‘American Horror Story’ gets spooky on social media
Tonight is Halloween, and in honor of the spookiest night of the year, we have an inside look at FX’s new hit drama, American Horror Story from SVP Marketing at FX, Sally Daws. The show was only picked-up in July and stars Friday Night Lights favorite Connie Britton (and was co-created by Glee creator Ryan Murphy), and it has leveraged the social web in the short period of time the network had between the show’s announcement and air-date.
Inside look at Project Runway’s successful social TV efforts
Season 9 of Lifetime’s Project Runway finished last week, and winner Anya Ayoung-Chee is already on her way to a successful career. A+E Networks, which owns Lifetime, went out of its way to create a social TV strategy that would allow fans to connect one-on-one with the brand even when the show wasn’t airing. Lost Remote spoke with SVP of Digital Media, Evan Silverman about the different social TV successes the show had this past season, which he explains, all the major social TV data companies agree on:
NBC announces big investment in its local TV stations
NBC Universal announced today it’s investing millions and hiring over 130 new people at its 10 owned-and-operated TV stations. “The new leaders of the company believe in the owned television station division, and they want to see these stations strong again,” said Valari Staab, President of NBC’s local unit. “So we’re moving as fast as we can.”
The investment will add 1,200 hours of new newcasts, launch new consumer and investigative units in five markets, restore promotion departments at all stations, create new sets and expand helicopter coverage.
How Shazam’s changing media buys on TV
In the old days, you’d hear a song on TV, scramble to remember a few lyrics, Google them and then download the song on iTunes — if you’re lucky enough to find it. But the music-identification app Shazam is driving iTunes downloads on its own, and as they’ve provided us the chart below, TV can play a big role.
HBO is known for their musically significant series finales that bring songs back from the dead. When the final moments of Entourage concluded on September 11th and Led Zeppelin’s “Going to California” played, viewers punched up their Shazam apps and tagged it (identified it) nearly 25,000 times:
MTV’s O Music Awards attempts Guinness World Record
MTV’s second O Music Awards kicked off on Sunday night with an attempt to break a Guinness World Record for longest Dance Marathon, raising money for a bunch of LGBT organizations (live stream below). Award categories include “Beyond The Blog Award,” “Best Fan Cover,” and “Most Addictive Social Music Service,” which Spotify has not surprisingly won.
A documentary about television not to be missed
On Sunday night at 8pm Eastern on PBS, a four-part documentary series on TV will premier. America in Primetime will take a deep look at the different characters on television today through the lens of different shows throughout television history. Check out NPR’s outstanding review and the series’ official website.
BBC brings a human touch to its Twitter accounts
BBC News joins a growing list of news organizations that are shifting from automatically-updated Twitter feeds to human-powered tweets. “We want to be tweeting with value,” explains Chris Hamilton, BBC News’ social media editor. “Are we exposing our best content, and also tweeting intelligently?”
While @BBCBreaking has been human-powered for some time, the BBC is updating @BBCNews and (soon) @BBCWorld by hand instead of automatically tweeting out headlines as stories are posted, reports NiemanLab.
NBC’s Ann Curry challenges Brian Williams to tweet
NBC anchor Brian Williams has been on Twitter for over a year, but he has yet to send a tweet to his 55,000 or so followers. So this morning on the Today Show, Ann Curry asked him why he’s been silent. “Papa don’t tweet,” Williams replies. “I haven’t decided what to say.” To which Roker laughs, “YOU can’t decide what to say?”
Charlie Sheen announces #AngerManagement on Twitter
After a seemingly sincere apology at the Emmy’s and a disappointingly train-wreck-less Roast on Comedy Central, Charlie Sheen will rise again. FX has picked up Sheen’s “Anger Management,” a new sitcom loosely based on Revolution Studios’ 2003 hit comedy feature of the same name, according to the release.
Sheen has already tweeted the news and within an hours hundreds had retweeted it.
Twitter posts a ‘Producer’s Guide for TV’
Twitter continues its quest to encourage the TV industry to put tweets to work on-air. Today Twitter’s Media team, headed by Chloe Sladden, posted a handy guide for producers to use Twitter on TV. The company shares interesting and compelling graphs and data showing the correlation between tweets and television on-air. If you’re too lazy to read their entire post, here’s a summary of the sections.
Bloomberg TV brings 24-hour broadcast to iPad
Bloomberg TV (which has studios in New York, London and Hong Kong) has launched a new iPad app where they will be streaming their full 24-hour broadcast to anyone with an iPad, over WiFi or 3G. Bloomberg’s decision to make their TV content available to any iPad user sets an extremely innovative precedent in a TV world dominated my network-MSO relationships.
Under the leadership of Oke Okaro, Global Head of Mobile at Bloomberg, the app also offers customizable on-demand content based on location and topic, and in the near future iPad exclusive content. Lost Remote interviewed Okaro to learn more details about how the launch:
Storify rolls out snazzy new social storytelling design
The social storytelling tool Storify — especially popular among journalists –debuted a big upgrade to its editor tools today, streamlining the process to build embeddable lists of social elements. Among the new features: more drag-and-drop editing, photo galleries for search results, larger embedded photos in stories and a new bookmarklet that makes it easy to grab social elements from around the web.
Facebook more popular than TV during work hours
We all know about Facebook’s phenomenal reach, but a new study underlines how big the social platform has become. A survey by Magid and eMarketer reveals that more people say they use Facebook than watch TV between the hours of 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. The numbers hold up for all age groups — except baby boomers.
To the charts, the first for Facebook and the second for TV:
Christina Milian joins ‘The Voice’ as social media correspondent
Singer-actress Christina Milian will join the next season of NBC’s hit show The Voice as a social media correspondent, replacing Alison Haislip.
“Christina’s extensive musical background and widespread recognition make her the perfect choice for the role of Social Media Correspondent on The Voice,” said NBC’s president of alternative programming Paul Telegdy. “Her experience as a singer will provide a comfort level to our artists when they speak to her about the ins and outs of the competition.”
Twitter partners with X Factor to allow voting via tweets
For the first time, Twitter is working with Syco Television, FremantleMedia and Fox to allow X Factor fans and viewers to vote on contests via DM on Twitter in addition phone and text message. The release explains:
Fans can vote via Twitter using the instructions and prompt at twitter.thexfactorusa.com. Once fans sign up for Twitter, they must then follow @TheXFactorUSA and cast their votes via Direct Message. Direct Messaging is a private way to communicate on Twitter. Votes will not be publicly visible. Tweets will not count as votes.
PBS ‘Like Drive’ attracts Facebook fans and engagement
In a modern twist to a TV pledge drive, PBS ran a Facebook “Like Drive” last week that rewarded fans for helping promote some of PBS’ most beloved people and shows. Every day, PBS promised to unlock exclusive video clips on Facebook if fans “liked” the PBS page and shared statements of support on their own walls. For example, you could click Mister Rogers to post the statement, “I support PBS because I believe in a neighborhood where every child belongs.”
Those statements helped drive awareness for the PBS page, driving new fans — more than 18,000 in all for the week, stopping just short of 950,000 total likes for the page. When PBS hit the daily “like” goal of one thousand on all seven days, fans were rewarded with a new video. For example, on the last day of the drive, fans were rewarded with an exclusive video of Mister Rogers from the PBS archives:
NBC adds Telemundo to local TV site deal with BIM
Broadcast Interactive Media announced today that Telemundo’s TV stations will soon relaunch their sites on the BIM platform. BIM is already powering NBC’s ten owned-and-operated local TV websites, and the deal with Telemundo adds ten more.
“We selected Broadcast Interactive Media for its revenue-focused approach to site development as well as their flexible solutions including the Developer’s Access CMS model,” said Manuel Martinez, President & General Manager of WSCV-TV in Miami, and the Digital Group’s business leader. “Telemundo is excited about the new partnership and the enhanced functionality BIM’s technology will bring to our staff and end-users.”
GetGlue integrates with Tumblr and creates blog widgets
Last month we wrote it’s time to take Tumblr seriously for a social TV strategy. GetGlue seems to agree and has just announced that in addition to pushing your check-in to Twitter and Facebook you will now be able to push to Tumblr:
Now in addition to Facebook and Twitter you can easily share your GetGlue check-ins and reviews to your Tumblog. Tumblr posts from GetGlue are big and beautiful images of the show or movie you checked-in to, and always include your comment or review.
Has the Netflix bubble burst?
Updated 8:45 a.m. PT: Netflix shares are down a whopping 40% this morning (quote) after yesterday’s news that the online video provider lost 800,000 subscribers in the U.S. last quarter. That’s the stock’s lowest point since mid-2010, when it was in the middle of a stratospheric rise to top out at $304 a share in July of this year. It’s currently at $77.
A series of missteps — from hiking prices to creating and then killing Qwickster, its DVD spinoff — have led to Netflix losing its luster on Wall Street. Yesterday a Citi analyst downgraded the stock to “Neutral,” cutting the target price to $95 from $220. A Wedbush analyst cut his target price to $85.
Dear Slingbox, please let us help you
There’s a second-screen iPad app that allows you to watch any TV network, any time, anywhere in the world with a wifi or 3G connection. Unbeknownst to many social TV enthusiasts, this iPad app has been available for almost a year and the computer app and technology since 2005. While it also requires a $140 box, an MSO subscription and a download fee of $29.99, it’s definitely the most impressive “TV Everywhere” and second screen product on the market.
