Daily Marauder

BROADCAST/CABLE

Hollywood studios and striking writers are agreeing to terms of a new contract that could be presented to union leaders in days and end their labor clash as early as Friday. The “big breakthrough” is said to be how much writers will be paid for Web streaming of television shows. (http://www.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idUSN0460617520080205  2/4)

News Corp.’s Fox network hauled in $250 million in advertising revenue on the strength of the most-watched Super Bowl ever — a performance that chief Rupert Murdoch calls “the biggest day in our company’s history.” Fox says it isn’t seeing any “concerns about the economic environment.” (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3e7f3952-d37d-11dc-b861-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1  2/5)

Jeff Bewkes, the new CEO of Time Warner, is expected to “aggressively” restructure some businesses to boost the company’s languishing stock. Folding in New Line Cinema, while “not the Wall Street-shaking move that an AOL spin-off might be,” would “probably improve cash flow.” (http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/feb2008/db2008024_252949.htm  2/5)

MTV has inked a deal with Verizon that will give the telecom full episodes of its “Randy Jackson Presents: America’s Best Dance Crew,” which premieres Thursday at 10 p.m. Under the exclusive on-demand arrangement, Verizon’s FiOS TV can run episodes for free 24 hours after they appear on MTV. (Mediaweek 2/4)

Following on the heels of a similar move by Cablevision, Comcast said Monday that it would begin offering such theatricals as “Michael Clayton,” “Invasion” and “The Brave One” to video-on-demand customers on the same day they are released on DVD. Comcast also announced that it would serve up Showtime’s “The Tudors” on VOD before the program’s second-season premiere March 30. (Multichannel News 2/4)

Tudors on Showtime

Americans are turning to their PCs to watch their favorite prime time shows more often than they’re turning to VOD, according to the new Digital Life America tracking study from Solutions Research Group. A full 20% of the 1,150 users surveyed said they watch shows online on a weekly basis – compared to only 14% who said they use cable’s VOD services weekly. 43% of those surveyed have watched at least one of their favorite shows online, up from 25% one year ago. ABC.com received the highest grades in terms of user experience with 52% describing it as “excellent,” followed by 44% giving excellent ratings to Fox.com.

Beginning in March, AT&T will tack on an additional $5 to some of its monthly DSL prices. With the change, the telecom’s basic DSL price will go from $14.99 to $19.99 a month. (OneTRAK 2/4, The Wall Street Journal/Dow Jones Newswires 2/4)

ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA

Google’s share price has dropped below $500 as investors grow concerned about competition from Microsoft’s potential merger with Yahoo. Google’s stock is also feeling the impact of concerns about the U.S. economy and a slowdown in advertising — which accounts for 99% of its revenue. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/feb/05/googlethemedia.google  2/5)

News Corp. will “definitely not” make a bid on Yahoo, says chief Rupert Murdoch. When asked if he would have any interest in Time Warner’s AOL unit, he says: “That’s an even easier question — no.” Murdoch adds that News Corp. has no acquisition targets in its sights at the moment. (http://www.thestreet.com/story/10401942/1/news-corp-no-interest-in-yahoo.html  2/4)

News Corp. is reporting that its fiscal second-quarter net income rose 1.2% on improved results in its television, cable-TV and Internet assets. In the company segment dominated by Fox Interactive Media and MySpace, earnings soared to $23 million from $1 million a year earlier. (http://www.smartmoney.com/bn/ON/index.cfm?story=ON-20080204-000636-1639  2/4)

MySpace finally followed suit with Facebook in opening up its platform to third party applications. The MySpace developers platform, which goes live today, Feb. 5, will enjoy some later adopter advantages. For one it will support Google’s OpenSocial initiative from day one, enabling interoperability between other social networks including imeem, LinkedIn, Ning and orkut. Additionally MySpace says it will focus on monetizing third party content by allowing developers to share in ad revenue sold by its national sales team. (http://www.informationweek.com/software/showArticle.jhtml;?articleID=206104114 2/5)

While News Corp. is thrilled about the ad-revenue growth of MySpace, many marketers are frustrated about plummeting click-through rates. “There’s too much [advertising] when you sign on,” says one 32-year-old user who likes the site, though he ignores the ads. “They don’t interest me.” (http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb2008/tc2008024_252834.htm  2/4)

AOL has acquired buy.at, a leading affiliate marketing network backed by VC house DFJ Esprit, reports TechCrunch UK. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but well-placed sources say the deal is worth in the region of $150 million (£75 million). (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/05/aol-acquires-affiliate-network-to-boost-ad-platform  2/5)

The Internet and other new technologies are giving a strong postgame presence to Super Bowl commercials. Visitors to YouTube are being offered an incentive to vote for their favorite spot: The commercial attracting the most votes will be featured on YouTube’s home page next Tuesday. (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/business/media/05adco.html  2/5)

An estimated 80 million Americans, or 43% of the country’s online population, screened a prime-time TV show on the Web last year, according to a study by Solutions Research Group. Among the most-watched online programs are “Heroes,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Dancing With the Stars,” “Ugly Betty,” “Chuck” and “CSI.” The Hollywood Reporter (2/5)

TelevisionWithoutPity.com, Bravo’s Web site for television fans, will introduce video content and an original online series to its line-up of satirical commentary. The site’s first show is “The Week Without Pity,” an irreverent take on the best and worst guilty pleasures of the week. (http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6528497.html  2/4)

Online video site DailyMotion.com and viral comedy studio JibJab Media launched Politics Schmolitics, a new political satire destination to aggregate the latest politically-themed fare on the web. Obama Girl’s latest, “Super Obama Girl,” is headlining leading into Super Tuesday.

Even if the Hollywood writers strike ends this week, the genie isn’t going back into the bottle when it comes to Web video, say online video experts. The strike “opened many people’s eyes” to the wide range of Internet video. “Just how much ‘American Gladiators’ can one person take?” (http://www.tvweek.com/news/2008/02/web_video_boom_will_outlive_wr.php  2/4)

The founders of DealLocker.com are launching a new online shopping site today called TypoBuddy that helps shoppers save through human error. Simply type in an item you’re looking for on eBay or craigslist, and the search tool pulls up auctions or items for sale that others have missed because the seller misspelled the entry.

Here’s an example using “Marc Jacobs” as search terms.  Now if we can’t spell Marc Jacobs, imagine the results on Ferragamo.  Thank you Typo Buddy.

Some interesting new figures have been released by eMarketer today that shows that podcasts are taking off in both traffic and revenue, and the outlook is even better again. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/04/podcasts-taking-off-again-emarketer  2/4)

GAMING

Nokia is set to introduce today its online game-downloads portal N-Gage and social-networking site “Share on Ovi” as part of the company’s forays into the mobile Web market. Setbacks in software development prompted Nokia to delay the launch of its N-Gage platform last year. (Yahoo!/Reuters 2/5)

TECHNOLOGY

Apple is unveiling higher-priced models of its iPhone mobile handset and iPod media player with double the memory of previous versions. The iPhone will now be available in a 16-gigbyte model for $499 and the 32 GB iPod Touch for $499. Demand for the devices is said to be abating. (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601204&sid=awF.6lTq5C1Y  2/5)