— Musings —02.05.2015 08:39 AM
Somewhere, political war rooms are rejoicing
About this:
The deal, according to a person familiar with the matter, will give Google direct access to the hundreds of millions of tweets that flow through Twitter every day, and make it possible for tweets to more quickly appear in Google search results.”
The war roomers will be delighted that they will now be able to quickly locate stupid tweets made by their opponents, and disseminate them to grateful media organizations who cannot afford to cover campaigns like they used to.
And then the war roomers will remember that, um, their opponents will be able to do the same thing to them.
Ain’t politics grand?
It doesn’t matter. You poly-amor-tic types are still fighting the last election war. TV reporters quoting twitter users is more than just pathetic, it signals the end of TV.
The next election(s) “won’t” be televised.
It may just be a flesh wound, but I cut the cord last week and so did my sports mad neighbour. We just gave up on TV, and in the end we were willing to give up on that wacky new Rogers “Hockey Night” where none of our local Ottawa Sens games were ever available, and Jian’s alter ego is, shall we say, less than stellar in his new role.
Along with losing televised hockey (and returning to buying tickets for real games, like the Ottawa 67s OHL franchise, tons of fun!), neither of us will be watching the next election on TV.
CBC reporters and their 20 person crews can scour the countryside for egregious, mis-quoted Tweets till their time and half overtime kicks in, it just doesn’t matter anymore. When Peter Mansbridge announces on the national that Twitter user “@KinsellaWarren12345_HotKitty” says, quote, ‘I saw Harper kissing Trudeau underneath the mistletoe last XMas’, no one will be watching. Note to Peter, when you start quoting twitter users, it’s time to retire.
we stopped our TV subscriptions around 2000; we aren’t addicted to live sports so we don’t miss it.
My kids don’t want to watch TV anyway. Treehouse used to be the best channel on cable TV but gradually they cut their spending on new programming (and got rid of their clowns which was a disappointment). The kids are on YouTube now 100% of the time.
My wife and I now mostly watch Korean and Japanese dramas on the ‘net, where at least there the dramas talk about corruption in the media, the government and business circles. Nothing like that and to that extent was ever produced in Canada that I can remember. I think their media is more critical and tries to convey messages to their audience more.
oh and the CRTC should have been disbanded when they allowed cable TV companies to show commercials on their channels — the original deal to customers was that if they paid monthly subscriptions for SuperChannel and FirstChoice, they wouldn’t have to watch commercials. They didn’t keep their promise so I have zero sympathy. I often wondered whether there was active wooing going on back then but we’ll never know probably.
Anyway, good choice.
Corruption in media, government and business (and security) circles…I used to like Chris Haddock’s series from Vancouver. I can understand why those kept being cancelled. APTN’s Moccasin Flats, Cashing IN and Blackstone would have pretty good corruption stories.
But, I am bewildered by the importance put on tweets. I fail to see any wit or substance in news stories showing tweet exchanges. It seems to me like showing a discussion or debate by showing bumper stickers.
Last provincial election here in BC I tried to talk our exec into trying something called targeted messages (or some such), but we ended up doing the same old building signs, mailing out pamphlets, and going to meetings with people who already know who they are voting for. (Small point…I lived in an oil patch city, and our phone list was made up of phone numbers, most of which listed 6 or so different surnames at apartment rental addresses. Transient, young population, short living space supply, far away landlord companies gouging whatever the market will pay.)
Well this certainly means that professional politicians will be sending out the most bland vetted tweets from now on, and that the the only gotchas will have been tweeted by people who think they aren’t going into politics, only to have this dragged up years later if perchance they do. Will the latter bunch of tweets matter?