Archive for December 4th, 2006
NBCU Television Group CEO Jeff Zucker said he expects to generate $300-400 million in digital revenue this year and $1 billion in 2007. The big growth areas? Download-to-own and mobile offerings, he said. About a third of this year’s digital revenue will come from iVillage, and Zucker says his team has been surprised by the popularity of NBC shows streaming online. “It has been significant,” he said. “We are collapsing windows in TV.”
December 4th, 2006
Media General is now the eighth newspaper group to partner with Yahoo, joining Hearst, Cox, MediaNews, Belo, Scripps, Journal Register and Lee. That brings the tally to over 200 newspapers in the strategic alliance. Press release…
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Comedy Central says it’s migrating a mobile series, Lil’ Bush: Resident of the United States, to the cable network next year. It’s believed to be the first time original mobile content has made the leap. The show is currently the most popular series on the Amp’d Mobile service. Screen grab from the promotional site…
December 4th, 2006
Three different ad forecasts for 2007 predict tough times ahead for television as well as continued woes for newspapers. Zenith predicts U.S. television will grow .5 percent next year compared to 5.4 percent this year (a chunk of the decrease is due to a lack of political in ‘07). Meanwhile, online advertising is expected to continued its torrid growth, thanks in part to online video. (WSJ sub. req.)
Also: Scripps predicts revenue at its stations will drop 3-5 percent
December 4th, 2006
An intriguing story in the NY Times compares the advertising trends in the U.S. with the U.K, where online is growing at 40 percent a year and is expected to account for 10.5 percent of all advertising at the end of this year (compared to 5.6 in the U.S). What’s the primary difference? Most of Britain’s advertising is national, and local markets in the U.S. have been slow to spend on the web. In other words, there’s a ton of money in the local markets, and as the portals and pure plays continue their aggressive local push, we could see that 5.6 number grow in a hurry.
December 4th, 2006
Fox News will provide video clips to Yahoo Finance as part of the news organization’s first portal deal. “We haven’t done anything like this before,” said Jeremy Steinberg, Fox News head of digital sales and development. “It’s a huge opportunity to drive awareness for Fox News, FoxNews.com and our business content.” The video will be highlighted on Yahoo Finance’s main page under the “Fox Business Now” heading. If you’re curious, the cable network says the Yahoo deal has nothing to do with plans to launch a business news channel.
December 4th, 2006
The Fort Myers News-Press has 14 mojos (mobile journalists) on the streets covering stories for the web first, newspaper second. It’s part of a larger Gannett experiment to reinvent the newspaper online. Many of the mojos — who work out of their cars with wireless laptops — are focused on covering stories for the site’s hyperlocal sections. Some of the other interesting initiatives at the News-Press include “crowd-sourcing” investigative stories, hiring a managing editor in charge of “audience building” (who tracks popular stories in the stats) and liberal message board policies that even allow profanity. “We’re trying a lot of things. Some will work; others won’t,” said Kate Marymont, the executive editor. “It’s like play.” Very interesting stuff.
December 4th, 2006
The creators of Lonelygirl15 are wooing Madison Avenue with the hopes that companies will want to have their products integrated into the storyline of the web show. Even after doing a deal with Revver — which shares ad revenue with video producers — the majority of Lonelygirl15’s video views still come from YouTube, which does not have a similar arrangement. So by embedding products into the show, the creators hope to tap into some serious revenue.
December 4th, 2006
I just watched a few minutes of the first iVillage Live show, billed as the “daytime TV’s first fully interactive talk show.” The show debuted today on NBC’s owned and operated stations and Bravo while being simulcast live on iVillageLive.com. First off, the hosts were way too over-caffeinated for my taste, but let’s hope they can chalk it up to launch day jitters. Meanwhile, the interactive components have tons of potential. While watching the show live online, I was logged into a straightforward chat window (screen grab below). A moderator offered behind-the-scenes factoids along the way, while users posted feedback. “The concept is great but everyone is too self conscious and trying too hard. It makes me nervous to watch,” said Vikilee in the chat. You can also text in comments from your mobile phone, which scroll along the bottom of the screen. Or participate in votes that influence the outcome of the show (in this episode, you could vote how to cut a woman’s hair.) And finally, you can edit and upload your video via iVillageLive.com, without any application downloads. The most popular videos, determined by users and screened by editors, will appear on the show. NBC’s effort is tremendously ambitious, and while the talent needs to take it down a notch, I think it’s a great concept.
December 4th, 2006
Today’s the day for new site launches. AskCity, the new local venture from Barry Diller we reported last week, is up and running. It features a business directory, local search, dynamic mapping, events guide and movie listings for most major U.S. cities. CitySearch powers much of the directory and the events guide, and you can buy tickets on TicketMaster (both owned by Diller’s IAC). I haven’t had much time to take it through it’s paces, but it looks rather slick. You can punch up walking and driving directions, write up your own notes on the map and print it all out. Everything can be broken down to sub-categories, and when in doubt, just search for it. Again, this is another big player in the local search/business directory market (especially when you consider CitySearch and Ticketmaster already have significant local audiences to integrate with AskCity) and it will ultimately suck more dollars out of local media companies.
December 4th, 2006
Starting tomorrow, users can submit photos and video via Yahoo for display on both Yahoo News and Reuters.com. And Reuters will also start distributing some of the submitted content to its print, online and broadcast subscribers. Called “You Witness News,” submitted photos and video will appear on Flickr and presumably Yahoo Video. Editors will then screen it to see which content is worth promoting to news stories or be distributed to Reuters clients. Yahoo will use the content for its sports and entertainment sections, and the company said it will soon expand to local news and high school sports. Meanwhile, users will not be paid unless their content is distributed, although the payment structure has not been finalized. This is the largest citizen journalism partnership to date — the most popular news site on the web teaming with the second largest wire service — and the fact that Yahoo wants to extend it into local news and high school sports should set off alarm bells at local TV stations everywhere (except, perhaps, media partners of Yahoo, although it’s unclear whether they would have access to this content). As we’ve urged before, it’s high time local TV sites encourage their users to submit news and sports video and photos before the portals and national news sites steal it away. (Full disclosure: I work for a Belo TV station, and Belo newspapers are Yahoo media partners.)
December 4th, 2006
Orlando, FL
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The brand new CNBC.com launched overnight with a bunch of promising features. The site will stream 3-8 hours of live programming every day, including press conferences, interviews and web-only news updates at the top and bottom of the hour. And CNBC.com says it will post more than 75 new clips every day. Users who pay $9.95 a month will be able to watch a live simulcast of CNBC TV as well as search through thousands of archive clips (the site launches with 15,000 of them.) I interviewed CNBC.com VP Meredith Stark about the new site, CNBC’s newsroom integration as well as the site’s video alerts, tagging and live-blogging features below…
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