Belo invests in Mochila

Belo has inked a strategic partnership with Mochila, an online content syndication company. Press release below… (Full disclosure: I work for KING5.com, a Belo site.)

Read the full post Add comment September 24th, 2007

Nielsen launches pop culture social network

HeyNielsen launched in public beta today, and it’s an interesting effort by Nielsen to expand into the consumer web space. HeyNielsen is a social network where users share opinions and discuss their favorite shows, movies and music. “It could be an effective mechanism for Nielsen to explore — and define — a wide variety of experimental media and marketing research,” reads the press release, which follows below the screen grab…

Read the full post 8 comments September 24th, 2007

Will wsj.com go free? Should it?

With News Corp. set to close on its deal to purchase Dow Jones and its Wall Street Journal unit, CEO Rupert Murdoch is indicating that wsj.com will go from one of the few successful pay sites to a free site supported by advertising. Several Dow Jones execs says the site should stay paid - but Murdoch thinks the current subscriber base (in the million customer range) would boom to the 10-15 million range - which would more than make up for the lost subscriber revenue.

2 comments September 23rd, 2007

FCC chief on the record

FCC chairman Kevin Martin sat down with Broadcasting and Cable Magazine for a long chat about the pending DTV transition. Among other things, Martin says he will still be in the chairman’s seat when the Feb. 17, 2009 deadline rolls around - despite rumors he has public office ambitions in his home state.

1 comment September 23rd, 2007

Five goals to keep a blog fresh

I wrote this piece for the Idaho Business Review, the local business newspaper - and thought there might be some interest here as well. The paper’s editor asked me for some “rules” to help keep a blog fresh and active. Full story after the jump…

1) Don’t do it all at once. Instead of blogging a dozen items twice a month, spread it out. You want to hook visitors into stopping by regularly. If you empty your notebook with a lot of items all at once, you discourage people from checking frequently. Sites fall into three categories for me - the every day “must reads,” the once-a-month “should reads,” and the once-in a while “read when I have time” sites.

2) Keep it short. Don’t overload your readers with a long dissertation on your topic of choice. Make it short and bite-sized. If you must go in-depth, make sure you include a summary. Most blog software will allow you to put longer entries “after the jump,” meaning the summary goes on the home page, while your long, lovingly-crafted thesis goes on a separate page. This keeps your home page neat and tidy.

3) Save up. My goal on IdahoRadioNews.com is to post 30 items per month. Sometimes I go way over that number when it is busy, but if it is quiet, I still try to hit that number. If it is a slow month, I always have a few items saved away. Keep a file of evergreen topics you can trot out during a slow period.

4) Produce discussion-evoking content. This is easier said then done - and I am not an expert in what will light the fire of my userbase - even after four years of blogging. However, try to be a bit provocative and work to engage. The easiest way to keep your site fresh is by having a community of folks who comment regularly. They generate content for you — free. Don’t be discouraged that you might not have a lot of comments in the first year or so. As you establish yourself, this part of your blog will grow.

5) Post regular features. Though this isn’t a trick I personally employ, many sites do this with great success. Local photography and culture site Boisee.com does a “Monday Follies” feature as well as a “Photo Friday” roundup. This helps keep the content pump running, since the site’s editor knows he has to fill these regularly scheduled blanks. It’s important to stick to something you can keep up with. The worst thing you can do is to commit to something, then disappoint your users.

1 comment September 23rd, 2007

NYT Public Editor: MoveOn.org ad violated paper’s standards

New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt writes in Sunday’s Times that the MoveOn.org ad that ran in the paper and was critical of Gen. David Petraeus “violated the paper’s own written standards.” You know the ad - it’s the instantly famous one with the headline “General Petraeus or General Betray-Us?” (Get it? It rhymes.) Further, Hoyt says, MoveOn paid less than half what the paper should have charged for the full-page ad:

MoveOn.org paid what is known in the newspaper industry as a standby rate of $64,575 that it should not have received under Times policies. The group should have paid $142,083. The Times had maintained for a week that the standby rate was appropriate, but a company spokeswoman told me late Thursday afternoon that an advertising sales representative made a mistake.

