I figured out Blockbuster. First they arrange with the movie studios to pay a percentage on the rentals rather than paying up-front for the tape and keeping all rental fees. This way their inventory cost becomes irrelevant, because the cost for them to have 1 copy of a video is about the same as the cost of having 20, since they only pay when it is rented. Then they spring the 5-day rental on you. Because they can get an unlimited number of videos for no extra cost, it doesn't matter to them that the videos are out most of the time because their return on investment is the same. However, the 5-day rental makes it easier to be late, because you think you have plenty of time to return the video, where with a 2-day rental you are always conscious of the need to return the video. As a result, Blockbuster collects more late fees. Their costs stay about the same but their revenue increases due to late fees. And yet in selling it to you and the movie studios, they make it sound better for you than for them. Pretty clever, no?
Stupid networks. They've started advertising their shows in the middle of the commercial breaks. Before they'd wait till the end of the break. That way I knew when to stop fast-forwarding (the magic of TiVo). But I'm on to them.
I want my Tivo! Here are some advertising rates for television. My primetime viewing is worth roughly $0.0065 - $0.013 per 30 second commercial. I'm not sure what the difference between the network television cost and spot television cost is; those are the two bounds above. So assuming I watch 4 hours of primetime television a day, or about 122 hours/month, and there are 30 such spots per hour of television, I am worth about $18.30 - $36.60, roughly speaking. Now, let's ignore for the moment the specifics of my demographic information (plus: 18-35, college education - minus: under-employed, cheap) that might affect those numbers. Let's also ignore the overhead costs of managing advertising sales at the networks, as well as that these costs come from the networks, not the ESPN2 that I've been watching lots of lately. And then, of course, we ignore the large number of ads on television that are for the network's own programming. I'm worth, at most, $37/month (assuming average household size of 2) to the networks. That sounds like a lot. But then we note that my cable bill is $45 + $11 for HBO. So making me pay explicitly (again noting that this number is inflated) for my television programming would cost me about 50% more. That's not a small number. But it's not a huge number either. I don't know if I'd want to pay that much for commercial-free television because, well, I don't know what commercial-full television is like anymore. I'm guessing my actual worth to a network is considerably less than that, perhaps in the teens of dollars per month. I would gladly pay that directly. That's what the new business model should be to allow people to watch TV the way they want. People who own TiVo and similar devices should be able to pay the networks indirectly for the shows they watch in order to pay for the lost advertising time. People who don't own such devices get the programming more cheaply, but have to endure commercial interruptions. In a perfect world, television broadcasts would have hidden codes embedded in them so PVRs wouldn't even record the commercials. Of course there would be problems with cheating, but I don't see that sinking today's pay-for-cable systems. The networks need to realize this and embrace the future.
This recent Pew Center media research report indicates that Americans are just plain confused. It is subtitled: "Public Wants Neutrality and Pro-American Point of View." The first part is about the recent FCC decision to relax media ownership rules; the more interesting stuff is further down. For example: "In the current survey, 63% of Republicans say press criticism of the military undermines the nation's defenses," versus 29% for Democrats*. Think about that for a moment. I would like to find these people and make them explain the link from cause "The military is underprepared" to effect "2 soldiers were killed in Iraq today." I'll give them a whiteboard and markers, even. A parallel problem is that many Americans cannot distinguish between the military and the administration, so assume that criticizing military policy (i.e., Iraq) is the same thing as wanting American soldiers to die. I don't even know where to begin with that; all I know is that this administration has done a masterful job of muddling the issue to protect themselves from criticism.
This isn't a Republican vs. Democrat thing; it's a stupidity thing. I'm sure the numbers would be reversed if the political situation was reversed.
Today's IMDB People News' top item is Mary-Kate Olsen's minor auto accident. I love that they just had to include: "Afterwards, Mary Kate sipped on a Diet Dr. Pepper to calm her nerves."
