The Daily, announced today

Today’s the day News Corp. unveils its iPad-only news publication, The Daily. New Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch will make the announcement today in New York along side Apple’s head of Internet services, Eddy Cue. What do we know so far?

• CNN got an early look at the app. It blends multimedia content, has social media functions and even boasts crosswords and sudoku.
• Poynter has a list of some of the Daily’s 100 staffers, who have a range of broadcast and print media experience, hailing from such national media outlets as The New York Post, the Associated Press, The Atlantic and Gawker.
• News Corp. has invested about $30 million in the project, and will charge readers around 99 cents a week to access The Daily.
• It already has a Flipboard-esque competitor. Techcrunch has a sneak peak at the New York Times’ news app experiment called News.me, billed as “a social news reading app.”
• The Atlantic says new content will arrive to the app every morning with “infrequent midday updates” when necessary.

The other part of this, which is what publishers will be watching, is whatever new subscription model Apple may allow for apps in its App Store. There’s no ongoing subscription system that allows regular, automatically billed payments via the App Store. Speculation is that Apple will tweak is App Store model for publishers looking to do this very thing.

What They’re Saying

Sight unseen, media pundits are already weighing in on whether The Daily will work:

• Alan Mutter says it will work because it carries no legacy media baggage, News Corp. has deep pockets, promotion will be huge and Rupert has access to a wealth of content.
• Alan Mutter says it won’t work because it’s not free, there’s a limited market, there’s a lot of competition on the Web and it’ll be a challenge to generate enough reader interest to make the numbers work.
• Gawker/Valleywag says The Daily “is doomed” because it’s unfocused, slow, has an “extremist” business model and, well, News Corp. “sucks at the Internet.”
• An analyst with Stifel Nicolas lists his pros and cons. Among the pros are Apple’s involvement in the project and its one-of-a-kind “iPad-only” status.

Got a big night ahead? Watch it right now online.

(From left) Democratic Lt. Governor candidate Shane Broadway, Democratic Secretary of State candidate Pat O'Brien, Republican Governor candidate Jim Keet and Republican U.S. House candidate Tim Griffin chat over coffee after appearing on "Today's THV This Morning" live from Community Bakery.

Arkansas Business Election Guide | Today’s THV Election Guide | Video: All the AETN Debates

Don’t forget: Tonight at the Clinton School, we make final predictions then watch the returns roll in. Also: Tweet-In! Track analysis from Clinton School students under hashtag #UACS2010.

Arkansas Business Publisher Jeff Hankins joins “Today’s THV” tonight for live coverage starting at 7 p.m. See THV2.com for continuous coverage. Updates on ArkansasBusiness.com, @ArkBusiness, @JeffHankins, @LT.

Your Vote 2010

We’ve got what’s shaping up to be an unpredictable — but fun! — Tuesday morning on “Today’s THV This Morning” tomorrow, Election Day.

Hosts Alyson Courtney and Tom Brannon will be live at Community Bakery in downtown Little Rock throughout the show. I’ll be there too, and we’ll chat with some of the state’s candidates for Congressional and state offices, as well as give some final info on all the races and what to watch for on Election Night.

So who exactly’s gonna show up early? “Today’s THV This Morning” Producer Matthew Carroll says he’s called just about everybody — particularly in the U.S. House and Senate races, along with those for the state’s Constitutional offices — and most have agreed to pop in for a final informal chat over some hot coffee and pastries. Elections and eclairs! Should be hoot.

Check it out tomorrow starting at 5 a.m. on Today’s THV to see who shows.

Until then, we’ve got lots to do:

1) “Arkansas Week,” 8 p.m. tonight. I join KUAR-FM, 89.1′s Kelly MacNeil, the University of Arkansas’ Hoyt Purvis and host Steve Barnes for a final assessment of the state’s Congressional and constitutional officer races, such as they are. Remember that big exciting Senate race? Not so exciting heading into the final weekend. We look to the 1st District for any final fireworks. Also: Swepco’s 0-3 in court rulings. Check your local AETN station tonight or watch it online here.

