Filed under: BROADCAST/CABLE
BROADCAST/CABLE
Fears that a possible U.S. recession will sap advertising spending are souring investors on the media industry. But some entertainment companies might be more resilient than Wall Street thinks. Consumers often end up at the movies even if they spend less elsewhere. (http://www.reuters.com/article/technology-media-telco-SP/idUSN1444589420070914 9/14)
News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch is selling about $20.5 million worth of his company’s stock, as part of his “normal financial planning.” Also: Time Warner boss Dick Parsons is buying about $500,000 worth of his company’s shares “in a show of confidence in the company’s future.” (http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/news-corp-ceo-rupert-murdoch/story.aspx?guid=%7BEBE34169-D942-4229-81ED-0ADA04874848%7D 9/13, http://www.reuters.com/article/industryNews/idUSN1338563220070913 9/13)
Cable television networks are expected to suffer under Nielsen’s new ratings system. While broadcast networks typically see 6% to 7% of the audience leave during ads, channels like MTV with younger, more impatient viewers can see a channel-surfing dropoff of as much as 16%. (http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_39/b4051050.htm 9/24)
Comcast/Sony Pictures TV/Lionsgate joint venture will premiere the horror flick Catacombs on VOD on Oct. 1 and on the fearnet.com website on Halloween Night. It is the venture’s first original feature film, co-produced by Lions Gate and Twisted Pictures.
For those who have missed the Fab Five, Bravo is bringing back Queer Eye for a fourth and final season beginning October 2 at 9p. The ten-episode run opens with a Straight Guy Pageant hosted by soap star Susan Lucci that will reunite former cast members. The premiere is followed by an all-new episode. The series is produced by Scout Productions.
The National Football League, in a filing to the FCC, accused cable companies of discriminating against unaffiliated channels such as NFL Network. “Most of our sports networks are multisport, with multiple professional leagues on each network and with hundreds of games to watch. This is a major distinction between them and the NFL Network,” a Comcast spokeswoman said. (Multichannel News 9/13) (Below) Doesn’t the launch market for this strategy seem a little wrong to you?
“English on Demand” will allow digital cable users in New England to tune in to language lessons with video from the company English For You. The programming includes four hours of instructional courses. (Multichannel News 9/13)
During the week of September 3, ABC’s The View kicked off its 11th season with Whoopi Goldberg as a new moderator. The daytime talker pulled an average 917,000 W18-49, and 3.5 million Total Viewers, marking the show’s highest Total Viewer numbers for a premiere week in its history.
Cablevision shareholders will vote Oct. 24 whether to allow the owning Dolan family to privatize at $36.26 a share. If successful, the company hopes to undertake the plan by the end of the year. (Light Reading 9/13, Forbes/Associated Press 9/13)
Filed under: ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA
ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA
News Corp. expects to have contentious talks with Apple over showing its television programs on iTunes. “I assume it will be prickly and dicey,” says No. 2 exec Peter Chernin. NBC Universal said in August it did not intend to renew its contract to sell TV shows on iTunes. (http://investing.reuters.co.uk/news/articleinvesting.aspx?type=media&storyID=nL14821850 9/14)
Yahoo is said to be acquiring the news aggregation site BuzzTracker for $5 million. The price is lower than the $7 million that News Corp. paid for NewRoo, a similar service, in 2006. Alan Warms, CEO of Buzztracker parent company Participate Media, will join Yahoo News. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/09/14/yahoo-makes-tiny-acquisition-buzztracker/ 9/14)
E! Online will simulcast its Red Carpet coverage of the Primetime Emmy Awards on its broadband channel, The Vine @ E! Online, as well as on its Sprint TV mobile channel. The festivities begin this Sunday, Sept. 16 at 4 p.m. ET with pre-show interviews.
After being taken to task by bloggers such as Jeff Jarvis for backing off, Yahoo is going ahead with an interesting Mashup feature of its Democratic Candidate Mashup, allowing citizen editors to combine candidate comments with other images and sounds the way they see fit. Yahoo’s web based video editing service Jumpcut will let the footage all hang out, so to speak, enabling mashers to create a new medium for the YouTube generation of satirists. Tribune Media Service’s Zap2it.com launched a new “On Broadband” feature powered by Truveo that aggregates all the free full episodes streamed each week by the five major broadcast networks, as well as offerings from TNT and TBS.
Basically, this one page links to the online players for all online streamed content from the big five. Simple offering but pretty helpful none the less. Think of it this way, Hulu.com wants to try and be the online host for all of this content. Maybe, that’s unnecessary. Maybe, we as viewers just need one site that links to the online players for all of this content. Interesting debate.
