Archive for March, 2008
After pouring $15 million into development, the NBC/Fox partnership Hulu is set to debut this month, according to Fortune. We’ve chronicled the rise over the last year here - the first announcement came on March 22nd, 2007. While the big focus in this space early last year was Joost, that momentum seems to have shifted to Hulu, which has big money, big partners and a no-download interface. NBCU & Fox did something many thought impossible: bring together two competing media giants, tie in old media and new media partners - and deliver something that doesn’t suck.
Update: A good source says we could see a Wednesday launch…
March 9th, 2008
I found this on my hard drive tonight — it’s an audio clip sent to me by a friend several years ago: sweepscankillyou.mp3
March 9th, 2008
Google’s onslaught of not-so-positive press continued this week, as the stock continued to slump. Fortune has an interesting nugget about Google’s much vaunted (and profitable) contextual advertising model. Iggy Fanlo, CEO of AdBrite notes that while contextual ads work perfect for search — there are vast portions of the Internet where contextual ads just don’t work (despite those Google AdsSense boxes pasted all over every blog on the planet).
“Contextual advertising isn’t the right thing for most of the Internet,” says AdBrite’s Fanlo. “It’s like selling Superbowl ads. They don’t sell me cleats, jerseys or helmets. They sell me cars, beer, and erectile dysfunction medication because they know I’m an old, fat guy.”
Fanlo says most advertisers are better off targeting customers based on where they live, who they are, and how they surf the web.
DoubleClick, anyone?
March 9th, 2008
I haven’t been in my local Best Buy in several years. Yesterday, while spilling out of one DVD aisle and getting ready to dive into the next one, I saw this:
A simple monolithic wall with a pair of white Apple logos and a huge monitor. In front of it, a simple table with several Apple products neatly arranged. Instead of a price sign for each item, you find a flipbook with a tag for each product inside.
The rest of Best Buy is like most local TV sites: cluttered, crammed full of signage, and somewhat hard to navigate. The Apple section is what our sites should be: Simple, understated and organized. Is it a huge, hard challenge? Yes. But are you an advocate for simplicity — for the user — or are you just “doing what you’re told?” Most local TV sites make me nauseous. Flashing this… rotating that… big anchor heads this… cluttered that. We face lots of challenges — and this is a very simple one, but is vitally important. Putting a crazy focus on the best user experience FIRST is the best way to win audience and mindshare.
March 9th, 2008
MSNBC won a CINE Special Jury award for this Keith Olbermann promo spot. Who knows this anchor (rhetorically)?
March 9th, 2008
One honor handed out in the 2008 National Headliner Awards stands out, awarded to local TV station website WBALtv.com. My colleagues won second place in Television Affiliated Online Journalism for their coverage of the Domino Sugar Plant Explosion. WBAL was the only local TV site to win an award. ESPN won first place in the same category for their amazing presentation titled “Ray of Hope.” The package tells an amazing story, and the web producers should be proud of the interactive they built to tell this story about a special life.
But, take a look at the recipients for the Online Videography category. The winners are all from newspapers. “Reporting for Duty” from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch; “The Burning Man Experience; Electric Playa; New Frontier Implosion” from the Las Vegas Sun; and “Health Diplomacy” from the Miami Herald.
I congratulate the excellent work by the newspapers, but these awards provide further evidence of newspapers encroaching on videography — a category that would intuitively be dominated by broadcasters.
March 8th, 2008
No. Hell no. This story is wrong. Flat wrong. If you work in the media biz, please don’t let anyone in your company start passing this story around. And if you need a second opinion, here’s Terry Heaton with the many reasons why.
March 8th, 2008
The WB merged with UPN to form “The CW” back in 2006. And now Warner Bros. says it will debut WB.com, a Hulu-like site with free episodes of all the WB-produced series from 1995-2006. “We’re in the process of developing several Warner Bros.-branded Web destinations and will announce all the details in the coming weeks,” Warner Bros. TV Group said in a statement. WB.com will debut in beta next month.
