MEDIA

Time for Some Media Navel-Gazing

What faces profitability challenges and ruthless competition but is determined to survive? The answer is not "my friend's pre-seed startup"—it's the media industry.

In recent years, publishers have struggled to capture eyeball market share. Why? Social media, Fortnite, streaming, Fortnite, etc. To adapt, media execs are putting on their product designer hats. 

On automatic

According to a new Reuters Institute survey, 53% of publishers said it's "very important" to deploy automated curation techniques, like AI recommender systems and personalized web pages, this year. 47% said it's "very important" to use AI tools for lead generation and dynamic paywalls.  

Some publications are tapping AI to automate tedious newsroom functions, such as transcription, translation, subtitling, text-to-speech/speech-to-text services, and even rote article writing. 

• But: It's difficult to attract engineers and data scientists who can build these tools given the short supply and sky-high demand across industries. 

Content for your ears 

Thanks to bigger audiences, better measurement tools, and Morning Brew's Business Casual, podcasts are having quite a moment. Powerful wireless earbuds, which pack immersive tech capabilities, are opening up audio-first content opportunities. Voice assistants could also serve as a new interface for publishers. 

The audio content publishers are prioritizing in 2020: Daily news, talk show, and serialized podcasts (53%, 53%, 47%, respectively), short briefings for smart devices (31%), and text articles read aloud (24%). 

But embarking down the spoken word path comes with risks: Audio may not generate an ROI. And platform dependency (i.e. Spotify, Apple, voice assistants) limits distribution controls and listener data. 

• For example: The BBC, which is investing in audio-first offerings, has yanked services from third party platforms. 

Bottom line: For publishers, emerging tech giveth and taketh. One thing's for sure: Building or buying these capabilities doesn't come cheap, so smaller outlets have fewer options. 

GAMING

Esports, Online to Offline

In the beginning, there was online gaming. Then entertainment companies said: "Let there be more physical esports spaces." 

Welcome to the Hotel Atari, such a lovely place. This week, Atari said eight branded hotels are coming to the U.S. Construction on the first "video game-themed destination" will begin this year in Phoenix, and additional locations are planned for Austin, Chicago, Denver, Las Vegas, San Francisco, San Jose, and Seattle. 

• Atari Hotels will leave plenty of room for joystick mashing with areas dedicated to fully immersive gaming experiences in AR and VR.  

Gaming is going IRL 

Dedicated esports venues are popping up around the country. Just last week in LA, esports organization 100 Thieves unveiled its training "compound," the U.S.' biggest esports team facility. 

Gaming is going online to offline in mixed reality, too. 

• Retail: Sandbox VR, which raised $11 million in October, uses motion capture and VR hardware to provide custom gaming experiences at the company's VR centers in major cities. 
• Riding along: German startup Holoride wants to bring VR to the backseat of your car. 

SPONSORED BY HPE

The Essence of Innovation Is Risk

Companies that want to spark innovation need to encourage risk-taking. We didn’t land on the moon by wondering if it was possible to fly a paper airplane across the office.

The question is, how can you go about spinning up radical new products, processes, and approaches for your business without taking irresponsible risks?

In order to effectively push the proverbial envelope, businesses need to establish innovation structures that are right for them—structures like a skunkworks, internal VC firm, or an internal shark tank.

But the structure you choose can be the difference between success and failure. Robert Siegel, a lecturer at Stanford, says “The first question I would ask is what’s the objective?” From there, Siegel advocates for surveying your options: “You have to look at this menu of options as part of building the muscle tissue of innovation.”

Read more on what innovative structures might be right for your business.

AUTO

General Makeover

The first vehicle rolled off GM's Detroit-Hamtramck assembly line in 1985, followed by over 4 million more. On Monday, GM said Detroit-Hamtramck will become the poster child for the automaker's electric future. 

The details: GM is investing $2.2 billion to retrofit the assembly plant into a "fully-dedicated" EV facility. An electric pickup is scheduled to go into production at D-Ham next year, and eventually, the company hopes to make 1 million EVs annually. 

• Remember Origin, the electric, shared, autonomous shuttle announced by GM subsidiary Cruise last week? It's going into production at D-Ham shortly after the pickup.  

D-Ham was set to close last January, but GM reversed course after negotiations with the United Auto Workers union in October. The facility's flip-flopping fate shows the challenges and opportunities of pivoting to electrification.

+ While we're waiting for autonomy, GM's Cadillac is upgrading Super Cruise, its advanced driver assist system, with automatic lane changing. It'll be coming to some 2021 models. 

BITS & BYTES

Stat: 52% of smart speaker owners control TVs with their devices, according to Strategy Analytics, suggesting higher engagement with voice-first tech can carry over to other experiences.  

Quote: "We know that governments may not be relied upon to provide information in a timely fashion...we can pick up news of possible outbreaks, little murmurs or forums or blogs of indications of some kind of unusual events going on"—BlueDot CEO Kamran Khan to Wired. BlueDot's AI trawled online news reports, airline ticket data, and animal disease networks to notify customers of the coronavirus contagion days ahead of public health officials. 

Read: The Verge takes a gut check on AI radiologists, explaining the technology could lead to overdiagnosis and rushed results. 

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• The U.K. officially OK'd the use of Huawei equipment in non-core parts of its 5G network.
• Facebook proposed bylaws for its upcoming oversight board. It also announced "Off-Facebook Activity," a tool that lets you see and delete data about your internet activity sent to Facebook by other businesses, websites, and apps. 
• Related: Pew found that 74% of U.S. adults support an option to remove potentially damaging personal info from online searches. Pertinent to the "right to be forgotten" clauses of GDPR. 
• Sen. Edward Markey (D-MA) recommended that Tesla rebrand Autopilot as an advanced driver assist feature. 
• The Swiss Post resumed its delivery drone program. Tests were put on pause after a drone from fleet provider Matternet went down near a kindergarten playground. 
• The Department of the Interior is officially grounding its drones due to cybersecurity concerns. 

SPONSORED BY OWL LABS

Who wants to have a meeting about meeting tech? Most likely no one, so Owl Labs did the work for you and put together this comprehensive guide for In-Room Video Conferencing Systems. They took a look at all the options, focusing on account calendar and productivity integrations, software compatibility, tech specs, and more. Read the guide for free today.

BLACK MIRROR IRL

The stories in Netflix's Black Mirror often seem like they're coming true in real life. This week's round-up:

• A Maine woman said a drone stalked her for two days and police reportedly couldn't do anything about it.
• Some gig workers of Amazon's Mechanical Turk, a microtask platform often used to train AI, were hired by Gizmodo to talk about their experiences using the marketplace. 12% of respondents reported "uncomfortable personal data requests."
• Watch the AFP's aerial footage of the streets of Wuhan, the Chinese city where the coronavirus outbreak originated. 5 million of the city's 11 million residents are estimated to have left before travel restrictions were put in place. 

THE TECHLARATION

I've heard from a number of you future tech titans who are still in college or even high school. Since I'm impressed by your command of the written word, I recommend you try your hand at the NYT's STEM writing contest. 

The contest invites students ages 13–19 to explain a tech, engineering, or science concept in just 500 words. Let me know if you send in a submission, and better yet, tell me when you win.

See you Friday—Ryan.