Archive for September 24th, 2006
President Bill Clinton’s interview on Fox News Sunday is spreading like wildfire around the internet. (If you haven’t seen it yet, Clinton became upset when asked about bin Laden. “So you did Fox’s bidding on this show,” he told host Chris Wallace. “You did your nice little conservative hit job on me.”) Clearly, this is a viral video if there ever was one, yet the relaunched FoxNews.com dropped the ball. Yes, it’s displaying the story and video prominently. But there’s no way to email, link or embed the video. So what did Drudge and a fair share of blogs do? Linked YouTube’s clips of the interview, not FoxNews.com. So far, the first YouTube clip of the bunch as been viewed 988,000 times. A couple others are in the 200,000 range and counting. (And this is as of Sunday night.) You can bet FoxNews.com’s clip of the video isn’t even close. And they can’t blame YouTube — just themselves for the lost opportunity. Update: “Johnny Dollar” in comments correctly points out that there’s a little email graphic under each clip that allows you to send video to a friend. But it’s TINY and not associated with the clip that’s playing.
Earlier this year: Why Lost Remote links to YouTube
September 24th, 2006
Jay Adelson and Kevin Rose’s company Revision3 is using its recent burst of $1 million in funding to expand its slate of video shows, reports a big splash in the NY Times. The idea is to produce niche shows that are more professional than amateur video but not as expensive as Hollywood productions. Smart idea. As many of you know, I’m a huge fan of Diggnation, which boasts 250,000 downloads per episode.
Plus: Blogger Robert Scoble to launch a video show
September 24th, 2006
We raved about ABC.com’s video player last season, and now the network has updated the look and launched it over the weekend with more shows: Grey’s Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, Lost, Ugly Betty, Six Degrees, Nine and The Knights of Prosperity. The player is still 16×9 with a big display option that makes watching TV shows on a computer, well, almost like watching it on standard-def TV. Well done, ABC. The player has also debuted on LA affiliate ABC7.com, and I imagine many more ABC station sites will launch soon, as promised. As we reported earlier, each participating affiliate will be able to sell local advertising in the ABC shows. Screen grabs of the player…
September 24th, 2006
Coming early next year, A&E Television Networks will begin selling downloads of shows from A&E, History Channel and the Biography Channel on its own websites. So far, the cable group has sold 10,000 episodes a week on iTunes. “That gives us the confidence to go forward,” said A&E EVP Steve Ronson. No pricing has been set, but A&E likely won’t stray too far from $1.99. Meanwhile, Fox Interactive Media plans this fall to offer download-to-own versions of Fox TV shows across its network of sites, including MySpace.
September 24th, 2006
The awful blog from “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” has apparently been pulled. At least, I don’t see it. Defaker was a fake blog purportedly written by a “fan” of the show-within-a-show. I don’t know how many levels of meta deep this is, but either the fictional NBS ordered a cease and desist (likely) or NBC came to its senses. (Thanks to Max, a Brit who called the blog “quasifictional bollocks.”)
September 24th, 2006
The two reporters who exposed the fraud that is Barry Bonds were heralded by President Bush as having performed a “public service.” And in America, when journalists perform a public service and do it better than public servants, we face jail time. The freedom of the press is under attack, and we need a shield law right now. Sure, it’s not exactly controversial for a journalist to write an editorial supporting a shield law. But hear me out.
Read the full post September 24th, 2006
From the Lost Remote office of Public Relations and Beer Acquisitions, this BREAKING NEWS story about a MAJOR DEVELOPMENT in … oh, whatever. I’m quoted in an article by Broadcasting and Cable about the adoption of text messaging by network TV. I’ll give Anne Becker a lot of credit here - she wound up telling me more about the topic than I really knew. All I figured was that it was legalized gambling. (By the way - do a search some time for “Cory Bergman” and you’ll see all the articles that quote him. Tons. I think we all know who the consultant-trying-to-sell-his-ware in the firm is.)
September 24th, 2006
Happy Rosh Hashana! “VeggieTales,” the “Davey and Goliath” of this generation, will keep its religious references. NBC says it has not taken religion out of the show. But it also won’t comment on creator Phil Vischer’s claims that the network asked him to take out specific references to “God” and “The Bible.” NBC says it wants to keep the positive messages of the show without advocating one religion or another. I don’t know about your kids, but mine are highly prone to following the messianic preachings of a cucumber.
September 24th, 2006
