Dior was nice. Prada was better. The shoes fantastic. The plot, not so much. I would describe myself as a Sex and the City fan. Okay, maybe that’s an understatement, I am a super fan. I watch the series over and over again and know the episodes inside and out. And even I, disliked the movie.

Americans love the movies. All over the country people go to the opening night of big box-office hits; such as Spiderman, War of the Worlds, X-Men and Superman. These movies gross so much money, but what happens to those people that do not want to go to the crowded theaters? That is where Netflix comes in. Instead of going to the local movie theater or movie rental store, a person can now at the push of a button select a movie they want to watch and it will be delivered right to their front door. How convenient.

Netflix was started in 1998 by Reed Hastings after accruing a $40 fine in late fees from Blockbuster. “He began wondering why video stores don’t offer members unlimited access for a flat fee, like a health club” (Breslau and McGinn, 2005, p. 131). Initially, Reed was going to use VHS’s as the mailed product but then he switched to DVDs because it was the most current technology for movies. For a monthly fee around $17.99, consumers would be delivered an unlimited number of rented DVDs. Hastings, currently receives 100,000 new movies each day from studios to provide to the 3.2 million members. Altogether members can choose from 42 million discs.

With such a great idea, other companies have followed Hastings’s concept. Both Blockbuster and Wal-Mart decided they wanted a piece of the $5.7 million in profits that Netflix earned in 2005. Blockbuster and Wal-Mart executives have both started their own version of the DVD-mailing system because they could not compete with Hastings successful service. All of this competition between these large companies is due to what the authors call a battle between the “Forces of Control” and the “Forces of Freedom”. The Forces of Control are, “the cable and satellite companies, which offer 50 to 500 channels of content that’s chosen by network programmers” (Breslau and McGinn, 2005, p. 131). The Forces of Freedom are, “companies that include Netflix, TiVo, Apple, AOL and Yahoo. Together the freedom fighters offer something like 5 million channels via the Internet, giving consumers the ability to watch just about anything they’d like, whenever they’d like” (Breslau and McGinn, 2005, p. 131).

The problem for Netflix specifically, is the advances with the Internet. People can now at the push of a button, download an entire movie. Now, that’s speed. Hastings sees downloadable movies as a long-term threat and is starting to slowly move the company in that new direction. Currently, Hastings is trying to transform his company into an Internet content provider as opposed to a mail-order retailer. Regardless of the Internet changes he predicts that, “his snail-mail model will be around another 20 to 30 years, both because DVDs are very portable and convenient to customers and because movie studios want DVDs to last a long time because it’s such a revenue and profit driver” (Breslau and McGinn, 2005, p. 132).

Regardless of Hastings positive outlook, other professionals are skeptical of Netflix’s domination. Forrester Researcher analyst Ted Schadler believes that Netflix will not last five years, with the growing changes of the Internet. “Digital music sharing has driven worldwide music sales down 13 percent in the past six years, and video downloads could do the same to mail-order movies” (Breslau and McGinn, 2005, p. 132).

I personally have been a Netflix customer. At first the thrill of receiving as many DVDs as you could think of, was amazing. My sister and I would choose our top favorites and watch them. However, over time the excitement was lost. After awhile, the cost per month seemed expensive and we did not want to watch DVDs as often. I mean really how many movies on the weekend can you watch? We ended up stopping our service with Netflix after about 8 months, but it was fun while it lasted. With the possibilities of downloading a movie right at our fingertips, this does seem to raise awareness that Netflix will lose customers if they do not change with the times. According to the authors, Netflix is being proactive and thinking ahead. Netflix is working out a deal with TiVo, for personal movie recording.

It seems according to current news, that Netflix is losing customers in this ongoing battle to stay afloat. Michel Marriott of the New York Times, believes that Netflix is trying to keep customers by offering streaming video with a subscription. “This year, the DVD rental company Netflix began to take advantage of click-and-view streaming of full-length films and television episodes with a subscription service. “Push a tab ‘Watch Now’ and more than 3,000 television episodes and movies come up in 30 seconds or less,” said Steve Swasey, a Netflix spokesman. ‘There’s no downloading’” (Marriott, 2007, p.1).

However, although Netflix is constantly trying to keep up with tech-savvy consumers, they still are having difficulty staying on top. According to the Associated Press from the New York Times, Netflix is not having such a positive outlook for the future. Its stock plunged $2.36, or 12 percent on July 24, 2007. Netflix hoping to retain more of its current customers while enticing new subscribers, lowered monthly fees by $1 on its two most popular plans to match Blockbuster’s prices for comparable Internet-only services (Associated Press, 2007, p.1). Apparently the discounts were driven by Netflix’s trouble in signing new subscribers since last year. Despite profit decreases Hastings remains optimistic, “We are in a very competitive, large battle,” said Hastings. “But we feel like we are still in a great position” (Associated Press, 2007, p.1). As for now, Netflix is still a service that many subscribe to. However, Hastings needs to either make changes or embrace reality—for it seems that Blockbuster is taking back the lead.

If you haven’t already noticed, I am obsessed with the Media Dependency theory. For my senior project (see entry below) I went without any media for a week. I was a hermit. Interestingly enough, Oprah just did this episode about wasting. Wasting what, you ask? Anything. The episode was titled, “What would you dare to live without”?

Whether it be energy, food, time, heat, money, etc. This episode had so much basis in Media Dependency that I just had to watch. (As a side note, they never referred to this term, but it was implied).

