Don Day
Despite big TV promotion, prominent placement on MSN and MSNBC.com, 211 affiliates cranking towards it and exclusive video, NBCOlympics.com isn’t the top Olympics news site - that crown goes to Yahoo.
Silicon Alley Insider quotes Nielsen Online data for the sites - which shows from August 8 - August 18, Yahoo Olympics beat NBC Olympics for eight out of 11 days. In aggregate, Yahoo Olympics edged NBCO in average users by about 10%.
SAI published that report on August 20. Earlier that same day, an NBCU media relations person sent out a release touting NBCO’s big win over Yahoo. So what gives? The NBCU announcement only used NIELSEN data through 8/10/2008 - even though the release was sent 20 days later. It then mushed in some Hitwise data and swished it all around to paint a bright picture. NBC’s release is at best misleading - and as Wired notes, even Hitwise says Yahoo had more users to its site… something NBC left out of its news release.
Read the NBC release after the jump.
(Disclosure: I’ve been generating content for NBCO’s OZone program for KTVB & KTFT. We also have a content sharing agreement with MSNBC.com).
(more…)
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August 23rd, 2008
Don Day
Yesterday, a reporter with KMBC in Kansas City had a big scoop: Barack Obama would pick Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh to be his running mate. Except… that didn’t happen. Oops. The station broke into programming with the hot news based on a bumper sticker. Did they hedge? Not enough…
KMBC-9 News has every indication that Barack Obama is about to announce his running mate will be the Indiana senator Evan Bayh. This is based on sources very close to the situation and based also on this.
Turns out sources “close to the situation” were actually sources close to the bumper sticker makers. Ouch.
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August 23rd, 2008
Cory Bergman
As you know, Obama’s campaign sent out its much-anticipated text early this morning, announcing Biden as his VP choice. You’ll notice a few things from the timing: 1) most newspapers were unable to get it into their Saturday editions, which apparently was the campaign’s intent 2) it probably woke up a bunch of people and 3) some are saying it was timed as a subtle jab back at Hillary Clinton for the “3 a.m. red phone” ad. Meanwhile, many subscribers are saying they didn’t receive the text until several hours later. Sprint isn’t divulging details about that, but they did put out a press release and a graph illustrating the traffic on Obama’s short code:
By the way, you might find this quote from Sprint’s press release interesting: “Sprint customers depend on us for information that is important to them — including real-time breaking news.” While you might think Sprint is going a little overboard capitalizing on the publicity, if you think about it for a moment the wireless providers are indeed becoming one of the most popular distribution networks for news. And someday, they may be the most popular.
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August 23rd, 2008
Cory Bergman
The mad dash toward location awareness continues with Google’s “Gears Geolocation API.” Developers can use Google’s toolkit to develop location-based services for both mobile devices and on your PC. At its core, the API can “determine your location using nearby cell phone towers or GPS for your mobile device or your computer’s IP address for your laptop.” In other words, this will make it easier for developers to launch location-based applications on the fly. Google explains in this video.
Last week: Yahoo debuts Fire Eagle location tool
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August 22nd, 2008
Cory Bergman
NewTeeVee’s Liz Gannes just returned from casting her vote judging the fiction category of the Interactive Emmy Awards, and she breaks down the five entrants including HBO’s Voyeur, NBC’s Heroes and ABC’s Lost. But Gannes reserved the most praise for Showtime’s The L Word. “It has cultivated the biggest social network for lesbians, OurChart, out of a plot line from the show,” she writes. “OurChart is actually a separate company put together by the show’s creators, where characters are present but fan community is abundant.” This is a terrific example of thinking beyond the confines of traditional TV: leveraging the show’s niche audience to launch a new online product that will outlive the TV show itself. Smart.
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August 22nd, 2008
Cory Bergman
Updated: Gannett has inked a deal with Capitol Records and Brian Wilson, the former Beach Boy, to debut the singer’s new album online. You can visit any of Gannett’s newspaper and TV sites and listen to the entire album, “That Lucky Old Sun” (see it in action on KUSA’s site, 9News.com here.) If you’re in the mood to buy, you’ll be directed to Amazon.com where you can pre-order it. It’s a first for Gannett as well as the first time we’ve heard of an artist debuting an album on local media sites. Screen grab…
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August 22nd, 2008
Don Day
The Oregonian in Portland, OR announced it plans to cut 100 jobs - or a bit less than 10% of its staff. The paper is offering employees with 10+ years of experience a nice buyout: “two years of pay and two years of health care for themselves and dependents.”
