Library of Congress Unveils National Recording Preservation Plan

I've written before about how the conversion to digital formats, particularly for video (see http://goo.gl/Zevfa for one example), has great benefits for many parties.  Unlike film, for example, digital video formats retain their clarity and color forever (at least theoretically), as there are no chemical colors to peel off aging celluloid film.  I presumed that audio was easier to upgrade to digital format since much has already been converted.

But apparently, there are literally still tons of old recordings out there, some of which date as far back 125 years.  One might also think that digital audio is in better shape, therefore converting those to newer digital formats should be easy, say with a computer program that can convert from one format to another, right?

Not necessarily.

One big challenge with audio is that recorded sound does not always have a standardized recording format.  What was used for audio recordings at one time may have disappeared when newer, superior or less-costly formats evolved.  Audio recordings range from cylinders and vinyl discs (each with different speeds required for playback).  Other formats include various tapes (beyond what we think of as cassettes, who remembers the 8-Track, or even reel-to-reel tapes?), and more recently, audio has been recorded on computer files.

In 2000, Congress passed a law that established the National Recording Preservation Board and initiated a project to preserve our recorded audio content.  Some examples include Presidential addresses, to music recordings of a particular point in time.  There's a LOT of recorded audio content out there.

But just because files are in digital formats doesn't mean we'll automatically know how to convert those to newer formats in the future.

Sam Brylawski, the chairman of the National Recording Preservation Board says "You hear stories about things recorded on ... things like ProTools editing software 10 years ago, but the new version of the software isn't compatible with the digital files of 10 and 20 years ago."

On Wednesday, February 13, 2013, the U.S. Library of Congress unveiled its long-awaited plan to help preserve this country's audio archives.  The National Recording Preservation Plan proposes that anyone making a "born digital" recording needs to also encode the audio with metadata — information embedded in the file — that spells out exactly HOW that audio was recorded.  There's a lot more to the plan, including standardized practices for analog recordings preservation and storage (for analog media that may be susceptible to heat and humidity, for example).

While it seems logical to suggest converting everything to MP3 format, it represents a big change in thinking.  Mr. Brylawski says:

"It's important to think about the life cycle of the recording as it's made and not just 80 years later when you open your closet and see these things and scratch your head," Brylawski says. "Thinking about the life cycle of a born digital item as soon as it's made — that would be the best way to think about [the question of], 'How will this be preserved?'"

Copyrights Also An Enormous Challenge

The reason so many sounds from the very early stages of recording are lost is not because the recordings themselves are gone, but because we [the U.S.] have very expansive copyright laws that essentially lock them up and make them unavailable," according to Tim Brooks, the president of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections and the author of "Lost Sounds", a book about the earliest black recording artists.

My readers may also recall that a big change to U.S. copyright went into effect earlier this year which now enables authors to reclaim the rights to content they created but may have been signed over to publishers and/or record labels (see my post at http://goo.gl/fu4fc for details).  That represents a new wrinkle in the copyright mess without necessarily clear solutions.

We can thank corporate mergers and acquisitions for some of the copyright situation we're now in, and the specific copyright protections the music industry lobbied so hard to get also makes archiving historic recordings legally difficult.  In many cases, the rights holders to those recordings cannot even be found.  Think of a process similar to a title search for a home or automobile, only with ownership data that's locked in corporate vaults without public access to those records.

However, some of the biggest labels in the music industry including Sony have come around, seeing the commercial potential for cooperation rather than keeping stuff to themselves.  They cite Sony's agreement to permit the U.S. Library of Congress to stream free on the Library's National Jukebox website [http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/] some of its earliest recorded content as an example.

NPR had a fascinating story about the Library of Congress' National Recording Preservation Plan on February 13, 2013.  That can be listened to below, or by visiting http://n.pr/ZdyxNg.

While you can listen to that, its worth visiting NPR's website (see above), as they have links to the first known jazz recording, which was made in 1917, and also a wax cylinder recording of a song about President William McKinley.

