Study finds Web series audiences are unreliable
Here’s an interesting story over at AdAge that shows how hard it is to make a Web series stick. Ad Age asked TubeMogul to do a survey of the top 50 Web-only series and found that the series lost 64% of their audiences, on aggregate, from the first to the second episode. Most series don’t [...]
“The newest form of electronic journalism”
This is nearly mind-blowing: a 1981 KRON-TV report on a little experiment that allows you to get a San Francisco newspaper on your home computer! “We’re probably not going to lose a lot, but we’re not going to make a lot either.” 28 years later it appears the first part wasn’t right… but so far [...]
TV groups ink small business video deal
The Seattle company Mixpo has a do-it-yourself video platform that allows small businesses to create their own video advertorials — or contract with a network of photographers to shoot it for them — and distribute the clips through embedded players and traditional video advertising. If this sounds like the business local TV should be in, [...]
Google keeps growing search share
Google accounted for 90% of search growth last year. Wow.
City council tries to envision future of newspapers
With the Seattle PI just a few weeks from shutting down its printing press — and perhaps the entire operation — Seattle City Councilmember Nick Licata brought a council committee together today to talk about the future of newspapers in a soon-to-be one newspaper town. While I applaud Licata for tackling the complex topic — and giving people a forum to talk about it — I about fell out of my chair while I watched the live stream of the event at my desk. The vast majority of the discussion missed the point, straying into common misconceptions and old-school thinking about journalism in a new connected world. Finally, WestSeattleBlog‘s Tracy Record and Crosscut.com‘s David Brewster got their few minutes at the microphone.
Licata introduces them, “Editors, writers, producers, what do you call yourselves?”
“Journalists,” Record says, who runs arguably the most successful neighborhood news site in the country.
While Record and Brewster did a great job representing online news, the council proceeded to stray all over the place with questions that, out of fairness, represent the thinking of some people in the local news business. So without further ado, I’ve selected a few and added my own responses…
House kills DTV bill
Maybe we can commence worrying about the future and cease worrying about the past: The US House of Representatives canned the DTV bill today. Anything’s possible of course, but it appears the 2/17/09 date will stay put.
Senate agrees to push DTV date to June
With about three weeks to go until the much-anticipated digital switchover, the Senate voted to give consumers until June 12th to convert their analog TVs. “Unless we get this right, millions could be without television on February 18,” said Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. The bill will need to get reconciled with the House [...]
Report: YouTube will let media put ads on their material
This could be huge. TechCrunch says YouTube will soon allow content providers to put ads on their content — regardless of who uploaded it. The ability to sell their own ads on YouTube is a big deal for larger media companies, especially those which are already selling Web video ads across their own sites. Media [...]
Google cans Print Ads feature
Google’s attempt to sell ads for newspapers is going away. Even with more than 800 newspaper partners, Google couldn’t make it work out the way it hoped. In the farewell blog post, the director of Google’s print ads team says Google hasn’t given up on newspapers: We believe fair and accurate journalism and timely news [...]
Reviewing the inauguration live streams
Wow, what a day. Millions of people at work during the inauguration punched it up live on the web, creating record traffic surges and a fair amount of glitches spanning news sites and CDNs. Dan Rayburn compared the live inauguration streams and posts his reviews right here. The best according to Dan? The CBS O&Os, [...]
The CBS stations’ inauguration player in HD
Here at the CBS stations we’re pretty proud of our HD inauguration player, too (see Cory’s recent post about MSNBC’s player). It has 7 user-switchable HD feeds from different angles around Washington, one of which is CBS’ anchored coverage. It also has video of all the inaugural speeches going back to FDR, and an embedded [...]
Inauguration media-tech open thread
Post your media-tech observations of the Obama inauguration below. What works and what doesn’t, from TV to the web?
CNN.com’s new GM is on quest for love
LR friend Brian Stelter wrote what’s become my first must-read piece of the new year – and it centers on new CNN.com GM KC Estenson. Right up front, Estenson said something about CNN.com that will change the way I think about how to guide a news site: “My hunch is that people go to it [...]
CNN uses CSI technology for inauguration coverage
We usually assume that most of the technology we see on CSI isn’t real. But this time CNN is using the same technology that CSI used to recreate the crowd at a high-school prom (YouTube Video) to recreate Obama’s inauguration. CNN is partnering with Microsoft and using their Photosynth technology to create a 3-D version [...]
Msnbc.com debuts innovative video player
Msnbc.com’s brand new inauguration video player features some amazing new features (of course, I’m a little biased, as I work here at msnbc.com.) Beyond streaming the live event itself, it features inauguration speeches stretching back for decades. Each has a transcript in a sidebar. Click a word or a tag, and you jump instantly to [...]
Who should save the PI? Cory & Kate…
The folks at TechFlash have provided some of the best coverage of the shockwaves at the Seattle PI — and their list of suggestions for “techies who could help nurture and save” the PI’s website suggests Cory and Kate Bergman: Cory and Kate Bergman: The husband-and-wife team run MyBallard.com, the popular local news blog for [...]
Local TV and small business video ads
While the internet yellow pages and city guides are selling advertorial video for small businesses, the biggest player of them all continues to aggressively pursue this emerging opportunity. Google has teamed with SpotMixer to give small businesses the ability to churn out their own videos and traffic them on Google’s Adwords network, both online and [...]
Gannett, Tribune explore new content sources
As a storm descends on the economics of content, two more cost-saving efforts are reportedly underway. The first, Gannett may be exploring a way to leverage its USA Today stories as sort of a national wire across its newspapers, allowing the company to save on some AP costs. (It’s also planning to furlough many workers [...]
