by Diane Wild | May 6, 2007 | Canadian TV, Pseudo-Techie
Those of you who follow the TV, eh? site closely might have been wondering “What the hell is she doing?” this weekend. I actually had an out-of-town visitor and we had tons of fun in the brief time she was here, but in the times she wasn’t, I put on my pseudo-geek hat.
The short version of the story is that I changed the site from the free WordPress-hosted blog to the open source WordPress software on a paid host. It’s something I’ve thought of doing since launching the site because of the limitations of free blogging solutions, but didn’t want to spend the money on an external host for something I started more or less on a whim.
You’ll notice that the site looks a little different, but that was a side effect of the switch — the templates for the free version are different from the hosted version. The hosted version allows for much greater customization of the templates, though, which is a huge bonus. I don’t know quite enough HTML or CSS to make full use of the freedom, but I know enough to be dangerous and tweak things.
WordPress thank god has great instructions for installation, because while the words were all English, they were strung together in ways that made no sense to me, and yet I still managed to upload the files to my host, create databases, install the WordPress software, and launch the site with only a few episodes of banging my head into a cyberwall. I also managed to automatically import most of the posts and sidebar information from the old site after a little more headbanging and some deletions to get the import file down in size. The first month or two of posts from the old site now don’t exist, and I need to recreate the schedule page, but it seemed like a small sacrifice for less aggravation.
The one thing that always bugged me about the free WordPress hosting is the JavaScript ban, which leads to limited web stats. WordPress has built-in stats which let you see what sites and search words are referring to the site and which pages are getting hits, but the information isn’t connected — you don’t know what referrals are landing on which pages, and there’s no information on who these visitors are. To supplement that, I used an HTML-only version of StatCounter, which tells me where my visitors are from and when they visited, but none of the other information the fully functioning JavaScript StatCounter would give you. So I don’t know what page the person from CanWest in Calgary landed on or what someone searched for to get to a particular post. That information isn’t crucial, but it is helpful for site marketing purposes and curiosity-fulfilling purposes.
JavaScript plus the private hosting also allows me to put up the Amazon ads you’ll see now, and maybe accept other advertising I’ve until now had to turn down because the free WordPress hosting didn’t allow for commercial activity of any kind. I know no visitor is going to say “Yay, ads!” but it’s not like I’m going to start soliciting for the porn marketers (“but it’s Canadian porn”) or creating pop-ups. The Amazon ads let me point people to where they can buy Canadian TV products while hopefully helping to pay for the hosting and domain fees. I’m guessing there’s no one on the planet retiring from Amazon Associates revenue. I kind of doubt most people can pay for hosting and domain fees from Amazon Associates revenue, either.
The switch was not without problems, though. I set the new site up on my personal unused domain name for testing before switching over the tv-eh.com domain, but then had a bit of a scare post-switch: for some people, some of the time, www.tv-eh.com didn’t work but http://tv-eh.com did. After some supremely unhelpful support from my domain name registrar and much more helpful support from my new hosting company, it seems the most likely cause is the user’s cache, and it should be a temporary problem. I’m not entirely confident that’s the actual cause, but the randomness of the problem makes me think that shrugging is as close as we’re going to come to solving it.
I’m still working with the hosting company on why the tv-eh domain only shows up on the home page, while the domain name I don’t want visitors to see shows up on the other pages. I have faith it will be resolved soon.
When I first launched the site last summer, it was with the free domain http://canadiantv.wordpress.com. That address was doomed to die with the switch … but it’s only a little dead. WordPress support insists there’s no way to redirect from a site hosted by them to one hosted externally, so I figured I’d just have to rely on people changing their bookmarks and links manually. Which is true, but it turns out I have some more grace time. Post-launch I opted for the paid feature in the free WordPress version to have my own domain, tv-eh.com, map to canadiantv.wordpress.com. Now that tv-eh.com points to the new site, it in effect acts as an automatic redirect. WordPress doesn’t seem to want you to know it will work that way.
