Content Wars!

Back when I was heavy in the blogging game -- from August 1 to August 10 of last year -- my brother gave me lots of snark for my buzzword-heavy talk about "media," "content," and "TV is dead."

This week brought further evidence that my predictions for analogue television were straight cookiez in the oven...Netflix released "House of Cards" to not-shabby reviews, and Apple cut a deal for the HBO Go multiscreen service. 'Twould seem that the real 'house of cards' is my brother's faith in old-school media.

As Netflix's chief content officer Ted Sarandos notes, the point of House of Cards -- and future 'binge shows' -- is to fundamentally change the paradigm of television storytelling. Normally I'd think that's a douchey business objective, but Sarandos is a community-college dropout who clawed his way through the home-video store ranks to become Hollywood's biggest disrupter. That unexpected resume has gotta be exponentially more frightening for old-media giants to stare into -- like IBM in the 1980s when they found out they were getting their ass handed to them by an acid-dropping, shoe-less maniac.

Corporations are people, after all -- they fear what they don't understand.

Greg Selkoe -- Too Cool to be a CEO?

The query in this post's title may be my own personal grudge against any buff-dude who rocks a purple v-neck better then myself, but legitimately -- who the hell is this guy? And why does he have a graduate degree from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government? And why can't I find any information about Karmaloop cable ratings?

Turns out that Selkoe -- and his "creative director" Pharrell Williams -- were counting their eggs a little too early in the above Bloomberg interview, which is from 2011. Their efforts to start their own cable network were stymied by the bureaucratic, old-world "TV Guide" system, to the point that Selkoe abandoned plans for the network and instead doubled-down on the online TV efforts. Ever the victorious Boston Bro, Selkoe noted in July 2012 that Karmaloop videos "received 70 million video views in 2011, and is projecting 350 million views in 2012." They also were planning a scripted comedy, as well as advertising deals with Red Bull and Burton Snowboards.

Selkoe may look like a 19th-century Irish prizefighter, but damn if his steadfast support for creative content isn't inspiring. I, for one, am a huge fan of Karmaloop's content -- especially "That Life" with Carissa Rossi. Rossi has "America's Sweetheart" potential -- like an ethnic Katie Couric for the 21st Century.

Two Questions:
a) How much ad revenue do the videos generate? Or are the videos primarily to draw traffic to the Karmaloop Store?
b) What is someone like Carissa Rossi's salary? i.e. What's the market valuation of a well-liked Internet personality at a successful online retail start-up?

Everyone Watch H+...

I think EVERYONE who's ANYONE knows that the classic model of watching television -- waiting around like a chump for the cable channels to feed you your daily dose of content and hope they play your favorite episodes -- is long over. Free web-isodes or die, baby. 

Hence, it's good to see ol' media giant Warner Brothers taking a stab at legitimate web video entertainment with their new Youtube series "H+." Naturally, the show portrays "an apocalyptic future where technology has begun to spiral out of control." I was decently intrigued by a perusal of the first episode -- it's like The Jetsons meets Blade Runner. Minus The Jetsons.

Next 'Jetsons' -- Rosie the Robot totally freaks out.

I'm struggling to connect this post to India in some way...I donno, just watch the video and support Warner Brothers as they play the role of plucky Web upstart. 

Christopher Hitchens: Destroying Indian Bloggers from Beyond the Grave

I always gag a bit whenever I read some fawning New York Times elegy on a  literary figure they deem to be "indispensable"...like their recent obituary on Gore Vidal. Unfortunate, because I'm sure I'd love Mr. Vidal's work as countless other have, but I always feel like with each successive death of a "last of a breed," as the Grey Lady termed Vidal, the grizzled Times' newsmen are really lamenting the death of their industry.

Despite my aversion to self-serious, self-destructive essayists, I still surprised myself by how long I held out on reading any Christopher Hitchens. Must've been a particularly lachrymose Times' obituary, that one. Regardless, I was happy to find a 1997 Vanity Fair essay of his, "There'll Always Be an India," which comments on pretty much everything, say, a blog on India could cover...only in essay form!

