September 2019

August Flew By. 

Highlight was the return to Chicago of native son Jesse G. Weinberg with Diane, his wonderful wife.  They’re living on the North Side, less than a mile from Foster Avenue Beach.   

The whole family here is thrilled as he’s back after almost 11 years in Los Angeles.  And to help get her through her first winter. They drove east shortly after the biggest California earthquake (7.1) in 20 years and arrived August 24, in time for their niece Maggie Jane’s fifth birthday Cinderella party (a smash hit!).  She has started kindergarten at Oak Terrace bilingual school in Highwood, IL.

In other news:  my laptop got cracked by a file folder and then repaired. At last, I went for a big screen home computer…welcome to 2019.  Summer in Chicago resembles a rain forest with showers followed by hot sun nearly every day.  I played early morning outdoor tennis more times than I have for the last 20 summers. 

And the big news at the Media Burn Archive is Sara Chapman’s marvelous project, a film on fake news and versions of reality.  A creation of two Russian and two American video artist/producers, it had three successful screenings and vibrant discussions in Chicago.  The one-hour film, Ghosts in the Machine also had a similar set of screenings and spirited discussions with the four filmmakers and Sara in St. Petersburg, Russia in July.   The reactions to this unique film were wonderful and controversial. 

You can contact Sara (info@mediaburn.org) if you want to help arrange a screening anywhere.

We’re proud of it. I can brag since I didn’t have any involvement in the actual producing of the movie. (you can see my notes about it here.)

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Your Talkback   

I always ask for reactions from you, the PY-O-MY Letter/Weinberg House Organ subscribers/readers.  It’s a big part of what keeps me going.   Every month, I treasure your notes, usually short and complimentary.  With the online blog format now, you can comment simply online and get your own dialogue going.

This month, I pass along two comments from earlier this year, before we went online.

First, from Davidson Gigliotti with whom we spent a wonderful weekend in August at the 50th reunion of the Videofreex in the Catskills.

  Here’s Davidson’s thoughtful comment:

Changes in the information order are always disruptive. Radio and film, well utilized by Josef Goebbels, did for his master what the printing press did for Martin Luther, and brought us WWII. Certainly that is not all they did. They changed all our lives, created a mass audience, and gave us a new way of looking at ourselves. They created whole new industries, revitalized some old ones, and did away with some very old ones. Radio and film, not to mention the telephone, changed our culture and our consciousness. It wasn’t easy but, on the whole, we are rather glad we had radio and film, aren’t we? Or are we?

Television didn’t just give us I Love Lucy and Star Trek. It gave Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X just what they needed to develop the civil rights movement, made the Viet Nam war insupportable, effectively divided the nation into left and right, encouraged the radicals,  raised our hair with the graphic details of the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and MLK, giving us a short course on just what kind of nation we really were. It also did away with some fine old evening newspapers, at least here in New York. And, it created some interesting opportunities for the Videofreex, Raindance, Ant Farm and TVTV.

My second comment is this: SUDDEN MAJOR changes in both substance and scope of the information order are EXTREMELY disruptive. That’s what we are looking at now, and we are babes in the woods here. The old Videofreex and Raindance dream of empowering the people with the tools of communication has come to pass, though the results are not quite what was expected and hoped for. The digital universe has invaded all our lives, world wide, and human history is taking a turn of unprecedented scope and substance. There is no going back, and there is no predicting how it will all turn out. But it looks like a rough ride, and it is doubtful that old fellows like ourselves will see the end of it. Trump? Trump is a symptom, not a cause, and his demise will not bring an end to disruption.

There is always hope, of course, though hope alone is never a prediction. It depends on how much faith you have in human beings being able to sort themselves out eventually.  My suspicion is that the ‘new world’ will look nothing like the one we live in, even now. And it may be a world that you and I might not want to live in. Maybe it will be better, who knows.

You asked for comment!

We spent hours discussing this kind of big picture questions at the weekend Davidson organized with Skip Blumberg in August. 

A report from Maple Tree Farm will be completed soon.  I’ll give you the link next month. Bright, accomplished author Liz Flyntz is writing a long piece on the past and future of video activism (which we helped invent). Link also as soon as it’s available.

The second comment came from a regular correspondent, a Nicaraguan native who spends his time between his companies in Nicaragua and Miami.  He is adamant about the horrors the current strongman President, Daniel Ortega, who has originally part of the junta that followed the revolution in 1979, but has, with his wife, become as oppressive and corrupt as the regime it replaced four decades ago. His comments (name withheld):

My friend, thank you for e-mailing me your interesting Organ, I enjoyed it very much. I learned a lot [and it] is a great piece of literature that I like very much. I have been following and worried about what is happening in Nicaragua. We Nicaraguans hope this is going to be solved sooner than later. This guy Ortega and company after killing so many students and civil and peaceful unharmed people protesting, no longer has the trust of the Country.