I was looking over this summer's crop of movies and was a little bit disappointed. My movie sweet spot is apparently not one that Hollywood favors very often. Then I got to thinking it over a little bit more and realized that it didn't matter much at all. After all, I'm not limited to movies. I've arranged things so that I have a diverse array of quality media inputs available to me. Some of them I can time shift. I have a very accessible public library, a Tivo, two-and-a-half subscriptions to good magazines*, Starz! movie channels, a DVD player, and, of course, the Internet. As a result, I can balance the things I cannot schedule against those that I can. My media aren't all time-shiftable, but enough of them are that it doesn't matter; when one channel is strong, I cut back on the others; when it is weak, I increase the others. I can even sort of time-shift movies in the theater because we have a discount cinema nearby. In short, the paucity of good summer fare means nothing to me because I have a ready supply of substitutes. I am a Toyota Prius, but I burn media.
* Harper's, The Atlantic, and MIT Technology Review; anybody want to subscribe me to The Economist? It's only $129/year....
Mute's disappointment with "Fahrenheit 9/11" led me to think once more about bias. Mute is a little more cynical than I am, believing that bias is inherent in media. I cannot accept that. I believe there is a difference between bias and perspective and that you can objectively determine which is which. This is my checklist:
What relevant information has been omitted that should have been included? This is the most common flaw; authors almost always will ignore strong counter-arguments, often by changing the subject, but usually just by pretending they don't exist. For example: "Where are the weapons of mass destruction?" "Saddam Hussein is a murderer."
What irrelevant information has been included that should have been omitted? Editorial writers often cite evidence that has been weakened or discredited. Al Gore could tell youabout it.
What minor issues have been exaggerated?
What major issues have been minimized?
Has the author used loaded, charged terminology intended to inflame rather than enlighten? Or resorted to labels rather than arguments? Favorites include "conservative," "liberal," "flip-flop," "fundamentalist," and more.
Has the author drawn conclusions not supported by the evidence or used innuendo to imply something that cannot be proved? For example, opinion writers often make broad generalizations based on just a few specific data points. Another common tactic is guilt (or innocence) by association, where writers will associate their primary subject with another subject known to be liked or disliked by the audience in order to transfer those feelings to the subject without making a case for the subject on its own. Yet another one is when authors imply or state a connection between two things that haven't been shown to be connected, such as Iraq and September 11.
Does the author state actual, established facts in support of a point of view? What "facts" are just plain wrong? A common tactic is to take a quote out of context or truncate qualifiers or just creatively rephrase it. See Al Gore again.
Does the author clearly separate opinion, speculation, and fact? Or do they pass along bias indirectly, such as Fox News' "Some say John Kerry ...?"
Does the author invoke "ancient history" relative to the subject?
I don't claim that this is complete, but it keeps me objective. I'm just fine with perspective. Perspective is inevitable. Bias is different. Bias is another word for deception, of oneself and/or of one's audience. If your case is strong, you don't need to resort to these tactics. And if your case is not strong, then you are being dishonest by trying to make it look strong. In the former case, you present the evidence and have faith that people will come to the right decision. In the latter case, you are trying to control people's minds by controlling what goes in.
Making your case honestly requires you to be methodical and sober. That doesn't mean you have to be boring or emotionless, but it does mean avoiding hysteria. Part of a good argument is in what you leave out; including weak points undermines your strong ones by association, so you must be sure to avoid blasting away shotgun-style in the hopes that something will stick. Odds are people will just tune you out, the way we increasingly do advertising. Even worse, you will appear to be desperate and flailing. Either way, your credibility is reduced.