Among other epic declarations in the piece, Hitchens notes: "Land of Contrasts. I challenge you to show me the Indian guidebook or travel piece that does not resort to this dismal cliche."

Well...uhhh...there goes the subject of my next post...

Ooohhh you're just so erudite and witty, aren't you...

Hitchens also explains why Coca-Cola's relationship with India is even more complicated then I thought -- turns out the Indian government demanded the secret Coke formula in the late 1970s. Coca-Cola "denounced India as a basket case" and stopped doing business in the country until the 1990s.

I highly suggest reading this piece, for more then just the pithy asides -- he packs in a lot of info, and a lot of reporting. Not bad for a guy who was probably wasted when he wrote it. 

India to Jim O'Neill: "Shut up, you're not even my real Dad!"

Maybe it's just because I live with other five other post-college twenty-somethings, but at times this country seems like it's organized with all the care and common sense of a hormonally challenged, demotivated adolescent. So I guess I wasn't surprised that the hardass father of the BRICs, Jim O'Neill of Goldman Sachs, would speak to the country en masse as if he were talking to his loser teenage son.

"The country's huge power blackouts highlight once more the scale of their challenges, and at the same time, ongoing economic indicators lead more to scale back cyclical GDP forecasts. In addition, they are the one BRIC nation that doesn't appear to be here on mass in London. What is the matter with you guys?"

"Dammit, India!" O'Neill went on to say. "You forgot to take out the trash...again...and hell if your gonna sit on your ass all summer while your friends are out playin' sports. Get your shit together, son!"

"Clone High" had Gandhi right all along...

I was also discouraged to see that O'Neill specified India as the BRIC that has disappointed him the most at a recent investor conference. Well, O'Neill, you may not be proud of your son's report card, so to speak, but that poke at the lack of athletic prowess is just a low blow -- just wait till they put cricket in the Olympics! India is still too big and fast-growing to count out...O'Neill knows this...and the computer nerds always get the last laugh anyway. As a proud hanger-on of computer nerds, I hope to be laughing right there with 'em. Either that or getting back to Virginia and kissing that sweet, stable American soil, I haven't really decided yet.

India in the News...That's a First...

The New York Times ran an interesting -- if incomplete -- timeline of India's modern economic history as told through magazine covers from the past 10 years. More accurately framed, this is a history of the mainstream media's coverage of India's booming decade.

Basically, according to this timeline, BusinessWeek first beguiled the general public with tales of a sexy, brown-skinned "vanguard of one of the biggest mind meld's in history," right before Wired warned everyone that these brilliant young computer whizzes were going to take our jobs...then a few more random stories about how great and liberal India was becoming...then a 2007 BusinessWeek piece about how India's horrible infrastructure and overpopulation may stunt growth...and going right up to The Economist's 2010 cover of a swiftly running tiger, representing India's potential outpacing of Chinese economic growth. Mee-yow, Economist!

The piece came on the heels of the Time cover labeling Indian Prime Minister Monmohan Singh "The Underachiever." A far cry from the October 27, 1947 cover of Time where Vishnu made her U.S. debut...or something....

Of all the publications, I have to say that the 2007 BusinessWeek article tells the story the best. That elephant on the cover is a pretty apt metaphor for India's growing pains...that poor, poor elephant. Yes, there is an awesome amount of entrepreneurship, rising education and general brilliance in India, but before they eclipse Silicon Valley they're going to need to fix some potholes. Literally. I can't count how many times I bump my head in the autorickshaw on the way to work.

Peering Over Poverty

Before I came to Mumbai, I knew I would see poverty. I just didn't know it would be shoved in my face so brazenly.

