Cord Cutting and You

cord cut·ting

noun informal

1. the practice of canceling or forgoing a cable television subscription or landline telephone connection in favor of an alternative Internet-based or wireless service.
2. "the cable industry has seen a decline in television subscribers as customers engage in cord cutting"

There has been a lot of discussion in the media lately about "cord cutting" and its impact on cable consumers and providers. While cord cutting dedicated websites are bragging that the numbers cutting the cord are soaring, others are downplaying the total impact. A report by CNBC  says the 11th annual "Digital Democracy Survey" found that paid subscriptions to television services have remained stable since 2012. The article states:

 "In its survey of 2,131 consumers, Deloitte said two-thirds of respondents reported they have kept their TV subscriptions because they're bundled with their internet plan."  That doesn't mean that the streaming services aren't doing well with consumers, with the percentage of people who pay for at least one streaming service climbing from 10 percent in 2009 to 49 percent in 2016, but the study found that 74 percent of consumers continue to hold paid TV subscriptions in 2016."

For another cord cutting indicator, let's look at Comcast.

In 2016, Comcast reported that it added 80,000 video customers in the fourth quarter, down from 89,000 in the year before. For the full year, it added 161,000 video subscribers, compared with a 2015 decline of 36,000. Comcast said that was its "best result in 10 years." Analysts have been noting an "improved subscriber momentum" at big cable operators. In the first Quarter of 2017, Comcast reported the following highlights:

Cable Communications 1st Quarter 2017 Highlights:

• Cable Communications Revenue Increased 5.8% and Adjusted EBITDA Increased 6.3%
• Customer Relationships Increased by 297,000, a 9.9% Increase from the First Quarter of 2016
• Total Revenue per Customer Relationship Increased 2.6%
• Video Customers Increased by 42,000; Over 50% of Residential Video Customers Now Have X1
• High-Speed Internet Customers Increased by 429,000 and Residential Revenue Increased 10.1%
• Business Services Revenue Increased 13.6%, Nearly $6.0 Billion in Annualized Revenue
• (Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) is a measure of a company's operating performance. Essentially, it's a way to evaluate a company's performance without having to factor in financing decisions, accounting decisions or tax environments.)

While Comcast's numbers aren't showing an immediate panic caused by cord cutting, the industry is still worried about the impact of people moving away from traditional cable systems. An article in The Hollywood Reporter  states:

"MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett
 pointed to signs of intensified cord-cutting in the first quarter, which Wall Street observers said seemed to spook investors and contribute to Wednesday's sell-off. "The first quarter is usually a seasonally strong one for pay TV. It wasn’t this year," he wrote in a research note. Moffett said that it was the drop of 762,000 video subscribers was the worst first-quarter loss ever for the pay TV industry."

The numbers for the satellite TV company Dish also seem to suggest some impact. In its 2017 Q1 earnings report, Dish said it lost 143 thousand net pay-TV subscribers, up from 23 thousand a year earlier. In 2016, Dish lost over 1 million satellite customers.

I do believe that cord cutting is a potential problem, but I think there are other factors that also play into the changing numbers. Netflix has maintained that the fact that they are growing while cable TV numbers have been relatively constant illustrates that consumers are keeping their cable connections while adding Netflix.  I do believe that as more new services like Hulu Live join the list of services like Sling TV, PlayStation Vue, and YouTube TV, they will have an impact on the traditional pay TV providers.  The industry will change, but I don't think we will see a great collapse anytime soon.

If you want to know more about options for cutting the cord, read this New York Times article, or visit the website untangle.tv.  Untangle offers a handy web calculator to look at what you currently view and how much money you can potentially save by cutting that cord.

Media Production - Getting Started

Your teacher has just assigned a media project and given you a deadline for when the final project is due, what do you do now?

I have seen many students have a confused look on their faces, or worse, a look of panic and anxiety. In this post, I will offer you some concrete ways to get on track to produce an effective media project.

Media production is separated by 3 stages of production:

1. Pre-Production
2. Production
3. Post-Production

Obviously, you can't have any production without these 3 stages, but I would argue that your project lives or dies based upon the work you do in stage 1- Pre-Production.

What happens in this most important stage?

Pre-production is where all the planning, writing, scripting, and important production questions should be asked and answered. This is the right time to pull out those tried and true journalism 5 "W"s:

1. Who? Who is the audience? 
2. What? What is your approach?
3. Where? What locations are needed to tell this story?
4. When? When (and How) will you be shooting your story?
5. Why? Why is your approach interesting to your audience? Why do I want to watch?

These are not all the questions you should be thinking about, but they do give you a starting place to begin planning your project.

If there is one main concept to always keep in mind, a "Prime Directive", it would be "Who is the target audience?" The answer to this question will guide your approach, your script, and your storytelling.

