SnapStream’s ‘TV Searcher’ Blog

Coming to a city near you, SnapStream Media will be showcasing the latest in their TV search technology. Learn more about the Enterprise TV search appliance from any of the sales engineers by visiting them at any of the following conferences:

Morning Show Boot Camp – Denver, CO
July 31st – August 2nd; Exhibit Area
Geared towards morning-talk broadcasters, this conference is loaded with panels and sessions covering every aspect of producing an engaging morning radio broadcast.

Association of Public Safety Communications Officers – Kansas City, MO
August 3rd – August 7th; Booth # 141
A conference catering to the the professional needs of Public Safety Communications Officers – from examining standards and issues to providing education, products and services.

Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication – Chicago, IL
August 6th – August 9th; Table #25
The conference program includes the latest in technology as well as special sessions on teaching, research and public service in the various components of journalism and mass communication.

Texas Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors – Fort Worth, TX
August 7th – August 8th; Exhibit Area
The TATOA conference is dedicated to educating local government officials to better serve their citizens in the development, regulation, and administration of cable television and other telecommunications systems.

Can’t make any of the appearances, well sign up for an online webinar or email enterprise@snapstream.com to schedule a demo.

Jeff Jarvis wrote a blog post last week about how he thought the word “actually” was overused on television. Here’s the post (he lost a bunch of posts and hasn’t restored them all):

Actually is the new ‘y’know’
July 19th, 2008, by Jeff Jarvis

The most overused and unnecessary word on broadcast is “actually.” Start counting how many times it is used by TV people and you’ll hate me for driving you nuts.

While I’m kvetching, why do TV people introduce a panel of three people and then say, “Mr. Jones, let me start with you.” Just start with him: ask your question. Why this need to warn Mr. Jones?

Our TV search appliance is used by a number of journalism schools for content analysis (like Emerson College and GWU, so this got me thinking about how we might try and use our product to measure Jeff’s assertion about the word actually.

So here’s what I did. I took one week of national TV recordings that we had made on a SnapStream Enterprise TV Server and I did some ad-hoc analysis (remember, I’m not expert on content analysis!) on how frequently the word ‘actually’ appeared by series and by network.

Here are the 20 shows that use the word ‘actually’ the most:

And here are the 20 shows that use the word ‘actually’ the least:

And here’s a summary of the the word ‘actually’ by network:

Here’s all the data if you want to dig deeper.

So at the higher end, offending shows are using the word ‘actually’ between once every 10 minutes to once every 3 minutes. Since I’m not a content analysis expert, what other trends can you draw? How could the test be improved?