Filed under: BROADCAST/CABLE
BROADCAST/CABLE
NBC’s big Live Earth concert is scheduled for 7/7/07, that’s Saturday night, and it will be shown around the world in 8 cities on all 7 continents, as well as back home on many of the NBC owned networks - Bravo, CNBC, Sundance, Telemundo, mun2 and Universal HD. Check listings for times on all these networks and where ever you are in the world. The cities hosting the event include Rutherford NJ, Sydney, London, Tokyo, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Hamburg and Rio de Janeiro. One note - if you’re in Rio and plan to attend the concert - you may need to think again. A judge there has cancelled the event because they don’t have enough police to manage it, a ruling local organizers are working to get turned over.
Comcast is releasing VOD viewership information for some of its systems on its corporate Web site. Comcast is publishing the pay-VOD and free-VOD shows in systems that include Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. (Multichannel News 7/3)
Cable companies are expected to pass along the cost of the new set-top boxes with CableCards to their customers. Cable trade groups have said it could cost subscribers $2 to $3 more a month to lease the new boxes, but the cost could also be spread across all of a company’s leased set-top box customers. (Yahoo!/Associated Press 7/5)
On Tuesday, Comcast carried out a $581 million deal that will give it full ownership of Cablevision’s regional sports holdings outside of the New York area. Rainbow Media, a division of Cablevision, will transfer its 60% stake in FSN Bay Area regional channel and a 50% stake in FSN New England. (Newsday (Long Island, N.Y.) 7/3)
According to Nielsen, last week’s season finale of Univision’s telenovela “La Fea Mas Bella” had a strong showing. The Spanish-language network laid claim to three of the 10 most-watched shows among persons aged 18 to 49 in last week’s ratings. (CNN/Associated Press 7/4)
When it comes to adding advertising to VOD streams, Canadian cable companies currently face some restrictions, according to this article. A session to discuss the topic was set up recently to enable Roger Communications’ employees, Rogers’ programming partners and CTAM Canada members to explore the possibilities of ad-supported VOD. ( Cartt News Service 7/5)
Cable and syndication are still working with potential ad sales buyers during their respective upfront sessions, but media buyers said syndication was considerably further along. Cable networks such as Lifetime and Turner have closed major deals, but Comcast and MTV and others are still working on the bulk of their agreements. (Advertising Age 7/3)
The squabble between Comcast and Qwest over which company had the faster high-speed broadband service has come to a close. Qwest agreed to drop TV, print and Internet ads that Comcast said were misleading while Comcast agreed to drop its lawsuit. (Denver Rocky Mountain News 7/4)
Filed under: ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA
ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA
eBay launched the classified site Kijiji in the U.S. as a direct competitor to the ubiquitous Craigslist. It’s a little snazzier than its text-only predecessor, allowing users to target searches also by state and zip code, but it essentially does the same thing. Kijiji was originally launched overseas in February 2005 and maintains classified sites throughout Europe and Canada. As of now it is a standalone site, with no direct links or reference to it on eBay.com. eBay is not the first to try to challenge Craigslist’s dominance in a space it says it occupies for altruistic reasons. Microsoft soft-launched a site called Expo last year but abandoned the project after very little promotional effort. Yet Craigslist’s success is eBay’s gain, as it still owns the 25% of the company it bought from a former employee in 2004.
Kijiji
Maybe you’ll have better luck. I found the site to be unfunctional unable to drill down to the city level to present classified listings.
Craigslist
VH1.com’s live coverage of the Concert for Diana was streamed 335,000 times on VSPOT, VH1’s broadband channel. A total of 126,000 unique visits were made to the concert page, according to MTV Networks. The concert drew 453,000 page views, and average time spent viewing the live video was over 12 minutes.
Click on the image below for the best of highlights from the concert. If you watch the Nelly Furtado clip, you can catch Prince William shaking it like a polaroid picture. Of course, P. Diddy did ‘Missing You’. . .anyone find it strange that a song written for Biggie was sung with Princess Diana as an inspiration? And the highlight for me, was a rare performance from the original David Brent (Ricky Gervais) and Gareth (Mackenzie Crook) from The Office.
Elton John
Ricky Gervais
Google acquired GrandCentral Communications for an undisclosed amount. The Fremont, California-based start up operates a service that allows users to manage multiple voice mailboxes over the web in a single account.
MySpace co-founder Brad Greenspan, who put in a bid for Dow Jones last week, acquired partnership stakes in Chinese video sites Mofile.com and Hubotv.com through investment company BroadWebAsia. The sites attract 26 million and 22 million unique users per month respectively, according to BWA, ranking among the top community sites in China.
Amazon.com will begin selling independent HD DVDs through its on-demand DVD printing service. The company is waiving processing fees for the first 1,000 films accepted for production.
Bravo says page views of its online properties (BravoTV.com, BrilliantButCancelled.com, OUTzoneTV.com, TelevisionWithoutPity.com and getTRIO.com) grew by 476 percent during 2Q07 compared to a year earlier to 240 million total views, according to internal NBCU web logs Omniture and Urchin. Page views on TelevisionWithoutPity have increased 64% since Bravo acquired the blog in March .
