*Sony’s Will Smith Stream Dreams
The Will Smith super-hero actioner Hancock hasn’t even hit theaters yet, but Sony already has big plans for the movie’s debut in your home. The company announced a new service that will deliver movies like Hancock directly to Internet-connected TV sets without the need for a set-top box or heck, even a cable or satellite subscription.
The move is part of Sony’s overall vision to enable video downloading services to all of its main products like the PS3 (which has a video content service launching this summer), PCs and portable media devices.
Who wins and who loses when Sony skips straight to the consumer? The answer is complicated.
Read more of this story
*Movies For Mobiles: Top Sites For Movie Downloads
(Click through to see article)
1Amazon Unbox
2BitTorrent
3CinemaNow
4iTunes
5Movielink
6Vongo
7ZML
*Interview: CEO Quincy Smith, President Neil Ashe, CBS Interactive; Filling In Gaps, Cross Promotion
Now that the merger is complete, it’s time for CBS Interactive (NYSE: CBS) to get onto the business of “changing the world,” in the words of newly named division President Neil Ashe. As we wrote earlier, the unit is dividing into specific verticals. Among them: News & Technology, headed by CNET (NSDQ: CNET) vet Joe Gillespie; Entertainment, which will be lead by Stephen Colvin and Anthony Soohoo; Sports, headed by Jason Kint; International, led by Adam Power; and Business, lead by Greg Mason. Ashe and CBS Interactive CEO Quincy Smith explained the strategy during an interview soon after the announcement:
Cross-promotion: Smith: “You’re going to see a lot more promotion and cross-marketing of CBS brands, as well as the CBS interactive personalities: (for example) Natali Del Conte on the Early Show… It’s gotta work both ways, as you known given the demographics of the CBS Corporation, it’s really found eyeballs online right now.” (Basically: CBS viewers are older and CNET users are younger, so there isn’t much overlap.) Another example offered by Smith: Moblogic recently featured 60 Minutes, prompting some eyebrow raising. In that particular case, the notion was to go out and use the online presence and find new eyeballs.” As for whether experiments like that will actually yield fruit, Smith acknowledged that it’s still an “early day,” but that the success of the NCAA streaming online was a testament to how TV could promote new internet services.
Much more after the jump…
Read More »
*QUALCOMM (NASD: QCOM) is entering the computer chip market. The cellphone chip manufacturer recently unveiled the new Snapdragon microprocessor, which can fully power HD video on a handset using half the amount of power of the competing INTEL (NASD: INTC) X86 chip.
*SAG’s contract with Hollywood studios will expire Tuesday at 12:01 a.m. SAG could negotiate an extension, which would continue talks, or they can begin the strike authorization process, which takes two-weeks.
*Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane will produce a new original web show "Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy" that will be distributed in 50 2-minutes webisodes across a new contextual network based on Google's AdSense code, reports The New York Times. The Google Content Network's demographic targeting ability will enable advertisers to buy pre-roll, display and others ads for clips served only to specific audiences. (Young men, in this case.)
*Check out this new desktop gadget from Google that utilizes the "Universal Plug n' Play" spec to stream media across multiple devices. It can be used to port video, audio and photos from your PC to other devices that support the standard, including Sony's PS3 and certain HP television sets. The Google Media Server works in conjunction with the Google Desktop dashboard, which is also a free download. (So far it's only available for Windows.)
*A new rich media search engine built in collaboration between AT&T and digital media start-up Divvio called VideoCrawler is advancing video search by focusing on two concepts. One is the idea of providing the user with tons of advanced search options to help them wade through the massive amounts of content out there on the web. You can choose to search by media type (audio, video, internet tv, slideshows, etc.) and user rating, then prioritize the results in order of relevancy (the default setting), most viewed, top rated, most recent or file duration.
Customizable parental controls scan metadata to omit the offensive stuff. The site also works behind the scenes to push videos that are trending upward in views to the top of the list.
VideoCrawler also smartly remembers your search preferences for next time so you don't have to always set them. The other core feature here is a "collection" engine allowing users to build, bookmark and share collections of found treasures. Public collections can be viewed by anyone who logs onto the site. If you find someone who's news clips collection you like, for instance, you can bookmark it then return when it's updated. VideoCrawler is definitely a work in progress but AT&T is working hard to index every legitimate piece of content it can get its hands on. So far its crawls about 3,000 sites.
*CBS and NBC Give Digital Execs Promotions
Acknowledging the growing role of digital media within their organizations, both CBS and NBC announced promotions for some of their top digital execs today. But digital isn’t moving anything or anyone else out the door yet; in both instances, the moves created new, formerly unfilled titles.
Quincy Smith, president of CBS Interactive since November 2006, will now be CEO of that division. The announcement came alongside confirmation that CBS’ acquisition of CNET was completed. CNET CEO Neil Ashe will now fill Smith’s old role. The CBS Interactive unit is being expanded along five verticals: technology, entertainment, sports, news and business.
And over at NBC, Vivi Zigler is now President of NBC Universal Digital Entertainment.
Previously she was “Executive Vice President, NBC Digital Entertainment and New Media,” and had been since August 2006. Zigler oversees the NBC Universal Digital Studio and NBC.com. Since NBC splits up its entertainment fare from the rest of its content, Zigler isn’t in charge of all digital initiatives; the company still has George Kliavkoff as its chief digital officer.
Friday, June 27 Blogs
*Sony Pictures Television International announced the launch of three pan-Latin American mobile content portals distributed across 34 carriers and reaching 300 million mobile users in 16 countries across the region. The distribution pipelines give SPTI a marketplace for video clips, wallpapers, ringtones and mobile games sourced from Animax, Sony Entertainment Television, and AXN television networks. Region specific mobile content offerings include Nada Que Ver ("Nothing To Watch,") Brazil's Next Top Model and the animated sci-fi series Afterworld.
Citing data from Hitwise, PBS.org claims it is beating out the 6 commercial broadcast websites in the U.S. in terms of unique visits. PBS.org launched a major search optimization initiative and underwent a major redesign earlier this year, upgrading to a cleaner look and adding hours of new and archived video content.
Despite the continued proliferation of video portals on the web, YouTube increased its market share of unique visits from 60% to 75% of the online video marketplace during the last year according to panel-based Hitwise.
*Virgin Mobile Acquiring MVNO Helio For A Paltry $39M In Equity; Gets $50M Cash Investment
As we have been reporting since the start of these talks, Virgin Mobile (NYSE: VM) has announced the acquisition of troubled MVNO Helio. The acquisition will cost Virgin Mobile a ridiculously low price of $39 million paid in limited partnership units equivalent to 13 million of its shares, currently valued at $2.99. In addition, the company will take on a fresh $50 million of investments from Virgin Group and SK Telecom (NYSE: SKM) at the equivalent of $8.50 per share. Release.Full coverage at our sister site mocoNews.net.
*ActiveVideo Networks Moves Beyond STBs
ActiveVideo Networks (formerly ICTV), is branching out beyond set-top boxes to enable professional web and social media content on almost any Internet-connected device.
The company made a name for itself building interactive TV applications that would work on just about any existing set-top box provided by cable or IPTV services. Now ActiveVideo can work directly with content programmers to deliver web content, casual games and social networks to your television through Blu-Ray players, video game consoles, Internet-enabled TVs and more using standard remote controls.
ActiveVideo has a pretty slick interface to get content from the likes of blip.tv from the web to the TV, but they wouldn’t let me film that particular bit of web video goodness. They did, however, do a demo showing how ActiveVideo combines live TV and web video for destinations like CNN.
*Yahoo announced a major realignment of its executive ranks in an effort to centralize control of product development and execution. The company is creating 3 new teams each reporting to President Sue Decker:
Ash Patel, former manager of the Platforms & Infrastructure group, will lead the Audience Products Division, responsible for product strategy and management
Hillary Schneider, previous head of the Global Partners Solutions group, will be accountable for all Go To Market activity in the U.S. Head of the Yahoo Media Group Scott Moore will report to Hillary
The Insight Strategy group, still looking for leader, will work on unification of strategies across platform.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Thursday, June 26, 2008
News Bytes: June 26
Sony unveils "Life with Playstation" PS3 service
Kaz Hirai took to a Tokyo stage today to give us a peek at the Playstation's future, and he let slip a couple of interesting tidbits. First, Sony will be launching a new program called "Life with Playstation" that will give users real time news and weather, using a globe metaphor reminiscent of the Wii's News Channel. Of course, since the PS3 has considerably more horsepower under the hood, the globe is a rendered weather satellite image showing cloud patterns, and it also supports geo-tagged photos and other content. Kaz also previewed the video-download service set to launch next month at E3, which will allow you to download or stream video to the PS3 and PSP.
The store looks a lot like the current PlayStation Store, and it looks like HD rentals will run around $6 while SD purchases will clock in around $13 when it launches in the States this summer. We'll learn a lot more at E3, presumably, but for now we'll just settle for a decent screen shot of that globe interface.
Sony Offers Morsels On New Video Platform; Announces Investment Plan For Coming Years
Sony (NYSE: SNE), which is always on the hunt for a new strategy or direction, has offered up its latest growth plan across its various myriad business lines. As described by a Thomson wire report, the company will focus more on organic investment—$16.7 billion through 2011—than on cost cutting, as it’s done in the past. In particular, it wants to invest more in the BRIC countries (just like everyone else).
In terms of digital media, Sony says it’s rolling out its long awaited and much rumored new multi-platform video service this summer in the US. Still nothing meaty in terms of usable details, except that it will work with its Bravia TVs, Playstations and handheld devices. Because details are scant, we don’t know how to reconcile this against past reports saying the service would be all about “open standards”, in itself a meaningless phrase. A first step: Offering Sony-made Will Smith vehicle Hancock to owners of internet-connected Bravia TVs before the movie is available on DVD. That’s kind of a typical Sony move, but at least it probably won’t harm anything. As for details of the service, more will be unveiled at a later date. Ok.
As for its games business, it says it expects more from non-games content and services, so again think stuff like video and music delivered via PS3. CEO Howard Stringer also vowed, reports AP, that the money-losing line would be in the black in 2009.
Virgin Mobile USA plans to acquire SK Telecom's Helio phone service and fold it into the pay-as-you-go Virgin Mobile USA brand, according to the Financial Times. That's good news for Helio's 200,000 some odd users as rumors have been swirling that the socially-oriented MVNO was about to pack it in.
NBC signed on to become the first broadcast network to release its show-specific demographic data for the shows it streams online measured through Nielsen Online's VideoCensus, beginning in July. So far broadcast networks have kept this data close to the vest. While the industry assumes online viewing tends to skew younger, it will be interesting to see the hard data on individual shows.
At first glance the new TidalTV portal looks an awful lot like a cable barker channel. (Coincidentally, TV Guide is one of programming providers.) It turns out this is exactly what co-founder and chairman Scott Ferber is going for. The Advertising.com founder set out to create a more passive, TV-like video experience for web users in the 25-54 demo who may not be the web savviest. The interface provides programmed, linear channels from mostly cable and print publishing brands that are grouped in vertical clusters including news, sports, lifestyle and entertainment. Users can also search for on demand programming, but the emphasis is definitely on a more lean back experience. The initial interface is a little clunky. For instance it takes 3 clicks to pull up a small video player to leave on in the background of your desktop (click on "controls," then "options," then finally "mini player.") But Scott promises that TidalTV is already working on tweaks to the interface, including additional customization features. And so far the site seems to be resonating with its target demo. He says early usage patterns reveal that 76% of the audience falls into the 25-54 year old range.
Barry Sonnenfeld staying at Sony
Signs one-year contract
Barry Sonnenfeld is staying put at Sony Pictures TV.His new one-year pact is exclusive for Sonnenfeld's scripted development and gives the studio first look at his unscripted and digital projects. Additionally, Sony TV has Sonnenfeld in first position for directing.Development is a priority for Sonnenfeld this year. He is busy prepping several projects expected to be brought to the networks shortly, including comedy "Things a Man Should Never Do Past 30" and a high-concept drama from Jeff Rake."Things" is based on the book by Esquire editor David Katz. Katz and Esquire editor at large A.J. Jacobs are attached to write, with Jay Scherick and David Ronn supervising.Rake's project is described as a legal drama with a supernatural twist. On the digital front, Sonnenfeld is mulling an online series based on his monthly "Digital Man" Esquire column as well as an interview show. (He showed off his interviewing skills as the moderator of the network chiefs HRTS luncheon last fall).After spending the last year at Sony TV, Sonnenfeld was eager to extend his stay there."I really respect (co-presidents) Jamie (Erlicht) and Zack (Van Amburg)," he said. "I have a very good working relationship with them, and I wanted to be at a studio that is independent of any specific network. I want to be able to sell to anyone."At Sony TV, WMA-repped Sonnenfeld is attached to direct drama pilot "The Kingdom," which is being reworked by British writer Tony Jordan.Outside of the deal, he serves as an exec producer on the ABC/Warner Bros. TV series "Pushing Daisies," which is returning for a second season in the fall.He said he may direct more episodes of the critically praised show, probably in the second half of the season, as his attention in the next few months will be focused on his development for Sony TV
Sleep When You’re Dead, Watch Video Instead
People will spend as much time consuming video-based entertainment as they do sleeping by 2013, according to a new study (PDF) from Solutions Research Group. But, the bells continue to toll for oldteevee as its share of that time will shrink.
SRG reports that currently American consumers over the age of 12 with Internet access spend 6.1 hours a day with some kind of video entertainment (guess Forrester Research’s concept of “OmniVideo” is already here). And while oldteevee accounts for 63.9 percent of those hours across the entire group, the young ‘uns are watching elsewhere, with oldteevee accounting for just 42.4 percent of video time for those aged 12 - 24.
Even worse for oldteevee, though the total number of hours consuming video-based entertainment across platforms will hit 8 hours a day (the same amount of time the average American spends snoozing), time spent with traditional TV’s will remain stalled at roughly 4 hours a day, with its overall share shrinking from 63.9 percent to 47.1 percent by 2013 as mobile devices and online video play a greater role.
MTVN Redux: AtomFilms And AtomUploads Rebrand As Atom.com
As if the online comedy sector wasn’t crowded enough already… Viacom’s (NYSE: VIA) MTVN Entertainment Group has relaunched Atom.com, combining the professional content of AtomFilms.com with the user-generated videos hosted by AtomUploads.com. MTV bought Atom two years ago.
With the launch, Atom.com becomes Comedy Central’s anchor brand for original digital comedy content, developing new properties for distribution and producing the half-hour TV series Atom TV that debuted on Comedy Central this week. The new brand offers community features such as a UGC upload system, user profiles, forums and the “Upload Showdown.” where users can vote for which UG video should be branded as one of Atom’s pro videos. Pro videos earn site promotion and a distribution and licensing contract with royalty payments via Atom’s rev sharing program. The site hosts channels featuring spoofs, sketch groups and cartoons, as well as original web series, Border Patrol, Stephen & Stephen, Stickman Exodus and Benny, Escaped Convict. Dozens more shows are currently in development. As for advertising, each video will include non-interruptive overlay ads and certain videos will use product integration.
It did a somewhat similar move with iFilm, which it bought and then merged it with Spike.com....it even launched a spinoff TV show on VH1 titled Web Junk 20, which was later canceled.
Kaz Hirai took to a Tokyo stage today to give us a peek at the Playstation's future, and he let slip a couple of interesting tidbits. First, Sony will be launching a new program called "Life with Playstation" that will give users real time news and weather, using a globe metaphor reminiscent of the Wii's News Channel. Of course, since the PS3 has considerably more horsepower under the hood, the globe is a rendered weather satellite image showing cloud patterns, and it also supports geo-tagged photos and other content. Kaz also previewed the video-download service set to launch next month at E3, which will allow you to download or stream video to the PS3 and PSP.
The store looks a lot like the current PlayStation Store, and it looks like HD rentals will run around $6 while SD purchases will clock in around $13 when it launches in the States this summer. We'll learn a lot more at E3, presumably, but for now we'll just settle for a decent screen shot of that globe interface.
Sony Offers Morsels On New Video Platform; Announces Investment Plan For Coming Years
Sony (NYSE: SNE), which is always on the hunt for a new strategy or direction, has offered up its latest growth plan across its various myriad business lines. As described by a Thomson wire report, the company will focus more on organic investment—$16.7 billion through 2011—than on cost cutting, as it’s done in the past. In particular, it wants to invest more in the BRIC countries (just like everyone else).
In terms of digital media, Sony says it’s rolling out its long awaited and much rumored new multi-platform video service this summer in the US. Still nothing meaty in terms of usable details, except that it will work with its Bravia TVs, Playstations and handheld devices. Because details are scant, we don’t know how to reconcile this against past reports saying the service would be all about “open standards”, in itself a meaningless phrase. A first step: Offering Sony-made Will Smith vehicle Hancock to owners of internet-connected Bravia TVs before the movie is available on DVD. That’s kind of a typical Sony move, but at least it probably won’t harm anything. As for details of the service, more will be unveiled at a later date. Ok.
As for its games business, it says it expects more from non-games content and services, so again think stuff like video and music delivered via PS3. CEO Howard Stringer also vowed, reports AP, that the money-losing line would be in the black in 2009.
Virgin Mobile USA plans to acquire SK Telecom's Helio phone service and fold it into the pay-as-you-go Virgin Mobile USA brand, according to the Financial Times. That's good news for Helio's 200,000 some odd users as rumors have been swirling that the socially-oriented MVNO was about to pack it in.
NBC signed on to become the first broadcast network to release its show-specific demographic data for the shows it streams online measured through Nielsen Online's VideoCensus, beginning in July. So far broadcast networks have kept this data close to the vest. While the industry assumes online viewing tends to skew younger, it will be interesting to see the hard data on individual shows.
At first glance the new TidalTV portal looks an awful lot like a cable barker channel. (Coincidentally, TV Guide is one of programming providers.) It turns out this is exactly what co-founder and chairman Scott Ferber is going for. The Advertising.com founder set out to create a more passive, TV-like video experience for web users in the 25-54 demo who may not be the web savviest. The interface provides programmed, linear channels from mostly cable and print publishing brands that are grouped in vertical clusters including news, sports, lifestyle and entertainment. Users can also search for on demand programming, but the emphasis is definitely on a more lean back experience. The initial interface is a little clunky. For instance it takes 3 clicks to pull up a small video player to leave on in the background of your desktop (click on "controls," then "options," then finally "mini player.") But Scott promises that TidalTV is already working on tweaks to the interface, including additional customization features. And so far the site seems to be resonating with its target demo. He says early usage patterns reveal that 76% of the audience falls into the 25-54 year old range.
Barry Sonnenfeld staying at Sony
Signs one-year contract
Barry Sonnenfeld is staying put at Sony Pictures TV.His new one-year pact is exclusive for Sonnenfeld's scripted development and gives the studio first look at his unscripted and digital projects. Additionally, Sony TV has Sonnenfeld in first position for directing.Development is a priority for Sonnenfeld this year. He is busy prepping several projects expected to be brought to the networks shortly, including comedy "Things a Man Should Never Do Past 30" and a high-concept drama from Jeff Rake."Things" is based on the book by Esquire editor David Katz. Katz and Esquire editor at large A.J. Jacobs are attached to write, with Jay Scherick and David Ronn supervising.Rake's project is described as a legal drama with a supernatural twist. On the digital front, Sonnenfeld is mulling an online series based on his monthly "Digital Man" Esquire column as well as an interview show. (He showed off his interviewing skills as the moderator of the network chiefs HRTS luncheon last fall).After spending the last year at Sony TV, Sonnenfeld was eager to extend his stay there."I really respect (co-presidents) Jamie (Erlicht) and Zack (Van Amburg)," he said. "I have a very good working relationship with them, and I wanted to be at a studio that is independent of any specific network. I want to be able to sell to anyone."At Sony TV, WMA-repped Sonnenfeld is attached to direct drama pilot "The Kingdom," which is being reworked by British writer Tony Jordan.Outside of the deal, he serves as an exec producer on the ABC/Warner Bros. TV series "Pushing Daisies," which is returning for a second season in the fall.He said he may direct more episodes of the critically praised show, probably in the second half of the season, as his attention in the next few months will be focused on his development for Sony TV
Sleep When You’re Dead, Watch Video Instead
People will spend as much time consuming video-based entertainment as they do sleeping by 2013, according to a new study (PDF) from Solutions Research Group. But, the bells continue to toll for oldteevee as its share of that time will shrink.
SRG reports that currently American consumers over the age of 12 with Internet access spend 6.1 hours a day with some kind of video entertainment (guess Forrester Research’s concept of “OmniVideo” is already here). And while oldteevee accounts for 63.9 percent of those hours across the entire group, the young ‘uns are watching elsewhere, with oldteevee accounting for just 42.4 percent of video time for those aged 12 - 24.
Even worse for oldteevee, though the total number of hours consuming video-based entertainment across platforms will hit 8 hours a day (the same amount of time the average American spends snoozing), time spent with traditional TV’s will remain stalled at roughly 4 hours a day, with its overall share shrinking from 63.9 percent to 47.1 percent by 2013 as mobile devices and online video play a greater role.