March 8th, 2008
Bad news for the media industry, especially local media: a dismal jobs report on Friday makes a recession almost inevitable. “Every time such a slump has occurred since the early 1970s, a recession has followed — or already been under way,” reports the NY Times. With advertisers already allocating less of their marketing mix to television and newspapers, adding a recession to the equation means painful times are ahead. The key, of course, is for local media not to slow their investment in digital media initiatives. That would be suicide.
March 8th, 2008
Some of Walt Disney’s classic TV shows will soon appear on Disney.com, “either for free or through some sort of subscription,” said Disney CEO Robert Iger. But the reasoning is something I haven’t heard so far: “Providing physical goods on DVD is tougher and tougher these days because shelf space is limited,” he said. Iger didn’t say which shows they’ll post online.
March 8th, 2008
TechCrunch reports that two media companies (that he does not name) and Google and Microsoft are “in heavy due diligence” with Digg. “Digg is prepared to take less than the $300 million Allen & Co. were floating late last year,” writes Michael Arrington. “Google, our source says, will likely bid $200-$225 million, which Digg would likely accept.”
March 7th, 2008
At an advertising conference, Disney-ABC’s Anne Sweeney said that video on ABC.com is driving younger viewers to the network on TV. And in a survey very similar to NBC.com’s below, ABC.com said it found that its streaming video users remember ads 87% of the time.
March 7th, 2008
60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl is joining some other big names to launch a new site targeted to women over the age of 40, WowoWow.com, which plans to debut this Saturday. “I wanted to call the site AllTheGoodNamesAreTaken.com,” jokes columnist Liz Smith, also a co-founder.
March 6th, 2008
TechCrunch is reporting that Technorati is planning to launch an ad network for blogs, similar to Federated Media (which powers advertising on this site) yet more of a focus on smaller “long tail” players. Also, News.com is reporting that Federated Media is looking for a second round of financing in the $20 to $30 million range.
March 6th, 2008
NBC.com has the results back from another in a series of consumer surveys from people watching “NBC Rewind” video. As we’ve seen from ABC.com and others who have commissioned similar surveys, the ad recall for show streaming is off the charts: 86% in NBC.com’s case. And NBC.com said “ads with interactive elements were more likely to elicit higher brand recall as well as higher agreement that ads were entertaining and relevant.” The survey also concluded that 77% say NBC Rewind was a compliment, not a substitute, to TV. Press release with a few more details follows below…
Read the full post March 6th, 2008
Wow, I just watched a video demonstration (player below) of the upcoming new NBCOlympics.com, which promises to be the destination for the biggest online video event of all time. And it’s cool, to say the least. As we’ve written about before, NBCU along with MSN plan to offer 2,200 hours of live Olympics coverage online along with a treasure trove of video available on demand. They decided to go with Microsoft to power it all using Silverlight. First of all, each video clip is surrounded by related information, such as bios, stats and analysis, that apply directly to the athletes on screen. You can watch two events at once, using picture-in-picture. Or you can watch four different streams at once from the same event, like different camera angles of this track and field event. (Pardon the grainy screen grabs…)
While you’re watching a clip, a message may appear across the top of the screen, alerting you to another live event that’s just getting underway. Click it, and you’re instantly transported there. You can also send other people email alerts of live events. Pretty cool stuff, and I like the innovative ways to browse ongoing live events and “most watched” clips.
Of course, the downside in all of this is it will require a free Silverlight download to watch. But you have to admit, Microsoft couldn’t have found a better kick-off event to get its Silverlight players distributed quickly. Here’s the clip of the presentation below. You’ll need to fast-forward it to 1:17:00…
(Full disclosure: My site, KING5.com, is an NBCOlympics.com affiliate)
March 5th, 2008
Microsoft’s Flash-like software, Silverlight, will now be part of Move Networks, which helps power video on ESPN360.com and ABC.com’s high-definition video. “Every time a user downloads Silverlight, they will also download the Move plug-in,” said Move CEO John Edwards. “Our main focus with media companies is really taking quality to the next level. We think that really stimulates viewing and, thus, stimulates better metrics, and better metrics stimulate more relevant advertising and better, more intelligent programming.”
Also, Microsoft has teamed with Nokia to put Silverlight on mobile devices.
