Archive for April 10th, 2008
We’re headed to Las Vegas this Sunday for our annual experience of running ourselves to death covering TV’s biggest convention: NAB-RTNDA. (Although Don Day says he’s going to take some time to “relax.” Ha!) It’s our eighth year blogging the big event (back then it was two events), and we’ll be shooting video, posting photos, live-blogging sessions and sending out Twitter alerts. And this year we have a new twist: we’re encouraging attendees to submit their own photos (on a Flickr group) and videos (on a YouTube group.) We’ll post them on Lost Remote, and other blogs can embed ‘em, as well.
I’m on a RTNDA panel again this year (schedule). Jacques Natz, director of Digital Media Content for Heart-Argyle, Dan Shelley, Director of Digital Media at WCBStv.com and I will discuss “Going Local in a New Direction” on Tuesday at 9 a.m. Sure, there’s news, weather and traffic. But what about aggregation? Hyperlocal? Niche news-like content? Local search? That’s the future of our business, and in many respects, the future of news. We’ll be showing off some examples and taking questions about how to realistically build this stuff when there are so many competing demands for resources.
Lost Remote alumnus-for-life Steve Safran will be moderating a panel called, “Leading Change in a Digital Newsroom” on Monday at 10:30 a.m. “Your customers are changing the way they get their news. So why does your newsroom still act and look as it did 10 or 20 years ago?” reads the panel description. Good question, and it sounds like a great panel. In fact, there are LOTS of webby/digital sessions this year, ranging from a user-generated content session to “Tips, Tricks and 20 Widgets for Your Website.” (Safran’s on TWO panels this year. Geesh.)
And a reminder: we’ll be holding our annual Lost Remote meetup on Tuesday between 4-6 p.m. in the little bar in the hallway between the RTNDA meeting rooms and the Hilton casino floor. Hope to see you there!
April 10th, 2008
By analyzing viewer behavior, TiVo says it has accurately predicted which Idol contestant will get booted off the show four weeks in a row. So this week TiVo is going public with its prediction: Syesha.
Update: TiVo got it wrong! But Syesha was in the bottom three.
Oh by the way, while we were browsing TMZ and found the TiVo story, we also found this story. Um, just a bit overboard.
April 10th, 2008
We just relaunched CitizenRain.com here at KING in Seattle.
The original Citizen Rain aggregated local blogs by topic, like sports and real estate. Now we’ve added communities. So if you click on Belltown, for example, you’ll see the latest news stories and blog posts written about the neighborhood, updated every half-hour. Plus, we’ve added community event calendars, free classifieds and user stories.
More later. In the meantime, I’ll be talking about the new site at NAB-RTNDA next week on the RTNDA panel, “Beyond Local,” Tuesday at 9 a.m. If you’re at the convention, make sure to stop by — we’ll be talking about innovative ways to grow audience and revenue outside traditional news, weather and traffic.
Update: Michael Malone over at Broadcasting & Cable has posted a blurb.
April 10th, 2008
One of the quiet successes in the local space is Angie’s List, a paid subscription site that provides ratings for local services ranging from plumbers to doctors. The site has been around since 1995 (was the internet around then?) and it now boasts 600,000 members. Wow. Now Angie’s List has added $35 million in new funding from Battery Ventures. The site currently serves 124 cities and plans to expand from there, subsequently launching internationally in Toronto and London.
April 10th, 2008
MLB has inked a deal with Yahoo that spans content distribution and ad sales. “We’re providing MLB.com an opportunity to extend its reach to the largest possible audience, while at the same time maximizing monetization of its video subscription product,” said Todd Teresi, Yahoo SVP.
April 10th, 2008
When CNBC.com launched its new site last year, it also launched CNBC Plus — a premium online video product that sells for $99.95 a year or $9.95 a month. And now CNBC says the service is up to 15,000 subscribers. “Ten dollars a month is more than you would typically pay for online video so it’s not going to have the level of subscribers that free services have,” CNBC’s Martin Kay told PaidContent. “But it is a very valuable product.”
April 10th, 2008
Blockbuster, which has long been criticized on Lost Remote for taking forever to adapt to change, is working on a set-top box to stream movies directly to TV sets, says the Hollywood Reporter. The effort, powered by Movielink, would compete with Apple TV, TiVo, Xbox, Netflix, to name a few.
Update: BoingBoing Gadget’s Joel Johnson says, “I never want to touch a piece of proprietary hardware to access content again. There’s no need! We’ll be able to stream HD content soon enough; in the interim, even these browser-based solutions could pre-fetch and cache it. The only reason companies like Blockbuster and Vudu want dedicated hardware is because it locks you into their service. They’re recreating the Blu-ray/HD DVD format war for streaming digital media. How silly is that?” (Thanks for the link, Aaron!)
April 10th, 2008
Monster is now the exclusive jobs provider for MSNBC.com.
April 10th, 2008