MTVN Redux: AtomFilms And AtomUploads Rebrand As Atom.com
As if the online comedy sector wasn’t crowded enough already… Viacom’s (NYSE: VIA) MTVN Entertainment Group has relaunched Atom.com, combining the professional content of AtomFilms.com with the user-generated videos hosted by AtomUploads.com. MTV bought Atom two years ago.
With the launch, Atom.com becomes Comedy Central’s anchor brand for original digital comedy content, developing new properties for distribution and producing the half-hour TV series Atom TV that debuted on Comedy Central this week. The new brand offers community features such as a UGC upload system, user profiles, forums and the “Upload Showdown.” where users can vote for which UG video should be branded as one of Atom’s pro videos. Pro videos earn site promotion and a distribution and licensing contract with royalty payments via Atom’s rev sharing program. The site hosts channels featuring spoofs, sketch groups and cartoons, as well as original web series, Border Patrol, Stephen & Stephen, Stickman Exodus and Benny, Escaped Convict. Dozens more shows are currently in development. As for advertising, each video will include non-interruptive overlay ads and certain videos will use product integration.
It did a somewhat similar move with iFilm, which it bought and then merged it with Spike.com....it even launched a spinoff TV show on VH1 titled Web Junk 20, which was later canceled.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
News Bytes: June 25
NOKIA (NYSE: NOK) will purchase mobile software company SYMBIAN for $411 million. After acquiring the Symbian, whose software runs two-thirds of the world’s smartphones, Nokia will open third party access to the software. Nokia plans to turn Symbian into a foundation for making software available royalty free.
Whedon’s Web Musical Fanboy-tastic!
The wonderfully nerdy fruits of the writers guild strike are starting to ripen. Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon started writing a three-part musical Internet series during the strike with his brothers and the result, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, is coming to soon to a computer near you. The teaser trailer just “leaked” yesterday and is full of fanboy fodder.
Teaser from Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog
Dr. Horrible has high production values and an allstar cast including Niel Patrick Harris as the low-budget villain, The Guild’s Felicia Day as my his love interest and Nathan Fillion of Whedon’s Firefly as the “superhero who’s kind of a dick,” as Fillion describes it. The film was one of the last projects shot on NBC Universal’s New York street set, which burned down earlier this month.
Read more of this story
TubeMogul’s (Biased) List Shows New Media Kicking A$$ Online
The newteevee world is still ruled by new media stars, according to video distrbutor TubeMogul’s Top 40 list. The list is diverse, but old media types don’t break the the Top 10. New teevee whippersnappers like Next New Networks, Effinfunny.com and MyDamnChannel all scored very high. Moving down the list, old media giants are slowly creeping up, with FOX, CBS, Warner Brothers, HBO and Sony Pictures all grabbing spots. So while old media giants are gaining traction with their massive content libraries in the new media space newer players are still holding their own and building their audiences with fresh, web-specific video.
But you don’t have to be a large content network to make it onto the list. TubeMogul’s list shows that web-savvy personalities can push their personal content out to mass audiences. Chris Pirillo, iJustine, Hayden Black and Nalts all grabbed top spots showing that the mantra of “broadcast yourself” still holds. The fact that an online video buffoon like Nalts can score higher than CBS confirms that the playing field has been significantly leveled. Read more of this story
The All-For-Nots Play Kimmel
The All-For-Nots, the real-life band made up for the fictional documentary web series of the same name, will be playing Jimmy Kimmel Live tonight, June 25 at 12:05 ET. Getting on national TV as a musical act is a significant breakthrough for the web show, which we haven’t checked in with since launch (though we’ve been watching on Hulu).
The All-For-Nots has been seen nearly 5 million times, according to Jane Hu of Vuguru. Those views come from distribution partners galore: Bebo, Blip.tv, Dailymotion, HDNet, Hulu, iTunes, ManiaTV, Veoh, Verizon Wireless VCAST, YouTube. Of those we looked at (most don’t display view counts), Veoh seems to be attracting the most, with 419,945 views for one episode (embedded above) and others breaking into the hundreds of thousands. Still, many episodes had just a few hundred views on Veoh, making us think promotion must have had something to do with the big hits. Veoh, after all, is funded by Vuguru founder Michael Eisner.
Meanwhile on YouTube, the single most-viewed episode has 42,910 views, and on DailyMotion the most popular episode has just 49 views (whoa). The show is currently in week 15 of its run, and it has nine weeks left (each week’s release consists of a core episode plus related clips).
The “quasi-fake, quasi-real indie rock band,” as Hu calls them, will be appearing alongside Mike Myers (who’s seen better days) and Boston Celtic Paul Pierce (who hasn’t!).
For more on The All-For-Nots, see our NewTeeVee Station page for the show.
CBS Widget Deal With Blogs Already Profitable CBS Television Stations' digital media group is rolling out a widget-advertising-revenue-sharing program with local bloggers at more than a dozen network-owned stations across the country. The program launched at New York's WCBS last week and was "making money from day one."
AT&T to Boost Online Content Distribution AT&T aims to expand its services to help companies deliver digital media to consumers' computers and mobile phones, moving into competition with outfits like Akamai. AT&T, which already has customers like Forbes.com, will spend $70 million to bolster its network infrastructure.
Disney Overhauls Web Site for Movies, Games Disney is moving once again to overhaul Disney.com, introducing more free video to the site, including full-length movies like "Finding Nemo," as well as more games and activities for visitors to do with their mobile phones. Its video search pages will look similar to those of YouTube.
Whedon’s Web Musical Fanboy-tastic!
The wonderfully nerdy fruits of the writers guild strike are starting to ripen. Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon started writing a three-part musical Internet series during the strike with his brothers and the result, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, is coming to soon to a computer near you. The teaser trailer just “leaked” yesterday and is full of fanboy fodder.
Teaser from Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog
Dr. Horrible has high production values and an allstar cast including Niel Patrick Harris as the low-budget villain, The Guild’s Felicia Day as my his love interest and Nathan Fillion of Whedon’s Firefly as the “superhero who’s kind of a dick,” as Fillion describes it. The film was one of the last projects shot on NBC Universal’s New York street set, which burned down earlier this month.
Read more of this story
TubeMogul’s (Biased) List Shows New Media Kicking A$$ Online
The newteevee world is still ruled by new media stars, according to video distrbutor TubeMogul’s Top 40 list. The list is diverse, but old media types don’t break the the Top 10. New teevee whippersnappers like Next New Networks, Effinfunny.com and MyDamnChannel all scored very high. Moving down the list, old media giants are slowly creeping up, with FOX, CBS, Warner Brothers, HBO and Sony Pictures all grabbing spots. So while old media giants are gaining traction with their massive content libraries in the new media space newer players are still holding their own and building their audiences with fresh, web-specific video.
But you don’t have to be a large content network to make it onto the list. TubeMogul’s list shows that web-savvy personalities can push their personal content out to mass audiences. Chris Pirillo, iJustine, Hayden Black and Nalts all grabbed top spots showing that the mantra of “broadcast yourself” still holds. The fact that an online video buffoon like Nalts can score higher than CBS confirms that the playing field has been significantly leveled. Read more of this story
The All-For-Nots Play Kimmel
The All-For-Nots, the real-life band made up for the fictional documentary web series of the same name, will be playing Jimmy Kimmel Live tonight, June 25 at 12:05 ET. Getting on national TV as a musical act is a significant breakthrough for the web show, which we haven’t checked in with since launch (though we’ve been watching on Hulu).
The All-For-Nots has been seen nearly 5 million times, according to Jane Hu of Vuguru. Those views come from distribution partners galore: Bebo, Blip.tv, Dailymotion, HDNet, Hulu, iTunes, ManiaTV, Veoh, Verizon Wireless VCAST, YouTube. Of those we looked at (most don’t display view counts), Veoh seems to be attracting the most, with 419,945 views for one episode (embedded above) and others breaking into the hundreds of thousands. Still, many episodes had just a few hundred views on Veoh, making us think promotion must have had something to do with the big hits. Veoh, after all, is funded by Vuguru founder Michael Eisner.
Meanwhile on YouTube, the single most-viewed episode has 42,910 views, and on DailyMotion the most popular episode has just 49 views (whoa). The show is currently in week 15 of its run, and it has nine weeks left (each week’s release consists of a core episode plus related clips).
The “quasi-fake, quasi-real indie rock band,” as Hu calls them, will be appearing alongside Mike Myers (who’s seen better days) and Boston Celtic Paul Pierce (who hasn’t!).
For more on The All-For-Nots, see our NewTeeVee Station page for the show.
CBS Widget Deal With Blogs Already Profitable CBS Television Stations' digital media group is rolling out a widget-advertising-revenue-sharing program with local bloggers at more than a dozen network-owned stations across the country. The program launched at New York's WCBS last week and was "making money from day one."
AT&T to Boost Online Content Distribution AT&T aims to expand its services to help companies deliver digital media to consumers' computers and mobile phones, moving into competition with outfits like Akamai. AT&T, which already has customers like Forbes.com, will spend $70 million to bolster its network infrastructure.
Disney Overhauls Web Site for Movies, Games Disney is moving once again to overhaul Disney.com, introducing more free video to the site, including full-length movies like "Finding Nemo," as well as more games and activities for visitors to do with their mobile phones. Its video search pages will look similar to those of YouTube.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
News Bytes: June 24
*Analysis: Converging on Circuit City
So is a deal between Blockbuster and Circuit City getting more likely, or less? Hard to tell, exactly. Things looked grim yesterday, after analysts said Circuit's ugly first-quarter numbers, reported last week, could lead Blockbuster to dial back its $6-$8 a share bid for the floundering electronics chain, which caused CC shares to dive more than 20%. This morning, however, the company said it had agreed to add three new members to its board hand picked by activist investor Mark Wattles. Wattles, who once built Hollywood Video into Blockbuster's largest competitor, has been an outspoken proponent of a deal with his formal rival, which would seem to make a deal more likely. Wattles, in fact, said three potential suitors, presumably including Blockbuster, are looking through CC's books and that a deal would be announced probably within a month.
*After holding back on joining Hulu and largely avoiding syndication of its video content, ABC signed a deal with Veoh Networks to make full episodes of prime time shows available on Veoh.com. Offerings include Desperate Housewives, Lost and Ugly Betty along with originals from ESPN. Users who discover a show on Veoh will actually pull up the Move Networks-powered ABC player to watch the video pre-sold ads, furthering a sort of Trojan Horse strategy centering around control of the delivery platform. (ABC will pay Veoh for the traffic it drives to the site.) Disney is even considering distributing video on Hulu and YouTube in the future, according to The New York Times. *YouTube officially launched its personalized homepage allowing users to manage subscriptions, connect with other users and view friends' activities. One of the coolest additions is a Featured Videos section based on videos you've favored in the past - an example of how Google's algorithmic genius is helping to improve the site.
*Comcast's online movie ticketing service Fandango.com acquired Disney's entertainment news site Movies.com, once aligned to be the online VOD outlet for Disney feature films.
So is a deal between Blockbuster and Circuit City getting more likely, or less? Hard to tell, exactly. Things looked grim yesterday, after analysts said Circuit's ugly first-quarter numbers, reported last week, could lead Blockbuster to dial back its $6-$8 a share bid for the floundering electronics chain, which caused CC shares to dive more than 20%. This morning, however, the company said it had agreed to add three new members to its board hand picked by activist investor Mark Wattles. Wattles, who once built Hollywood Video into Blockbuster's largest competitor, has been an outspoken proponent of a deal with his formal rival, which would seem to make a deal more likely. Wattles, in fact, said three potential suitors, presumably including Blockbuster, are looking through CC's books and that a deal would be announced probably within a month.
*After holding back on joining Hulu and largely avoiding syndication of its video content, ABC signed a deal with Veoh Networks to make full episodes of prime time shows available on Veoh.com. Offerings include Desperate Housewives, Lost and Ugly Betty along with originals from ESPN. Users who discover a show on Veoh will actually pull up the Move Networks-powered ABC player to watch the video pre-sold ads, furthering a sort of Trojan Horse strategy centering around control of the delivery platform. (ABC will pay Veoh for the traffic it drives to the site.) Disney is even considering distributing video on Hulu and YouTube in the future, according to The New York Times. *YouTube officially launched its personalized homepage allowing users to manage subscriptions, connect with other users and view friends' activities. One of the coolest additions is a Featured Videos section based on videos you've favored in the past - an example of how Google's algorithmic genius is helping to improve the site.
*Comcast's online movie ticketing service Fandango.com acquired Disney's entertainment news site Movies.com, once aligned to be the online VOD outlet for Disney feature films.
Monday, June 23, 2008
News Bytes: June 23
New deal for Weiser at Sony TV
Veteran re-upped as president of distribution
John Weiser has re-upped as president of distribution at Sony Pictures Television, signing what is believed to be a new four-year deal with the company.The 18-year Sony veteran oversees all domestic sales operations for SPT, including sales of feature films and first-run and off-network syndicated programs and library titles to U.S. broadcast networks, cable networks, TV station groups, pay TV, satellite companies, cable MSOs, including VOD and pay-per-view, and Spanish-language networks serving U.S. markets. Sony's library includes more than 400 series and 5,000 films.Weiser joined the company in 1990 as a West Coast account executive. He became president of distribution, then a new position, in 2004.Under his leadership, SPT recently extended the studio's output deal with Starz to 2013 and extended the run of "The King of Queens" in broadcast syndication through 2016. In the first-run arena, SPT has sold the court show "Judge Karen" in 95% of the country for a fall launch and recently inked a deal with Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Prods. to co-produce and distribute the new talk show "Dr. Oz" for fall 2009.Weiser's group also created and implemented a ratings database for 35,000 movies. In addition, Weiser is credited with creating the Minisode Network, a Web-based network that launched last year. He reports to SPT president Steve Mosko. "John is in a unique position at SPT, managing so many distribution windows in a quickly changing marketplace," Mosko said.
"His relationships and expertise set him apart, and his innovative thinking, such as the idea behind the Minisode Network, makes him a terrific executive." Weiser also manages the personnel and operations of five regional offices in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Atlanta.
~
Watch Shelly’s commentary on GOOGLE’s (NASD: GOOG) Android mobile platform, which has been pushed back to a fourth quarter release.
YouTube Starts Paying Upfront for Content
YouTube is said to be paying creators a fee to license films for its new indie short-film destination. A YouTube spokesperson says: "We are experimenting with a variety of limited promotional sponsorship programs." Still, YouTube is "not getting into the acquisitions business."
ESPN launched its latest online exclusive series giving fans an "all access" look at Kansas State basketball star Michael Beasley, expected to be one of the top 2 picks in the NBA draft on June 26. Ten 3-5 minute webisodes will premiere on ESPN.com and ESPN Mobile TV throughout the summer.
As reported, CARL ICAHN’s Icahn Report launched yesterday and the blog finds Icahn to be much like many other bloggers; angry. The activist investors goal is simple: “to expose the worst of corporate America.” With posts like “About CEOs…Survival of the Unfittest” and the “Absurdity of Corporate Board Elections”, Icahn probably isn’t going to be making any new executive friends in the future.
Apple topped 5 billion songs sold on the iTunes platform. (Pretty soon they're going to have to just say "billions served," like McDonalds does.) More than 50,000 movies are being rented or purchased each day at an average price of $6/title, making it the most popular online movie outlet.
Tribe Pictures is producing an original web series debuting Monday called Get Fit with Alyson sponsored by Nintendo and starring Alyson Stoner (of the upcoming Disney kids movie Camp Rock.) Each 3-minute webisode sets out to inspire teens to live a more active lifestyle (such as trying new games on the Wii Fit device). Additional content will be featured exclusively on the Nintendo Channel, accessible only through broadband-connected Wiis.
VOD ad impressions can provide better recall results than linear TV ads, according to a new study conducted by Frank N. Magid Associates for Exercise TV. The study found that VOD impressions have higher order value versus linear TV advertising impressions because the advertising is relevant to the content. The VOD viewer also tended to be more engaged than the typical TV viewer. Brands such as Slim-Fast and New Balance scored the highest because viewers tend to watch specifically to exercise and lose weight.
Blank Slate Blurs Web/TV Series
Oldteevee just got a little more like newteevee as cable network TNT announced Blank Slate, a new “microseries” that will debut in September. Variety reports that the 80-minute crime thriller will be chopped up into twenty, four-minute minisodes that will air during primetime.
Blank Slate is about an amnesiac who gets implanted with memories of the recently dead; it’s produced by Dean Devlin (Independence Day) and will star Eric Stoltz. Acura has signed on as a sponsor and will have its cars featured prominently in the minisodes (to get those sneaky commercial fast forwarders).Read more of this story
Veoh to Get Paid to Link to ABC
Veoh has struck a deal to index TV shows from ABC and ESPN, making it only the second portal to get official entertainment content from the Disney-owned networks after AOL. However, the deal is sort of silly because ABC doesn’t actually allow embeds of its content, only links to launch its player (which requires downloading the Move Networks plug-in). And it’s not like anyone else can’t also link to ABC’s player; the difference is ABC will be paying for any traffic Veoh drives, according to the New York Times. Read more of this story
Get Ready for “OmniVideo”
Video will become so ubiquitous and pervasive in five years that it will be almost difficult to avoid, according to a recent study from Forrester. In the report “How Video Will Take Over the World,” James L. McQuivey lays out an “OmniVideo” scenario that doesn’t seem nefarious as much as it appears to be inevitable. In the report, McQuivey predicts a (not-so-distant) future in which we’ll encounter video on just about every surface we come in contact with. Alarm clocks, GPS devices, gas stations, taxis and kiosks, are just a few of the devices along with cell phones, PCs and regular ol’ TVs that will beam video to us. McQuivey predicts that, by 2013, total video viewing time will jump from four hours today to four hours a day.
Read more of this story
Comcast-Owned Fandango Buys Movies.com From Disney
So Comcast (NSDQ: CMCSA) couldn’t buy Disney (NYSE: DIS) a few years ago, but it has now succeeded in buying a part of it, sort of: Fandango, the online movie tickets service that Comcast bought a year ago, has bought out movies info site Movies.com from Disney, for an undisclosed sum.
Veteran re-upped as president of distribution
John Weiser has re-upped as president of distribution at Sony Pictures Television, signing what is believed to be a new four-year deal with the company.The 18-year Sony veteran oversees all domestic sales operations for SPT, including sales of feature films and first-run and off-network syndicated programs and library titles to U.S. broadcast networks, cable networks, TV station groups, pay TV, satellite companies, cable MSOs, including VOD and pay-per-view, and Spanish-language networks serving U.S. markets. Sony's library includes more than 400 series and 5,000 films.Weiser joined the company in 1990 as a West Coast account executive. He became president of distribution, then a new position, in 2004.Under his leadership, SPT recently extended the studio's output deal with Starz to 2013 and extended the run of "The King of Queens" in broadcast syndication through 2016. In the first-run arena, SPT has sold the court show "Judge Karen" in 95% of the country for a fall launch and recently inked a deal with Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Prods. to co-produce and distribute the new talk show "Dr. Oz" for fall 2009.Weiser's group also created and implemented a ratings database for 35,000 movies. In addition, Weiser is credited with creating the Minisode Network, a Web-based network that launched last year. He reports to SPT president Steve Mosko. "John is in a unique position at SPT, managing so many distribution windows in a quickly changing marketplace," Mosko said.
"His relationships and expertise set him apart, and his innovative thinking, such as the idea behind the Minisode Network, makes him a terrific executive." Weiser also manages the personnel and operations of five regional offices in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Atlanta.
~
Watch Shelly’s commentary on GOOGLE’s (NASD: GOOG) Android mobile platform, which has been pushed back to a fourth quarter release.
YouTube Starts Paying Upfront for Content
YouTube is said to be paying creators a fee to license films for its new indie short-film destination. A YouTube spokesperson says: "We are experimenting with a variety of limited promotional sponsorship programs." Still, YouTube is "not getting into the acquisitions business."
ESPN launched its latest online exclusive series giving fans an "all access" look at Kansas State basketball star Michael Beasley, expected to be one of the top 2 picks in the NBA draft on June 26. Ten 3-5 minute webisodes will premiere on ESPN.com and ESPN Mobile TV throughout the summer.
As reported, CARL ICAHN’s Icahn Report launched yesterday and the blog finds Icahn to be much like many other bloggers; angry. The activist investors goal is simple: “to expose the worst of corporate America.” With posts like “About CEOs…Survival of the Unfittest” and the “Absurdity of Corporate Board Elections”, Icahn probably isn’t going to be making any new executive friends in the future.
Apple topped 5 billion songs sold on the iTunes platform. (Pretty soon they're going to have to just say "billions served," like McDonalds does.) More than 50,000 movies are being rented or purchased each day at an average price of $6/title, making it the most popular online movie outlet.
