Archive for April 5th, 2007
Cable networks Discovery, Turner, Lifetime and ESPN have decided to boycott an online ad buying exchange for TV spots under development by eBay because they say it goes too far in removing humans from the equation. Specifically, they worry that the exchange would remove creativity and reduce everything to volume, demographics and price — which would ultimately lower their return. “The grand majority (of ads sold today are) about idea-driven packages that have got multiple consumer touch points,” said Sean Cunningham, president and chief executive of the cable association. While this is true, many cable nets are still awash in inventory and could use the exchange to fill remnant advertising — which has nothing to do with idea-driven packages. In my humble opinion, their boycott is likely more about a fear of losing control (to the bidding process) than it is about the strength of concept. But that’s just me.
April 5th, 2007
Raleigh, NC
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Columbus, OH
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Columbus, OH
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Google is just beginning to tap its local revenue potential. In fact, I’d say Google is local online media’s biggest sales competitor at the retail and services level. When brainstorming ad campaigns for prospective clients, ask yourself if you’re offering more value for the dollar than Google. If the Google ship has already sailed, create campaigns that reinforce or complement their Google campaign. If you’re still fuzzy on how Google is pulling big chunks of ad revenue out of your market, ClickZ has a good explainer.
Plus: Google posts “offline” jobs on Lost Remote’s job page
April 5th, 2007
You’ll find a small link on NBC.com’s home page with a preview of its social networking functionality including profiles, friends, blogs, groups and widgets. Screen grab…
Also: NBC.com adding more video from SNL, Tonight Show, Conan
April 5th, 2007
Jason Samuels has been named the senior producer in charge of digital content for ABC World News with Charles Gibson. Samuels will oversee Gibson’s daily webcast as well as be World News‘ liason with ABCNews.com. Earlier, Samuels was a senior producer at ABC News Now. Press release…
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Couple interesting announcements out of Discovery today. First, the network said it would premiere selected shows — two a week — on Discovery.com before they air on TV. Second, Discovery will launch the “first-ever 24-hour television network dedicated solely to green lifestyle programming” called PlanetGreen. Smart. Both press releases below…
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Comcast is running a new series of TV ads called “Channel 1″ to promote their On Demand service. One of the ads features people on a tour through the Channel 1 facility, and it pokes fun at traditional TV. A Comcast employee is seen throwing away clocks. “We have no use for clocks here,” says the tour guide, because you can watch shows whenever you want On Demand. Then a Comcast employee is wrestling with some old guy, rips the man’s clock away and stuffs it down a woodchipper. “We can get a little overzealous sometimes,” says the tour guide.
You can watch the ad on ComcastCh1.com, but it’s a pain to find.
April 5th, 2007
A new urgency is emerging for journalists to do more than just report a story — but also to promote their work. “Getting yourself out there as many places as you can and making sure people understand what you’re doing is important,” said WashingtonPost.com Executive Editor Jim Brady in an video interview with Beet.TV. Brady explains how Washington Post reporters frequently appear on MSNBC and Washington Post radio as well as conduct chats on WashingtonPost.com. “It does all cut into your schedule, and figuring out how to juggle all that is complicated… but we’re fighting for the attention of every reader,” he said. We had a similar discussion on Lost Remote a month ago, in which Adam left a comment that sums up what most journalists believe:
“I think every field journalists job is to tell the best, accurate and compelling story they’re assigned. The managing editors, ND’s etc. are responsible to find the relevant assignments and worry about getting the audience to watch. When a reporter starts to worry about how many clicks he’s going to generate, their eye is off the ball.”
That’s old thinking. Driven by the web and steadily decreasing TV news ratings, it’s critical for TV reporters to juggle their schedule to write web versions of their stories, write blog posts, plug them on the air and make sure TV producers are effectively promoting their TV and web reporting. It’s every journalist’s responsibility now, along with management. As Brady said, it’s not easy, but it’s critical for our long-term survival.
Adam responds in comments: “Let me play devil’s advocate; is it possible that the distractions of promotion and feeding more mouths in the same window of time it used to take to turn a single story is degrading the quality of journalism? If that is remotely possible where is the line and do we risk losing viewers by trying to find more? I completely agree that there needs to be a different way to look at how we pollinate the landscape with our stories but over extending as an individual journalist (particularly on deadline) creates some major risks…”
April 5th, 2007
Crazy story in our market. Shortly after a homeowner evicted a tenant, and an ad appears on Craigslist inviting people to take whatever they want. And they did. The house was stripped of everything, from light fixtures, windows, hot water heater to the kitchen sink. Even the front door. Punked, internet-style.
April 5th, 2007
Wii is arguably the brightest bulb in the class of consoles, but it gets poor marks from Kemp Powers for staying in the sandbox and not playing nicely with others. With onboard Wifi, Wii is ready to rumble, but there is no present means for competitive online play against other users. Blogger buzz is that Nintendo is not allowing any third-party title producers to include online multiplayer features this year, even though more than 50 percent of the consoles are connected to the Net and 1.5 million classic games have downloaded. Meanwhile, the socially strategic Microsoft’s Xbox Live gaming service has attracted more than 6 million subscribers, creating a clearly differentiating feature for the 360.
April 5th, 2007
A new study from online video tracker Vidmeter.com produced some interesting results in light of recent broohahas over copyrighted network videos and YouTube. It turns out that less than one in ten videos were uploaded without permission of the copyright holders, and that material accounted for only about six percent of YouTube’s overall viewership. Clearly a blast to their megamoney lawsuit, Viacom is already calling the study’s methodology flawed. The findings do gibe with conventional wisdom and anecdotal observations that YouTube’s strength and popularity lie in the long tail business model and user-focused strategy to provide a simple service for posting, sharing and syndicated user generated video content. If true, it also may have scarier implications for big media’s role in the space where an engaged community of content contributors may find their products have diminishing attractiveness. YouTube may not be a sea of piracy at all, but an ocean of empowerment.
Adds Cory in comments: “YouTube is popular because of its technology, not copyrighted content. It makes it easy and free for anyone to host, share and embed players with their own video. There are millions of people out their with video cameras, but they don’t know how to convert their video to Flash, host their video on a streaming server, build a Flash player, etc. YouTube takes care of all of this with a couple clicks. Brilliant…”
Adds GB: “Cory, the report doesn’t prove that YouTube isn’t popular because of copyrighted content. It proves that YouTube isn’t popular because of unauthorized copyrighted content that has been found and removed by the copyright owner. I question why Vidmeter only counted videos removed due to copyright violations as being unauthorized. Wouldn’t it have been a lot more meaningful to look at those 6,725 and judge whether they were user-generated vs. copyrighted content (authorized or unauthorized)? That would prove how much YouTube relies on copyrighted content…”
April 5th, 2007
