ABC, FCC argue over a naked butt

This AP story of the proposed $1.4 million FCC fine against ABC for a naked butt scene in NYPD is hilarious. Especially the last line.

11 comments January 28th, 2008

Small stations best positioned for growth?

Former AOL President and co-founder of MTV, Bob Pittman has some interesting things to say about small market television, both on TV and the web. Pittman’s Pilot investment group has been buying up smaller stations. “We have focused on small market television, where local advertising is the predominant revenue stream,” Pittman explains in an interview with VideoNuze. “We have done that because we believe national advertisers will slow down spending in economic downturns, whereas in local market when you’re dealing with a local retailer he still has to sell everything that’s on the shelf, come good times or bad. And we believe that in small markets, newspapers and yellow pages are getting wildly disproportionate share of the revenue, so we think there’s a great growth opportunity as well.” And online, Pittman says his stations have been setting up “what are in essense newspapers online.” He explains, “In our smaller markets, we’re not competing with Google or MSN, so we can get large local audiences, which allow us to better serve our advertisers.”

6 comments January 28th, 2008

Las Vegas Sun’s terrific online fire coverage

WashingtonPost Interactive’s Rob Curley breaks down how the Las Vegas Sun covered last week’s fire at the Monte Carlo. “My jaw nearly hit the ground,” Curley writes of how well the newspaper site covered the breaking story. A live blog, photos, backgrounders, video and the ability for users to upload video through YouTube and photos through Flickr. “To me, this was a nearly textbook example of how a local newspaper should cover a big breaking news story in its community in the iPhone era,” Curley writes.

Adds Don Day in comments below: “I was incredibly impressed when I clicked on to the site last week. The TV sites in the market were… not good. The Sun site was vibrant, fresh, clean and simple. I noticed they just revamped - and clearly the new architecture and design were built for this type of story. I took away several good ideas from the Sun here — and it’s one of the better local newspaper sites I’ve seen.”

Yes, that’s a massive 16×9 video player of the fire.

18 comments January 28th, 2008

Current TV files for IPO

The parent company of Current TV, Current Media, has filed for a $100 million IPO on NASDAQ. Explains PaidContent’s Joseph Weisenthal, “Reading through the management’s discussion and the risks section highlights Current’s challenge, as it attempts to pitch a cable channel to a crowd increasingly watching video online.” (Full disclosure: Current is advertising on Lost Remote right now.)

1 comment January 28th, 2008

Interview with WorldNow’s Gannaway

WorldNow President and CEO Gary Gannaway sat down for an interview with Broadcasting & Cable. Interestingly, WorldNow just closed a deal to manage the online ad inventory for the ABC reality program Supernanny.

7 comments January 28th, 2008

NBC acquires video site LX.tv

For a year now, WNBC has been airing videos from LX.tv, a New York startup that produces high-end entertainment videos about NY and LA (with plans to expand to other cities). Now NBC’s Local Media Division has purchased the company for an undisclosed amount. LX.tv was founded in ‘06 by former MTV executives Morgan Hertzan and Joseph Varet.

Add comment January 28th, 2008

Target to blogosphere: you’re irrelevant

A blog asks Target a question. Target blows it off with an email that says, “Target does not participate with nontraditional media outlets.” Then the New York Times does a story on it. Ooops.

5 comments January 28th, 2008

Top news sites for December ‘07

The Nielsen-Netratings monthly list for news sites (ranked by uniques):

1. Yahoo News   35,362
2. CNN Digital Network   33,090
3. MSNBC Digital Network   30,417
4. AOL News   22,601
5. NYTimes.com   17,177

The next 15 in order: Tribune, Gannett, Google News, USAToday, ABCNews Digital Network, Fox News Digital Network, WashingtonPost, WorldNow, CBS News Digital Network, McClatchy, Hearst Newspapers Digital, MediaNews, Internet Broadcasting (those not included in the CNN Digital Network), Advance Internet and Topix.

Add comment January 27th, 2008

Hulu launch slated for end of March

The NBCU-News Corp. video joint venture Hulu.com is currently running in private beta with “hundreds of thousands” of users, says CTO Eric Feng. And while fresh video is hard to find because of the writers strike, Feng told NewTeeVee that the demand for archived shows has spiked (I’ve been watching old Arrested Development shows on Hulu lately). The full launch is scheduled sometime in March. Lots more details and a video interview here.

Last October: Our review of Hulu.com

9 comments January 25th, 2008

Best banner ad campaign I’ve seen

Ad campaign currently on Yahoo News…

PC walks up the ladder from one ad unit into another…

… to staple up a “NOT” sign on the Wall Street Journal quote. The ad auto-plays, but you have to click for audio. Very, very well done.

4 comments January 25th, 2008

WSJ.com to expand free content, keep paid model

Rupert Murdoch told a crowd in Davos, Switzerland that WSJ.com would expand its free content offerings - but would still charge for “really special things.” He didn’t say exactly what those things are - but did note that the price would likely go up.

