Filed under: BROADCAST/CABLE | Tags: Arts, Chris Lilley, HBO, Hills, MTV, MTV.com, Summer Heights High, Television
Monday’s episode of MTV’s “The Hills” pulled in an average 4.8 million total viewers, its biggest audience ever, according to Nielsen. The following day, the episode was downloaded 1.8 million times at MTV.com. The New York Times/Reuters/The Hollywood Reporter (3/27)
For the full season 3 premiere, click below.
HBO picked up the Australian comedy series Summer Heights High, an eight-episode mocumentary which will join the late-night Friday comedy block this June. Created, written and performed by comedian Chris Lilley, Summer Heights High depicts high school through three characters all played by Lilley: a flighty drama teacher, a snooty female exchange student and a break-dance loving delinquent. The twist of this series is that it was shot on location at a real high school with actual students and faculty interacting with Lilley’s characters. Also joining the HBO’s late-night Friday block will be the new animated comedy The Life and Times of Tim, produced by MRC, about an ordinary guy whose instincts keep him on the wrong path. (Cynopsis, 3/27, The Hollywood Reporter 3/26)
Summer Heights High
Discovery Channel begins the first of six new episodes of Man vs. Wild on May 2 at 9p. Adventurer Bear Grylls is back for the second season taking on the Siberian Tundra, flash floods in Southern Africa to an earthquake prone region of Indonesia. The series is produced by Diverse Productions. (Cynopsis, 3/27)
Man vs. Wild: To Pee or Not to Pee
The broadcast networks, ramping up production following the Hollywood writers’ strike, are finding that most of the 10 comedies and dramas launched in the last three months — such as NBC’s high-profile Internet pickup “quarterlife” — are striking out with viewers. (Iwantmedia.com 3/27, http://www.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idUSN2745783820080327 3/27)
NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker is said to be appearing in an on-air promo slated to air April 3 before the return of NBC’s “My Name is Earl.” In it, “JZ,” as he calls himself, offers a recap of the show’s fall season, as well as some zingers about the Hollywood writers’ strike. (Iwantmedia.com 3/27, http://www.deadlinehollywooddaily.com/has-nbc-unis-jeff-zucker-lost-his-mind 3/26)
Apparently, Zucker has lost all touch with reality. This promo seems more like a local insurance commercial rather than a network promo. Dear Mr. Media Executive, Please let the actors do their jobs while you continue to do yours. Things get all murky when y’all think you can act.
ABC socked away two more pilots. The first is an untitled comedy from Dave Hemingson produced by 20th Century Fox TV about a young law school graduate with a middle-class background who goes to work for a boutique firm in Los Angeles. The other pilot is Prince of Motor City produced by ABC Studios from Jessica Goldberg and Hamish Linklater. Prince is a take-off of Shakespeare’s Hamlet set in Detroit’s auto industry. (Cynopsis, 3/27)
Comedy Central ordered two new series that had appeared on its recently announced development slate: David Alan Grier’s Chocolate News and Reality Bites. (Cynopsis, 3/27)
FX made a preemptive offer for 15 theatrical titles from Universal, many of which have not yet been released. Titles include The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, Wanted, Hellboy II: The Golden Army and Leatherheads. The license fee for the four year package will end up at a minimum of $115 million, based on the total domestic box office receipts. Universal retains the rights to carve out a separate broadcast license deal as well as another cable license deal. Additionally, Universal granted FX free VOD rights to the movies for a set period during the four-year term. (Cynopsis 3/27, Variety 3/26)
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
Just days after several top cable firms accused Verizon of improperly contacting customers after they agreed to try the cable companies’ VoIP services, Verizon has asked the FCC to force cable companies to immediately disconnect their customers if they switch to the telecom’s video offerings. But NCTA Vice President of Communications Brian Dietz said, “Verizon’s fairy tale complaint is a lame attempt to deflect criticism from its years-long illegal practice of misusing proprietary information to prevent consumers from switching to a new phone provider.” The (Washington Post 3/27)
Filed under: ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA | Tags: Amazon MP3, David Pakman, Digital rights management, DRM, EMI, EMusic, ITunes Store, Warner Music Group
ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA
Amazon‘s DRM-free music sales outlet Amazon MP3 overtook eMusic as the #2 online music outlet and is now second only to iTunes just 6 months after launching, reports USA Today. Amazon has deals in place with Warner Music, Sony/BMG and Universal, offering a catalog of about 4.5 million DRM free songs. Apple, which still controls 80% of the digital download market, offers about 2 million DRM free tracks, including EMI and indie labels, according to the article. eMusic CEO David Pakman disputes the findings in his company’s blog, 17dots. (Cynopsis Digital, 3/27, USA TODAY 3/25)
Forget the traditional radio premiere: R.E.M.’s new album, “Accelerate,” debuted on the social networking application iLike. The roll-out, the first of its kind for a major act, will allow fans to stream and share “Accelerate” in its entirety beginning March 24, a week ahead of the album’s April 1 release date.
