FCC Chair Kevin Martin Makes Congress and the Public Do His Job

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin gave everyone something to complain about Tuesday.  

In relaxing "cross-ownership" rules, allowing a company to own a TV station and a newspaper in the nation's top 20 markets under certain conditions, he upset foes of media consolidation -- who fear the trend is just the tip of an iceberg eventually allowing cross ownership in every market. Passing the measure with votes from the commission's two Republican members, Martin also ticked off members of the newspaper industry, who said the change was too small to help substantially.

In passing a cap preventing any one cable company from controlling more than 30 percent of the nation's cable subscribers, he upset conservatives who oppose government stepping in to regulate a largely unregulated industry. Joining with the commission's two Democrats for this measure, Martin also upset executives at Comcast Communications, the only company close to the 30 percent mark with 27 percent of the nation's cable subscribers in their folds.

More importantly, in failing to build a public consensus for these changes -- especially the elimination of the cross-ownership ban -- Martin virtually guaranteed a nastly public fight over the rules, with little actual data presented to justify his moves.

Already, 25 senators have announced their opposition to the cross ownership rule change, public interest groups are planning to sue, and advocacy groups are gearing up public pressure to push legislators into overriding an expected presidential veto. All this for a rule change which currently benefits a handful of companies, including one of the nation's largest media conglomerates, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

Times reporter Christina Rexrode reports that there's likely little impact to the change in the Tampa- St. Petersburg market (currently the nation's 13th largest market): Media General's ownership to WFLA-Ch. 8 and the Tampa Tribune has always been allowed because it predates the 1975 banning such newspaper/TV "cross ownerships." (MG does have cross-ownership waivers for four markets, presumably under the top 20 threshhold, including Panama City).

While I suspect Times management wouldn't mind the having the regulatory ability to purchase a TV station, it's hard to imagine such a scenario given our current financial challenges.

As I noted in an earlier post, Martin has cast this move as an effort to save the newspaper industry; the FCC's press release on the cross ownership decision notes "permitting cross ownership can preserve the viability of newspapers by allowing them to share their operational costs across multiple platforms."

But Tribune Co., one of the best known media companies with cross ownership arrangements in major markets such as Los Angeles and Chicago, is struggling financially. Other companies, such as Belo co. have announced plans to separate their TV and newspaper companies, earning praise and support from Wall Street investors. Even longtime newspaper analyst John Morton told the Los Angeles Times Tuesday "isuspect you're not going to see a big rush of newspaper companies trying to buy TV stations."

So Martin disregarded significant public and congressional sentiment to pass a rule relaxation that even the industry which benefits from it likely won't use much. (though the L.A. Times reports the FCC also granted 42 cross ownership waivers, which this bold rule relaxation obscures) And rather than help the nation sort through he mess, he creates a situation sure to spark lawsuits, retaliatory legislation and protests.

Makes you wonder why they bothered holding those public hearings across the country, including here in Tampa, earlier this year. Doesn't make much sense to take public comment if you're not going to heed it.

 

Mass Confusion: Bright House Channel Changes Start Today

As you may already know by now, tons of channels are changing on Bright House Networks in every one of its Tampa Bay area cable TV systems in seven counties. Pinellas County has been hit the hardest, with 42 different channel changes, including moving the government and public school channels into the high definition tier. It's all in the name of standardizing channel numbers in every market.

There's also a bunch of new high definition channels -- eight debuting tomorrow. Some, including the ESPN channels, have appeared before their scheduled start, but I'll include the information anyways.

The new HD channels in Pinellas (name/new channel number)
Discovery HD / 721     Discovery Science HD / 722    Animal Planet HD / 723                                      The Learning Channel HD / 724       Food Network HD/ 731      HGTV HD / 732
History HD / 734     ESPN HD / 707   ESPN2 HD / 704     National Geographic HD / 727

The channel changes (name/old channel number/new channel number) Click here to see Bright House chart on the changes.

AMC / 22 / 64    BET / 65 / 19     Bravo / 54/ 51    Cartoon / 62 / 58    City Govt. / 15 / 615
County Govt. / 18 / 622      CMT / 58 / 45     CNN / 40 / 29    C-SPAN / 99 / 15
C-SPAN2 / 50, 96 / 24    Discovery / 51 / 34     Discovery Health / 72 / 20    Disney / 68 / 40
E! / 37 / 14         EWTN / 46 / 70     Fox News / 67 / 37     Fox Sports / 69 / 39
FX / 39 / 60       Golf / 32/ 67    Hallmark / 49 / 68     Headline News / 41 / 30
History / 64 / 25    TLC / 34 / 46      Lifetime Movie / 73 / 50    Movie Plex / 66 / 62
MSNBC / 30 / 41     MTV / 44 / 66      National Geographic / 71 / 65   Oxygen / 74 / 44
Pin. Co. Schools 14 / 614     Public Access / 96 / 949     QVC / 29 / 22
SciFi / 60 / 59       Shop NBC / 24 / 98     Spike / 53/ 43      St. Pete College / 19 / 620
TCM / 59 / 53       Telemundo / 76 / 97      Travel / 43 / 54      TV Guide / 98 / 99
TV Land / 75 / 49       USA / 25 / 32    VH1 / 45 / 71    WE / 70 / 69     WGN / 20 / 18
Source: Bright House Networks

I also got this email from the good folks at Verizon:

Our channel line-up for PEGs is already "in order" and will not be changed. The link below provides you with our overall line-up. The PEG channels are available to both analog (Local Package on this list) and digital customers in the same location. The overwhelming majority of our FiOS TV customers take the digital Premier package. One, it is the foundation of our bundled offerings; and two, at $42.99 for standalone (STBs, taxes and fees are extra), it is priced very competitively to Bright House's analog and digital packages.

Click here to see their channel lineup.

When Anchors Get Punk'd, Who's to Blame?

Jossip has an interesting item, trying to figure out who gave prankster extraordinaire Harry Shearer a clip of CBS anchor Katie Couric fussing over her hair before a live shot, asking whether anyone in their audience might care that Rudy Giuliani pal Bernard Kerik was indicted for federal crimes.

The blog's item quotes an unnamed source saying it had to be an inside job, a notion which I find tough to swallow, given the unauthorized access so many people have to satellite signals. Indeed, Shearer himself has a long history of posting such items on his own Web site and airing them within his NPR program Le Show, so anchors should already be on notice.

Shearer had already posted a similar clip of Dan Rather obsessing for 20 minutes over whether to wear a trenchcoat during a shot or not. Judge for yourself whether journalism is being practiced here.   

Here's the Dan Rather clip as well:

St. Pete Times Hires "News Technologist"

Years ago, investigative reporter Matt Waite and I used to talk about how newspapers need to leverage the information they gather into new forms: creating searchable databases with real estate information we gather for stories or interactive maps of crime reports.

So I wasn't that surprised to see an internal announcement last week noting that Matt -- who has won a truckload of prestigious awards for his work on environmental coverage with pal and colleague Craig Pittman -- was taking over a new position at the Times: News Technologist.

I'll let him explain what that means: "it's going to be developing a lot of news-driven products we've talked about but never had the chance to create," said Matt, who was instrumental in creating our new political fact-checking web site, Politifact. "There's a long, messy distance from talk to reality."

Or, as he says on his own Web site: "I’ve been given the mandate to take my skills as a journalist and my growing skills as a coder and bash them together really hard to see what comes out. I’m going to take my 12 years of data-driven journalism and try to build things online that people want." the data delivery editor jobs some newspapers have come up with, which shackles the employee to building databases from information collected by the institution. 

Even Matt admits this is something newspapers should have been doing five or 10 years ago -- freeing up tech-savvy staffers to work positions which are essentially research and development gigs. The advent of digital technology is turning every newspaper into a news company -- an aggregator of data which can provide that information to consumers in any variety of ways. It's a more expansive gig than

But better late than never. Those of us who have worked for big news organizations awhile know it is not unusual for guys as talented and filled with ideas as Matt to sit around for long years offering concepts to superiors who can't see beyond the next quarterly circulation report. Cutting Matt loose in this new role is a smart way of acknowledging that it is time to come up with new configurations for the information we assemble each day beyond the typical forms.

The platforms in question can range from cellphones to the Nintendo Wii (at least, that's Matt's pitch for getting a Wii at his desk; I'd look a little closer at that purchasing request, Mother Times!) The only drawback for Matt: leaving behind his more traditional journalism work.

"Literally since high school, every day I've woken up and said, 'How can I be a better investigative reporter?'" he said. "My whole frame of reference is changed, now."    

Tampa Area Cable Access Takes a Pugnacious Message to the Airwaves

The first commercial begins with shots of despots Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin, warning of the dangers from government leaders totally controlling public media. By the spot's end, the picture has resolved into photos of four Hillsborough County commissioners, drawing an uncomfortable and serious comparison.

Never let it be said that Tampa's cable access producers don't know how to make a point.

Weeks after filing a lawsuit against the county for voting to end the community's side of cable access while maintaining the government's end, Speak Up Tampa Bay has unleashed a series of commercials to raise money for their legal fund. The first and most striking ad, which I described up top, is viewable here.

Another, slightly less in-your-face ad can be seen here, showing cable access programs cut off without warning. The third, and funniest spot, features a longtime access host literally getting the rug -- and the background and the mics -- pulled out from under her.

All the ads make the same basic point: That County officials' decision to drop cable access programs created by the pulbic, diverting all the money collected for the program to shows touting the government and elected officials, is Unconstitutional.

It's hard to know whether this action has any chance of success. And Speak Up's very success in getting its commercials seen on YouTube -- along with efforts by other producers to keep their shows alive online -- may turn out to be the most persuasive argument against their thesis.

Check out the commercials yourself below. And speak up here -- is this much ado about nothing, or an important First Amendment issue?

 

Can NBC and MySpace Take Out YouTube? And the Crying Idol Girl Gets Her Own Taste of Media Overkill

Pay no attention to the flacks who keep insisting that the new advertising-supported, video Web site announced by NBC and News Corp. may be YouTube compatible and will work with the video-sharing Web site.

Make no mistake: This is another attempt by those who make high-priced video content to ensure that it mostly appears somewhere they can make money on it. And if it sticks a fork in YouTube, so much the better.

  And while this approach seems to be the carrot compared to the stick of Viacom's lawsuit against YouTube and its owner Google, the goal is the same -- making sure those who produce video content are the primary folks to make money from it. So far, content from NBC, NBC's cable channels and Fox's array of media properties will be feeding material thrugh Yahoo, Microsoft's MSN site, News Corps' MySpace and America Online.

But they'll be fighting some serious trends. Online consumers don't even have the patience for short commercials, so they may still prefer the wilds of YouTube, which doesn't place ads in the video content. And they need a wide array of programmning to make it work -- one of the reasons Google Video and so many other YouTube wannabe's never took off is because their selection of video is too limited.

Fox example: when I wanted a video clip of the crying 13-year-old who worshipped lame-o Idol contestant Sanjaya for this blog, the video was available within hours on YouTube -- before Fox even had pictures from the performance on its official Web site. Ditto with clips from Spider Man 3 aired on NBC during Heroes and bits from a review DVD given to critics of Fox's 1/2 Hour News Hour.

So thi new site's content needs to be available early -- hopefully, exclusively -- from a wide variety of programs with a minimum of commercial intrusion and a way easy-to-use interface, so people quickly build the habit of utilizing it. And they also have to hope Viacom's lawsuit hampers YouTube enough that all that ubiquitous content disappears and ans turn to them as an alternative.

Man. Sounds like an uphill battle -- even for the networks that gave us Twenty Good Years and Celebrity Duets. 

ONE MORE THING

Former WFTS news director Bill Berra keeps making headlines for his in-your-face style of local TV reporting. This time, one of his reporters at WTMJ in Milwaukee wound up inadvertently telling a woman her husband was dead before the police could. Berra has apologized for the circumstance. (thanks NewsBlues)

LITTLE GIRL OVERKILL

Because the actual competition sucks, are we surprised that media outlets all over the planet have jumped on Ashley Ferl, the 13-year-old girl whose tears for lame-o Sanjaya probably saved his skinny butt from elimination from American Idol? (thanks RealityBlurred!)

 

FCC Announces Public Hearing on Media Ownership in Tampa

Do you think too few companies control too many media outlets?

Do you worry about the effect on public discourse when 80 percent of an area's radio outlets are controlled by three companies or the same corporation owns the largest TV station, the Number Two newspaper and one of the biggest web sites in town?

Well, now you have a change to express your concerns in person. Because the Federal Communications Commission has announced it will hold a public hearing April 30 in the Tampa Bay area on the issue of media ownership.

In 2003, the FCC held just one public hearing before voting to loosen media ownership rules, but the new strictures were deemed impractical by a federal appellate court and sent back to the agency for revamping.

Since then, FCC chair Michael Powell (Colin's son, right) has been replaced and the new cheese Kevin Martin has promised six public hearings on the issue. The Tampa area hearing would be the fourth, and will likely draw hundreds of people concerned about the impact of allowing too few corporations to control too much of the country's big media outlets. (See some reports on the Los Angeles hearing here.)

I wrote about this issue back in 2003, when the FCC's actions created an unlikely alliance of conservatives concerned about the rising explicitness of big media and liberals concerned that left-wing political discourse would be limited even more thasn it already is by profit-focused companies.

Something tells me they're going to get an earful in the Tampa Bay area.

When is Paris Hilton News? And a Multimedia Journalism Seminar in Tampa

I've rarely seen a news organization do a story on why it didn't cover something.

But the Associated Press appears to be patting itself on the back -- albiet in a restrained, self-deprecating journalism kind of way -- for trying an experiment of sorts: refraining from covering Paris Hilton for a week.

The unbylined AP story I saw, said this: "It turned out that people noticed plenty -- but not in the way that might have been expected. None of the thousands of media outlets that depend on AP called in asking for a Paris Hilton story. No one felt a newsworthy event had been ignored. (To be fair, nothing too out-of-the-ordinary happened in the Hilton universe.)

The reaction was to the idea of the ban, not the effects of it. There was some internal hand-wringing. Some felt we were tinkering dangerously with the news. Whom, they asked, would we ban next? Others loved the idea. "I vote we do the same for North Korea," one AP writer said facetiously."

Put me in that camp. Because the idea of banning Paris Hilton from news coverage seems a little bassackwards to me.

The traditional notion of news coverage is pretty simple. As an outlet, you develop an internal code about what you report, why, and how. It's a template that is constantly evolving and moving, depending on events in the world, the intiative of reporters and even changing technology. But the process is simple: Develop standards of news and apply them to events in the world.

So what does it mean when the largest news collective in the world decides that, no matter what a particular celebrity does in her life, they won't report it for a week? Or more importantly, what does it mean when they stop their reporting and nobody really notices?

It tells me they weren't really reporting much in the first place.

This all comes back to something I've written about many times in this space. I'm tired of the hypocrisy from old school journalists who proclaim dysfunctional professional celebrities like Anna Nicole Smith aren't news, until they do something they know their readers care about.

So, again, it seems the problem isn't that Paris Hilton isn't news. It's that we, too often, report on things that they do which really aren't news.

Exhibit A: the AP's first story after the Hilton blackout -- news that she was ticketed for driving with a suspended license. Under AP's oddball moratorium, this tidbit wasn't news on Thursday, but was news worth reporting today.

Call me crazy, but I think the AP's week would have been better spent figuring out how to turn more substantive stories on celebrities readers clearly want to know more about. because ignoring news is a business I just don't see a lot of future in...

-- The Tampa Bay Association of Black Journalists is presenting a seminar on multimedia journalism at 10:45 a.m. Saturday (tomorrow) at the Tampa Tribune building, 200 S. Parker St., Tampa. Don't let the name of our group fool you; this seminar is FREE and open to the public, journalists and non-journalists alike, REGARDLESS OF RACE. (See our MySpace page here; Web site here)

We will have a distinguished panel, including myself, Media General Multimedia Editor Ken Knight and Sarasota Herald-Tribune features reporter/blogger Steve Echeverria leading a discussion on how to bring multimedia elements to journalism, what makes a cool blog and more. Stop by for the doughnuts, stay for the conversation!

-- The folks at tbt* are celebrating a record 356,000 copies distributed in one week for the free, youth-oriented tabloid. That means the newspaper has a pick-up rate of 85 to 90 percent -- with a significant footprint in Hillsborough County and Tampa -- making it the fastest growing newspaper in the country.

At a time of declining circulation figures and sinking ad revenues, it is  heartening to hear that a newspaper experiment to reach new readers is actually working. But I can't help wondering what it means for newspapers when our biggest recent success is a stripped-down news report which doesn't even ask readers for a nominal, .35-cent fee.

Squeezing the Love Sponge; Is iPhone the Killer App for Mobile Technology?