Tribe Pictures is producing an original web series debuting Monday called Get Fit with Alyson sponsored by Nintendo and starring Alyson Stoner (of the upcoming Disney kids movie Camp Rock.) Each 3-minute webisode sets out to inspire teens to live a more active lifestyle (such as trying new games on the Wii Fit device). Additional content will be featured exclusively on the Nintendo Channel, accessible only through broadband-connected Wiis.
VOD ad impressions can provide better recall results than linear TV ads, according to a new study conducted by Frank N. Magid Associates for Exercise TV. The study found that VOD impressions have higher order value versus linear TV advertising impressions because the advertising is relevant to the content. The VOD viewer also tended to be more engaged than the typical TV viewer. Brands such as Slim-Fast and New Balance scored the highest because viewers tend to watch specifically to exercise and lose weight.
Blank Slate Blurs Web/TV Series
Oldteevee just got a little more like newteevee as cable network TNT announced Blank Slate, a new “microseries” that will debut in September. Variety reports that the 80-minute crime thriller will be chopped up into twenty, four-minute minisodes that will air during primetime.
Blank Slate is about an amnesiac who gets implanted with memories of the recently dead; it’s produced by Dean Devlin (Independence Day) and will star Eric Stoltz. Acura has signed on as a sponsor and will have its cars featured prominently in the minisodes (to get those sneaky commercial fast forwarders).Read more of this story
Veoh to Get Paid to Link to ABC
Veoh has struck a deal to index TV shows from ABC and ESPN, making it only the second portal to get official entertainment content from the Disney-owned networks after AOL. However, the deal is sort of silly because ABC doesn’t actually allow embeds of its content, only links to launch its player (which requires downloading the Move Networks plug-in). And it’s not like anyone else can’t also link to ABC’s player; the difference is ABC will be paying for any traffic Veoh drives, according to the New York Times. Read more of this story
Get Ready for “OmniVideo”
Video will become so ubiquitous and pervasive in five years that it will be almost difficult to avoid, according to a recent study from Forrester. In the report “How Video Will Take Over the World,” James L. McQuivey lays out an “OmniVideo” scenario that doesn’t seem nefarious as much as it appears to be inevitable. In the report, McQuivey predicts a (not-so-distant) future in which we’ll encounter video on just about every surface we come in contact with. Alarm clocks, GPS devices, gas stations, taxis and kiosks, are just a few of the devices along with cell phones, PCs and regular ol’ TVs that will beam video to us. McQuivey predicts that, by 2013, total video viewing time will jump from four hours today to four hours a day.
Read more of this story
Comcast-Owned Fandango Buys Movies.com From Disney
So Comcast (NSDQ: CMCSA) couldn’t buy Disney (NYSE: DIS) a few years ago, but it has now succeeded in buying a part of it, sort of: Fandango, the online movie tickets service that Comcast bought a year ago, has bought out movies info site Movies.com from Disney, for an undisclosed sum.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
News Bytes: June 19
Scripps Networks announced a syndication deal with AOL Video to distribute clips of programs from HGTV, Food Network, DIY and Find Living on AOL sites including Food, Home and Slashfood. The deal includes an ad revenue sharing agreement.
Mobile entertainment provider Viva Vision announced a strategic partnership with the Sports Illustrated Group to license its proprietary slide show application to produce a SI Swimsuit slideshow for mobile handsets.
Ego TV signed a deal to distribute its shows via Clearspring video widgets, beginning with web drama Malibu U., Ego TV's new series following sorority girls' lives in trendy Malibu, CA. Ego TV's Dream Jobs with Tom Arnold and Anatomy of a Rock Star - Doc McGhee will also be featured.
Verizon also announced plans to upgrade its Fios broadband service to accommodate video-happy customers' need for speed. Rates of 50Mbps down/20Mbps up for $140/month and 20Mbps down/20Mbps up for $65/month will be available across its 16 state footprint beginning next week. Comcast launched its 50Mbp down/5 Mbps up service in Minneapolis in April for $150/month but doesn't expect to roll it out nationally until 2010.
TVN Entertainment Corp has entered into a long-term VOD services agreement with Fox Cable Networks to help enhance its own VOD offerings surrounding such core linear brands as Speed, National Geographic Channel and Big Ten Network. Ericcson Group's Tanberg Television unveiled a new content management system called MediaModeler enabling telco operators to offer online video content to television customers through a single, customized user interface.
A new mobile ad platform is being developed by digital Sidebar to deliver ad content using the white space that appears when customers dial a number or send and receive SMS messages. Content includes promotions which link to interactive and multimedia entertainment. Sidebar enables targeting of content to users by age, gender, interests, use patterns and day & time.
Updated: Yahoo’s Exit Door Blown Open: Garlinghouse,Makhijani, Lu Leaving; Reorg Plans Still Fluid
Yahoo’s (NSDQ: YHOO) senior management exodus is picking up steam by the minute: next to go is Brad Garlinghouse, the head of Yahoo’s communications and communities group—and author of the infamous “Peanut Butter Manifesto,” is leaving the company, fed up with the current path the company is taking, we have confirmed. The news was first reported by Techcrunch. Also, not yet confirmed by us, but TC reports that Vish Makhijani, the SVP and GM of Search, is leaving to become the CEO of Yandex, the Russian search engine which is headed for a big IPO.
Garlinghouse is not leaving for any specific job yet, though if recent exec departures are any indication of where the wind is blowing, it would probably be a VC or PE firm.
Meanwhile, Kara reported this morning that the next one out the exit door is Qi Lu, Yahoo’s EVP engineering for Search and Advertising Technology Group. Lu holds about 20 patents and has been heading up Yahoo’s search revenue development projects. Updated: NYT is also reporting that Makhijani and Lu are leaving, and that Makhijani is taking on the CEO role at Yandex.
Our sources say any big reorg plans at Yahoo are still fluid, as the dust on any other senior execs staying or leaving has not yet settled. All these departures mean that Yahoo’s network division, which runs all services on the portal, is without its top leader and two of his four deputies. It is expected that Hilary Schneider, EVP for global partner solutions, will take on more responsibilities.
Menwhile, Jeremy Zawodny, the tech evangelist at Yahoo who left earlier this month, is now joining Craigslist, he announced on his blog...he will be working on the tech side.
Industry Moves: Changes At FIM’s Scout: SVP Patrick Crumb Leaves For Liberty Media; Husvar New GM
Patrick Crumb, the SVP at Fox Interactive Media (NYSE: NWS), and GM of sports site network Scout Media, which FIM bought in 2005, has left the company, and is joining Liberty Sports Group, the newly formed subsidiary of Liberty Media (NSDQ: LINTA). He is joining as EVP of Business Affairs and General Counsel. Crumb had worked with Scout since 2001 and had served as Scout’s President & General Counsel, a member of its board of directors and an investor. In his new role, Crumb will be responsible for leading the group’s efforts in growth and expansion across all existing properties while seeking out new business ventures locally and nationally, it said.
Liberty Sports currently consists of three regional sports networks in Denver, Pittsburgh and Seattle....Crumb is based in Seattle.
Update: Effective July 1, Crumb’s replacement at FIM is Jeff Husvar, promoted to SVP-Operations of Fox Sports Interactive from VP-business operations, and now adding the title of Scout GM. He has also been GM of WhatifSports.com. He’ll oversee all strategy, operations and production for Scout’s online and publishing businesses, according to an internal memo from Brian Grey, SVP and GM of Fox Sports Interactive. Husvar remains based in LA but will ratchet up his time in Seattle, where Scott is based.
Murdoch: Digital Could Make Up 75 Percent Of Dow Jones Revs
Dow Jones gets about half of its revenues from its digital operations right now, and within a few short years, News Corp (NYSE: NWS). CEO Rupert Murdoch expects his subsidiary to receive 75 percent of its revs from its online business. Reuters reported Murdoch’s remarks from the Cannes Lions 2008 international advertising festival, where he was joined by News Corp. COO Peter Chernin. He added that he wasn’t solely referring to The Wall St. Journal, but the other DJ properties, which include its Newswires as well as financial pubs like Barron’s and Marketwatch. Asked about what’s surprised him since taking over the company last fall, Murdoch said he didn’t expect “how cooperative the vast majority of journalists have been.”
Apple Says It Sold 5 Billion Songs; Could Movies Become A $100M Business?
Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) announced today that it has sold a total of about 5 billion songs, up from the 4 billion mark it announced in Jan this year. The more interesting bit is that it is now renting and purchasing over 50,000 movies every day, the company says. Apple has recently done deals with all of the major movie studios after a few years of trying to convince others besides Disney (NYSE: DIS) to come onto the service. At this rate, it will have sold or rented about 18.25 million movies on an annualized basis.
Cynthia Brumfield does some basic calculations on the possible annual revenues for Apple: “iTunes movie sales are priced at $9.99 (for library titles) and $14.99 (for new releases). Rentals are priced at $2.99 (library) to $3.99 (new releases), with Apple TV HD versions of film rentals priced at $1 above the standard rental prices. Assuming that the average price of a sale/rental combined is around $6, then Apple is raking in around $110 million in movie revenue alone on an annual basis.” While that isn’t necessarily a huge amount, that is the amount that didn’t exist before. It is also big in the online/digital video world.
This figure does not include TV shows, which is a much bigger business for Apple and could bring in as much as $200 million in revenues this year.
Fortune: On the music side, this represents a significant acceleration in music sales. It took Apple (AAPL) nearly three years to sell its first billion songs (Feb 23, 2006), ten months to sell its second billion (Jan. 6, 2007), seven months to sell its third (July 31, 2007) and fourth billion (Feb. 27, 2008), and only three and a half months to sell its fifth (June 19, 2008).
SPRINT NEXTEL (NYSE: S) will release its own touch-screen smart phone for $129. Dubbed the Instinct, the new smart phone boasts many of the same features of the iPhone. Sprint had announced that the Instinct would retail for the same price as APPLE’s iPhone, however, by cutting costs Sprint hopes to undermine the iPhone market.
YouTube Screening Room Launches
This evening, I’m updating live from the YouTube Screening Room launch party in Los Angeles, where a press conference will reveal more details about YouTube’s plans to showcase and distribute online high-quality short films from around the world — four shorts to be released every two weeks, with feature-length projects to be considered on a case-by-case basis. Press release includes strong language about “creating new business opportunities for filmmakers,” with all participants enrolled in revenue-sharing and able to link out to sites where the films are available for sale.
Chris is skeptical about the program’s success — what I’m still wondering, though, is if this really will give the undiscovered filmmaker a chance to get greater exposure. While YouTube Film and Animation Manager Sara Pollack was vague on how future films will be selected by an undisclosed editorial team, citing a process of word-of-mouth and filmmaker outreach, she did promise that filmmakers could email YouTube directly at ytscreeningroom@youtube.com to pitch their films. Hopefully they’ll be able to find some hidden gems in the mass of unsolicited submissions they’re doomed to receive — if only so the Screening Room can occasionally feature films produced in the last year.
Mobile entertainment provider Viva Vision announced a strategic partnership with the Sports Illustrated Group to license its proprietary slide show application to produce a SI Swimsuit slideshow for mobile handsets.
Ego TV signed a deal to distribute its shows via Clearspring video widgets, beginning with web drama Malibu U., Ego TV's new series following sorority girls' lives in trendy Malibu, CA. Ego TV's Dream Jobs with Tom Arnold and Anatomy of a Rock Star - Doc McGhee will also be featured.
Verizon also announced plans to upgrade its Fios broadband service to accommodate video-happy customers' need for speed. Rates of 50Mbps down/20Mbps up for $140/month and 20Mbps down/20Mbps up for $65/month will be available across its 16 state footprint beginning next week. Comcast launched its 50Mbp down/5 Mbps up service in Minneapolis in April for $150/month but doesn't expect to roll it out nationally until 2010.
TVN Entertainment Corp has entered into a long-term VOD services agreement with Fox Cable Networks to help enhance its own VOD offerings surrounding such core linear brands as Speed, National Geographic Channel and Big Ten Network. Ericcson Group's Tanberg Television unveiled a new content management system called MediaModeler enabling telco operators to offer online video content to television customers through a single, customized user interface.
A new mobile ad platform is being developed by digital Sidebar to deliver ad content using the white space that appears when customers dial a number or send and receive SMS messages. Content includes promotions which link to interactive and multimedia entertainment. Sidebar enables targeting of content to users by age, gender, interests, use patterns and day & time.
Updated: Yahoo’s Exit Door Blown Open: Garlinghouse,Makhijani, Lu Leaving; Reorg Plans Still Fluid
Yahoo’s (NSDQ: YHOO) senior management exodus is picking up steam by the minute: next to go is Brad Garlinghouse, the head of Yahoo’s communications and communities group—and author of the infamous “Peanut Butter Manifesto,” is leaving the company, fed up with the current path the company is taking, we have confirmed. The news was first reported by Techcrunch. Also, not yet confirmed by us, but TC reports that Vish Makhijani, the SVP and GM of Search, is leaving to become the CEO of Yandex, the Russian search engine which is headed for a big IPO.
Garlinghouse is not leaving for any specific job yet, though if recent exec departures are any indication of where the wind is blowing, it would probably be a VC or PE firm.
Meanwhile, Kara reported this morning that the next one out the exit door is Qi Lu, Yahoo’s EVP engineering for Search and Advertising Technology Group. Lu holds about 20 patents and has been heading up Yahoo’s search revenue development projects. Updated: NYT is also reporting that Makhijani and Lu are leaving, and that Makhijani is taking on the CEO role at Yandex.
Our sources say any big reorg plans at Yahoo are still fluid, as the dust on any other senior execs staying or leaving has not yet settled. All these departures mean that Yahoo’s network division, which runs all services on the portal, is without its top leader and two of his four deputies. It is expected that Hilary Schneider, EVP for global partner solutions, will take on more responsibilities.
Menwhile, Jeremy Zawodny, the tech evangelist at Yahoo who left earlier this month, is now joining Craigslist, he announced on his blog...he will be working on the tech side.
Industry Moves: Changes At FIM’s Scout: SVP Patrick Crumb Leaves For Liberty Media; Husvar New GM
Patrick Crumb, the SVP at Fox Interactive Media (NYSE: NWS), and GM of sports site network Scout Media, which FIM bought in 2005, has left the company, and is joining Liberty Sports Group, the newly formed subsidiary of Liberty Media (NSDQ: LINTA). He is joining as EVP of Business Affairs and General Counsel. Crumb had worked with Scout since 2001 and had served as Scout’s President & General Counsel, a member of its board of directors and an investor. In his new role, Crumb will be responsible for leading the group’s efforts in growth and expansion across all existing properties while seeking out new business ventures locally and nationally, it said.
Liberty Sports currently consists of three regional sports networks in Denver, Pittsburgh and Seattle....Crumb is based in Seattle.
Update: Effective July 1, Crumb’s replacement at FIM is Jeff Husvar, promoted to SVP-Operations of Fox Sports Interactive from VP-business operations, and now adding the title of Scout GM. He has also been GM of WhatifSports.com. He’ll oversee all strategy, operations and production for Scout’s online and publishing businesses, according to an internal memo from Brian Grey, SVP and GM of Fox Sports Interactive. Husvar remains based in LA but will ratchet up his time in Seattle, where Scott is based.
Murdoch: Digital Could Make Up 75 Percent Of Dow Jones Revs
Dow Jones gets about half of its revenues from its digital operations right now, and within a few short years, News Corp (NYSE: NWS). CEO Rupert Murdoch expects his subsidiary to receive 75 percent of its revs from its online business. Reuters reported Murdoch’s remarks from the Cannes Lions 2008 international advertising festival, where he was joined by News Corp. COO Peter Chernin. He added that he wasn’t solely referring to The Wall St. Journal, but the other DJ properties, which include its Newswires as well as financial pubs like Barron’s and Marketwatch. Asked about what’s surprised him since taking over the company last fall, Murdoch said he didn’t expect “how cooperative the vast majority of journalists have been.”
Apple Says It Sold 5 Billion Songs; Could Movies Become A $100M Business?
Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) announced today that it has sold a total of about 5 billion songs, up from the 4 billion mark it announced in Jan this year. The more interesting bit is that it is now renting and purchasing over 50,000 movies every day, the company says. Apple has recently done deals with all of the major movie studios after a few years of trying to convince others besides Disney (NYSE: DIS) to come onto the service. At this rate, it will have sold or rented about 18.25 million movies on an annualized basis.
Cynthia Brumfield does some basic calculations on the possible annual revenues for Apple: “iTunes movie sales are priced at $9.99 (for library titles) and $14.99 (for new releases). Rentals are priced at $2.99 (library) to $3.99 (new releases), with Apple TV HD versions of film rentals priced at $1 above the standard rental prices. Assuming that the average price of a sale/rental combined is around $6, then Apple is raking in around $110 million in movie revenue alone on an annual basis.” While that isn’t necessarily a huge amount, that is the amount that didn’t exist before. It is also big in the online/digital video world.
This figure does not include TV shows, which is a much bigger business for Apple and could bring in as much as $200 million in revenues this year.
Fortune: On the music side, this represents a significant acceleration in music sales. It took Apple (AAPL) nearly three years to sell its first billion songs (Feb 23, 2006), ten months to sell its second billion (Jan. 6, 2007), seven months to sell its third (July 31, 2007) and fourth billion (Feb. 27, 2008), and only three and a half months to sell its fifth (June 19, 2008).
SPRINT NEXTEL (NYSE: S) will release its own touch-screen smart phone for $129. Dubbed the Instinct, the new smart phone boasts many of the same features of the iPhone. Sprint had announced that the Instinct would retail for the same price as APPLE’s iPhone, however, by cutting costs Sprint hopes to undermine the iPhone market.
YouTube Screening Room Launches
This evening, I’m updating live from the YouTube Screening Room launch party in Los Angeles, where a press conference will reveal more details about YouTube’s plans to showcase and distribute online high-quality short films from around the world — four shorts to be released every two weeks, with feature-length projects to be considered on a case-by-case basis. Press release includes strong language about “creating new business opportunities for filmmakers,” with all participants enrolled in revenue-sharing and able to link out to sites where the films are available for sale.
Chris is skeptical about the program’s success — what I’m still wondering, though, is if this really will give the undiscovered filmmaker a chance to get greater exposure. While YouTube Film and Animation Manager Sara Pollack was vague on how future films will be selected by an undisclosed editorial team, citing a process of word-of-mouth and filmmaker outreach, she did promise that filmmakers could email YouTube directly at ytscreeningroom@youtube.com to pitch their films. Hopefully they’ll be able to find some hidden gems in the mass of unsolicited submissions they’re doomed to receive — if only so the Screening Room can occasionally feature films produced in the last year.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
News Bytes: June 18
Global Online Ad Revs To Grow 19.5 Annually To 2012: PwC
Despite daily evidence of slowing online ad growth, internet revenues will represent the highest growth levels of overall media worldwide, averaging 19.5 percent annually through 2012, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers’ annual Global Entertainment and Media Outlook. Last year, PwC expected internet advertising and access spending would grow an average of 13.4 percent through 2011—nevertheless, those numbers are a far cry from 2006 to 2007, when PwC noted that advertising rose 37.9 percent. In general, PwC expects worldwide revenues to hit $2.2 trillion by 2012, with annual growth averaging 6.6 percent each year—up slightly from 2007’s expectation 6.4 percent average annual growth.
-- Digital’s market share to remain small: Although digital and mobile distribution accounted for only 5 percent of global entertainment and media spending in 2007, these revenues will account for 24 percent of all growth throughout the industry to 2012. By that year, PwC predicts, digital and mobile revenues will account for just 11 percent of total entertainment and media spending, or $234 billion of the $2.2 trillion global market. In comparison, by 2012, digital and mobile revenues will account for 10 percent of total E&M spending in the U.S., or $75 billion of the $759 billion U.S. market. Still, revenue devoted to online and portable devices is going to continue to be the main driver of global media spending. Specifically for the U.S., internet ads are forecast to grow at a 15.1 percent annual growth rate (CAGR), followed by internet access (10.9 percent CAGR) and video games, which are set to expand at a 7.9 percent CAGR.
-- Digital passes CDs by 2011: When it comes to traditional media’s dominance, music is the one exception. As PwC’s report indicates, recorded music revenues are projected to drop 0.6 percent through 2012, though the sales in that area could start growing again by 2011, when PwC expects digital distribution to surpass CDs. Release
US IPTV Subscriptions Quadrupled In 2007; Not Taking Away From Satellite (Yet): iSuppli
Halfway through 2008, iSuppli is out with its assessment of the IPTV market for 2007. IPTV sometimes gets used for all kinds of things, though in this case they’re talking about the advanced internet services from the likes of Verizon (NYSE: VZ) and AT&T (NYSE: T). The basic numbers: North American IPTV subscriber rolls were up almost fourfold to 1.2 million. Across North and South America, total IPTV subscribers totalled nearly 1.8 million. As for the forecast, iSuppli isn’t breaking down its North America-only numbers, but it expects that in North and South America, total subscribers will grow ten-fold by 2011 to 17.7 million.