In the end, this was a fascinating story about the initiative to save American recorded audio history.  With an articulated plan for content, along with perhaps partnering with industry, we might not lose our recorded audio content, therefore ensuring future generations will still have access to it.  And with meta data attached to the newly-converted audio files, future generations may also be able to enjoy access to it.

Skype, Tango, Duo and Facetime: Today's Versions of Ma Bell's Picturephone Service

Readers may recall that in October 2012, I blogged about the 50th Anniversary of Hanna-Barbera cartoon "The Jetsons" (catch my post on that by visiting http://goo.gl/01mqj). It was a sort of a tongue-in-cheek intro that the future had just received its membership card from AARP, but the reality is that at least in my lifetime, many of the gee-whiz things we saw in "The Jetsons" have become facts of life.  True, we're not flying to work yet, but many other things are now pretty ordinary.

One technology that I highlighted was the concept of video telephone calls. These days, that technology, whether its via Tango, the far more ubiquitous technology from Skype, or Apple's proprietary (and non-compatible) Facetime apps on Apple's iOS devices, or Google's Duo app (available on Android and iOS platforms) today, video phone calls are no longer far-fetched dreams of visionaries. But it wasn't always that way, and the change has actually been quite recent.

According to the AT&T Archive, the American public first witnessed what was dubbed the Picturephone at the 1964 World's Fair in Queens, NY. Soon thereafter, what was then known as the Bell System (which was in reality known as AT&T) rolled out three Picturephone booths in Washington DC, New York, and Chicago. Those three Picturephones could communicate only with each other. Usage costs ranged from $16 to $27 for just three minutes (that's $118 to $200 in 2012 dollars!).

Cover of 1964 Picturephone brochure (click to open)

The old Bell System even published a futuristic-looking brochure (now scanned into Adobe Acrobat format) which can be found by visiting http://bit.ly/2eplcjD tempting us that the Bell System was working to bring those video phone calls to our homes in the future.

 As it turns out, that did happen, and the old Bell System disintegrated following antitrust regulators suing (and winning) a lawsuit to break the monopolistic company up. The company we know of as AT&T in 2013 is actually one of the so-called "Baby Bells" which grew into a company that looks a bit like the old Bell System used to, minus the legendary Bell Laboratories which invented the fiber optic technology which runs much of today's internet and lots of other stuff, minus Western Electric, the company that manufactured all those telephones that still sit in many people's homes even today (side note: if you can find a landline phone made half as well as those were, you might consider holding onto it, because the cheap junky phones sold today aren't likely to work for very long after they are removed from the packaging; I've bought three which didn't even work after I opened the plastic).

In the following video, which is courtesy of the AT&T Archive (noted above), shows a short video (originally from film) from 1970 containing actual footage from the inaugural Picturephone call at the launch of commercial service in the first test (beta) city, Pittsburgh. The call was made from then-Mayor Pete Flaherty, in Pittsburgh's Bell Telephone HQ auditorium, to John Harper, then the Chairman of Alcoa. Those two men made the call from locations that were actually only a block apart, but seeing them on a screen in realtime seemed like an incredible vision of the future.

Watch that video below, or by visiting the AT&T Archive at https://techchannel.att.com/playvideo/2012/06/29/AT&T-Archives-Debut-of-the-Picturephone or on AT&T's YouTube channel at https://youtu.be/BQMnlKMFD8M:



The AT&T Archive also has some interesting information on why the original Picturephone service never quite took off (the reason wasn't technological, but cost).  It seems that companies, who were seen as the target market for the service, balked at paying the equivalent of almost $1,000 per month for the video conferencing service (which came with a minimum of 30 minutes. Additional sets on the same line added another $50/month in 1970 dollars; additional minutes were priced at $0.25 each, again in 1970 dollars). Still, when viewed from its historical perspective, you can see just how visionary all of that was in 1970!

In 1992 (until around 1995), AT&T tried again, with its VideoPhone 2500 to the general public, with prices starting at $1,500.  Unlike earlier efforts, this particular device was designed to provide color video using ordinary Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS), rather than broadband connections.

