BRC 301

[ The 20-game agreement makes the basketball league the first women’s professional sports group to sign a rights deal with the social media service.

Twitter will stream 20 regular-season games in each of the next three seasons, starting with the game between the Dallas Wings and the Phoenix Mercury on May 14.

Facebook also recently struck deals to stream live sporting events. During the 2016-17 season, the N.B.A.’s Development League games were streamed on Facebook Live. In March, Facebook and Major League Soccer announced that at least 22 games in the 2017 season would be available on Facebook.

“Sports are inherently social, with the power to build and connect communities around the world,” Dan Reed, Facebook’s head of global sports partnerships, said in a statement. “This aligns closely with our mission, and we feel Facebook is a natural home for sports content, including live games. Early experiments with these events on Facebook have delivered great results for fans, broadcasters and rights holders.” ]

Monday my group was asked a question after our presentation on the existence of cable companies about whether we think sports is going to be something that joins the streaming world and this article directly drew my attention. Both of these platforms are making deals to stream games on social media and have verbalized that even though they don't know how they're going to make a profit off of it, they are willing to put the money in to try and figure it out.

I think this is a big step for the world of sports and only furthers the idea that cable companies are going to continue to suffer.

While I’ve never been one very interested in fiscal stuff, the broadcasting industry, like all industries, takes the form of businesses that rely on funds to make them possible - so having an understanding of media economics is essential to maneuvering the broadcasting world.

This class gave me more insight into the way economics plays out in media businesses, and also left me wondering a lot about the future of the industry and what it’s going to be like for all of us broadcasters/journalists/content creators in the future.

The shift from scarcity to abundance definitely poses a new and unique challenge that wasn’t present before. More competition, less valuable advertising, and information overload are all results of the shift into the age of abundance. But the shift has also resulted in more niche media, greater accessibility, and arguably, the ability for everyone to have a voice. So, as an aspiring journalist, the uncertain future of media is exciting and kind of intimidating. 

But I do believe this class gave me a great deal of valuable information that I will take with me moving forward. As much as money bores me, it’s always part of the equation, so I’m glad I had this class to give me that foundation.

As college students, there are many classes we’re required to take where we either know everything about the topic or we have no idea what we’re learning and will never use the information again in our lives. I’m glad, however, that this class was a requirement for my broadcasting major because I can see myself referring back to each topic we discussed. I always knew about media and how it worked, but never thought about it and analyzed it so thoroughly as we did during this course. We talk about media in our everyday lives, and now having more knowledge about topics everyone is constantly talking about is super helpful and resourceful. I would definitely recommend this class to other students who don’t have to take it for a requirement, and if they do have to take it, I’ll tell them to register for it with Professor Moritz!! 

Was just talking about in our presentation today how streaming services were going to start making pushes for more live sports contracts. Turns out they are not the only ones. 

The founder of Wikipedia announced plans for a news website that would offer stories by journalists and volunteers that would help stop fake news. The site would be crowd-funded by supporters and have no advertising. The site will be called Wikitribune, and will have articles that are authored, fact checked, and verified by journalists and volunteers. It was argued in this article that the type of people who would use the site are already media-literate, but since users expect news to be free, news sites rely on money from advertising, which encourages them to make "clickbait" instead of quality news.

Amazon is a very large, well-known company continuing to grow but they don't advertise very often.

When questioned on whether or not they believed that "advertising could become a more 'meaningful part of the business' over the near to mid-term," they claimed that it is "much more of a possibility than it has ever been."

Everyone who owns a Facebook has run into these sort of things at one point or another quizzes, trending challenges, etc. This reason caught my eye because it's amazing how much we don't we are giving away on social media by taking part in these mindless activities. 

Privacy experts said the specific answers posted in response to the meme could be used by marketers to target ads or by hackers to breach secure accounts.

It could telegraph information about a user’s age, musical tastes and even religious affiliation — all of which would be desirable to marketers hoping to target ads.

It's a bit scary in a sense to think that simply by taking quizzes or partaking in things like the Ice Bucket challenge and posting about it reveals certain information about yourself to advertisers and people who are potentially taking part in fraudulent acts against you. 

“People always have to have their eyes wide open when they’re on the internet,” he said. “It’s the way of the world.”

