| Here Lies TV |
[Jul. 11th, 2009|04:45 pm] |
At Mumbai's International Telecommunication Union - Asia-Pacific Institute for Broadcasting Development (ITU-AIBD), the MPAA and it's cronies have been discussing locking down future TV broadcasts. They are now mortally terrified of their A-hole emissions reaching the tubosphere. As ever, there is a deep irony in organisations that make their business delivering content going so far out of their way to prevent people from receiving it:
Conax AS International Product marketing manager Vidar Sandvik advocated "scrambling" for FTA [Free To Air] broadcasting. He cited Netherlands and Poland where 100% cable saturation did not prevent terrestrial television from thriving. In Poland where FTA had 30% of the market, FTA broadcasters added video-on-demand in HD, increasing value for consumers, and ensuring no leaks to the Net. Let the pay-TV operator subsidise the set-top box, he said, and then control box quality for content protection. As for cost, set-top box vendors paid nothing for Conax hardware, he said.
Scrambling Free to Air? Isn't that just Free to View? It's like suggesting vegetarian food should contain more meat. And "ensuring no leaks to the Net"? Oh, I seriously doubt that.
Licensing set-top box production and preventing consumers from becoming broadcasters, but enabling them to receive, store and do home networking are some rules that regulators should lay down to protect content, concluded Williams. He recommended making content protection cheaper by going completely digital. "Why do you need analog outputs?" he asks.
And there it is, who needs that festering analogue wound in the side of every receiver, spilling our digital goodness into the cupping hands of those evil pirates? Clearly the digital changeover in the US went so well that it was obviously just too easy. This time people should be forced to buy new TVs as well! Admittedly, this is the satellite TV industry talking, and they do have a habit of claiming special excuses for acting like the owners of content rather than merely the transmitters - kind of like the guy who delivers your new washing machine scratching his name on the front of it then hanging around and asking for money every time you want to use it.
Yeah, I think that's enough analogies for this weekend.
Over the last few years I've been watching TV die. Even after going out of my way to get satellite because it was the only way to get a reliable service out here in the woods, I've found myself watching less and less. It is a rare occasion indeed for me to actually sit down and watch a show from beginning to end. When I miss a show that I intended to watch there is no more "aw crap!" reaction that I recall from the past. On more than one occasion I've found myself with remote in my hand, staring at the listings and thinking "even though there is a show I thought I wanted to see, I can't actually be bothered to set up a recording." The new relationship with TV appears to be one of opportunistic sampling - when particularly bored or put out by some other medium or project I might turn on and watch whatever can be found that is the least anti-intellectual. Then, an hour later, It'll be turned off. So delicate is this connection that sometimes a show will be turned off, not because it's dull or offensive, but because having to turn down the ads to an acceptable volume every fifteen minutes is more annoying that the show is interesting.
Another thing that leads to this general malaise is that the listings are becoming a serious impediment to viewing. Despite having access to an accurate schedule for every available channel for the next seven days I can honestly say that for weeks now I have not looked at more than the next three hours in that "wall of worthless" for any channel. In a world of ballooning lateral access, locating anything of value on linear TV has become too much of a chore for too little entertainment.
So what the hell happened? Is it me? Or could it be the content, could it actually be less entertaining than it used to be? Or rather, has it stopped evolving in line my expectations of innovation? If this were multiple choice I think we'd check that last one.
The problem appears to be one of homogenisation - every channel, regardless of their original remit, wants to reach the largest possible audience. So if one type of programming draws a greater audience then every channel will want that type of programming. And so we have 24 hours of make-over and pimping shows on what used to be called "Music Television", and we even have reality TV on the SciFi channel... sorry that will be "SyFy" for the US viewers:
SyFy: where we're going, we won't need "i"s
The reason for this fuss over the locking down of a medium that is rapidly dipping below the horizon of relevance is because we can see a whole lot of defectors of this nature having a serious impact on viewing figures. The subsequent drop in advertising revenue will no doubt be blamed on illicit distribution of the same content that we can't be bothered to watch. Naturally, the finger will be pointed at the Internet. With Ireland already facing a de facto Three-strikes law and Internet censorship over music distribution, such attention is only going to add to the troubles. That the MPAA et al are deciding amongst themselves to further break our already compromised personal technology is a damning signal of both their mortally ill business and our own complacency over their power.
