Daily Marauder

BROADCAST/CABLE

A possible Microsoft acquisition of Yahoo could run as high as $52 billion, says Kara Swisher of the Wall Street Journal. But with the stock of Time Warner drifting downward, the current price tag for AOL, Bebo, CNN and the media giant attached to them would be “a bargain” $51.5 billion. (Iwantmedia 3/20, http://kara.allthingsd.com/20080320/why-doesnt-microsoft-buy-time-warner-aol-bebo-aim-and-harry-potter  3/20)

Independent cable network The Sundance Channel is up for sale, according to this article, and the price tag is likely to be in the range of $400 million to $500 million. Investment bank UBS is said to be shopping the channel to a small group of potential buyers, and a deal could be struck within weeks. Possible buyers include CBS, NBC, and Cablevision.  (New York Post 3/20, The New York Times 3/20)

 
Jane Root, a former top executive at The Discovery Channel and The Science Channel, appears to be a leading contender to replace Carolyn Strauss, who stepped down earlier this week as president of HBO Entertainment. Root helped HBO produce “Rome” while she was with BBC2. (The Hollywood Reporter 3/20)

HBO signed a two-year deal with Entourage executive producer Rob Weiss to develop new projects for the network in addition to continued work on the Hollywood-themed comedy, which goes into production at the end of April. (Cynopsis 3/20)

 
John Corbett will star along with Toni Collette in Showtime’s comedy pilot United States of Tara, reports THR. The story is about a woman with multiple personality disorder (Collette) and Corbett will portray her husband, Max Gregor. Production on the pilot begins next month in Los Angeles. (Cynopsis, 3/20)

 
NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker: “I do think there will be a broadcast network in 10 years. But it will not be like the broadcast network of 1975.” The big broadcast networks may have to cut back on producing pricey scripted programming. (Iwantmedia 3/20, http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=125811  3/19)

 
VH1 has ordered eight episodes of “Glam God With Vivica A. Fox,” a contest series that aims to locate the “next great celebrity stylist,” according to this article. The weekly series, set to launch this summer, comes from the producers of VH1 shows such as “Rock of Love,” “Flavor of Love” and “I Love New York.” (The Hollywood Reporter 3/20)

 
Cable firms such as Comcast and Time Warner Cable are developing a new way to engage subscribers locally: their own TV shows. Comcast has even set up a six-employee team that already has produced on-demand local content, including a pet-adoption show for the Washington/Baltimore market and a police series in Delaware. (The Wall Street Journal 3/20)

 
Verizon Fios customers can watch on demand NCAA highlights, game recaps, interviews and team press conferences, thanks to a partnership with CBS Sports. (Cynopsis, 3/20)

Verizon’s FiOS TV service expanded its VOD offerings adding output deals with CBS, Discovery Channel, Smithsonian Channel and Ovation TV. Verizon has also said that it expects to increase its HD VOD titles to more than 1,000 by the end of the year. (Cynopsis, 3/20)

Comcast customers have notched more than 7 billion views of the company’s array of video-on-demand programming since the service became available in 2003. According to this report, Comcast gets 100 requests for a VOD program each second, with customers watching a total of 130 million hours of the company’s on-demand shows each month. (CED Magazine 3/19)

 
Screen Digest projects that on-demand media will muffle the effects of declining DVD sales and muster as much as $33 million this year in U.S. and European incremental spending. The on-demand sector should have a value of $1.1 billion by 2012, with $665 million of it in new revenue and the rest replacing DVD sales. (The Hollywood Reporter 3/20)

 
One week after Time Warner Cable hired Rentrak to measure its video-on-demand performance, corporate cousin Turner has followed suit. With the new deal, Rentrak’s On Demand Essentials will monitor VOD transactions for Turner networks such as TNT, TBS, CNN, truTV, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, Boomerang and Turner Classic Movies. (Mediaweek 3/19)

 
The FCC adopted rules Wednesday that would exempt DirecTV and Dish from carrying local broadcast TV signals in HD format after the DTV transition in February 2009. Instead, the commission decided to extend the deadline for the satellite giants to comply with the “carry one, carry all in HD” principle until 2013. (Multichannel News 3/19)

ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA

Big media and Internet companies are driving up the valuations of social networks like MySpace and Facebook. “But that does not mean there is a working revenue model,” according to The Economist. Social networking will become “ubiquitous” and may “never make oodles of money.” (Iwantmedia 3/20, http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10880936  3/19)

 
When AOL bought Bebo for $850 million last week, CEO Randy Falco and COO Ron Grant believed the social network would help save AOL from its downward spiral. Social networks are where pageviews are generated these days, and AOL’s own attempt to turn AOL Instant Messenger into one (via Aim Pages) was a dud on arrival. Bebo, with 22.9 million unique visitors in February and 10.3 billion pageviews (per comScore), was growing and it was for sale. Even though AOL is trying to transform itself into an advertising network, it makes much higher margins on the ads it places on its own pages. The formula for its business is pretty simple: Unique visitors X page views = advertising inventory. If social networks are the future of the Web, AOL needed to own one.  But was Bebo the right one, and did AOL pay too much for it? Those are questions that other AOL executives below Falco and Grant are asking themselves, reports Silicon Alley Insider.  (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/20/smelling-trouble-behind-aols-850-million-bebo-deal  3/20)