A more serious problem that made my heart sink was to find out that the new site had a different way of naming pages and posts than the old one. Now I get server stats too, which give all sorts of bizarre data I won’t care about. But yesterday, seeing all the “unfulfilled requests” from people getting 404 messages from dead search links made me question my decision to switch for the first time. I thought it was something I’d have to live with until Google indexed the new site and gave up on the old, but it turns out there’s an option hidden in the depths of the WordPress software to select the kind of post naming that the old site had. So now the new post names match the old post names and all is good in Googleland.
I’m guessing the pain isn’t over yet. The site’s Google juice might be affected at first, though maybe not. I have a feeling some RSS subscribers might be left behind. I’ll be unable to prevent myself from spending way too much time fiddling and tweaking. Other glitches will come to light, I’m sure. But I know more geek secrets now than I did before, I have a shiny new toy to play with, and the site now has more possibilities than it did before. So all in all, despite the headbanging, I’m satisfied with the switch. So far.
by Diane Wild | Apr 15, 2007 | House, Pseudo-Techie
Here’s something that never would have occurred to me: a
House fan who offers a service to convert handwriting into a font has created one out of the whiteboard writing, and is offering it as
a free download.
It sounds like a cool service for those who have pretty or at least legible writing. I type so people don’t have to decipher my chicken scratch.
Now, what shall I do with this new Whiteboard font? Um, this is probably pretty much it.
by Diane Wild | Apr 3, 2007 | Canadian TV, Pseudo-Techie
I had nothing to do with instigating this one – my brother writes about a Toronto Star article talking about Canadian broadcasters and artists wanting more CRTC regulation of the Internet. Steve quotes Heinlein and a fictional real estate agent to make his point: “I’m just a little tired of old dinosaurs trying to stop progress, instead of using it for their advantage.”
by Diane Wild | Mar 21, 2007 | Pseudo-Techie, TV, Video
In what seems like a case of getting an engineer to build a card house, Steven Bochco, he of NYPD Blue and LA Law and Hill Street Blues, is producing a series of web videos called Café Confidential for Metacafe. I’m sure there’s a more universal parallel I could make if only I liked this kind of thing, but Canadians who get Citytv, think Speakers Corner, only with a high-profile Hollywood writer’s name attached to it. The high-profile talent behind the name isn’t quite as evident.
Launched a couple of days ago, the section has a handful of talking head videos of young adults talking about their first time, worst date, craziest day on the job, weird family, etc. As the site puts it:
Pour yourself a hot latte and listen in as the girl next door and the guy across the hall reveal their most personal stories. No scripts, no sets, no special effects – here at Café Confidential, you get real stories from real people, handpicked by Hollywood producer Steven Bochco.
The multiple-Emmy-award winning writer/producer explains his reasons for getting into Internet video to the LA Times. Sort of. He explains why Hollywood is starting to embrace sites like YouTube and the far less popular and less democratic Metacafe, taking lessons from the recording industry’s failure:
“If you spend your life chasing your consumers and filing lawsuits, that’s a fool’s errand,” Bochco said. “At the end of the day, the consumer always wins. So, do you want to be right and spend five years and millions of dollars in legal fees to prove it? Or do you want to be successful?”
He explains why he choose the confessional clip format:
“The Internet is at its best when it distracts its users,” Bochco said. “You’re waiting at the bus stop, you’re in between classes, you have 20 minutes — so you go online and you have some fun.”
As for why he’s delving into web-based content, Bochco is even more vague than the industry types I heard at the Banff World Television Festival who talked about the need to create online content before quite knowing where it was leading or how to make money from it.
[He] saw the project as a way to create entertainment outside the confines of traditional Hollywood. … Bochco isn’t sure how people will respond to his videos. But he believes he has to try to cross the bridge between old media and new. “Maybe as this evolves, it will take us to places we hadn’t anticipated,” he said.