Besides the numbers, the firm’s takeaway is that IPTV isn’t cutting into satellite TV providers just yet. However going into this year, the tension will escalate as satellite providers increasingly compete with their previous partners. Think: The relationship between DISH and AT&T, which may be souring. As for whether IPTV is hurting cable operators, we know that there’s been talk of pressure in the past. This particular report, however, doesn’t get into it, saying that for the most part IPTV subscribers are new additions to the pay-TV marketplace. Given the estimated growth though, that can’t last.
AOL to Carry Shows from HGTV and Food Network; Barefoot Contessa and Carter Can among programs being distributed. (MediaWeek)
Does Online TV Have a Short Shelf Life?
New research indicates that online videos get the majority of their views soon after they’re posted. Of 10,916 videos with at least 1,000 views after 90 days, half of those views happened over the first two weeks, according to a study by video analytics firm TubeMogul. Views peak on day three, with 11 percent of all views happening on that day, according to the study.
So what does this mean? Despite the on-demand revolution, we still experience cultural phenomena together. Which is great in its own way. But I’m skeptical — focusing on the first 90 days and extrapolating from there is bound to bias growth towards the beginning of a video’s lifecycle.
And how does it account for classic gems like this one — Mr. T rapping “Treat Your Mother Right,” which I first saw this week, more than a year after it had been added to YouTube? Not to mention however well it did when it originally aired, this version has nearly 2 million views and a full page of comments just from the last day.
Read more of this story.
MICROSOFT (NASD: MSFT) will acquire interactive TV ad network NAVIC for an undisclosed sum. Navic’s platform provides advertising and interactive television applications on over 35 million set-top boxes on COMCAST (NASD: CMCSA), COX (NYSE: CXR), TIME WARNER CABLE (NYSE: TWC) and CHARTER COMMUNICATIONS (NASD: CHTR) networks. Navic helps advertisers broaden their reach by tailoring ads to demographics and other viewer characteristics.
Analysts believe the iPhone could drive a third of APPLE’s (NASD: AAPL) revenue in 2009. With a lower price tag on the iPhone, Morgan Stanley expects Apple to sell 27 million units in 2009, which at $200 a phone would generate roughly $5 billion in revenue.
Despite daily evidence of slowing online ad growth, internet revenues will represent the highest growth levels of overall media worldwide, averaging 19.5 percent annually through 2012, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers’ annual Global Entertainment and Media Outlook. Last year, PwC expected internet advertising and access spending would grow an average of 13.4 percent through 2011—nevertheless, those numbers are a far cry from 2006 to 2007, when PwC noted that advertising rose 37.9 percent. In general, PwC expects worldwide revenues to hit $2.2 trillion by 2012, with annual growth averaging 6.6 percent each year—up slightly from 2007’s expectation 6.4 percent average annual growth.
-- Digital’s market share to remain small: Although digital and mobile distribution accounted for only 5 percent of global entertainment and media spending in 2007, these revenues will account for 24 percent of all growth throughout the industry to 2012. By that year, PwC predicts, digital and mobile revenues will account for just 11 percent of total entertainment and media spending, or $234 billion of the $2.2 trillion global market. In comparison, by 2012, digital and mobile revenues will account for 10 percent of total E&M spending in the U.S., or $75 billion of the $759 billion U.S. market. Still, revenue devoted to online and portable devices is going to continue to be the main driver of global media spending. Specifically for the U.S., internet ads are forecast to grow at a 15.1 percent annual growth rate (CAGR), followed by internet access (10.9 percent CAGR) and video games, which are set to expand at a 7.9 percent CAGR.
-- Digital passes CDs by 2011: When it comes to traditional media’s dominance, music is the one exception. As PwC’s report indicates, recorded music revenues are projected to drop 0.6 percent through 2012, though the sales in that area could start growing again by 2011, when PwC expects digital distribution to surpass CDs. Release
US IPTV Subscriptions Quadrupled In 2007; Not Taking Away From Satellite (Yet): iSuppli
Halfway through 2008, iSuppli is out with its assessment of the IPTV market for 2007. IPTV sometimes gets used for all kinds of things, though in this case they’re talking about the advanced internet services from the likes of Verizon (NYSE: VZ) and AT&T (NYSE: T). The basic numbers: North American IPTV subscriber rolls were up almost fourfold to 1.2 million. Across North and South America, total IPTV subscribers totalled nearly 1.8 million. As for the forecast, iSuppli isn’t breaking down its North America-only numbers, but it expects that in North and South America, total subscribers will grow ten-fold by 2011 to 17.7 million.
Besides the numbers, the firm’s takeaway is that IPTV isn’t cutting into satellite TV providers just yet. However going into this year, the tension will escalate as satellite providers increasingly compete with their previous partners. Think: The relationship between DISH and AT&T, which may be souring. As for whether IPTV is hurting cable operators, we know that there’s been talk of pressure in the past. This particular report, however, doesn’t get into it, saying that for the most part IPTV subscribers are new additions to the pay-TV marketplace. Given the estimated growth though, that can’t last.
AOL to Carry Shows from HGTV and Food Network; Barefoot Contessa and Carter Can among programs being distributed. (MediaWeek)
Does Online TV Have a Short Shelf Life?
New research indicates that online videos get the majority of their views soon after they’re posted. Of 10,916 videos with at least 1,000 views after 90 days, half of those views happened over the first two weeks, according to a study by video analytics firm TubeMogul. Views peak on day three, with 11 percent of all views happening on that day, according to the study.
So what does this mean? Despite the on-demand revolution, we still experience cultural phenomena together. Which is great in its own way. But I’m skeptical — focusing on the first 90 days and extrapolating from there is bound to bias growth towards the beginning of a video’s lifecycle.
And how does it account for classic gems like this one — Mr. T rapping “Treat Your Mother Right,” which I first saw this week, more than a year after it had been added to YouTube? Not to mention however well it did when it originally aired, this version has nearly 2 million views and a full page of comments just from the last day.
Read more of this story.
MICROSOFT (NASD: MSFT) will acquire interactive TV ad network NAVIC for an undisclosed sum. Navic’s platform provides advertising and interactive television applications on over 35 million set-top boxes on COMCAST (NASD: CMCSA), COX (NYSE: CXR), TIME WARNER CABLE (NYSE: TWC) and CHARTER COMMUNICATIONS (NASD: CHTR) networks. Navic helps advertisers broaden their reach by tailoring ads to demographics and other viewer characteristics.
Analysts believe the iPhone could drive a third of APPLE’s (NASD: AAPL) revenue in 2009. With a lower price tag on the iPhone, Morgan Stanley expects Apple to sell 27 million units in 2009, which at $200 a phone would generate roughly $5 billion in revenue.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
News Bytes: June 17
BRIGHTCOVE has gutted and rebuilt its streaming video player for better long-form capabilities. Brightcove, which is popular with news content producers and short form producers like TMZ, is making a move to acquire more long-form content partners. The move is directly targeted at competitor MOVE NETWORKS, who provides the player for ABC, FOX, the CW and ESPN.
comScore: Video Views Drop in April
Perhaps with the writers’ strike over, people went back to oldteevee in April. U.S. Internet viewers watched approximately 11 billion videos online during the month, according to comScore, down from 11.5 billion in March.
Roughly 135 million unique Internet viewers watched an average of 82 videos per viewer during the month. The average online viewer watched 228 minutes (3.8 hours) of video, but 18-34 year olds watched an average of 287 minutes (roughly 5 hours). The average online video duration held steady from March at 2.8 minutes.
Though we feel like a broken record for saying it, YouTube continued to dominate the competition, though it too dropped. YouTube had 82.1 million viewers watching 4.1 billion videos (49.8 videos per viewer) in April, down from 84.8 million viewers watching 4.3 billion videos (50.4 videos per viewer) in March.
Hulu Embeds Down Across the Web
Hulu, the online TV service that allows liberal embedding of its videos by nearly any web site, has disabled videos embeds. Embeds (little bits of code that blog and other site owners can include on their pages that play specific videos from Hulu’s servers) have been down for hours so far this morning, replaced by messages that state, “This video is not currently available at this site, but you can view this and other Hulu videos at Hulu.com.” However, embedded video at official Hulu partner sites like AOL and Fancast still appears to work.
Is Hulu pulling the plug on one of its best features? It certainly has been used and abused, with sites like OPENhulu and TV Paradise republishing the site wholesale while it was still in closed beta. Most recently, developer Paul Yanez built an Adobe Air version of the site — but why would Hulu take down all embeds rather than nicely asking him to stop, if that’s what they wanted? Something’s not making sense, so we’ve called and emailed Hulu PR.
Update: Hulu replies,
“We were performing maintenance on the site early this morning. The embeds should be back up shortly.”
The lesson here? People really care about your service — they are tipping us in the wee hours of the morning that it’s not working. So either keep it up, or warn them when it’s going to go down.
Read more of this story
Vid-Biz: DVRs, ImageSpan, UCSF
Movie Trailers Fare Better Against DVRs; TiVo releases data showing that ads for films like Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Hancock were fast-forwarded through the least. (MediaPost)
INDUSTRY MOVES:
Robert Oswaks was upped to President of Marketing for Sony Pictures Television, reporting to President Steve Mosko with network, syndication, cable and new media responsibilities under his purview. Additionally:
Chris Van Amburg was bumped up to VP/New Media, Digital and Mobile Marketing
Steve Gadecki was named Senior Manager/New Media Marketing
Kendra Moore was upped to Director/Digital Marketing
Allison Higgins has become Senior Manager/Mobile Marketing and
Rachel Mizuno was promoted to VP/Affiliate Sales
comScore: Video Views Drop in April
Perhaps with the writers’ strike over, people went back to oldteevee in April. U.S. Internet viewers watched approximately 11 billion videos online during the month, according to comScore, down from 11.5 billion in March.
Roughly 135 million unique Internet viewers watched an average of 82 videos per viewer during the month. The average online viewer watched 228 minutes (3.8 hours) of video, but 18-34 year olds watched an average of 287 minutes (roughly 5 hours). The average online video duration held steady from March at 2.8 minutes.
Though we feel like a broken record for saying it, YouTube continued to dominate the competition, though it too dropped. YouTube had 82.1 million viewers watching 4.1 billion videos (49.8 videos per viewer) in April, down from 84.8 million viewers watching 4.3 billion videos (50.4 videos per viewer) in March.
Hulu Embeds Down Across the Web
Hulu, the online TV service that allows liberal embedding of its videos by nearly any web site, has disabled videos embeds. Embeds (little bits of code that blog and other site owners can include on their pages that play specific videos from Hulu’s servers) have been down for hours so far this morning, replaced by messages that state, “This video is not currently available at this site, but you can view this and other Hulu videos at Hulu.com.” However, embedded video at official Hulu partner sites like AOL and Fancast still appears to work.
Is Hulu pulling the plug on one of its best features? It certainly has been used and abused, with sites like OPENhulu and TV Paradise republishing the site wholesale while it was still in closed beta. Most recently, developer Paul Yanez built an Adobe Air version of the site — but why would Hulu take down all embeds rather than nicely asking him to stop, if that’s what they wanted? Something’s not making sense, so we’ve called and emailed Hulu PR.
Update: Hulu replies,
“We were performing maintenance on the site early this morning. The embeds should be back up shortly.”
The lesson here? People really care about your service — they are tipping us in the wee hours of the morning that it’s not working. So either keep it up, or warn them when it’s going to go down.
Read more of this story
Vid-Biz: DVRs, ImageSpan, UCSF
Movie Trailers Fare Better Against DVRs; TiVo releases data showing that ads for films like Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Hancock were fast-forwarded through the least. (MediaPost)
INDUSTRY MOVES:
Robert Oswaks was upped to President of Marketing for Sony Pictures Television, reporting to President Steve Mosko with network, syndication, cable and new media responsibilities under his purview. Additionally:
Chris Van Amburg was bumped up to VP/New Media, Digital and Mobile Marketing
Steve Gadecki was named Senior Manager/New Media Marketing
Kendra Moore was upped to Director/Digital Marketing
Allison Higgins has become Senior Manager/Mobile Marketing and
Rachel Mizuno was promoted to VP/Affiliate Sales
Monday, June 16, 2008
News Bytes: June 13-16
Video to Drive 50% of Net Traffic
Internet video will account for half of all consumer Internet traffic by 2012, according to new research from Cisco. In its Visual Networking Index (PDF), the company says video already accounts for a quarter of all consumer Internet traffic, a number that will rise to 32 percent by the end of the year.
Since Cisco sells the gear that gets this video to your home, you might be wary of these numbers. Om, however, has read the report and is taking it seriously.
Some more stats:
Internet video-to-PC traffic will make up the majority of Internet video traffic in 2012, but Internet video-to-TV traffic will grow rapidly. This is a big opportunity for set-top box makers looking to bridge oldteevee and newteevee.
Read more of this story
Vid-Biz: Angel of Death
Angel of Death to Go DVD Via the Web; Sony will run the 10-part web series about a female assassin in the hopes of generating buzz for a DVD release. (The Wall Street Journal)
Motorola’s Spinoff: One Unit To Be Sent To “Poorhouse”?
A very bleak look at the financials behind Motorola’s decision to hive off its mobile division. According to the WSJ, the handset division is losing so much money that spinning it off could put “one or other of the newly independent firms in the poorhouse.” The money issue is even hampering its efforts to hire a new CEO for the handset unit. Front runner Todd Bradley—currently EVP of HP’s Personal Systems group—has backed out, apparently balking over the dangerous levels of cash. … more…
Mobile Content Bits: Verizon and Nokia’s Bat Phone; maniaTV Goes Mobile
— Verizon (NYSE: VZ) Releases Nokia (NYSE: NOK) Batphone: So this is what Nokia’s closer ties with operators are producing: A “bat phone” for Verizon’s tie-in with the July 18 release of the new batman movie “The Dark Knight.” The black clamshell Nokia 6205 sports a Dark Knight logo on the case and comes pre-loaded with wallpapers, voice tones, and animated screensavers from the film, and a full movie trailer. Verizon also plans to launch the phone without the movie content, and without the batman logo next month (release).
—ManiaTV Goes Mobile: maniaTV, the TV network that created “Dave Navarro’s Spread TV” and “Tom Green Live,” said today it launched maniaTV Mobile through the help of Transpera‘s mobile video delivery and ad platform. People with video-enabled mobile devices will be able to access the select videos by going to http://maniatv.com. Other features will include: “Send-to-Friend” to share a video, and “Send to Mobile,” which will allow people to go from online to mobile. Release.
YouTube Plugs Expansion In Living Rooms YouTube is holding its first-ever gathering for developers in July at the company's San Bruno, Calif., headquarters. The event will draw attention to new partnerships -- Sony, Panasonic, TiVo -- as the video-sharing site increases user options to "consume YouTube on television sets."
Hulu Already a Top Web Video Destination Hulu, the NBC-News Corp. free video site, delivered 63 million total streams in April, its first full month of operation, making it the No. 10 online video-streaming service. CEO Jason Kilar says he sees value in developing a "department-store model" for shows. Sony Series Will Start on Web, Go to DVD Sony will launch its new show "Angel of Death" on various Web sites. After the Internet run, Sony will release a traditional DVD of the series with additional scenes. The company's plan marks Hollywood's latest attempt to use Internet distribution without losing revenue.
MYSPACE (NYSE:NWS) is getting a massive re-design.The social network known for spam messaging and blinking ads will undergo a massive overhaul next week, including a revamped homepage, an updated navigation map and a new search feature. MySpace is expected to relaunch with the update design Wednesday June, 18.
WARNER BROS. TELEVISION GROUP (NYSE:TWX) has signed a broadband distribution deal for the revitalized WB network. The once defunct, now alive in the digital sphere WB will receive syndication on Joost, Dailymotion, Sling Media, TiVO, and Veoh, but not online television destination HULU. While Hulu is a major omission, analysts believe it hardly matters as the NBC-FOX venture already has a separate distribution deal for The WB’s most popular show, Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
Internet video will account for half of all consumer Internet traffic by 2012, according to new research from Cisco. In its Visual Networking Index (PDF), the company says video already accounts for a quarter of all consumer Internet traffic, a number that will rise to 32 percent by the end of the year.
Since Cisco sells the gear that gets this video to your home, you might be wary of these numbers. Om, however, has read the report and is taking it seriously.
Some more stats:
Internet video-to-PC traffic will make up the majority of Internet video traffic in 2012, but Internet video-to-TV traffic will grow rapidly. This is a big opportunity for set-top box makers looking to bridge oldteevee and newteevee.
Read more of this story
Vid-Biz: Angel of Death
Angel of Death to Go DVD Via the Web; Sony will run the 10-part web series about a female assassin in the hopes of generating buzz for a DVD release. (The Wall Street Journal)
Motorola’s Spinoff: One Unit To Be Sent To “Poorhouse”?
A very bleak look at the financials behind Motorola’s decision to hive off its mobile division. According to the WSJ, the handset division is losing so much money that spinning it off could put “one or other of the newly independent firms in the poorhouse.” The money issue is even hampering its efforts to hire a new CEO for the handset unit. Front runner Todd Bradley—currently EVP of HP’s Personal Systems group—has backed out, apparently balking over the dangerous levels of cash. … more…
Mobile Content Bits: Verizon and Nokia’s Bat Phone; maniaTV Goes Mobile
— Verizon (NYSE: VZ) Releases Nokia (NYSE: NOK) Batphone: So this is what Nokia’s closer ties with operators are producing: A “bat phone” for Verizon’s tie-in with the July 18 release of the new batman movie “The Dark Knight.” The black clamshell Nokia 6205 sports a Dark Knight logo on the case and comes pre-loaded with wallpapers, voice tones, and animated screensavers from the film, and a full movie trailer. Verizon also plans to launch the phone without the movie content, and without the batman logo next month (release).
—ManiaTV Goes Mobile: maniaTV, the TV network that created “Dave Navarro’s Spread TV” and “Tom Green Live,” said today it launched maniaTV Mobile through the help of Transpera‘s mobile video delivery and ad platform. People with video-enabled mobile devices will be able to access the select videos by going to http://maniatv.com. Other features will include: “Send-to-Friend” to share a video, and “Send to Mobile,” which will allow people to go from online to mobile. Release.
YouTube Plugs Expansion In Living Rooms YouTube is holding its first-ever gathering for developers in July at the company's San Bruno, Calif., headquarters. The event will draw attention to new partnerships -- Sony, Panasonic, TiVo -- as the video-sharing site increases user options to "consume YouTube on television sets."
Hulu Already a Top Web Video Destination Hulu, the NBC-News Corp. free video site, delivered 63 million total streams in April, its first full month of operation, making it the No. 10 online video-streaming service. CEO Jason Kilar says he sees value in developing a "department-store model" for shows. Sony Series Will Start on Web, Go to DVD Sony will launch its new show "Angel of Death" on various Web sites. After the Internet run, Sony will release a traditional DVD of the series with additional scenes. The company's plan marks Hollywood's latest attempt to use Internet distribution without losing revenue.
MYSPACE (NYSE:NWS) is getting a massive re-design.The social network known for spam messaging and blinking ads will undergo a massive overhaul next week, including a revamped homepage, an updated navigation map and a new search feature. MySpace is expected to relaunch with the update design Wednesday June, 18.
WARNER BROS. TELEVISION GROUP (NYSE:TWX) has signed a broadband distribution deal for the revitalized WB network. The once defunct, now alive in the digital sphere WB will receive syndication on Joost, Dailymotion, Sling Media, TiVO, and Veoh, but not online television destination HULU. While Hulu is a major omission, analysts believe it hardly matters as the NBC-FOX venture already has a separate distribution deal for The WB’s most popular show, Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
News Bytes: June 12
Will Anyone Love Brad Garrett? Former Raymond star launches online dating series. (Crackle)
BREAKING: Yahoo And Google In Non-Exclusive Search Ad Deal; $250-$450 Million Extra Op Cash Flow
As expected Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) has announced a non-exclusive ad pact with Google (NSDQ: GOOG). In an announcement, the company says it has agreed with its arch rival to run ads against some search queries as well as other of its web properties. From the announcement: “Under the terms of the agreement, Yahoo! will select the search term queries for which – and the pages on which – Yahoo! may offer Google paid search results.” Release.
Key highlights:
-- Length: It has a term of up to 10 years: an initial four-year term and two three-year renewals at Yahoo’s option.
-- Limited geographic scope: The deal applies to Yahoo U.S. and Canada only. “At current monetization rates, this is an approximately $800 million annual revenue opportunity. In the first 12 months following implementation, Yahoo! expects the agreement to generate an estimated $250 million to $450 million in incremental operating cash flow.”
-- Change in control: This deal would not preclude change of control through a sale or some other agreement. “The agreement allows either party to terminate the agreement in the event of a change in control of either party.” Yahoo would have to pay a termination fee of $250 million if the agreement is terminated as a result of a change in control that occurs within 24 months. The amount is subject to reduction by 50 percent of revenues earned by Google before the change.
-- How it works: Yahoo can run ads supplied by Google’s AdSense for Search and AdSense for Content services next to its own internally generated paid search and algorithmic search results. Yahoo may also run Google-supplied ads on non-search Yahoo web properties, as well as on current members of its partner network. Yahoo and Google each will continue to be paid directly by advertisers with Yahoo getting revenue share from Google.
