Archive for March, 2008
The WSJ has a good story today (free link) on the experimental efforts by Comcast, Time Warner and Verizon to produce hyperlocal video content. You may remember that Michael Rosenblum, the VJ guru, is working with Verizon in Washington D.C. on a 24-hour IPTV channel that features content from a team of 5 VJs. Most of the stories are local features. “What we accomplish is more positive, uplifting and community central (than traditional TV news),” says Terry Denson, who oversees the local content effort for Verizon. (Via B&C)
March 20th, 2008
Have you been watching March Madness on Demand? It just took 60 seconds or so waiting “in line” without a VIP pass to get in, and everything seems to be streaming just fine. I had a few buffering problems with one game, but nothing too major. As we’ve mentioned before, MMOD will stream all the NCAA games this year, all the way to the finals. Very, very cool.
Yes, it has the boss button again this year, but be careful if you’re logged on to Facebook — it’s “Beacon” feature may rat you out for watching at work.
March 20th, 2008
The Tribune Co. will combine its Florida Sun-Sentinel newspaper operations with those of WFSL - the CW affiliate in the Miami market. Right now, WFSL does not produce its own news - but instead airs a 30 minute nightly newscast produced by WTVJ. The story in the Sun-Sentinel today has one of those “sounds great” passages:
The broadcast collaboration also is designed to broaden the Sun-Sentinel’s audience, particularly for younger viewers who favor CW programming such as One Tree Hill and Gossip Girl.
The combo will have a single GM/publisher - and all operations will be based in the same building. Tribune has cross-ownership in other markets of course - notably KTLA & The Los Angeles Times - and WGN and The Chicago Tribune.
March 20th, 2008
Here’s the Nielsen-Netratings February list for news sites (ranked by uniques followed by time on site) via CyberJournalist
1. CNN Digital Network - 37,181,000 - 0:40:11
2. Yahoo! News - 35,274,000 - 0:23:10
3. MSNBC Digital Network - 34,013,000 - 0:29:50
4. AOL News - 21,119,000 - 0:36:14
5. NYTimes.com -18,975,000 - 0:33:29
January numbers for comparison:
1. Yahoo! News - 36,074,000 - 0:23:58
2. CNN Digital Network - 35,598,000 - 0:41:58
3. MSNBC Digital Network - 35,410,000 - 0:30:00
4. AOL News - 23,732,000 - 0:31:12
5. NYTimes.com -20,461,000 - 0:35:47
March 19th, 2008
NBC Universal continues to refocus its Local Media division — announcing its intent to unload WTVJ/Miami and WVIT/Hartford, CT. NBCU says it will primarily focus on the top ten markets - though it will hold on to KNSD/San Diego out in market 27. Miami is market 16 and Hartford is 28. Even though NBCU will unload WTVJ, it plans to hang on to its Telemundo station in the market. “We’re in the process of re-engineering the way we think, shifting our focus from a traditional stations business to becoming full-service local-media-production centers,” NBC Local Media president John Wallace said in an internal memo obtained by Broadcasting & Cable.
March 19th, 2008
What recession? The research company eMarketer released an updated online advertising forecast, predicting that spending will increase 23% this year. As PaidContent points out, that’s a downward revision from eMarketer’s forecast in November of 28.5%. But still, considering the economy right now, that’s an amazing growth number. Through 2012, eMarketer predicts the most growth will be in rich media/video advertising, from a 9.7% share in 2007 to a 18.5% share in 2012. Meanwhile search, display ads, classifieds and lead generation will stay rather consistent in share.
March 19th, 2008
After 261 rounds of bidding, the FCC auction of TV’s analog airwaves is over, bringing in $19.6 billion. But the winners won’t be known for another few days or weeks. The big question, of course, is whether Google won enough bids to build its own wireless network. While the $19.6 billion is a record, some criticized the FCC for setting conditions on some blocks of airwaves. For example, a block dedicated to emergency responders did not achieve the minimum bid and will have to be re-auctioned. More here in the WSJ.
March 19th, 2008
You’ll remember WKRN.com offered many features that were innovative when they launched. The site has now relaunched as a WorldNow site.