According to CNN, MoveOn has now paid the full $142,083 amount. As for the editorial content of the ad, the Times’s director of advertising acceptability (love the title) approved it: “He said the question mark after the headline figured in his decision.” Hoyt writes.

For The Times, there is another value: the protection of its brand as a newspaper that sets a high standard for civility. Were I in Jespersen’s shoes, I’d have demanded changes to eliminate “Betray Us,” a particularly low blow when aimed at a soldier.

10 comments September 23rd, 2007

Sergey and Larry make the Forbes top five richest

Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page are tied for #5 in this years’ Forbes Magazine list of the richest Americans. They’re both 34 years old, and their net worth went up about $4.5 billion each in the last year. They displace members of the Walton family, of Wal-Mart fame. Sergey and Larry have an estimated $18.5 billion apiece. Bill Gates, of course, is at #1 (it’s his 14th year in a row at the top spot) with $59 billion, Warren Buffet’s #2 with $52 billion, Sheldon Adelson (you’ve probably been in one of his casinos) is #3, Oracle’s Larry Ellison is #4. As soon as Cory sells LR, we’ll make the list and we’re totally sharing the money with you. Seriously.

2 comments September 22nd, 2007

Cuban talks about potential bid to buy the Cubs

Mark Cuban is among those in the bidding to buy the Chicago Cubs and, if this ESPN article is anything to go by, he’s a fan-favorite choice. Asked via email about his bid to buy the Cubbies, “the Mavericks’ owner coyly replied via e-mail, “All I can say is anything I do, I do to win.’” Tribune Co. is selling the Cubs, and it could cost the newcomers around $1 billion to buy the team and Wrigley Field. Cuban, of course, already owns the Dallas Mavericks and is noted for doing things his way - which may mean the stiffs who run MLB will take issue with his bid. But whether you like Mark or not (and - full disclosure - I do), you have to admit it would perfect to have a CUB-an own the team.

2 comments September 22nd, 2007

Take a look at MSN Video in beta

MSN has launched a new video experience, currently in beta, that merges its traditional video offerings with user video clips from Soapbox. And it’s in Flash.

Clean, straightforward presentation. Easy to navigate.

Click a clip and a medium rectangle companion ad animates out of the side of the player. Interestingly, I could only get a pre-roll ad to play on the first clip per session. (I wonder if that’s just a beta setting?) Meanwhile, there’s a smaller ad unit that rests beneath the player and changes with every clip played. Meanwhile, MSNBC.com is preparing to launch its own new video experience, so stay tuned for that.

3 comments September 22nd, 2007

Amanda Congdon logs off abcnews.com

TVNewser has the sad news that Amanda Congdon is no longer working with abcnews.com. Congdon joined the site almost a year ago after her successful video blogging experience at rocketboom.com. According to TVNewser, ABC News released this statement:

“It’s been a great year with Amanda — a great experiment for both of us. We thank her for her many contributions and know that she’s about to embark on new endeavors and expect there will be times in the future that we can again work together.”

Sorry guys.

13 comments September 21st, 2007

NBC.com to premiere original production

In a first for NBC.com, the site will debut an original production series, “Coastal Dreams.” Also, the animated comedy series “Pale Force” returns this fall. Press release below…

Read the full post 4 comments September 21st, 2007

Free FOX shows coming to iTunes

As a way to hook you, kind of like a drug dealer, FOX is giving away the season premiere episodes of a number of their shows for free on iTunes. According to the LA Times, shows include “Prison Break,” “Bones,” “American Dad” and “K-Ville.” FOX hopes that by giving away the first show, you will want to pay $0.99 for each additional show or at least watch them free on TV. It will be interesting to see which offerings consumers like the most, since CBS, ABC and NBC all have made similar big shifts in online offerings this season.