-- Interoperability: The two also agreed to enable interoperability between their respective IM services.
HBO took another baby step toward participating in the digital revolution, taking a small equity stake in Landlord producers Funny or Die.com and commissioning 10 half-hours of comedy programming from the team. Funny or Die founders Will Ferrell Adam McKay, Chris Henchy and Judd Apatow will develop the show initially for on air but the deal provides for collaboration on multiple projects and platforms, according to sources.
The MPAA filed a petition with the FCC last week offering to shorten the window for new releases to reach television. But in exchange, studios asked the commission to change regulations to prevent these movies from being recorded on DVRs. To insure unauthorized copying studios are seeking permission to block signals from certain outputs on the back of televisions and DVRs to prevent digital copies from being made.
With choices expanding and gadgets improving Americans are expected to expand their multiplatform video consumption by 35% by 2013, according to a new report from Toronto-based Solutions Research Group. Viewers 12 and older already spend 6.1 hours a day watching linear TV, DVRs, VOD, video games and video on PC and mobile devices, up from 4.6 hours/day in 1996. The boob tube is accounting for a lower share of overall video consumption among 12-24 year olds (42.4%) and men (57.7%) compared to the population average (63.9%). Other interesting findings include:
Primetime viewing hours differ by platform; web video viewing peaks midday M-F
Web and mobile video viewing is expected to triple from 1 hour/day to nearly 3 hours/day
TV's share of the overall viewing pie is expected to shrink from 63.9% to 47.1% by 2013
Video-based Entertainment Shares by Platform 2008, U.S. Online 12+
Platform % of total viewing
TV (cable/DBS/OTA) 63.9%
Video Games 13.0%
PC Video 10.3% DVDs 7.2%
Video on personal devices 3.9%
Video on cell phones 1.7%
Source: SRC
John Najarian has been upped to EVP/Digital Media and Business Development, Comcast Entertainment Group. John will oversee mobile, broadband and emerging businesses for E! Entertainment, The Style Network and G4l, reporting to Ted Harbert, President & CEO, Comcast Entertainment Group.
WBTVG Inks Syndication Deals With Joost, TiVo, Veoh, Others
Now that its online programming is ready to go, Warner Brothers Television Group has lined up a roster of distribution partners: Dailymotion, Joost, Sling Media, TiVo (NSDQ: TIVO) and Veoh Networks. The sites will create dedicated channels for programming from TheWB.com and KidsWB.com, the two new ad-supported broadband properties WBTVG unveiled in late April. Both sites are still in beta.
The new distribution channels will begin showcasing WBTVG’s content by mid-September. The announcement follows a recent syndication deal with Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) sibling AOL, the creation of a Facebook content channel and TheWB.com app. While the deals focus only on the new beta sites, it could also open doors for the WBTVG’s other online projects, including its work on Time Inc. mag Essence‘s new site and videos from its MomLogic social net.
Industry Moves: Microsoft Reshuffles Interactive Entertainment With Marketing VP Bell’s Exit
Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) has reorganized its Interactive Entertainment Business, which houses its Xbox and Game Studios units, in the wake of the exit by Jeff Bell, who has served as the division’s VP of Global Marketing. In the executive reshuffling, Microsoft is promoting two vets from its Game Studio to help run Interactive Entertainment.
Shane Kim, who has been with the game unit for four years, takes the new role of corporate VP of Strategy and Business Development. Also, Phil Spencer, who’s been with the games unit for six years, will manage first-party development and publishing efforts worldwide. Both will report directly to Don Mattrick, SVP, Interactive Entertainment Business.
Bell had been with the company for two years, overseeing marketing efforts for Microsoft’s Xbox and Games for Windows. He joined Microsoft from DaimlerChrysler, where he was VP, product strategy for the Chrysler Group. While at Interactive Entertainment, Bell helped craft campaigns for Halo 3, Guitar Hero III, Rock Band. Release
BREAKING: Yahoo And Google In Non-Exclusive Search Ad Deal; $250-$450 Million Extra Op Cash Flow
As expected Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) has announced a non-exclusive ad pact with Google (NSDQ: GOOG). In an announcement, the company says it has agreed with its arch rival to run ads against some search queries as well as other of its web properties. From the announcement: “Under the terms of the agreement, Yahoo! will select the search term queries for which – and the pages on which – Yahoo! may offer Google paid search results.” Release.
Key highlights:
-- Length: It has a term of up to 10 years: an initial four-year term and two three-year renewals at Yahoo’s option.
-- Limited geographic scope: The deal applies to Yahoo U.S. and Canada only. “At current monetization rates, this is an approximately $800 million annual revenue opportunity. In the first 12 months following implementation, Yahoo! expects the agreement to generate an estimated $250 million to $450 million in incremental operating cash flow.”
-- Change in control: This deal would not preclude change of control through a sale or some other agreement. “The agreement allows either party to terminate the agreement in the event of a change in control of either party.” Yahoo would have to pay a termination fee of $250 million if the agreement is terminated as a result of a change in control that occurs within 24 months. The amount is subject to reduction by 50 percent of revenues earned by Google before the change.
-- How it works: Yahoo can run ads supplied by Google’s AdSense for Search and AdSense for Content services next to its own internally generated paid search and algorithmic search results. Yahoo may also run Google-supplied ads on non-search Yahoo web properties, as well as on current members of its partner network. Yahoo and Google each will continue to be paid directly by advertisers with Yahoo getting revenue share from Google.
-- Interoperability: The two also agreed to enable interoperability between their respective IM services.
HBO took another baby step toward participating in the digital revolution, taking a small equity stake in Landlord producers Funny or Die.com and commissioning 10 half-hours of comedy programming from the team. Funny or Die founders Will Ferrell Adam McKay, Chris Henchy and Judd Apatow will develop the show initially for on air but the deal provides for collaboration on multiple projects and platforms, according to sources.
The MPAA filed a petition with the FCC last week offering to shorten the window for new releases to reach television. But in exchange, studios asked the commission to change regulations to prevent these movies from being recorded on DVRs. To insure unauthorized copying studios are seeking permission to block signals from certain outputs on the back of televisions and DVRs to prevent digital copies from being made.
With choices expanding and gadgets improving Americans are expected to expand their multiplatform video consumption by 35% by 2013, according to a new report from Toronto-based Solutions Research Group. Viewers 12 and older already spend 6.1 hours a day watching linear TV, DVRs, VOD, video games and video on PC and mobile devices, up from 4.6 hours/day in 1996. The boob tube is accounting for a lower share of overall video consumption among 12-24 year olds (42.4%) and men (57.7%) compared to the population average (63.9%). Other interesting findings include:
Primetime viewing hours differ by platform; web video viewing peaks midday M-F
Web and mobile video viewing is expected to triple from 1 hour/day to nearly 3 hours/day
TV's share of the overall viewing pie is expected to shrink from 63.9% to 47.1% by 2013
Video-based Entertainment Shares by Platform 2008, U.S. Online 12+
Platform % of total viewing
TV (cable/DBS/OTA) 63.9%
Video Games 13.0%
PC Video 10.3% DVDs 7.2%
Video on personal devices 3.9%
Video on cell phones 1.7%
Source: SRC
John Najarian has been upped to EVP/Digital Media and Business Development, Comcast Entertainment Group. John will oversee mobile, broadband and emerging businesses for E! Entertainment, The Style Network and G4l, reporting to Ted Harbert, President & CEO, Comcast Entertainment Group.
WBTVG Inks Syndication Deals With Joost, TiVo, Veoh, Others
Now that its online programming is ready to go, Warner Brothers Television Group has lined up a roster of distribution partners: Dailymotion, Joost, Sling Media, TiVo (NSDQ: TIVO) and Veoh Networks. The sites will create dedicated channels for programming from TheWB.com and KidsWB.com, the two new ad-supported broadband properties WBTVG unveiled in late April. Both sites are still in beta.
The new distribution channels will begin showcasing WBTVG’s content by mid-September. The announcement follows a recent syndication deal with Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) sibling AOL, the creation of a Facebook content channel and TheWB.com app. While the deals focus only on the new beta sites, it could also open doors for the WBTVG’s other online projects, including its work on Time Inc. mag Essence‘s new site and videos from its MomLogic social net.
Industry Moves: Microsoft Reshuffles Interactive Entertainment With Marketing VP Bell’s Exit
Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) has reorganized its Interactive Entertainment Business, which houses its Xbox and Game Studios units, in the wake of the exit by Jeff Bell, who has served as the division’s VP of Global Marketing. In the executive reshuffling, Microsoft is promoting two vets from its Game Studio to help run Interactive Entertainment.
Shane Kim, who has been with the game unit for four years, takes the new role of corporate VP of Strategy and Business Development. Also, Phil Spencer, who’s been with the games unit for six years, will manage first-party development and publishing efforts worldwide. Both will report directly to Don Mattrick, SVP, Interactive Entertainment Business.
Bell had been with the company for two years, overseeing marketing efforts for Microsoft’s Xbox and Games for Windows. He joined Microsoft from DaimlerChrysler, where he was VP, product strategy for the Chrysler Group. While at Interactive Entertainment, Bell helped craft campaigns for Halo 3, Guitar Hero III, Rock Band. Release
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
News Bytes: June 11
Disney.com will stream full-length movies from its family friendly archive of Wonderful World of Disney movies for the first time this summer, for free. Titles such as Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc., Haunted Mansion, Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, Princess Diaries 2 and Peter Pan will be offered for week after they air on ABC, with only one pre-roll ad. Voom HD Networks announced the launch of two VOD offerings developed as a companion service to its 24/7 linear Voom HD and Rush HD channels distributed internationally. The new VOD service will provide cable and satellite operators who carry the channels with five monthly hours of VOD programming for each channel.
Industry Moves-- Comcast: John Najarian has been promoted to EVP-digital media and business development from SVP-new media and business development for the group’s entertainment sector, where he will oversee mobile, broadband and emerging businesses for E!, The Style Network and G4. Having joined E! in 2001, he spearheaded the launch of E! News Now as well as its mobile initiatives including the E! mobile video channel, site and E! News text alert.
Netflix Sells Out of Rokus; movie rental company says it’s run out of the $99 set-top box; the stat is somewhat meaningless, however, as we don’t know how many it had to begin with. (Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal)
Video Consumption to Hit 8 Hours a Day by 2013; PC, web and mobile video watching to grow to 2.9 hours a day, from just under one hour today. (TVWeek)
Bertelsmann Wants $1.5 Billion For Sony BMG Stake, Talks ‘Advanced’: Report
Finally, some meat on the bone of the “Bertelsmann wants to quit music” story. An unnamed source tells FT Deutschland the German media group wants to sell its 50 percent stake in Sony (NYSE: SNE) BMG to its JV partner for $1.5 billion within four to six weeks. It may only get $1.2 or $1.3 billion, the source said. Yesterday, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung had another bite at a rumour that has bobbled about all year, but added little. But FTD says talks are “well advanced”.
Bertelsmann’s BMG revenue from Sony BMG fell 27 percent to €1.5 billion in 2007, partly from the sale of the company’s publishing unit. But the core was weak, too - a 40 percent hike in digital music sales couldn’t offset a 17 percent decline in physical sales. Losses slimmed dramatically in Q1 08 after Bertelsmann settled all its litigation payouts to rival labels annoyed by its earlier stake in Napster (NSDQ: NAPS). The Sony BMG merger was ratified for a second time in September, after Europe’s 2004 approval was annulled.
Updated: Yahoo Exec Spec Swirling Again; Weiner Returning From Paternity Leave But Will He Stay?
It’s Yahoo’s (NSDQ: YHOO) version of the plagues—Carl Icahn, shareholder lawsuits, another round of speculation about top-level execs and a report that a major internal announcement is on tap Wednesday.
Once again, the fate of Jeff Weiner, due back Monday after a month of paternity leave, leads the exec spec list with Kara Swisher at AllThingsD suggesting that the network division EVP’s patience for the drama at Yahoo has worn thin. Weiner could be tempted by a VC offer to become an executive in residence, for instance. But we’re being cautioned from within Yahoo not to leap to conclusions—that it wouldn’t be shocking if he decides to ratchet back and get some more family time or if he feels like the leave offered enough of a break to merit sticking around.
Read more….
ABC Considers Major Online Newscast Overhaul; CBS Looks To CNET, Celebs For Boost
When it comes to all the tropes the broadcast networks continue to cling to, the national evening news shows are arguably the most in need of drastic change. As the shows’ millions viewers are getting older and older, ad support is dwindling. While the networks’ online versions of the nightly news were meant to invigorate the stale productions and attract younger viewers, it turns out that the webcasts are struggling as well. David Westin, ABC’s news-division president, tells WSJ that the Disney-owned network isn’t ready to pull the plug on the two-year-old World News webcasts, but ABC is clearly groping for ways to make its online news relevant. Westin: “I want to look at it and say, ‘What have we learned from it?’ ‘How can we reconfigure it?’ ‘What can we do better?’”
-- ABC’s numbers: Last Monday, internal traffic showed ABCNews.com logged 7.8 million pageviews, though the company claims it averages about 8.4 million. Within that, the 15-minute World News webcast got 145,000 hits, while three million clicks went to the news site’s photo gallery featuring shots of celebrities and “the pregnant man.” Though general hard news has been met with indifference, sections devoted to health and politics have been relative bright spots, suggesting that ABC might try to focus on niche verticals.
-- CBS’ (NYSE: CBS) solution: celebs and tech: CBS plans to overhaul its online news with some assistance from CNET (NSDQ: CNET) once the merger closes. And noticing the same insatiable appetite for celebrity news, CBS Interactive promises to deliver more of that kind of coverage with a new destination due “in coming weeks.”
Industry Moves-- Comcast: John Najarian has been promoted to EVP-digital media and business development from SVP-new media and business development for the group’s entertainment sector, where he will oversee mobile, broadband and emerging businesses for E!, The Style Network and G4. Having joined E! in 2001, he spearheaded the launch of E! News Now as well as its mobile initiatives including the E! mobile video channel, site and E! News text alert.
Netflix Sells Out of Rokus; movie rental company says it’s run out of the $99 set-top box; the stat is somewhat meaningless, however, as we don’t know how many it had to begin with. (Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal)
Video Consumption to Hit 8 Hours a Day by 2013; PC, web and mobile video watching to grow to 2.9 hours a day, from just under one hour today. (TVWeek)
Bertelsmann Wants $1.5 Billion For Sony BMG Stake, Talks ‘Advanced’: Report
Finally, some meat on the bone of the “Bertelsmann wants to quit music” story. An unnamed source tells FT Deutschland the German media group wants to sell its 50 percent stake in Sony (NYSE: SNE) BMG to its JV partner for $1.5 billion within four to six weeks. It may only get $1.2 or $1.3 billion, the source said. Yesterday, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung had another bite at a rumour that has bobbled about all year, but added little. But FTD says talks are “well advanced”.
Bertelsmann’s BMG revenue from Sony BMG fell 27 percent to €1.5 billion in 2007, partly from the sale of the company’s publishing unit. But the core was weak, too - a 40 percent hike in digital music sales couldn’t offset a 17 percent decline in physical sales. Losses slimmed dramatically in Q1 08 after Bertelsmann settled all its litigation payouts to rival labels annoyed by its earlier stake in Napster (NSDQ: NAPS). The Sony BMG merger was ratified for a second time in September, after Europe’s 2004 approval was annulled.
Updated: Yahoo Exec Spec Swirling Again; Weiner Returning From Paternity Leave But Will He Stay?
It’s Yahoo’s (NSDQ: YHOO) version of the plagues—Carl Icahn, shareholder lawsuits, another round of speculation about top-level execs and a report that a major internal announcement is on tap Wednesday.
Once again, the fate of Jeff Weiner, due back Monday after a month of paternity leave, leads the exec spec list with Kara Swisher at AllThingsD suggesting that the network division EVP’s patience for the drama at Yahoo has worn thin. Weiner could be tempted by a VC offer to become an executive in residence, for instance. But we’re being cautioned from within Yahoo not to leap to conclusions—that it wouldn’t be shocking if he decides to ratchet back and get some more family time or if he feels like the leave offered enough of a break to merit sticking around.
Read more….
ABC Considers Major Online Newscast Overhaul; CBS Looks To CNET, Celebs For Boost
When it comes to all the tropes the broadcast networks continue to cling to, the national evening news shows are arguably the most in need of drastic change. As the shows’ millions viewers are getting older and older, ad support is dwindling. While the networks’ online versions of the nightly news were meant to invigorate the stale productions and attract younger viewers, it turns out that the webcasts are struggling as well. David Westin, ABC’s news-division president, tells WSJ that the Disney-owned network isn’t ready to pull the plug on the two-year-old World News webcasts, but ABC is clearly groping for ways to make its online news relevant. Westin: “I want to look at it and say, ‘What have we learned from it?’ ‘How can we reconfigure it?’ ‘What can we do better?’”
-- ABC’s numbers: Last Monday, internal traffic showed ABCNews.com logged 7.8 million pageviews, though the company claims it averages about 8.4 million. Within that, the 15-minute World News webcast got 145,000 hits, while three million clicks went to the news site’s photo gallery featuring shots of celebrities and “the pregnant man.” Though general hard news has been met with indifference, sections devoted to health and politics have been relative bright spots, suggesting that ABC might try to focus on niche verticals.
-- CBS’ (NYSE: CBS) solution: celebs and tech: CBS plans to overhaul its online news with some assistance from CNET (NSDQ: CNET) once the merger closes. And noticing the same insatiable appetite for celebrity news, CBS Interactive promises to deliver more of that kind of coverage with a new destination due “in coming weeks.”
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Congratulations Eric Berger
ERIC BERGER NAMED SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT,
MOBILE ENTERTAINMENT & DIGITAL NETWORKS, SONY PICTURES TELEVISION
CULVER CITY, CA (June 9, 2008)—Eric Berger has been promoted to senior vice president, mobile entertainment and digital networks, Sony Pictures Television (SPT), it was announced today by Sean Carey, senior executive vice president, SPT.
In this position Berger oversees SPT’s mobile entertainment group, which develops, produces and domestically distributes products that include personalization, applications, video services, and mobile games. This year his team will bring out such games as Hancock: The Mobile Game, Afterworld Global Contact, Rock & Roll Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune Road Trip, Quantum of Solace, and LocoRoco™.
Berger also manages the day to day operations of the digital networks group. These responsibilities include the programming and distribution functions for multi-platform channels including The Minisode Network; C-Spot, an ad-supported short form comedy channel; the Vault, SPT's television library channel; and PIX, SPT’s movie channel. Additionally, Berger oversees the distribution of Crackle.com’s content to other sites and platforms.
“Eric is very driven,” said Carey. “He has a keen eye for identifying ways the division can adapt to the evolving digital business, and his ambition and insight have catapulted our ideas into fruition.”
Berger joined the company in 2006 as vice president, mobile entertainment. He guided SPT’s mobile games division from 17th to 7th place in the market, and he successfully launched video services on all available mobile operators including Verizon, Sprint and AT&T.
Prior to Sony, Berger was Vice President of Strategic Planning at Time Warner Inc. (AOL, HBO, Turner Broadcasting, Time Inc., Time Warner Cable, and Warner Bros.) where he was responsible for wireless initiatives and the creation of new digital growth businesses. His efforts included shaping the company’s overall mobile strategy, including driving investment, acquisition and business development. In addition, he led product development efforts for music and video services, including the creation of a music video on-demand channel.
Sony Pictures Television is one of the television industry’s leading content providers. It produces and distributes programming in every genre, including series, telefilms, theatrical releases and family entertainment for network and cable television, as well as first-run and off-network series for syndication. With more than 25 programs on the air, SPT boasts a program slate that includes the top-rated daytime dramas and game shows, landmark off-network series, original animated series and critically acclaimed primetime dramas, comedies and telefilms. SPT also owns one-half of cable channel GSN and is a partner in FEARnet, the premier horror/thriller website and VOD service. Sony Pictures Television oversees all of Sony Pictures Entertainment's (SPE) domestic digital distribution efforts across all electronically delivered platforms, including the internet and mobile. Sony Pictures Television, advertiser sales, is one of the premiere national advertising sales companies, handling the commercial inventory in SPT syndicated series as well as in all of SPE's digital businesses in the United States, for Sony BMG and for iN DEMAND's high-definition channel Mojo and the Tennis Channel, and is part owner of national media sales company ITN Networks, Inc. SPT (www.sonypicturestelevision.com) is a Sony Pictures Entertainment company.
MOBILE ENTERTAINMENT & DIGITAL NETWORKS, SONY PICTURES TELEVISION
CULVER CITY, CA (June 9, 2008)—Eric Berger has been promoted to senior vice president, mobile entertainment and digital networks, Sony Pictures Television (SPT), it was announced today by Sean Carey, senior executive vice president, SPT.