AT&T VideoPhone 2500 (circa 1992)

As it turned out, AT&T would ultimately by acquired by a baby bell (the company behind the acquisition was SBC, the Southwestern Bell spinoff which went on an buying binge, snapping up most of its baby bell rivals except Bell Atlantic (Verizon as of 2013).  From a tech standpoint, VideoPhone 2500 was a winner, but in spite of the superior technology behind it, cost was the key issue in its failure.  However, AT&T's published research helped pave the way for other companies to later enter the field of videoconferencing.

These days, a LOT of people complain that Apple's Facetime is limited only to other iOS users, and that's a major drawback, whereas Google Duo operates on both platforms (though Google got into the game late). That means you cannot Facetime your grandmother if you've got an iPhone but she's got a Droid. Rather than encouraging Apple device sales, it seems to be doing the opposite. There's been a steady stream of news that Apple has lost its perch on top of the mobile device market as Samsung outsold it (see http://n.pr/16KAXED for details).  iOS is a nice operating system, but Wall Street is looking for Apple to sell cheaper devices to get them into more people's hands, especially in the developing world. Apple is sitting on a very big hoard of cash at the moment, so the company is hardly in imminent danger, but the many experts believe the company's premium-priced strategy may need retooling.

Still, to get around that proprietary Apple technology hurdle (lets face it, of mobile devices, recent data shows that 60% of all devices now in circulation are powered by Google's Android operating system, Apple only has about 40%, down from half a few years ago), Skype already has apps that work on both, as does Google's Duo and there are rival apps like Tango which do the same.  The point is these days, its not technological hurdles but marketing hurdles, but most people already have the technology to do video conferencing right from their mobile handsets.  But we should remember it wasn't so long ago all of those were just visions of a future world!

Documenting Porn's Path to Becoming Mainstream

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Pop Culture Cast Reunion: One Day at a Time and the Death of Bonnie Franklin

Actress Bonnie Franklin, perhaps best known for her starring TV role as divorced mother Ann Romano in "One Day at a Time", has died (see the Los Angeles Times obituary at http://lat.ms/Zi8oZk).  She passed away on Friday, March 1, 2013 at her Los Angeles home from complications of pancreatic cancer at age 69.  News broke in September that Ms. Franklin had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  She was surrounded by family and friends at the time of her death, an individual familiar with the situation said.  A private memorial will be held in L.A. this week. In lieu of flowers, her family suggested donations to CCAP, a nonprofit organization that was started by Bonnie Franklin and her sister Judy Bush to introduce and implement great American Plays into inner city schools' curriculum.

Bonnie Franklin was born in Santa Monica, California in 1944, and she first appeared on TV at age nine, in "The Colgate Comedy Hour," and made her Broadway debut in 1970 in the play "Applause." She also had a semi-regular role on ABC's "Gidget" with Sally Field.

However, Ms. Frankin became a household name back in the 1970s thanks to her TV role of Ann Romano, who was a recently-divorced, working mother trying to raise two teenaged daughters on her own.  That show ran on CBS for nine seasons.

After "One Day at a Time" ended, Ms. Franklin had largely stayed out of the public spotlight (although she appeared in a number of  plays in Los Angeles) until returning to TV in various guest roles quite recently.  Perhaps most notably, she appeared as a guest on the hit TV Land first-run TV show "Hot In Cleveland" as the Polish mother of a man (who was played by actor John Schneider) that one of the show's core characters Melanie Moretti was romantically interested in.  Of course, the character of Melanie on "Hot in Cleveland" is played by Valerie Bertinelli, who famously portrayed Barbara for "One Day at a Time's" entire duration, as one of Ann Romano's two daughters on (the other was played by Mackenzie Philips, although that character was on-again, off-again, on-again due to Ms. Phillips own substance abuse problems in real life) back in the seventies.  In fact, Ms. Phillips was fired twice from the show.

Aside from her brief appearance on "Hot in Cleveland" during Season 2, Bonnie Franklin was also honored at the TV Land Awards in 2012 (see http://bit.ly/15s3jFs for a clip) along with Ms. Bertinelli, Ms. Philips and Pat Harrington, who played the building supervisor in the "One Day at a Time" series, and the cast also reappeared together in a 2008 cast reunion on NBC's Today Show, which I'm sharing here.

