'Roll Your Own News' DVDs Now Shipping

theodp writes "Amazon.com and CBS have partnered to offer a la carte news clips on custom-made DVDs. Pay $24.95 and you'll get 10 clips or 90 minutes, whichever comes first. Not too surprisingly, CBS News seems to have the best coverage on the new service."

huh?

I'm confused. Is this supposed to be "news for nerds" or "stuff that matters"? Doesn't really seem to fit into either.

Bah. CBS.

I'd rather read news from bloggers, the real heroes, who sit on their asses reading news reports and giving me the real story. Fuck all that "traveling to other countries" and "gathering original reporting" shit.

Re:Bah. Bloggers.

Not me. I'd rather watch my news on the major media cable channels. I trust Bill O'Reilly and Lou Dobbs to give me the facts, clear of any bias or corporate agendas.

$30 for something you can tape

This is like those advertisements at the end of PBS shows that charge $24.99 for a VHS tape of the show you have just seen. I always wondered who the hell bought that crap.

Re:$30 for something you can tape

This is like those advertisements at the end of PBS shows that charge $24.99 for a VHS tape of the show you have just seen. I always wondered who the hell bought that crap.

And now you understand why the content producers are so keen on the broadcast flag. Then it becomes $30 for something you can't tape.

Licensing

The usefulness of this service really depends on the licensing. If you can do whatever you want with them then I could see some cool 60 minute techno remixes (OK, they wouldn't really be cool, but at least someone might find the clips useful). However if they are licensed anally (as I suspect they will be) then this service is useless. Not surprisingly the article doesn't say.

Re:Licensing

However if they are licensed anally (as I suspect they will be) then this service is useless.

Wow, I guess RIAA/MPAA & friends really are out to screw us over.

Limited Use

I could see this as being useful in an educational setting, as a good way to show recent events to middle/high school kids who otherwise could care less and are probably more concerned about who just sent them a friend invite on MySpace. After all, who do you think spends $24.95 to buy the same program you just saw on the History Channel? Outside of this though, I have no idea who could possibly have any use for this, even after reading TFA.

Old news

Doesn't news become old news in about the same amount of time it takes to cook a DVD?

I remember a time...

when CNN attempted to make their content pay-to-view (made far worse by partnering it with RealPlayer). Even if it is an exclusive CBS story, there is no way that people are going to pay money to watch it when they can read about it from other sources or find out about it the next day.

Not only did they drop it, but CNN/FOX/MSNBC offer premium content on their webpage for free.

Is there really a market for this?

I'm dubious about the potential market for customized DVDs of old news clips. I just can't recall any instances where I've felt like sitting down to an evening of watching old 60 Minutes segments from way back when. News is attractive because it's happening 'right now', or because it tells an interesting story that we didn't know before. Old news clips have none of this immediacy or novelty, and without those critical interest factors, what's left for us to enjoy? Watching old news clips seems as exciting to me as looking at last years' slides of my neighbors' trip to Las Vegas. It's like watching a documentary without narration, or even an overall theme to the story.

I don't know -- the only market I can see for this service is in education, as a supplement to a history class, or perhaps to underline some other subject with appropriate video eye-candy. By itself, the concept of customized DVD news clips just seems, well, boring. Why waste my time like this when there are so many other, more interesting ways to spend $25?

Woohoo!

Now I can finally get yesterday's news next week. Or can I one-click my way to overnight shipping so I'm only 3 days out? If I have the computer to order the dvd of the news, why can't I use the computer to read the news in the first place? I must be missing a key point here.

purpose

To everyone who seems to think this is useless, I think you've missed the point. The summary and headline are perhaps misleading. This seems to be more geared toward owning a copy of the clip or news segment, not a way to get the current news. THe usa today article says

CustomFlix, an Amazon division, allows customers to select from "thousands" of clips dating as far back as 1990

.

So basically what they sell is ..

old news ? :)

New Anti-Piracy Measure Found!

Well, it seem that CBS has stumbled on a new anti-piracy measure! I, for one, predict that these old clips of old news will not be found on any bittorrent sites in the future. Truly ingenious and no DRM needed to boot.

My hat is off to you, CBS.

In other news, the RIAA has been experiment with zero value content for years now....

Ship me a dvd!

If I go for standard shipping does that mean it's a slow news day?

Cool!!

For all those doubters out there, take a minute to actually look [customflix.com] at the service CBS and Amazon.com are offering. This isn't about getting a DVD of yesterday's 60 Minutes broadcast (we all have MythTV for that, right?), but rather for finding copies of older news stories that certainly aren't going to be broadcast again. Personally, I think the move is genius for CBS. Rather than collect dust, they're offering up these old clips for a very reasonable fee. It's a perfect example of a mega-corp actually adjusting to technological advances and embracing them. If you think about it for 30 seconds, it's really a perfect medium for the syndication of millions of archived newsreels.

Browsing through some of the clips, there's actually some really neat stuff available that would otherwise have been lost to the general public and appears to be a worthwhile trip down nostalgia lane. For example, their political [customflix.com] section has a vast array of news clips from the 2000 Presidential election. There are a couple of pre-9/11 snippets on gas [customflix.com] prices [customflix.com], and even what appears to be a segment on the Segway [customflix.com]. Plus there's a wide variety of interviews with people like Neil Armstrong [customflix.com], Jonathon "Fatal1ty" Wendel [customflix.com], Jon Stewart [customflix.com], and J. K. Rowling [customflix.com] dating back to 1999.

