DVrepublic News

Comcast-NBC merger sheds light on future of online video

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 10:48:23

]]> The Federal Communications Commission focused Tuesday on how Comcasts proposed merger with NBC Universal will impact the small, new but fast-growing market for video over the Internet.

If you listen to Comcast, the company said it has no incentive to withhold NBC shows and channels from Internet distributors such as YouTube and Vuze because they want as many eyeballs as possible. They say that market is too young to regulate and that the FCC shouldnt impose conditions on the merged company that would force it to share NBC and Comcast channels with online video distributors.

Even if it did keep competitors from getting their shows, "there is no basis for expecting withholding current NBCU networks from online providers could significantly harm the ability of an online provider to attract or retain subscribers," according to a Comcast online video report written by Mark Israel and Michael Katz.

Indeed, the market for online video is dynamic. The number of videos online is booming. YouTube is still the top distributor of content, and in May it achieved a record level of viewing with 14.6 billion videos watched, according to Comscore. Eight out of 10 Internet users watched video online in May, and the average Hulu viewer watched 27 videos in May.

But regulators and critics of the merger say that market is precisely where the FCC and Justice Department should place much of its attention.

Democratic Commissioner Michael J. Copps said promises by the companies to behave well and not to block content arent enough.

Approval of this proposed transaction would be a very steep climb," Copps said in his speech at the Chicago hearing. "I cannot, I will not, accept half-hearted pledges of fairness from industry when the future of the Web is at stake. And right now the assurances and conditions we have received on this Comcast/NBCU proposal dont pass the red-face test."

Susan Crawford, a former White House adviser and professor at Cardoza Law School, said Comcast is motivated to merge with NBC in an attempt to avoid being a dumb pipe. That means it wants to prioritize its own content and withhold it from other distributors that would pose competition to its broadband and video business.

Future growth for Comcast, already the country's leading broadband provider, will come from having the most subscribers to the fastest and most valued pipe, she said in her testimony at the field hearing. Comcast would like, instead, a pipe that is capable of controlling, tiering and prioritizing online content, just as a cable distributor does. The leadership of the company believes that increased participation in content will delay the day when that pipe is just a pipe.

She and others said that if the merger is approved, there should be program access conditions similar to that in paid television that would force Comcast to share content to online video providers. There isnt a similar program access rule that applies to Internet video distribution.

Cecilia Kang
Washington Post

Blacks and Latinos Continue to Lead in Mobile Data Usage

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 06:57:52

]]> About half of black and Hispanic adults access the mobile web, compared with one in three whites

Mobile internet and data usage is becoming more popular overall as smartphones proliferate and feature phones become more sophisticated, but not all adults are taking up the new habits at the same pace.

A May 2010 study from the Pew Internet & American Life Foundation found that non-Hispanic white adults are still the least likely group to own a mobile phone, at 80%, compared with 87% of black and Hispanic adults. And theyre doing less with the phones they have.

A majority of English-speaking Hispanic adults accessed the internet from their mobile phone, and nearly as many checked email. Black respondents were not far behind, but among whites only a third went online and 30% used email. This pattern was repeated across all mobile data activities studied.

Broadening the scope of wireless activities to include the use of laptops with either the mobile internet or Wi-Fi access, white respondents were still behind, though they were more likely to say this was their only method of accessing the wireless internet.

Notably, while wireless access overall rose with income, the less affluent dominated the ranks of those with mobile internet service only on their cellphone. This mirrors earlier results from Pew on teens and the mobile web. While low-income teens, as well as black and Hispanic respondents, sometimes lacked home internet access, they closed the digital divide by accessing the internet via their mobile phones. Lower-income adults appear to be doing the same.

While some groups lag behind, mobile data use is indisputably on the rise. Pew found that overall 38% of US adult mobile owners accessed the internet on their phone in May 2010, up from 25% in April 2009. With younger adults clearly leading the way on mobile and wireless internet access, and teens mobile-obsessed, such increases will continue.

Jesse Jackson calls on Comcast-NBCU to increase ad spending with black media

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 06:55:22

]]> The Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr., president and founder of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, called on Comcast and NBC Universal to address the economic trade imbalance between Black-owned media and advertising firms which have been ignored in the hearings concerning the proposed merger of the two media giants.