If you want a great example of a major film production fail, check out the documentary Lost in La Mancha (2003). This award winning film documents the failed attempt of director Terry Gilliam to bring his vision of the Don Quixote story to the big screen.  There are many factors that contributed to the film's production failure, but certainly a very short pre-production schedule was one major cause.

Trusting Media Sources

Now that the election is over and we are moving into the Trump presidency, I thought it would be a good time to review media sources and how to evaluate them.  

It is critically important to a democracy that we stay informed on all the important issues and events taking place around us, but what sources can be trusted? Just yesterday CNN and others were reporting that Facebook and Google are making efforts to limit "Fake News" sites on their platforms (see New York Times article). I would like to share this excellent list written by Melissa Zimdars, a communication and media professor from Merrimack College in Massachusetts. Here are her tips for analyzing news sources:

Tips for analyzing news sources:

• Avoid websites that end in “lo” ex: Newslo (above). These sites take pieces of accurate information and then packaging that information with other false or misleading “facts” (sometimes for the purposes of satire or comedy).
• Watch out for websites that end in “.com.co” as they are often fake versions of real news sources.
• Watch out if known/reputable news sites are not also reporting on the story. Sometimes lack of coverage is the result of corporate media bias and other factors, but there should typically be more than one source reporting on a topic or event.
• Odd domain names generally equal odd and rarely truthful news.
• Lack of author attribution may, but not always, signify that the news story is suspect and requires verification.
• Some news organizations are also letting bloggers post under the banner of particular news brands; however, many of these posts do not go through the same editing process (ex: BuzzFeed Community Posts, Kinja blogs, Forbes blogs).
• Check the “About Us” tab on websites or look up the website on Snopes or Wikipedia for more information about the source.
• Bad web design and use of ALL CAPS can also be a sign that the source you’re looking at should be verified and/or read in conjunction with other sources.
• If the story makes you REALLY ANGRY it’s probably a good idea to keep reading about the topic via other sources to make sure the story you read wasn’t purposefully trying to make you angry (with potentially misleading or false information) in order to generate shares and ad revenue.
• It’s always best to read multiple sources of information to get a variety of viewpoints and media frames. Some sources not yet included in this list (although their practices at times may qualify them for addition), such as The Daily Kos, The Huffington Post, and Fox News, vacillate between providing important, legitimate, problematic, and/or hyperbolic news coverage, requiring readers and viewers to verify and contextualize information with other sources. 
     
  Later she adds the following:
  
  
  Some people are asking which news sources I trust, and all I can say is that I read/watch/listen very widely, from mainstream, corporate owned sources (The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes) as well as The Atlantic, National Public Radio, and various local and alternative sources with different political perspectives, some of which are included on this list. The problem: Even typically reliable sources, whether mainstream or alternative, corporate or nonprofit, rely on particular media frames to report stories and select stories based on different notions of newsworthiness. The best thing to do in our contemporary media environment is to read/watch/listen widely and often, and to be critical of the sources we share and engage with on social media. (emphasis is mine) 
  
  
  
  
  
  

Community

Hello, and welcome to the CVU Media Blog.

For those that don't know me, my name is Gary Lambert, and I am the Media Coordinator at CVU.  I have been calling this my "Back to the Future" year because I am back at CVU after a 7 year absence. I was the Media Coordinator for 2 years in 2008-2010, and I left to teach the Electronic Recording Arts Program at the Burlington Technical Center.  I have been teaching at either the college or high school level for the past 16 years, and before that I worked professionally in all aspects of media production.  As an art form, film editing has only existed for a little over 100 years, and I believe that any student who continues in the field has the potential to create a brand new way to tell a story.  

I believe we are all lifelong learners, and I enjoy the challenge of working with students to teach them the skills of media production in a fun and interesting way.  Media is all around us, and as media consumers, it is important to teach every student media literacy.  I believe that the best way to do this is by hands-on creation of projects and analysis and critiques of existing media programs.  In mastering the material, a student will be able to produce quality programs, and get a competitive job in the production industry or find success in college.  Even if the student doesn’t continue in the field, I hope that the experience they gain will make them more educated media consumers and more critical thinkers, as well as lifelong learners.

I bring to the classroom my expertise, enthusiasm, and energy for media production.  All students can be successful if they have an instructor that takes the time to help them learn and understand the course material.  I am always surprised by the quality and creativity of student productions, and am consistently amazed at the powerful programs students produce when given the tools to succeed.

But enough about me.

This entry is entitled "Community" because that seems to be the theme while we start this new school year. I have been so warmly welcomed at CVU during this transition time, and I am very excited by the administration, faculty, and staff and their commitment to the students and to the learning environment. Community is a real tangible thing here. The words that are painted on the main office are not just words, but a living philosophy, "Take Care of Yourself. Take Care of Each Other. Take Care of this Place".

To get a better sense of this Community, please watch the following short video, my first CVU production: