Over the past week and a half we have witnessed scenes of destruction in Japan across the Web. Videos of the tsunami ravaging towns, devastating whole villages, and destroying homes have become commonplace at the top of YouTube’s charts, garnering millions of views. Today a harrowing story of survival is rising the viral charts. Although the video is traumatic, it is still an inspiring story of survival, showcasing some of the heroes of Japan’s recent disaster.
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Remember the days when it was big news that cable news networks introduced the rolling ticker to television screens everywhere? So 20th century.
A new iPad app is out, merging the latest in social TV with punditry and cable news. We’ll tell you which show and which features you’ll want to pay attention to.
Rachel Maddow is really moving up in the world: In addition to her own television show on MSNBC, she now has an iPad app to call her very own.
The free Rachel Maddow HD app allows users to join the “Watch Party” and read real-time Tweets from Maddow, guests, fans, and other Twitter users including the #maddow hashtag, as well as offering one-touch access to The Maddow Blog, and an archive of the past 20 installments of The Rachel Maddow Show.
MSNBC said it will extend the app to other programs.
GetGlue has added its first TV news network to its lineup of partners. The company is partnering with MSNBC to offer its signature stickers for users that “check in” to MSNBC programs “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell” and “The Rachel Maddow Show.”
GetGlue is similar to the hot location-based startup Foursquare, but it allows users to check in to TV shows, movies, books and other forms of media. It also offers stickers, like Foursquare’s badges… and sends users physical versions of the stickers they have earned.
The idea is to build loyalty to shows, but it has the added bonus of encouraging live tune-in. For a new program such as “The Last Word,” all buzz is good buzz, and building a loyal audience is a necessary first step.
Well this is interesting. According to Peter Kafka at All Things D, MSNBC is readying an iPad app based on one of its programs. While the network is being coy about which show it will be, Rachel Maddow is the likely candidate.
Kafka raises an interesting point, specifically that the network could be raising some eyebrows at the MSOs that carry the network. MSNBC, like most cable channels, makes a significant portion of its revenue from cable subscription fees.
Mark Marvel, who runs video advertising sales for MSNBC.com, mostly dismissed that concern:
“I wouldn’t be surprised if we hear some pushback from them”, he said. “[But] the fact is that this is going to be testing a new market.”
That’s MSNBC host Rachel Maddow talking with NYO’s Felix Gillette about her newish online endeavor, The Maddow Blog.
The Maddow Blog is one of the more ambitious attempts to date by an MSNBC star trying to rise above the low expectations of the genre.
“We felt like we had an audience that was very wired,” said Ms. Maddow. “But we weren’t providing a really hospitable environment for them.”
Late last year, an opening came up on Ms. Maddow’s show for a new segment-producer head. After some discussion, Ms. Maddow and her team decided they’d rather spend the money on someone who would focus primarily on the Web. Eventually, they hired Laura Conaway, a former Village Voice editor who more recently had been working for the star-crossed NPR-for-young-people show The Bryant Park Project. (The former host of the BPP, Alison Stewart, is married to Bill Wolff, the executive producer of The Rachel Maddow Show).
For a site based on a TV show, the blog is surprisingly mostly text-based, not a repository of Maddow-only clips. Something that concerned the msnbc.com folks.
“We’ve done fine,” said Ms. Maddow. “We haven’t paid a price in terms of overall video clicks. That hasn’t suffered. And we’re able to do all of this additional content that is, for me, rewarding and rewards the show in terms of ideas.”
“We also do just some dumb stuff on there,” Maddow tells Gillette. “It’s a good place to be goofy.”
The Diggnation team stopped by MSNBC’s Digital Cafe to tape an episode of their popular web show, and Rachel Maddow served as guest bartender for hosts Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht. She served up some “breakfast cocktails” while the hosts talked Xbox and more:
Msnbc.com and Zumobi announced the launch of The Rachel Maddow Show application for the iPhone and iPod touch. The free app — available here — has videos and photos, and allows users to easily access and respond to Rachel’s Twitter updates. “Rachel Maddow’s audience is young, sophisticated and connected,” said Randy Stearns, Deputy Editor, msnbc.com.
While Maddow’s TV audience has been declining over the past several weeks, setting an all-time low earlier this week, she out-rated CNN’s “Larry King Live” in April in A25-54 demo viewers. The Rachel Maddow show can be seen weeknights on MSNBC at 9pmET.
Earlier this week I talked to MSNBC host Rachel Maddow for a mediabistro.com “So What Do You Do?” interview. The radio and TV host had a lot to say about the Web:
On the way the Web has helped drive her career:
I read Web pages all day long. I don’t read print publications in print, and I don’t watch television . Even though I haven’t purposely tried to cultivate an online sort of pro-Rachel community, I think that there may be something about the way that I communicate and the way that I think about things that is sort of recognizable to other people who are very comfortable in the online world.
On crediting Web sites for their reporting:
I try to credit not only Web sites, but I really am a believer in the cult of the reporter. I believe if you are doing good reporting, whether you’re doing it at The New York Times or you’re doing it at McClatchy or you’re doing it at FireDogLake or you’re doing it at RedState, if you are the person who reported the information, who thereby brought that fact to the rest of the world by your well-sourced reporting, not only do I want to cite you so I’m covering myself in case your reporting turns out to be wrong, I want to cite you because I want to implicitly praise you for doing good useful reporting.
Maddow says she’s “unbelievably flattered” by the fan-maintained MaddowFans.com, and it also serves another purpose:
I’m the least organized person in the world. I have no archive of anything I’ve ever written, any interviews with me, TV appearances, nothing. The only archive that exists of my work in broadcasting exists because of MaddowFans.com and the other people who have created Maddow channels on YouTube and stuff, it’s amazing to me
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Fox News’ late night news/comedy hybrid “Red Eye” debuted a new segment this week from ombudsman Andy Levy (@AndyLevy), called “Twitter News.” Why the need to know the “latest going-ons” on Twitter? “Twitter is now considered by many to be the most important source of news in the history of humankind,” said Levy.
Featured tweets include Rachel Maddow‘s cowering, David Gregory‘s hair and Dan Abrams‘ bus ride:
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