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I was just surprised with a trip to this year’s NAB in Vages.  Once I peal myself off the ceiling I’m going to return with something intelligent to say.

I wonder…if I was a brand spankin’ new network desperately trying to buy my way through the markets…I wonder which station I would buy in the 5^th biggest market in the country.  Since the old UPN affiliate is the future home of CW, I’m curious to see which station MyTV picks for their Bay Area affiliation.  After recently talking with a couple of my friends at work and school, I’m putting my bet on KRON. 

KRON lost it’s NBC affiliate a few years back and I’ve heard many a rumors it’s been downhill for the independent station ever since.  You know it’s bad when the rats are even jumping ship (One of Andy’s best quotes).  Now, they’ve tried their best and I’m impressed they’ve survived this long.  But it’s time for some new blood…and money, fast!

Imagine having this job…one can only dream!

Now I’m not totally bashing NY.  I mean honestly after graduation I’m not going to pass up a job if it’s there.  What I’m saying is Time Warner offers an interactive television experience.  I like the approach.  My opinion is that broadcast networks hate the idea of interactive TV and are dragging their feet.  MSO’s on the other hand are strategically looking into the future.  Ok so it’s not sticking to the stratigic plans from the 90’s.  But honey, technology is like a beautiful woman…you don’t rush her.  She takes two hours to get ready?  You give her two hours to get ready.  Then you spend endless hours enjoying.

Sometimes when I’m in a Shel Silverstein mood, I think of the big television networks as big sleepy hairy giants who just finished a feast of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, full and sticky and unable to adapt and keep up. Well today, I think the giants are beginning to stir. Disney-ABC has announced that they will offer full-length episodes of four of their biggest shows online at abc.com. Don’t toss out the TV yet. This is a two month trial which will include interactive video ads for 10 advertisers. Check out Television Week’s report.

The idea is a good one don’t get me wrong, but the success of this all depends on those interactive video ads. For example, I was on the Associated Press website watching some video. In return for their free service they require you to sit and first watch a TV commcercial. Well after clicking on the 5th video news segment and watching the same exact ad for Tide each and every time I was starting to quote verbatim and loath the spot, no seriously it was pissing me off. I mean hello this is the 21st century, you have people who are willing to sit through your ad, change it up a bit for crying out loud! It like trying to stick something the size of a square into something the size of a circle…people, if you’re going to pay thousands in advertising make sure it works with the media platform.

There’s no excuse, soon companies will be spending millions on internet advertising, and pissing off millions of people who see it more then once in one sitting. So why are we using old-fashioned styles of advertising and making them non-skippable? Soon you are going to have people boycotting companies and products because of the fact that we are forced to watch a branding spot over and over in a matter of minutes. I personally blame Tide for that torture the other day.

And really this is a new media platform, and the best we got are putting tv commercials on the websites…doesn’t smell very fresh to me.

Remember, programming is coming to the internet, it’s unavoidable, but make sure the advertising can keep up.

Anyone who knows me knows this is the year of the dentist. Besides the fact that I’m graduating, and soon will be moving, I’ve also been spending an absorbent amount of time at the University of Pacific’s School of Dentistry. Let me use this moment to slip in a public service announcement, kid’s brush your teeth! I can’t complain too much, I have an awesome senior student dentist, and you can’t beat the discount of a dentistry school, considering how much work I have to get done.

But I digress. Yesterday, as I walked into my dentist’s station he asked if it’s all right if we listen to the game (St.Louise v.Philly) while he worked. To my fascination, he had the game streaming live on his laptop thanks to MLB.com, while the Yahoo Sports page was up with stats on all the games playing next to my dental files. Of course I didn’t mind, I was completely distracted at this whole set up. I was interested in seeing how an average Joe uses streaming platform to watch a broadcast program.

I’m always told my opinion on this whole idea is some what skewed by the fact that I work in the industry while getting my B.A. in Broadcasting. Strip that all away and I am a consumer too and I know what I like. And I love the concept of watching my TV on any new media platform that makes it convenient for me. As for my dentist, this was the next best thing to being in St. Louise watching in the stadium. In the opening session of a broadcasting symposium which was recently held at SFSU, VP Broadcast Distribution for CBS, Inc., Brent Stranathan talked about the concerns of cannibalization with putting broadcast programming online.

As I sat in my dentists chair waiting for the Novocain to kick in, it occurred to me this isn’t cannibalization, this is two people who would normally be chatting about the weather now are talking about the game, scores, and stats. And I’m not even a baseball fan. Watching the stream with a critical eye the first thing I did notice was the miss-use of the commercial brakes. I was sitting in a dentist chair in San Francisco watching a commercial for a tire service in, well honestly, I don’t even know where this was streaming from but I know this wasn’t for SF. Working in commercial radio and television I know there are ways of coming out of the national satellite streams in order to play local commercials, so why weren’t we doing this today online? Maybe the technology is too new, maybe the old way of advertising isn’t evolving fast enough? And this was a subscription stream, is it really fare to make people who paid to stream a show watch the commercials. Sounds like double dipping if you ask me.

Ok, so I know I don’t have all the answers…yet! But I do know there’s money to be made here people. Especially since I went to the dentist needing some work, and walked out watching two major league games (well passivley watching/listening…I mean, come on, I was at the dentists). That and the elevator version of Seal’s “Kiss by a Rose” in my head. But that’s another story.