Thoughts on 'Free' by Chris Anderson

I have read this book as part of my research for the programme I am taking part in, called Radio Revisited. You can read some more about the reasons for this and what Radio Revisited aims to do on the Vision and Media blog.

There is no doubt that the work is changing and the reduction of digital storage and delivery to an almost un-metered price means a change in what can be charged for and what will become 'free'. Chris Anderson in his previous book The Long Tail showed how cheaper and cheaper digital storage means digital stores can hold a huge inventory and still make money from selling just a couple of units from their many lines.

Atoms v bits
Now in Free, Chris compares anything that is made of 'atoms' as something that has value and can be traded for real money and anything that is made up of 'bits' is perceived as not worth spending money on.  But my problem is that anything I make, as a sound designer, is in 'bits' and so how do I make a living in this 'atoms v bits' world? What I have is intellectual property (IP). So my challenge is to monetize my IP and how to go about making money around 'free'?

Anderson outlines that to compete with 'free' you have to produce something better, or at least different from the 'free' alternatives and quotes examples like people passing the free office coffee machine to go to Starbucks to buy a coffee there. Or in the digital world he compares Microsoft Office with the open source 'office' equivalents, where if you want a relatively reliable product with customer service you buy Microsoft. If you want a 'free' product and can put up with it not being as reliable and can spend the time hunting on the net for the fix, then the open source option offers a low cost solution. Also if what you are doing is being replaced by software and/or 'on line', like travel agents, real estate agents, or stockbrokers then you need to move upstream to use your IP to resolve the more complex problems which people will still pay for.

Journalism
The newspaper industry is being decimated in this 'information free' world. So journalists need to adapt to survive. The top tier newspapers will survive but most journalists aren't employed by them. They work in the 101 magazines and trade journals, local papers etc. The journalists that are prepared to adapt will need to move upstream and become editors and gatekeepers of the information overloaded world of the internet. They also need to become coaches and editors to the growing amateur journalists, bloggers etc.

So it is looking as if the phrase 'time is money' is looking less and less secure....

If you are interested in buying the book then please consider using the links below.

TalkSport wants Radio 5 Live budget review

Following on from the story that BBC enlists commercial sector help to shake up radio where the BBC has asked former GMG Radio boss, John Myers, to carry out a wide-ranging efficiency review. He has been tasked with reviewing the operations at core BBC stations including Radio 1, Radio 2, 6 Music and 1Xtra. The review could lead to a major shake-up of the way BBC Radio operates and is one attempt at ending constant accusations of a "bloated" BBC. In recent years, the commercial sector has heavily criticised the BBC for spending more than is necessary to operate a radio business.

John Plunkett has written a piece in The Guardian which reports that Talksport want this review extended to the speech stations including Radio 5 Live.

However, TalkSport parent company UTV said the review should be extended to include the BBC's national speech stations including news and sport service BBC Radio 5 Live, where "cost per user hour" is four times higher than either Radio 1 or Radio 2. Scott Taunton, the managing director of UTV Media (GB), said the scope of the review was "much too narrow" and "suggests a reluctance by BBC management to bring the overall radio budget under control".  Taunton welcomed the appointment of Myers, but said the efficiency review's remit was too narrow and contradicted the NAO's recommendations. He added that it "suggests a reluctance by BBC management to bring the overall radio budget under control. Rather than focusing on their cheaper pop stations, the BBC should seek efficiency opportunities right across their portfolio." 

So surprise surprise, John Myers' appointment to hopefully pacify the commercial sector doesn't seem to work. However especially for the speech stations and also to a lesser degree the music stations their is a public service remit. Speech radio isn't cheap, it is very labour intensive to produce an hour of programming. The commercial sector by enlarge doesn't commission documentaries, dramas etc because they can't get a commercial return on them. So that is why we have public service broadcasting, to provide content the commercial sector can't do. Now I have no problem with making sure that there isn't money wasted in the BBC but I believe the radio sector provides a very cost effective range of stations to the public.

We need to disconnect to make sense of all this

In my regular scanning of my RSS feed from The media section of The Guardian, I came across this heading and it immediately grabbed my attention as it resonated with thoughts I am currently processing. Jemima Kiss has written a blog entry on the Week Notes section of The Guardian's web site. She starts....