Add comment January 24th, 2008

BBC blog admits they don’t know what’s going on

Thursday BBC Worldwide announced a deal with MySpace.com that brings content from the BBC to the huge social networking website. Apparently the editorial team at BBC News didn’t know, and on the same day ran a story about how hard it is to delete your profile from MySpace. Bad timing? Sure. But this blog entry on BBC’s technology blog made me, well, LOL. It called the irony of the timing:

A good way of proving a) how impartial we are and b) how no two parts of the BBC know what each other is up to.

The new MySpace page does look nice though. There are lots of videos, although no videos from BBC News. Also, the videos are able to be embedded onto external sites. A feature we at LostRemote love.

Add comment January 24th, 2008

KPIX launches local blog aggregator

The CBS5.com team in San Francisco along with new hire Brittney Gilbert (formerly of WKRN fame) have launched Eye on the Blogs, a local blog and blog aggregator. “It’s a weblog about blogs in the Bay Area,” writes Gilbert in her first blog post. “Any blog produced within the Bay Area that I can find will be added to our blogroll, as well as the aggregator, in the hopes of making this a one-stop source for self-published online content.” Read B&C’s blurb about the launch here. Clearly, I’m a big fan of this, because I launched CitizenRain.com last year, Seattle’s blog aggregator. Unlike CitizenRain, Eye on the Blogs is wrapped in CBS5.com’s branding and navigation.

9 comments January 24th, 2008

YouTube to soon allow mobile video uploads

In an upcoming feature, YouTube says it will make it possible for 3G-enabled cell phone users to shoot a video clip and upload it directly to the site. In other words, YouTube is enabling a wireless video army — a development that should be of immediate interest to TV news operations.

2 comments January 24th, 2008

ESPN mobile site beats ESPN.com

Whoa, I just heard about this a couple weeks after the fact. During the NFL playoffs for a day in the first week of January, ESPN’s mobile site racked up more page views than ESPN.com itself. This folks, is a watershed moment. “We’re having extraordinary growth on ESPN.com’s NFL pages, but we’re also seeing extraordinary usage with mobile devices as well,” said Ed Erhardt, president-ESPN ABC Sports customer marketing and sales, calling mobile “a big part of the future as it relates to how fans are going to consume sports.”

Add comment January 24th, 2008

Everyblock has launched, and it’s very cool

Adrian Holovaty’s much-anticipated hyperlocal site Everyblock just launched for Chicago, New York and San Francisco. At it’s core, it’s a powerful aggregator of news, user-generated content and data — all geotagged and mapped. News stories, blog posts, Flick photos, building permits, crime data, restaurant reviews, Craigslist postings… etc… you can map it all around your house, in your neighborhood. “We’re a geographic filter — a ‘news feed’ for your neighborhood, or, yes, even your block,” explains the Everyblock team. And it looks like just about everything is automated.

I’ve always believed that the hyperlocal nut will be cracked with a technology solution, not a content solution. Why try to convince people to submit content when there’s already a ton of it out there that just needs organizing? I’ll be posting a full review of the site soon, but my first impression is Everyblock has more potential to succeed than any hyperlocal effort before it.

3 comments January 23rd, 2008

CSTV.com partners with USAToday.com

The CBS college sports site will provide stats and video to USAToday.com.

Add comment January 23rd, 2008

A simplified vision of online video’s future

No, there’s not much money out there for independent web video publishers. In fact, Perez Hilton said he only made $5,000 on 25 million video views on YouTube (that works out to a lousy .20 CPM, if my math is correct.) So video producers are starting to look for product placement opportunities, explains this TV Week story.

This is a logical next step for online video, which is still in its infancy. If you ask me, online video will continue to niche down until you can “subscribe” to just about everything under the sun, either to your TV, mobile device or PC. The majority of this video will originate from family and friends — baby’s first steps, etc. — but let’s focus on the other stuff. The most successful “shows,” for lack of a better term, will be passionately loyal to their niche and deliver useful information in unique and entertaining ways. (For example, I’d love a “show” about mountain biking in Seattle that combines crazy hijinks with useful trail information. And shows like these would have serious long-tail benefits). They’ll also be produced on a budget, and many of them, like blogging, will be labor of loves. Now, what’s missing here is two things: 1) an easy way for consumers to discover this content and seamlessly “subscribe” to it on their TVs, mobile devices and PCs and 2) an easy way for advertisers to discover shows that match their needs, and then scale enough advertising and product placement across them, with full back-end accountability. For example, K2 Snowboards should be able to quickly find and traffic video ads/placements across every snowboarding show in the country that meets minimum audience parameters and general standards.

But one thing should be very clear here: like blogging, there won’t be much money in it for video producers. Some will become hits and score some cash, especially if like-minded shows are networked together. But this isn’t Hollywood, by any stretch of the imagination. Thoughts on all this? Please let me know in comments…

5 comments January 23rd, 2008