March 5th, 2008
- NBC Local Media acquires marketing assets of Skycastle Entertainment
- Online News Association blasts new MLB online restrictions in letter
- New version of Omniture to include tracking for video and mobile devices
- Yahoo buys some time in upcoming proxy fight with Microsoft
- LA Times to post news to Clear Channel’s digital billboards
March 5th, 2008
Landmark Communications wants as much as $5 billion for the Weather Channel and Weather.com, and preliminary bids are due next week. So who’s interested? NBCU, Time Warner, CBS and Comcast, among others. Meanwhile, Silicon Alley did some rough math and valued Weather.com at $2 billion. “Is that realistic?” Peter Kafka writes. “More so than any other news niche, weather information is a commodity… Weather.com is undoubtedly a valuable URL, but beyond that, not sure what the site offers that isn’t easily duplicated or displaced.” In other words, as weather information become available everywhere, will Weather.com be able to hold its dominance in traffic?
March 5th, 2008
The NY Times has an in-depth story on the resurgence of CNN, both in ratings and revenue. “In the last four years CNN, which includes not just the flagship American network, but Headline News, CNN International and CNN.com, doubled its profits,” writes Tim Arango. “The crux of the plan was to have the ad sales department sell sponsorships across platforms — the flagship network, Headline News and the Internet — as well as to streamline management so fewer people were making the important decisions.” Profits have grown from $200 million in 2004 to nearly $400 million now.
I’m sure CNN.com has played a rather big role in CNN’s resurgence.
March 5th, 2008
The company run by former MySpace Chairman Richard Rosenblatt, Demand Media, has scooped up Pluck for a reported $50 to $60 million. Pluck is best known for powering the social media tools on USAToday.com, and it also operates the “world’s largest” blog syndication network.
March 4th, 2008
Sigh. In Congress on Wednesday, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell plans to accuse Comcast and Time Warner of discriminating against the NFL Network. Oh, and he’s going to rip the FCC, too. Plueeze.
March 4th, 2008
Updated: Nearly half (48%) of respondents in a new survey from We Media and Zogby International — internet users who took an online survey — say the internet is their primary news source, up from 40% just a year ago. Only 29% said TV is their primary news source, with radio at 11% and newspapers at 10%. Of course, younger users are even more internet-centric: 55% of people 18-29 say the internet is their primary news source. The study also found that the internet (32%) even beat TV (21%) and newspapers (22%) for the most trustworthy source of news.
While these numbers are skewed in favor of the internet because of the survey’s methodology (see more below), this is worth a hard look: 67% believe traditional journalism is out of of touch with what Americans want from their news. “For the second year in a row we have documented a crisis in American journalism that is far more serious than the industry’s business challenges — or maybe a consequence of them,” said Andrew Nachison, co-founder of iFOCOS. “While the U.S. news industry sheds expenses and frets about its future, Americans are dismayed by its present. Meanwhile, we see clearly the generational shift of digital natives from traditional to online news — so the challenge for traditional news companies is complex. They need to invest in new products and services - and they have. But they’ve also got to invest in quality, influence and impact. They need to invest in journalism that makes a difference in people’s lives.”
It boils down to one word: relevancy. The internet, by definition, is more relevant because you can self-select what you want to read and watch. But I think the tendency for local and cable TV news to focus on lowest-common-denominator coverage (urgent crime, breathless disaster, amazing anti-aging face cream, danger lurking to kill your children and your dog, too!) is accelerating the transition from television to the web for news.
Adds Aaron in comments: “I’m shocked, shocked to learn that internet users prefer to get their news on the internet! This is just as useless as the Magid-HA survey from last week. Zogby controlled for age/race/region, etc., but didn’t control for internet usage habits, so we have no idea if these respondents spend more or less time online than the average American. I will ask this — how many infrequent/occasional internet users do you know who will voluntarily take time to fill out internet surveys?”
March 4th, 2008
Broadcast Interactive will integrate Mochila’s syndicated content into its content management system, which will allow affiliated TV sites to set-up real-time feeds or pull in selected content by hand. Release…
Read the full post March 4th, 2008
Brett Favre is leaving, and Packers.com is getting hammered. So it switched to a lighter breaking news format to handle all the traffic. (Thanks, Chip!)
New home page on the left. Old on the right.
March 4th, 2008
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