ZenithOptimedia projects 29% growth in U.S. online ad budgets this year amid slow, steady growth of 3.7% of the overall ad market. With stalwarts such as network and spot TV expected to be flat or to slip slightly, the internet is growing at rate roughly six times faster than traditional media. Next year will see more of the same, predicts the agency, with internet spending growing by another 23% to $41.2 billion thanks to strong growth in online video ads and local search. (The Olympics should also help the cause, adding a total of $3 billion in additional ad spending worldwide next year, nearly a third of it spent in China.) The internet share of the overall pie is growing rapidly, according to this chart:
Share of total Ad Spend by Medium 2005-2009 (%)
2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
Newspapers 30.0 29.2 28.4 27.4 26.8
Magazines 13.1 12.8 12.5 12.2 12.1
Television 37.6 37.7 37.5 37.7 37.5
Radio 8.5 8.2 8.1 7.8 7.8
Cinema 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.5
Outdoor 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 5.9
Internet 4.8 6.1 7.4 8.6 9.4
Source: ZenithOptimedia
According to a new study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, the national growth rate for broadband services was 12% over the past year compared with 40% over the same time frame the previous year. The study found that roughly 47% of adults in the U.S. have high-speed Internet service in their homes. (The Courier-Journal (Louisville, Ky.) 7/5)
Filed under: WIRELESS
WIRELESS
Apple’s iPhone continues to dominate technology gossip, this time due to the efforts of early hackers of the device. By swapping SIM cards, hackers have been able to use the device for Web browsing and music playback, essentially making it a tiny ultra-mobile PC. (Forbes 7/4)
iPhone users across the U.S. were complaining Monday that AT&T’s wireless data network was down. (http://newsletter.infoworld.com/t?ctl=180BC22:DA82C51354DCEC5D6046D3AC20C0E9D2EFF29049075316B4 7/3)
BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) announced record high subscriber growth and strong device shipments in its first quarter, a sign that some users aren’t putting off smartphone purchases ahead of Friday’s iPhone launch. (http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/06/29/RIM-posts-record-highs_1.html?source=NLC-WIR&cgd=2007-07-05 6/29)
In addition to the live Wimbledon coverage it is providing Verizon’s V CAST subscribers, Qualcomm subsidiary MediaFLO is adding sports programming from CBS, ESPN, Fox and NBC to its network this summer. The ESPN Mobile TV channel will offer live coverage of major NASCAR races, with replays appearing on Fox Mobile TV. ESPN Mobile TV will also provide coverage of Busch Series Racing, the Under-20 FIFA World Cup and The X Games. NBC2Go will carry coverage of the AST Dew Tour starting with the June 23 Panasonic Open. CBS Mobile and CSTV will feature beach volleyball, softball, weightlifting, wakeboarding, snowboarding and lacrosse.
South Korea’s LG Electronics signed a deal with YouTube to enable mobile phone users to upload, view and share video clips directly from their phones to the site. LG is planning to release handsets that support the service in Europe during the second half of the year. The company also began selling “Google phones” enabling applications such as search, Google maps and Gmail in Europe last month.
Filed under: GAMING
GAMING
Japanese consumers can expect Microsoft’s Xbox 360 Elite to hit store shelves Oct. 11. Sales of the original Xbox have lagged behind Wii sales, although Microsoft expects the Elite’s added hard-drive space to garner it a widespread audience. (Yahoo!/Reuters 7/5)
The first new games that truly tap into the graphics power of the Xbox 360 and Sony’s PS3 will be unveiled next week in Los Angeles. Titles include the exclusive Xbox 360 version of Halo 3 and an Xbox and PS3 version of Grand Theft Auto IV. Game developers hope these new titles will drum up interest and sales for this year’s holiday season. (The Wall Street Journal (free content) 7/5)
Halo 3
Filed under: TECHNOLOGY
TECHNOLOGY
Warner Bros. will delay the launch of a dual-format high-definition disc until next year, according to company officials. “We need a critical mass of titles to go to retail with so they can establish a section,” Warner’s senior vice president of marketing Steve Nickerson said. “The concept is the right concept. It is more important to execute it correctly than to execute it quickly.” (The Globe and Mail (Toronto)/Associated Press 7/4)
Panasonic has released a faster write-once version of the Blu-ray high-definition disc. The disc, which is available in 25GB and 50GB versions, features write speeds of up to 4x. (Electronic Engineering Times (Asia)/InformationWeek 7/3)
Filed under: MISC
MISC
Under a new partnership between JetBlue Airways Corporation and Fox, JetBlue is now the “official airline of Springfield,” as part of the support for Fox’s upcoming The Simpsons Movie, opening July 24, 2007. But this isn’t just a name folks, JetBlue has outfitted its first specialty aircraft that has been named “Woo-Hoo, JetBlue” and sports a picture of Homer Simpson, meanwhile inside passengers can watch continuous Simpson’s episodes in-flight on the Fox channel. The deal also includes a Simpsons Sweepstakes ( http://www.jetblue.com/simpsons) for its TrueBlue frequent flyer members.
The animated penguin musical “Happy Feet” sold 8.6 million copies on DVD in the first half of 2007, making it this year’s top-selling DVD so far. Sales for all DVDs were $6.8 billion through June, down 3% from last year. (The Hollywood Reporter 7/5)
