Dan Kennedy Media Blog | Info

The Otago University Students Association wants broadcast media to sign a censorship contract before attending Ori10 concerts.

The annual orientation event starts tomorrow and upon requesting media passes to cover it, Dunedin's Channel 9 production manager Luke Chapman received a media release form.

The contract contained clauses banning broadcast of footage "showing severe intoxication . . . including, but not limited to vomiting, concussion, fighting, individuals receiving medical attention, and sexually explicit material".

It also stated verbal consent had to be gained from all individuals before filming occurred, and if anyone filmed later notified OUSA they did not want footage of themselves broadcast, footage of that individual would have to be edited.

The edited footage would also have to be given to OUSA for its final consent before being broadcast and if any footage was deemed to be in breach of contract it would have to be removed before screening.

OUSA president Harriet Geoghegan said the contract was drafted in 2007, in consultation with the association's lawyer, and she had not heard of any media finding fault with it.

No contract was created for print media.

The contract applied only to broadcast media's coverage of private concerts held in the Union Hall, she said.

There would be no such restrictions on outdoor and public events.

"We are well within our rights to restrict access to anyone [to] our private events."

Students went to concerts thinking they would be a private event, not expecting media to be there, she said.

The contract was drafted to try to "protect our members" and the association's reputation, as media coverage "quite often paints us in a bad light".

Footage of events, such as Undie 500 riots, was often screened years after it was filmed and was taken out of context, Ms Geoghegan said.

A clause which allowed footage to screen only during orientation, except repeat screenings of the full production, was designed to stop this.

She acknowledged the Undie 500 was not a private event.

Mr Chapman described the contract as "silly" and said he had never seen such a "steering" document in his 17 years in television.

"It's trying to steer us away from covering anything at our discretion," he said.

So far I've talked about how I actually use Social Media, and next week I fully intend to continue with that. But right now I'm really hyped about how several ideas in my life are converging right now, so I thought I'd take a left turn at Albuquerque and look at those ideas and what they have to do with how I'd like to be using Social Media.

The Ideas

1. Connected TV Widgets

First, I came across this press release by Yahoo! detailing an expanded roll out of their Connected TV Widget technology and announcing that the Widget SDK, or WDK as Yahoo! calls it. Just to summarize, Connected TV Widgets are similar to the Widgets that go on the desktop of a Vista or Windows 7 PC or an OSX Mac, only it's on your TV. I'll tell you, when I read this press release I was so excited I could spit, but I couldn't quite put my finger on why at first.

2. Facebook Games

The next thing that happened is that I did follow through on the half promise I made in last week's Developer Diary to try a Facebook game. I chose a game at random from among the myriad requests from my friends that I usually ignore. I'm half ashamed to say how much time I've spent engaged in this kind of "research," but I'm really glad that I did–I understand a lot more about how these games work and how they tie into every developer's dream of monetizing his/her killer app.

3. Some Freaking Amazing "Who Dat"

Finally, to the extent that I am a football fan at all, I am a fan of the New Orleans Saints. I'm not just saying that because they finally won the Super Bowl. The very first pro football game I watched all the way through on purpose was when the Saints played the Rams for a playoff berth in 1983. So I'm sure you can well imagine what I was doing Sunday afternoon when I would normally have been publishing my InsideRIA article.

The thing is, I live in a relatively small town and our friends who hosted the Superbowl party have DirectTV. What this means is that our local channels aren't available but, because the network that showed the game has a local affiliate (local-ish–New Orleans, as luck would have it), DirectTV can't or won't allow access to the channels in larger markets that we might have tapped into to see the game. What this meant is that we had to watch the game in a tiny corner of one of the stations that aggregates 6 games at once. And at the top of the screen, there was "Press Select to Play the Axe Hair Challenge," which no one was remotely tempted to do.

Put them in the mixing bowl with some King Cakes

So, yesterday, when I was going through my annual ritual of decorating and mailing out the King Cakes I'd made for my best clients yesterday before the game, I started thinking about why that ad was so "not tempting," and what could have persuaded me that I was interested in clicking it.

Social games can be a little fishy...

And I started thinking about how there are several things I really want for my Fish World aquariums that can only be bought with Fish Bucks. And right now, it seems that there are two main ways you can get fish bucks. One is by leveling up. The frustrating thing is that you don't get fish bucks on every level up–more like every second or third one–and you usually just get one fish buck when you do. The second is that you can buy something or complete a survey, which no doubt will sign you up to be spammed until you change your email address. I am very suspicious of these offers, especially after reading about how unscrupulous some of the game companies can be. But it occurred to me I'd be quite happy to take the Axe Hair challenge for a fish buck or two.

I'll come back to that thought in a minute, because, though that might tempt me, I am not really representative of the target audience for the SuperBowl. Sorry–I tend to think in spirals, and, since this is written sort of "stream of consciousness," expect it to loop back on itself a few times.