That's a photo my friend took of an impoverished lil' Mumbaikar peeking in our taxi window, begging for a spare rupee. Fortunately, I was warned multiple times as soon as I arrived: don't give money to beggars. The effect is apparently like that South Park episode where Stan Marsh is mobbed by homeless people after he gives a nickel to one vagabond.

The poverty I've seen here mainly manifests itself in the pollution and general lack of hygiene in certain neighborhoods -- adults relieving themselves in the streets, children walking around naked, cardboard shanty towns, etc. And I haven't even visited Dharavi, in northern Mumbai, where leopards from the nearby Sanjay Ghandi National Park apparently 'nom on village children regularly.

Mumbai also has a ton of opulence and "new money" as well, and I still haven't come to terms with my proximity to some truly horrible human living conditions. Will of course keep you all updated on this new-found humanitarianism as it develops. This whole "sympathy" thing is all new to me...

Amurica! F*** Yeah!

Happy Independence Day, everyone! People at work today were giving me handshakes and backslaps in respect to the good ol' US of A. Even my comrades from Eastern Europe granted me the indulgence of slamming the table and shouting "America!" at lunch.  I also made a fool of myself when a Slovenian girl offered me cake, and I knowingly chuckled "Aaah, for Independence Day?" It was actually for her birthday.

But dammit, I won't apologize for my patriotism! Everyone shoot off some fireworks for me!

Indian Rupee at Seven-Week High; "The Amazing Spiderman" is Dubious; And Other News

This was a cray cray week; I saw "The Amazing Spiderman" in iMax 3D. That night was significant because it also marked my first time truly getting "caught" in an Indian monsoon. We were stuck for about an hour in a small Wadala back-alley market -- with no electricity -- as the streets got more and more flooded and the imposing Indian locals inched creepily close.

But perhaps even more important: the Indian rupee is rebounding! According to the Wall Street Journal, it reached a seven-week high against the U.S. dollar yesterday. Now if only if the dollar can sink below that 53.79 rupees mark, I can REALLY celebrate this Fourth of July!

Oh yeah, by the way, the Amazing Spiderman was WeakSauce Malloy. I'm pretty sure they just rummaged through Sam Raimi's office trashbin for the storyline. My good friend Hipster Spiderman would be ashamed.

Lana Del Rey Wins the Internet

Are you f***ing kidding me? A$AP Rocky as JFK?

The fact that these two young trendsetters wanted to work together is awesome enough, but even more heartening is that there is clearly something clicking here artistically. We all got a taste of it with this KickDrums-produced preview -- a song that neither camp has released in full -- but with this next-level music video, we see that Lana and A$AP together are greater then the sum of their parts.

Enjoy.

Lana Del Rey: Back to the Future

I generally don't consider myself to have worthwhile taste when it comes to slow-moving, epic-voiced female singers. My particular preferences seem to cultivate artists leaning towards the spectrum of "potentially insane ironic rhymespitters."

But recently, when the sun gets low and I start to think of the teenage years I never had (in 1950's Southern California, that is), nothing spaces me out better then some Lana Del Rey. Her whole style is like if the world's most hipster Tumblr account had a baby with Lady Gaga....so basically, I'm saying Lana's half-cyborg. YEA, she's that good.

Lana is to musical innovation what Steve Jobs was to technological innovation. Pure simplicity mixed with pure vision.

Enjoy. 

Suggest Unto Me Your Biographies

This blog just passed the venerable 50+ views mark. I'm going to ball-park that only 25 of those were me, so either my half-assed attempts at SEO maximization are working and forcing people to stumble upon "Of Bombay and B.Doyle," or there is a burgeoning market for content with regards to media critiques and avant garde gangsta hip-hop. 

So, let's interact: I need biographies to read. As previously mentioned, I just finished Neil Gabler's Walt Disney biography, and am currently in the midst of Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs biography. Shoot me a suggestion of a biography about an epic personality or epoch-defining businessman, and I'll friend you on Facebook! Oh, the private pictures of mine you could view.

But seriously, biography suggestions. I wants them. Now. This Mumbai heat makes "epic" books the only kind worth sitting down and reading.

