Dana Blankenhorn

The Jazz Singer

And now for something completely different...

I'm no film reviewer, but I just felt a need to tell you about an amazing film I saw on TV the other day.

The Jazz Singer.

Stop laughing a moment. This is one of those films we all assume we know, because of what we've been told about it, and because it's something that is supposed to be in our collective conscious. As the first mass market talking picture, it's one of the most important films of all time, and when we think about it all that's what we usually think about.

The Jazz Singer opened 80 years ago this month. It is regularly derided by critics as a minor piece, and in some ways it is. All the spoken parts are done as a silent, complete with speech cards, so there's this shock when Jolson suddenly starts singing, an excitement you can still feel on behalf of your grandparents and great-grandparents.

But, seeing the whole thing, there is so much more. The actors are behaving as in a talkie, without the heavy pancake and darkened lips of so many silents. Even in the sections which are silent, it's distinctively different. All the acting is naturalistic, not the measured pantomime we associate with the period.

Web Command of the Year

Embed.

The embed command, which places an object, usually a Shockwave player, inside a Web page and directs it to play some video clip on command, is the most important piece of code in our time. (There will be a test on the clip above later in this item.)

What made YouTube was this simple embed command. People don't spend their whole days at YouTube, watching its videos. They search YouTube and, when they find what they like, cut-and-paste the embed command so their own work will give the clip they have found context.

The embed command is why Google paid $1.65 billion in stock for YouTube. The embed command is why Google was hosed in that deal, because YouTube did not own, nor did it control the embed command. It was merely the first company to make embed the heart of its business model.

All the brouhaha over Viacom "taking back" its videos from Google, which even I engaged in, was in the end meaningless because of the embed command. After a very short period of time Viacom added the embed command to its Comedy Central clips, surrounding the window with its trade dress, and we all went on as before.

Face in the Crowd

Penance is supposed to mean "I won't do it again," but in practice it's used as a get-out-of-jail-free card.

The news yesterday was very Catholic as MSNBC and CNN did all-day penance on the Imus thing. Allison Stewart became the "black" host -- I'd always thought she was the young and cute host of The Most.

Services concluded with TCM playing "A Face in the Crowd," starring Andy Griffith. (The scene to the right is from early in the film, when he dominates the screen. Note that as his star rises he becomes smaller.)

Copyright Wars May End Soon

The screen above shows a rant by CBS host Craig Ferguson on the subject of his own alcoholism. It's a good monologue.

That's not why it is here.  Note that when you link to it you will find it comes directly from CBS. It is of high quality. You can see exactly how many times it has been viewed -- about 320,000 by last count -- and what people think of it.

This is invaluable data. There's also space for an ad on the top and an adblock in the corner that could, in the future, contain another ad. A short ad could also be embedded into the stream, by CBS. There's already a few seconds advertising the show at the end.

There are many ways in which CBS (and YouTube) can monetize this, and the cost to CBS is zero. Nada. Zilch. Nothing. Bupkis. The null set.

Now contrast this with what Viacom has done, pulling its videos from YouTube. First let's look at the initial costs of pulling its content:

1. Lots of angry Internet users.
2. Negative publicity.
3. Lower audiences.
4. Costs for hosting the content itself.

The company has tried to recover by striking a deal with a start-up competitor, and claims it benefits because it can get "premium CPMs."

Viacom also claims that it's avoiding "piracy." Which means what exactly? It seems to mean that they're not going to have their video content hosted on Web sites like this, with context provided by people like me.

Where is the financial gain in that?

Porn's Changing Role in Tech

Sad, but true. The first industry to get hold of and make money from most technologies is the porn industry.

When you have high-income buyers ready to pay big for what they want, you have a business model that can't be beat. True for porn, true for gambling. While many "early adopters" are geeks who will embrace a technology for its own sake, porn customers are goal-oriented.

So it was porn that pioneered the business model for videotape, porn that pioneered the 900 number, porn that pioneered the DVD and the paid Web site. Attempts to outlaw porn merely act as taxes on this market, just as in every other area.

Now porn is looking at higher capacity DVDs, where there is an ongoing format war between Sony's Blu-Ray and the HD-DVD standard. Sony says it won't sell to pornographers.  Does this mean HD-DVD will sweep the field?

Why Google Goofed in Buying YouTube

A Brazilian judge has demanded that the nation's phone companies and ISPs cut off access to YouTube, because a clip of a Brazilian model (left) making love on the beach keeps popping up there against his orders. 

The words "finger" and "dike" come to mind obviously, but the report also shows exactly why Google should not have bought YouTube in the first place.