I’ve traveled to Nicaragua more than a dozen times in the last 42 years.  The situation now is a terrible tinderbox.  People are constantly scared for their lives. Resentment of Ortega and the government is everywhere. But of course, he has the military.

Just last week, the Organization of American States (OAS) gave an ultimatum to Ortega to find a “peaceful and effective solution” in 75 days to the crisis in Nicaragua.  If it fails (as is most likely) the OAS could expel Nicaragua. That will have political and economic effects on the poor country and its oppressive regime. No surprise, the United States is still officially supporting the leader/dictator who has changed the constitution so he can essentially serve as President for life. He’s 73.

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Factoids for You

Reading

People in which countries read the most?  Here are top ten in hours of reading time per person per week:

1. India 10:42
2. Thailand 9:24
3. China 8:00
4. Philippines 7:36
5. Egypt 7:30
6. Czech Republic 7:24
7. Russia 7:06
8.  Sweden 6:54
9. France 6:54
10.  Hungary 6:48

The USA is #23. Japan and Korea are deep in the standings.

I’d conclude there is an inverse relationship between time spent reading the penetration of TV.  All numbers are down in digital age.  It doesn’t bode well for our future.

YouTube IS…

Millions worldwide think YouTube is the only video on the Internet. As we all know, that’s nowhere near true, but it is dominant. Look at these facts and numbers and you can see why they think it’s only video online: 

YouTube
As of January 1, 2019
Facts and Numbers:

First YouTube upload: “Meet Me at the Zoo” by Yakor Lapitsky, 23 April 2005, 19 seconds, uploaded by co-founder Jawed Karim at San Diego Zoo

• The total number of people who use YouTube = 1.3 billion
• 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute!
• Almost 5 billion videos are watched on Youtube every single day.
• YouTube gets over 30 million visitors per day
• In an average month, 8 out of 10 18-49 year-olds watch YouTube.
• 80% of YouTube’s views are from outside of the U.S.
• The average mobile YouTube video views per day is one billion
• The average mobile viewing session lasts more than 40 minutes. This is up more than 50% year-over-year.
• Female users are 38% and male users are 62%.
• More than half of YouTube views come from mobile devices.
• YouTube overall and even YouTube on mobile alone reaches more 18-34 and 18-49 year-olds than any cable network in the U.S.
• The number of hours people spend watching videos (aka watch time) on YouTube is up 60% year-over-year, the fastest growth we’ve seen in 2 years.
• You can navigate YouTube in a total of 76 different languages (covering 95% of the Internet population).
• Approximately 20% of the people who start your video will leave after the first 10 seconds.

Financials

• Google paid $1.65 billion for YouTube in November of 2006. Value today is estimated to be over $100 billion.
• It generates over $10 billion in ad revenues yearly (estimate)
• Since 2007 YouTube has paid $1.25 billion to rights holders.
• Highest paid Youtube partner is Daniel Middleton – DanTDM with annual income reaching $16.5 million for 2017.
• Youngest star is 6 years old.  Ryan Toys Review made $11 million  in 2017

FYI, more referrals to Media Burn videos come directly from YouTube than any other source. By far.

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It’s China, Stupid

I don’t know much about China.  The problems, solutions and background history are so much bigger than I can possibly understand or try to fit in a couple sentences of PY-O-MY. 

I do know a few things:

1. Tariffs are not the cause of US-China rift. It’s far deeper. 
2. China has 4,000 years of keeping it together as a country through ups and downs.  It has a longer long-range view of history and longer vision of the short-range than USA.
3. China has dominion over the South China Sea and all of Asia. Everyone in the world must deal with the reality of China’s economic and military power.
4. As the most powerful creditor and holder of US debt, China is in a position of influence as nobody else is.  It’s impossible to say how, but it will definitely use that strength to its advantage.        

One fascinating video I watched last month was an hour with Steve Bannon.  He isn’t anything like the goof the mainstream press portrays him.  Or irrelevant as many of us wish he were.  I can recommend it to you, if only to get a perspective that’s plain talk, right or wrong, on China and world affairs.

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How Grand It Is!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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How lucky and blessed we are! 

Happy landings and good health to you as the psychological new year begins. 

My best,