This family above, had to live without any luxuries for a week. No TV, video games, cell phones, plastic water bottles, no take-out, shopping, Internet, radio,etc.

http://www.oprah.com/tows/pastshows/200804/tows_past_20080417.jhtml?promocode=incl20080417TD

What are your thoughts? Could you go a week without these things, or would you crack, like their daughter did?

It’s the truth. I can not think of anything that rhymes with April. That’s why April stinks for me. Actually my mom’s birthday is in April. Alright April gets some points. Oh, and Earth day is on April 22, it gets some bonus points. Oh, my neighbor is supposed to give birth this month–fine it’ll rack up 10 extra points.

Wow, April isn’t looking so bad now.

Oh wait, I just remembered…finals are this month (deduct 10 points).

Oh and I have several final projects due (deduct a few more).

What else stinks? I remember…I have to work on the yearbook (deduct 59 points).

Stupid April.

I have to say this. I must. My mouth dropped when I read this article. The person below is Romal Roberts. The photo is courtesy of the New York Times. Roberts, 18, decided to sexually assault a “possibly” handicap girl with two buddies. Did I forget to mention that they used a broom stick?

I am dumbfounded. Really. Has it come to this? What provoked them to do such nastiness? I don’t even think I can write anything.

The article I read had comments from neighbors praising him. I went to MySpace.com and he seems to be a completely different person there. Not so sweet and innocent. He has pictures of angry adults yelling, a diagram of sexual positions, things relating to his sex life, when he lost his virginity, comments and photos relating to marijuana, etc.

I am not sure that anyone actually has read or heard about this story. I thought it was interesting and profound.

According to the news, students at Readington Middle School each brought in $2 worth of pennies to pay for lunch. The students pulled this prank in order to protest their short lunch. The students only receive a half-hour for lunch. The school made a huge deal and decided to give a 2-day detention to about 29 8th grade students. Bad PR for those who are sympathetic to the students’ cause.

Below are links to two different news sources about the story:

http://wcbstv.com/watercooler/pennies.readington.township.2.666113.html

http://www.nj.com/hunterdon/stories/index.ssf?/base/news-1/1204797913104490.xml&coll=12

I happen to be on the students side. I think it is amazing to hear about young adults fighting for a cause—whatever it may be. I think it is unwise to punish these students who protested in a non-violent way. They made their point and I applaud them.

I read several other blogs about this topic. I love reading entries by angry parents. It is so amusing.

Here is an example: “If, like you say, these students have a problem eating in 30 minutes, I’m even more inclined to think they are out of line. Your telling me that with 675 students, only 29 couldn’t eat in that amount of time? Everyone I know only had half an hour to eat and we ate in 10 minutes so we could go out and play. We had to sit for 10 minutes. These kids have every right to protest but not at the expense of all the other kids. No wonder why most lunch ladies are crabs having to deal with something that they have no control over,” from a blogger named Jane (Parentdish.com).

Isn’t that great. Angry over something so simple and non-violent. Lovely.

Ah…today was tiresome. Besides my mass-load of work I had for my classes, I also was inundated with work for yearbook. Some may say that I am complaining, but if someone knew the pressure on me as yearbook editor they would feel slightly bad. Today I met with my amazing publisher for a 9 a.m. meeting. However, this meant that I had to be up around 6ish so that I could travel over to campus and prepare for the meeting. Our meeting went until 10 minutes before my class–that’s about 31/2 hours. I had class, drove home (because my mommy is really ill), went back to campus for class, was text messaged by a staff member in a jam, and now I am doing work for my night class that I have in 15 minutes. After night class I have a meeting at 9:45 p.m. and that won’t end until we get the work done. Then it is home to write a paper. Phewww…I am tired writing about it.

On a stellar note, Chris got into Penn State’s Aerospace Engineering Graduate Program.

On another good note, I was able to eat lunch today!

Finally, Luther Vandross is the man (that’s to you Christine-lol)!

Today is the day we can look forward to getting a new President. I don’t know about all of you, but that’s something to cheer about!!

Oh PR,

I still find it odd that we are writing a blog for class. It’s sort of odd for me. I am fairly private about my thoughts and feelings. Usually when someone talks to me I am silly and stupid because I love to make people laugh. Subsequently, it feels odd to write my real thoughts and feelings. Luckily though, this blog doesn’t really have to do with “me” — per say. It has to do with my thoughts about our night class.

I might add that I feel a bit behind. I don’t know why. I think I just feel that I know so much less about PR and thus, it feel like everyone is running circles around me. I don’t consider myself a great writer and I know very little about PR cases and blogs. Our main text book is okay. I find it to be a bit drab. No color or life to it. The book by David Meerman Scott is pretty good. I normally wouldn’t have been interested in reading it.

Oh and by the way, when we were talking about case study 4-2 on page 83, I totally didn’t get the entirety of the problem at first. I am better now.

I don’t really know what else to say. I have been staring at the computer trying to figure out what to say. Better luck next time…hopefully.

The internet has revolutionized the world. People now sit around computers looking up facts, chatting to friends in Singapore and typing their hearts content for the world to read. It would only seem proper for everyone to align themselves with the current and present technology. So, why not blog for Public Relations? It seems reasonable and practical. It seems like a quick way for companies to see how people truly feel about their organization. It seems new to me because I have never looked at a blog — but perhaps I am in the minority on that. If most people “blog” or peruse “blogs” than it does seem like a great way for PR practitioners to spread their word. Mostly though, I think I feel indifferent about it. Personally, if I were working in the PR department at a company and we had a crisis, I wouldn’t turn to a “blog” to let the world know how we were handling things. Hey, but that’s just me. I seem to be a late adopter of ideas.

-Laura