Fox, NBC stations teaming up for local news
TV Week reports Fox and NBC are teaming up for local news coverage. The video-sharing arrangement will start in January in Philly, where their O&Os have been testing it since the summer. Later, they’ll add their O&Os in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth and DC. They say they will also make the video [...]
Gannett buys social tools company Ripple6
Ripple6 has been powering some of the social features on Gannett’s MomsLikeMe network of sites, and now Gannett has acquired the company for an undisclosed sum. “With the Ripple6 platform, we can help users create communities and connect with their friends and family in highly pleasing ways, while providing marketers with innovative advertising opportunities and [...]
Microsoft gets social with new Live
While Yahoo is changing its home page to allow users to bring in third-party apps that fit their lives, Microsoft is relaunching Windows Live to bring together your friends’ content from Flickr, Twitter, LinkedIn, Yelp and many more outside services along with existing Microsoft services like email and Messenger. This content is then organized into [...]
NPR to tackle hyperlocal
From a PaidContent interview with Vivian Schiller, who stepped down from NYTimes.com this week to take the CEO job at NPR: “So many companies have started and folded trying to win in local hubs. Big news organizations spend hours wondering how do I create the hyperlocal presence, you don’t have the infrastructure. NPR can do [...]
YouTube debuts video search ads
It’s a little apples-to-oranges, but more people search for video on YouTube than conduct “core” searches on Yahoo. So it’s only natural that YouTube is offering paid search ads so you can drive traffic to your YouTube clips. This clip provides a quick overview of how it works… Suddenly it looks like YouTube has found [...]
Analysis: Does local TV have a future?
Columnist Dianne Mermigas, whose insight has been a staple for TV execs for years, has written a blog post that examines the challenges facing local TV going into 2009. Beyond many of the numbers we’ve already reported here — and the usual trepidation about whether the networks will phase out the affiliate model (they say [...]
Yahoo brings third-party apps to home page
Third-party mobile applications are all the rage right now, thanks to the iPhone and Google Android phones. So why not take that same approach to a portal experience on the web? That’s what Yahoo is doing with its new home page, currently in bucket testing (a random set of users will see it). The idea [...]
New Flip camera shoots in HD
The new Flip MinoHD can shoot up to an hour of 720p video. It also features improved sound (which was a complaint in prior Flip cams), and it will cost you $230. Full review plus a test video clip right here. Adds SkipD in comments: “The Kodak Zi6 is a much better buy: AA batteries, [...]
TVB cuts local TV ad forecast
The Television Bureau of Advertising predicts that total spot TV revenue will decline somewhere in the range of 7-11% for local television stations next year. That compares to TVB’s earlier forecast of a 1-5% decline.
Obama photo exclusive uploaded to Flickr
So which news organization landed one of the biggest photo stories of the year, exclusive behind-the-scenes pictures with the Obama family on election night? None of them. Obama’s personal photographer snapped the photos and uploaded them to Flickr under a Creative Commons license, skipping the media altogether. The popularity of the photos subsequently crashed the [...]
Borrell: The big local slowdown has begun
Borrell Associates has reworked its local online ad forecast for 2009. “For local interactive media, the big slowdown has begun a year earlier than we anticipated,” the reports reads. “The spending levels by local advertisers — which have grown at a frenetic 47% this year — are expected to slow down to a relatively paltry [...]
Local TV facing tough economic times
For a good sense of what the local TV industry is facing right now, read this letter (.pdf) from Belo Corp. CEO Dunia Shive to shareholders. “Pure-play television media stocks, including Belo, are down over 75 percent since the first of the year,” she writes in part. “Since we cannot predict the duration of the [...]
Election sets online records all around
Akamai hosts many of the top news sites, and its “Net Usage Index” registered the highest-ever traffic, measured in users per minute. Right at 11 p.m. ET, when Obama was declared the winner, Akamai registered 8,572,042 visitors per minute. Wow. (Via Beet.tv) And on TV, a record 71.5 million people tuned into broadcast and cable [...]
Historic home pages
Captured 10 minutes after the West Coast polls closed…
More screen grabs after the break…
Election media-tech open thread
Post your election coverage observations in comments below… Live streams: MSNBC, NBC News (begins 7 p.m. ET), CNN, CBS webcast, ABC News, Washington Post, C-SPAN, BBC News. Live media blogs: NYT’s Brian Stelter, Beet.tv, TVNewser
Election day is finally here
You thought it would never come. Some stories from this morning… – Networks may call the race before voting is complete – Networks say they’ll call them as they see them – CNN to use hologram technology to conduct remote interviews – An armchair pundit’s guide to watching the election on TV – Even cable [...]
Another local high school sports site
This one is called GrandStadium.tv, a joint venture between WorldNow and sports consultant Stu Swartz. But this one has a pay-per-view model: $9.95 to watch live streams of the games. Five stations have signed on so far, including KSTC in Minneapolis. GrandStadium.tv joins a long list of local high school sports ventures including HSGameTime.com (Belo), [...]
Election resources, tools and whiz-bangs
We’re building a list of links to cool online election creations, including widgets, tools and other interactive goodness… – Msnbc.com’s election results widget, which can even drill down to state and county level. (Full disclosure: I work at msnbc.com). – CNN.com’s Your Races tool allows you to customize your own results. – YouTube along with [...]
Scripps: Online will support our papers by 2012
Rusty Coats, vice president for interactive at Scripps, is so confident about their online strategy, “that he projects that Scripps websites will sell enough ads to support the staff and costs of the print and online newsrooms by 2012, without staff cuts,” reports the NY Times. “If Scripps could achieve that, it would mark a [...]