6 comments September 21st, 2007

Learning the right lesson from Times Select

There’s a temptation when an online experiment fails to engage in the “I Told You So” game, which generally doesn’t do anyone any good. The New York Times tried its luck with its Times Select subscription service. It didn’t work. I don’t penalize people for trying, especially online. But I do like to take what lessons I can from failure. One of the lessons from the Times Select experiment may not be so obvious.

Read the full post 9 comments September 20th, 2007

Getting it right

A quick kudos to NYTime’s Brian Stelter for getting it right. All morning I’ve seen articles talking about Think.MTV, a new site from MTV that aims to help teens do good things. The problem? Think.MTV takes you no where. .MTV isn’t a web domain. Luckily, Brian correctly posted on his new blog TVDecoder that the new site is Think.MTV.com. See what happens when a person who “gets it” writes about the Web? They don’t make mistakes.

3 comments September 20th, 2007

TV news video appearing on BreitBartTV.com

BreitBart’s new video site features a bunch of news clips from local TV stations and the networks, and you can bet it’s not part of a distribution agreement. Right now on their home page, the top story is from CNN and the next big three stories are from WNEP, WKMG and KLAS. Scroll down the page and there are clips from KOMO, KCRA, KCBS, WDAF, KING, ABC News… the list goes on and on. And they’re surrounded by ads. So how are they doing this? They’re just embedding players from YouTube, LiveLeak, DailyMotion and other video sites that are hosting this copyrighted material. Now, I don’t have a problem with blogs that embed copyrighted clips from YouTube because they don’t attract that much traffic in the whole scheme of things — they tend to be very niche. But Breitbart.com is a rather popular news aggregation site (Drudge links ‘em all the time) and now they’ve created a video news site embedding content they don’t own. Hmmmm.

18 comments September 20th, 2007

KING TV’s CitizenRain.com adds news aggregation

Yeah, yeah, I’m back to promoting myself, but this is pretty cool. Our blog aggregator, CitizenRain.com, has expanded to add local news aggregation. At the top of the site, we post links to the most interesting stories we can find from all of the Seattle news sites, TV competitors included. As you can see, we’re not necessarily picking the big stories of the day but the most interesting, clickable stories.

Then we still have our own blog, the blog aggregator divided by topic and our Seattle blog search tool. So in a nutshell, we serve up the day’s most interesting links from 236 Seattle community blogs and the news media all in one place.

As far as I know, we’re the only local media company with an aggregation site, and for some reason I find it very entertaining to link the competition.

9 comments September 20th, 2007

ABC will offer its shows on AOL Video

ABC will start to have its primetime shows available for viewing on AOL Video. The shows will be available on AOL Video one day after airing. From B&C:

ABC will offer the shows on AOL Video one day after they premiere on TV through an “ABC.com on AOL” player, which will also display identification from the local ABC affiliate station. While AOL offers primetime programming from the other broadcast networks, this partnership is its first to stream ABC’s shows and represents the first time that a network will co-brand its own online-video player with an online portal.

As Michael Gay wrote about yesterday, NBC will go a step further by offering its programs for free downloading (with some DRM limitations). Full press release after the jump.

Read the full post 1 comment September 20th, 2007

NBC to offer free show downloads

NBC announces that they will start beta testing free program downloads in October that will allow users to watch shows for free on their computer for up to one week after it is broadcast for free. The free shows at launch will include “Heroes,” “The Office,” “Life,” “Bionic Woman,” “30 Rock,” “Friday Night Lights,” “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” and “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.” Did I mention they are free? The NBC Direct service will even let users subscribe to shows and have the episodes downloaded as soon as they are available, for free. Mac support and portable player support will be included in future phases. Wow, I want in the beta. Press release after the jump.

Read the full post 8 comments September 19th, 2007