November 2011

A recent study suggests that media outlets are poor social media sports, using networks strictly to promote their own work. But isn't that what everyone using social media is asked to do? So consultant Peter Bregman, who is author of the new book 18 Minutes, recommends something akin to a spiritual practice. Remind yourself that it's okay to miss stuff. Where this fails, Bregman suggests building a wall around your Twitter use so that it doesn't distract you from other activities that might ultimately bring more pleasure or influence. He sets his watch to beep every hour during his workday, at which point he pauses for a full minute and asks himself two questions: Am I doing the work I want to be doing? Am I being the person I want to be? This reflection has helped him temper the competitive instincts that could easily lead to panicked over-Tweeting. But, he concluded, "the only way to really protect ourselves is not to look in the first place."

A couple of weeks ago, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a constitutional challenge to President Obama’s health care law. The case is a once-in-a-generation blockbuster, and the court underscored its importance by scheduling five and a half hours of oral arguments, the most in any case since 1966. The day after the announcement, Brian P. Lamb, the chairman of C-Span, wrote to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. with a modest request. “We believe the public interest is best served by live television coverage of this particular oral argument,” Lamb said.

The request is, of course, doomed. Yet it is hard to say why. The Supreme Courts of Canada and the United Kingdom allow cameras. What the public sees in those countries, and what it would see here, is something not always prominent in the elected branches of our government: able public servants with a complete mastery of difficult materials grappling seriously with matters of surpassing consequence. It probably inspires confidence. It certainly dispels ignorance. Justice Elena Kagan, the member of the court who has been most outspoken about the value of television coverage, recently recalled what it was like to see Supreme Court arguments before she joined the court. “Everybody was so prepared, so smart, so obviously deeply concerned about getting to the right answer,” she said at the Aspen Institute in August. “I thought if everybody could see this, it would make people feel so good about this branch of government and how it’s operating. And I thought it’s such a shame actually that only 200 people a day can get to see it.” There will probably be just 50 seats available to the public at the arguments in the health care case. People hoping for a shot at one of them will probably wait in line in the cold for two nights or longer. Forcing citizens to endure that sort of hardship for a chance to see their government at work would seem to require a substantial justification.

More preteen children are watching television this fall than last, according to new data from TV-ratings firm Nielsen, raising questions about Viacom's contention that a glitch has caused the sharp drop in its Nickelodeon channel's audience.

So far this TV season through Nov. 20, an average of 5.8 million children between the ages of two and 11 have been watching television at any given minute, including broadcast and cable and live and recorded TV, Nielsen says. That is 1.7% higher than a year earlier. Meanwhile, Nickelodeon has been seeing steep declines in viewership among that same age group, which it has long dominated but where it now faces more competition. Hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising revenue for parent Viacom hinge on the audience and on whether long-running shows like "SpongeBob SquarePants" can still hold onto their audiences, and whether new series like "Kung Fu Panda" can build new ones. Nielsen's data paint a broad picture of how kids' overall TV-watching may be shifting amid a whirlwind of technological changes and a new competitive landscape. While Nielsen's numbers show more children viewing TV in total than a year ago, slightly fewer are watching during the day and more are watching shows on nonkids networks, Nielsen says. The Nielsen data also reflect a bigger Hispanic audience, with 4.6% more Hispanic TV households this fall than last. At Nickelodeon, Nielsen's data show an accelerating decline. An average of 969,000 kids between the ages of two and 11, a group of particular interest to many advertisers, watched the channel in September, down 11% from a year earlier. In October, the decline was 17%, and in the first three weeks of November it steepened to 19% from a year earlier.

[Commentary] If Facebook’s current rate of growth continues (and there’s no obvious reason why it shouldn’t), the social network could have a billion active users within a matter of months. According to some estimates, it will soon have more than 16 percent of the display advertising market — a number that’s also growing rapidly — and will likely generate ad revenue of close to $4 billion this year alone (just one of the reasons why Google is so determined to develop its own Google+ network as a competitor). The big story is the integration between Facebook and a host of other services that have potentially much broader implications. Already, there are some apps — such as the music-sharing app Spotify — that will not work without a Facebook account. If you are determined not to belong to the network, you can’t use these services at all. That may not be a big deal right now, but what about when other more important services are also tightly integrated with a Facebook account?