What does this have to do with the film? I have not seen "Fahrenheit 9/11," nor do I intend to. Michael Moore has said point blank that this movie is his attempt to keep George W. Bush from winning the 2004 election. I won't watch propaganda. I believe that there is plenty of evidence that George W. Bush is not suitable for the presidency. A lot of this evidence is unknown to most of the American people because the news media has failed in their duty to present the whole truth. Michael Moore had an excellent opportunity to rectify this and allow the people to understand why George W. Bush should not continue as President. Instead, he gave us a hatchet job that uses innuendo, selective presentation of evidence, exaggeration, childish attacks, and other deceptive tactics. The very people who most need to understand how they have been deceived are the ones most likely to reject the film. They feel that they are being pushed into a point of view when what we need is for them to come around on their own after finding out the facts.
I want John Kerry to win the election this year, but I don't want him to win 51-49. I want people to understand how badly George W. Bush has led the country these last three and a half years and emphatically vote him out of office. To do that, moderate Republicans, independents, and the apathetic have to be won over. Instead of making a truthful, informative film for them, Michael Moore made a propaganda film for the already converted. Important facts have now been tainted by this bias and people will tune them out as a result. By taking the low road, Michael Moore has effectively made the case against George W. Bush weaker, not stronger. He who is on the side of truth is a friend of mine, no matter his goals. He who deceives shares no common cause with me, for the truth is a higher purpose than this election. Michael Moore has done the truth a disservice and thus is no friend of mine, no matter that we both want John Kerry as President.
My (new) (lovely) (insightful) wife points out that Michael Moore might not have had a shot with the moderates and independents in the first place as I had suggested. Her point was that Michael Moore was already too polarizing a figure to have gotten them into the seats no matter how even-handed the movie. I have two responses to that.
One, Michael Moore is a recently prominent Democrat. His ascent was triggered by his Oscar for "Bowling for Columbine" and his now notorious acceptance speech. I believe that he already had the idea to make "Fahrenheit 9/11" at the time and that was not just a publicity-seeking move, but a publicity-seeking move with the specific purpose of setting the stage for his next film. So he could have avoided strutting so much on the left if his goal was to appeal to those moderates and independents; it wasn't something that had been decided and set in stone.
Two, forget about the unconverted and just focus on the converted. Don't they deserve the truth? Don't the people who are in theory already on Michael Moore's side deserve to be treated with a modicum of respect? They're already on board with the pro-Kerry/anti-Bush program; there's no reason to insult their intelligence with unsubstantiated allegations and innuendo. I hate feeling like I'm being manipulated, especially by someone with whom I should be able to find common ground, and I doubt I'm the only one.
My position on "Fahrenheit 9/11" remains the same. George W. Bush does not need Michael Moore to demonstrate that he is unfit to be President; Bush has already done it. All that was necessary was to present the obscure and overlooked evidence. By stretching the truth, Moore damaged his own credibility and that of "his side"* while simultaneously insulting those on his side.
* Most people are not critical thinkers who make fine distinctions between what Moore says, what Terry McAuliffe says, what Howard Dean says, what Kerry says, etc. It's unfortunate, but that's the reality we live in; Moore's excess taints them all. On the other hand, Fox News has certainly learned how to make a subjective point of view look objective by filtering it through a large number of talking heads... Hmm. This could be a whole new avenue in and of itself: Michael Moore offends me for the same reasons Fox News does. He is not "fair and balanced." He doesn't just report and let me decide. But it's late, and I want to go back to bed.
There was an accident in a Japanese nuclear power plant this weekend. If it was hydro power, coal, natural gas, or any other kind of energy, the story would just be a blip on the radar. But because of the magic word "nuclear," it's a big, international issue.
Also in the article:
The worst previous incident at a nuclear facility was at a uranium processing plant in Tokaimura, a town north of Tokyo.
That took place on September 30, 1999, when an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction was triggered after three poorly trained workers used buckets to mix nuclear fuel in a tub.
Holy crap. That is mind-bogglingly stupid. "Poorly trained" indeed.