In this position Berger oversees SPT’s mobile entertainment group, which develops, produces and domestically distributes products that include personalization, applications, video services, and mobile games. This year his team will bring out such games as Hancock: The Mobile Game, Afterworld Global Contact, Rock & Roll Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune Road Trip, Quantum of Solace, and LocoRoco™.
Berger also manages the day to day operations of the digital networks group. These responsibilities include the programming and distribution functions for multi-platform channels including The Minisode Network; C-Spot, an ad-supported short form comedy channel; the Vault, SPT's television library channel; and PIX, SPT’s movie channel. Additionally, Berger oversees the distribution of Crackle.com’s content to other sites and platforms.
“Eric is very driven,” said Carey. “He has a keen eye for identifying ways the division can adapt to the evolving digital business, and his ambition and insight have catapulted our ideas into fruition.”
Berger joined the company in 2006 as vice president, mobile entertainment. He guided SPT’s mobile games division from 17th to 7th place in the market, and he successfully launched video services on all available mobile operators including Verizon, Sprint and AT&T.
Prior to Sony, Berger was Vice President of Strategic Planning at Time Warner Inc. (AOL, HBO, Turner Broadcasting, Time Inc., Time Warner Cable, and Warner Bros.) where he was responsible for wireless initiatives and the creation of new digital growth businesses. His efforts included shaping the company’s overall mobile strategy, including driving investment, acquisition and business development. In addition, he led product development efforts for music and video services, including the creation of a music video on-demand channel.
Sony Pictures Television is one of the television industry’s leading content providers. It produces and distributes programming in every genre, including series, telefilms, theatrical releases and family entertainment for network and cable television, as well as first-run and off-network series for syndication. With more than 25 programs on the air, SPT boasts a program slate that includes the top-rated daytime dramas and game shows, landmark off-network series, original animated series and critically acclaimed primetime dramas, comedies and telefilms. SPT also owns one-half of cable channel GSN and is a partner in FEARnet, the premier horror/thriller website and VOD service. Sony Pictures Television oversees all of Sony Pictures Entertainment's (SPE) domestic digital distribution efforts across all electronically delivered platforms, including the internet and mobile. Sony Pictures Television, advertiser sales, is one of the premiere national advertising sales companies, handling the commercial inventory in SPT syndicated series as well as in all of SPE's digital businesses in the United States, for Sony BMG and for iN DEMAND's high-definition channel Mojo and the Tennis Channel, and is part owner of national media sales company ITN Networks, Inc. SPT (www.sonypicturestelevision.com) is a Sony Pictures Entertainment company.
News Bytes: June 10
Disney To Stream Catalog Movies Online
Disney (NYSE: DIS) is doing an interesting experiment: it will be streaming online movies at Disney.com for the first time, intended to boost the “Wonderful World of Disney” summer TV series on sister channel ABC. Among the movies online include “Finding Nemo,” “Monsters Inc.” and “Peter Pan.” The movies will be available after its Saturday airing, for the week following the network presentation (Monday - Friday). The site also will stream Camp Rock, a new movie featuring the Jonas Brothers on June 23, following its TV premiere on the network on June 20. These are older movies, and is a limited catalog, but a good start on a major movie studio’s part. More details in release.
Viacom Gives In; To Offer Comedy Central Shows on Hulu
After lots of posturing over the last year, Viacom (NYSE: VIA) has given in and will start syndicating two Comedy Central shows through NBCU-FOX JV video service Hulu. It will begin offering full episodes of ”The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and the ”Colbert Report” on Hulu.com starting Tuesday, as part of a test, reports Reuters. If this test is successful, the company says, they will add more Viacom shows to the service. Comedy Central will receive a percentage of ad sales sold by Hulu.
The two shows are also available in full length on ComedyCentral.com and on Comcast’s (NSDQ: CMCSA) Fancast...previously the shows only offered clips on the network site, though the two shows recently launched their standalone sites with most of the archives in clip form. Later this month, Hulu will add select programs from PBS as well, including Nova, Carrier, Scientific American Frontiers, Wired Science, and others down the line.
This should be an early validation for Hulu, which recently broke out above TV network’s own video sites, in terms of traffic...according to April Nielsen numbers, Hulu’s video streams have grown to more than 63 million, as viewers are watching more than two hours of Hulu content per month.
APPLE (NASD: AAPL) finally unveiled the 3G iphone, available July 11. Steve Jobs presented the mobile smart phone at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference and as expected the phone comes equipped with a handful of new features, including a cheaper price tag. Apple is hoping to sell 10 million iPhones during 2008.
AT&T (NYSE: T), who has the exclusive rights to the iPhone in the United States, will subsidize a $200 rebate on the smart phone. The discount, which cuts the price of the iPhone in half, is intended to bring the iPhone to the masses. With new features and an affordable price, AT&T should be able to capitalize on the sleek 3G iPhone.
TIME WARNER (NYSE: TWX) CEO Jeff Bewkes said the media company has no plans to acquire NBC, but would consider a deal if the network became available. While rumors about TW acquiring NBCU (NYSE: GE) have been rampant on Wall Street, NBCU execs have repeatedly denounced such claims.
Google CEO: Get Ready for 'New Online Lifestyle' Companies and industries must shift their focus and embrace a "new online lifestyle" to stay competitive, says Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Incumbent businesses like newspapers have adapted slowly to the Internet, he points out. "People have no patience any more. They want information now."
Sony Pictures Television launched a new application on Facebook to kick-off the second season of My Boys premiering on Thursday, June 12 at 9:30 p, ET/PT on TBS. "M.A.S.H." allows users to forecast their future, sharing their randomly determined, fictitious fate with friends.
Mobile web usage spiked 24% during the first quarter with AT&T driving a third of the on deck traffic, according to the first Crisp Wireless Index study measuring mobile usage across a sample of 14 million users who surf via Crisp's mobile web publishing network. While over half of the traffic - 53% - is still driven by on deck portals, off deck searches including manual URL type-ins and bookmark usage in on the rise, accounting for nearly 40% of the traffic. (iPhone searches using the Safari browser count as off deck.)
Disney (NYSE: DIS) is doing an interesting experiment: it will be streaming online movies at Disney.com for the first time, intended to boost the “Wonderful World of Disney” summer TV series on sister channel ABC. Among the movies online include “Finding Nemo,” “Monsters Inc.” and “Peter Pan.” The movies will be available after its Saturday airing, for the week following the network presentation (Monday - Friday). The site also will stream Camp Rock, a new movie featuring the Jonas Brothers on June 23, following its TV premiere on the network on June 20. These are older movies, and is a limited catalog, but a good start on a major movie studio’s part. More details in release.
Viacom Gives In; To Offer Comedy Central Shows on Hulu
After lots of posturing over the last year, Viacom (NYSE: VIA) has given in and will start syndicating two Comedy Central shows through NBCU-FOX JV video service Hulu. It will begin offering full episodes of ”The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and the ”Colbert Report” on Hulu.com starting Tuesday, as part of a test, reports Reuters. If this test is successful, the company says, they will add more Viacom shows to the service. Comedy Central will receive a percentage of ad sales sold by Hulu.
The two shows are also available in full length on ComedyCentral.com and on Comcast’s (NSDQ: CMCSA) Fancast...previously the shows only offered clips on the network site, though the two shows recently launched their standalone sites with most of the archives in clip form. Later this month, Hulu will add select programs from PBS as well, including Nova, Carrier, Scientific American Frontiers, Wired Science, and others down the line.
This should be an early validation for Hulu, which recently broke out above TV network’s own video sites, in terms of traffic...according to April Nielsen numbers, Hulu’s video streams have grown to more than 63 million, as viewers are watching more than two hours of Hulu content per month.
APPLE (NASD: AAPL) finally unveiled the 3G iphone, available July 11. Steve Jobs presented the mobile smart phone at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference and as expected the phone comes equipped with a handful of new features, including a cheaper price tag. Apple is hoping to sell 10 million iPhones during 2008.
AT&T (NYSE: T), who has the exclusive rights to the iPhone in the United States, will subsidize a $200 rebate on the smart phone. The discount, which cuts the price of the iPhone in half, is intended to bring the iPhone to the masses. With new features and an affordable price, AT&T should be able to capitalize on the sleek 3G iPhone.
TIME WARNER (NYSE: TWX) CEO Jeff Bewkes said the media company has no plans to acquire NBC, but would consider a deal if the network became available. While rumors about TW acquiring NBCU (NYSE: GE) have been rampant on Wall Street, NBCU execs have repeatedly denounced such claims.
Google CEO: Get Ready for 'New Online Lifestyle' Companies and industries must shift their focus and embrace a "new online lifestyle" to stay competitive, says Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Incumbent businesses like newspapers have adapted slowly to the Internet, he points out. "People have no patience any more. They want information now."
Sony Pictures Television launched a new application on Facebook to kick-off the second season of My Boys premiering on Thursday, June 12 at 9:30 p, ET/PT on TBS. "M.A.S.H." allows users to forecast their future, sharing their randomly determined, fictitious fate with friends.
Mobile web usage spiked 24% during the first quarter with AT&T driving a third of the on deck traffic, according to the first Crisp Wireless Index study measuring mobile usage across a sample of 14 million users who surf via Crisp's mobile web publishing network. While over half of the traffic - 53% - is still driven by on deck portals, off deck searches including manual URL type-ins and bookmark usage in on the rise, accounting for nearly 40% of the traffic. (iPhone searches using the Safari browser count as off deck.)
Monday, June 9, 2008
News Bytes: June 9
@ WWDC: 3G iPhone Available July 11 For $199; 6 Million Sold First Year
From our sister site mocoNews.net: Here’s the big news: the 8-Gig 3G iPhone will be $199 around the world. It launches in 22 countries on July 11. The 16-Gig will be $299.
“6 million iPhones sold this year, and we are pretty thrilled with this, and we did figure out what our next challenges are. The next mountain we have to climb to go to the next level—3G...."It’s beautiful. It’s thinner at the edges. Full plastic back, solid metal buttons, 3.5 inch display, camera, flush headphone jack. “It’s really great, and it feels even better in your hand,” Jobs said.
3G is approaching Wi-Fi speeds. 3G features include enterprise support, standby time of 300 hours, 2G talk time of 8-10 hours and 3G talk time of 5 hours (while others are at 3.5 hours). Much more at mocoNews.net…
Apple also announced the upcoming launch of MobileMe, which is described as “Exchange for the rest of us.” The Web app allows you to get push calendar, contacts and email on all of your devices and PCs. “It will push on the fly to keep things up to date all the time.” If it gets sent to Mobileme, it updates phones and computers, so that they all have the same email.” If a new contact is added on the phone, it gets pushed up to mobileme and then up to all computers and devices. “Wherever I am, everything is up to date. It works over the air wirelessly. If something changes, it gets pushed to the iPhone and I see it immediately. It’s perfect for my iPhone.”
MobileMe will cost $99 a year for 20 gigabytes of online storage. There will be a free 60-day trial. It will be available along with 2.0 software in early July.
The rest of our coverage is on our Apple Worldwide Developers Conference channel on MocoNews.
CARL ICAHN sent another heated letter to YAHOO (NASD: YHOO), this time urging the search company to sell to MICROSOFT (NASD: MSFT) for $34.375/share, or $49.5 billion, a nearly $2 billion increase from Microsoft’s last offer. If that doesn’t work out, Icahn advised Yahoo to resume negotiations with GOOGLE (NASD: GOOG) regarding a potential search-ads deal that could significantly boost Yahoo’s cash flow, and make the company more attractive to Microsoft.
COMCAST (NASD: CMCSA) was slapped with three Class Action lawsuits over its decision to throttle the internet connection of customers downloading BitTorrent files. The lawsuits in California, Illinois and New Jersey claim that Comcast misled customers who were promised “unfettered access to all the content, services and application that the Internet has to offer.” This is a major issue that isn’t going anyway any time soon, expect more law suits in the not so distant future.
Industry Moves: Fox Appoints Erik Moreno As New SVP Of Corp Dev
Fox Networks Group has added more arsenal on its corp dev/M&A side: it has appointed Erik Moreno as its new SVP, reporting to Mike Lang, the EVP of the corp dev unit. In his new position, Moreno will look at “strategic opportunities across Fox Entertainment as well as work on acquisitions, joint ventures, and other related opportunities that could include News Corporation (NYSE: NWS) units,” the company said. The group has been involved with major digital media deals the company has done: MySpace and IGN acquisitions, Big Ten Channel, Jamba mobile joint venture, Hulu and most recently the MySpace Music joint venture with the major music labels.
Moreno will be based in Los Angeles and report to Lang. He joins FNG after having served as Director of Corporate Development with eBay (NSDQ: EBAY) since 2006. Prior to working at eBay, Moreno served as VP in Corporate Development and Strategy at Level 3 Communications.
Broadband Content Bits: ESPN360.com; Network Sites’ Visits; Hulu
-- ESPN (NYSE: DIS) reports audience growth across online and TV viewership: ESPN’s NBA coverage has grown across the company’s online and TV platforms. Its broadband network ESPN360.com provided live coverage of 101 NBA games with 29 of them in hi-def. Fans watching games on this site averaged 60-plus minutes of time spent viewing, over 20 times the average time spent viewing online video. Visits to ESPN.com during the Conference Finals were up 53 percent, with visits to NBA content up 54 percent from last year. As for TV viewing, coverage of the 2008 NBA Playoffs broke the network’s record for most views at 3,149,000 households from 2,994,000 households in 2006.
-- CBS.com visits increase while those to ABC.com and NBC.com decrease: Visits to CBS.com increased 41 percent for the 2007-08 season compared to the 2006-07 season, ranking third place and marking the largest growth in average visits among the six leading broadcast network sites, Hitwise reports. ABC.com was the most visited network site for the season with 27.14 percent of US visits, down 9 percent from the previous season. NBC.com came in second with 27.01 percent of visits, down 18 percent from the previous season. Fox came in fourth with 17.54 percent, followed by CWTV.com at 6.61 percent and MyNetworkTV.com at .19 percent. The CW website received the second largest growth in average visits, with its 27 percent increase.
-- Hulu adds search within embeds: Hulu just added its new search within embeds feature, reports NewTeeVee. Now, users can search for other videos on the Hulu clip embedded on a different site. The search feature directs users to outside content Hulu content isn’t available.
JetBlue’s LiveTV Buying Verizon’s Airfone For In-Flight Internet
JetBlue’s LiveTV unit, which offers in-flight TV and messaging services, is buying Verizon’s (NYSE: VZ) Airfone, an air-to-ground telecom network, in a deal WSJ (via Reuters) says is to boost its on-board internet and email offering. No purchase price was given. JetBlue took control of LiveTV in 2002 and it now shows DirecTV (NYSE: DTV), Bell ExpressVu, Foxtel and Austar channels on around seven airlines. There’s also BlackBerry messaging and Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) Mail but, despite the launch on on-board WiFi in December, JetBlue still advises: “In order to maintain optimal bandwidth performance, attachments and internet browsing should be avoided.” Verizon had wanted to offload Airfone for some time, and the continuation of the unit had hinged on finding a buyer.
Vid-Biz: Crackle, DVR Block, Reframe
Crackle to Launch New Series; The Jace Hall Show and Take-Away Shows added to lineup, The Purple Onion and The C-Spot re-upped. (MediaWeek)
MPAA Looks to Block DVR Recording of Some Movies; at the request of the film organization, FCC has started a proceeding to determine whether video distributors can remotely block consumers from recording recently released movies on their DVRs. (Ars Technica)
Tribeca and Amazon Partner to Digitize Rare Films; ReframeCollection.org will convert the films and offer them for rental or sale. (The Hollywood Reporter)
DTV Switch to Bring More “SubChannels;” multicasting means more channels, but will people tune in? (The New York Times)
Tots and Teens Dig the NewTeeVee
Watch out, oldteevee! According to new Nielsen data, the next generation of video watchers is spending even more time with online video at home than the current crop of adults do.
During the month of April, kids ages 2 to 11 watched an average of 51 streams per month and 118 minutes of online video per month. Teens ages 12 to 17 watched an average of 74 streams per month and 132 minutes of online video. Fogeys over the age of 18 watched just 44.3 streams per month and spent 99.4 minutes per viewer.
From our sister site mocoNews.net: Here’s the big news: the 8-Gig 3G iPhone will be $199 around the world. It launches in 22 countries on July 11. The 16-Gig will be $299.
“6 million iPhones sold this year, and we are pretty thrilled with this, and we did figure out what our next challenges are. The next mountain we have to climb to go to the next level—3G...."It’s beautiful. It’s thinner at the edges. Full plastic back, solid metal buttons, 3.5 inch display, camera, flush headphone jack. “It’s really great, and it feels even better in your hand,” Jobs said.
3G is approaching Wi-Fi speeds. 3G features include enterprise support, standby time of 300 hours, 2G talk time of 8-10 hours and 3G talk time of 5 hours (while others are at 3.5 hours). Much more at mocoNews.net…
Apple also announced the upcoming launch of MobileMe, which is described as “Exchange for the rest of us.” The Web app allows you to get push calendar, contacts and email on all of your devices and PCs. “It will push on the fly to keep things up to date all the time.” If it gets sent to Mobileme, it updates phones and computers, so that they all have the same email.” If a new contact is added on the phone, it gets pushed up to mobileme and then up to all computers and devices. “Wherever I am, everything is up to date. It works over the air wirelessly. If something changes, it gets pushed to the iPhone and I see it immediately. It’s perfect for my iPhone.”
MobileMe will cost $99 a year for 20 gigabytes of online storage. There will be a free 60-day trial. It will be available along with 2.0 software in early July.
The rest of our coverage is on our Apple Worldwide Developers Conference channel on MocoNews.
CARL ICAHN sent another heated letter to YAHOO (NASD: YHOO), this time urging the search company to sell to MICROSOFT (NASD: MSFT) for $34.375/share, or $49.5 billion, a nearly $2 billion increase from Microsoft’s last offer. If that doesn’t work out, Icahn advised Yahoo to resume negotiations with GOOGLE (NASD: GOOG) regarding a potential search-ads deal that could significantly boost Yahoo’s cash flow, and make the company more attractive to Microsoft.
COMCAST (NASD: CMCSA) was slapped with three Class Action lawsuits over its decision to throttle the internet connection of customers downloading BitTorrent files. The lawsuits in California, Illinois and New Jersey claim that Comcast misled customers who were promised “unfettered access to all the content, services and application that the Internet has to offer.” This is a major issue that isn’t going anyway any time soon, expect more law suits in the not so distant future.
Industry Moves: Fox Appoints Erik Moreno As New SVP Of Corp Dev
Fox Networks Group has added more arsenal on its corp dev/M&A side: it has appointed Erik Moreno as its new SVP, reporting to Mike Lang, the EVP of the corp dev unit. In his new position, Moreno will look at “strategic opportunities across Fox Entertainment as well as work on acquisitions, joint ventures, and other related opportunities that could include News Corporation (NYSE: NWS) units,” the company said. The group has been involved with major digital media deals the company has done: MySpace and IGN acquisitions, Big Ten Channel, Jamba mobile joint venture, Hulu and most recently the MySpace Music joint venture with the major music labels.
Moreno will be based in Los Angeles and report to Lang. He joins FNG after having served as Director of Corporate Development with eBay (NSDQ: EBAY) since 2006. Prior to working at eBay, Moreno served as VP in Corporate Development and Strategy at Level 3 Communications.
Broadband Content Bits: ESPN360.com; Network Sites’ Visits; Hulu
-- ESPN (NYSE: DIS) reports audience growth across online and TV viewership: ESPN’s NBA coverage has grown across the company’s online and TV platforms. Its broadband network ESPN360.com provided live coverage of 101 NBA games with 29 of them in hi-def. Fans watching games on this site averaged 60-plus minutes of time spent viewing, over 20 times the average time spent viewing online video. Visits to ESPN.com during the Conference Finals were up 53 percent, with visits to NBA content up 54 percent from last year. As for TV viewing, coverage of the 2008 NBA Playoffs broke the network’s record for most views at 3,149,000 households from 2,994,000 households in 2006.
-- CBS.com visits increase while those to ABC.com and NBC.com decrease: Visits to CBS.com increased 41 percent for the 2007-08 season compared to the 2006-07 season, ranking third place and marking the largest growth in average visits among the six leading broadcast network sites, Hitwise reports. ABC.com was the most visited network site for the season with 27.14 percent of US visits, down 9 percent from the previous season. NBC.com came in second with 27.01 percent of visits, down 18 percent from the previous season. Fox came in fourth with 17.54 percent, followed by CWTV.com at 6.61 percent and MyNetworkTV.com at .19 percent. The CW website received the second largest growth in average visits, with its 27 percent increase.
-- Hulu adds search within embeds: Hulu just added its new search within embeds feature, reports NewTeeVee. Now, users can search for other videos on the Hulu clip embedded on a different site. The search feature directs users to outside content Hulu content isn’t available.