That clip, which was part of a week-long series called "TV's Greatest Casts Reunited" which I've featured here in the past, aired on February 26, 2008, and a page for that can be seen at http://www.today.com/id/23350209/ns/today-entertainment/t/cast-one-day-time-reunites-today/ and a video (for the time being, anyway) can also be seen there.  The show received an Innovator Award from TV Land (see http://bit.ly/2cGvkCB for details).

"One Day at a Time" was very much a product of its time.  The show was created by TV legend Norman Lear, but in some ways reflected what an entire generation of kids of the day were experiencing.  Gen X was perhaps best defined as a generation of divorce victims (for lack of a better description, although that helped shape the generation to be self-dependent), and the prevalence of latch-key kids whose parents were divorced were very much reflected in that show.  The show was also among Norman Lear's longest-running shows, having run for nearly a decade on CBS from 1975 to 1984.

In spite of its now unheard of duration in prime-time, so far, only the first season of "One Day at a Time" has been released on DVD (or for that matter, has been digitized).  At present, neither TV Land, nor any of the newer networks that have followed in its footsteps such as Antenna TV, Me-TV or RTV (Retro Television) are airing "One Day at a Time" right now, although that could change.

Ms. Franklin's early death at age 69 from Pancreatic Cancer was quite young, but there are almost no effective treatments for pancreatic cancer.

"One Day at a Time" cast daughter Valerie Bertinelli issued the following statement about Bonnie Franklin's passing:

"My heart is breaking. Bonnie has always been one of the most important women in my life and was a second mother to me. The years on One Day at a Time were some of the happiest of my life, and along with Pat (Harrington Jr.) and Mackenzie we were a family in every way. She taught me how to navigate this business and life itself with grace and humor, and to always be true to yourself. I will miss her terribly."

Her other cast daughter on "One Day at a Time", Mackenzie Phillips said this about Ms. Franklin's death:

"I am so saddened by the loss of our dear friend, Bonnie Franklin. She was just full of light and love. Bonnie will be very much missed by all the people she touched with her love. Family, friends and fans. Please respect the privacy of her wonderful family at this difficult time. We all loved her very much."

While its not quite the kind of cast reunion post I envisioned for "One Day at a Time", it seems appropriate to acknowledge the loss this way.

Author P.S., January 7, 2016:  Pat Harrington, Jr., best known for his role as as Dwayne Schneider on television's "One Day at a Time", which was a Norman Lear sitcom that aired starting in 1975 that ran for nine seasons that sealed his image in the public's mind as the obnoxious super with a heart.  He died in Los Angeles on January 6, 2016.  He was 86 and suffered from Alzheimer's disease and complications from a fall.  While his role as Schneider was his best-known role, his TV appearances read like a history of the medium: "The Steve Allen Show," "Make Room for Daddy," "The Jackie Gleason Show," "Marcus Welby, M.D.," "The Partridge Family," "Love American Style" — all the way up to "Curb Your Enthusiasm."  An obituary appears in the Los Angeles Times at http://lat.ms/1JBRTUj and is perhaps the best place to view it.

Author P.S., February 2, 2017:  While movie and TV reboots occasionally emerge, and covers of popular music are routine, not all succeed.  Sometimes, the reboot alienates the original TV show viewers and/or fails to connect with newer audiences.  One example was the ill-fated 2007 NBC reboot of the 1970's TV series "The Bionic Woman" which was canceled shortly after it began because of low ratings.  That said, having someone from the original series can help translate a reboot while keeping important elements that made an original successful.  One such reboot is the 2017 TV series "One Day at a Time" which now runs on Netflix, and has been re-imagined with a family at the show's center being Cuban-American.  APM's Marketplace radio interviewed the 1970's creator Norman Lear about the new version and his new collaboration with Gloria Calderon Kellett and Mike Royce.  Listen below, or by visiting http://bit.ly/2jLMApo.