I will say this, finding the album on iLike was not as easy as clicking my heels together and googling “R.E.M. Accelerate.” Instead, I had to google “R.E.M.” and “iLike” which seems to demonstrate that I, the typical music fan, would need to remember where exactly I had heard the album was debuting one week early. Hmmm. This R.E.M. album is an interesting temptation back to the sound of their past. It’s the end of the world as we know it and frankly that’s alright with me.
Shares of Google declined after a report by comScore showed slower growth in the number of people clicking on Internet advertisements in February, the second straight month of disappointing results. Google got about 99% of its $16.6 billion in sales last year from online ads. (Iwantmedia.com 3/27, http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601204&sid=amGIKMv25vHI 3/27)
Barack Obama sure knows how to capitalize on his celebrity fame in order to fundraise for his campaign. Anyone who makes a donation from now until 11:59 EST on Monday March 31st will be entered into a sweepstakes to have dinner with the candidate. The contribution amount does not matter. One entry per donation.
YouTube has rolled out a new tool designed to help content producers, advertisers and media planners analyze viewer traffic. The free YouTube Insight provides metrics on the popularity and effectiveness of clips or ads and offers publishers specific data such as days when traffic spikes, U.S. states that demand the most streaming or the duration when a clip remains popular. (Mediaweek 3/27, The Wall Street Journal 3/27)
(Below) Glad to see Comcast finally trying to attack the problem by working with the network rather than against it. VERY impressive new strategy by a generally conservative distributor. Props Comcast. Props.
Comcast and file-sharing firm BitTorrent have entered into an agreement to work together on issues related to management of online traffic. Executives hope the collaboration results in BitTorrent’s technology running more efficiently on Comcast’s broadband network and enabling Comcast to handle higher numbers of video files, particularly during peak usage times. (The Wall Street Journal 3/27)
As Techcrunch alluded to in an earlier post, online photo-editing applications keep getting better as the competition heats up between startups like Picnik and FotoFlexer. Today, a very large competitor, Adobe, is entering the market by releasing a Web-based version of Photoshop for editing pictures called Photoshop Express. It is in public beta and anyone can sign up. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/26/adobe-unveils-webtop-version-of-photoshop-picnik-is-not-scared 3/26)
April 1st marks the kick off of a new season of Sundance Channel‘s The Green block, but viewers can get a free sneak peek of the documentary series Big Ideas for a Small Planet on iTunes this week. Subsequent episodes go on sale for $1.99 a day after they air. (Cynopsis Digital, 3/27)
Former AOL directors Laurence Hooper and Dan Goodman are launching a new venture on Facebook. Their startup, Loladex, is a local search engine that uses recommendations and ratings from online social networking platforms to return more specific results. (Iwantmedia.com 3/27, http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/stories/2008/03/24/daily32.html 3/26)
I like the functionality of the application but I’m just wondering if anyone thinks about the design element here. Can’t anyone apart from iLike design an application that’s pleasurable to look at? One other thing about Loladex that needs to be fixed: the application lists restaurants as my recommendations on my Mini-Feed even if I give a restaurant a thumbs down.
It takes either a very brave or very foolish company to enter the browser wars. But that is exactly what AT&T is doing—in a small way. I was just shown a demo for Pogo, a 3D browser based on Mozilla that is in private beta (we should be getting invites in a couple weeks). It is a project that comes out AT&T’s business development group and Vizible, a Toronto-based company whose 3-D rendering engine gives Pogo a very different look than other browsers. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/26/att-is-working-on-its-own-3d-browser-pogo-what-are-they-thinking 3/26)
Guinness World Records TV, already available on YouTube and Joost, added channels on Dailymotion and Veoh this week. