Archive for November 1st, 2007
If ever there was a big shove in the direction of media change - this might be it. The Writers Guild of America, along with the Screen Actors Guild and other unions are ready to strike, according to Variety. This could shut down late night shows immediately, and rip apart the network (and to some extent cable) lineups if the shutdown drags on. The Heroes: Origins spinoff is on ice on strike fears.
Following up on Cory’s entry below, this week’s SNL with Brian Williams could be the last new ep for a while. If the strike were to start Friday as speculated, even the Williams hosted episode could go down the tubes, since “it’s unclear if Williams would cross a picket line” according to Variety.
November 1st, 2007
Just saw the promo. “I’m Brian Williams, and I’ll be hosting Saturday Night Live this week,” the NBC anchor said on the SNL set. “And if the threatened writers’ strike takes place, I’ll be hosting My Name is Earl.” Williams has a great sense of humor, so this will be a must-TiVo event.
“My family was anxious for me to do it,” Williams told the AP. “My bosses were anxious for me to do it,” he said. “But in the end, it’s ME doing it, and I worried that anyone might be confused between this and my day job. But I just don’t think there’s a chance of that.”
November 1st, 2007
(This article originally appeared in the November 1, 2007 edition of the AR&D Media 2.0 Intel newsletter.) In 2004, I had the honor of doing live reports on TV from the Red Sox World Series victory parade. In 2007, I went live from a Sox victory parade again - this time, from my laptop. On Tuesday, I webcast the Red Sox victory parade from downtown Boston with nothing more than a handheld video camera, my Mac laptop and a remarkable website called Mogulus.
Read the full post November 1st, 2007
Watching the “campaign” of Stephen Colbert has been fun, but the best part is that he’s polling higher than some of the serious candidates. Unfortunately, South Carolina Democrats think they are above the attention Colbert has been bringing their state. They’ve denied him a place on the ballot. What’s interesting is seeing the reaction from the press:
“According to CNN, he lost a roll call vote, 13-3. You’re right - not exactly a tight vote. Amazingly, Dennis Kucinich WAS allowed on the ballot; he’s the candidate who sees UFOs and is apparently considered more “serious” than Colbert.” Newsweek
“Colbert had brightened the autumn political scene in recent days by announcing he would run in both parties’ primaries in his home state and in that state only.”LA Times
“He won’t even get to lose once, let alone “lose twice” like he said he wanted to…” Washington Post
We’ll find out tonight if Colbert is calling it quits, but my guess is he’ll be a part of the race as an Independent candidate in South Carolina, so long as the Writer’s Guild strike doesn’t force his show to go dark.
November 1st, 2007
It’s like a headline from the past, but Don Imus is officially returning to radio in New York City on WABC, according to GoogleAP. “He is rested, fired up and ready to do great radio,” said the station’s GM. Calling Don Imus “fired up” seems like a strange choice of words, doesn’t it?
November 1st, 2007
Anyone else just getting sick of all this promotion for the Bee Movie? I mean, really.
November 1st, 2007
OpenSocial is a common set of APIs so developers can write social applications that span multiple social networks. Now MySpace is part of the group, leaving Facebook as the last big social network that’s not part of the initiative. “Our partnership with Google allows developers to gain massive distribution without unnecessary specialized development for every platform,” said Chris DeWolfe, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of MySpace. “This is about helping the start-up spend more time building a great product rather than rebuilding it for every social network. We’re pleased to collaborate with Google to establish a landmark standard for social applications.” Starting tonight, developers can start writing applications for OpenSocial here. Press release…
Read the full post November 1st, 2007
Another round of YouTube channels were launched today by Hearst-Argyle to bring their group of official channels up to 26. It’s taken a few months for all the HTV stations to launch since the partnership was first announced in June. When this started, Hearst-Argyle was the first local broadcaster to form the revenue partnership. We’ve blogged that LIN is launching YouTube channels as well. The hidden headline from today’s press release deals with the metrics. A commenter had asked before for numbers, but they weren’t public until now. Hearst-Argyle reports hitting 13 million video streams in the first five months of the partnership. Considering many of the stations hadn’t even launched until today, that’s a notable number. (Disclosure: I work for Hearst-Argyle and am directly involved in the YouTube channels.)
November 1st, 2007
KTVB colleagues Tony Courtwright, Aletia Powers and I often talk about how smart it would be for Google to buy a TV station or station group (and I swear it’s not just because of the free snack rooms). Conde’ Nast Porfolio looks at a simple question: who would make the ideal newspaper owner. The conclusion? Google’s philanthropic arm Google.org:
The ideal newspaper owner, in my view, would be a fan of profits, yet not profit-oriented; have a strong commitment to making the world a better place through the dissemination of information; and have loads of money. Who best fits the bill? Easy: Google.org. Paging Larry Brilliant!
We’ve seen a myraid of efforts by Google to bridge the Internet with old technology: selling radio ads and print ads to name two. At what point does it make sense for Google to take the plunge and purchase a newspaper or TV station? We all talk about how to capitalize on the Internet and the new future media faces. What better way to tackle that challenge then to be have an Internet-centric organization like Google steer the ship?
November 1st, 2007
The early bird deadline is tomorrow and the final deadline is December 14th to enter your site for a Webby Award (which does have a video category, by the way).
November 1st, 2007
Hulu is running short sponsorship announcements (:05ish) before show episodes, but not pre-rolls. “We think it’s a higher quality experience for users and advertisers alike,” said Jason Kilar, the former Amazon.com executive who is Hulu’s CEO. An average of two minutes of ads will appear inside a 30-minute episode, just not at the beginning. Hulu’s thinking mirrors Google’s recent research that discovered that pre-rolls are a poor user experience.
Also, following up from my earlier review of Hulu, I’m still very impressed with the site’s video quality. I watched a full-screen episode the other night, and it was the best streaming experience I’ve had — even beating Joost. BUT, BUT… the big caveat is that Hulu is still in private beta with very few users. It will be interesting to see if it can scale while retaining this level of quality and fast response.
November 1st, 2007
The association that promotes newspaper companies, the NAA reports that paper sites experienced a 9 percent year-over-year increase in unique users. Also, the Audit Bureau of Circulations plans to release its circulation data next week and, in addition to paid print circulation, for the first time ABC is including online readership for some 200 papers.
November 1st, 2007
MediaWeek is reporting that NBC is planning to shut down its comedy venture DotComedy.com, folding the video content into NBC.com and other NBC sites (presumably Hulu, too). The site’s traffic high is 246,000 unique users in August. MediaWeek says the logic is to move away from a forced-destination model to an open-distribution model (which makes sense, IMHO). (Via PaidContent)
November 1st, 2007
Earlier this week, NBCU announced a mobile marketing deal with SinglePoint that the press release calls “one of the biggest company-wide mobile marketing initiatives ever conducted by a media company.” Now there’s news that NBCU has invested in 4INFO, a mobile SMS advertising company. “Mobile advertising will be a multi-billion dollar industry in the next few years as more progressive content providers and advertisers like NBC Universal realize its potential to engage audiences with targeted, measurable messages,” said Tom Byrne, managing director and group head, Peacock Equity, NBCU’s investment fund.
November 1st, 2007