JetBlue’s LiveTV Buying Verizon’s Airfone For In-Flight Internet
JetBlue’s LiveTV unit, which offers in-flight TV and messaging services, is buying Verizon’s (NYSE: VZ) Airfone, an air-to-ground telecom network, in a deal WSJ (via Reuters) says is to boost its on-board internet and email offering. No purchase price was given. JetBlue took control of LiveTV in 2002 and it now shows DirecTV (NYSE: DTV), Bell ExpressVu, Foxtel and Austar channels on around seven airlines. There’s also BlackBerry messaging and Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) Mail but, despite the launch on on-board WiFi in December, JetBlue still advises: “In order to maintain optimal bandwidth performance, attachments and internet browsing should be avoided.” Verizon had wanted to offload Airfone for some time, and the continuation of the unit had hinged on finding a buyer.
Vid-Biz: Crackle, DVR Block, Reframe
Crackle to Launch New Series; The Jace Hall Show and Take-Away Shows added to lineup, The Purple Onion and The C-Spot re-upped. (MediaWeek)
MPAA Looks to Block DVR Recording of Some Movies; at the request of the film organization, FCC has started a proceeding to determine whether video distributors can remotely block consumers from recording recently released movies on their DVRs. (Ars Technica)
Tribeca and Amazon Partner to Digitize Rare Films; ReframeCollection.org will convert the films and offer them for rental or sale. (The Hollywood Reporter)
DTV Switch to Bring More “SubChannels;” multicasting means more channels, but will people tune in? (The New York Times)
Tots and Teens Dig the NewTeeVee
Watch out, oldteevee! According to new Nielsen data, the next generation of video watchers is spending even more time with online video at home than the current crop of adults do.
During the month of April, kids ages 2 to 11 watched an average of 51 streams per month and 118 minutes of online video per month. Teens ages 12 to 17 watched an average of 74 streams per month and 132 minutes of online video. Fogeys over the age of 18 watched just 44.3 streams per month and spent 99.4 minutes per viewer.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
News Bytes: June 5
Microsoft CEO Addresses Future of Media What is Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's outlook for the future of media? "In the next 10 years, the whole world of media [is] going to be turned upside down. There will be no newspapers, no magazines that are delivered in paper form. There are going to be far more producers of content."
Advertisers are abuzz about the possibilities of APPLE’s new 3G iPhone, even though they haven’t seen it yet. No comment from APPLE, but sources believe Steve Jobs will unveil the new iPhone Monday, June 9 when Jobs gives the keynote speech at Apple’s Wordwide Developer’s Conference in San Francisco.
TBS has begun pausing shows mid-scene to display ads for other TBS programs. The ad in question features comedian Bill Engvall walking on screen, pausing Family Guy and plugging The Bill Engvall Show. The ad plays off the idea of pausing shows using DVR technology, a sure fire way to know the viewer is paying attention, for better or worse.
FOX’s recent experiment with ‘Remote Free TV’ is paying off with 35-40% pricing premiums for upfront advertisements. ‘Remote Free TV’ is a new initiative intent on keeping viewers focused on programming in the age of the digital video recorder and airs half the number of commercials per program. Fox has already sold 70% of its upfront prime time spots and could sell out by the end of the week.
Interview: Laura Lang, Digitas CEO: Starting An ‘Internet Upfront’ And Meaning it
The notion of a digital upfront similar to the annual TV dog and pony shows strikes some ad industry observers as dubious, but that doesn’t seem to stop efforts kicking it into gear. The latest: this afternoon, Publicis Groupe’s Digitas tries a twist with a presentation it calls “The Newfront.” Digitas CEO Laura Lang told me the company is sincere in its ambition to create an annual event specifically devoted to previewing digital content. She said that the Newfront will include companies outside of Publicis, but it’s not all altruism: Digitas wants the event to draw attention to its new branded content creation unit, The Third Act. I also spoke to Lang about how Digitas has evolved since being acquired for $1.3 billion in December 2006.
Read More »
Is Verizon Wireless Buying Alltel For Its Assets Or For Its Culture Of Innovation?
Verizon Wireless’s (NYSE: VZ) $28.1 billion acquisition of Alltel (NYSE: AT) will create the largest U.S. wireless carrier, but at the same time, it will eliminate one of the most innovative carriers in the country, which begs the question: Is Verizon buying Alltel for its towers and subscribers, or also for its forward-looking approach to the market?
As a regional carrier, Alltel may only serve 13 million subscribers in limited territories, but that gives the company a level of comfort and flexibility to quickly roll out new services without the constraints larger carriers face. It doesn’t worry that millions of users will start using a new service overnight that crash the network, and it doesn’t have to train as many customer service and retail representatives every time it launches a new phone or application. So, the concern is that once apart of Verizon this attitude will fade. Some of it probably will, but if the merger gains regulatory approval, will companies lose an important petri dish, or gain a larger one? Lots more analysis on MocoNews.net.
Quest To Be ‘Next’ Platform: Idea One Player Will Win Is So ‘Old Status Quo’
Later today Time goes live with a lengthy Josh Quittner look at the evolving concept of platforms—among the wonkiest subjects you can bring to a consumer news mag. (We’ll add a link when it’s up.) His take: Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and Facebook, three of the “most innovative” companies in SV “each representing a fundamental phase of the information era,” are duking it out to become the next great platform. They also each represent a different style: Google, more open; Facebook, more controlled; Apple, highly controlled. The winners “stand to make billions selling devices, selling eyeballs to advertisers, selling services such as music, movies, even computer power on demand” but Quittner contends the real battle is over the internet’s very future. Read more…
Hulu Searches in Embeds, MySpaceTV Gets RSS
Hulu has added an innovative new feature: search within embeds. Now if you’re watching a Hulu embed (example below) on another site, you can search for something else to watch without leaving the player. The video site already has an extremely unselfish search engine, pointing outside to content when it doesn’t have video of its own — and the same results will show up within embed search. See the Hulu blog for screenshots. We mentioned yesterday that Heavy is planning to do something like this with its new Husky ad insertion spinoff.
MySpace also just let us know they added RSS feeds to MySpaceTV. Now users can subscribe to any video channel or chart. It’s a long-overdue feature (YouTube had RSS from the womb), but hey, change is tough when you’re a social-networking behemoth.
Also, hey, it’s not a feature addition, but a nice upgrade nonetheless: Ustream just emailed to say it added Shashi Seth, the recently departed YouTube head of monetization, to its board of advisors.
Panasonic Pipes YouTube Directly to TVs
Consumer electronics companies like Apple, TiVo and HP either are or will be putting YouTube content on your TV through set-top boxes. But Panasonic’s new PZ-850 plasma Viera TV ditches the box and puts YouTube directly into your TV, and I got to see a demo of it today.
The PZ-850 sports an Internet connection and a dedicated on-screen YouTube section that gives you access to the site’s entire video library. Though the interface is different (built for remote control browsing), it offers pretty much all of the same functionality as the YouTube web site — search for video using keywords, check out the most viewed, rate videos and access your account.
Vid-Biz:
SAG Strong-arming AFTRA Members? SAG reportedly holding a special meeting to convince people who belong to both guilds not to ratify AFTRA’s recent deal with the AMPTP. (The Hollywood Reporter)
Vudu Offers Wireless Kit; standalone cordless connection device costs $79. (CrunchGear)
TV Tops, But PC Video Watching Grows
While oldteevee remains the top video-watching dog for most people, the PC is gaining ground, according to a recent study by Ipsos MediaCT. Ipsos found that, among U.S. video downloaders and streamers, the amount of video consumed on a TV set dropped to 70 percent in February 2008 from 75 percent in February 2007.
While oldteevee was dropping, video watching on PCs grew to 19 percent in 2008, up from from 11 percent in 2007. According to Ipsos, of the 52 percent of Americans 12 and older who have ever streamed or downloaded video content, roughly one out of every five hours of video content is watched on the PC.
YouTube content comes to Sony's Bravia Internet Video Link
Sony's Bravia Internet Video Link hasn't really gotten much attention, but the little box is growing up so fast -- Sony's just announced that as of today, YouTube content will now be available at no extra cost. That's in addition to channels from Style.com, Sports Illustrated, blip.tv, and others, and YouTube content should pop up in the BIVL's XMB inteface just like all the rest. Sounds great -- now to figure out how to RickRoll the sucker.
Advertisers are abuzz about the possibilities of APPLE’s new 3G iPhone, even though they haven’t seen it yet. No comment from APPLE, but sources believe Steve Jobs will unveil the new iPhone Monday, June 9 when Jobs gives the keynote speech at Apple’s Wordwide Developer’s Conference in San Francisco.
TBS has begun pausing shows mid-scene to display ads for other TBS programs. The ad in question features comedian Bill Engvall walking on screen, pausing Family Guy and plugging The Bill Engvall Show. The ad plays off the idea of pausing shows using DVR technology, a sure fire way to know the viewer is paying attention, for better or worse.
FOX’s recent experiment with ‘Remote Free TV’ is paying off with 35-40% pricing premiums for upfront advertisements. ‘Remote Free TV’ is a new initiative intent on keeping viewers focused on programming in the age of the digital video recorder and airs half the number of commercials per program. Fox has already sold 70% of its upfront prime time spots and could sell out by the end of the week.
Interview: Laura Lang, Digitas CEO: Starting An ‘Internet Upfront’ And Meaning it
The notion of a digital upfront similar to the annual TV dog and pony shows strikes some ad industry observers as dubious, but that doesn’t seem to stop efforts kicking it into gear. The latest: this afternoon, Publicis Groupe’s Digitas tries a twist with a presentation it calls “The Newfront.” Digitas CEO Laura Lang told me the company is sincere in its ambition to create an annual event specifically devoted to previewing digital content. She said that the Newfront will include companies outside of Publicis, but it’s not all altruism: Digitas wants the event to draw attention to its new branded content creation unit, The Third Act. I also spoke to Lang about how Digitas has evolved since being acquired for $1.3 billion in December 2006.
Read More »
Is Verizon Wireless Buying Alltel For Its Assets Or For Its Culture Of Innovation?
Verizon Wireless’s (NYSE: VZ) $28.1 billion acquisition of Alltel (NYSE: AT) will create the largest U.S. wireless carrier, but at the same time, it will eliminate one of the most innovative carriers in the country, which begs the question: Is Verizon buying Alltel for its towers and subscribers, or also for its forward-looking approach to the market?
As a regional carrier, Alltel may only serve 13 million subscribers in limited territories, but that gives the company a level of comfort and flexibility to quickly roll out new services without the constraints larger carriers face. It doesn’t worry that millions of users will start using a new service overnight that crash the network, and it doesn’t have to train as many customer service and retail representatives every time it launches a new phone or application. So, the concern is that once apart of Verizon this attitude will fade. Some of it probably will, but if the merger gains regulatory approval, will companies lose an important petri dish, or gain a larger one? Lots more analysis on MocoNews.net.
Quest To Be ‘Next’ Platform: Idea One Player Will Win Is So ‘Old Status Quo’
Later today Time goes live with a lengthy Josh Quittner look at the evolving concept of platforms—among the wonkiest subjects you can bring to a consumer news mag. (We’ll add a link when it’s up.) His take: Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and Facebook, three of the “most innovative” companies in SV “each representing a fundamental phase of the information era,” are duking it out to become the next great platform. They also each represent a different style: Google, more open; Facebook, more controlled; Apple, highly controlled. The winners “stand to make billions selling devices, selling eyeballs to advertisers, selling services such as music, movies, even computer power on demand” but Quittner contends the real battle is over the internet’s very future. Read more…
Hulu Searches in Embeds, MySpaceTV Gets RSS
Hulu has added an innovative new feature: search within embeds. Now if you’re watching a Hulu embed (example below) on another site, you can search for something else to watch without leaving the player. The video site already has an extremely unselfish search engine, pointing outside to content when it doesn’t have video of its own — and the same results will show up within embed search. See the Hulu blog for screenshots. We mentioned yesterday that Heavy is planning to do something like this with its new Husky ad insertion spinoff.
MySpace also just let us know they added RSS feeds to MySpaceTV. Now users can subscribe to any video channel or chart. It’s a long-overdue feature (YouTube had RSS from the womb), but hey, change is tough when you’re a social-networking behemoth.
Also, hey, it’s not a feature addition, but a nice upgrade nonetheless: Ustream just emailed to say it added Shashi Seth, the recently departed YouTube head of monetization, to its board of advisors.
Panasonic Pipes YouTube Directly to TVs
Consumer electronics companies like Apple, TiVo and HP either are or will be putting YouTube content on your TV through set-top boxes. But Panasonic’s new PZ-850 plasma Viera TV ditches the box and puts YouTube directly into your TV, and I got to see a demo of it today.
The PZ-850 sports an Internet connection and a dedicated on-screen YouTube section that gives you access to the site’s entire video library. Though the interface is different (built for remote control browsing), it offers pretty much all of the same functionality as the YouTube web site — search for video using keywords, check out the most viewed, rate videos and access your account.
Vid-Biz:
SAG Strong-arming AFTRA Members? SAG reportedly holding a special meeting to convince people who belong to both guilds not to ratify AFTRA’s recent deal with the AMPTP. (The Hollywood Reporter)
Vudu Offers Wireless Kit; standalone cordless connection device costs $79. (CrunchGear)
TV Tops, But PC Video Watching Grows
While oldteevee remains the top video-watching dog for most people, the PC is gaining ground, according to a recent study by Ipsos MediaCT. Ipsos found that, among U.S. video downloaders and streamers, the amount of video consumed on a TV set dropped to 70 percent in February 2008 from 75 percent in February 2007.
While oldteevee was dropping, video watching on PCs grew to 19 percent in 2008, up from from 11 percent in 2007. According to Ipsos, of the 52 percent of Americans 12 and older who have ever streamed or downloaded video content, roughly one out of every five hours of video content is watched on the PC.
YouTube content comes to Sony's Bravia Internet Video Link
Sony's Bravia Internet Video Link hasn't really gotten much attention, but the little box is growing up so fast -- Sony's just announced that as of today, YouTube content will now be available at no extra cost. That's in addition to channels from Style.com, Sports Illustrated, blip.tv, and others, and YouTube content should pop up in the BIVL's XMB inteface just like all the rest. Sounds great -- now to figure out how to RickRoll the sucker.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
News Bytes: June 4
Activist investor CARL ICAHN vowed to remove JERRY YANG from his Chief Executive position if Icahn’s bid to unseat YAHOO’s board of directors is a success. Icahn, who feels Yang was a major obstacle in MICROSOFT’s failed bid to acquire the search company, reiterated that he plans to replace Yang and other board members in hopes of reviving negotiations with Microsoft. Yang has been heavily criticized for his role in the botched takeover, especially after it was revealed that he had rejected a previous offer from Microsoft well above the $33/share Microsoft offered in May.
SONY will announce that it has reached a deal with IGA WORLDWIDE to bring advertisements distributed via the internet to PS3 games. The deal would emphasize product placement and display ads embedded inside the game that could create significant new revenue for the company. IGA will announce that ELECTRONIC ARTS will be the first game publisher to feature ads in its games.
Verizon "in talks" to buy Alltel for $27 billion
Verizon has certainly courted Alltel before, but this time, the two could finally be rounding third base. According to a breaking report at CNBC, Verizon is "in deep in talks to acquire Alltel," which of course is America's fifth largest wireless carrier. It's no secret that Alltel has been riding fairly high of late, and unless your memory is totally shot, you'll likely recall that it was just recently "taken private by TPG and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners in a $27.5 billion deal." Not surprisingly, officials at both outfits refused to comment on the rumblings, but if this does indeed go down, analysts are expecting Verizon to pay around 8x Alltel's current EBITDA, whereas TPG / Goldman Sachs paid 9.2x. We'll keep you posted on any developments.
Sony Confirms Paid-Sub PS3 Video Mag ‘Qore’, Produced By Future
Future Publishing (LSE: FUTR) has confirmed to us our earlier report it has been licensed to start providing online magazine-type content to Sony’s (NYSE: SNE) PlayStation Network.
“Qore”, a monthly digital “program” featuring editorial from Future, will launch on Friday in the US with a possible UK launch later. It will be a premium subscription offering, with both monthly and annual fee structures, though no fees are available yet. The publisher will also sell video, interstitial and contextual ads on the service. Qore will include game demos and previews, tips and developer interviews.
This is Future’s first over-the-console mag license and sees it move much further in to online video. It has counted Sony amongst its long-term official licensors in Europe for several years and took the US contract for PSM from Ziff-Davis in January 2007 but that was for print only - the counterpart site psmonline.com has been mothballed and Future’s main online games output, gamesradar.com, only uses content from its non-license print titles.
Vid-Biz: Flip, Disney, Pork and Beans
Disney Buys Fanlib, in Process of Acquiring DigiSynd; acquisition of fan-fiction site interesting from a copyright perspective, DigiSynd is a stealth startup founded by Revver co-founder. (paidContent)
Heavy’s Burly Sports Shows Heads for CBS; CBSSports.com to distribute weekly sports roundup show hosted by comedian Nick “Fitzy” Stevens. (emailed release)
Inergize Digital Media Uses Entriq Media Services; partnership will help television broadcasters manage distribution and workflow of digital content across platforms. (Broadcasting and Cable)
Canada Gets Movies on iTunes; folks in the Great White North can now rent or buy movies through the service. (Globe and Mail)
Pop-Up Video Comes to YouTube
YouTube has unveiled a new tool, Video Annotations, which, according to YouTube, allows creators to:
-Add background information about the video
-Create stories with multiple possibilities (viewers click to the next scene)
-Link to related YouTube videos, channels, or search results from within a video
-Annotations are only available in English and don’t work with embedded videos at this point, but you can see them being put to use in this skydiving video, magic card trick and this interactive shell game.
Verismo Box Plugs Web into Your TV
Verismo Networks on Tuesday previewed “the PoD,” a tiny box that brings web content to your TV monitor without needing a PC in between, at the Under the Radar conference in Mountain View, Calif. I’d never heard of the company before sitting down for the session, so was excited to see an entirely new device. Yes, yes, it’s a device, and it doesn’t come from a company you already have a relationship with, but like I said, it’s tiny.
Verismo CEO Prakash Bhalerao said his company has partnered with YouTube and BitTorrent to get access to their content, and vTap to search for anything else. Apparently YouTube will also be marketing the PoD to its users, which would definitely help a new company get exposure! The box can also handle anything with Windows DRM, so you can watch Amazon Unbox and CinemaNow downloads right on your TV.
The PoD, along with a remote, is set to go on sale later this summer for $99. Unfortunately I didn’t catch all the specs, and the company’s web site is less than helpful. We spoke to Verismo Networks CTO and co-founder Vijay Maheshwari after the presentation to get an up close and personal demo on camera. The video of that interview is embedded above.
TechCrunch to Launch Digg for Startups TechCrunch is launching a video site called "Elevator Pitches," which will enable startup entrepreneurs to submit video presentations for ratings, co-editor Erick Schonfeld announced at I Want Media's "Future of Media" forum. Site users will be able to "rate" the viability of the startups.
CBS, Yahoo Set to Announce Partnership CBS is said to be preparing an "important" partnership with Yahoo. The Internet company is expected to join the CBS Audience Network, which streams some 70,000 videos to more than 300 partners, including YouTube, AOL, MSN, Joost, Veoh, Fancast and Bebo.
YouTube: The New Advertising Hot Spot With viewers migrating online -- and YouTube accounting for roughly a third of all online-video watching -- the Google-owned video-sharing site is perceived as "the new advertising hot spot." Also: YouTube provides advertisers with immediate user demographic information.
Disney Appears to Warm Up to Hulu Disney's Kevin Mayer, executive VP of corporate strategy and business development, is signaling that he could be ready to join Hulu, the so-called "YouTube killer" that offers legitimate video content from NBC and Fox. "Hulu's a great site. We're not participating -- now."
SONY will announce that it has reached a deal with IGA WORLDWIDE to bring advertisements distributed via the internet to PS3 games. The deal would emphasize product placement and display ads embedded inside the game that could create significant new revenue for the company. IGA will announce that ELECTRONIC ARTS will be the first game publisher to feature ads in its games.
Verizon "in talks" to buy Alltel for $27 billion
Verizon has certainly courted Alltel before, but this time, the two could finally be rounding third base. According to a breaking report at CNBC, Verizon is "in deep in talks to acquire Alltel," which of course is America's fifth largest wireless carrier. It's no secret that Alltel has been riding fairly high of late, and unless your memory is totally shot, you'll likely recall that it was just recently "taken private by TPG and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners in a $27.5 billion deal." Not surprisingly, officials at both outfits refused to comment on the rumblings, but if this does indeed go down, analysts are expecting Verizon to pay around 8x Alltel's current EBITDA, whereas TPG / Goldman Sachs paid 9.2x. We'll keep you posted on any developments.
Sony Confirms Paid-Sub PS3 Video Mag ‘Qore’, Produced By Future
Future Publishing (LSE: FUTR) has confirmed to us our earlier report it has been licensed to start providing online magazine-type content to Sony’s (NYSE: SNE) PlayStation Network.
“Qore”, a monthly digital “program” featuring editorial from Future, will launch on Friday in the US with a possible UK launch later. It will be a premium subscription offering, with both monthly and annual fee structures, though no fees are available yet. The publisher will also sell video, interstitial and contextual ads on the service. Qore will include game demos and previews, tips and developer interviews.