End result: an industry that produces something dull that we don't care about is trying to control us because we don't particularly want their product any more. The sounds of their desperate scrabbling for power are not unfamiliar. |
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| Dark Days Ahead for Irish Internet Users |
[Jun. 22nd, 2009|04:59 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | censorship, copyright, internet, ireland, irma, music, net neutrality, rant, riaa, technology, three strikes | ] |
Just to catch you up. This year my ISP, Eircom.net, settled a dispute with the Irish Recorded Music Ass. (IRMA) who had taken them to court over illegal file sharing. The claim was that Eircom were complicit in the illegal activities of their users. the evidence against them included internal emails showing Eircom execs joking about copyright infringement.
The out of court settlement, so far as anyone can tell, is entirely one-sided. Eircom have agreed to institute both content filtering - censorship by any other name - and a three-strikes rule - very like the situation promised by the recently defeated EU Telecoms Package. The Industry Ass. will put forward to the courts websites and online services that they feel need to be blocked in Ireland to protect their profit margins and Eircom have agreed not to contest any of them. A sorry little MediaSentry wannabe called DTecNet is in place to monitor internet users and provide accusations which Eircom will be asked to act upon by disconnecting those accused without any room for appeal. Remember, this is the same monitoring technique that lead the RIAA to sue a woman who did not even own a computer! Also keep in mind that this is a private arrangement, there is no public consultation, no democratic or judicial process, no tests for legality or constitutionality. This is the Recording Industry successfully inserting a de facto law without any need to lobby politicians or campaign for public support.
Fine, I'll ditch Eircom in a heartbeat, and I'll be sure to let them know exactly why I, and no doubt many other customers are jumping what has become the Recording Industry patrol boat to man the cruise liner across the dock. I'm thinking I'll sign up with UPC, an international company that bought out NTL and Chorus and that offer better stats for a similar price.
But there's a problem...
Since their success with Eircom the Irish Recorded Music Ass. has been sending threatening letters to all the other ISPs operating in the country (and a few that aren't ISPs at all) offering the same arrangement they offered Eircom and backed by the same threats of legal action. In fact both BT Ireland and UPC are already facing legal proceedings over this.
Eircom is the largest telecoms operator in the Republic, the one-time monopoly holder, their pockets are as deep as they get in the local industry. Even they could not face the legal avalanche that the Recording Industry promised to drop on them - appeal after appeal, case after case. Eircom have a maximum possible consumer base of maybe 2 million households and businesses. Subtract from that the customers who have taken up offers from other companies. What's left does not look like much when placed before the international cartels that are applying monetary leverage across the fulcrum of IRMA. All the other operators here are smaller than that, or at least have a smaller stake in the already tiny market. Even BT will probably settle before the cost of legal activity outstrips their profit margin. It seems we're about to find out.
How can anyone select a new provider when it looks like they'll all end up in exactly the same situation?
UPC have publicly stated that they have no intention of folding before the threats. In their own words "UPC intends to vigorously defend its position in court." And this is exactly the stance that lead Eircom to court in the first place. And look where they are now.
Angry yet? |
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| Forgive me for Thinking Like an Engineer |
[May. 31st, 2009|01:11 am] |
Last weekend our cat, Tilly, was poisoned. When I saw him lying on the living room floor he was suffering some form of seizure, shuddering, stretching and curling uncontrollably. His pulse was so light, his breathing so shallow, that I was sure they had stopped altogether. The spasms were too strong to get him safely into a the carrier so he went to the vet wrapped in a towel.
Having heard and seen what happens to poisoned animals, I feared the worst. Even if he survived, I was sure there would be permanent damage, that he would never be the same again, would never be fit or well.