Time Warner’s AOL is starting a Web site in Italy as part of a plan to expand in 14 countries in the next 18 months. The free AOL.it offers news, e-mail and instant messaging. AOL is accelerating a push overseas to help make up for falling revenue at its U.S. Web access unit. (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=ayMMcCyWATo4 9/13)
Amazon is close to launching its DRM-free downloadable music store, awaiting only approval from the big boss CEO Jeff Bezos, according to Billboard.biz. Amazon has signed supply deals with major labels EMI and Universal Music so far.
Joost signed a partnership agreement with Paramount Pictures to distribute movies such as Patriot Games, Star Trek: Insurrection and Breakfast at Tiffany’s on the P2P video service. The deal includes rights to the UK, France, Germany and Spain with more territories to follow.
Joost User Interface
Viacom has two projects in the works for its MTV Networks unit that it hopes will help it catch up to News Corp.’s MySpace. One is a social network called Flux that will be “open” to non-Viacom Web sites. The other involves an stake in Vice magazine video offshoot VBS.tv. (http://money.cnn.com/2007/09/13/magazines/fortune/siklos_viacom.fortune/index.htm 9/13)
Basically, the idea here is that Flux will enable users to access social networking features across all partner web sites without having to engage in the tedious registration process every single time. Very interesting. VBS.tv is as cool as MTV wishes it still was. With all of the negative feedback swirling following the MTV VMA’s, a partnerships with a content provider as interesting and alternative as this one is definitely a good call. Check out a trailer from a movie produced by Vice below called “Heavy Metal in Baghdad”, showcasing how music evolves in this war-torn country. If you dig this, there’s also an amazing documentary called “I Love Hip Hop in Morocco” out there that highlights how hip hop artists in Morocco toe the line between their Muslim roots and their love for creating music.
Eons, the social network targeting Baby Boomers started by Monster.com founder Jeff Taylor, has fallen on hard times. The company has laid off 24 employees, amounting to about a third of its full-time staff, according to reports, despite attracting nearly 6 million unique visitors since January.
Eons?!! As in, these members have been around for eons?! They can’t be serious. Just looking at their marketing on the site makes me a bit nauseous. I’m not a baby boomer but I must imagine that at least a significant audience would find this partonizing as all hell.
Winamp launched the beta version of a new and improved online multimedia player to celebrate its 10th year in marketplace. Enhancements include album art displays, support of the iPod and other MP3 players and a song recommendation engine that generates custom playlists of songs users may like. To participate in testing of the player go to AOL’s Beta Central page.
Winamp still exists? Who knew?! I remember the good old winamp days with a tear in my eye. Strangely enough, the new winamp (below) looks miraculously like the OLD winamp. Hmmmm. . .
Facebook continued its meteoric rise among social networks according to Nielsen/NetRatings, registering over 19 million unique users in August, an increase of 117% over last year. Top social networking site MySpace also continues to grow at a healthy pace, registering over 60 million users for an annual growth rate of 23%. Meanwhile YouTube nearly doubled its user base from last year, registering nearly four times more traffic than its nearest competitor.
Top 10 Social Networking Sites for August 2007 in Unique Visitors (U.S., Home and Work)
Site Aug. 06 (000) Aug. 07 (000) % Change
MySpace.com 49,178 60,327 23%
Facebook 8,852 19,173 117%
Classmates Online 14,137 15,364 9%
Windows Live Spaces 8,203 8,816 7%
AOL Hometown 9,077 6,956 -23%
Reunion.com 4,292 4,469 4%
LinkedIn 1,678 4,410 163%
Club Penguin 1,125 3,934 250%
Buzznet.com 766 3,872 405%
AOL People Connection 6,025 3,858 -36%
Source: Nielsen/NetRatings
Top Video Sites for August 2007 in Unique Visitors (U.S., Home and Work)
Site Aug. 06 (000) Aug. 07 (000) % Change
YouTube 34,039 56,453 66%
Vids.mspace.com 17,923 16,759 -6%
Google Video 13,483 14,450 7%
AOL Video NA 13,632 NA
MSN Video 11,984 12,486 4%
Yahoo! Video 5,958 11,987 101%
Metacafe 2,822 4,151 47%
Break.com 2,926 3,954 35%
Veoh.com 663 2,958 346%
Atom Films 1,102 1,422 29%
Source: Nielsen/NetRatings