"The current economic relationship between African-American-owned media and advertising firms and Comcast/NBCU has not been a part of the discussions taking place about this merger," said Rev. Jackson. "These two media companies have a multi-Billion dollar trade deficit with African-American consumers. A mutually beneficial trade relationship must be negotiated to end the media and economic segregation that exists."

Among the economic facts that Rev. Jackson said must be considered are these:

- Black consumers spend more than $9 Billion a year for cable service and Internet service, most of that going to Comcast, according to data from the federal government.

- The Black community sends a half-Billion dollars every single month to Comcast for cable and Internet service. And Black consumers pay more per household than any other consumers because they're more willing to pay for premium cable service and the fastest Internet service.

- Comcast and NBCU have not negotiated with Black-owned media companies or ad agencies about advertising directed to Black consumers. Advertising represents the largest sum of money Comcast and NBCU spend with the Black community every year.

- According to industry figures, Comcast and NBCU last year collectively spent more than $1.5 Billion in advertising. Only $6.3 Million was spent on advertising in Black media -- less than 1/2 of one percent. Practically none of that money was spent with Black-owned media.

"We need a fair trade agreement between Comcast-NBCU, Black-owned media companies, and Black-owned ad agencies and public relations firms," said Rev. Jackson. "A merger between Comcast and NBCU will mean that there will likely be no competition possible for the billions of dollars we spend for cable service, Internet service and Black-oriented news and public affairs programming, and no possibility for greater minority ownership of television, cable, Internet and other media platforms."

The Rainbow PUSH Coalition recently announced the formation of The Marketing & Media Project to join RPC's other industry-focused projects whose mission is to protect, defend, and gain civil and economic rights by leveling the playing fields. A Steering Committee has been formed within The Marketing & Media Project consisting of Danny Bakewell of the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), Jim Winston of National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters (NABOB), Eugene Morris of the Association of Black-Owned Advertising Agencies (ABAA), and Robert Bogle of the African American News and Information Consortium (AANIC).

Blacks, Hispanics Continue to Lead in Mobile Data Usage

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 05:37:54

Why Journalism Is in a 'State of Chaos'

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 13:44:16

]]> Five Politics Daily staffers -- Carl Cannon, Melinda Henneberger, Walter Shapiro, David Wood and James Grady -- are joining in an online discussion with Pulitzer Prize-winning former New York Times reporter Sydney Schanberg about politics and the press as seen through the prism of his new book, "Beyond the Killing Fields."

Here is Schanberg's response to David Wood, who lamented the shrinking of foreign news bureaus and asked Schanberg how the great tradition can be kept alive.

With life on our planet spinning faster and faster on the electronic wings of the digital revolution, I have no simple answers.
There is no way to turn back the clock. The world has embraced the new technology, and as I see it, the craft of credible, serious journalism is in a state of chaos.

Money is at the heart of the issue. Papers have lost much of their advertising to the Internet, which so far has produced sparse original reporting considering the volume of websites, choosing instead to cherry-pick from newspapers without compensating them.
Also, Internet sites have decided that their audiences want shorter, splashier articles, not lengthy, detailed ones that often force governments and corporations to correct errant ways of dealing with the public.

Papers are disappearing into bankruptcy on a regular basis. Those that remain are struggling to find a business model that can still support in-depth reporting. The best journalism costs serious money. I'm referring to investigative journalism, which is especially costly because it can take months for a team of reporters to bring forth a solid, major story. In the past, these came almost entirely from a small number of major newspapers and a few magazines.

As newspapers and their staffs have shrunk, so has that special product, which is crucial for any healthy democracy based on a well-informed public. Those still standing have created their own websites to seek new advertising revenue, but the money gap has not closed. And the decline of credible journalism continues.

Good journalism does not have to be printed on paper. But the Internet has also spawned an endless 24/7 trail of garbage, which I call bits-and-pieces journalism -- "borrowed" or "aggregated" material from other sources, especially original stories from newspapers. Internet companies say that the material they use is in the public domain and therefore free.

So what can we do to repair this mess? It isn't just a case of a profession in decline but a dumbing down of an entire nation -- one that has considerable effect on the rest of the world.

