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Update: Solterra is also developing a condo complex in Chinatown, according to The Tyee.

The Solterra Facebook page is now thoroughly dominated by comments about The Waldorf closing. Here are a selection:

“If anything happens to the precious architectural treasure that is the Waldorf Tiki Room, I hope the ghost of my dear friend Jim Green haunts you until the end of your days. Don’t worry, I can repost this comment as many times as I need to if you’re taking it down. “LOVE, LAUGHTER AND HAPPINESS!! 2013 IS GOING TO BE A GREAT YEAR…” you forgot to add “UNLESS YOU CARE ABOUT ANYTHING BUT MONEY!”

Apart from any kind of comment I would have to make about the Waldorf and how important it is to this city – gotta tell y”ou, I’m FULL of schadenfreude. This is the worst public relations gaffe any developer in this city has EVER made. Let me tell you – as someone looking to get into the market within 5 years, anything you just built is now unsaleable – and I’ll ensure every other young professional I know is aware that Solterra is the one tearing down the Waldorf.”

“FOUR distinct venues under one roof. Sixty employees soon to be out of work. Possibly the oldest surviving Tiki Room in North America. Built in 1947, and lovingly restored since 2010 by the current establishment. More style and dignity than another sub-par condo development selling its suites to absentee, off-shore owners just waiting to flip them for the next flipper. … What- you weren’t expecting Vancouverites to be able to afford these suites, were you?”

Previous Story

The news that The Waldorf Hotel in Vancouver is being sold to a developer has triggered outrage on social media. The hash tag #RIPWaldorf at the time of this post was the number one Twitter Trend in Vancouver, according to the tracking service TrendsMap.

In fact, virtually all the popular hash tags and search terms on Twitter in Vancouver were related to the story of  The Waldorf, a popular cultural and social hub, being sold.

But beyond the noise on Twitter, Mayor Gregor Robertson, Vision Vancouver and the developer Solterra are all  likely preparing for some serious blowback.

News in the digital age outpaces the ability of politicians and organizations to respond to public sentiment which is expressed instantly and loudly.

Case in point: According to a Vancouver Sun blog post by Jeff Lee, Solterra was listed as an attendee for a Vision Vancouver fund raiser in November of 2011. Having said that, Solterra had just one of 88 tables at that fund raiser. The crowd their was an eclectic mix including, W2 media, Artists for Vision, and LGBT Friends of Vision Outlooks TV.

But the fact that Solterra was there is now being re-tweeted, and will just add to the tempest.

The initial response from the mayor’s office and their subsequent, and almost immediate back-pedalling, is documented below. The developer Solterra is not being sparred either as its Facebook page is being inundated with messages.

Check out the response on social media to news of The Waldorf Hotel in Vancouver being sold to condo developers.

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Flush with $38 million in financing, Aereo, the startup that brings the TV antenna to the internet is expanding to 22 cities in the USA after launching in New York City.

Aereo connects local TV broadcast signals to I.P. enabled devices such as computers, tablets and smart phones so viewers can watch local TV anywhere including NBC, CBS, ABC a host of other channels, anything that is transmitted via local broadcast signals. No word yet on if Aereo is expanding to Canada.

Backed by media veteran Barry Diller, Aereo has the potential to be a disrupter for the cable news business because it offers cheap service, you can watch local TV on most devices,  and it has recording capabilities to boot.

The price for Aereo starts $1 for 24 hours and goes up to $80 a year for the unlimited plan.

 

Increasingly, startups and more established new media companies are gnawing into the revenues of the big cable services providers. Services like Netflix,  Amazon,  and iTunes  provide high quality on demand TV shows and movies.

Now, Aereo, is targeting another niche local TV. So, theoretically unless you are die hard sports fan (ESPN), you can get your local news, broadcast shows, a lot of big ticket sports, through a combination servies like Aereo and, say Netflix.

Understandably, broadcasters are not happy and the big broadcasters supported by the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) have filed a lawsuit claiming copyright infringement.

The position of Aereo in all of this is summed up CEO Chet Kanojia   “What is at stake is whether a consumer’s right to access broadcast television for free, via an antenna and to record that content for private use, is still meaningful.  If consumers cannot take advantage of current and innovative technology, that right becomes hollow.

There are certain things we take for granted as Americans. One of those things is free access to over-the-air broadcast television and the ability to record and watch our programs.”

Aereo uses an ingenious (its critics would say diabolical) technology that leverages a “micro-antenna” for each user (somewhat similar to a home antenna) thereby getting around the notion of “sharing” broadcast signals. An initial ruling said Aereo could continue to operate despite the lawsuit which ultimately lead to the $38 million in series B financing, and now to Wednesday’s expansion announcement.

Kanojia told Bloomberg news that once it successfully expands in the USA it plans to hit global markets, presumably Canada.

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Now that brands have to ability to customize their Facebook Cover Photo, TV News outlets are starting to leverage this prominent piece of real estate to push their news brands – and so far most of the attempts are, well, lame.

Kim Wilson of the Social News Desk, has a post on Mashable  that survey’s the TV Newsroom Facebook Photo Cover Landscape.  The article points out that TV Newsrooms showcase either the News Team (group photo), the Main Anchors (at the news desk photo), the location (scenic photo), or technology (a photo of the news helicopter). This image from CTV Toronto is par for the course for Facebook News Cover Photos.

