WNEG our Entrance Ramp to Information Superhighway

“I’m not giving you a car. I’m giving you the road.”

My sixteenth birthday car was truly crappy. Three wheels and a cement block. A door missing. And when you tried to shift gears, the lever came off in your hand. Yeah, it sucked.

My Mom could tell I was underwhelmed. She grabbed my hand that was fiddling with the rust masquerading as paint and looked me right in the eye.

“I’m not giving you a car. I’m giving you the road.”
She has always been crazy wise and she was on target then. She helped me look past the thing to what that thing enabled. Past the vehicle to where I wanted to go. Smart, eh?

On June 25, the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication (the New Media Institute’s parent unit) announced that it was purchasing WNEG Channel 32 out of Toccoa, Georgia. When word got out, I started getting emails right away. You see, I have been telling people for years that the Grady College is dedicated to exploring to NEW media. Sure, television was a highlight in the “World of Tomorrow” – at the World’s Fair in 1939! And if a medium debuts with a speech by Franklin Roosevelt, well it is stretching to call it new. Nope, it looked like Grady was committing itself to OLD media. And WNEG with its lightning damaged tower and programming that resembled a Saturday Night Live parody was looking a lot like Thunderball (that is what I named my car – after I got it running).

But to paraphrase my Mom, we didn’t really buy the station. We bought the channel – and everything that goes along with it. Look closer and you will see that this purchase is about as sophisticated a new media move as you can make.

Let me lapse into professor mode for just a minute to explain. Broadcast television uses airwaves to send the signal to antennae on your set. OK, most of us don’t have rabbit ears any more, but the cable company gets broadcast TV through its rabbit ears and sends it down that expensive pipeline to your house. These airwaves are part of what a scientist would call the electromagnetic spectrum – or just spectrum. The cool/weird/problematic aspect of spectrum is just about all the post web advances in new media use it. The WiFi connection at Starbucks uses spectrum. And so does your cell phone. Did you ever wonder why there are a limited number of cell phone companies? Because those carriers bought the enabling spectrum from the government. That spectrum ain’t cheep. In fact, in January, the FCC sold some of that spectrum for over $19B.

OK, professor, so what?

In buying WNEG, Grady gets 6MHz of spectrum. And with digital compression technology, you only need a fraction of that to send out a television signal. Now we have a capability that only two other universities in the country have. We can use our spectrum for a TV channel – and a host of other cool new things.

So what are we going to do with this extra spectrum? Wouldn’t you like to know!
Alright, here is a hint. Call it a sneak preview. Who rules in mobile video now? Yep, the carriers: Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, etc. Why do they get to call the shots? You guessed it – spectrum. What if there was a new spectrum owner on the scene pushing video in a whole new way? What if this new spectrum owner had decades of expertise in making quality video content that people like to watch? What if consumers had the option to watch mobile television – cruising up and down channels not on a remote, but on a cell phone? What if this new player also understood advertising and had an efficient business operation in place charged with selling commercials? What if a broadcaster with a commitment to public service could offer an alternative mobile video service? Well things would be very interesting, wouldn’t they?

With WNEG, the station isn’t really important – it is what we are going to do with a new wealth of potential that matters. In short, Grady owns a new type of road. There are sure to be a lot of twists and turns, but you can bet that it will be an exciting ride. Stay tuned!

Ideas come from iDMAa (Savannah, 11/6 – 11/8)

Ideas are the currency in the digital media world. Good/Compelling/Creative/Innovative ideas set us apart. They help us succeed. Rewarding careers are built on a foundation of ideas.
But where do you get your best ideas? The shower? On long walks? During boring meetings? Good places, sure. But let me tell you where I have been getting my best ideas. The International Digital Media and Arts Association – iDMAa. Let me give you an example. In 2005 at the iDMAa Conference at Miami University, I was holding forth on how important mobile was going to be. I did a panel on it. A lot of people showed up and offered some cool perspectives. But Karla Berry and Conrad Gleber looked skeptical. “If mobile media is going to change the world, how come all we are getting is ringtones, silly games, and hello kitty animations.” They had a good point. There was a lot of potential there, but not much power.
We adjourned to a pub and gave ourselves a big challenge. Come up with a way that mobile can truly improve peoples lives. That meeting changed everything.
That December Karla, Conrad and I held the Mobile Media Workshop where filmmakers and students had to use cell phones to produce video addressing an important social topic (like AIDS, homelessness, substance abuse, etc.) And they had to do it in one day.
From that meetings and the ideas we kicked around, we have hosted to other events around the country. We have pioneered a new type of video to be distributed via cell phones, the Personal Public Service Announcement (http://www.mynmi.net/aids_ppsa/). Bottom line, that ideas that came from that iDMAa conference changed my career – for the better.
The 2008 iDMAa Conference is November 6-8 in Savannah, Georgia. The theme is “Ideas for the Future.” Do you really want to miss out on the cool idea that could change everything? http://www.idmaa.org/.

Totally Cool Digital Brown Bags this Semester

We always have great speakers for our Digital Brown Bags (Tu, 12:30P, NMI, Rm. 412, Journalism). But this semester we have out done ourselves! Here is a list of some of the guests we are having in for our informal discussion sections.
• Nokia – talking about their mobile television system
• Turner – telling us about their international mobile initiatives
• WSB – talking about what they want to do with new media
• Moxie Interactive – an interactive agency with wild stuff
• Mobient – a mobile media usability company
• LSN Mobile – does cool mobile advertising.
And that is just the first few weeks!
Our first Digital Brown Bag (Tu, 8/19) is for students only. But after that, everyone is invited every Tuesday.

Schematic does Olympics Online – Check it out!

Yeah, I am hooked on the Olympics – staying up way too late and actually considering swimming again. Hey, I think I could take that Phelps guy in my specialty – dawg paddling! And I wouldn’t even need to wear one of those shower caps.
And I am watching it right now – in my office – on my computer. Have you checked out NBCOlympics.com? Wild streaming video! You can see video from any event – live or recorded. And you can even set it up to have picture in a picture of any two events. Crazy cool! And I met some of the people that made this happen. Schematic http://www.schematic.com/ is working on a ton or amazing projects. And they are establishing themselves as an industry leader in video players – they did one for ABC and without them I wouldn’t be able to indulge my “Desperate Housewives” addiction. Schematic has an office in Atlanta. And Schematic is going to be a key player at iDMAa 2008 in Savannah. Who wouldn’t believe what they can do.