Robert Paterson's Weblog

The end of movies in the cinema?

Hollywood's leading lobbyist understands the challenge. "It's not enough just to sue," Mr. Glickman said. "The industry has to develop hassle-free, reasonable-cost ways to offer movies over the Internet."

The new Star Wars film was downloaded millions of times in the first few days of release. My Aliant informer tells me that in less than a year, my high speed will be 10 times faster than it is today. All the preconditions for a digital delivery are now present.

In addition the quality of the home experience is now high. Many people have invested in Home Move sound systems. You watch the movie at home and you save the meal, the baby sitter, the parking and the hassle in a time compressed world.

It is inevitable - movies will quickly move to an online distribution for the masses.

There is only one move that the industry has that will work - to put together a legal download system that works for the consumer. Mr Glickman knows this -

The end of newspapers - the Rise of the BBC

The BBC is the part of the old media that has really got it. I attach a full article from the Economist below (subscription normally required)

Look at the quality of their Gardening Microsite where you can visit every garden at the Chelsea Flower Show.

My bet - the unreformed press will be dead in less than 55 years. Time to wake up. Time also for the CBC to make a drive into the new web - Let's Podcast and stream locally guys!

The BBC now has 525 sites. It spends £15m ($27m) a year on its news website and another £51m on others ranging from society and culture to science, nature and entertainment. But behind the websites are the vast newsgathering and programme-making resources, including over 5,000 journalists, funded by its annual £2.8 billion public subsidy.

For this year's Chelsea Flower Show, for instance, the BBC's gardening micro-site made it possible to zoom around each competing garden, watch an interview with the designer and click on “leaf hotspots” about individual plants. For this year's election, the news website offered a wealth of easy-to-use statistical detail on constituencies, voting patterns and polls. This week the BBC announced free downloads of several Beethoven symphonies performed by one of its five in-house orchestras. That particularly annoys newspapers, whose online sites sometimes offer free music downloads—but they have to pay the music industry for them.

It is the success of the BBC's news website that most troubles newspapers. Its audience has increased from 1.6m unique weekly users in 2000 to 7.8m in 2005; and its content has a breadth and depth that newspapers struggle to match.

Newspapers need to build up their online businesses because their offline businesses are flagging. Total newspaper readership has fallen by about 30% since 1990 and readers are getting older as young people increasingly get their news from other sources—principally the internet. In 1990, 38% of newspaper readers were under 35. By 2002, the figure had dropped to 31%.

Just this week, Dominic Lawson, the editor of the Sunday Telegraph, was sacked for failing to stem its decline. Some papers are having some success in building audiences online—the Guardian, which has by far the most successful newspaper site, gets nearly half as many weekly users as the BBC—but the problem is turning them into money.

Bub's PEI

As I begin to talk to people about Homesteading on PEI, it has been a joy to read Bub's story and to look at his pictures

Homesteading on PEI

On Monday June 13 after 5.30 on Mainstreet, I will be hosting the first of a series of interviews that tell some stories of that amazing group of people who came to PEI in the late 1960's early 1970's as part of the Back to the Land Movement.

Wendy Pobjoy is my first guest.  Wendy, as was typical of many, was not born to the land but grew up very much a middle class urban life in New York. Her father worked at the UN. 

What united these people was a set of values that rejected the consumer values of the time and who sought to learn how to become self sufficient. The irony is that these young people arrived on PEI as their PEI contemporaries were leaving the Island for the city lights. As I listened to Wendy, I could sense that for many of the older Islanders left behind, these bright eyed newcomers were the echoes of the sons and daughters that they had lost. Consequently, just as the Indians saved the bacon of the early white settlers who had no idea of how to survive our harsh climate, so the older Islanders came to the rescue of this new group of immigrants. There is a deep sense of gratitude in Wendy's interview to the men and women who showed them how to build and heat their homes, grow their food and share their music.

Not having any family here of their own, this group created their own family - a kind of tribe. Raising their children well was the most important job that they had. They had no money. None! Yet many had at least one parent stay at home full time. I wonder about many people's choices today. So many of us make the statement that economics force us both to work full time.  Yet these people with less money than any of us managed to make their kids the central part of their lives.

I was moved to tears listening to Wendy as she ends the interview talking about the great reward that she has found in seeing her two wonderful daughters become adults.

Farming - A Successful Direct Model

The barrier to cross for a sustainable agriculture is not limited to what you do in the field but to how you sell what you grow.

No matter what you grow and how you work, if you sell into the system you will be screwed. It is the same fro all producers whether they are musicians or farmers.

So how do you sell direct as a farmer? How do you develop a community that is connected to your farm? Is there a good model?
Peter Rukavina is at the Reboot Conference and he lead me to this link.

I took over a farm in 1984 - kind of early - due to the death of my parents.  I like to call it a family farm, but really, my parents bought it only 14 years earlier and they bought it for a place for the family to be outdoors.  Agriculture was really a backdrop for family.
 
I farmed it in an unconventional but not organic way for 10 years.  In 1990, I began a family of my own.  In 1995, I converted the farm to organic principles  – which resulted in a positive chain reaction of creativity that we had not foreseen.

 

In 1995, the farm supported three families, giving full-time work for four people.  Eight years later, there are 160 of us.  And it’s all due to one key idea -- the idea of reconnecting urban households and farms.  It’s as simple as that.....

Thomas Harttung serves his customers not just CSA but the entire range of food that they need. If saving farming interests you please check Thomas out