More Cracks In Cable's Fortress

I've written several times in the past about the pay TV business model, and many presume that particular business model is still pretty solid, in spite of evidence to suggest otherwise.  See the following posts as examples:

Why Must-See-TV Is History; But Is It The End of "Shared" Pop Culture? (or visit http://goo.gl/Vzbcn)


What Happens to TV As We Know It When The Business Model No Longer Works? (or see http://goo.gl/G7z0A)


Is the Future Pay TV Model As Safe as The Atlantic Believes It Is? (or see http://goo.gl/3Ic0S)

I believe that model is likely to unravel soon.  At the core of the argument for the business model is that cable is somehow not susceptible to the same disruptive technology that in caused the music business to collapse.  That belief is flawed for many reasons.

We've seen signs that glass house is indeed cracking.

Aside from the growth of online services like YouTube (which is free), Netflix (which is subscription), Hulu (there's a free version and a subscription version) and others, big cable companies that have the most to gain from fighting that model are now starting to fight back.

In the one entitled "Is the Future Pay TV Model As Safe as The Atlantic Believes It Is?", I noted that during the first six and a half months of 2012, there were 22 fee disputes involving the price of broadcast TV signals have caused channel blackouts, according to the American TV Alliance. That was up from 15 blackouts in all of 2011, and just four in 2010.

Then, there are business initiatives such as the Barry Diller-funded effort called Aereo.com which began in the town I live in (New York City) but is expanding to other cities in 2013.  In spite of dozens of legal copyright-infringement lawsuits filed by the major media conglomerates which accuse Aereo of unlawfully copying their content, Mr. Diller argues what he's doing is entirely legal because customers are assigned individual antennas at its data centers, so they're basically just renting the use of their own antennas and have that delivered via the internet. Aereo uses a dime-sized TV antenna and crams hundreds (or perhaps thousands of them) into boxes located at the company's data centers.  AP claims each box is the size of a dishwasher.  As a result, the company says it's similar to what viewers would get for free by installing the same equipment at home.  By contrast, cable companies use a single antenna or direct feed from a broadcaster to pick up a station for thousands of subscribers.

Ultimately, the courts will decide.  But last July, a federal judge in New York refused to give the broadcaster conglomerates (Newscorp's Fox, Disney/ABC, CBS/Viacom which Mr. Diller himself used to run, and NBC Universal/Comcast) who were suing Aereo a preliminary injunction to stop the service, although the case remains pending.

More recent moves have bypassed broadcast networks altogether, in effect, cutting the media conglomerates out of the equation.  Netflix, for example, signed a deal with Disney.  As the cost of production has declined, some producers can make high-quality content at a low cost and do the same thing.  Beyond that, online content is finding its own audience without the help of big broadcasters to distribute it.

Indeed, YouTube is living up to its name.

Anyway, we saw one major cable company finally push back.  Last month, Cablevision sued Viacom over alleged antitrust violations, another challenge to the business model of consumers being forced to pay for channels they don't want to get the few they do want.

Personally, I couldn't have imagined this would happen quite as fast as it is happening.

By the way, I Google'd the headline "Cablevision Picks at the Ties That Bind" and found that Newscorp was giving the content away anyway, so I think this particular article is safe to share since the company isn't doing anything to safeguard it.  You can find it online (with a WSJ subscription) at http://on.wsj.com/WnD0wq:


Cablevision Picks at the Ties That Bind
By Miriam Gottfried, The Wall Street Journal
February 27, 2013

Cracks are forming in the pay-TV fortress. And Cablevision is the latest to deliver a blow.

The cable provider's announcement Tuesday that it has sued Viacom over alleged antitrust violations ups the ante in the continuing battle over the rising cost of TV content. Pay-TV providers say they can't pass along the escalating prices being charged by media networks to customers already paying more than $70 a month for video alone. At the same time, they are facing increasing pressure from a rapidly changing media-technology environment in which some viewers are getting video from other sources such as Netflix.

n its suit, Cablevision alleges Viacom forced it to carry and pay for 14 "lesser-watched" channels for the right to carry its more popular "must-have" networks, including Nickelodeon, MTV and Comedy Central. The practice of packaging channels together, known as bundling, is standard for network agreements with distributors.

