Photos: Dotson, TV Segway, Mini Cooper

Bob Dotson signing copies of his terrific book, Make it Memorable.

A steadicam built on top of a… Segway? Yup.

A Mini Cooper rigged with a… satellite dish? Yup.

10 comments April 16th, 2008

An interview with NYT’s Brian Stelter

The original TVNewser, Brian Stelter, stopped by Lost Remote’s meetup yesterday, so I took the opportunity to interview him on camera…

He talks about the transition to the New York Times and his efforts to make TV Decorder on NYTimes.com a “bloggier blog.”

1 comment April 16th, 2008

‘Niche famous’ and other NAB-RTNDA notes

Safely back in the land of the potato - and away from the city of sin - I’ve had some time to think about NAB RTNDA 2008.

• If you haven’t been — go. I learned an amazing amount and will try and make this an annual trip. I never really thought it would have much to offer me, but it did. The sessions were great, the show floor was great - and the chance to network can’t be beat. Plus… it’s in VEGAS. Plan to be there next year.
• Our business is changing so fast that you an almost just feel it happening. The sessions talk about change, the technology parters focus on change - and even the show itself is evolving.
• It’s way bigger than I ever would have thought. I’ve tried to describe the size to a few people today - and can’t. I could easily have spent another full day looking at vendors.
• Wear comfy shoes. Not flip flops. Not dress shoes. Just roll out the sneakers… everyone will understand.
• At yesterday’s Lost Remote meetup - I realized that our founder is “niche famous.” Dozens of people stopped by - and they each knew Cory - if not in person, then by his nine years of work here.
• Yesterday afternoon, I was sitting outside the Ballroom at the Hilton at about 3:30pm killing some time by checking e-mail on my phone. A gentleman was sitting next to me with his laptop… reading Lost Remote. I didn’t identify myself to him - but that was a fun moment.

2 comments April 16th, 2008

Alexa revamps ranking system

The much-maligned, not always accurate Alexa ranking system has been revamped according to TechCrunch - mixing in more data source than just the Alexa toolbar. Alexa isn’t saying what exactly that secret formula is - but some of the searched I run on the site seem to be slightly more in-line with reality. The bottom line is that there still isn’t an accurate way to compare sites and get a good read on traffic - not even the professional services like those offered by Nielsen.

6 comments April 16th, 2008

Hulu exceeding plan, embraces affiliates

Updated: I attended Hulu CEO Jason Kilar’s keynote, and he announced that traffic has tripled over the last four weeks (since leaving beta) and revenue is already exceeding plan. To date, Hulu clips have been embedded 105,000 times on 12,000 sites (short embedded clips have overlay ads, longer clips have :15 pre-rolls). Some shows, like Hulu’s most popular, Arrested Development (an “unbelievable stat,” he says), are pulling in higher CPMs than network TV shows in primetime. Kilar said Hulu’s mission is a bold one: “Help people find and enjoy the world’s premium content when, where and how they want it.” So clearly, Hulu has a long ways to go, but Kilar said many more content providers will soon be on board. One of Kilar’s key points was his team’s obsession with design simplicity. “It can’t look like Toyko at night” like many other content websites out there, he said, adding that his team obsessed over whitespace, nitpicked over the muted navigation and worked hard on video quality. (By the way, I love Hulu’s design.) When asked about local affiliates, he said Hulu’s not a competitor, and he encouraged local TV sites to become distributors of Hulu’s “entire content library.” One woman from the audience said she was contemplating canceling her cable, but Kilar brought up Hulu’s relationship with Comcast’s Fancast and said the service is additive, not a replacement of TV viewing. Have an “offensive attitude, not defensive,” he told the media attendees, bringing up that American Idol has 25 million TV viewers and a “non-audience” of 278 million who may want to watch it online. And when asked when Hulu will be wired into TV sets, he said he couldn’t discuss details of his product roadmap but it’s a “fantastic opportunity,” along with mobile applications, as well.