The public does not hold journalists in high esteem largely because news outlets, including newspapers, have chosen over time to increase fluff stories about gossip, celebrities, sex scandals, etc., and mix them with hard news.

We were dumbing down the coverage before the Internet reared its head. If we want to restore a higher grade of journalism, we professionals will have to address the public and convince them that without serious reporting, they will not have the means to make informed decisions.

In the past, we have never explained ourselves well to the public. We resent it when citizens raise questions about our stories. As a profession we have been soft and have not challenged our publishers when they sought more fluff. If we want to rehabilitate professional journalism, restore foreign bureaus, raise newsroom standards, then we're in a fight -- on the Internet and at newspapers.

We would have to stand up and speak out. But I don't know a silent, invisible way to get a task like this done.

Comcast/NBCU Pledge Diversity Channels

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 07:17:09

]]> Despite one senator's efforts, Comcast continues to have no plans to divest its stake in Hulu if a joint venture with NBC Universal is completed. But looking to appeal to legislators, Comcast pledged to add eight independent TV networks -- four each controlled by African-American and Hispanic interests -- to its cable system, while creating a $20 million fund to assist minority entrepreneurs.

Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wisc.) has asked that the joint venture sell its stake in Hulu within a year of the transaction closing, arguing that the merged company could stifle competition in the online video space.

Yet in a letter to Rep. Bobby Rush (D. Ill.) released Thursday, Comcast said that except for a Spanish-language local station in Los Angeles, "no additional divestiture of media assets is contemplated in connection with the NBCU transaction."

Comcast Executive Vice President David Cohen, who wrote the letter, noted that in the case of future divestitures, including cable systems not part of NBCU, the company will "use commercially reasonable efforts to provide first priority to minority ownership groups." Comcast has said it will try to sell NBCU's independent KWHY in L.A. to a minority-controlled group.

Rush, a member of a House subcommittee on communications, technology and the Internet, participated in a hearing on the proposed NBCU joint venture in Chicago on Thursday. It was the sixth congressional hearing on the would-be transaction since its late-2009 proposal. Comcast would have the controlling stake.

In a summary of diversity commitments unveiled Thursday, Cohen further said that two networks majority controlled by African-American interests will be added to Comcast's digital tier in the first two years post-transaction. Overall, Comcast will add 10 independent networks in the first eight years.

The Hispanic-network pledge was not mentioned in Cohen's letter. But the executive said that two networks majority-controlled by African-American interests will be added to Comcast's digital tier in the first two years post-transaction.

Networks such as TV One or BET J could also receive a distribution bump soon after the venture debuts. Comcast pledged to increase carriage on its systems of networks controlled by, and targeting, African-Americans within six months.

Comcast also promised to establish a new venture-capital fund with a minimum of $20 million to seed ventures by minority entrepreneurs in the new-media arena. Details about the fund to be managed by Comcast Interactive Capital will be released in the fall. The fund, which currently manages $500 million-plus in interests, has stakes in companies such as ad-targeting Visible World and TidalTV.

In prepared testimony, NBCU's executive vice president of diversity, Paula Madison, indicated that Comcast is in "support" of its cable system paying retrans-consent dollars to local stations.

"As everyone recognizes, broadcast stations have struggled to survive on advertising revenue alone," Madison said. "These retransmission-consent negotiations have the potential to provide broadcast stations with a second stream of revenue to reinvigorate that business."

Madison also said that over the last year, the NBC network has increased the number of minority actors (31% to 33%), as well as writers/producers (12% to 14%) and directors (9% to 11%). At the USA network, minority actors rose from 19% to 23% and writers/producers from 14% to 18%. At Syfy, writers/producers went from 4% to 10%, she said.

Before the hearing, the newly formed Coalition for Competition in Media, which includes WealthTV, Common Cause, Writers Guild of America arms and National Coalition of African American Owned Media, expressed its opposition to the proposed joint venture.