I've always had this odd connection to Bubba the Love Sponge.

On the surface, he's the embodiment of much I oppose as a critic. Borderline mysoginist. Racially insensitive. Knuckleheaded and profane. When he was on free "terrestrial" radio, I wrote a story criticizing his recurring bit making fun a mentally challenged fan called "wake up a retard." for this, i earned the ultimate honor of being called an asshole on air by him.

But we also have a lot in common. We're both Indiana natives, who were kicking around the state at about the same time in the mid'80s. During my most recent visist to his well-appointed home Friday, we realized that we frequented the same clubs in Terre Haute, Ind. -- he as a patron and me as the drummer in a popular regional funk band -- and saw a lot of the same craziness.

So perhaps that explains why my story today on his upcoming wedding wasn't the kind of pointed criticism some might expect from me. Particularly since he's moved his act to satellite radio -- where adults who want to hear his shtick can pony up for the pleasure -- I've mellowed a little in my treatment of the Sponge, reasoning that an evenhanded view of his antics might serve readers better.

Already, I've taken a phone call from a reader complaining that the newspaper featured the story on its front page. One thing I've learned in my years as a reporter is to never turn down the opportunity to get your work on the front page -- but I also see today's Bubba story as a fun, celebrity tinged way to talk about a lot of stuff, from his year anniversary on satellite radio to the circus his wedding seems poised to bring to our town.

A few things we didn't have room for today:

Bubba spoke about a recent flap between he and producer Brent Hatley, in which a member of Bubba's crew interviewed Bubba' son Tyler and then edited his responses to make it sound as if he was being read an x-rated story live on air. The bit was apparently included on a CD release -- Bubba said he wasn't aware of it -- and when the bit aired on Bubba's show, he blew his top.

"Tyler's mom flipped out and I flipped out...Brent didn't think it was that big a deal, but he doesn't know what's its like to have children and to have...a baby's momma on the other side," Bubba said. "We've never had this much freedom, and it can be trial and error sometimes on what works."

-- Some fans are complaining about the criticism of satellite radio included in the story. But I think it's fairly obvious that the medium's current business structure requires the companies to spend too much money to get content and subscribers. And Sirius head Mel Karmazin wouldn't be making all the noises about a merger of the two companies if there wasn't a sense that some drastic change is needed. That said, it also seems obvious Bubba would chafe under the more restricted format of terrestrial radio, so it's hard to know how serious he is about talking with Cox radio.

-- Bubba claims to have video footage recorded from the moment Internet model Brooke Skye entered his Tampa studio that will exonerate him from the lawsuit she recently filed.

-- Bubba also claims there won't a be a bachelor party -- just a get-together at his favorite strip club with his buddies and their wives. "Howard said to me, 'I can't wait for your bachelor party,'" said Bubba. "My answer was: my whole 20s and 30s was a bachelor party. I don't need that now."

(By the way, if you have Sirius radio, check out Stern's Howard 100 News  today for an interview I did on the Bubba story. I have no idea how badly they're going to make me look, but I hope they at least say my name right)

Is the iPhone the Killer App for Digital Media?

Because I'm so focused on TV, when I wrote about the future of media in 2007 for the business page yesterday, I focused mostly on that screen.

Bad move. Because the avalanche of publicity about Apple's iPhone today shows that this is the technology eveybody is talking about. Even I -- somebody who is moedrately tech-savvy but waited to get an iPod because of the price -- am considering an iPhone when it hits the market, because a PDA/cell phone/iPod is an awfully convenient combination.

As Matt Lauer suggested on the Today show this morning, Apple's advantage is that it makes technology cool. There may be other mobile devices which combine all these things in one unit but nobody makes it look at cool or user-friendly as Apple.

The key feature of the iPhone and the Apple TV product I wrote about Tuesday is navigation: both products promise to help consumers navigate the increasing amounty of personal media piling up on different platforms. IPhone synchs music, movies, email, web favorites and photos; Apple TV synchs with your iTunes library and allows you to watch video downloaded there on your TV (key stumbling block -- you can't watch video streamed on non-Apple web sites, at least according to the latest information).

At a time of exploding media choice, the company that helps you navigate it best will win. Microsoft, are you listening?

