Archive for July 19th, 2006
Merrill Lynch analysts Jessica Reif Cohen and Michael Kopelman say “it’s time for Disney to pull the plug on Mobile ESPN,” the media company’s branded phone service. They estimate ESPN will sign up 30,000 subs over the course of this financial year, well short of estimates of 240,000. Meanwhile, ESPN says they have no plans to shut it down. “While sales have been slower than expected, we have added retail distribution outlets, introduced a new thin handset and have enhanced marketing efforts,” an ESPN spokesperson said.
July 19th, 2006
Televisa, the world’s largest Spanish-language broadcaster, maintains its programming agreement with Univision does not allow the U.S. network to post the video on the web.
July 19th, 2006
New LR friend-for-life John Higgins at Broadcasting & Cable summarizes a theme of CTAM2006: what content monetizes best on new media platforms. He found “three important steps necessary to turn VOD from a fledgling business into a profitable enterprise.” Give it a read. Higgins brings a missing element to journalism: scrutiny.
July 19th, 2006
It fell 19 percent Wednesday after a disappointing earnings report that has some analysts wondering if the search ad business is slowing — except for Google. Industry experts estimate that Google pulls in 40 percent more revenue than Yahoo for each search. Wow. Now all eyes are on Google as it releases its earnings report on Thursday.
July 19th, 2006
Grand Rapids, MI
Read the full post July 19th, 2006
Atlanta
Read the full post July 19th, 2006
At CTAM, Stephen Warley and I were musing that convention tags could be so much more. Let’s bring social networking offline! Embed an RF chip into a tag along with a small amount of memory and an OLED display, and you have an ID badge that could change the way we interact at conventions. It could sense the people around you and change colors according to their relationship to you, (BLUE: This person can help me, YELLOW: This person once worked with me, RED: This person must be avoided at all costs, etc.) If you want to exhange information, throw out the business cards - the RF chip already has your info and all you’ll have to do is tap the badge (a la Star Trek: The Next Generation) to save the information. A little GPS in there, and you can always find your friends and co-workers. All the ribbons that hang below the badges indicating “Speaker,” “Member,” “Founding Member,” “Chair,” Founding Chair,” “Empty Chair,” etc? Give ‘em a special color at the bottom. Maybe something that blinks. I’m telling you - get on this. Then see what you can to to resolve the heartbreak of FTS (floppy tag syndrome) that turns every tag over backwards.
July 19th, 2006
First, my bias: I go with Flash. The end. No, wait. LR pal and streaming media genius Dan Rayburn breaks down the differences between Windows Media and Flash video in a considerably more mature and fact-based article. Downsides to Flash: No live encoding, no DRM, no way to download the file to the desktop (without some sneaky programs you can find, anyway), doesn’t scale up too well. Downsides to WM: you need the plugin, it’s mean to Apple, Linux and other vociferous computer users, DRM haterz hatez it, Mo’Money to Redmond. Looking forward, Rayburn is right to frame the streaming debate in terms of WindowsMedia vs Flash. RealVideo is losing steam (more desk popups, please!), QT, despite Mac users unlimited love, will not be the standard. It’s WM vs Flash, and my money’s on Flash as it has been for several years. (This is where I would put the self congratulatory link to an archived story from the early ’00s where I predicted Flash as the next coming of video. Curse you, old platform!)
July 19th, 2006
You remember how Netscape relaunched a couple months ago with a site that’s nearly a direct copy of Digg? Now Netscape chief Jason Calcanis says he’ll pay $1,000 a month to Digg’s top contributors if they switch to his site. Why? Because Netscape’s user-created content is dragging. And much of Digg’s content, Calcanis explains, is posted by a small group of Digg fans. So he wants to steal up to a dozen of them, as well as top posters on sites like Newsvine. While the money is certainly attractive, Netscape is missing the point. Digg succeeds because it has built a community of loyal early adopters who thrive on Digg’s innovation, coolness and the Kevin Rose/Alex Albrecht effect (former TechTV hosts with a following, and now their Diggnation podcast is more watched than many cable TV shows.) So to succeed, Netscape should stop stealing and start innovating.