Fortunately we'd found him in time and got him medical attention as quickly as possible. So after a night on a drip he's back to himself with nothing but a slightly blooded leg from the IV.
Needless to say, my relief has been tempered to some degree by frothing outrage.
A while back there was a discussion in comments to a Boing Boing post on the so-called "better mousetrap", various parties offering advice on catching and killing vermin. I offered my own opinion that, catching and killing rats, mice, roaches, anything of that nature is essentially futile, no more effective than bailing out a river. Lay all the poison the pest-controllers will sell you, poison all the rats you like, there are plenty more waiting to fill the vacuum you are creating. In the meantime you are leaving incredibly toxic substances around for people's pets to find, occasionally in the form of dying, delirious rodents wandering away from their territory and taking the poison with them. Not to mention the possibility of inquisitive children coming into contact with the materials. And what do you get for your trouble? A couple of months without a pest, if you're lucky. But if you're unlucky...
A couple of years ago I was working IT on premises where they had fallen for this dumb idea to deal with a handful of mice in the building (which I had never seen but which the female staff swore were the rabid harbingers of all-consuming death). The pest controller left a half-dozen little white containers of poison around the halls and wandered off to the next job. Did he have any other suggestions? Not that I heard, after all, why give the customer a permanent solution when quick fixes guarantee repeat business? After a few weeks we began to notice a bad smell in the offices. You can imagine what had happened. It was a couple of weeks, during which the stench rapidly became unbearable, before the pest controller finally located the rancid corpse he had generated, tucked away under a raised floor.
As I said in that Boing Boing thread, the best mouse trap is not a trap at all. There are only two things that one need do to deal with a rodent problem: take away their reason for staying, then take away their means of getting in. Their reason for staying is food, remove the food source, or at least put it out of their reach, and the rats won't want to be there. Keep your house clean and tidy, don't leave spills and crumbs on the floor, throw out your junk and minimise their hiding places. Keep your trash secure in metal or plastic bins, not just a heaps of bags, and keep the bins and the area around the them clean. Find out how they got into the place to begin with and seal it up. I've heard stories about POWs beating food tins flat to armour-plate their food stores - this isn't rocket science. Think about the area you live in: is there flytipping going on, are there empty or derelict buildings, is there a neighbour with a garden full of garbage? These are things your council and maybe the police need to deal with.
"Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door."
Perhaps, Mr Emerson, but build a better world and they won't have to.
The bottom line is that a pest controller shouldn't be selling you something to kill every living thing that comes into contact with it, he should be showing you what must change to disrupt the rat-friendly habitat you are living in. If you have a pest problem you don't need a better mousetrap, what you need are better living conditions. |
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| Your Secrecy Makes you Weak |
[May. 15th, 2009|01:52 am] |
All closed source code is invariably poorly written, containing bugs, mistakes, design flaws and security issues from beginning to end. For every ten lines of code there is a disaster waiting, and when that disaster comes to pass you'll be lucky if the system even reports it. Within the cloak of secrecy afforded by closed source code programmers demonstrate just how careless and unprofessional they can truly be, and just how much they are willing to risk for the sake of making their job easier.
Prove... me... wrong. |
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| Glitch |
[Dec. 5th, 2007|10:49 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | civil liberties, copyright, drm, economy, movies, mpaa, music, net neutrality, news, p2p, politics, rant, technology | ] |
Listen, Glick, the movie industry is already doing the one thing that guarantees I will never illegally download their 'products', namely they are now making such deficient, low-brow, half-assed, worthless, over-hyped, over-funded, overwritten, sub intellectual, inadequate, substandard, ridiculous, inferior, scoff-worthy, malodorous, cringe-making, mismanaged, shoddy, insufferable, incompetent and defective low-com-dom crap, that I would never ever even consider wasting one single byte of my precious bandwidth on any of it. I would be perfectly happy to see every last bit of your meritless trash forever erased from the internet were it not for the fact that you are trying to do it by introducing a radically disproportionate mechanism: ending Network Neutrality!