Censors seek leverage. Google offers leverage. The Judge could easily extend his ban from YouTube alone to Google generally. So could any other judge who finds something on YouTube they don't want to stay there there.

A quick note. The woman's name is  Daniela Cicarelli and I'm certain the video looks just like any other 20-something having sex on the beach. This obsession with watching celebrities do it is, to my mind, silly. But so it goes...now back to our story.

What Makes An Interest Special?

Charles Martin wrote today pointing to a News.Com story (and discussion thread) on the RIAA trying to use the current lame duck session of Congress to get even more anti-consumer legislation into law.

The RIAA is a classic "special interest." It's narrow, but more important it has money, presence, and the ability to take revenge on those who disobey.

As the price of doing all this has risen, more general interests have been drowned out.

But in an era of Internet Politics, maybe not so much.

Abundance vs. Scarcity

The economics of this decade can be summed up as a fight between abundance and scarcity. (Pictured is the first oil well, courtesy the Paleontological Research Institute.)

Digital goods are abundant, their economics that of abundance. The time and attention of buyers is limited, the products on offer unlimited. So if you can monetize small slivers of that, as Google, YouTube and MySpace do, through truly deep personalization (it's all about you and what you want to know, see and feel) you're going to make money.

In contrast there is oil economics, which the current Administration has been making paramount. Oil is based on an economics of scarcity. The providers have the whip hand, and by manipulating supply they can maximize their value. OPEC does it, refiners do it, integrated oils do it by owning their own dealers.

The producers of "copyright" goods -- movies, TV, music, books, software, etc. -- all depend on an economics of scarcity. You've got to see that movie now, you've got to turn on the TV to this channel at this time, you've got to get the #1 hit and be the first on your street to read the #1 book. You want to run the new Windows applications, so you need Windows now, and new hardware to run it. This makes the supplier of the good king, able to name their own price by manipulating supply -- just like an oil company. And it's good to be the king.

Media Business Model Dying

Given what I wrote recently about the problems of media, and the differences between H-P and GE, I reckoned it would be prudent to comment on the NBC lay-offs. NBC is owned by GE.

Most comments on this have come from media insiders, who have an auitomatic bias for, and affection for, the operation of the business. They don't see it through the gimlet eye of the accountant. For that reason, ignore what anyone in the media tells you about this. They want NBC to succeed. They want to work there. Real businessmen don't care.

For generations GE has had a rule that guides its actions toward subsidiaries.  You grow earnings by 15% per year, or you're gone. There are two ways to do this. If you grow revenues, and keep operations lean, your earnings will grow. If you can't grow revenues, you better cut expenses.

What GE is saying here is that media revenues can't grow 15% per year, so it's going to cut. The media business model is broken.

Note that I'm not just talking about TV here. NBC Universal is more than TV. I'm talking about all media -- music, movies, the lot.  General Electric has decided these are no longer growth businesses.

What might it do instead? A lot of things. Jack Walsh liked finance. Jeff Immelt calls his strategy "ecomagination," by which he means green energy and energy-saving technologies.  I think the key word here is technology. Technology is still a fast-growing business. Media is not.

This Week's Clue: Out Everybody

Update: When I wrote this, over a week ago, I honestly had no idea there was a closeted gay predator on Capitol Hill. But I can't say I'm surprised.

Following is the lead item in this week's issue of my free weekly e-mail newsletter, A-Clue.Com.

Unlike the items you see here, A-Clue.Com columns are usually written at least a week before they are published. They have to stand the test of a little time.

You can subscribe to A-Clue.Com by following this link. Enjoy.

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Let me start this week by saying I'm straight, married, happy with myself, but that my best friend in college was gay. His coming-out changed me, because I still loved him afterward.
Still do.

History tells us that gays who are honest with themselves, and others, pose little threat to society, no matter how much some hate groups may disagree.

Closeted gays, on the other hand?

Very dangerous. That makes this an issue for straights as well as gays. Finding, naming, shaming, and preventing evil are in everyone's interest. Self-hating, closeted gay people do tremendous damage. Self-hating closeted people no matter what their trips cause tremendous damage.

Back when I was young the best example of this was Roy Cohn (above). Cohn was Joe McCarthy's chief lawyer. He came up at a time when to come out meant to lose everything you had. He was a bully.  While his homosexuality was an open secret, and he even went to gay bars in the 1970s, he never admitted to the AIDS which killed him in 1986. His life was fictionalized in Tony Kushner's Angels in America. 

He was an archetype. He hated himself and so practiced hate on others. Pretty good definition of evil in my book.