July 19th, 2006
In a roundtable discussion at CTAM, Andy Sippel, SVP Sports and Product Management for ESPN said they are “making a ton of money” off their video ads. They typically use prerolls. He characterized the “auto start” video ads on the ESPN homepage as “controversial.” I was honest and told him I didn’t like them. I don’t mind watching prerolls, just give me a chance to click on the video I want to watch first. Regardless of what I think, 60% of their video ads are viewed. I also found it interesting that ESPN sells “holistically” seeking the best opportunity for their clients regardless of the platform. All the account executives from each platform report to one sales manager. He said they have seen, “a lot of cross over sales.”
July 19th, 2006
Today the term “mosaic channel” can up in a roundtable on sat in on at CTAM. I never heard of them before, but DirecTV squeezes multiple channels onto your screen. It’s kind of like your own personal feedroom. They have themed mosaic channels like sports, news, etc. In our discussion, ESPN said they “leased” one of DirecTV’s mosaic channels to provide 6 feeds of the Indy 500. They reported seeing 350,000 unique viewers and 500,000 impressions. OpenTV developed the application. If you have DirecTV, do you ever use these channels? If so, what do you like about them?
July 19th, 2006
Netflix subscribers will be able to watch the inaugural episodes of NBC’s “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” and “Kidnapped” a full six weeks before the premiere date. Cool idea. But as News.com points out, it’s also a confident move: if the shows don’t meet expectations, bad reviews may put a damper on the TV premieres.
July 19th, 2006
The new 9 a.m. show will air on 25 of Fox’s owned-and-operated stations beginning in January. “This is a newscast that will be entertaining — or you can say it’s an entertainment show that will be newsy,” said Dennis Swanson, Fox Television Stations’ president of station operations. “I think it probably falls in the latter category.”
July 19th, 2006
“Comfortable should be an uncomfortable place to be,” June Blockin, vice chairperson of Young & Rubicam Brands, told cable executives at CTAM. She gave me some pause about dealing with technological change. Yes, LR tends to be a bit pro tech, so here’s an alternative view (which I also happen to agree with):
The human brain doesn’t follow Moore’s Law (stating the speed and capacity of transistors will double every 18 months).
“Change” is more of a producer need than a consumer want.
Quoting the founder of Sony, “Ideal consumer electronics devices should only have one button.”
Understand the nuances of each medium and how it relates to your brand.
July 19th, 2006
Now that Dr. Steven Levitt has written the best selling “business” book, Freakonomics, he told CTAM attendees that several Fortune 500 companies have approached him to interpret their data. While they appreciated his alternative perspectives about societal trends and behaviors, he said they are less inclined to take his advice when it comes to their business (the truth hurts sometimes). Whether we like to hear it or not, he did impart these bits of advice to help TV execs deal with change:
When gathering research, it’s sometimes more useful to put people in unusual situations rather than usual ones. (He once suggested to a movie studio that people should watch movie screenings alone, so that aren’t influenced by members of a focus group.)
Build feedback mechanisms. There is so much money being left on the table in the absence of regular dialogue with your consumers.
July 19th, 2006
How big was the room where we had our session at the CTAM Summit in Boston this week? Imagine speaking in a cathedral. You are talking into a very sensitive microphone, and your every whisper is a giant echo. Now imagine you have a cold. The EVP Disney/ABC Digital Media is speaking, and you let out an ever-so-gentle sniffle. It echos like it was at the Grand Canyon. That was my day…
Read the full post July 19th, 2006
After Shawn Gold, SVP of Marketing for MySpace, addressed CTAM attendees yesterday, I decided it’s high time for me to set up a profile on MySpace before I get left behind! The fastest growing segment is the 35+ crowd with over 25 million users. By this fall, MySpace is expected to have 100,000,000 register users. Gold articulated MySpace’s long-term biz plan: 1. Understand the core needs of their users. 2. Address those core needs. 3. Facilitate on a social networking platform. That’s not just a biz plan folks, that’s how all media companies now need to organize themselves. If you don’t get MySpace, you don’t get the future of media. More fun stats from MySpace . . . . (click on “read the full post below”)
Read the full post July 19th, 2006
Finally, several large studios have signed off on a new feature on CinemaNow that will allow users to purchase, download and burn a movie on DVD. But here are the caveats: they’re older movies, they cost $9-15 a pop, downloads take up to three hours and the quality still falls short of traditional DVDs. But hey, it’s progress.
July 19th, 2006
Previous Entries
