News Bytes: October 8

Sprint, AT&T Coordinate Wide-Ranging Honda Ad Campaign with Sony
via mocoNews.net

Wireless carriers Sprint (NYSE: S) and AT&T (NYSE: T) are working with Sony (NYSE: SNE) Pictures Television on a wide-ranging marketing campaign that places the carmarker on all available ad space on Sony's online and mobile sites. WSJ has the details, which include giving Honda the run of all ad space on Sony Pictures' video site Crackle and record label Sony BMG's web properties and music videos. In addition to outside partners Sprint and AT&T, ads promoting the Honda Fit will appear with Sony-created programming on MySpace and Facebook, YouTube, Hulu, and virtual community Gaia Online. By coordinating the campaign across a range of online and mobile properties, the $500,000 ad deal is designed to "cut through the clutter" of the thousands of ads that users are exposed to. Sony is betting heavily on Honda's success—though how it defines success in this case wasn't made clear—and plans to strike similar blanket deals with other companies.

Net-flix to charge more for Blu-Ray
via Net-flix

As you may know, Blu-ray movies are more expensive than standard definition movies. As a result, we're going to start charging $1 a month (plus applicable taxes), in addition to your monthly membership charge, for unlimited access to Blu-ray movies.The additional charge for unlimited Blu-ray access will be automatically added to your next billing statement on or after November 5th, 2008 and will be referenced in your Membership Terms and Details. If you wish to continue getting Blu-ray movies for $1 a month more, you don't need to do anything. If not, you can remove Blu-ray access anytime by visiting Your Account at the Netflix website.

Crackle Shutting NorCal Office to Move in with Parent Sony
via NewTeeVee

Crackle will be closing up its Sausalito, Calif.-based shop at the end of the month and moving down to Culver City to join its corporate parent, Sony Pictures Entertainment. The move comes more than two years after Sony acquired Crackle, then called Grouper. It is also being accompanied by the departure of most of Crackle’s staff, many of whom were given job offers but declined to move to Southern California.

“It’s really the next logical step in the asset’s evolution,” said Sean Carey, senior executive vice president of Sony Pictures Television. “When we acquired Grouper, it was really about a technological platform. It’s evolved from a technology company to a media network.”

Until very recently, Crackle employed some 35 people, according to Carey, and “half or less of that” will be moving to LA before the end of the month. Sony will be replacing most of those positions with local hires. In February of this year, the site employed 60 people and laid off eight of them as part of a general restructuring. At that time co-founders Josh Felser and Dave Samuel stopped being involved on a day-to-day basis, though they officially left the company more recently.

Grouper was indeed a technology company; it had built desktop applications for P2P sharing and personal video making back in the day, before scoring a $65 million acquisition that preceded YouTube’s sale to Google. Crackle, which launched last summer as a site for discovering the best amateur content on the web and bringing it to the attention of the execs at Sony, has evolved to be more about commissioned professional content. Carey said a key example of what’s to come is the site’s new series Dating Brad Garrett, which makes use of that actor’s relationship with Sony from its show ‘Til Death.

Crackle has consistently built traffic, but it’s not showing up on any top video site rankings just yet. We haven’t been blown away by its original efforts thus far.
Felser said he heartily approved of the move to be closer to Sony, saying it would hopefully set up the site for getting a bigger piece of its parent’s mindshare and assets. “It’s so crowded out there, you need every advantage you can possibly get — outside of being YouTube,” said Felser. “I wouldn’t dream of starting an Internet video site today unless it was highly, highly targeted. Those sites are doomed.”

(Felser himself has started a new video site as a side project — it’s called Blinky TV and its for kids — and he’s also raising a fund to make investments.)

For his part, Carey said Crackle will try to stand out based on its original content — which is arguably a niche in this day and age. “Movies and television shows on the Internet are almost a commodity at this point,” said Carey. “What we believe will differentiate our service is short-form original production with high-caliber content that you can only find — at least in the first instance — at Crackle.com, and secondly, building a much more robust experience around that content.”

Vid-Biz
via NewTeeVee

Universal Music Puts Vids on Kiwibox; music videos will be distributed through the teen social network’s “KiwiboxTV” before the end of the year. (CNET)
Eisner on Hulu and MySpace; former Disney CEO says Hulu is not an end game, but more of a “middle game,” and says MySpace is squandering its video opportunity. (MediaWeek)

Comcast, KIT Digital Make Acquisitions; Comcast Media Center acquires asset delivery systems provider Radiance Technologies for $5 million. (Multichannel News) KIT Digital buys Czech digital media and IPTV company Visual Connection. (paidContent)

RealDVD Injunction Stands For Now
via Digital Trends

U.S. District Judge Marilyn Patel has ruled that a court injunction barring the sale of RealNetworks' RealDVD DVD-copying software will stand for at least another month until she has an opportunity to ramp up on the details of the licensing arrangement, how the software functions, and copyright issues involved in the case. Judge Patel indicated after the hearing that the case raises serious issues of licensing and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and she wasn't satisfied at first hearing that RealDVD was not in violation. As such, she is letting the current injunction blocking the sale of RealDVD stand, and indicated she is next ava …