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August 22nd, 2008
Don Day
CitizenRain points us to a Seattle Weekly story on a Colorado company that sells window decals that claim “Best of Citysearch” and other ranking organizations. “But they don’t differentiate between quotes from actual critics who work for the Web sites and comments left by anonymous readers” says CR’s Katherine Sather. Or even have CitySearch’s permission. Nice.
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August 22nd, 2008
Cory Bergman
KLAS-TV and its terrific website LasVegasNow.com are sending four student reporters from UNLV to the Democratic convention, armed with all the latest technology tools. Explains Director of Digital Media Christopher Way:
“The cool part is that they’ll be taking Nokia N95 smart phones and streaming video from the phones live back to LasVegasNOW.com and unlvtv.unlv.edu/dnc/ using Kyte. They also sending updates via Twitter and producing finished packages which we’ll broadcast/publish on KLAS-TV and LasVegasNOW.com. The Kyte player allows two way interactive between the phone streaming the video and a chat window on the player (messages sent through the chat interface show up as text messages on the camera-phones). So essentially, people living in southern Nevada will be able to interact with the student reporters in real time as they are streaming video from the convention floor. Want to ask a Nevada delegate a question? Send the students a question via the chat window as they are streaming live.”
This is a screen grab (not embedded) of the Kyte player as the LasVegasNow team puts it through a test. Very cool stuff.
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August 22nd, 2008
Cory Bergman
C-SPAN is launching convention web destinations, one for the Democrats, another for the Republicans. Wait. Is that Twitter (here) and Qik functionality on the site? A YouTube page? A way for convention bloggers to embed C-SPAN video? When did C-SPAN suddenly get so hip and with it?
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August 22nd, 2008
Cory Bergman
That’s the line greeting you as you visit iList.com, a stealth startup that promises to take free classifieds to the next level with social functionality.
Other than that, there aren’t many more details, other to say they’ve raised a little bit of money ($1.5 million) from some respectable names. “The field is pretty crowded, but that is not to say that anyone has cracked the social classifieds nut just yet,” explains TechCrunch.
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August 22nd, 2008
Cory Bergman
It doesn’t matter if you work in TV, print, radio or the internet, a survey like this one is depressing: 53% of the advertisers surveyed by the Association of National Advertisers say they expect their budgets to be cut in the next six months due to the tough economy.
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August 21st, 2008
Don Day
CNN.com has joined the embedded video gold rush (with MSNBC.com, CBSNews.com, FoxNews.com and others). As is tradition, here’s a sample clip to test out the new feature:
Earlier: The first video clip I picked doesn’t work! The error message makes it sound like it is my fault - but I tried it twice.
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August 21st, 2008
Cory Bergman
According to numbers released by Quantcast, CitySquares.com is the fastest-growing search site on the web. Of course, CitySquares.com is starting from a small base — it expanded in June from the Boston area to New York and all of New England — and that makes up the 1500% percent traffic jump. But there’s no denying the site has tremendous potential. (In fact, Clickz once said, “CitySquares may well be the future of local online advertising.”)
In its most basic form, CitySquares is a local search site and business directory. While city guide sites like CitySearch focus on restaurants and the like, CitySquares also lists plumbers, painters and nail salons — all with user reviews. The site’s advertising products are extensive: basic listings are free, and deluxe listings feature coupons, photo galleries and “enhanced search engine optimization” to move the listing up Google and Yahoo’s organic results. Businesses can set up their own email distribution lists via a relationship with Constant Contact. They can also buy advertorial video clips, powered by TurnHere. One-click-print coupons appear on the main city and neighborhood pages. And, of course, there are traditional display ads.
There’s something to be said about how CitySquares started: in a single neighborhood back in 2005. Now three years later, it’s expanded over New York and New England — rather slow, organic expansion given today’s internet speed. But that approach, which ensures neighborhoods are well-represented before expanding, appears to be a critical success factor.
