Filed under: BROADCAST/CABLE
BROADCAST/CABLE
Time Warner isn’t changing its name back to AOL Time Warner just yet. Still, the media giant’s stock has outperformed the market since AOL’s strategy was revised last year to make it mostly free and supported by advertising. An AOL sale or spinoff is seen as unlikely anytime soon. (http://money.cnn.com/2007/07/25/news/companies/twx_aol/index.htm?postversion=2007072606 7/26)
Jon Seda, Ashton Holmes and Rami Malek have signed on for HBO’s World War II miniseries “The Pacific.” The 10-hour miniseries is from executive producers Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg. (Yahoo!/Reuters/Hollywood Reporter 7/26)
Comcast’s second-quarter profit climbed 28%, as customer demand for its “triple play” of digital video, high-speed Internet and phone service increased. Basic-cable customers declined by 95,000 as many college students and other customers disconnect service during the summer. (http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/comcast-profit-soars-28-demand/story.aspx?guid=%7BD72EBD90-2F47-48BB-9D98-B90E2394EEBF%7D 7/26)
NBC Universal could be worth $45 billion, says General Electric CFO Keith Sherin, in a recent lunch discussion. So is GE is eager to sell the troubled NBCU? A GE spokesman says: “As long as we feel like we can run it better than others and it is creating value, it will be a part of our portfolio.” (http://blogs.reuters.com/2007/07/25/nbcu-worth-45-billion/ 7/25)
Co-founder Oprah Winfrey’s Oxygen network is being sued by American Youth Symphony, the producer of “America’s Hot Musician,” for $100 million. The group claims the cable network frustrated its attempts to air the paid program to the point where its production was canceled. (http://www.tvweek.com/news/2007/07/oprahs_oxygen_faces_100_millio.php 7/25)
Filed under: ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA
ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA
A United Nations arbitration agency ruled a Brooklyn man must return the domain name thesimpsonsmovie.com to Twentieth Century Fox just in time for film’s release tomorrow. Keith Malley had been using the URL to divert users to a web site featuring Simpsons characters in compromising positions, according to an AP report and was demanding $50,000 from Fox to turn over the rights to the web address. The World Intellectual Property Organization was founded in 1999 to protect companies against such cyber-extortion.
VH1.com launched The Score, an online search to find the best undiscovered music producer to score this year’s VH1 awards show Hip Hop Honors. The winner will receive show credit for the score/theme of this year’s show and a trip to NYC to attend the taping of the fourth annual “VH1 Hip Hop Honors” celebration in New York in October.
Joost co-founder Niklas Zennstrom said the P2P TV sharing service has attracted more than one million beta testers at a press event in Estonia. Joost in on track to officially launch by year end.
TubeMogul launched as a cross-network tool used to track online video consumption across multiple sites including YouTube, Revver, MetaCafe and MySpace. Individual videos and publishers can be tracked and organized into lists including top viewed and average rating. TubeMogul also creates customized reports for publishers and advertisers.
This is a fantastic tool for tracking online video performance across a multitude of sites simultaneously. Users can either track one specific video as it performs across several online video sites or several videos across just one online video site. It’s interesting to note how much more detailed this type of online tracking can be as compared to broadcast tracking.