You've heard over and over that John Kerry is "the most liberal member of the Senate" and that John Edwards is the "fourth most liberal." If you look at those statements for a moment, you realize there are all kinds of problems with them
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. Who made the list? What were their criteria? What actions are covered? What time period is involved? Spinsanity covers those issues with their usual thoroughness, including a link to an analysis by a University of Houston professor. Note that according to that analysis, Ted Kennedy is not "the most liberal" either.
You want to see how much the media are intimidated by the Bush Administration, just look at how many people laughed at the lame Bush + double bit, and how few laughed at Stephen Colbert's much funnier, sharper speech.
I think the furor over Mel Gibson's drunken, anti-Semitic tirade brings up a host of interesting questions. How much do the beliefs of musicians, actors, etc. matter when it comes to consuming their product? I have no doubt that some of my favorites believe stupid and/or offensive things. They might not say them publicly, but isn't the problem the belief itself? After all, that's part of why people have jumped all over Gibson. They feel like they have been deceived for years and it took alcohol and an arrest to reveal what he really thought. Where does freedom enter into the equation? It may be reprehensible, but we should be careful not to create an environment hostile to free speech.
Then there's the question of punishment and rehabilitation. Rob Schneider has declared a Gibson boycott, that he would never work with Gibson no matter what
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. On the one hand, it's understandable that he wouldn't want to associate with someone who believes such things. On the other hand, if most of Hollywood behaved the same way and marginalized him, Gibson would see no point in attempting to change his ways. I don't care about Mel Gibson or about this relatively minor incident that has become national news, but it does provoke some interesting questions.
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Which I'm sure has destroyed what would have inevitably been a wonderful partnership, since they have so much in common.
A week or so back, The Christian Science Monitor reported:
Today's conventional hybrids command a premium price - $2,000 to $4,000 more than their nonhybrid counterparts - and their owners will recover that extra cost in about three years, assuming $3-a-gallon gasoline and 12,000 miles a year of driving, the report found.
Those numbers sounded suspicious to me, especially after I did the math myself, so I obtained the original report (bug ye not). What it actually says is (on page 15 of the PDF, page 9 of the report):
With a gasoline price of $3 per gallon, fuel for a 30-mile-per-gallon conventional vehicle driven 12,000 miles costs $1,200. A hybrid achieving 50 miles per gallon and driven the same amount uses $720 per year on gasoline.... the ... payback period for the hybrid relative to the conventional vehicle is just over seven years.
Seven years now? Wow. That's a big disparity. How did they screw that up? Simple. Reading further down the page, it says:
With battry costs at the long-term levels in Table 1, however, the picture is quite different. Assume that ... incremental costs for ... a hybrid relative to a conventional vehicle are $1,500, declining to $1,000 ion the long term... which assumes high-volume battery costs of $400 for the hybrid.... results in [a] payback period of 2.9 years.
The "long-term levels" they refer to are the cost of batteries if they are produced in much higher quantities than today. The CSM reporter took completely hypothetical cost and rate-of-return estimates and presented them as facts.
My point here isn't so much about the efficiency of hybrids as it is about bad reporting. The mistake was instantly obvious to me, and it took barely any time to prove it (most of the time was spent creating a fake account for the ACEEE site). And yet, a key fact presented in the article was still wrong and made press not only in the CSM, but as a reprint in Yahoo News and possibly other publications.
The moral is to find the primary sources when you can. Of course, the media enjoy too much their role as mediators to make that easy. Given how often they make mistakes, though, it's kind of necessary. I think this is part of why people feel disillusioned with scientists. A paper will appear in a journal describing how daily injections of a particular substance into a genetically-modified strain of mice caused tumors of the spleen to spontaneously reduce in size 38% of the time, which will turn into the headline "Cancer Cure Discovered!" This will happen in politics, too, where a bill that grants the President the power to arbitrarily detain and torture anyone he wants is called a "compromise." But I've posted enough about that subject for now, so I'll stop.