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August 21st, 2008
Cory Bergman
A Pennsylvania woman uploaded a 29-second garbled clip to YouTube that featured her toddler dancing to Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy.” Universal sent YouTube a DMCA takedown order. YouTube yanked it. The woman put it back up and took on representation from the EFF to sue Universal. Now months later, while it’s unlikely the woman will win her lawsuit, a federal judge has ruled that media companies should consider “fair use” before issuing takedown orders. And if they don’t, that could open them up to misrepresentation claims. Wired does a good job explaining it here.
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August 21st, 2008
Cory Bergman
The Bakersfield Californian, The Spokesman-Review, The Yakima Herald-Republic and Wenatchee World are all following in the footsteps of The Post Register to drop Associated Press after the AP announced new rates. And the Review is trying to drop AP without the two-year required advance notice.
Adds Rob in comments: “With Yakima and Wenatchee — two of the other major Eastern Washington papers (along with Spokane’s Spokesman-Review) — joining suit in dumping AP, I wonder if this means Washington papers might attempt something similar to OHNO (Ohio News Organization)?”
Update: As linked in the comments, here’s Spokesman-Review Editor Steven Smith’s blog post explaining the decision to drop AP.
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August 20th, 2008
Cory Bergman
TV Week has the chart of the top 10 local TV advertisers and their growth/decline over last year. As you can see, most have declined, thanks in part to the economy. Meanwhile, Comcast continues its aggressive marketing push in both services and content.
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August 20th, 2008
Cory Bergman
Comcast has teamed up with Intel and Yahoo to allow third-party developers to create web-connected widgets for TV. Like what kind of widgets, you ask? So far, the following companies are working on one: Blockbuster, CBS Interactive, CinemaNow, Cinequest, Comcast, Disney-ABC Television Group, eBay, GE, Group M, Joost, MTV, Samsung Electronics, Schematic, Showtime, Toshiba and Twitter. (Woo, Twitter on my TV!?) The widgets would be powered by a chip in the set-top box (and ultimately built into the TV set itself) which of course would be connected to the internet. “(It’s) really going to create a dramatic change,” said Patrick Barry, Yahoo’s VP of connected TV.
The possibilities here are endless — especially in the social sphere — and it wouldn’t take long to brainstorm plenty of applications at the local level. Conversely, you can look at this from another angle: you could punch up a Yahoo Weather widget over the top of your local news, for example. This underlines the importance for local TV to be aggressive and create widgets that emphasize the unique strengths of local content. You can learn more in an extensive overview of the “Widget Channel” right here.
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August 20th, 2008
Cory Bergman
Fresh out of private beta, NewsCred.com uses an algorithm to balance popularity with credibility to bring you your own personal newspaper. News sources, authors and even stories themselves are rated by users on a credibility scale. Hmmm. Since credibility is subjective — especially among known news brands — I’m a little unsure of NewsCred.com’s value proposition. But let us know what you think in comments…
Adds NewsCred’s Shafqat in comments: “We’re trying to do two things: 1) We want to introduce the power of news aggregation to the mainstream news reader, who may not understand RSS or know of Netvibes, Google Reader, even Digg. We’ve made it as simple as clicking on the logos of your favorite, trusted sites. 2) We want to give news readers a platform to voice their opinion about the quality of news, and the people writing the news. We think being a news reader is qualification enough to voice that opinion. Having an informed public and an accountable press is a cornerstone of democracy. Will NewsCred result in that overnight? Probably not - but its better to light one candle than curse the darkness, right?”
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August 19th, 2008
Cory Bergman
While some in the radio business cringe when they think of the popularity of iTunes and in-car iPods, mega radio syndicator Premiere Radio Networks has created a new show called The iTunes Download that counts down the 30 most downloaded iTunes songs. And it’s hosted by iTunes Director of Music Programming Alex Luke. “Radio is where more music buyers first hear what they want to buy and iTunes is the place they go to do it — now we’re connecting the two,” said Luke. I don’t know about you, but I don’t listen to the radio to hear the same songs over and over again (like many stations still do), but I listen to discover new music that I might add to my iPod playlists. Understanding that shift — from pure entertainment to discovery engine — is important for music radio stations to navigate the years ahead.
Of course, the obvious question is… do radio stations who air the show get a cut of incremental iTunes revenue? And not just via an affiliate program on their own radio sites, because most people who hear a cool song in “The iTunes Countdown” are just going to go straight to iTunes to make the purchase. Or perhaps Apple is paying radio stations to air the show? 
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August 19th, 2008
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