2) “Today’s THV This Morning,” election day. Last week, I appeared on the noon show each day for a quick, final summary of all the Congressional races. On Tuesday’s “Morning” show, I’ll be live throughout the morning with some last-minute notes and maybe a guest or two.

3) Midterm Election Watch Party, the Clinton School of Public Service in Little Rock. I’ll be on a panel with a couple of other yahoos to give some final impressions of this year’s campaigns. We’ll also take questions from the audience and enjoy a warm bowl of bean soup before the returns start, er, returning. Fun!

4) Election Night Returns on Today’s THV and ArkansasBusiness.com. Pop up some popcorn, grab a Coke and settle in for a long night. You’ll be on the couch, we’ll be in at the parties, on the phone, online and in studio delivering the latest election night news as it happens. Arkansas Business Publisher Jeff Hankins will analyze the county-by-county returns live on Today’s THV and THV2.com, and I’ll be manning coverage for ArkansasBusiness.com.

5) The Morning After. Hankins and I will be on “Today’s THV This Morning” and “Today’s THV at Noon” to go over the results and, maybe, What It All Means.

And if this year’s elections weren’t scary enough: Happy Halloween!

AETN's video-heavy election page. Nicely done.

I’m among the panelists for today’s hour-long gubernatorial debate starring incumbent Mike Beebe (D), Jim Keet (R) and Jim Lendall (G). We tape the debate at 2 p.m. in Conway and it airs tonight at 8 p.m. on your local Arkansas Educational Television Network affiliate.

Also on tonight’s panel: Ron Breeding of NPR affiliate KUAR-FM and Bill Simmons of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. I haven’t seen anyone’s questions except my own, but I expect hot topics to include jobs, the economy, health care and, more than likely, state vehicles.

Each panelist gets ask two questions, so expect six questions total, plus opening and closing statements from each of the candidates.

Today’s debate is part of a series of debates airing each weeknight this week on AETN stations as well as on KUAR. Also tonight: the Lt. Governors debate between Shane Broadway (D) and Mark Darr (R), airing at 7 p.m.. And on Wednesday, Arkansas Business Editor Gwen Moritz is on the panel for the U.S. Senate debate, and Publisher Jeff Hankins will be part of Friday’s Attorney General debate.

You can see the full schedule of this week’s debates at AETN’s Web site here.

And speaking of that site, kudos to AETN for a solid multimedia Web effort. In its excellent debates section, you can see videos of each of the debates and conversations with voters.

Update: You can watch the full debate here.

The Social Network

Great insight from New Republic writer Lawrence Lessig on how “The Social Network” writer Aaron Sorkin completely misses the point of the story of Facebook and its founder, Mark Zuckerberg. Lessig concludes that the audience will miss the point, too.

The real deal here is innovation, and how the Internet is the most powerful platform for it in our history. Because of it, Lessig writes, ”Zuckerberg’s genius could be embraced by half-a-billion people within six years of its first being launched, without (and here is the critical bit) asking permission of anyone” [emphasis mine].

Zuckerberg put his code, his idea, on the Web for all to access for less than $1,000. Used to be, the question of distribution was a tough one for some innovators. Not so for Zuckerberg. Not so for anyone with a Web-ready idea today.

But people who see “The Social Network” this weekend likely won’t get that, Lessig writes:

Practically everyone walking out will think they understand genius on the Internet. But almost none will have seen the real genius here. And that is tragedy because just at the moment when we celebrate the product of these two wonders—Zuckerberg and the Internet—working together, policymakers are conspiring ferociously with old world powers to remove the conditions for this success. As “network neutrality” gets bargained away—to add insult to injury, by an administration that was elected with the promise to defend it—the opportunities for the Zuckerbergs of tomorrow will shrink. And as they do, we will return more to the world where success depends upon permission. And privilege. And insiders. And where fewer turn their souls to inventing the next great idea.

