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Nielsen has long been the gold standard in TV advertising. In recent years, the company has expanded in to music sales (SoundScan), box office (EDI) and Internet usage (NetRatings) among other things. Now the company has snapped up Telephia, which tracks cell phone usage. Founded in ‘98, Telephia primarily targeted wireless companies - but has recently broadened its scope to media companies and advertisers.
Add comment June 27th, 2007
WGN-AM morning host Spike O’Dell suddenly found his voice booming across more than just the powerhouse signal he usually originates on. A strange glitch in the Emergency Alert System triggered the Emergency Action Notification. The EAN is the highest level alert - indicating a message is incoming from the White House. The EAS readout told stations not to cut away under penalty of law. “The system is set up so that if there is an emergency, the president or the governor or someone else in authority can take control of the airwaves. And no one did,” Patti Thompson, a spokeswoman for the Illinois Emergency Management Agency told the Chicago Tribune. Instead, O’Dell’s mic was hot all over the dial, since WGN is the hub for EAS in the area. A VP for CBS Radio in the market joked that if this happened next year, when Portable People Meters will be in place in the market - WGN would have seen quite the ratings spike.
Add comment June 27th, 2007
The season finale of Univision’s telenovela “La Fea mas Bella” beat all five English broadcast networks Tuesday night. The show had 7.4 million viewers - CBS drew 7.06, Fox 5.65 million — and NBC and ABC under 5 million. La Fea mas Bella is a cousin of ABC’s Ugly Betty — both are based on a Columbian program.
5 comments June 27th, 2007
Last week I pointed out a newspaper that was doing much more TV-like content and presentation, and tonight radio is pushing into our arena as well. CBS Radio is producing a live webcast tonight called “Live from the Web Carpet” at the red carpet of the Transformers premiere in Los Angeles. The webcast will be available on 100 CBS Radio sites tonight at 9:30PM ET. The webcast will feature interviews with cast members including Shia LaBeouf, Tyrese Gibson, John Duhamel, John Turturro, and John Voigt.
8 comments June 27th, 2007
Update: In a bid to take on YouTube, MySpace has launched a standalone site called MySpaceTV.com. The site features professional video “front and center,” and it aims to integrate video more seamlessly with social networking. “When you go to MySpace video now, what you see is far less appealing to the eye than what you get from other video sites,” said Jeff Berman, a MySpace executive who took over the video effort in March. By focusing primarily on professional and original content, MySpaceTV also hopes to attract advertisers who are concerned about associating with user-generated fare.
2 comments June 27th, 2007
There have been two national news stories this week involving sports. One is the death of WWE wrestler Chris Benoit, his wife and son in an apparent double-murder/suicide. The other is the House hearings into the NFL’s disability plans for retired football players. And although both those stories are getting airtime, Andrew Tyndall keenly observes that you’re hard-pressed to find the video versions of those stories online:
The explanation for their presence on television but their absence as video has nothing to do with journalism, and everything to do with copyright. The rights to use sports footage do not transfer from one medium to another so the footage at a correspondent’s disposal to cover a sports story varies medium by medium. The same is true for journalism about show business.
Consider these examples: since the start of May, there have been 18 news stories that aired on ABC World News that have not been posted online; fully half of those (six sports stories, three show business stories) have been on subjects where video rights are difficult to clear. On CBS the same holds true: of the 13 CBS Evening News stories that have not been posted online, four were sports and three were show business.
Amen, Andrew. We have been warning about this for years now. I would argue fair use in these cases, but it’s not hard to see why networks would back off putting the stories online, given the onerous way the NFL and others enforce their online rights. You can bet any use of sports video, even in a news story, would result in a cease-and-desist letter, followed by more back-and-forth letters and lawsuit threats. Who needs that? The risk adds up to the potential for networks losing real money, and they are understandably shy about getting into expensive fights these days.
