It’s shaping up to be a good, if expensive, week for survey researchers (and others) who are also Beatles fans. This Wednesday, Harmonix Music Systems will release the greatly anticipated The Beatles: Rock Band , a video game which will allow users to jam along with the Beatles interactively on the game’s electronic instruments. That same day, digitally remastered versions of all Beatles studio albums will be released . Serious aficionados will no doubt snap up the box set featuring 14 of these remastered CDs along with brief documentaries detailing the making of each CD.

In a nine page article in the New York Times describing the making of The Beatles: Rock Band, author Daniel Radosh describes the extensive involvement of surviving Beatles Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney as well as Yoko Ono and Olivia and Dhani Harrison in imagining, creating, refining, and publicizing the game. On the decision to place the Beatles in the center of the interactive video game cultural phenomenon, McCartney comments that “I think it reflects where the Beatles are at.. we are halfway between reality and mythology.” McCartney is also a fan of the game’s interactive nature, noting that “you want people to get engaged… [now people can feel as if] they possess or own the song, that they’ve been in it.”

Meanwhile, some pollsters are hard at work confirming hypotheses that will come as little surprise to Beatles fans: more than forty years after their last group recording, the Beatles are judged to be the most liked musical group in America, and their fans are found in every generation. Pew reports that 49% of those surveyed claimed they liked the Beatles “a lot”, and 81% like the Beatles overall. This is the highest favorability percentage for any of the 20 musical groups or artists included in Pew’s survey. The biggest fans are those between 50 and 64, with 65% of this age group liking the Beatles “a lot”, but fans are found in all age groups: 45% of those between 16 and 25 also like the Beatles “a lot”.

Are you a Beatles fan? Do you think any musical group will ever have a cultural or musical impact equal to the Beatles? Do you plan to purchase or play any of the Beatles-related music or games released this week?

Katy culture, lifestyles, media Beatles, best band ever, culture, entertainment, music, polls, video, work

A recent article in Wall Street Journal argued that social networking sites such as Facebook have some undesirable effects on friendships. One of the arguments made was that the ease with which information can be shared encourages sharing of banality that was previously usually kept for oneself.
One of the targets in both the article and comments were posts and tweets about consuming food and drinks.

Insofar as this is a sin, Zogby Interactive data suggest that not that many of us are sinners. 85% percent of our respondents who use Twitter said they have never twittered about food or drinks. Females tend to find these topic a little more interesting, with 18% saying they have done so (compared to 13% males).

Do you think that sites such as Facebook encourage banality in relationships? Do you tweet about food and drinks?

Zeljka communication, culture, internet, lifestyles, media twitter, work, zogby

Some media outlets have recently reported that conservative groups have been more successful in utilizing twitter than liberal groups. This comes in contrast to recent history, where liberal bloggers and online communities have been thought to have played an instrumental role in the election of President Obama. On this view, the success of a political platform is, at least to some extent, due to new technology.

However, one can look at this from a different angle: the recent success of conservatives tweets may be due to a consolidation of conservative opposition to the administration policies. Likewise, it was a wide discontent with the Bush administration that lead to victory for Democrats, and the effects of new media were incidental to those more fundamental changes.

What is your view of the role of technology in political change? Are new technologies primarily a cause or effect of the rise and fall of political ideas?

Zeljka future, internet, media, politics, technology history, media, Obama, technology, twitter

We’ve done a lot of polling recently on how people get their news and what sources they most trust. We wanted to find out more about why the Internet is in rapid ascendance, while newspapers are on the media endangered species list.
The results come from two Zogby Interactive surveys taken in the past month, one in conjunction with 463 Communications and the other a Zogby project. One question produced a particularly curious result.  We asked which of the four primary information sources was most reliable.

Go to John Zogby’s weekly column at Forbes.com  and read about why many people believe the Internet is the most reliable media source of information. Also, read more about our survey on the Internet and other media here.