Full article: Sorkin vs. Zuckerberg, The New Republic

Apple TV

… iTunes in the context of Apple TV is vastly more interesting—in fact, Apple TV is by far the most enthralling thing Apple announced this week, a model for what Apple products should be more like.

…

Apple TV’s integration with AirPlay and an upcoming, more powerful new Remote app soothes a lot of the anxiety about the inexplicable sense of disconnect between various Apple products.

The Seeds of Apple’s Cloud – Gizmodo

There was peculation that Apple would make good on its purchase of Lala this week by finally putting iTunes in the cloud, allowing you to stream your music library from anywhere. That didn’t happen. But the connectivity heralded by the new Apple TV to all IOS devices is a really cool step in the right direction.

Despite it’s “meh” debut, the undercooked Ping might pay off farther down the road (name another social network that has more than 100 million credit card numbers already on file). The bigger announcement this week was the new Apple TV — not so much the odd “rent and don’t purchase” model, not even the Netflix integration, which should have been part of Apple TV from the git-go — but the way it easily brings together files on your Mac, iPad, iPhone and every other AirPlay enabled device third-party manufacturers can crank out.

You could argue that other services like Boxee already do this and even allow more customization and better access to wider variety of file formats. But like everything else from Apple, the new Apple TV makes it easier, particularly if you’re already part of its ecosystem. And if you’re not, this might make you want to be.

Cable suffered its worst video loss, shedding 711,000 video subscribers in the second quarter, as six of the eight biggest cable firms reported their most dismal three-month period. Overall, cable, satellite TV and telecom providers shed 216,000 video customers in Q2 compared with a 378,000 gain in the same period a year earlier.

SNL Kagan estimates that almost 3 million U.S. households will use Hulu and other Web TV options as their primary video solution by the end of the year, up from 1.5 million in 2009. For 2011, the company expects that figure to hit 4.3 million. (There are about 115 million TV households in the States.)

- Cable’s decline an incentive for Yahoo, Hulu deal

This has been a long time coming, of course. People can only put with with subpar customer service and expensive, overstuffed channel packages for so long. Add to that the rise of Web-enabled TVs with apps that allow streaming from Netflex, Vudu, YouTube and Hulu and you’ve got all kinds of reason to dump traditional cable.

No AMC? We've decided 'Mad Men' is worth paying for, so we get new episodes via iTunes.

Here’s how it’s been working at my house this summer after a move necessitated dumping Comcast. Now we get the four major networks, in HD, and any of their secondary digital channels over-the-air via digital antenna for free. We supplement  that with an $11 per month Netflix subscription, which gets us one DVD or Blu-ray at a time, plus unlimited streaming of Netflix’s Watch Instantly library.

We access streaming content via our Samsung Blu-ray player, which comes equipped with a Netflix app, along with other services like Wal-Mart’s Vudu, Blockbuster, Pandora and YouTube. It’s connected to the Web with our $35 per month SuddenLink high-speed Internet access.

Any other shows we’re missing, we can always connect the MacBook Pro to the TV to access iTunes content or, really, anything else out there for free on Web.

We realize this model is not ideal for everyone — “Where’s ESPN?” many will say. But it works well for us right now. For the most part, we watch what we want when we want. And some days we don’t watch anything, which is nice too!

Of course, we also realize this model won’t be sustainable — that is, as cable companies, telecoms and Internet companies move more and more distribution to the Web, paywalls are likely to go up. And don’t forget that those same companies (including, some say, Google) are desperately angling for some type of tiered Internet, with multiple packages offering varying levels of speed and access for a price. That would suck for myriad reasons. But it’s also probably inevitable.

Related

Little Rock mad man Ross Cranford is hardcore. He doesn’t even watch TV! Well, not like you and me at least. See him take all this a step beyond on his TV Free Me blog.