One other thing: did you know that when you search for a non-Hulu show on Hulu, like ABC’s Lost, that the search result will link you to the show on ABC.com? Smart thinking.

10 comments April 16th, 2008

ABC News debate reactions

Watching the debate tonight I was wondering why there weren’t more teases for abcnews.com. It seemed Hillary “pimped” her site more than ABC News. Then I went to the site and saw the comments about the debate. Ouch. Did you see the debate? What did you think?

42 comments April 16th, 2008

Local TV sites, competition and growth

B&C has posted a story on our “Going Local” panel, where we urged TV stations to take a broader view of the local web. The story quotes me as saying that stations’ web growth will be “at-best-flat outlook for the near-term.” To add some context, I said that from a revenue perspective, increasing local competition will result in slowing and flattening growth (or worse) for many stations if they don’t launch new products outside their core compentencies. Those products are of the type that we demo’d at the session, such as local ad networks, content aggregators and hyperlocal communities (and I wish we had time to show some advertorial video directories, too.) From a traffic perspective, I believe local TV sites will continue to grow, but as Borrell predicted, “The decade-long era in which the banner ad ruled the web appears to be drawing to a close.” Which means local stations need to find new approaches to online revenue or see flattening or even declining revenue growth in increasingly competitive marketplaces.

2 comments April 16th, 2008

2008 is the year of gaming

C|Net’s Tech news blog has declared that 2008 is the year of gaming. While it may seem a little early for declarations, and these diggers don’t seem to be overly impressed, the sales numbers on games and gaming gear in the first quarter alone are impressive:

The indicators already suggest that this year will be huge for gaming. According to one analyst, video game sales rose 35 percent in March, bucking the trend being witnessed in other areas of the technology industry and representing another strong month after February’s 34 percent hardware and software sales increase. Even better for the industry, there doesn’t seem to be any slowdown in the works.

Cool, but the industry is really stuck in sequel mode. Perhaps a signal that gaming is really more mainstream than ever, major publishers look more and more like movie studios and the music industry, with franchise titles ruling the charts.

4 comments April 16th, 2008

Web video views up 66% over last year

Comscore says Internet users in the U.S. watched 10 million videos in February, up 66% over last year and up 3% over January.

2 comments April 16th, 2008

It’s all about the DTV changeover

Outside the Central Hall here at NAB, a big DTVAnswers.com booth sets the mood. “This year, the buzz on the NAB floor at the Las Vegas Convention Center is all about the pending transition to all-digital television in February,” writes Variety’s Cynthia Littleton. “And everybody at NAB seems to have a product or service designed to capitalize on this transformation coming to the nation’s living rooms.” B&C has a good wrap-up here of the escalating efforts to educate the public.

3 comments April 16th, 2008

Interview with CNN’s political chief

I spoke with CNN Political Director Sam Feist about how CNN reporters juggle their TV and web assignments in a typical day…

(Sorry about bad lighting and low audio. Still figuring out new camera.)

3 comments April 16th, 2008

More video from NAB-RTNDA

- Thanks to Al Thompkins who shot part of our “Going Local” panel.
- Beet.TV’s Andy Plesser interviewed Adobe’s video strategist, Mark Randall
- B&C interviewed ION Media Networks’ Brandon Burgess about mobile DTV
- Beet.TV also spoke with Akamai’s Rich Kennelly about HD video

1 comment April 16th, 2008

WashingtonPost.com deploys Apture link overlays

Two WashingtonPost.com blogs are experimenting with a technology from Apture that pops up related information and photos (even video clips) when you mouse-over selected links. On the blog Celebritology, for example, I moused over this link of Madonna…

I’ve always been a little mixed about link overlays (like Snapshots, for example), because of the potential to clutter the user experience. But when used sparingly, I think they can add value. Your thoughts?

7 comments April 16th, 2008