This is Future’s first over-the-console mag license and sees it move much further in to online video. It has counted Sony amongst its long-term official licensors in Europe for several years and took the US contract for PSM from Ziff-Davis in January 2007 but that was for print only - the counterpart site psmonline.com has been mothballed and Future’s main online games output, gamesradar.com, only uses content from its non-license print titles.
Vid-Biz: Flip, Disney, Pork and Beans
Disney Buys Fanlib, in Process of Acquiring DigiSynd; acquisition of fan-fiction site interesting from a copyright perspective, DigiSynd is a stealth startup founded by Revver co-founder. (paidContent)
Heavy’s Burly Sports Shows Heads for CBS; CBSSports.com to distribute weekly sports roundup show hosted by comedian Nick “Fitzy” Stevens. (emailed release)
Inergize Digital Media Uses Entriq Media Services; partnership will help television broadcasters manage distribution and workflow of digital content across platforms. (Broadcasting and Cable)
Canada Gets Movies on iTunes; folks in the Great White North can now rent or buy movies through the service. (Globe and Mail)
Pop-Up Video Comes to YouTube
YouTube has unveiled a new tool, Video Annotations, which, according to YouTube, allows creators to:
-Add background information about the video
-Create stories with multiple possibilities (viewers click to the next scene)
-Link to related YouTube videos, channels, or search results from within a video
-Annotations are only available in English and don’t work with embedded videos at this point, but you can see them being put to use in this skydiving video, magic card trick and this interactive shell game.
Verismo Box Plugs Web into Your TV
Verismo Networks on Tuesday previewed “the PoD,” a tiny box that brings web content to your TV monitor without needing a PC in between, at the Under the Radar conference in Mountain View, Calif. I’d never heard of the company before sitting down for the session, so was excited to see an entirely new device. Yes, yes, it’s a device, and it doesn’t come from a company you already have a relationship with, but like I said, it’s tiny.
Verismo CEO Prakash Bhalerao said his company has partnered with YouTube and BitTorrent to get access to their content, and vTap to search for anything else. Apparently YouTube will also be marketing the PoD to its users, which would definitely help a new company get exposure! The box can also handle anything with Windows DRM, so you can watch Amazon Unbox and CinemaNow downloads right on your TV.
The PoD, along with a remote, is set to go on sale later this summer for $99. Unfortunately I didn’t catch all the specs, and the company’s web site is less than helpful. We spoke to Verismo Networks CTO and co-founder Vijay Maheshwari after the presentation to get an up close and personal demo on camera. The video of that interview is embedded above.
TechCrunch to Launch Digg for Startups TechCrunch is launching a video site called "Elevator Pitches," which will enable startup entrepreneurs to submit video presentations for ratings, co-editor Erick Schonfeld announced at I Want Media's "Future of Media" forum. Site users will be able to "rate" the viability of the startups.
CBS, Yahoo Set to Announce Partnership CBS is said to be preparing an "important" partnership with Yahoo. The Internet company is expected to join the CBS Audience Network, which streams some 70,000 videos to more than 300 partners, including YouTube, AOL, MSN, Joost, Veoh, Fancast and Bebo.
YouTube: The New Advertising Hot Spot With viewers migrating online -- and YouTube accounting for roughly a third of all online-video watching -- the Google-owned video-sharing site is perceived as "the new advertising hot spot." Also: YouTube provides advertisers with immediate user demographic information.
Disney Appears to Warm Up to Hulu Disney's Kevin Mayer, executive VP of corporate strategy and business development, is signaling that he could be ready to join Hulu, the so-called "YouTube killer" that offers legitimate video content from NBC and Fox. "Hulu's a great site. We're not participating -- now."
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
News Bytes: June 3
Court documents reveal that YAHOO rejected an offer of $40/share from MICROSOFT fifteen months ago. The details emerged via an unsealed complaint in a lawsuit between shareholders and Yahoo. News of the offer comes a month after Yahoo rejected a $33/share offer, under the guise that their stock was worth at least $37.
TIME WARNER CABLE is developing a wireless cable modem capable of bringing viral video to the television. The modem, which will allow users to build a wireless network in their home, will be able to directly access the Internet on any television set with the box set up. While web-to-TV technology is still in its early stages, similar models are offered by APPLE’s AppleTV and TiVo, however, neither are capable of surfing for Web videos, which the Time Warner Cable box would be able to do.
Sony's 'Rescue Me' Minisodes to Air on FX, Web Sony Pictures Television is producing 10 minisodes of the firefighter series "Rescue Me," starring Denis Leary. The five-minute shorts will air Tuesday nights on FX and online the following day. The fifth season of the TV series was postponed until next spring because of the writers strike.
Disney Exec Leads in Hollywood 'Digital Power' Disney Internet head Steve Wadsworth, who "seems to be making all the right moves," comes in at No. 1 on The Hollywood Reporter's list of the 50 online innovators in Hollywood. The trade title admits: "With the way the industry is evolving, next year's [list] might look totally different."
Media Moguls Struggle to Survive Bipolar World In today's changing environment, media moguls are said to struggling to understand whether they should buy or sell assets. "Old-media guys are trying to transform into new-media 'it' girls," says one observer, "while upstarts are thinking, 'Hey, maybe I can take down a dinosaur.' "
Study: Traditional Media to Lose Ads to Internet U.S. Internet advertising will continue to "grow fast" in the face of an economic downturn, says a forecast by analyst firm IDC. The transfer of marketing budgets from traditional to new media will accelerate, with the Internet surpassing newspapers and television "in just five years."
NBCU And Nielsen Team To Map Consumers’ View Habits From To TV To Online Video
NBC Universal (NYSE: GE) is teaming with The Nielsen Company on creating sales metrics across TV and online video streaming. Specifically, the ad sales collaboration will focus on finding the connections between viewers’ buying decisions and habits. Nielsen will provide data from its TV ratings service and its VideoCensus service, which measures streaming video, as well as databases of consumer activity for broader overall product categories, including packaged goods, pharmaceuticals, automotive and movies.
The partnership bridges the paths the two companies have been taking lately to the study of consumer viewing and purchasing habits. Nielsen has been trying to tie together data from TV, the web and mobile, while NBCU has been working with TiVo (NSDQ: TIVO) on mining its audience measurement for ad sales purposes. Release
ABC Tops in Visits, But CBS Gets More Time
While more people visited ABC.com during the 2007-2008 television season, they spent more time on CBS.com, according to new numbers from Hitwise.
ABC eked out a narrow victory, capturing 27.14 percent of U.S. visits compared to NBC’s 27.01 percent in a custom category defined by Hitwise. Trailing behind in order were CBS (which had the highest jump from the previous season, increasing 41 percent), FOX sites, the CW, and My Network TV.
YouTube Head of Monetization Quits
YouTube’s head of monetization, Shashi Seth, let us know this morning that he left the company to become the chief revenue officer of startup Cooliris. Seth will be working on a business and advertising model for the Menlo Park, Calif.-based immersive browsing toolmaker, which has raised some $3 million in Series A funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
Google had moved Seth, who had formerly been its product lead on search, over to be YouTube’s head of monetization in January 2007. He was responsible for YouTube’s overlay video advertising product — see our interview with him from when that product launched.
“I think part of being a Googler is that you like smaller environments, and I think Google got a little big for me,” Seth told GigaOM today. Head over there to keep on reading.
HULU; Blu-Ray
Dorm Life Heads for Hulu; Attention Span Media to bring the college comedy, as well as SockTube Presents, to the popular video site. (emailed release)
More People Know About Blu-Ray, But Sales Aren’t Guaranteed; NPD Group says 9 percent of HDTV owners intend to buy the Blu-Ray player in the next six months, but many consumers believe that standard DVDs are good enough. (TWICE)
Quasi-Famous People Pile Into Web Series
When it rains, it pours. A host of new online original series were announced in the past 24 hours, most of which are professionally produced content featuring semi-famous people — or the siblings of semi-famous people.
Lloyd Braun, the former Yahoo exec who was supposed to bring Hollywood-style content to the portal years ago, only to be booted from the company, is back, kinda. AllThingsD reports that Braun will produce The Lunacy Report, a daily show devoted to “weird news” for Yahoo, as well as a celebrity news content portal for MSN. Lunacy will be hosted by Ellen DeGeneres’ brother Vance.
TIME WARNER CABLE is developing a wireless cable modem capable of bringing viral video to the television. The modem, which will allow users to build a wireless network in their home, will be able to directly access the Internet on any television set with the box set up. While web-to-TV technology is still in its early stages, similar models are offered by APPLE’s AppleTV and TiVo, however, neither are capable of surfing for Web videos, which the Time Warner Cable box would be able to do.
Sony's 'Rescue Me' Minisodes to Air on FX, Web Sony Pictures Television is producing 10 minisodes of the firefighter series "Rescue Me," starring Denis Leary. The five-minute shorts will air Tuesday nights on FX and online the following day. The fifth season of the TV series was postponed until next spring because of the writers strike.
Disney Exec Leads in Hollywood 'Digital Power' Disney Internet head Steve Wadsworth, who "seems to be making all the right moves," comes in at No. 1 on The Hollywood Reporter's list of the 50 online innovators in Hollywood. The trade title admits: "With the way the industry is evolving, next year's [list] might look totally different."
Media Moguls Struggle to Survive Bipolar World In today's changing environment, media moguls are said to struggling to understand whether they should buy or sell assets. "Old-media guys are trying to transform into new-media 'it' girls," says one observer, "while upstarts are thinking, 'Hey, maybe I can take down a dinosaur.' "
Study: Traditional Media to Lose Ads to Internet U.S. Internet advertising will continue to "grow fast" in the face of an economic downturn, says a forecast by analyst firm IDC. The transfer of marketing budgets from traditional to new media will accelerate, with the Internet surpassing newspapers and television "in just five years."
NBCU And Nielsen Team To Map Consumers’ View Habits From To TV To Online Video
NBC Universal (NYSE: GE) is teaming with The Nielsen Company on creating sales metrics across TV and online video streaming. Specifically, the ad sales collaboration will focus on finding the connections between viewers’ buying decisions and habits. Nielsen will provide data from its TV ratings service and its VideoCensus service, which measures streaming video, as well as databases of consumer activity for broader overall product categories, including packaged goods, pharmaceuticals, automotive and movies.
The partnership bridges the paths the two companies have been taking lately to the study of consumer viewing and purchasing habits. Nielsen has been trying to tie together data from TV, the web and mobile, while NBCU has been working with TiVo (NSDQ: TIVO) on mining its audience measurement for ad sales purposes. Release
ABC Tops in Visits, But CBS Gets More Time
While more people visited ABC.com during the 2007-2008 television season, they spent more time on CBS.com, according to new numbers from Hitwise.
ABC eked out a narrow victory, capturing 27.14 percent of U.S. visits compared to NBC’s 27.01 percent in a custom category defined by Hitwise. Trailing behind in order were CBS (which had the highest jump from the previous season, increasing 41 percent), FOX sites, the CW, and My Network TV.
YouTube Head of Monetization Quits
YouTube’s head of monetization, Shashi Seth, let us know this morning that he left the company to become the chief revenue officer of startup Cooliris. Seth will be working on a business and advertising model for the Menlo Park, Calif.-based immersive browsing toolmaker, which has raised some $3 million in Series A funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
Google had moved Seth, who had formerly been its product lead on search, over to be YouTube’s head of monetization in January 2007. He was responsible for YouTube’s overlay video advertising product — see our interview with him from when that product launched.
“I think part of being a Googler is that you like smaller environments, and I think Google got a little big for me,” Seth told GigaOM today. Head over there to keep on reading.
HULU; Blu-Ray
Dorm Life Heads for Hulu; Attention Span Media to bring the college comedy, as well as SockTube Presents, to the popular video site. (emailed release)
More People Know About Blu-Ray, But Sales Aren’t Guaranteed; NPD Group says 9 percent of HDTV owners intend to buy the Blu-Ray player in the next six months, but many consumers believe that standard DVDs are good enough. (TWICE)
Quasi-Famous People Pile Into Web Series
When it rains, it pours. A host of new online original series were announced in the past 24 hours, most of which are professionally produced content featuring semi-famous people — or the siblings of semi-famous people.
Lloyd Braun, the former Yahoo exec who was supposed to bring Hollywood-style content to the portal years ago, only to be booted from the company, is back, kinda. AllThingsD reports that Braun will produce The Lunacy Report, a daily show devoted to “weird news” for Yahoo, as well as a celebrity news content portal for MSN. Lunacy will be hosted by Ellen DeGeneres’ brother Vance.
Monday, June 2, 2008
News Bytes: May 30- June 2
TURNER is uniting its web properties to form a brand- friendly ad network. The media conglomerate will offer advertisers a choice of video and display ads available on their nineteen web sites, including CNN.com, NBA.com and PGA.com. The move is part of a digital sales overhaul in which the company will abandon third party ad networks.
INTEL will re-enter the mobile phone market. As smart phones become more like computers, Intel, which has an 80% share of the PC processor market, believes its expertise with processors will help them in the smart phone market. However, while its new Atom chip is set to roll out an upgrade in late 2009, competitors say that the Atom will only give users roughly 4-6 hours of HD-video playback on a single battery.
In other mobile device news, NVIDIA will announce its plans for its first chips designed for mobile internet devices (MIDs) this afternoon. The manufacturer described its new Tegra chips as a “computer on a chip” which it estimates will be able to play up to 26 hours of HD-video on a single battery change on a MID. Nvidia’s move into the MID market comes on the heels of competitors like INTEL, SAMSUNG and QUALCOMM’s decision to move into the emerging market.
The DISH NETWORK and ECHOSTAR are suing TIVO over comments the digital video recording company made about the Dish Network infringing on its patents. The lawsuit comes after an appeals court upheld a decision that ruled the firms had to pay Tivo $74 million in patent-infringement damages. The latest round in this legal battle could benefit TiVo, who recently posted a first quarter profit, if a judge orders an injunction against infringing digital video recorders.
CBS Interactive Promises “HD” Look To Video Player Content
CBS Interactive has upgraded its video player, though the full effects won’t be immediately available, the company said in an email press release. Among the player’s new features are the promise of “HD-quality,” full-screen viewing, a redesigned interface and embeddable video clips. In keeping with CBS Interactive’s (NYSE: CBS) emphasis on syndication, the new player will be deployed across CBS.com and on CBS Audience Network associated sites. CBS adds that it’s trying to make it easier for users to share videos. The company didn’t mention anything about any additional ad applications to the video player, though it’s clearly has an eye on Hulu’s growing distribution and on the improvements to NBC Universal’s (NYSE: GE) rival video player NBC Direct.
Facebook Platform Now Open Source: fbOpen Released
As we wrote last week, Facebook is turning parts of its application platform open source, the company announced today. It’s available here for download.
This comes a little more than a year after Facebook Platform first launched to allow third party developers a way to get their applications directly onto Facebook. The company says more than 24,000 applications have now been built on the platform and more than 400,000 developers are building these applications. 140 new applications are added to the directory each day. “Nearly all” Facebook users have added at least one of those applications.
Facebook Open Platform is licensed under the Common Public Attribution License (CPAL), except for the FBML parser, which includes Mozilla source code, which is licensed under the Mozilla Public License (MPL).
Facebook says they’re doing this “to give back to the developer community.” That may be somewhat true, but the key reason for fbOpen is to compete with OpenSocial, the Google/MySpace/Yahoo/AOL led open source competitor to Facebook Platform.
Competing social networks, including the still-larger MySpace, are lining up against Facebook via OpenSocial. This is their way of responding.
It may be too late. Tellingly, Facebook was unable to line up any partners to add to today’s announcement, although some social networks we’ve chatted with say they will almost certainly implement it in the near future.
Study: Advertisers Should Look at VOD; IAG research found viewers were 68 percent more likely to remember a spot in a VOD environment than during linear TV. (MediaWeek)
Sony secretly working on a PS3 motion controlling remote?
Considering how little attention the PS3's motion-sensing functionality currently receives, we're not inclined to think that Sony's making an even deeper push into the Wii's territory, but a site called Playstation Lifestyle says that Sony conducted focus-group testing on a controller similar to the Wiimote earlier this year. Apparently the device was mounted on a foot-tall mini-tripod, and was demoed with tennis, fencing, and paintball mini-games, as well as used to play Quake on a laptop. That's not to say that Sony's ever going to bring this stuff to market, but it would certainly be interesting if it did -- and coupled with those persistent Xbox 360 remote rumors, the gaming landscape could suddenly be overrun with people miming tennis.
YAHOO CEO Jerry Yang confirmed reports that MICROSOFT is no longer interested in a total acquisition of the search company. While Yang admitted that the two companies are still in talks for some sort of search deal, a deal would most certainly fall far short of the proposed $45 billion takeover Microsoft offered in January. Yang reiterated that Yahoo is still open to a search ads deal with GOOGLE, however, analysts are still skeptical, citing regulatory issues.
INTEL will re-enter the mobile phone market. As smart phones become more like computers, Intel, which has an 80% share of the PC processor market, believes its expertise with processors will help them in the smart phone market. However, while its new Atom chip is set to roll out an upgrade in late 2009, competitors say that the Atom will only give users roughly 4-6 hours of HD-video playback on a single battery.
In other mobile device news, NVIDIA will announce its plans for its first chips designed for mobile internet devices (MIDs) this afternoon. The manufacturer described its new Tegra chips as a “computer on a chip” which it estimates will be able to play up to 26 hours of HD-video on a single battery change on a MID. Nvidia’s move into the MID market comes on the heels of competitors like INTEL, SAMSUNG and QUALCOMM’s decision to move into the emerging market.
The DISH NETWORK and ECHOSTAR are suing TIVO over comments the digital video recording company made about the Dish Network infringing on its patents. The lawsuit comes after an appeals court upheld a decision that ruled the firms had to pay Tivo $74 million in patent-infringement damages. The latest round in this legal battle could benefit TiVo, who recently posted a first quarter profit, if a judge orders an injunction against infringing digital video recorders.
CBS Interactive Promises “HD” Look To Video Player Content
CBS Interactive has upgraded its video player, though the full effects won’t be immediately available, the company said in an email press release. Among the player’s new features are the promise of “HD-quality,” full-screen viewing, a redesigned interface and embeddable video clips. In keeping with CBS Interactive’s (NYSE: CBS) emphasis on syndication, the new player will be deployed across CBS.com and on CBS Audience Network associated sites. CBS adds that it’s trying to make it easier for users to share videos. The company didn’t mention anything about any additional ad applications to the video player, though it’s clearly has an eye on Hulu’s growing distribution and on the improvements to NBC Universal’s (NYSE: GE) rival video player NBC Direct.
Facebook Platform Now Open Source: fbOpen Released
As we wrote last week, Facebook is turning parts of its application platform open source, the company announced today. It’s available here for download.
This comes a little more than a year after Facebook Platform first launched to allow third party developers a way to get their applications directly onto Facebook. The company says more than 24,000 applications have now been built on the platform and more than 400,000 developers are building these applications. 140 new applications are added to the directory each day. “Nearly all” Facebook users have added at least one of those applications.
Facebook Open Platform is licensed under the Common Public Attribution License (CPAL), except for the FBML parser, which includes Mozilla source code, which is licensed under the Mozilla Public License (MPL).
Facebook says they’re doing this “to give back to the developer community.” That may be somewhat true, but the key reason for fbOpen is to compete with OpenSocial, the Google/MySpace/Yahoo/AOL led open source competitor to Facebook Platform.
Competing social networks, including the still-larger MySpace, are lining up against Facebook via OpenSocial. This is their way of responding.
It may be too late. Tellingly, Facebook was unable to line up any partners to add to today’s announcement, although some social networks we’ve chatted with say they will almost certainly implement it in the near future.
Study: Advertisers Should Look at VOD; IAG research found viewers were 68 percent more likely to remember a spot in a VOD environment than during linear TV. (MediaWeek)
Sony secretly working on a PS3 motion controlling remote?
Considering how little attention the PS3's motion-sensing functionality currently receives, we're not inclined to think that Sony's making an even deeper push into the Wii's territory, but a site called Playstation Lifestyle says that Sony conducted focus-group testing on a controller similar to the Wiimote earlier this year. Apparently the device was mounted on a foot-tall mini-tripod, and was demoed with tennis, fencing, and paintball mini-games, as well as used to play Quake on a laptop. That's not to say that Sony's ever going to bring this stuff to market, but it would certainly be interesting if it did -- and coupled with those persistent Xbox 360 remote rumors, the gaming landscape could suddenly be overrun with people miming tennis.
YAHOO CEO Jerry Yang confirmed reports that MICROSOFT is no longer interested in a total acquisition of the search company. While Yang admitted that the two companies are still in talks for some sort of search deal, a deal would most certainly fall far short of the proposed $45 billion takeover Microsoft offered in January. Yang reiterated that Yahoo is still open to a search ads deal with GOOGLE, however, analysts are still skeptical, citing regulatory issues.
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