To show Viacom did anything illegal, Cablevision must demonstrate the terms are so onerous it was essentially forced to take all the channels, a practice known as tying. Viacom has said it will defend itself vigorously against the claims.

If the case undermines typical channel-bundling contracts, it could have far-reaching implications. Media companies may have to allow pay-TV operators to sell channels separately or in different groupings, possibly forcing less popular channels—which generate advertising revenue for networks—to shut down.

But the lawsuit is unlikely to get that far or produce such an extreme outcome. More likely, Cablevision hopes to push Viacom to the settlement table to work out more-favorable terms.

The following graphic from AP shows how the frequency of such disputes have increased in recent years.

Indeed, Cablevision may be targeting Viacom rather than other content providers because of its apparent vulnerability. Viacom has no sports programming, among the most popular and lucrative content. And ratings at Viacom's top networks have been suffering.

Beyond the specific players involved, the dispute reflects widespread industry pressure. Time Warner Cable Chief Executive Glenn Britt said last month that his company's content costs have risen 32% in the past four years, while average revenue per residential user has risen only 16%.

Time Warner Cable has openly threatened to cut less-popular channels, dropping arts channel Ovation at the beginning of the year. And other pay-TV providers have lashed out. Last summer, Viacom's channels went dark on DirecTV for nine days before an agreement could be hammered out.

While Cablevision's suit isn't likely to set a legal precedent, it may succeed in driving home the point to consumers that the bundling of channels and rising costs to carry them are what is pushing up their monthly bills.

This wasn't lost on a number of Cablevision's peers, including Time Warner Cable, Charter Communications and DirecTV, which issued statements in support of the lawsuit. If it keeps up the vocal push for à la carte channel offerings, pay TV may find itself with a rare ally: its own subscribers.

Write to Miriam Gottfried at Miriam.Gottfried@wsj.com

A version of this article appeared February 28, 2013, on page C8 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Cablevision Picks at Ties That Bind.

URL for this article (WSJ subscription may be required for access, but if you search on Google or Bing by the article headline, probably not):
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323293704578330663947606892.html

American Public Media's Marketplace.org covered the story, which can be listened to below, or by visiting Marketplace.org at http://bit.ly/YK2yOe:

However, even more telling was a separate article on the next day (February 28, 2013) from The Wall Street Journal entitled "Imagining a Post-Bundle TV World" by Shalini Ramachandran and William Launder, http://on.wsj.com/WKh21l which looked a bit deeper into the underlying payments and just how much the media companies get for their bundled networks.  Consider the following example:

Disney earns more than $10 billion in such bundled fee revenue, mostly from its majority-owned ESPN group of channels, according to estimates from market researcher SNL Kagan. That's about a third of the $31.6 billion expected to be generated industrywide by such fees this year, excluding premium services like HBO and broadcast outlets, Mr. Kagan told the Journal.

It added that the size of these fees varies widely, noting that while ESPN gets $5.54 per subscriber a month, Viacom's MTV gets just 41 cents per subscriber.  Niche channels get much less.  MTV Hits, for instance, gets two cents, according to Kagan.

The following graphic shows just how much these fees contribute towards the bottom lines of companies like Disney, Time-Warmer, Comcast's NBC Universal unit and News Corp.

The article writes:

"Now pay-TV executives—as well as its customers—are openly pondering a world where the bundle no longer reigns, even though such a scenario could be years away."

The media giants argue that costs will go up if cable operators can unbundle content, but the article suggests that the outcome isn't certain:

"There has long been intense debate about whether unbundling would save consumers money. Two studies by the Federal Communications Commission in the past decade came to opposite conclusions. A Temple University study, meanwhile, concluded only incremental savings for consumers, and that was before accounting for the higher costs for customer service and programming that distributors would likely pass along."

The closing statement in the article reads as follows:

"Mike Fricklas, general counsel at Viacom says the conversation will change only if 'cutting the cord' becomes a widespread reality. 'As of right now,' Mr. Fricklas said, 'the cable packages are expensive to some people but not so expensive that people aren't choosing to subscribe.

But another pay-TV executive said improved Internet distribution of video will 'force the change.'"