Don't cover your ears Glickster, you need to hear this: Shrek 3 is not important enough to bring an end to our freedom. The only reason the movie industry can say it's losing money now is because they spent way too much on producing something that nobody actually needs and nobody really wants. The Western World will not crumble because they can't turn a profit, but it might if we lose the integrity and security of the single most important communications tool in history.
One way or another the IP delusional industries are one the way out. It's only a matter of time before the average consumer figures out that their 'entertainment' just isn't worth it any more, that the busker on the street outside the cinema is a hell of lot more creative, interesting and memorable than the claptrap movie they just walked out of. How long do you think they'll watch their technology subverted, their personal data ransacked, their legally purchased media disintegrating, and their communications tapped and blocked before they think: "But I didn't even like the Bourne Appendectomy!"
Anyone invested in the movie or recording industries with even an iota of common sense should be selling up now, while their stock is still worth the ferromagnetic material it's stored on. You know it can't go on like this. It just isn't reasonable in consider this a survivable scenario for anyone involved. I mean it. Get out now. This is going to end badly, and you know it.
Glicky, you are not adding to our culture in any positive way beyond uniting the rest of us against you. You are not curing any horrible diseases. You are not on a crusade of righteousness. You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You are not welcome here. |
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| The Fallacy of Lost Sales |
[May. 4th, 2006|05:25 pm] |
The MPAA has released a study by LEK Consulting that almost doubles the estimated annual loses due to piracy, the figure reaching $6.1 billion globally:
"The previous estimates didn't include the impact of free Internet downloading, which is incorporated in the LEK report. Another surprise involves the fast expansion of online piracy by consumers compared to the losses stemming from professional bootleggers who sell DVDs. Last year, according to a person familiar with the matter, copies of movies downloaded or received from people who had downloaded them cost the studios $447 million in the U.S., whereas copies stemming from professional bootleggers cost the studios $335 million. An additional $529 million in losses came from consumers making copies of legitimate films they bought on DVD or VHS." - Wall Street Journal Online (via /.)
This is bunk. And ill-advised bunk at that. On the one hand these figures will be used to justify the introduction of restrictive and offensive legislation that will retard our technology and threaten our privacy and our freedom. On the other hand, this makes the MPAA look like a worthless organisation of dullards who, having set out to make people spend more money on movies, only succeeded in making them spend less.
It's bunk because there is no reasonable way to accurately estimate lost sales where file-sharing is concerned, it just isn't possible. It cannot be proven that someone who downloaded a movie via p2p, for example, would have otherwise purchased a legitimate copy or gone to a legitimate screening, at least no more than it can be proven that they would not have. It's like suggesting that people who use libraries would otherwise have spent hundreds, maybe even thousands of euros buying the books they borrowed. Lets take the imaginary case of a 15 year old kid who has downloaded $400 worth of new movies and music: would that kid's parents really have coughed up the $400 had he not been getting the data illegally? Do they honestly think that, were file-sharing to suddenly disappear, Americans would jump up and spend an extra $447 million on movies every year?
I love movies, my favourites include Blade Runner, Fight Club, Seven Samurai, Dersu Uzala, For A Few Dollars More, Runaway Train, etc. Want to know how much I personally spent on movies in the last year? About €70, mostly on cinema tickets for movies that weren't worth it. I can't remember the last time I rented a DVD, though I've watched one or two that friends or family rented. I bought two DVDs at a total price of about €20 - one of those was a Christmas gift and both had been on the shelves for more than a year. Why so little money? Why so few DVDs? Because the movies made today are shit! I consider most of the money I've spent on them to be wasted. And I have never illegally downloaded a movie, I've never even tried, not because I fear legal repercussion but because, frankly, I don't want the movies that are available, not even for free!
As far as I'm concerned making it illegal to download that material is about as useful as making it illegal to eat broken glass.