Its interesting to see how HBO's Game of Thrones is stepping up their production value from £4.6 million to £7.7 million per episode. Although the show does air their new episodes on HBO, it would be interesting to see what percent of their audience streams the show. I personally am not a fan, however every single one of my friends who watches the show streams it on HBOGO. The question I would like to know is how streaming affects their budget and without HBOGO how negatively their budget would react. 

BRC 301 was by far one of my favorite courses of those I chose to take for the Spring 2017 semester. Although I am a Public Relations major, I’ve always enjoyed economics and looking at it from the media market’s POV steered me from the basic knowledge and skewed the direction of my interests. It’s not often you can say you don’t mind going to class three days per week, but showing up for this course didn’t feel like a chore. One thing I learned (and now, will never forget) is that the shift from scarcity to abundance was the biggest change in the history of media. I would 100% recommend other students to take this course. Thank you, Professor Moritz, for making class entertaining and always being so full of energy.

We talk a lot about cutting the cord in class and in this article we find out that HULU is making their own cable bundle? i find this interesting because HULU is one of the things that allows for people to cut the cord in the first place. you have to wonder why hulu is doing this now?

Orange is the New Blackmail?

Over the weekend, a hacker claimed to have Season 5 of Orange Is The New Black, and planned to leak them unless Netflix met their demands. On Friday, they released the first episode. Netflix did not give in to The Dark Overlord, the username the hacker is going by. 

Early Sunday morning, The Dark Overlord released nine more episodes on ThePirateBay, stating that the final three episodes had not been available when they found the leak. The Dark Overlord also said that they have other studios’ shows, such as Fox, Nat Geo, and ABC.

The fifth season of OITNB is slated to release June 9th, more than a month away. This leak can definitely hurt Netflix since some subscribers may only be paying to watch that show. It could possibly lead to cancelled subscriptions, and less views for the show.

As we discussed last week in class, ESPN is facing the challenge of keeping up with today’s media market. Lack of funds has resulted in nearly 100 layoffs. 

“[ESPN] once boasted more than 100 million subscribers for all its main channels. But once the Netflix Generation of cord-cutters found ways to consume sports and everything else on other media platforms, some 12 million subscribers dropped off the ESPN TV radar, amounting to almost $1 billion each year. Bloomberg Business reported that ESPN lost 621,000 subscribers during one month last fall, the most in company history.”

Those are some alarming numbers for anyone in the media industry, because as we’ve talked about in class, ESPN isn’t been the only company dealing with cord-cutters and insufficient funds. This trend in media consumption is changing the game for content creators and it doesn’t seem like it’s stopping.

In the article, ESPN is quoted saying they plan to "focus more on the ESPN App” and “maximize our unparalleled scale in every medium with storytelling that stands out and makes a difference.”

We’ll see, ESPN, we’ll see.

It was found in a recent study that some 69% of U.S. TV homes now have at least one TV set connected to the Internet via Smart TV that has access to stand-alone streaming devices from companies such as Google, Roku, Apple and Amazon, as well as connected Blu-ray players, up from 50% in 2014. This is proof that most families are moving toward the switch from cable to streaming services or at least have cable but can’t live without their favorite streaming platforms. The shift is real! #Sorrycable

What’s the deal with people being kicked off planes.... also what’s the deal with airline food?

Anyways, this past week video surfaced of a man being removed from a Delta flight for using the bathroom being the plane took off. The plane was waiting the takeoff when the man decided to use the bathroom. This action caused the plane to proceed back down the runway, into the gate, which was followed up by having the man removed from the plane for disobeying  airline policy. The man was removed after refusing to leave several times (can you blame the guy?). Eventually, every passenger unboarded from the plane and were allowed to reboard, besides the man who was originally asked to leave to plane.

The man was given a partial refund and had to buy a ticket for another airline. Occurring just a few weeks after another man was dragged off of a United flight, another airline has made headlines for treating their passengers poorly. 

Which raises the question, is this a new issue we’re having or has this always been a thing? I think this has always been a thing but since people love to record any drama occurring around them on their phones, we’re just seeing it now. 

Johnny Depp went to Disney in California and appeared on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride there and surprised all of the people there. This is a good use of product branding and promotion for the new Pirates movie that is just announced a release date. The article went on to mention that Disney shelled out a good amount of money to get Depp to show up and wow the audiences there. However this is a very good promotional tool to help gain hype for the new movie.