So far I find Café Confidential far more interesting in concept than execution. The confessions range from bland to banal. It’s kind of like listening to that annoying guy at work’s endless anecdotes that end with “maybe you had to be there.” The only thing interesting about the concept is that someone like Bochco is teaming with a site like Metacafe with, apparently, the hope of generating revenue from a web-only offering.
I’m skeptical, but for this – whatever “this” is – to evolve and take us to those unanticipated places, there has to be something to evolve from, right?
Craziest Day at Work
by Diane Wild | Mar 17, 2007 | Canadian TV, Pseudo-Techie
I’ve moved on from stealing my brother’s e-mails as blog post fodder to stealthily enticing him to write something on a subject he’s more knowledgeable about, so I don’t have to do one of my half-assed rants. His post is called Stupid CBC, which I know makes it difficult to tell what he thinks of their new DRM initiative.
But first, the backstory …
A few days ago, I wanted to post this one segment from the Rick Mercer Report about the problems with the tax e-filing system, and the “new” mail file system: “Simply take the lead wand and touch it to the boxes …” I don’t know, it just made me laugh, and I wanted to share. But while it is available through the official site (see “Canada Revenue Agency: Taking Your Money Old School” under March 13), it isn’t embeddable – as I’ve just proven, it’s not even easily linkable – and I figured it was too much bother. It wasn’t a House video, so I wasn’t quite that motivated.
Yes, that is how lazy I am, thank you very much. But it’s also the nature of the web. It’s a proven fact: adding a layer of click-throughs cuts your audience drastically. You know why I started adding lengthy quotes from the articles I link to on the TV, Eh site? I knew that fact, and had always meant to write my own little blurbs about the articles a la TV Tattle except that takes more time than I wanted to spend. But WordPress made it hard to ignore that fact by adding a stats feature that lets you see what links people are clicking on from your site. It became screamingly obvious that the number of people searching for a particular topic and the number of people landing on a particular page dwarfed the number of people who would click one more time to read the original article.
The web is made for skimming, and readers’ boots are made for walking. Make it difficult for them, and most’ll just ignore your content.
So after my experience with the Mercer video, and after my rant about video incompatibilities on Canadian TV sites, reading this post on the Inside the CBC blog made my Canadian TV promoting soul weep. Apparently CBC is moving towards protecting their online content with DRM (digital rights management – you know, that thing everybody hates about music downloads).
I sent that post to my brother pointing out that Tod Maffin, the blog writer, is asking if that’s what people want. My response: Duh. And that would be duh, no, for those of you not keeping score at home. My brother’s response is more articulate:
First off, why are they worried about people pirating their little video snippets? Some would consider it promotion. I think before they start worrying about piracy they have to get people who want to watch their stuff first. … The problem CBC is having isn’t with piracy, it’s with getting people to watch their damn shows. Why are they spending our tax money on a solution that will make it more difficult for people to see their shows, and will do nothing to stop piracy?
Good question. The only answer I can come up with is that it’s another example of the stealth theory of marketing Canadian TV combined with the kind of fear mongering about this scary new Internet thing the recording industry has been promoting for years.
by Diane Wild | Feb 21, 2007 | Canadian TV, Pseudo-Techie
Because there’s not enough wrong with the Canadian TV industry, my brother points out a problem with their ambitions to embrace those multiple platforms they’re so excited about.
After reading my sister’s post about CTV’s Robson Arms and their cool decision to put episodes online I decided to check it out. Turns out they’ve made an uncool decision to exclude Linux users from watching.
He goes on to talk about his difficulties (eventually resolved through web geekitude) with CBC’s site, too. He’s not alone in his frustration. I couldn’t easily view the Robson Arms episodes in Firefox, and by the time I’d realized it might be a browser issue and tried Internet Explorer, which worked, the second season had started airing and I’d given up on catching up. A writer on Robson Arms, David Moses, has pointed out that he can’t view them on his Mac. Hmm, don’t a lot of writers and artsy types use Macs? He’s doing his best to be an evangelist for a website he doesn’t have full access to, but it’s a little sad that he’s not part of the audience for the site.