Wire Creator David Simon Coming to Eckerd College

Just got this newsflash from the good folks at the college to the south:

"David Simon, a writer and producer for HBO's THE WIRE, will be at 
Eckerd College for the 3rd Annual Writers in Paradise Conference, Jan. 20-28. A highlight of the conference is the series of free evening readings: 

David Simon will be speaking on Thursday, Jan. 25 from 8:00-9:00 p.m. 
in Miller Auditorium." The speech by Simon -- a former Baltimore Sun reporter who created The Wire and wrote the book on which the series Homicide: Life on the Street was based -- is free and is open to the public.

Check my interview with Mystic River author, Wire writer, Eckerd instructor and Simon pal Dennis Lehane here. See a 2003 interview with Simon alone here.

(as always, click on a photo to enlarge it)

   

The Real Message of the Google/YouTube Buy: Power in the Media Relationship Just Shifted to Consumers

As news outlets continue jockeying to see whether Google's $1.6-million acquisition of YouTube makes any kind of financial sense, I'm struck by a different conclusion.

This business about media companies controlling the product they make after they make it has just taken one big step toward the dumpster.

First, there's the fact of the Google deal itself. Mini media mogul Mark Cuban's derisive comments to the contrary, this billion-dollar deal sends an important message: despite thousands of copyrighted videos uploaded to YouTube every day, the online company with the deepest pockets around is willing to bring this massive warehouse of unlicensed video into their corporate family.

That's likely because, unlike Napster, YouTube never tried to pretend that users uploading copyrighted content was cool. Instead, the site  used a novel defense -- we cant keep up wth al the stuff they're uploading, and hey, doesn't it help promote your projects anyway? -- that pushed media outlets into seeing the marketing potential and cutting deals.

(If you want to really get bummed, check out this message from the two billionaire slackers enjoying their moment in the sun before their 30th birthdays; I was trying to figure out how to get out of living in New Jersey when I was 30...argh)

The site's content sharing deal with CBS announced Monday was a prime example. Under the terms of the deal, CBS provides some programming to YouTube -- like users aren't already uploading a lot of that stuff, anyway -- and gets on the ground floor of a revolutionary system. YouTube will identify when CBS-owed content is uploaded to the site and the network will have the choice of removing it, or keeping it up and sharing the ad revenue with YouTube.

So the Tiffany Network neatly avoids the trap Fox News fell in, when its interview with GOP boogeyman Bill Clinton became one of the site's most-watched videos. First, angry that an unauthorized site was making revenue off its video, it demanded YouTube remove the clips; then they realized what a tremendous publicity windfall the clips were bringing them and they relented (I don't care what anyone says about the MySpace-owning Fox-ites; their understanding of online stuff has always been three steps behind the rest of the media world).

CBS will funnel stuff to YouTube they want to promote: David Letterman's coolest bits, Katie Couric's news reports, its sports coverage, little-seen Showtime series such as Dexter and The L word and more. They also get a mechanism to enable the spread of viral videos which make them look cool and squelch the ones which reflect badly on CBS or corporate parent Viacom (what they will discover: stopping the questionable stuff is easier said than done, when you take a publicity hit with consumers every time you play media cop).

Similar deals with Sony BMG Music and Universal Music Group show the recording industry has also learned from its futile fight with Napster (do you really win if you kill off the hip pipeline that kids are using to access your product?).

But for YouTube users, yet another media company has allowed its product to be used in a way they don't fully control, hoping that the affection they get from YouTubers offsets the precedent they're setting by officially acknowledging that, yes, there are times when some knucklehead in Utah can upload a CBS clip to the world with no prior permission and it's cool.

Feel media's grip on its own work loosen just a little?

Of course, the question still remains whether YouTube is a giant dot com bubble waiting to burst -- competitor vMix sent out emails all day Monday noting that YouTube likely spends up to $3-million a month to maintain its video streams and likely faces a huge lawsuit liability for all the unauthorized video clips on its site.

But comScore Networks notes that YouTube offers 9 percent of all video streams -- or more than 30 million -- increasing Google's number of streams and its shot at advertising revenue on those streams by a factor of 9.

And unless Google is stupid enough to kill YouTube's traffic by forcing it to expunge all unauthorized video at once, the site's unique stance of tolerating copyrighted video unless the owner demands its removal will likely continue -- prodding media companies into giving up control of its product to hang with the cool kids on the snappiest video site around.