I gave an internal presentation this week on distraction, overload and how we need a better balance of wired and unwired time. Because very little at the Guardian is internal any more (we are all mutualised, after all) I'm going to share it. Less a presentation and more a collection of thoughts and observations, this is about a kind of digital crisis I find myself in. That's partly down to the pressures of the job, commuting and being mother to a little fellow, which puts more pressure on my time and my (already admittedly unrealistic) personal expectations of how much work I could and should be producing.
I've written before about trying to shift away from that world of frenetic, short-form blogging to more in-depth, feature-style posts. Breaking off from our playground of distracting techness is part of that. My posts about email are part of that too - it is a medium designed by accident which was never intended to be used this way. Can't we do something better, something bespoke?

To read the rest of this and to see the Prezi she produced go to Week Notes Blog.

One of the statistics she quotes is that it can take 15 minutes to recover from a one minute interruption. I would certainly agree with that from my own experience. It takes me much less time per day if I 'do' my email in a few intensive blocks rather than keep breaking off to see what emails have come in recently. But as Jemima says there is an expectation with email that you are considered rude if you don't reply instantly.

Your comments would be most welcome...

When is the best time to post on social media?

Erik Qualman at the Socialnomics blog has posted this video from @equalman about the best times to post content on social media and the graveyard slots to avoid.

General guidelines:

• Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are your best days
• Saturday is the worst day
• Holidays are slow traffic days (except commerce sites)
• 10 am – 11:30 am and 1 – 3:30 pm are great times to post
• Stagger posts based on time zones

A recent study by Virtue specific to Facebook also shows that Social Media may follow similar patterns to the rest of the traditional Web.

• The three biggest usage spikes tend to occur on weekdays at 11:00 a.m., 3:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. ET.
• The biggest spike occurs at 3:00 p.m. ET on weekdays.
• Weekday usage is pretty steady, however Wednesday at 3:00 pm ET is consistently the busiest period.

Fans are less active on Sunday compared to all other days of the week; most sites slowest traffic day is Saturday, followed by Sunday. This is interesting since so many schools and companies block Facebook from 9 – 5 pm.  Tough to block mobile devices though.

There are exceptions to the above rules, depending on what you are posting, but these are good general guides for most sites, social media activity and blogs. Erik has been fortunate to have access to statistics to hundreds of different sites/blogs during my sixteen year career and roughly 90% of the time the above holds true.
When he was the Head of Marketing at Travelzoo his production team always sent out the Top 20 e-mail list to the 21 million subscribers on Wednesday at roughly 11 am.  Why?  This gave it the best chance to be read.  If you have an incredible Tweet you need to get out, but it’s 2 a.m. on a Saturday, use a tool like hootsuite to schedule for the tweet to go out when more potential readers might read it.
Ironically, this post may not be picked up as much as it could since I’m posting it in the afternoon on a Monday following a holiday.
Ric suggests these as other good posts on this topic: YouTube Traffic Patters, Best Time to Send E-Mail, When are Facebook Users Most Active?, Conversion Volume by Day

BBC enlists commercial sector help to shake up radio

Amanda Andrews has written a piece in The Telegraph and also reported by Radio Today that former GMG Radio boss, John Myers, has been asked to carry out a wide-ranging efficiency review.

Mr Myers has been tasked with reviewing the operations at core BBC stations including Radio 1, Radio 2, 6 Music and 1Xtra. The review could lead to a major shake-up of the way BBC Radio operates and is one attempt at ending constant accusations of a "bloated" BBC. In recent years, the commercial sector has heavily criticised the BBC for spending more than is necessary to operate a radio business.

The BBC Trust wants the core radio stations to deliver value for money to the licence fee payer, while operating as efficiently as possible. Mr Myers will spend the first three months of 2011 undertaking the review. As a result of his commitments at the BBC, he will not begin his new role as chief executive of the Radio Academy until April. "I can confirm that as part of our ongoing drive to ensure value for money we have asked independent consultant John Myers to help us in reviewing the efficiency of our radio operations. He will be working with us between January and March 2011," said a BBC spokeswoman A source familiar with the situation said that the BBC wanted to hire someone primarily with commercial sector expertise, but needed to ensure that person was not a "BBC hater". 

It is an interesting development am I not sure what I make of it. He is only reviewing the stations that compete with the commercial sector  but arguably that is all he is qualified to advise on. But when you look at the budgets will it make any real difference.

