2008 February 26 - Lost Remote TV Blog

Archive for February 26th, 2008

‘Wire’ files obit for newspapers

Do you watch The Wire on HBO? It’s a great show, a crime drama based in Baltimore, but recently it’s been chronicling the decline of the Baltimore Sun. Turns out, series creator David Simon used to be a reporter for the Sun. And go figure, not everyone is happy about the newspaper subplot on the show.

3 comments February 26th, 2008

First NFL, now MLB imposes online restrictions

This shouldn’t surprise you. Major League Baseball is instituting new restrictions for web content. Websites will now be held to two minutes of video (or audio) a day gathered at MLB facilities — but formal press conferences are exempt to this rule. Similar to the NFL, there’s no live streaming. But in an unique twist, sites will be limited to 7 photos per game. And no photo galleries, either (it’s unclear what they mean by that.) All non-text content must be removed after 72 hours. If you don’t follow the new rules, your press passes could be revoked. The Sports Business Journal has the story here, but a subscription is required.

4 comments February 26th, 2008

The Rivers duo covers the Oscars

This was an interesting content strategy from the AOL blog Stylist. They had Joan and Melissa Rivers cover the Red Carpet in a video for the site. According to the site, it’s been viewed over 250,000 times. No matter your opinion on the duo, there is an audience for them, and a blog was their platform to do what they do. Smart move by Stylist.

5 comments February 26th, 2008

Cable, satellite continue battle with NFL Net

The NFL Network, which would like each and every cable and satellite user in the country to indirectly pay for its niche service (end mini-rant) continues to wrestle with providers over carriage. An appeals court reversed a lower court ruling that backed up Comcast’s decision to sweep the channel to a sports tier. The NFL says it has an agreement with Comcast that requires it to put the channel in the basic package. Comast was pleased that the judge didn’t force it to put the channel back on basic cable — instead sending the whole battle back down to a lower court.

Last week, Dish Network bumped the NFL Network from America’s Top 100 to America’s Top 200 — costing the channel 4 million potential viewers - down to 31 million subs. (Disclosure: My cable service just went up four bucks a month, and I’m still annoyed)

1 comment February 26th, 2008

iTunes now second largest music retailer in U.S.

A new study shows iTunes has passed Best Buy and Target and is now second only to Walmart in sales of music in the U.S. According to Apple, the iTunes store now has more than 50 million customers and has sold more than 4 billion songs. Press release after the jump.

Read the full post 1 comment February 26th, 2008

Pesky mucus hard to forget, even for DVR users

A new study by NBCU finds that some ads are memorable - even for users of TiVo and other digital video recorders - who skip through the ads. Among the most memorable spots? Those Mucinex ads with the green phlegm monsters, and Bourne Identity ads with Matt Damon (who my female friends would note is not a green phlegm monster). The fairly limited study tracked a group of folks who watched the premier of Journeyman earlier this fall. WSJ: “The most successful ads concentrated the action and the brand’s logo in the middle of the screen, didn’t rely on multiple scene changes, audio or text to tell the story, and often used familiar characters. People were also more likely to remember an ad in fast-forward mode if they had seen it once before live.”

Add comment February 26th, 2008

Why a journalism class leans toward Obama

This is fascinating. A University of Washington journalism class is aggressively blogging the 2008 campaign. They’re attending primaries and caucuses, cameras and laptops in hand. The professor, David Domke, says he’s noticed a lean towards Obama among the students in part because of the way Obama’s campaign staff respected the bloggers. “The Obama campaign treated us like pros — they called us back within minutes, set up interviews, got us press passes, went out of their way to make the campaign accessible,” Domke writes. “The Clinton campaign, in contrast, didn’t return a single phone call, didn’t provide press access, and did virtually nothing to encourage our coverage.” Domke concludes: “The Clinton campaign has made the case that Obama is nothing but rhetoric; he’s supposedly all words, while she’s all action. Our experiences showed us that their campaigns — at least in Seattle — were exactly the opposite. In their treatment of my students, Clinton’s campaign was all talk, while Obama’s was all walk.”

Meanwhile: Obama is establishing himself as the candidate who keeps the most distance from the national media, reports Politico.

14 comments February 26th, 2008

Fake TV site promotes internet scam

Look at WACT-TV’s website, the award-winning Action 25 News…

Snazzy, huh? Well, it’s completely fake. All a scam to sell job training DVDs for $300 a pop. (Thanks, Jack!)

16 comments February 26th, 2008

Yahoo launches Digg clone with a twist

Yahoo Buzz debuted in beta overnight, and at first glance it looks and behaves exactly like Digg. Vote stories up and the most-buzzed appear on Yahoo’s home page. But there’s one big difference: you can’t submit a story. Explains Wired’s Scott Gilbertson: “Buzz aggregates stories from select publishers and then users can vote them up or down. While that means Buzz will lack the variety of sources that you’ll find on Digg, it also handily eliminates a good bit of spam and the pointless link bait articles that clutter up the Digg homepage.”

So who are these select publishers, and how do we get on the list? After scanning the stories, you’ll see mainstream publishers like Washington Post, bigger independent sites like Huffington Post as well as the occasional Wordpress blog. Interestingly, Yahoo says smaller sites will probably not make the Yahoo home page because of the “Digg effect” (their sites will crash). Publishers who want to get on the list are told Yahoo Buzz will “be accepting more publishers soon” and to sign up for an email.

I think Yahoo Buzz is an interesting idea, especially since it combines search popularity with voting to create that Buzz score. The tech-savvy folks, though, will stick with Digg. Yet the massive reach of Yahoo will pull in mainstream users who might think this is all that and a slice of bread. But the big question is, why didn’t Yahoo do this sooner?