Things I’ve learned about Twitter
Is your station on Twitter yet? And by “on Twitter,” I don’t mean either “you have an account reserved,” or “we feed our news headlines into it automatically.” Both of those options are a fine baby step, but not enough. Several months ago, we dumped the TwitterFeed from our RSS and went with a human-managed [...]
Disney inks deal with YouTube
Disney has agreed to provide short-form content to YouTube with the possibility for long-form coming in the near future. From the release:
“Under the terms of the agreement, Disney Media Networks will have the option to sell their own advertising inventory within the Disney/ABC and ESPN channels. Channel roll out is scheduled to begin in mid-April for ESPN and early May for the Disney/ABC Television Group channels which will include ABC Entertainment, ABC News, ABC Family and SOAPnet.”
Advertising will be overlays to start, with pre-rolls coming soon. As part of the agreement, the ESPN player will be embedded into ESPN’s channel on YouTube, and ESPN will also make additional short-form content available through YouTube’s player. Content is all short-form to start, but PaidContent’s Staci Kramer reports:
“I am told those discussions continue—as do serious discussions with Hulu—but that no announcement is imminent.”
The full press release from today follows below…
Study: Local TV revenues down 15.7%
A study released by SNL Kagan today predicts local TV will experience a 15.7% revenue decline this year on top of last year’s decline of 6.9%. More: “SNL Kagan forecasts a turnaround in 2010, with modest growth through 2013 offsetting some of the declines of 2008-2009. In the five-year outlook, SNL Kagan expects radio revenues [...]
Disney courting both Hulu and YouTube
PaidContent reports that Disney is in talks to become an equity partner of Hulu, joining NBCU and Fox in the joint venture. (Full disclosure: I work for msnbc.com, which syndicates video to Hulu.) Update: Disney is also talking with YouTube. Writes PaidContent’s Staci Kramer, “My understanding is the video clips would be delivered through ESPN’s [...]
The Knot launches local sites
The Knot has launched 75 local sites under the Weddings.com brand, such as Seattle.Weddings.com. Another 200 local sites are expected to launch by the end of the year. The sites combine The Knot’s national content and a localized community with a local weddings-oriented business directory — a low cost way to attract local advertising dollars. [...]
“Why a Little Wonder is a Good Thing”
I spoke at the first-ever Ignite Boise last week – and talked about how we’re using Twitter – both to help cover stories and provide information. The Ignite format is really cool — five minutes with 20 slides that auto-advance every 15 seconds. About 14 different people talked on a wide variety of topics. This [...]
Borrell: TV stations still losing video ad race
Last time Borrell Associates put out a report measuring local online ad spending, newspapers beat local TV in local video revenue. The latest numbers, due out in a couple weeks, still have newspapers driving more total local online video revenue than TV stations. But the bigger surprise is that internet yellow pages — which are [...]
Verizon expanding local TV news to NYC
About a year after launching FiOS1 in the DC area, Verizon plans to expand the “hyperlocal” TV news service to NYC this summer, reports WSJ (free). Verizon says ratings have been impressive: the local channel in Maryland and Northern Virginia ranks in the top 20% by viewers of the 350 channels the company offers. The [...]
Gaming time gaining on network TV
Nielsen reports that people are spending more time playing video games than they do watching The CW, making gaming “the real fifth network.” And game consumption continues to increase. Two points to make here: this is no surprise, as I’ve written about (and loosely predicted) here on Lost Remote. And second, gaming time doesn’t come [...]
What do former Seattle PI reporters do?
They start their own websites, of course. Lots of them.
Redlasso is back, but with Fox’s blessing
Last year, Redlasso was sued for copyright infringement, but now one of the plaintiffs, Fox Television Stations, is signing a partnership with the company. Redlasso’s old business model was hosting television content — without permission — and allowing bloggers to clip-and-embed it. Now Redlasso is back, but asking for permission first. The company has inked [...]
Big publishers to Google: Treat us special
Several big newspaper publishers (and ESPN) have formed a group to pressure Google to rejigger the PageRank feature to give them preferential treatment. Many publishers resent the criteria Google uses to pick top results, starting with the original PageRank formula that depended on how many links a page got. But crumbling ad revenue is lending [...]
NYTimes.com debuts huge new ad unit
Earlier this month, the Online Publishers Association introduced three new ad units for its members. Very large ad units. The idea is to counter the commoditization of standard display ads with a unique, eye-popping experience. Today, one of those magazine-style ads, a 336-by-860-pixel monster, debuted on NYTimes.com‘s home page… The larger ad units can also [...]
Flip’s surprising share of camcorder market
Flip’s parent company, Pure Digital, scored $590 million in Cisco stock in a deal announced today, and there’s one tidbit in the story that caught my eye: those little Flip cameras with no optical zoom have captured a 20 percent share of the camcorder market. Wow. Never underestimate the power of easy. Adds Tracy in [...]
TV goes crazy for Twitter
Updated: Suddenly, Twitter is everywhere on TV. ABC’s George Stephanopoulos even interviewed Senator John McCain via Twitter with questions and responses that were 140 characters or less. TV is even covering TV’s coverage of Twitter. Here a story from the Today Show about “Twittermania.” Toward the end, Twitter fan David Gregory (he has nearly 200,000 [...]
What if a TV station went online/VOD only?
The Seattle PI’s transition to the web this week has me thinking: what if a TV station did the same? After all, many in the industry now concede that some markets can only sustain two or three TV stations in the near future. For those who can’t survive, what if they shut down the station [...]
New SeattlePI.com aggregates even Twitter
SeattlePI.com launched some additional features overnight, including “Seattle Views,” which are commentary pieces written by well-known Seattleites — much like a local Huffington Post, as we wrote yesterday. They’re linking out to local sites — including my own MyBallard.com today — as well as aggregating Tweets from Seattle news organizations and blogs, right on the [...]
Laid-off journalists plan news sites
Today in Denver, a group of journalists who worked at the Rocky Mountain News announced their intent to start a new site funded in part by paid subscriptions. The idea is to offer free, ad-supported content, but subscribers who pay $4.99/month would get access to expanded content, including columns, interactive features, feeds to mobile devices [...]
PI to resemble ‘local Huffington Post’
From the NY Times story today about the Seattle PI’s move to the first large online-only newspaper in the country: “The P-I, as it is called, will resemble a local Huffington Post more than a traditional newspaper, with a news staff of about 20 people rather than the 165 it has had, and a site [...]
Seattle Times responds to PI move online
Punch up SeattleTimes.com right now and you’ll see… All PI subscribers will automatically start receiving the Times.