Radio 1
10.8 million weekly listeners, budget £43m, cost per user per hour 0.6p

Radio 2
13.3 million weekly listeners, budget £50.7m, cost per user per hour 0.5p

Radio 3
2 million weekly listeners, budget £51.1m, cost per user per hour 6.3p

Radio 4
9.7 million weekly listeners, budget £108.6m, cost per user per hour 1.3p

Radio 5 Live
6 million weekly listeners, budget £72.2million, cost per user per hour 2.3p

6 Music
0.7 million weekly listeners, budget £9m, cost per user per hour 3.4p

Radio 5 Live Sports Extra
0.7 million weekly listeners, budget £3.7m, cost per user per hour 2.6p

Radio 7
0.9 million weekly listeners, budget £6.9m, cost per user per hour 2p

Asian Network
0.4 million weekly listeners, budget £12.1m, cost per user per hour 6.9p

Radio 1Xtra
0.6 million weekly listeners, budget £9.6m, cost per user per hour 4.5p

The channels he is going to look at total £12.3m which is only just above the Radio 4 budget and the cost per listener for Radios 1 & 2 is already small so it makes me think this process is just to pacify the commercial sector.

More examples of my work

I have been busy on a number of dramas and documentaries most of which I cannot talk about yet but will be on air around and just after Christmas so will share more when they go public. However one that I am just finishing is a 2 part documentary on Manny Pacquiao, the Filipino boxer, and now politician. An exclusive interview produced by Lyndon Saunders at All Out Productions which I have been involved in editing and mixing will be going out on the World Service on Nov 26th and Dec 3rd as the Friday Documentary.

Fighting for the people

Making the leap from top level sport to politics is not unique: Pakistan’s Imran Kahn did it; Britain’s Sebastian Coe’s done it… but Filipino, Manny Pacquiao, takes things to a new level. As an active boxer – and the world’s first fighter to win eight world titles in no less than eight different weight divisions – earlier this year he was also elected to Congress in the Philippines earlier this year.
Now, Mike Costello, the BBC’s Boxing Correspondent travels to the Philippines to spend time with this sporting legend as he trains for his forthcoming fight with Antonio Margarito. Mike discovers who Pacquiao is as the boxer, the newly appointed politician and man of the Filipino people.
Speaking with people that know, love and work with Pacquiao, his story of poverty to one of the world’s most high earning sportsmen is compelling. Mike Costello will visit the streets in General Santos where Pacquiao grew up to see for himself where he came from.

TX times...

East Africa
Friday 07:00, 14:00, 21:00
West Africa
Friday 09:00. 14:00, 21:00
America
Friday 14:00, 19:00
East Asia
Friday 03:00, 08:00, 13:00
South Asia
Friday 04:00, 09:00, 15:00
Europe & Middle East
Friday 10:00, 15:00, 20:00
Australia
Thursday 23:00, Friday 04:00, 11:00, 16:00
UK
Friday 09:00, 12:00, 15:00

C4 unveils £5m gaming push aimed at 10 to 19 year olds

Channel 4 is to plough around £5m into a raft of games and apps that will encourage youngsters to consider finance, ethics, attraction and death. The 10 multiplatform projects have been commissioned by Channel 4 Education.
The services span a range of platforms, including console gaming, online games and mobile apps as C4 Education bids to reach youngsters in all digital places they consume content. 

As part of the range of commissions, C4 has earmarked three specifically for 10-to 14-year-olds following its extended remit to cater for this target demographic.   The orders follow C4’s decision to ring-fence its 2010 investment in education of £4m, along with an additional £1m injection specifically for 10-14s for 2011.
Alice Taylor, C4 commissioning editor for education, said the aim was to provide engaging content for the target demographic of 10-19s. “Covering a fantastic range of formats and platforms, the projects are varied and fun whilst still tackling useful and important subject matters,” said Taylor. “As usual we aim to represent teens – and now tweens – in their best light, and to continue to find new talent and recruit UK independents in the drive to provide public service content of the very highest quality.”
Speaking about Channel 4 Education's general remit, Taylor said it is "committed to the public service remit of reaching teenagers and young people with content relevant to their tastes and as such the budget is ring fenced". Taylor defended the public service remit of her department and its shift away from traditional term-time morning slots, which reached 70,000-80,000 viewers, to more experimental games and projects on the web and on mobile. The annual education budget of £4m for 14- to 19-year-olds is to be supplemented with £1m for 10- to 14-year-olds as a result of the government's Digital Economy Act earlier this year.
She said the department was "not only allowed to but expected to fail in some areas". "That's the merit, the point of public service to try something not that's not commercially proven or that doesn't exist yet," added Taylor.
"Luckily we're having a lot of success with our stuff but without public service you would only do what is commercially viable. We want experimentation, diversity innovation and something for the public benefit, to make products that are about helping somebody or making them feel better."
Taylor said that in the two years since Channel 4 changed its education strategy there is "no doubt" that it reaches a more suitable audience, but added that reaching that audience online presents different problems. "It's a challenge to get things noticed – publishing things on the internet is like chucking them into the sea, rather than a river."