Above: Mickey Mouse, the product of a tortured, perfectionist soul, according to Neil Gabler.

Moody's: India "Stable"

How you like them apples, Standard and Poor? Moody's noted today that the lower growth trends as of late are "unlikely to become permanent or even mid-term features of the Indian economy."

This is of importance to B.Doyle for two reasons:
1) The rupee (and thus, my paycheck) may not be doomed after all, and...
2) These next 11 months in Mumbai may have some economic growth meaning for the ol' career, aside from that intangible "experience" factor.

Of course, I'm not letting my hopes and dreams simply ride on the verdicts of finicky ratings agencies. No, I'm  much more comforted by this Business Insider slideshow explaining "Why Everyone is Freaking Out About India." Madness, illuminated.

Grow, damn you, grow!

Content Innovation: If Disney Can Do It, DealBook Can Do It

I recently finished Neil Gabler's "Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination." Disney pushed a lot of innovation in his day, but one area where he was incomparable was his innovation of "content" -- his perfectionism for his film's storylines, character development and overall themes was unparalleled. He never compromised, and he never rested on his laurels.

Flash forward sixty years, circa the B.Doyle era: reading New York Times' "Dealbook" section -- which previously held a scintillating aura of New Media excellence, not to mention some damn good writing -- it strikes me that the whole section has become fairly boring. Everything about it -- the content, the dearth of videos, even the bush league "single-column" listing of articles -- gives me the impression that Andrew Ross Sorkin stopped trying to really push the site's envelope, maybe, eight months ago. And in a digital media age where there's still a wide-open playing field to prove true "excellence" in content delivery and style, absolutely no website should be resting on its laurels.

Aww, but maybe I'm just salty because I miss the inimitable Kevin Roose on my DealBook homepage. He's since moved onto greener (except not...) pastures at New York Magazine. And I'm probably in no position to take Mr. Sorkin to task, considering he's only about ten years older then me and has already written a generation-defining expose and, well, founded "DealBook."

Regardless, I would like to point to Business Insider as the Internet's premium example of a true content innovator. They combine Huffington Post's penchant for addictive lists and slideshows with a fair bit of trenchant insight and solid numerical analyses. And damn if the site doesn't know what I want to read -- take their slideshow of "The World's Hottest Billionaire Offspring." Now that's some good juice!

To conclude: Dealbook's gotten weak, Business Insider rocks, and the Internet has yet to see its "Walt Disney." Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some BI slideshows to peruse.

Sorkin: Less squawking, more Dealbook-ing, please!

Rupee Hits All Time Low...Morale at All Time High...

So the Indian rupee was in a hell of a free fall this week...as of a few hours ago, it hit yet another "all-time low" of 57.12 rupees to the American dollar. That's bad news for the millions of us who get our paychecks in rupees...and ostensibly even more demoralizing for the small minority of us who had the option of working for the good ol' American simoleon.

Thankfully, this unfortunate bit of news is the only annoyance I've had in an otherwise fantastic week. Every fellow worker I've encountered here is young, cosmopolitan, and educated. Case in point: on my team of seven analysts, at least three have MBA's, all are under the age of 30, all are well-paid, and all are extremely articulate on the unique economic and social challenges their country faces on the road to economic stability. Anecdotes may not speak as loud as statistics, but it's still hard to get down about a few inauspicious economic indicators when I see first hand the growth and excitement of business here. 


Worse comes to worse, I'll just start acting in Bollywood movies for some extra cash, maybe do some back-up dancing. I could show the guys below a meannn Harlem Shake...

The Illustrious Rhymesayers of the Ivory Towers

Smart, hard-working people make great music. Sometimes as great as any wild-haired, drug-addled artist -- not to say the two are mutually exclusive. It was true with Columbia-educated Rodgers and Hammerstein, with Yale-educated Cole Porter, and it's damn true now.