There's probably a rather large potential market for this kind of stuff too. It's certainly not the kind of thing you'll find a torrent for or dig up on YouTube. I know there are some interesting documentaries on there that I would certainly be inclined to purchase. And aside from the academic environment, I could imagine buying one just to get a look at how stuff used to be (and to give to your grandparents years later). As of now, there isn't much older footage (I think late 1999 is as far as it goes back), but hopefully this is just the tip of the iceberg. If they offer much older stuff I'd definitely invest in a compilation of those big historical landmark broadcasts (e.g. Pearl Harbor, Cuban Missle Crisis, etc.).

On a side note, it'd be even cooler if someone like ESPN got into the action with this. I'd die for the ability to buy old baseball and football highlights and such. Just my $.02

Preview here!

Really! [thatvideosite.com]

Crying uncontrollably!!!

How could they DO this? HOW COULD THEY DO THIS? I can't beleive it. I just found out! Commodore is no longer making the 64!!!!!!!! No it's true, I just saw it on the news.....

Kind of torn

On one hand, as someone who does research on media and is really interested in media coverage of certain events, this is really a nice service. On the other hand, up until now, if I can't find something online, I've had good luck just contacting the networks with my university email and telling them I want a copy of a program for research. They usually fax me a form to sign saying I won't air it and they fedex it to me for free. I wonder if they would begin to be less willing to do that from now on...

Look at it another way

If Congress hadn't turned copyright into never-ending ownership, if we instead had a sensible expiration date, say 10 years, then all this content would become public domain in a reasonable time and there wouldn't be a market for most of these old clips. Yeah, the media producers paid to produce the material and they deserve to make money off it. But during the copyright period the public also makes an investment in the form of paying taxes to enforce the copyright laws. The end of the copyright period used to be the payoff for doing that, but not anymore. Not only do content companies get to sell material forever, they also get to withhold or destroy whatever isn't profitable enough. With all the fabulous technology we have to record and preserve our history, it's sad that the fate of all that material depends entirely on the whim of a few people.

What the Hell is a Radio Picture?

Why would I want a DVD of old news when I can download new news for much less money?

Maybe if I banded together with 359 other people to archive all of our 15 minutes each of fame, it would be worth seven cents apiece for the official disc. Which we would then copy across the Net and burn for ourselves.

Haven't Mr and Mrs Everywhere done that already?

Stock cue VISUAL: cliptage, splitscreen, cut in bridge-melder, Mr. & Mrs. Everywhere depthunder (today MAMP, Mid-Atlantic Mining Project), spaceover (today freefly-suiting), transiting (today Simpson Acceleratube), digging (today as everyday homimage with autoshout).

Like in Stand On Zanzibar [streettech.com] by John Brunner (1968)? Hmm, nope, not yet. Wake me up when it's news.

Special Dan Rather Edition?

You mean the news service that got it right about Bush going AWOL?

Here's what a Feb 2004 Washington Post article has to say:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A7372-200 4Feb2?language=printer [washingtonpost.com]

"In 2000, the Boston Globe examined a period from May 1972 to May 1973 and found no record that Bush performed any Guard duties, either in Alabama or Houston, although he was still enlisted.

According to military records obtained by The Washington Post, Bush first requested and received permission in May 1972 to be transferred to the Alabama National Guard so he could work on a U.S. Senate campaign. After he was in Alabama, he received notice from the Guard personnel center that he was "ineligible" for the Air Reserve Squadron he requested.

In August 1972, Bush was suspended from flying because he failed to complete an annual medical exam. A month later, Bush requested to be assigned to a different unit in Alabama and was approved. Although he was required to attend periodic drills in Alabama, there is no official record in his file that he did.

According to the records, Bush had been instructed to report to William Turnipseed, an officer in the Montgomery unit. "Had he reported in, I would have had some recall and I do not," Turnipseed, a retired brigadier general, told the Globe in 2000. "I had been in Texas, done my flight training there. If we had a first lieutenant from Texas, I would have remembered."

White House communications director Dan Bartlett said yesterday that although no official record has been found, "obviously, you don't get an honorable discharge unless you receive the required points for annual service." He said Bush "specifically remembers" performing some of his duties in Alabama. Bartlett also provided a news clipping from 2000 quoting friends of Bush's from the Alabama Senate campaign saying they recalled Bush leaving for Guard duty on occasion.

Bush said in 2000 that he did "show up for drills. I made most monthly meetings, and when I missed them I made them up."

Reached in Montgomery yesterday, Turnipseed stood by his contention that Bush never reported to him. But Turnipseed added that he could not recall if he, himself, was on the base much at that time.

Bush returned to Houston after the election, and again his service is vague in the records. His officers at Ellington Air Force Base wrote in May 1973 that Bush could not be given his annual evaluation, because he "has not been observed" in Houston between April 1972 and the following May. Ultimately, another officer states in a subsequent document that a report for that one-year period was unavailable for "administrative reasons."

The records indicate that Bush surfaced at the end of May 1973 and fulfilled point requirements 10 times between May 31 and July 30. In September 1973, Bush requested an early discharge to attend Harvard business school; in October he received an honorable discharge."

Just because Rather got Roved on one piece of "evidence" it does not follow that Bush did serve. Yeah I know there is a vast left wing cospiracy to tell the truth. Why don't you whine and cry about it?