7 comments June 27th, 2007
The folks at Slate have launched SlateV.com, a companion video site to the online magazine. The site combines original features hosted by Slate writers with some user-created components. Multiple Emmy winner Bill Smee, formerly of Discovery Times Channel, and Andy Bowers, long-time NPR correspondent and creator of Slate’s video programs are running the site. Like many video sites these days, it’s all powered by Brightcove.
2 comments June 27th, 2007
Good news for those in the UK waiting anxiously for the launch of the new BBC iPlayer. It’s set to launch on July 27th. Director General Mark Thompson said: “This July we are going to launch the iPlayer and in our view, the iPlayer is at least as big a redefinition of what TV can be, what radio can be, what broadcasting can be, as what colour television was 40 years ago.” There is a good promotional video available online which previews the features of the player.
1 comment June 27th, 2007
MySpace founders Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe are reportedly asking for a massive compensation package to stick around with News Corp. after their current deals expire in October. How much compensation? It would put them just under Rupert Murdoch and COO Peter Chernin.
2 comments June 26th, 2007
And you thought YouTube was big before: A new report (PDF) by Ellacoya Networks shows that the Google-owned video site comprises a monster ten percent of all traffic on the Internet. Thanks to the video boom - HTTP traffic outpaced peer to peer traffic for the first time in four years. Granted, video is a bandwidth hog and takes a bigger chunk of the pipe than your average web page - but that is still an astounding number. If the Information Superhighway were a turnpike through Ohio somewhere, every tenth car zipping by would sport the YouTube logo.
1 comment June 26th, 2007
Talks between News Corp. and Dow Jones has taken another big step forward with news that the two companies have reached a tentative agreement over editorial control. Explains the NY Times, “That clears the way for negotiation of price and other remaining issues. But some people close to the talks cautioned that certain details on editorial independence remained to be settled, and said they were even reluctant to call it an agreement yet.” And all this would still have to be approved by the Bancroft family. The WSJ story today breaks down how a deal might come together.
Add comment June 26th, 2007
Wall Street Journal Personal Technology Columnist Walter Mossberg is not one who is prone to give in to hype. So I respect his product reviews. He put the iPhone to the test, and gives a detailed review in this video. His verdict? It’s indeed a breakthrough device, but has its flaws. Video review below…
“Even in version 1.0, the iPhone is still the most sophisticated, outlook-changing piece of electronics to come along in years,” writes David Pogue in the NY Times. “It does so many things so well, and so pleasurably, that you tend to forgive its foibles.”
2 comments June 26th, 2007
Back in April, Wired Magazine offered to personalize the July, 2007 cover for 5,000 lucky entrants. (The issue is dedicated to “the hyperlocal web.”) The magazine has been arriving this week, and LR pal Chip Mahaney of KDFW in Dallas is among those who graces their own cover. So here’s Cover Boy Chip, Wired’s Sexiest Man Alive, 2007:
8 comments June 26th, 2007
I just punched up WashingtonPost.com and the screen pushed down… way down…
And that’s on a 1280 x 1024 resolution setting. These kind of ads (which condense up to a narrow bar at the top of the page after a few seconds) are becoming all the rage on many newspaper sites these days.
14 comments June 26th, 2007
MTV Radio, Rhapsody, Pandora and thousands of other internet radio stations are silent Tuesday to protest the dramatic hike in music royalties that go into effect in three weeks. (A few stations, like the popular KEXP here in Seattle, decided not to go along.) This screen grab from MTV Radio explains further:
Add comment June 26th, 2007
You may remember that TMZ.com — an AOL property — has had tremendous success switching from a traditional news format to a blog format, and now the new AOL News is following in its footsteps. Think of it as a modified blog format, with a shorter home page and stories not necessarily listed in pure chronological order. But it has comments, tags and user recommendations. (The version that’s in beta right now does not have all the functionality that’s displayed on the tour page. Looks like there are some bugs to work out.) So what do you think? Should more news sites switch to a blog format?
7 comments June 26th, 2007
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