programming
How DirecTV is keeping ‘Damages’ alive for fans
Season four of the critically acclaimed show Damages will premier it’s fourth season tonight exclusively on DirecTV’s AUDIENCE network, channel 239. After three seasons on FX, the show was canceled. But now the satellite provider came to the beck and call of many of the show’s super fans as they scooped up the property and offered [...]
CBS cancels first Twitter show, $#*! My Dad Says
The first network TV show based on a Twitter account has been cut due to struggling ratings. CBS has canceled $#*! My Dad Says, the comedy based on Justin Halpern’s popular Twitter account @shitmydadsays. “The cancellation of $#*! is a win for creativity,” argues TV.com’s Tim Surette. “CBS was eager to cash in on the [...]
Inside Jimmy Fallon’s Twitter hashtag game
Late Night with Jimmy Fallon features one of the most popular Twitter-powered segments in TV: a hashtag game that turns viewers into contributors. Every week, Fallon mentions a hashtag on the air (like #ScrewValentinesDay), which sparks a flood of tweets with one-liners for the theme. Like this one: After people tweet, many tune in the [...]
Daily Show, Cobert Report return to Hulu
Viacom’s Comedy Central and Hulu have patched up their relationship, and episodes from The Daily Show and Colbert Report re-appeared on Hulu this morning ten months after they were pulled. At the time, the shows were among the most popular on Hulu. As part of the new deal, Hulu is offering other Viacom shows like [...]
ABC to relaunch iPad app with TV sync
Last year, ABC launched an iPad app companion to the new show, My Generation (below), that displayed additional content and interactivity in sync with the TV broadcast, even if it was recorded on your DVR. But alas, ABC canceled the show after two low-rated episodes. Now ABC is relaunching the app but with the popular [...]
TV show sets Facebook goal, promises bonus episode
The TruTV show Operation Repo wants to hit 500,000 likes on Facebook, so it’s issuing a challenge to its fans: hit the number by the end of the season in April, and they’ll produce an bonus episode just for Facebook. The show has 243,622 fans right now. “Sure, 500,000 is a huge number,” the show [...]
Netflix still skyrocketing just about everywhere
If you wonder why so many entertainment programming and distribution execs are on edge about the rise of Netflix, take a look at how quickly the company’s growth is accelerating, according to new numbers released by the company today: These are new subscribers, not total subscribers, and the 7.7 million last year was double Netflix’s [...]
Social TV is ‘going to be huge,’ says Endemol CEO
Don’t take it from us, but from Ynon Kreiz, CEO of the Endemol group, the largest independent television production company in the world. “Everyone says that social television will be big. I think it’s not going to be big — it’s going to be huge,” he told attendees at the Digital Life Design (DLD) conference [...]
Nickelodeon to debut Spongebob episode on Facebook
Who lives in a pineapple under the sea and has 16 million Facebook friends? Spongebob Squareparents, of course. The Nickelodeon show, by our count, is the fifth most popular Facebook page for a TV show. And coming later this month, the network will debut a Spongebob episode on Facebook first, followed by a longer primetime [...]
CNN’s Piers Morgan puts Twitter to work for TV debut
With a taped interview with Oprah as the premiere episode of “Piers Morgan Tonight” on CNN on Monday night, the show’s host and staff gathered in the Presidential Suite of Mandarin Hotel in New York to watch the show’s debut. “God, hope the tape worked,” Piers Morgan tweeted 20 minutes to air. As the broadcast [...]
MTV aims for social media hit first, TV after
In one of the cable network’s biggest show launches in recent memory, Skins debuted Monday night on MTV. But for several months, the show has already debuted in bits and pieces online, thanks to an aggressive social media campaign. “We did the reverse of what we usually do with a show,” Damon Burrell, VP of [...]
Oprah TV station planning new show to replace it
Last week we posted a column that encourages TV stations to create original, local and “shareable video” to compete in a new world where network programming is increasingly built-into nearly every TV and widely available on tablets, mobile phones, and of course, your laptop. And for stations losing Oprah, the urgency is even greater. Today [...]
NBC to premiere ‘The Cape’ on iPad app
Here’s a first. NBC is premiering the one-hour pilot episode of “The Cape” on an iPad app — and not NBC’s app, but on DC Comics’ free iPad app. “What better partner than DC Comics, whose audience is devoted to the comic book genre from which ‘The Cape,’ draws its inspiration,” said Adam Stotsky, President, [...]
Fox shows top TV tweets in 2010
Twitter has already released its top trends of the year, including a television category which gave the MTV VMA’s the top slot. But now a tracking company called What the Trend has released its own top Twitter TV shows of the year. Fox takes the top two slots with Glee and American Idol, followed by [...]
Local TV’s challenge to create shareable video
Updated: TVNewsCheck’s Harry Jessel wrote a column today that jokingly (?) calls on media companies everywhere to stop innovating for three years. “We need a breather,” he writes, “so we can figure out one thing before being forced to move on to the next.”
Jessel has a good point in there — it’s hard enough for national media companies to keep up, let alone local TV stations faced with a growing array of possibilities, from social media to apps on just about everything — iPhone, iPad, Android, Samsung TV…. Where to prioritize with limited resources?
And then there’s the old battle between TV and everything else. “If [local TV execs] actually tried to grasp the new media,” he writes, “they wouldn’t have much time for the old media. They have stations to run and that’s not as easy as it used to be, what with the new media shattering audiences into a million pieces.”
That argument always makes me shake my head. It’s the classic “either-or” trap heard daily in local TV hallways. But media fragmentation is precisely why local TV must experiment at a higher velocity, not take a breather. As Gordon Borrell says in Jessel’s piece, it’s about picking your battles and making hard decisions to abandon stuff that’s not working.
So what are those battles?
Check in with GetGlue for CNN, MTV stickers
GetGlue is one of a few companies battling it out in the Foursquare-for-TV space, and coming this New Years Eve, you can “check in” for CNN and MTV stickers. Just check into CNN’s “New Years Eve Live” or MTV’s “New Years Bash” live broadcasts on New Years night — from your GetGlue app on your [...]
NBC, NHL launch contest linking Facebook and TV
Coming up on January 1st, while many people will be watching football games, hockey fans will watch the annual Winter Classic. NBC and the National Hockey League have just launched a Facebook contest tied to on-air. Like many Facebook contests, you’re required to “like” a page to enter, which drives new fans – value that [...]
CBS planning 3 more Twitter-based TV shows
After launching $#*! My Dad Says earlier this year, CBS is working on three more TV shows based on Twitter accounts. The latest, Mother of All Something, is a comedy project under development based on the Twitter feed of Kelly Oxford, a stay-at-home mother of three in Canada. There’s also Dear Girls Above Me (pictured) [...]