Rory O'Connor on Independence Day and Independent Journalism

Mon, 05 Jul 2010 03:40:44

]]> This Independence Day we need independent journalism more than ever as the events leading up to and immediately following the recent resignation of General Stanley McChrystal demonstrate anew. Why was it left to an independent journalist, Michael Hastings of Rolling Stone, to tell us important facts about our militarys people, practices and policies in Afghanistan facts that the mainstream medias deeply dependent and addicted to access Pentagon and Afghanistan beat reporters never would and never will, facts crucial to any citizen wanting to make an informed democratic decision about our countrys ongoing presence in Afghanistan? The MSM reporters, it turns out, are more than happy to explain. They have, you must understand, an unspoken agreement with the people they cover on our behalf, an agreement NOT TO TELL the rest of us certain things.

Appearing on CNNs Reliable Sources program, Hastings explained to host Howard Kurtz how truly independent journalists function:

KURTZ: You dont think its likely that McChrystal and his team assume that some of their joking, that some of their banter would be treated by you as off the record?

HASTINGS: I think youd have to ask General McChrystal and his team what they assumed. But for me, when I go in to write a profile, and no ground rules are laid down, and Im there to write an on-the-record profile and cover readings while in the room, then that means its on the record. I mean, its not much of a mystery. If someone tells you something is off the record, I dont print it. If they dont tell me something is off the record, then its fair game.

Hastings also did a good job of explaining how dependent journalists play the access game:

HASTINGS: Theres a reason why when General McChrystal took the job, everyone writes a glowing profile of him, because then that assures access later on. And that assures better if you ever write a favorable story, theyll get better access later. And that was a game General McChrystals team played very well, that if you get that if you write us a good story, well give you good access.

They gave unprecedented access to everybody. You know, they let you know, debriefings. They let you hang out with them. And they try to make you feel like youre part of the team. But thats an illusion. Youre really part of the team. You know? And they know that and you know that. Youre a journalist. Youre there to tell youre there to tell it like it is. Im sort of shocked or a bit surprised that

KURTZ: Youre saying that in your view, journalists who are going to be covering these guys regularly, covering the war, wrote puff pieces for the express purpose of being able to get more inside stuff, more access from the general and his top officials?

HASTINGS: Absolutely. And I dont think thats exclusive just to General McChrystal and the reporters covering him.

Later in that same program, CBS News chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan was asked by Kurtz if there is some sort of unspoken agreement that youre not going to embarrass [the troops] by reporting insults and banter.

Absolutely, Logan replied. Yes there is an element of trust.

Jamie McIntyre, CNNs Senior Pentagon and Military Affairs Correspondent from 1992 to 2008, backed Logans contention on his blog, and spoke of beat reporters dirty little secret.

I have another theory based on my 16 years of traveling with senior defense officials and military officers, McIntyre said in his post. Gen. McChrystal might have been under the misimpression Hastings would protect him, in return for the great access and candorThe dirty little secret among beat reporters who routinely travel with top military officials is that theres a unwritten code, a general understanding, that off-color jokes, irreverent banter, and casual conversations are generally off-the-record, or on the deepest of background, unless otherwise agreed upon. So why, McIntyre asked, would reporters protect senior military officers from what could be career-ending self-inflicted wounds? One word, access. Access now, and even more importantly access later.

Appearing on NPRs On The Media, McIntyre had the good grace at least to say Hastings was right:

Well, I have to say I think Michael Hastings did exactly the right thing. Part of the Uniform Code of Military Justice bars contemptuous remarks by military officers about their commander-in-chief. So if I witnessed a military officer violating the military law on this subject, I think I would be bound to report that.

Lara Logan, on the other hand, saw fit to attack Hastings, his reputation, and his professionalism. First she cast doubt on his claim that all the interviews were on-the-record:

Michael Hastings, if you believe him, says that there were no ground rules laid out. And, I mean, that just doesnt really make a lot of sense to me, she said. I mean, I know these people. They never let their guard down like that. To me, something doesnt add up here. I just I dont believe it.

Then Logan accused Hastings of having a damaging type of attitude:

What I find is the most telling thing about what Michael Hastings said in your interview is that he talked about his manner as pretending to build an illusion of trust and, you know, hes laid out there what his game is, Logan said. That is exactly the kind of damaging type of attitude that makes it difficult for reporters who are genuine about what they do, who dont I dont go around in my personal life pretending to be one thing and then being something else. I mean, I find it egregious that anyone would do that in their professional life.

Finally, Logans administered her coup de grace:

Michael Hastings has never served his country the way McChrystal has.

