See What’s Out There

Marc Andreessen has a blog post called “ABC thinks you’re an idiot.” What this post is about specifically is ABC’s launch of on demand programming as a way to get people to stop using DVR (digital video recorders, like TiVo.) The ABC people say, if we give you all of our shows on demand, then you want need the DVR. And on their on demand programming, you can’t skip the commercials.

Quoting Bill Carter from the NY Times

“This does counter the DVR,” said Anne Sweeney, the president of the Disney-ABC television group. “You don’t need TiVo if you have fast-forward-disabled video on demand…”

Ray Cole, president of Citadel Communications, which owns three local ABC stations, who is also the chairman of the board of affiliated ABC stations, was even more direct about the goal of the new service.

“As network and affiliates, we both have an interest in slowing down the explosive growth of DVRs,” Mr. Cole said. “This is about combating DVRs. As we developed this at every stage, there was an agreement that however we put this together, disabling the fast-forward function was key.”

Ha. ABC thinks we’re idiots. And this is the bigger point I want to make. Do you, in your work, project your goals onto your audience in unrealistic ways. ABC’s efforts will fail. It is a joke really. They want to believe so badly that they can stop the world from changing that they don’t tell themselves the truth. The truth at ABC is that people will watch what they want when they want, period. You can’t make them do anything. You better come up with other revenue sources, product placements, in-programming sponsorships, and the like, because the world you knew is gone.

When you think about your work and your goals and you think about the changes the internet has brought, are you telling yourself the truth?

I wrote recently about the decline of newspapers and the rise of the web. Marc Andreessen, the founder of Netscape, Ning and an internet thinker (and billionaire), wrote a post today on his blog called Inaugurating the New York Times Deathwatch.

Reading it you get the sense that these folks just won’t face the music. Their business model is near death and they better move faster to preserve whatever value they still have.

He shows vividly how the New York Times business has eroded, how their ad revenues are way down, circulation is down, etc. He makes fun of The Boston Globe’s (owned by the NY Times) decision to raise prices:

“When you have an obsolete, inconvenient physical product that nobody wants in an era of universal online access, the appropriate strategy is clearly to raise the price.”

He says “Sometimes it’s darkest right before it’s pitch black.”

The punchline is this:

Well, given that the Internet is the central force dismantling the company’s business, I’m sure that by now they’ve stocked their board with noted Internet experts. Let’s see:

* Brenda C. Barnes — CEO of Sara Lee; noted snack cake expert

* Raul E. Cesan — former CEO of Schering-Plough; noted Levitra expert

* Daniel H. Cohen — president of DeepSee LLC, “an oceanic exploration and submarine leasing company”; noted Jacques Cousteau expert

* Lynn G. Dolnick — former head of exhibits for the National Zoologic Park in Washington DC; noted marsupial expert

* Michael Golden — current publisher of the International Herald Tribune; former head of the company’s Women’s Publishing Division; noted sundress expert

* William E. Kennard — former head of the FCC; noted “seven dirty words” expert

* James M. Kilts — former CEO of Gillette; noted smooth, smooth shave expert; prior to that, unindicted coconspirator at Philip Morris; noted expert on your grandfather’s hacking cough

* David E. Liddle — here I have to take a pause as I actually know this one; based on what’s happening at the company, it could be reasonably asked whether he’s actually attending the board meetings.

* Ellen R. Marram — former CEO of Nabisco; noted Oreo expert. Oh, wait, she actually ran an Internet company: “From 1999 until 2000, Ms. Marram was president and chief executive officer of efdex Inc. (the Electronic Food & Drink Exchange), an Internet-based commodities exchange for the food and beverage industry.” Ooh. I wonder if that ended well.

* Thomas Middelhoff — former CEO of Bertelsmann; noted expert on complicated family politics — well, that’s probably coming in handy…

* Janet L. Robinson — current CEO of the New York Times Company; noted expert on horrific business implosions

* Doreen A. Toben — CFO of Verizon; noted 30-year debenture expert

* And finally, Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr. — the Big Kahuna — the Man — the Guy In Charge — the chairman and scion — the dude with the cojones to actually defend Judy Miller. Not noted Internet expert.

So, if you want to issue bonds to pay for FCC-approved snack cake manufacturing in a submarine on display at a national park by a sundress-wearing cigarette-puffing Levitra-popping Judy Miller, you’re pretty much set.

Go team!

Of course you want your organization to be using all of those new technology tools you keep hearing about. RSS feeds and blogs, article comments, social networks… it’s all increasingly important.

Avenue A/Razorfish, the high-end web ad agency now owned by Microsoft, did a little study of these so called Web 2.0 technologies to see about rates of adoption. Some of what they found was on the low end — such as 17% of people using shared bookmarks (sites such as Del.icio.us). But we also have 60% personalizing their home pages and 85% using most-emailed articles links on news sites.

But guess what the largest number of all was? If you have been reading this blog, then you would not be surprised. Video. 95% reporting they had watched an online video over the previous three months. 95%! That’s HUGE.

Video is the most compelling content online. Video is the most popular content online. Video is what your nonprofit needs to be doing.

Thanks to OnPhilanthropy and Marc Andreessen for tip.

You might know Marc Andreeseen. If you don’t, you should. He basically invented the web browser and founded Netscape and he just sold his company Opsware to HP for $1.6 billion (same amount YouTube sold for). And he recently started Ning, a company that lets you create your own social network in about 5 minutes — and more than 100,000 people have already done so.

Marc writes a super blog (though, without allowing comments, I am not sure we can call it a blog). He writes about internet business and business in general. He’s real smart.

And he just wrote a post called

12 questions for the producers of the new Bionic Woman

Here’s his first question:

Any organization that developed biomedical technology for instant healing and flawless body part replacement — technology 20 years ahead of its time — would be able to license it and generate hundreds of billions of dollars of income very quickly. Instead, they keep it secret and derive no real value from it. Why?

(On behalf of my childhood, I would also like to extend this same question to the producers of Knight Rider and Airwolf.)

He concludes with:

“Why do I know I’m going to keep watching this show?”