TubeMogul Instructional Video #1 : Intro
ABC.com is quietly kicking off a beta test of a high-definition Internet-TV channel with four episodes from the network’s top-rated primetime shows. ABC says it promises to deliver the HD programming “at the best quality and the biggest size allowed by law, or by your hardware.” (http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6462992.html 7/25)
News Corp. siblings Fox and MySpace are teaming up with the Producers Guild for a contest that will allow users to submit a brief television pilot and will hand out $25,000 prizes as well as an “opportunity” at a development deal. MySpace will gather the videos on a section of the site. (http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117969184.html?categoryid=1009&cs=1 7/25)
Microsoft signed a deal to become the exclusive provider of display and contextual advertising for content aggregator Digg, which has base of over 17 million unique monthly users. Federated Media Publishing and Google were Digg’s former advertising partners. http://news.com.com/Digg+chooses+Microsoft+as+new+ad+partner/2100-1024_3-6198845.html 7/25)
Om Malik, the former Time Inc. Business 2.0 magazine staffer turned GigaOM tech blogger, is launching an online television talk and analysis show on the video site Revision3. The weekly “GigaOm Show” will feature interviews with tech CEOs and start-up entrepreneurs. (http://kara.allthingsd.com/20070724/om-malik-is-ready-for-his-close-up/ 7/24)
Dow Jones and the New York Times lost out to telephone-directory firm R.H. Donnelley in an auction to acquire Business.com, a Web site that serves as a kind of online yellow pages. Donnelley’s deal is believed to be valued between $340 million and $360 million. (http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB118541740110378568.html 7/26)
Time Warner Cable’s Road Runner customers in most of the company’s divisions can buy several premium online services thanks to a newly signed deal with Synacor. The deal covers a host of offerings, including Variety Pack, Road Runner Music and Road Runner Music to Go, each of which will be available for an additional monthly fee. (CED Magazine 7/25)
Fifty-seven percent of online adults have used the internet to watch or download video and 19% do so on a typical day, according to a new study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Young viewers (18-29) are even more likely to watch, with 31% saying they do so on a typical day. Three-quarters of broadband users (74%) who enjoy high-speed connections at both home and work watch or download video online. The group’s first major report on online video also shows how many video viewers have contributed to the viral and social nature of online video. More than half of online video viewers (57%) share links to the video they find with others, and three in four (75%) say they receive links to watch video that others have sent to them. (http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/business/la-fi-briefs26.3jul26,1,3557624.story?ctrack=1&cset=true 7/26)
Internet TV advertising revenue could reach $10 billion worldwide by 2011, according to new research from Understanding and Solutions, which would represent 18% of the total internet ad market for that year.
Filed under: WIRELESS
WIRELESS
Apple’s iPhone had more press coverage than sales in its first several days of release. In the 30 hours after it debuted, the device sold 270,000 units — below sales forecasts of well over half a million. Some companies are said to be avoiding the gadget due to security concerns. (http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117969118.html?categoryid=1009&cs=1 7/25)
Nokia acquired online photo sharing site Twango for a reported $96.8 million. Nokia plans to integrate the web-based service with its cell phones and mobile devices to allow users share photos, videos and messages on both platforms.
Verizon Wireless became the first mobile provider to enable video recording and direct uploading to YouTube, using the shortcode text number YTUBE to complete the transfer. Users’YouTube account must be first modified at the YouTube WAP site.
Just to give you a little idea of how the site works, I’ve posted a little mobile video of my own. I just had to test this little product out and frankly, it was pretty easy and fun. If you’re a Verizon customer, I recommend checking this out on your end. Thanks to my office mates for helping me make this possible. . .you know who you are.
Comcast has ramped up its Pivot mobile-phone service in southwest Washington and Oregon. The service, available through a joint venture with Sprint Nextel, had previously been soft-launched in Portland, Ore., but it is now available on a wider scale throughout the region. (Multichannel News 7/25)
AT&T’s newly developed AT&T Mobile Backup system is expected to help consumers who constantly find themselves losing or breaking their mobile phones. The service, which allows users to store contact information on a server, will cost customers $1.99 a month. (American City Business Journals/San Antonio 7/25)
As part of its strategy to increase its presence in as many Web-enabled mobile devices as possible, Google has agreed to collaborate with Sprint Nextel to offer a range of Internet services to users of the U.S.operator’s planned new WiMax network. (http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/07/26/Google-Sprint-team-on-WiMax-mobile_1.html?source=NLC-WIR&cgd=2007-07-26 7/26)
Filed under: TECHNOLOGY
TECHNOLOGY
Apple reported profit jumped 73% and quarterly revenue climbed 24% to $5.41 billion on strong sales of iPods and Mac computers. It did not disclose the exact number of iPhones sold (mentioning 270,000 iPhones and “related accessories sold,”) but AT&T’s 146,000 number had an adverse effect on the stock this week.
Filed under: MISC
MISC
National Amusements, the parent company of Viacom and CBS, is signing a deal with National CineMedia to digitally broadcast live special events at 25 of its theaters. The theaters will become part of the Cinecast Network, which broadcasts events at some 300 U.S. movie theaters. (http://business.bostonherald.com/businessNews/view.bg?articleid=1013222 7/25)
Disney will become the first Hollywood studio to phase out cigarette smoking in its films, saying smoking scenes in future Disney-branded movies will be “non-existent.” Congressman Ed Markey says it is “time for other media companies to similarly kick the habit and follow Disney’s lead.” (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/ae1674e6-3ad1-11dc-8f9e-0000779fd2ac,Authorised=false.html?_i_location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2Fae1674e6-3ad1-11dc-8f9e-0000779fd2ac.html&_i_referer= 7/25)