Facebook has taken steps to limit application spam numerous times in the past. One of the recent steps they took was to specifically limit the number of daily invitations that users could send out to others - going from a hard cap of 20/day to a variable rate that takes into account the rate of declines by recipients. All of these steps are designed to limit the barrage of messages that the average Facebook user gets asking them to add applications.  The details of the rules seem fairly trivial, but they have a big impact on the third party developers trying to build a business on Facebook. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/19/facebook-playing-favorites-with-app-developers  3/19)

In addition to launching subscription-based, kid safe browser Kidzui, Howard Schultz has Starbucks getting into the social networking craze as well. mystarbucks.com is a place where customers can leave their two cents about what they’d like to see changed in their favorite stores. (Cynopsis, 3/20)

3D avatar creator Big Stage is powering a UGV application to promote Sony BMG’s re-release of Michael Jackson’ Thriller. Users can create a photo-realistic avatar of themselves and insert it into the epic Thriller video. Registration is required to play along. (Cynopsis, 3/20)

 
YouTube co-founder Steve Chen says his video site is not about to help kill off television just yet. “You’re not going to watch a two-hour movie” on a computer screen, he says. Also, YouTube plans to tap into owner Google’s search experience to ensure users find more “customized” content. ((Iwantmedia 3/20, http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23406756-5005961,00.html  3/20)

 
In lieu of the lack of embedding capabilities for its On Demand player, CBSSports.com users will be able to create NCAA highlight mash-ups choosing from a collection of memorable moments. (Cynopsis, 3/20)

 
Apple’s iTunes is issuing credits to its Season Pass subscribers for TV episodes unavailable because of the writers’ strike. Subscribers also will get two credits they can use for any iTunes content. (The Hollywood Reporter 3/20)

 
VC investment in web 2.0 companies reached a record $3.34 billion in 2007 led by Microsoft’s $300 million injection into Facebook, according to a report from Dow Jones VentureSource referenced by RedHerring. In terms of the number of deals, the market is actually cooling off a bit. The number of web 2.0 deals has doubled every year from 2002 to 2006 but only increased by 25% last year to 178. (Cynopsis, 3/20)

 
Venture capital activity in blogs, social networks and other Web 2.0 companies may be peaking, says a report by Dow Jones VentureSource. The pace of deal flow is slowing. “2008 may be a make-or-break year for many Internet companies with business models relying on advertising.” (Iwantmedia 3/20, http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9896632-7.html  3/18)

 
Federated Media, the advertising network serving hundreds of blogs and other Web sites, is said to be close to raising a $30 million round at a $200 million pre-money valuation. Federated is founded by John Battelle, the founder of Industry Standard and cofounder of Wired magazine. (Iwantmedia 3/20, http://venturebeat.com/2008/03/19/ad-newtork-federated-media-close-to-raising-30m-round-valued-at-200m  3/19)

WIRELESS

There is nothing worse than waiting for a mobile browser to fire up on your mobile phone (especially if it’s AT&T). That is why mobile apps customized for your phone still tend to deliver a better experience than going through the browser. Anyone building mobile apps knows this. Cut out any unnecessary steps and lag time, and the usage of your mobile app will go up. The folks on the Google Mobile team live by this rule and have been working hard to make their mobile apps faster (for search, Gmail, Maps). (More at MobileCrunch)  Below is a chart from Google showing how usage of Gmail on the iPhone took off once latency issues were resolved. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/19/google-mobile-learns-the-need-for-speed-but-is-still-not-fast-enough  3/19)

Remember that grand announcement from Verizon Wireless late last year that it was opening up its network? The company disclosed further details of how it plans to do this. Third party device makers who want access to Verizon’s 65 million customers can strike a direct deal with Verizon or buy wholesale minutes/data from the carrier and resell them under their own brand. Verizon has also released technical specs and best practices to guide application developers. (Cynopsis, 3/20)

GAMING

Sony is bringing BD-Live to PlayStation 3 later this month that will make user experiences more interactive. Sony also will enable console owners to copy PS3 photo and music playlists to a PSP. (Pocket-lint.co.uk 3/20, BetaNews 3/19)

MISC

Leave it to Mr. Cuban to be in on FSN Southwest’s broadcast of the first NBA regular season game in 3D HD. The March 25 the contest between Cuban’s Dallas Mavericks and the LA Clippers will be beamed to his Magnolia Theatre in Dallas, where an invitation-only audience will don special glasses provided by PACE Fusion 3D to view the action in 3D HD. (Cynopsis, 3/20)