Access 360 acquires Arena Media Networks
Fresh off of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection filing, Arena Media Networks, a digital place-based media company with video networks in sports stadiums, has been acquired by Access 360 Media. After raising nearly $12.5 million in two rounds of venture capital funding, Arena Media was unable to bear the weight of the economic downturn. As [...]
Gannett digital chief steps down, says papers must do more
Gannett’s Chief Digital Officer, Chris Saridakis, is stepping down and he’s making some pointed remarks in his farewell note. The memo, obtained by Gannett Blog (an independent blog with no business ties to the company) is half farewell and half advice. In one such exchange, Saridakis (who founded PointRoll) addresses the charge-for-content model the newspaper [...]
1 in 8 cutting cable and satellite subscriptions this year
We’re cutting the cord in big numbers this year. CNN Money reports that one in eight people in the U.S. will either eliminate or scale back their subscriptions to cable and satellite TV. The information is from a Yankee Group study. “The study, which was the result of a survey of pay-TV operators and more [...]
The true measure of social success
I’ve heard many times now statistics about how social media sites are/aren’t driving traffic to the main website. This misses the point. The goal of being social is to be social. Success comes, not from pushing people to the site and then converting them into viewers (damn near impossible) but from their engagement with individual [...]
RMG Networks partners with Delta Air Lines
RMG Networks, a market leader in the fast-emerging digital out-of-home media sector, has doubled the size of its in-flight entertainment network thanks to a partnership with Delta Air Lines. The multi-year advertising sales agreement lifts RMG’s in-flight network audience to 10 million monthly viewers. The network now reaches 110,000 video screens installed in the seatbacks of 840 aircraft. [...]
Los Angeles Times adds Amazon Links
For a newspaper that has seen arguments erupt recently between its business and editorial groups over calls of media exploitation, the Los Angeles Times continues to blur the lines between news reporting and commerce. The Los Angeles Times unveiled a plan this week to place affiliate links for sites like Amazon and TicketNetwork in the text of certain [...]
TV commercials work better online
You don’t like them, but apparently you pay attention to them. It turns out that video ads served up during streaming shows perform better than plain old TV ads. That’s according to a new Nielsen study. ClickZ writes: “The research company conducted over 14,000 surveys evaluating 238 brands, 412 products, and 951 ad executions, and [...]
NECN adds 4:30 am newscast, is wicked early
Is 4:30 am the new 5:30 am? NECN, the regional all-news channel in Boston, (and my former employer) has added a 1/2 hour newscast at 4:30 am. It’s a first here in Boston, although there are 4:30 am newscasts in D.C. and Atlanta, and 4 am newscasts in the midwest. Is there even an audience [...]
Sticker wars: Facebook enters local business fray with window decals
Mashable has the goods on Facebook’s official entry into the local marketing space. The social networking giant is sending window decals to local businesses, along with a letter and $25 in Facebook ad credits. The decals leverage Facebook’s new Like feature and invite customers of the local establishment to express their “Like” with SMS. “Like [...]
SeattleCrime iPhone app breaking new ground
The sand is flying these days in Seattle, that crowded sandbox for hyperlocal experimentation online. First, there was the announcement of Next Door Media’s partnership with the University of Washington Daily on a new neighborhood news site. Now comes word that an independent iPhone app called SeattleCrime has been downloaded more than 4,000 times. SeattleCrime.com [...]
Gray TV working with Young Broadcasting again
A judge has ruled that Gray TV, which entered into a management agreement with Young Broadcasting last year, can resume its work with Young’s stations. Gray had begun its work on contracts and budgets at some of the Young stations, when Young told them to stop. Young has been in bankruptcy since February 2009, and [...]
Sony to stop making floppy disks
A little off topic here, but a passage those of us in geekdom will want to note: Sony is going to stop making 3.5 inch floppy disks next year. The ubiquitous disks (mailed out seemingly dozens of times per household from AOL) went into production 30 years ago, back when they represented a major uptick [...]
Web video ad spend going up amid mixed feelings
A remarkable 94 percent of advertising agencies plan on increasing their online video budgets this year. MediaWeek, reporting on the BrightRoll survey, fleshes out some interesting tidbits: 56 percent of those surveyed say video pre-roll advertising is either “more effective or much more effective than other forms of advertising.” A third of the agencies are [...]
The five stages of new media acceptance
We’ve been there before. Every time there’s a new technology, people resist. Before long, it becomes part of your life. After a while, you forget what life was like before. This week we heard about Facebook’s “like” button domination. We’re also moving toward the location-based Web. Here at Lost Remote, we have learned from the [...]
Is Facebook trying to revolutionize the web for the good of Facebook?
Ever since Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s twenty-something CEO, announced his company’s new “Open Graph” initiatives at FB’s developer conference F8, the web has been buzzing about the potential repercussions. Some say that Facebook is aiming to make the entire web more social, whereas skeptics claim that Facebook is pursuing global digital domination. Is Facebook trying to [...]
Neighborhood blog partnership with student paper
The neighborhood news network I co-founded, Next Door Media, just announced that we’ve partnered with the University of Washington’s student-run school newspaper “The Daily” to launch a neighborhood news site from the ground up. The site, UDistrictDaily.com, covers community news and will offer targeted advertising in the greater neighborhood area surrounding the university. What’s unique [...]
New DC site will be called… TBD
Allbritton’s high-anticipated local news site in Washington DC will be called… TBD. Yes, TBD.com. Explains a message on the site’s home page. We came very close to securing a name more than once, but each time an obstacle – a divided staff, a greedy domain holder, a trademark problem – blocked the way. In a [...]
Newspapers finding success partnering with hyperlocals
Who is your competition? It’s probably been changing a lot over the past few years. In the age of new media, of course, your “enemies” could actually help you (and thus become “frenemies”). That’s the thinking behind the Networked Journalism Project funded by J-Lab in 2009. Last week at the ASNE conference in Washington, D.C., [...]
Facebook unveils “Like” button at f8
As the web speculated a few weeks ago, including an article from yours truly, Facebook announced at f8 in San Francisco that it will be launching a universal “Like” button. The objective of the “Like” button is to give FB users the ability to share their favorite content across the web with their social graphs. While there [...]
Google Places adds new local business tools
It’s nothing new that Google is aggressively going after the long tail that is local business advertising. In pursuit of the corner store’s ad budget, the search engine giant has just released new tools under the banner of its ”Local Business Center” (which is being rebranded as Google Places). Here’s the new features it’s adding (with commentary from [...]
