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What do you watch on cable TV that’s not available on a HDTV antenna? Of those shows, how much would it cost to buy them on iTunes every month? Probably a lot less than your monthly cable bill. So with the addition of Apple TV, which connects iTunes with your TV set, even in high def, will people begin to drop their cable service? A few, perhaps.
10 comments January 11th, 2007
So I was scrolling through my program guide (nothing on DVR or VOD or iPod) and I punched up Current. You know, the Al Gore cable channel that launched with much hype and has sort of slipped into obscurity. It was in the 8 p.m. (PST) hour, when Current was airing its VC2 (viewer contributed content) block, and I couldn’t turn it off. Perhaps it’s because I’m sick of all the crap that’s surfacing on YouTube lately, but the viewer-submitted “pods” were extremely well done and very entertaining. Anyway, Current has received a fair amount of criticism for missing the user-created video wave on the web (yes, their website needs to be video-forward instead of TV-forward), but the VC2 segments I saw were a welcome relief from the video clutter on the web.
During each pod (which last 2-6 minutes or so), a little bar appears in the bottom left, just like a video player on the web, which illustrates how much time is left. Cool.
3 comments January 11th, 2007
Michael Wolf is leaving the company just one day after Gail Berman, head of Viacom’s Paramount Pictures, also left. In neither case did the executives leave to accept other positions. “Viacom is cleaning up the management structure,” said Richard Greenfield, a media analyst at Pali Research.
Add comment January 11th, 2007
When you hear there’s gonna be a “geek race,” you can expect two things. 1: It will not involve actual exercise and 2. The competitors will wear sports shirts anyway. Watch and enjoy this video, via Gizmodo, of a PC-building contest from CES 2007. (The star of the video, Gizmodo’s Brian Lam, came in fifth.) The winner built a functioning PC in six minutes, 47 seconds. I can’t reboot that quickly.
Suggestion for CES 2008 competition: Blogging Flamewars.
Add comment January 11th, 2007
Steve Rubel sends this surprising (at least, to me) study about blog readership that found that Japan, South Korea and China lead the way. The study, conducted by Edelman (where Rubel works), found that 74% of people in Japan read blogs. Compare that to 27% in the U.S. Also very interesting: 91% of the people Edelman determined are “influencers” read blogs in Japan but only 34% of American “influencers” read blogs. The study is part of a white paper Edelman has just published. (Download the PDF of this graphic here.)
9 comments January 11th, 2007
CBSNews.com took a risk when it launched its “Public Eye” blog in 2005. CBS News was amid tremendous upheaval - with Memogate, Dan Rather leaving and Bob Schieffer replacing him. Oh, and then Katie came along. Lots to discuss. Into that fray jumped Vaughn Ververs (pictured, right), who became Public Eye’s first editor. Ververs tried to bring a sense of what was happening in the CBS Newsroom to the public, and in turn brought the viewers’ concerns to the newsroom. He has done it very well. Today, CBS News announced Ververs is moving to become Senior Political Editor for the website. Replacing him is Brian Montopoli, who has been writing and reporting for Public Eye since its inception. We congratulate Brian and Vaughn on their promotions. Press release after the jump.
Read the full post 2 comments January 11th, 2007
This is a cool little device to come out of MacWorld. It’s called EyeTV, and it’s a little device that looks like a flash drive that plugs straight into a USB port on your Mac. Plug the other end into your set-top box or TV antenna, and you can watch either analog or digital TV on your Mac. You can use your Apple remote to change channels. Like a show? Use EyeTV’s software to record it, edit it and then export it straight to your iPod.
6 comments January 11th, 2007
Merrill Lynch broadcast analyst Jessica Reif Cohen expects Google will team with a CBS Radio in a wide-ranging advertising deal. “We would expect a deal to include low quality radio inventory for use with Google’s dMarc service, but do not believe a deal for CBS’s television network or TV station advertising time is likely,” Cohen speculated. In a nutshell, Google would allow advertisers to bid for radio airtime using some of the same functionality as its online sales tool. But again, no deal has been announced.
3 comments January 11th, 2007
An article in today’s Washington Post notes that the once-coveted cross-promotional and content-sharing partnerships between local newspapers and television stations are becoming increasingly strained in the new mediascape where web sites can easily roll their own video. The balance is somewhat one-sided: Newspapers are training their online producers to become videographers, but broadcasters face challenges when it comes to getting copy for their sites.
3 comments January 11th, 2007
(Disclosure, right up front: I own shares of Apple.) The stock market seems to like the iPhone. Apple shares (AAPL), which were at $85 on January 5, are up as of this morning to about $96. The stock set a record on Wednesday, one day after the iPhone announcement, hitting more than $97. Apple stock is now nearly double its 52 week low of $50. Considering the recent questions surrounding stock options backdating, the jump is especially notable.
3 comments January 11th, 2007
Call them “ticket resellers,” call them “scalpers,” it means the same thing: people or companies that resell tickets, usually against the original seller’s policy, for a big markup. The laws on this are inconsistent. StubHub has made a big business out of reselling tickets - $400 million gross last year. eBay, where you can also find tickets, is buying StubHub for $310 million. And check out this stat: the primary ticket market in 2006 grossed $25 billion; the “secondary” market grossed $10 billion. Conclusion: It’s hard to believe, but apparently sports teams and concerts aren’t charging as much as they could.
Add comment January 11th, 2007
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