If the MPAA want to know why people are spending less on movies they need to stop chasing these 'lost sale' phantoms and start taking a hard look at the crap their members are peddling. Just because they thought it was worth their money doesn't mean we think it's worth ours. |
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| You take my freedom, I take your power |
[Apr. 24th, 2006|07:30 pm] |
This is insane.
Wiretapping for suspected IP theft? Ten years in jail for just trying to infringe copyright? On-the-spot knee-capping for humming a copyrighted tune in public?
A while back I signed a pledge never to purchase a DRM bearing CD, and I've stuck with it. But I'm starting to wonder if this goes far enough.
I'm considering drafting a new pledge for myself, a pledge never to pay for music or movies again. I'm not suggesting piracy as an alternative, in fact I would pledge not to infringe copyrights or break any related IP law, no matter how draconian. What I am suggesting is a stance that would make these laws irrelevant to me. I would pledge to only accept music and movies that are given to me legitimately and for free. If it is not free then I do not want it!
We have been paying our taxes and we have been buying our music and movies and what did we get? The IP industries are using the money we give them to deploy technology to corrupt our computers and restrict our freedom. The government is using the money we give them to turn those restrictions into law. Granted this is yet more US madness at the moment, but the DMCA made it into Europe just fine, so these extended delusions of intellectual property will likely do the same. And I doubt they care where the funds comes from, some portion of the money I've paid for CDs and DVDs here in Ireland has no doubt assisted in the legal and political machinations of these companies abroad.
Like everyone else I have helped grant power to the content industries, I have bought their 'products' and given them my money and my attention. But I don't like what they've done with that power, now I think I want to take it back, no matter how insignificant it is to the whole.
I cannot in good conscience continue to support any industry that uses my contributions to influence government policy, retard the progress of our culture and pursue the restriction of our civil rights, all in the service of an outmoded business model. I can't keep funding them just so they can break our machines and make it illegal to fix them. I will not help them to do harm, so I cannot help them at all.
It may seem like a drastic step, locking myself out of the majority of new movies and music, but right now I feel as though it might be easy. In the last year I have found very little to engage me in the mainstream, it all seems so bland and uninspired, empty husks of movie remakes and worthless committee-derived sequels, charts full of music that I could swear I was listening to ten years ago. Why would I pay to get into a theatre with lousy AC, overpriced food and patrons who actually answer their mobile phones when they ring, put up with a half hour of adverts and legal notices, all to watch a movie that inevitably disappoints? Why would I buy a wretchedly overpriced CD that might infect my computer with zombiware, might threaten my security and privacy, all for an album of 'new' music that sounds just like the music I already have in my collection from a decade ago? From where I'm standing I see nothing but insipid and tedious repetition in the future of these industries, a profound post-modern malaise. They can keep it.
More and more I have found the things that have touched me, made me laugh or fume or hope, things that have changed the way I think, have come from beyond the IP ideal. They did not need the certainty of success nor any reward from me beyond simple recognition of their achievement. The things I have rushed to tell people about have not required them to hand over money or rights or freedom to experience it themselves. There is a world of culture to enjoy without giving more power to despotic pigopolists.
Still, it's not a decision to take lightly. Somewhere down the line I might regret a pledge like this, some glorious phoenix of a movie may rise from the ashes of Hollywood, or we may witness the birth of a whole new genre of popular music. But I doubt it.
I'm not sure yet, I'm thinking on it.
Any suggestions are welcome. |
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| Another Shilling |
[Feb. 7th, 2006|02:42 am] |
That little anonymous tip-off to Penny Arcade the other week (in response to their comic on the subject of plants in consumer review lists) is shaping up into something interesting over on The Consumerist.