Ms. Wilson’s critique of the branded photos was gentle. She writes “It’s a great way to highlight the great lengths (or heights) news organizations go to for news coverage. But beware; these images lack a certain personal touch that fans desire.”

Let me be more blunt the branded photos being displayed are awful . Having worked in the local TV News space the shameless recycling of conventional tropes (such as the smiling anchor, the ready for action chopper) would be disheartening were it not for those same tropes being a source for Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert who blast those conventions with mocking delight.

The images in the article are awful for a simple reason they are examples of “shameless hucksterism.”  Rather than leverage the Facebook Photo Cover as an opportunity to engage with their audiences these photos really are bad wallpaper.

Here are 2 things a TV News Departments could do:

1) Celebrate  your Audience- Rather than push your brand to an audience, pull in your audience – Create a cross-channel photo contest where user submitted photos occupy the cover photo on a News stations Facebook page for a designated amount of time.

2) Humanize Your Talent – It is vital for Local TV News anchors and reporters to be seen as part their community. Leverage community orientated imagery – Have anchors and reporters take pictures of their pets or some of their favorite spots in city- anything besides the highly contrived images that litter the TV News marketing landscape.

Facebook Guideline For Branded Photos

“All covers are public. This means that anyone who visits your Page will be able to see your cover. Covers can’t be deceptive, misleading, or infringe on anyone else’s copyright. You may not encourage people to upload your cover to their personal timelines.

Related articles

• 5 Ways TV Newsrooms Use the Facebook Cover Photo (mashable.com)
• Create an Instagram-filled Facebook profile cover with InstaCover (thenextweb.com)
• 7 Awesome Facebook Timeline Cover Photo Examples (mikejeffs.co.uk)
• Do not fear the newsroom: Tips for journalism interns (journomel.com)

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Disturbing but not surprising that’s my reaction to what is happening to CanWest Media. I truly feel for what the employees (some of whom are my friends and former colleagues) must be going through.

The lastest Reuters headline did not mince any words.

The artcile points out that the acquistion of Hollinger and Alliance Atlantis while ambitous were also fraught with peril. The economy only compounds the situation making their existing assets less valuable. In  July of 2000 when CanWest bought Holinger, the share price was $18.55/share. When CanWest purchased Alliance-Atlantis the share price was trading around $10.63/share.  And now it is at 25 cents/share. Certainly, the slumping economy compounded their woes.

While focusing on the big ticket mainstream media items (newspapers, specialty networks ) CanWest didn’t move quickly in the one area where it needed to – Online.  Canwest was slow to react to the online world. Was it a portal? Was it email? Network vs Local priorites?  The end result a potentially great brand Canada.com languished in usability hell for years.

Think of it CANADA.COM. How many private companies own a country dot com domain?

Only recently did CanWest  finish a much needed revamp of their newspapers online – and they did a good job too.

I hope the many talented people who work for CanWest will somehow see their way through this.

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All TV Managers Take Note: No camera crew, no satellite feed costs, no micro wave truck, just  a small camera, computer,  an internet connection and skype – scary from an employment perspective but powerful from a cost savings perspective – the TV news of the near, near future. Having done a wee bit of “backpack” journalism it is not easy but technology is making it easier and easier.

WTSP-TV Uses Skype to Broadcast Live Shot

Monday morning, WTSP-TV anchor/reporter Janie Porter was on TV, reporting live from Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., on the run-up to this week’s national college football championship game. She didn’t have a big live truck accompanying her, or an engineer tuning in a shot or a photojournalist standing behind the camera and setting up lights. Porter set up her own camera, opened her laptop, connected the camera to her computer, slipped a wireless connection card into her laptop, called up Skype and used her Blackberry to establish IFB (the device TV folks wear in their ears to hear the off-air signal). It all looked just great on air. Watch the live shot here:This type of reporting marks a new day. It is more than backpack journalism or one-woman-band reporting; it is soup to nuts, live reporting without a live truck or a signal that looks like a Max Headroom video. Obviously, it is also a potential cost-saving way to use fewer people and to send in live reports without using expensive trucks.
WTSP News Director Darren Richards told me, “The process was surprisingly simple. We used a camera with firewire video out to a reporter laptop computer. We then used Skype to send the picture via a wireless AirCard. “Back here at 10 Connects, we called up the video via Skype in a computer in our control room that we have on the router. We then punched it up like a regular live video source on our switcher. We ran some tests in advance and they all worked great — very smooth with only a slight delay, probably a little shorter than a SNG (satellite truck) shot.”Richards added, “The only thing we have that the ‘average Joe’ might not have is the camera. Janie used one of our backpack journalism cameras and a $2,000 Sony HD camera with the firewire out. The future? It sure does open things up.”The key to a smooth shot seems to be having solid high-speed connection. The slower the connection, the worse the signal becomes. It also helps a lot if you have a fast laptop. I am a big fan of this tutorial to help you optimize your Skype connections. The tutorial is mostly aimed at audio, but the steps it walks you through to check your settings and your connection are the same that you would use for great video connections.I asked Porter, who will be using Skype throughout the week to cover the championship game, how it all works in the field. She had just finished shooting, writing, editing and filing a story when she answered my questions by e-mail:Al Tompkins: So give us an idea of what your anchor job entails now that it didn’t entail, say, a year ago.

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