Archive for May 3rd, 2007
NBCU’s owned-and-operated station in Philadelphia has soft-launched DigPhilly.com, a social networking site that features current events, local features, music, nightlife, shopping, restaurant reviews, video sharing and classifieds. Explains the site, “You can review your favorite restaurant, post videos and blogs, join discussion groups, sell stuff, find out about new music and meet new people.” Kudos to NBCU for taking a fresh approach to attracting younger users who increasingly don’t watch local TV news or visit local TV websites. Also, kudos for burying the NBC brand on the site — you have to drill down into the terms of service or click on the weather link at the top of the site to figure out the WCAU association. (In situations like these, brand association with a major local media company can actually hurt your chances of success.) If you ask me, DigPhilly.com (which has some similarities to Vita.mn, by the way) is a great example of a TV station branching out into new audiences and local niches to attract new online revenue. Keep in mind the site is in deep beta — they just launched — but take a look around and tell us what you think. (Thanks for the tip, O!)
May 3rd, 2007
The CW will air the last episode on May 15th after the network could not agree with stars Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel on a new contract. Gilmore Girls has an avid fan base — Lost Remote has received dozens of emails over the years — and I bet there will be an avalanche of fan mail to The CW and media sites. “Announcing the final season of Gilmore Girls is truly a sad moment,” said the network and Warner Bros. Television in a statement. “We would also like to thank the critics and ‘Gilmore’ fans for their passionate support and promise to give this series the sendoff it deserves.”
Update: The letter-writing campaign is already underway
May 3rd, 2007
Between 20 and 40 independent video producers on YouTube will begin receiving a slice of revenue associated with display ads that surround their video clips. “This will help erase the the stigma around the user-created content, and, to be honest, these guys are media entities in their own right,” said Jamie Byrne, vice president of marketing at YouTube. The producers include Lonelygirl15, Smosh and LisaNova. YouTube continues to work on a wider-reaching revenue share program.
May 3rd, 2007
News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch sat down with the NY Times to explain why he wants to own Dow Jones and what he would do with the Wall Street Journal. “We’re not coming in with a bunch of cost-cutters,” he said, but added: “I’m not saying it’s going to be a holiday camp for everybody.” Murdoch revealed that he would use the Wall Street Journal brand as the name for Fox’s upcoming business channel, and he said he would like to meet with members of the Bancroft family. “I think the next step for us is to be patient — and to be available at anytime should they respond to my suggestion for a meeting.” A Dow Jones trustee said 52 percent of the shares in the Bancroft family are opposed to selling, yet the company has not rejected the bid outright.
May 3rd, 2007
Just a few days after issuing a directive that would require soldier bloggers to approve each post with their commanding officer, the Army now says it’s not going to enforce it.
May 3rd, 2007
A few people are having some issues with Joost hanging up now that it has moved into a “public beta.” We gave out over 100 invites, and you can imagine how many people across the world have joined in the past couple days. I just logged on but Joost is stuck in infinite “coming soon” mode. It is in beta, after all.
May 3rd, 2007
As part of a new segment on Nightline called “Face-Off,” ABCNews.com will stream a debate between Christians (Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort) and athiests (the folks behind BlasphemyChallenge.com) over the existence of God. The debate will appear online and on ABC News Now on May 9th at 2 p.m. and then it will air later that night on Nightline. I imagine a regular series of debates like these could become quite popular online, and it will certainly take advantage of ABCNews.com’s new user participation features. (The advance story already has over 300 comments and counting…)
May 3rd, 2007
In an effort to move beyond an CPM (cost-per-thousand) model of online advertising, NBCU VP of Digital Media Beth Comstock said the company is developing a new “pay for effectiveness” technology. The idea, explains Clickz, is “to determine where exactly consumers are viewing its content, and then let them target desired demographics on whatever platform they’re using to access NBC content.” For instance, it will let the company track viewing of Heroes on broadcast, cable, online, and on mobile devices like iPods, to find the total number of viewers. “It’s about delivering the right message to the right person at the right time, and television doesn’t do that now,” Comstock explains.
