Archive for December 10th, 2007
The new SnapStream Television Search Appliance allows users to record a whopping ten channels at one time - with up to 2,300 hours of storage and 1.5 TB of storage. As Tim Allen used to say “Arrh! Arrh! Arrh!” The professional grade DVR also has another killer app. It stores all the closed captioning from the programs as meta-data, and allows user to search it. You can even get an e-mail alert when a flagged term shows up - and burn the clip to a DVD. It’s only $15,000 and needs a rack mount - but how many years will it be before this type of technology is in the living room? Not many.
Also: Washington State University students in Spokane are being offered a discount-rate TiVo for $125 (via PVR Blog)
And: TiVo’s Series Four boxes will offer two-way communications with cable providers, allowing for VOD download and more.
December 10th, 2007
CBSNews added a special iPhone version of its site. It is just the latest site to add a specially designed version for the trendy gadget of the year. Facebook, Google & others have already fired up customized versions. In some ways, the “iPhone” versions are better than the regular versions - if for no other reason than they aren’t cluttered and hard to navigate. Any locals doing it yet?
December 10th, 2007
When some of you click items in the navigation (like “resources”), nothing happens. Or it reloads the home page. I haven’t been able to duplicate it, but any ideas on what’s going on here? My hosting company recently added a caching plug-in (Lost Remote is powered by Wordpress) to reduce bandwidth, could that be an issue? Very strange stuff.
December 10th, 2007
Google’s YouTube is ramping up its partner program - moving beyond a small test to let more folks in on the show. YouTube partners share in revenue generated by videos they post on the site. Not everyone will be accepted - the YouTube blog notes the site will focus on partners who already generate a significant number of video views, and who have historically stayed within the site’s terms of service. Broadcasting & Cable says some YouTube partners are generating thousands of dollars per month from the site. Sign up here, partner.
December 10th, 2007
Have you ever been the one to make the call to interrupt a soap opera - then had to answer all the nasty phone calls? Yeah… me too. Prime time can be just as tricky - you want to get breaking news out - but interrupting programming is always dicey. Little Lost Robot’s JL Watkins notes his station WYFF/Greenville, SC decided to bust into Heroes with a news update. Here, I’ll let him tell it:
My station broke into programming with a breaking news update during the Heroes season finale on Monday. Just before the show went to commercial break, a vial containing a deadly virus was tumbling towards the floor, a mere second from shattering. When we came back to the show (from the breaking news alert) all the heroes were standing around congratulating each other. It sucked to miss part of the show, but hearing about the angry calls and emails from the “Heroes community” the next morning was priceless.
December 10th, 2007
WCMH/Columbus, OH traffic reporter Monica Day just won her state’s Miss USA pageant. As the new Miss Ohio, she’ll compete in the Donald Trump-backed Miss USA event next year. Day, 25 made her fourth attempt at the crown over the weekend - and took home the tiara. Oh, and she’s a sound bite machine to boot: “How great is it for my colleagues in the station that I’m doing this?” she said. “It’s exposure for them as well.” Yes. How great. “Anything you can do promote yourself, maybe to a higher position or a larger market—if you can do something that’s going to give you that extra push, go for it,” she told The Other Paper.
And then there’s this:
Justin Rudd, a California-based pageant coach, has been working with beauty queen hopefuls for nearly 20 years. The connection between pageant contestants and TV news careers, he said, often boils down to aesthetics. “Typically, they’re nice to look at,” Rudd said.
December 10th, 2007
KARE-TV’s kare11.com in Minneapolis got a new look today, and again we see another TV station going for a lighter website rather than the dark and TV-like design we saw from the ABC O&O’s last week. A couple of thoughts on the new kare11.com: I like the whiter pages, they are much easier on the eyes. It’s nice to see most popular content on the homepage. I think users appreciate seeing what others are reading. Ok, now the critiques. Anchor pics along the top of every page? Is it 1999? At least they click to bio pages. Above the fold on the homepage I have 3 news stories. Contrast that with 5 ads (3 for sales and 2 for the station) and 7 pictures of talent. What is the goal for this site? News, sales or promotion? Also, I’m not a fan of the blue font in the story pages. I won’t read a long page in blue. I really wanted to like that the site has so many blogs featured at the bottom, so I decided to check them out only to find the first one I clicked on was last updated in February of 2007. The second one I checked was last update in June 2007. Webmasters: Delete blogs that aren’t blogs. It’s embarrassing for your site, and if the person really wants the face space on the website, they should contribute. Not to leave a bad impression of KARE, I watch them about half the time I watch local news. I like them, although this site update isn’t enough of a change for me to stop using startribune.com. But what do you think?
December 10th, 2007
Dan Abrams’ new primetime show may have the most opinionated name for a series on any of the cable networks: Bush League Justice. “It stems from my increasing frustration and outrage over how the Bush Administration has politicized the usually apolitical Justice Department,” Abrams says. Of course, this fits neatly into MSNBC’s primetime strategy (started by Olbermann) to counter Fox News and target the political left.
December 10th, 2007
The folks at MSNBC.com have built a nifty gift guide on TodayShow.com that allows you to click (and buy) items in the video. The guide was built with Microsoft’s “Video Hyperlink” technology in conjunction with MSN Shopping, and it’s all sponsored by Sears. Give it a try here, and a link to the press release follows the screen grab below…
Read the full post December 10th, 2007
NYTimes.com took down its paid subscription wall for “Times Select” back in September. And now traffic is skyrocketing, according to Comscore. From the end of August through November, unique users have surged 65 percent. (I updated the TechCrunch story with November numbers.)
December 10th, 2007
Microsoft will be the exclusive third-party ad seller for CNBC.com, and the company said it would offer advertisers the ability to buy packages that span both CNBC.com and MSN Money. CNBC will maintain its own ad sales team, which will focus on selling video ads online and on CNBC TV.
December 10th, 2007
Unable to give make-goods due to tight commercial inventory, NBC is reimbursing advertisers for fourth quarter ratings shortfalls largely due to the writers strike. MediaWeek reports its “the first time in years a network has taken such a step.” The average refund is $500,000 per advertiser. The other networks, in the meantime, are offering make-goods into next year.
December 10th, 2007
- TiVo shifts to help companies it once threatened (NYTimes.com)
- CompUSA sold, will close down all remaining stores (CNET)
- Interview with outgoing WSJ Publisher Gordon Crovitz (PaidContent)
- LinkedIn partners with BusinessWeek on new API (Mashable)
December 10th, 2007