Fantasy Football

So then I started thinking about my friend, Stephanie, who probably is part of the target demographic for the SuperBowl. Ok, so demographically we're fairly similar–grew up in the same town, we're the same age, and we both married Brits we met on the Internet. But the big difference between her and me is that she is an avid fantasy football player. And wouldn't she just love to get information, right there on the screen, about how the players on her team are doing while she watches the game.

Ya, so it turns out I'm not the only person thinking like this. Luckily, the person who thought of it first isn't just learning now about Connected TV widgets. Instead, RallyCast has pioneered the development of multiple Connected TV widgets, including RallyCast Fantasy Sports. And they've lined up a sweet deal with Samsung and Best Buy where, if you buy a Samsung Series 7100 or better HD TV from Best Buy, you get a season pass to the Fantasy Sports service for free. This is clearly intended to promote this TV as the sports fan's TV, but I wonder if RallyCast might not have been wiser to cast in their lot with Vizio, whose TVs have remote controls with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and game controls. This makes it easier to use RallyCast's sophisticated features, such as inline chat.

Truly Interactive TV?

That got me thinking...Could I click on a player in a game and get instant stats on him? Or, if I were watching CSI Miami, could I have a widget that lets me see additional clues in a scene, like, I don't know, a black light overlay? It turns out that the technology isn't there yet. Not only can we not interact with the broadcast video, but we don't even know much about what's playing at the moment (the relevant comment is at the very end, in answer to a question).

How ya gonna keep them down on the farm, after they've seen TV?

So that brings me back to what we can do. As far as I know, there is nothing in the world stopping a tie-in where, for instance, someone gets an access code from a California Cow commercial and plugs it into Farmville to get a branded California cow on their farm. After all, the disappointed runner-ups need to go somewhere. And, for broadcast media, this would be advertising gold. They would be able to get specific metrics on what users are actively doing as a result of a specific ad spot. Yes, people could give the code to friends who are not watching, but it would be simple to prevent that by time limiting it.

Then I can imagine that someone might tune into Dirty Jobs specifically because of a Farmville announcement that the ad with the code would be running that night, and the audience would actually be motivated to sit there and watch every commercial in case the ad with the code comes on. Farmville has millions of active participants, so this might make every ad spot during the show more valuable. In a time where broadcast advertising is competing with other venues, such as social media, both venues could benefit by cooperating.

I think this is an idea that hasn't resonated yet with broadcasters and advertisers, or there would be a huge push to make such a connection more direct. Maybe there is, in the background, but if there is, they're not letting it slip.

I think that broadcasters should be looking for ways to motivate viewers to stick around and watch the commercials if they want to survive, and I think the huge explosion of social games indicates that there are many consumers who will invest quite a lot of effort in acquiring whatever virtual good they're hankering for today. But how much sense does it make for them to turn away from the TV, jump on the computer, and get immersed in their game? Instead, they should be able to interact directly with the commercial, add the item in the background to their online profile, and continue watching. This means that TVs need to be able to provide direct interaction with the programming that's on now, and they may not have a long window to get this technology up and running before people shift their viewing habits even further from TV.

Every Little Helps

I can envision a TV experience where I'm watching Martha Stewart and I quickly pull up a widget that knows what she's cooking and tells me about the gourmet store that has the hard-to-find ingredients and how much they cost there. Facebook already supports inexpensive location-sensitive advertising, and I think FourSquare does as well.

The large networks have typically ignored local businesses, except to the extent that they allow local stations to insert their own ads in network programming. But television ads are often prohibitively expensive. Widget-driven, location sensitive micro-advertising tied in to the programming might, in aggregate, add up to a lot of advertising dollars for the networks, while at the same time providing cost-effective, targeted advertising for businesses that might have a hard time affording the occasional ad on local TV.

Or you could do it for the children

OK, monetization is how all this gets built, but I can really see this as a tool for the greater good for children. Shows like Sesame Street are already cool (who doesn't have this video stuck in their head indelibly), but imagine how cool it would be to be able to click on "which of these things is not like the others" or type in the answer to a question posed by Elmo.

And when I think of something like Pee Wee's Playhouse with actual interactivity...well, that's just fun!

Do you want Connected TV?

I'm sure it's obvious by now that I totally want Connected TV, not just a consumer, but as a developer. I can see so many ways where knitting these, currently competing, technologies into a coherent whole benefits everyone–consumers, advertisers, developers, and even big media outlets.

I have to say that I'm torn between buying a Connected TV capable TV now and waiting for 3D TV to come to a store near me, or even waiting for hypothetical TV's in the future that might be more completely interactive.

I'm sure that the things I've outlined here are just the tip of the iceberg for what could be possible in the future. What do you think? Is this a technology that looks like fun to you? Are you already making or using Connected TV widgets?

Read more from Amy Blankenship.