Case number one: Kinetics and One Love. Recently Cornell-graduated. Writers of such recent Billboard hits as "Airplanes" and "Strange Clouds," and composers of my personal favorite Lana Del Rey remix:

Case Number Two: Hoodie Allen. A 2010 UPenn Graduate who...not gonna lie...I was pretty damn skeptical about. But the dude has pretty much conquered the Internet, and hell if he doesn't make some catchy tunes. I'm not quite certain of the boundaries between Internet supremacy and "mainstream" supremacy anymore, but I'll just go ahead and say that this guy is as close to mainstream success as any former dorm-room rat of our generation. 

Case Number Three: Mike Posner. 2010 Duke graduate. Huge overachiever. Creator of J. Biebz' "Boyfriend," and great music in general. Innovator.

RaP GaMe TaYLoR SWiFT!

This is my kind of hip-hop...straight irony, no filler. I guess you could say the low-fi beat, melodramatic imagery and bold clash of personalities is some sort of commentary on modern young adulthood...probably...the apathetic materialism of young adulthood. But I really just like it for RiFF RAFF. Enjoy!

Speaking of New Media Mistakes...

Last Friday, I logged onto The Onion to get my weekly dose of fake news. After clicking on a headline -- I think it was "Capricious God Violently Shakes Ant Farm Day After Bestowing Orange Slices Upon Colony" -- I was greeted by a confusing, self-defeating notice:

"...If you enjoy our probing and analytical journalism and want full access, we ask that you support our hardworking reporters by purchasing a subscription for as low as $2.95/month or $29.95 a year."

Uhhhhhh.......pay for comedy? Online? And are they actually trying to make a joke by referring to "probing and analytical journalism," right before they name their price? Hardy-har-har, Onion.

Needless to say, these yucksters have lost a reader. It's probably for the best though; I was becoming increasingly weary of articles which were less and less hilarious and more and more, I donno, liberal. Like "Victim in Fatal Car Accident Tragically Not Glenn Beck." As if we can all chuckle to ourselves knowing we share a mutual hate of Glenn Beck. Except I don't. Amurrica, mothaf***as!

Above: The Onion, in simpler, funnier times. RIP.

David Carr: "SMDH at the Huffington Post"

A particularly fatalistic-sounding David Carr penned this trenchant piece for his "Media Equation" column the other day, reporting on a recent launch party for The Huffington Post's tablet-based magazine. The column was chock-full of other media news from the week, such as Time Inc.'s deal to publish their stable of magazines on iPads -- giving Apple a hefty 30% commission in the process. And through it all, Carr -- who has a knack for existential aphorisms -- laments "the future is landing on the past with both boots."

"I've come to understand that it doesn't matter what I think is right or wrong, or what I think constitutes appropriate aggregation or great journalism. The market is as the market does." 

Quite a morose sentiment to be harboring in the midst of all this innovation. If that's the attitude of other Times newsmen, I certainly hope no one circulates CollegeHumor's "Honest New York Times Advertisement" around the office -- it's bound to make a few mustaches droop.

My issue is not with Carr's talent or profession -- as he is a master -- but with his taste. Why is it that creative and "disruptive" forces are so highly-valued in business, but so distrusted by content creators themselves? Old-media acolytes are a lot like "old school" hip-hop fans who refuse to acknowledge that 1994 is never coming back. If you stay listening to "Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)" and dismiss any non-"Golden Age" hip-hop, then you'll never experience the space-age cloud rap of A$AP Rocky. 

In case that metaphor didn't hit home for everyone, let me make my point straight: great things can be done in this new age of media. Innovative, visionary, exciting forms of story-telling not previously thought possible, and yes, even great journalism. There are scores of talented journalists proving this -- take Dealbook wizard Andrew Ross Sorkin. So with the launch of this Huffington Post magazine, I say, welcome the new baby, and quit lamenting the sick great-uncle.

Above: Me, in the background, staring forlornly at Ms. Huffington. One day, Arianna...