Turns out the tip-off coincided with The Consumerist picking up on rumours of Nvidia seeding gaming and hardware forums with shills to promote their products, using the services of the public relations agency Arbuthnot Entertainment Group. From the AEG website:
AEG is a leading public relations agency servicing the technology and entertainment industries. Combining expert media relations and integrated online community development, AEG will Amplify positive buzz, Elevate consumer mindshare and Generate extensive coverage of your company and its products. [my italics]
You'll know you're on the same page if you read "integrated online community development" as "hiring people to promote a company's goods and services without revealing any affiliation to that company." We're not talking about spamming or any other obvious advertising tactic, but something far more insidious. The suspicion is, as mentioned in the orginal tip-off, that there are groups of people paid to maintain multiple identities on various forums, carefully creating convincing, interactive, and eventually trusted personae which can then be used to stealthily and authoritatively promote a product. The idea is simple, to give the appearance of information originating in the consumer base, from an end user who has actually spent money for goods and is expressing genuine satisfaction.
On behalf of AEG and Nvidia, the Nvidia Public Relations Director, Derek Perez, has denied such deceptive marketing techniques, naturally. But there has also been an accusation that 'fans' who were 'recruited' by AEG to provide positive public commentary on Nvidia products were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements as part of deals which included 'gifts' such as 30inch widescreen LCDs. This was also denied by Mr Perez.
It should be noted that Mr Perez took offence to the emails he sent to the staff of a prominent blog being posted on that blog - I guess not everyone can come top of their PR class.
Now, it is entirely possible that Nvidia+AEG are engaged in legitimate market cultivation through the use of motivated fans providing honest contributions to message boards and blogs. But it must be admitted that there would appear to be an opportunity for deception, the incentive (though not an intention) to create and use shills. It is a simple matter for those employed (or perhaps deployed would be a better word) by a Web PR company to work honestly, to make it clear that they are participating with a loose affiliation to a certain company. They could, for example, make a declaration by providing relevant information and links in profiles and sigs when they post to public forums. Such honesty can give them a degree of authority in certain areas, they would be trusted as unofficial representatives of the company concerned. It seems like an obvious move.
The problem arises when these representatives give misleading information, perhaps unintentionally, say under a mistaken assumption or misunderstanding (after all, they could not be trained or closely monitored). In such a case they can be accused of deliberately misleading customers and, knowing the way such communities work, could find themselves at the centre of some very uncomfortable little dramas resulting in a great deal of fallout. Mistakes like that might prove to be annoying for the company to whom they are linked, but could also prove devastating to the PR group that organised their deployment. Being the middleman in such an arrangement would be a very precarious situation, where a single slip up by a person not actually in your employ could cost a great deal of time and money to repair.
It must be admitted then, that there is at least the temptation for these PR companies to work through entities with deliberately undeclared affiliations, to protect both themselves and their corporate customers by providing a degree of 'plausible deniability'. But now, regardless of the course of the current debacle, we are beginning to see what that kind of strategy can result in.
Personally, right now, I wouldn't touch Web PR with the sticky end of a ten-foot shit-stirring pole. |
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| Excuse me, sir, would you mind stepping this w- |
[Jan. 12th, 2006|10:19 pm] |
Full body scanner trail at London's Paddington station (BBC via Gizmodo)
I want someone to explain to me exactly how this is supposed work. Oh, I know about the technology, I remember seeing a demonstration years ago. But how, precisely, is this going to stop something like the July 7th London bombings?
Imagine the scenario: you are a police officer or guard at a station and you are alerted to someone acting suspiciously in the crowds entering the premises. You approach the person and ask them to accompany you to the scanner. Having been discovered the suicide bomber blows themselves up. Congratulations, you've just killed the bomber, several innocent bystanders and yourself.
Perhaps if the police see someone acting suspiciously they could shoot or stun them first, just to be sure. But then they wouldn't need the scanner at all, they could just search their puffer jacket manually once they're down. I suppose this could detect ordinary concealed weapons such as a guns and knives, but then so would a quick frisk or a metal detector.
So, what this scanner might stop is people with explosives on their person who are simply transporting them or who are intending to plant a device, rather than detonate it in person. Well that just means they'll go someplace where there are no scanners, or do the authorities intend to put scanners at every public transport connection? What's to stop the bomber planting the device just outside the doors leading to the security zone or on a bus, or any pedestrian bottle-neck for that matter, where it could be just as effective? Perhaps they should just set up these scanners on everyone's doorsteps so they can't leave the house with explosives.