Adds Cory: They also recently relaunched NashvilleisTalking, ditching the blog and turning it into a user-generated blog aggregator. Nashville blogs, by and large, are giving it a big thumbs-down. “What the heck is going on with Nashville is Talking?” blogs one. “It’s flooding my RSS feed with stuff and I look over there and it looks good, but there are just words, words, words and I can’t make heads nor tails of them. It’s like a handsome, drunken Frankenstein’s monster.” That’s what happens when you shift from an editorial-aggregation model to a pure user-generated aggregator. I’d write a little more about the relaunch, but the site is down right now.
Screen grab of the new WKRN.com…
March 18th, 2008
Subtle but significant changes to how the Audit Bureau of Circulation measures newspapers have been initially approved and will go into effect in 2009. Under the new rules, newspapers will be able to count circulation as “paid” regardless of the price at which the paper is sold, bringing newspaper rules in line with those for magazine publishers. Advertising opportunities are a prime driver behind content strategies. Is this the major step that will change the local newspaper into a daily or weekly magazine (don’t think about paper type and size as I say that, but publishing strategy), and drive breaking and spot news completely to electronic formats?
March 18th, 2008
Forecasters in Sunnyvale say that Yahoo’s three-year outlook is flush, with billions in revenue and double the cashflow after costs, and that Microsoft’s unwelcome takeover bid vastly undervalues the company. Google has gone on record to say that the potential takeover will hurt the Internet, as Microsoft’s corporate record isn’t exactly the picture of openness. Google also echoes Yahoo’s optimism about the future of online advertising during a down economy, saying that the advertising base is broad and international and also pointing to the past success of direct marketing in slow economies. The faithful will recall that 2011 has been identified as the tipping point when the online medium will surpass print and broadcast in total advertising value.
March 18th, 2008
Jeff Jarvis has a few more details on CBS’ announcement yesterday that it’s creating a local ad network in each of its O&O markets.
March 18th, 2008
Lexington’s WLEX drove 455,000 pageviews in a single day — in a market with around 1 million people — due to it’s aggressive coverage of a big snowstorm. “We’re coming to the point where the online is as important as on air,” said Bruce Carter, director of news and marketing.
March 18th, 2008
YouTube is now offering many videos in a higher quality format — and letting users decide if they want the higher quality versions, or the original faster playing files. They aren’t just limiting the higher quality to partner content, but videos coming in from the greater Interwebs as well. The offering is dependent on the source material uploaded to YouTube, of course - but to help support the initiative, uploads of up to 1 GB are now supported. You can select a higher-res version on a video-by-video basis, or change your account settings so that you always get the good stuff.
March 17th, 2008
SportsBusiness Journal has a fascinating look at the many criticisms that are thrown at ESPN - including weak ratings, arrogance, a heavy reliance on its multi-platform strategy, the news/programming dividing line and more. A PowerPoint presentation has apparently been floating around that lodges many of those complaints - and the SportsBusiness Journal looked at each of the claims from an independent lens. Some league officials regularly express frustration at the decisions made by ESPN’s news operation — especially when it casts a negative light on a sport or player. NBA commissioner David Stern was upset about a piece in ESPN The Magazine leading up to this year’s All Star Game: “We’re having a great year, so ESPN decided that what you should do if you’re a magazine is you write an article going into All-Star about how terrible things are,” Stern told the Oregonion. “Maybe its because (the game) was on TNT.” At the same time, an unnamed executives for Versus was said to be upset because a parade of ESPN hosts spent the day of the NHL All Star game last year dumping on the league and Versus itself.
ESPN currently brings home nearly a third of Disney’s annual revenue — but some see a major threat on the horizon as leagues increasingly work to start their own leagues and take control of their content. The story even outlines criticism against ESPN’s production value, saying some feel “ESPN’s offering has the look and feel of coming off an assembly line, with little creativity or personality to distinguish them.”