May 3rd, 2007
Barack Obama has a bold, promising idea that’s going to ruffle some media feathers. He wants video of the Democratic debates be made available in the public domain or with a Creative Commons license. Currently, debates that are hosted by media organizations — like MSNBC’s Republican debate — have restrictions for outside use, but Obama suggests that they waive their copyright so that the content can be shared openly online. He writes in a letter to Democratic Committee Chair Howard Dean:
“I am a strong believer in the importance of copyright, especially in a digital age. But there is no reason that this particular class of content needs the protection. We have incentive enough to debate. The networks have incentive enough to broadcast those debates. Rather than restricting the product of those debates, we should instead make sure that our democracy and citizens have the chance to benefit from them in all the ways that technology makes possible.”
Update: MSNBC.com streamed the debate live and it will post it in its entirety. The debate will also be available on Politico.com. MSNBC VP of communications Jeremy Gaines points out the network is not waiving its rights to the footage, but he said it will be available throughout the election season for users to watch or link to their own sites.
Update: Watch the archived debate here on MSNBC.com.
Update: One-third of debate questions were submitted to Politico.com.
May 3rd, 2007
For the many of us that pack around Blackberrys (and didn’t want to switch to the Pearl because of the keyboard), RIM has just unveiled a new device called “Curve” that’s a smaller version of the full keyboard. It has the same trackball as the Pearl — getting rid of the thumbwheel — and it also has a 2 megapixel camera with flash, the ability to play video and a photo editor. Curve is expected to retail around $200 when it hits store shelves later this spring.
May 3rd, 2007
Durham, NC
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Fresno, CA
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Fresno, CA
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New York, NY
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(This column originally appeared in the May 2, 2007 edition of the AR&D Media 2.0 Intel report.) The number three most-purchased music video at the iTunes store (as of this writing) is a Ford commercial. A newspaper is producing local news video in HD. The top podcasts are from NPR and PBS, not from jokers and teens with microphones and laptops. People love history, current affairs and non-fiction. They’re not just drawn to pap. Spend some time poking around the iTunes store and you’ll learn an awful lot about the way people consume media. And what you will learn will challenge many of the notions you have about what people want.
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Hitwise reports that nearly 25 percent of visits to newspaper sites were referred by search engines. From March to March, print sites saw a 29.7 percent increase in traffic generated by Google while broadcast media experienced a 35.9 percent rise. Hitwise also said that news consumption is beginning to fragment: the share of visits to the top 10 news sites declined 3.8 percent from November to March while traffic to gossip blogs is increasing rapidly. “Search engines were more likely to be the first step for Internet users in their search for information about breaking events, and search engine results from news video services, video sites like YouTube, and blogs were more likely to contain the information they sought, thus hastening the growth of nontraditional news sources,” said LeeAnn Prescott, director of research at Hitwise and author of the report. This underlines the urgency for TV sites to carefully optimize search keywords as well as write story headlines that resonate in a search world.
May 3rd, 2007
That’s right, Sacramento’s KOVR-TV has revamped its morning show to revolve around the web — so much so they’ve renamed it “CBS13.com,” the domain name of the station’s website. The show now features a single anchor (it was two anchors last week) and his computer. Explains VP of News Steve Charlier: “There are five morning shows in the market now, and what we don’t want to do is produce (another) traditional morning show. So we decided to focus it on the web and on business, and try to appeal to morning viewers who are into that. We will have some citizen journalism — people sending in home video. We’ll still cover the news, but we’ll integrate it with Yahoo and Google (news and searches). Obviously, it’s experimental. We’ll see how it goes.” Hopefully CBS13.com (the website) will post some video of CBS13.com (the show) so we can take a look. (Thanks for the tip, Ray! Free registration required for the link.)
Adds Jason in comments: “The whole newscast is largely created on the fly. I think it’s a great idea for the morning. Who needs to see a repeat of the news from the 10pm the night before? The question is: will weekday morning news viewers want to sit down and interact live on their computers?”
May 3rd, 2007
CNET does a great job highlighting some Webby winners you probably missed, from WikiTravel to CuteOverload to Last.FM. Also, the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism took home a Webby for The Science of Sex. Here’s the full list, by the way.
May 3rd, 2007
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