In the end, what this is going to stop is petty criminals stupid enough to go equipped through the security zone. And, in the meantime, thousands of innocent people will have their privacy invaded because they happen to have dark skin and are nervous because they have a job interview in an hour (well, since they've now missed their connection because of the scan they won't be making that appointment).
Perhaps in a few years this technology or something like it will have advanced to the point where people can be scanned without their knowledge, that way a suicide bomber can be... neutralised before they have a chance to detonate their device. But right now this just seems like a colossal waste of time and money, and does nothing to advance the security or safety of anyone in its vicinity.
The implementation of this technology is not going to make me feel any safer and I doubt anyone with an ounce of imagination can say otherwise. All I get from it is growing unease about the state of personal privacy in Europe.
While we're on the subject of terrorism on public transport, how's this for a "failure of imagination". For my whole childhood in England I was bombarded by public information films telling me how dangerous it is to play around train tracks, mainly because there is no one there to stop a kid doing something that will end up with their being buried in a sandwich box. More recently the emphasis of general concern has moved away from the safety of children to the safety of the trains and passengers (the innocent children having become dangerous vandals). You see, the rail network in England is vast, and dense, and complicated and as such it is impossible to monitor it all 24-7-365. As far as I know, for much of it, the only time the eye of authority will pass over any one section for days (or at least hours) at a time is when it blurs past in the periphery of the driver's vision. So how do you stop a vandal leaving something on a track that could derail a train? Let me put that another way: how do you stop a bomber intent on causing disruption to the British transport network from leaving a massive explosive device on the tracks minutes before a speeding 8am commuter train packed with office workers arrives, a device that will probably vaporise the first two carriages when struck and turn the rest into scrap and meat? Anyone want to tell me how that expensive little scanner toy is going to stop that? |
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| Facts x Importance = News |
[Jul. 4th, 2005|09:02 pm] |
Someone really needs to put a stop to Telephoto Reporting in news programmes. TR is so incredibly annoying that you may have guessed what it is even before I've described it. For the rest of you:
TR is the technique in which the reporter stands at a considerable remove from the camera while speaking. What usually happens is that the report begins with the usual close-up shot and slowly zooms out as it continues to reveal the location in wide angle with the reporter becoming an insignificant figure standing at the centre but still talking to you. Of itself this is not particularly offensive - save perhaps for the fact that the news is supposed to be delivering information not playing camera tricks. The really annoying thing about TR is that they invariably do it with the reporter standing in the middle of a crowded public space. So, while we sat down to learn about the latest news, what we end up doing is wondering what the people around the isolated reporter are thinking. I generally find myself waiting for some kindly old lady to come up and tell the reporter that he's missed the special bus to the local hospital's psychiatric unit. I suppose the prevalence of hands-free sets has accustomed people the sight strangers apparently talking to themselves in the middle of the street, but not to the point where we accept it without question (that is, without looking to see if it's cabled, bluetooth or a case of the crazies). The point is we are so distracted by this 'clever' effect that we completely forget to pay attention to what the reporter is saying, thus rendering the whole exercise pointless.
If you want to see how news should be reported take a look at EuroNews. The most significant thing about EN is that they don’t have on-screen reporters, they don’t even have a studio. Almost everything is run from edited footage or graphics. Even the location interviews are filmed with the interviewer out of shot. As I understand it the idea is that the same news programming can then be used in several countries simply by providing voice-overs in other languages. The result is very clear, very simple reporting, and is about as close to a transparent news source as you could hope for. Unfortunately we only get that in RoI in place of late-night programming on the national channels. I'm sure it must have it's own digital channel via satellite, but all I can afford is cheap local-circuit cable.
No, I'm stuck with SkyNews, the right-wing favourite. And they just love TR. |
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