March 17th, 2008
WKRN was digitally aggressive under the leadership of former station management, but it would appear the recent Young layoffs have now hit Web staff. Blogger A.C. Kleinheider managed VolunteerVoters.com, a site launched nearly two years ago to cover a local Senate race. He was laid off last week. His final post offered very kind words to the local community bloggers:
…Of course, that only happened because I was standing on the shoulders of some very generous people. Those people, of course, were you, the bloggers whose words I cut and pasted and the commenters whose sometimes inspired, sometimes delightfully ad hominem words made this space a “go-to” hub for those interested in Tennessee politics to come and see “what was going on in blogosphere.”
The community has responded with over 100 comments so far, including some harsh words for the station: “PS–WKRN—You’re making yet another mistake.” The station’s current GM did post a nice comment about Kleinheider.
March 17th, 2008
CBS stations in five markets (Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver and San Francisco) have launched the CBS Local Ad Network, with more markets coming soon. Partners embed a widget on their sites, which combines content with an ad unit. CBS stations sell the ads (for $5 to $10 CPMs) and give the partners a revenue share (undisclosed). CBS says it expects to add about 20 million impressions in each market every month from the network. Here’s a screen grab of UrbanSpoon, in the San Francisco market, with a promo in the medium rectangle ad space…
If you click the promo, it goes here with more information.
March 17th, 2008
NBCU is paying about $6 million for a 35% stake in DriverTV, reports the WSJ (sub. req.) Car manufacturers pay DriverTV to produce three-minute promotional videos for prospective buyers researching new cars. “This is a more niche way to replicate the cable model we built in the online world,” says George Kliavkoff, NBCU’s chief digital officer. Also, NBCU “recently created a pet owners’ site with Procter & Gamble and is set to announce another deal within a month that it says would take it into another big advertising category,” reports the Journal. (Don’t get WSJ? More here on PaidContent.)
March 16th, 2008
The Project for Excellence in Journalism annual “State of the Media” report has been released, and as always, it’s a must read (set aside a good hour to go through it.) Of all the years I’ve read this report, this year is the most intriguing — many great points and a couple, well, that are debatable. Of course, no one argues now that news consumption is shifting online. Local TV news ratings continue to slide: -6% in the evenings, -7% at night and basically flat in the mornings over the last year. So this year, the two big points are these:
1. Audiences aren’t leaving traditional news brands. Many people, especially the young, are just shifting to the same branded content online. “More people now consume what old media newsrooms produce, particularly from print, than before,” explains the report.
2. As audiences shift, the advertising revenue isn’t shifting at the same level. “The crisis in journalism, in other words, may not strictly be loss of audience. It may, more fundamentally, be the decoupling of news and advertising,” reads the report. “As a category, news Web sites appear to be falling behind financially. They are not growing in advertising revenue as quickly as other kinds of Internet destinations. And these figures do not include the most important revenue source, search, where news is a relatively small player.”
I generally agree with both those conclusions. The point about news sites “falling behind financially” shouldn’t be taken as a limit of their success: revenue is growing in the double digits while traditional media is flat or in a decline. The point is that straightforward news and display advertising isn’t enough to compete with the pure plays, as I’ve written before.
The one area that I disagree with is PEJ’s assessment that there’s “too little that is new or verifiable” with blogs and user-generated media. In other words, a belittling of their importance. While this is true from an old school journalism perspective, this doesn’t dismiss the massive opportunity (that’s filled by some smart new sites) that exists in high-value niche categories ignored by traditional TV and print newsrooms. When you narrow the niche, user content becomes expert content. Just like cable TV, which now as an aggregate surpasses broadcast TV, local media will get beat if we take the attitude that these little niche sites can’t compete with us.
Two of PEJ’s major trends are certainly worth highlighting. One sounds like it’s channeling Terry Heaton: “There is no single or finished news product anymore. As news consumption becomes continual, more new effort is put into producing incremental updates… News is shifting from being a product — today’s newspaper, Web site or newscast — to becoming a service — how can you help me, even empower me?” And the second sounds like a Lost Remote blog post: “A news organization and a news Web site are no longer final destinations. Now they must move toward also being stops along the way, gateways to other places, and a means to drill deeper.”
Good stuff. Let us know your impressions of the report below, as well as some other nuggets you’ve discovered…
March 16th, 2008
Next Entries
Previous Entries