Other parts of a potential Democratic agenda receive less support, especially calls to impeach Bush: 47 percent of Democrats say that should be a "top priority," but only 28 percent of all Americans say it should be, 23 percent say it should be a lower priority and nearly half, 44 percent, say it should not be done.
Hmmm. Did they just say that 51% of Americans are in favor of impeaching Bush? They make it sound like less by creating a group of those who think it's a "top priority" and those who think it should not be a "top priority," but should still happen. Remember, this is from the general population, not just Democrats.
Where do people get the idea that the Oscars have 1 billion viewers? How can they not instantly see that's wrong
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? I'd elaborate, but the New Yorker already did.
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Answer: innumeracy and parochialism. Most people don't have any idea of what the US or world populations are, and that maybe, just maybe, an American event hosted in America by Americans presenting awards to American movie-markers might not be of interest to non-Americans.
I've come up with a rule of thumb: if you see something scary on the front page of the news, you can safely ignore it. The media cares most about unusual events. Terrorism. SARS. Septuplets. Celebrities. They don't cover plain old car accidents, influenza, single births, or my neighbor's house getting robbed of $1000 in DVDs and tools. There's even a journalism cliché about it. Remember that the next time we have "Summer of the Shark."
This phenomenon has given me the idea 1 to start a site that would focus entirely on the ordinary dangers. Heart attacks. Car accidents. Natural deaths. In order to avoid being mind-numbingly boring, it would present a condensed version of the national news: 812 people were diagnosed with cancer on August 22, 2007. Just for comparison, I would include "0 deaths from terrorism," "0 cases of SARS," and the like. I'd call it "Dogs Bite Men" 2.
A recent headline in the local newspaper 1 claimed "Most Radiohead Fans Decline to Pay," referring to the band's experiment in digital music retailing. The headline should instead read, "Most Radiohead Downloaders Have Not Paid Yet." Just because they downloaded the music doesn't mean they're a fan; they could have just grabbed it to see what the hype was about. Secondly, the album will be released on CD in a couple of months. I would rather not pay for a digital download now and then pay full retail later. I am ethically at ease with downloading the music now without paying and buying the CD when it becomes available. I am not, in other words, declining to pay, but rather waiting to pay. Is it a terrible error? No. Does the distortion conform to the conventional narrative of music downloaders being thieves? Yup.
Media coverage around the 2008 presidential election is excessively focused on the campaigns. They describe and dissect the daily doings of campaigns like Monday morning quarterbacks. They talk about tactics and perceptions rather than the candidates and the issues. It's too much about the machinery and not enough about the end goals. It's too much noise signifying too little, but its appearance of pulling back the curtain makes it seem deep rather than shallow. It's all built up out of nothing, which makes it easier for the media to shape it. They give their blessing to the "serious" candidates who play the game, like Hillary Clinton or Mitt Romney, while dismissing as jokers and weirdos the more interesting candidates like Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul, or Mike Gravel.
A naïaut;ve observer might have guessed that 24-hour news would have offered the opportunity for broader coverage, but instead it has enabled saturation bombing of even narrower messages. I have similar hopes for the Internet, with some satisfaction to be found from the strength of Ron Paul's showing, but there's also the lesson of Howard Dean to give me pause. The campaigns are no more relevant than the card stock used for mailings. Losing sight of the candidates and the issues makes it easier for weak candidates with a poor grasp of the issues to slip through; indeed, it encourages it. Unless we reject the shallow focus, we'll get more of the same, and we'll deserve it.
On NPR on the way home, they were interviewing some New Hampshire women about their votes in the primaries. One exchange appalled me. This is my best recollection of what they said:
Interviewer (to a Hillary voter): The polls all said that Clinton was going to lose. Why do you think they were so wrong? Do you think they underestimated women voters?
Interviewee: Yes, I think they did underestimate women voters.
W... T... F... How the hell does she know? In fact, what does that even mean? And this is NPR, which is better than most other mainstream media outlets. That's just pathetic.