biggest landowner in America, two-time winner of the America’s Cup, and married to Jane Fonda, Turner sounds like quite the character and I’m surprised I’ve never seen a movie about him.

    I didn’t know much about Ted Turner before reading this chapter, and now I’m surprised we haven’t learned more about him. He created the first cable network in 1976, WTCG, though HBO had previously executed a similar idea. But for someone so ambitious and determined, taking on NBC, ABC, and CBS, he was rather uncreative. Broadcasting old cartoons and movies is not the way to make a name for yourself or make yourself a competitor against the Big Three. It’s probably a good thing he was crazy and mischievous because that is what drove him to broadcast news on his network, which ultimately made CNN successful.

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  9. I am most intrigued by the part of the Turner chapter during which he described trying to convince advertisers to run advertisements on his newly created cable channel. He made the analogy that really stuck out to me. "My first team of salesmen ended up like the soldiers in the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan. They were mowed down to a man." I wasn't really surprised when I read this, I actually found the quote quite humorous. It was just a foreign idea that people were skeptical of. Turner's new channel would be competing with NBC, CBS, and ABC, not many people before him wanted to try and go up with the biggest networks in the country. Obviously Turner worked it out and convinced people to buy advertisement time.

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  10. Because our generation grew up with cable, I never questioned where it originated. Though I knew cable cost more, and offered more channels, I never questioned that it was any different from the ABC, NBC and CBS stations. I just saw those stations as the main news stations that were transmitted through the airwaves because the people needed news. On the contrary the cable channels were for the cartoons and shows I wanted to watch, thus entertainment that cost more. I did not see any technical difference between the two. So it is interesting now to put cable in perspective as it was formed out of Ted Turners desire to compete with the big stations, and the use of satellite technology. This in conjunction with Turner’s revenue model allowed for stations to produce niche content that did not have to appeal to the masses. I think in recent years we see how cable’s success with this type of content has expanded the creativity of broadcast stations.
    The AOL Time Warner rise and fall is an interesting modern example of how communication experiments fail. The two companies were not forward thinking and tried to solve a problem with technology that already existed. In a similar way there were quite a few early television and radio innovators who focused too much on building off one existing technology or design who eventually failed because they did not create or take advantage of emerging technologies. Instead they tried to perfect old ones. This seems to be what happened to AOL with the use of cable. I also think its interesting how net neutrality of Google and Amazon killed the AOL model. It’s similar, though still different, with satellite and cable TV. The wide variety of stations pulls viewers away from content on broadcast stations that were previously valued more heavily due to their large viewing audiences.

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  11. Cable T.V. used to be the ultimate luxury. When my family finally got it, I remember being amazed by the eight hundred channels suddenly at my fingertips. It’s hard to believe that even then, cable was a relatively new concept and that a decade before Comcast installed my parent’s cable box, only a handful of stations existed.

    Time and again we hear stories of one powerful individual, who takes an existing invention and uses it to singlehandedly change the game. Ted Turner is the modern equivalent of David Sarnoff, with a slightly more outrageous back-story. He created a need for cable T.V., a means to bypass the network giants and most importantly, the 24-hour news cycle that all young journalists must learn to operate on. Wu is right in saying that Turner made people aware of their interests and their inability to identify with network programming. A few years after Turner successfully marketed his re-run channel, cable TV had something to offer everyone from a music junkie to a travel enthusiast.

    I find it surprising that given his prior experience, Turner was unable to predict the demise of AOL. Net neutrality makes the Internet fundamentally different from broadcast technology. It seems silly that Turner, the man responsible for providing viewers with unlimited choice in television, tried to take an open medium and close it. I also wonder how the Internet would have been different if special interest television did not exist. If all we knew of entertainment was “walled garden” television, would we still expect unlimited choice online?

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