Looking quickly at browser stats, in Canada, Internet Explorer has about 79% of the market, Firefox has 14%, Safari has 5%. Operating system stats (I assume these are US or international figures) show Windows has about 90% of the market, Mac about 6%, and Linux … well, I won’t break my brother’s heart by pointing out they’re sitting at only 0.35%. Oh. Maybe I will.
Looking carefully at those stats, you can see why the easy, default solution is to go with something that will work on a Windows operating system running Internet Explorer. That combination represents the majority.
Looking even more carefully, you’d see why strategy is a very, very bad one. If your video will only play in Internet Explorer, you could estimate that 2 out of 10 people who visit your site will not be able to view it. If it will only work in Windows, 1 out of 10 people won’t be able to see it.
These are rough estimates with bad statistical analysis, but think about what it means to exclude any browser or operating system: your targeted or viral marketing has worked and enticed these people to come to your site, but your product is not available to them. My brother and I and David Moses weren’t casual web surfers. We went to the Robson Arms site specifically to view the videos, and were unable to. They had us … and then they lost us. Well, Dave might have already seen those episodes, and might have an incentive to stick around despite his browser issues. Still.
I don’t mean to suggest this is strictly a Canadian TV issue. Far from it. There are many, many other sites that aren’t considering visitors who use anything other than Internet Explorer on a PC. I am the pot calling the kettle black, because the website I’m responsible for at work is only capable of hosting Windows Media Player videos. I had little to do with the decision making, though, and I’ve learned to pick my IT battles and then wait a couple of years to see who won. Anyway, this post isn’t about me and my failings, it’s about the Canadian television industry bigwigs and theirs. They have a thicker skin than I do, and they have the nerve to talk about their wonderful multi-platform strategies before they can even figure out how to post a video properly.
TV suits, internationally and locally, are talking a lot about multiple platforms, about how they have to create more than simply a television show, they have to create a user experience that extends online, on cell phones, on iPods, on milk cartons. Maybe not always milk cartons. But they love the online part. They love it. And they talk a lot about it, but they’re not doing a very good job of doing it.
Forget videos that alienate at least 1 in 10 people who seek them out. Canadian TV websites barely update their information-based content, never mind use the web to its most powerful advantage. There’s not much evidence of the so-called Web 2.0 in the TV industry, though it represents the cutting-edge, user-centric strategy the suits are salivating over.
From ZDNet:
One of the hallmarks of a good Web 2.0 site is one that hands over non-essential control to users, letting them contribute content, participate socially, and even fundamentally shape the site itself. The premise is that users will do a surprising amount of the hard work necessary to make the site successful, right down to creating the very information the site offers to its other users and even inviting their friends and family members to use it. Web 2.0 newcomers MySpace and YouTube have shown how this can be done on a mass scale surprisingly quickly, and of course older generation successes like eBay and craigslist have been doing this for years.
Interactivity with the viewer doesn’t just mean slapping up a forum or putting multimedia elements on the site and crossing your fingers that someone will use them and make the effort worthwhile. It is about things like getting users to create and distribute your content for you. Using tags, widgets, user-generated content, syndicating your content with RSS. (I have yet to even find a Canadian TV website that lets me subscribe to an RSS feed or e-mail alert to find out when the next episode airs, or what it’s about.)
It’s about giving visitors the tools to create mash ups. Getting people to sign up for e-mail alerts and then actually sending them something. (Hello almost every Canadian TV show that has an e-newsletter sign up button on your website: How about sending regular schedule updates? Information on new additions to the site? Anything? Don’t just take my e-mail address and disappear into the ether. Robson Arms gets a pat on the back so far, but keep it up.)
There’s a quote I love that’s attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson: “What you do speaks so loudly, I can’t hear what you say.” So until the TV industry can get the basics of a website down pat, like telling me when the next episode will air, or posting a video I can view, I’d love it if they’d just shut up about the multi-platform experience that goes along with their shows.
