UCLA Media Tech Class Winter Quarter 09 Class #4

Guest Speaker Next Week
I am happy to announce that next Wednesdays guest will be Deedee Gordon founder and principal with Look-Look (www.look-lookmagazine.com) . This is an ethnographic market research company with a global network of over 30,000 “correspondents”, and a true innovator in trend-spotting. I think it relates to our topics because she focuses on youth culture and we can discuss her observations about behaviors and trends related to technology.

News
We discussed Piracy and if it really cannibalizes DVD and BD sales as much as the studios say it does. We also delved into how much digital downloading and streaming will impact DVD sales and how quickly. That thread was triggered by news of Netflix 45% quarterly earnings boost and why it happened. More “cocooning” during hard times? A bump from BD? A bump from Netflix deals for online delivery including via some Samsung TVs and via set-top-boxes. News form NATPE is that this was much discussed. Israel is posting clips of missile strikes to show how “surgical” they are. I watched some hair raising videos of other ops as well. Oh, and the Vatican now has a Youtube Channel too. There were over 27 million streams of the inauguration.

Lectures
History of Content
Mark covered the macro timeline from the dawn of radio through to broadcast TV, CATV and the multi-channel universe of today. As an aside, a fascinating historical novel on the dawn of radio and Marconi is THUNDERSTRUCK by Erik Larson. It really shows just how revolutionary the invention of “wireless” and the first transatlantic transmissions really were.
Trends Part 3
OK, I’m really almost done with the trends already. I got through how advertising is transforming to being hyper-targeted and budgets are shifting online at the expense of traditional media. Sphere: Related Content