In response to her shameful ad hominem attacks, Logan herself was promptly assaulted in turn by the no-holds-barred streetfighter/attackdog Matt Taibbi. The driveby shooting occurred in Taibbis blog under the straightforward if sophomoric headline Lara Logan You Suck.

Heres a sample:

Anyone who wants to know why network television news hasnt mattered since the seventies just needs to check out this appearance by Logan. Heres CBSs chief foreign correspondent saying out loud on TV that when the man running a war thats killing thousands of young men and women every year steps on his own dick in front of a journalist, that journalist is supposed to eat the story so as not to embarrass the flag.

When it comes to journalistic unspoken agreements, Taibbi is right on the mark:

The reason Lara Logan thinks this is because shes like pretty much every other reputable journalist in this country, in that she suffers from a profound confusion about who shes supposed to be working for.

Taibbi shot himself in the foot by typically getting some basic facts wrongno, Matt, the Pentagon did NOT spend anywhere near $4.7 billion on P.R. in 2009 alone for which he was in turn later fact checked, corrected and slapped around by Jeff Bercovici in a post entitled The McChrystal Affair: Lara Logan Is Wrong but Matt Taibbi Is Full of It.

Although the factual errors made Taibbi look sloppy at best, they still dont undercut his basic premise and at least he ended his post by asking the right questionsquestions which, like the facts and answers their Faustian unspoken agreements keep hidden, well never hear from the dependent corporate mainstream media:

What the hell are we doing in Afghanistan? Is it worth all the bloodshed and the hatred? Who are the people running this thing, what is their agenda, and is that agenda the same thing we voted for?

So this Independence Day, I hold these truths to be self-evident: that governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that independent journalism is crucial to informed consent of the governed and thus a functioning democracy; and that that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it.

View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/147421/

Social game firm Crowdstar embraces Facebook Credits in five-year agreement

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 06:54:14

]]> Crowdstar is giving a big endorsement to Facebook Credits by making a five-year commitment to using Facebooks virtual currency in Crowdstars social games.

The introduction of Facebook Credits this summer is a big step for the social network, much like the introduction of the euro currency was for Europe. The hope is that the universal currency will grease the skids of electronic commerce on Facebook, prompting users to spend more money across a bunch of apps.

Crowdstar plans to get rid of its own in-game currencies and exclusively adopt Facebook credits in all of its games said Niren Hiro, chief executive of Crowdstar in Burlingame, Calif., in an interview. Crowdstar is a big player on Facebook, with more than 50 million users in games that include the hit titles Happy Aquarium, Happy Island, Zoo Paradise, Happy Pets and Hello City.

In adopting Facebook Credits, Crowdstar is following in the footsteps of Zynga, the biggest social game company on Facebook. Zynga also struck a five-year deal with Facebook to adopt Facebook Credits in a strategic deal where terms were not disclosed. Terms were also not disclosed for the Crowdstar deal, but Hiro said that Crowdstars share of virtual currency transactions will be 70 percent. While Crowdstar was a willing partner all along, Zynga had to be convinced that Facebook Credits would be in its best interest. Zynga was concerned that the 30-percent fee was too much, considering other virtual currency providers took a much smaller percentage.

That means that Crowdstar did not get any special discount on the Facebook Credits fee, which is 30 percent of each transaction, by signing up early. Hiro said that his company has already seen the benefits of dispensing with its own virtual currency (which costs money to develop and maintain) and replacing it with Facebook Credits. With Facebook Credits, average revenue per paying user has increased by 50 percent compared to other virtual currencies.

Facebook has argued that the benefits of a universal currency are multitude. Users are now more likely to spend more money across different social games, since there is less friction. You dont, for instance, have to sign up for and purchase a new currency with every new game. You have a single electronic wallet that you can use in every game. Users are also more likely to keep their wallets filled and make more purchases because they trust the entity that has issued the currency, Hiro said.

Crowdstar could have played it safe by keeping a secondary currency across its own games. But Hiro said that the benefits of moving solely to Facebook Credits outweighed those of keeping a currency of its own. Crowdstar began testing Facebook Credits in its games in December and customer comfort and trust has steadily increased. Hiro said that the use of Facebook credits has also made it easier to launch Crowdstars games in foreign territories such as France, Italy, Germany, Spain and Turkey all released last week. Now Crowdstar doesnt need to create new virtual currencies for every market it expands into.