Paul John Zogby, communication, internet, media communication, internet, John Zogby, media, television, zogby

The New York Daily News, MSNBC, and Wall Street Journal (subscription required to view full article) all recently reported that Blockbuster’s recent regulatory filing with the SEC raises “serious doubt” about the company’s ability to survive. The Daily News article reports that the survival of Blockbuster hinges partially on their ability to secure a $250 million loan, while MSNBC notes that “even if the loan is funded, the company said it ‘may not have sufficient liquidity to finance the ongoing obligations of our business, which raises substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern’.”

While Blockbuster remains the largest movie rental chain in America, the success of Netflix (DVD rental through mail) and Redbox (DVD rental through kiosk) has apparently cut into Blockbuster’s profits in recent years.  Discussing the former pervasiveness of the chain,  an article on Salon by Mike Madden notes that “there wasn’t a suburban strip mall or a gentrified city neighborhood in America that didn’t wind up with a Blockbuster outlet.”  But this pervasiveness did not lead all consumers to embrace Blockbuster; in 2005, Blockbuster settled a lawsuit related to their late fee policy. Salon writer Mike Madden harbors no nostalgia for the chain:

“Walking into a Blockbuster, even in its glory days, meant you hadn’t     managed to come up with anything more exciting to do that night than rent some mainstream Hollywood crap you somehow missed in the theaters. “Make it a Blockbuster night” may have been its marketing slogan, but somehow the vibe in the place made it feel like nothing more than a clever way to say “Admit defeat, loser.” Every one of the stores was, and still is, exactly the same: all electric blue and canary yellow, with dizzyingly bright walls, trailers for months-old action flicks playing loudly on overhead TV screens and a few surly employees behind the counter. In a pathetic attempt to be an all-in-one supplier of an entire night’s entertainment, the stores throw some popcorn, candy and soda for sale near the checkout line.”

Some of Zogby’s data suggests that the current recession is leading to an increase in low-cost forms of entertainment (such as DVD rentals) at the expense of  higher-cost forms of entertainment. In a February 2009 interactive poll , 58% of those surveyed agreed that they planned on staying home more instead of going out for entertainment because of the current economic conditions.   But  to judge from their recent financial problems, Blockbuster is not benefiting from people’s preferences for lower-cost entertainment. Why might this be? And have your entertainment plans (dvd rental or otherwise) changed recently?

Katy consumption, culture, economics, lifestyles, media, recreation economy, entertainment, lifestyle, race, recession, zogby

Most Americans believe small business, science and tech leaders will lead the U.S. to a better future – not the news media, government or large corporations. That’s the key finding from a new We Media/Zogby survey released today in conjunction with the We Media Miami 09 conference.

You can find and discuss the findings here. Like all surveys, this one is a snapshot in time – and given the times, not that surprising. The world is in a world of mess made worse by failing big businesses and inept governments. Big media is tumbling too. But it correlates with what my research organization, iFOCOS, has been forecasting for nearly a decade: a historic, global shift in human behavior and organization. A new era.

The New Now

While the marketers and lords of commerce were playing with our futures, the future itself was emerging in ways that broke dramatically from the past. Technology, economics and human creativity converged to shape the post-collapse era, the connected and empowered culture we call the New Now. In the connected culture we can no longer claim ignorance, innocence or powerlessness. Great forces of authority, perception and commerce compete for our attention and submission. What’s changed is that we can compete back. And we are. Something big is emerging – a culture broadly redefined and organized around individuals, creativity, empowerment and responsibility – and enriched, as we’ve long anticipated, by the continuous flow of information through ubiquitous digital networks.

In his book The Way We’ll Be, John Zogby writes optimistically of what he sees in today’s 20-somethings – global, digital natives, diverse and accepting of differences, and hunger for solutions. We see that too in our work at iFOCOS: an emerging culture of passion and purpose – in business, in life, in everything. The public’s sense of who will lead us to a better future reflects the failures of the 20th Century’s biggest and most influential institutions.  Dissatisfaction with the news media, corporations and government runs deep. So in The New Now Americans look elsewhere.

Read more…

ZogbyFeaturedContributor communication, future, media culture, economics, future, John Zogby, media, technology, The Way We'll Be, work, zogby