Facebook said earlier that more than 100 social app makers are testing Facebook Credits. Gareth Davis, platform manager for games, said in an interview that there are now 150 apps using Facebook Credits. A formal launch date has not yet been set, he said.

Davis said that Crowdstar is an early participant in the beta test and is seeing efficiencies in shifting entirely to Facebook Credits. Other companies, he said, are also looking at keeping their own virtual currencies for use inside games as a secondary currency. Both models work fine, he said. Davis said he could not comment on the specifics of the deal between Facebook and Crowdstar, beyond to say that both companies are committed to using Facebook Credits.

The use of Facebook Credits is important to Facebook as a way to monetize its vast audience of nearly 500 million monthly active users. Davis said early results show that Facebook Credits is increasing both the revenue per paying user and the number of people who are buying things in apps. He acknowledged that changes that Facebook made to its platform this spring have slowed growth of games, but he said that newly launched Facebook games are seeing rapid growth. He said the lull is a temporary one and that renewed growth is likely as next-generation Facebook games are launched. (Zyngas fast-growing FrontierVille fits in this category, as does Crowdstars Hello City.

Clearly, one of the benefits Crowdstar is reaping from the deal is marketing help. Crowdstar and Facebook worked together this month to promote Hello City, a new city-building simulation. Since its launch, more than 5 million people have played the game.

Google Me, the companys answer to Facebook, may be real. But its a longshot.

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 06:50:37

]]> Another of Silicon Valleys most prominent thinkers in social networking has come forward and confirmed that Google is working on a serious challenge to Facebooks dominance in social networking.

Facebooks first chief technology officer and Quora co-founder Adam DAngelo said on the question-and answer service last night that Google is building out a full, first-class social network in order to keep Facebook at bay. This comes on top of Digg founder Kevin Roses tweet over the weekend mentioning the rumored project.

They had assumed that Facebooks growth would slow as it grew, and that Facebook wouldnt be able to have too much leverage over them, but then it just didnt stop and now they are scared, DAngelo said.

Indeed, following Facebooks developer conference in April, when it launched the Open Graph and an ambitious vision to map the entire web through people, Googles leadership was not amused, according to one source. The companys co-founders have also started tapping younger product managers and associate product managers for ideas on how to build compelling social products and features.

The problem is Facebook has essentially set itself up to build a web-wide brand advertising network with more than one million sites integrated into its platform (although its never said this explicitly). Secondly, the open graph metadata and the liking behavior of its roughly 500 million users will allow it to index the web for a unique search offering. Facebook could marry its like graph with the link graph Google has indexed for years to make a rich and very personalized version of search. This is a much longer-term play, however.

For years, social networking wasnt a high priority at Google internally. While the company had supported Orkut and various socially-flavored products like Google Reader, social networking was not perceived as a serious academic or intellectual problem akin to some of the infrastructure and technical Google faced with search. Google had the ability to buy earlier social, Web 2.0 companies like Flickr, but declined because its leadership believed that the company could have easily built these services in-house and didnt see the value-add. (For an overview of Googles social strategy, click here.)

This attitude has changed within the last two years. As Facebook has grown, its become apparent that the social network has the ability to devour Googles market share in display advertising. Not only that, it could one day go after Googles bread and butter, the search keyword advertising market, if it builds a compelling alternative.

So Google put its efforts into products like Buzz, its much-vaunted social networking layer in Gmail launched earlier this year, and it bought Aardvark, a social search service founded by former Googlers. The problem was, privacy issues aside, Buzz didnt really address an unmet need among consumers. There were already alternatives with strong network effects like Facebook and Twitter.

If this new project, reportedly called Google Me, is going to make any headway for the company, a copycat full, first-class social network probably isnt going to cut it either.

Nelson Georges Left Unsaid Online Series Premieres

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 12:30:09

]]> Nelson George has had an amazing career as a journalist, a screenwriter and producer and now hes an online content provider with a Web series based on something familiar to most of us, Facebook. Left Unsaid premieres today after being well-received at the American Black Film Festival in Miami last week. Http://www.Leftunsaidseries.com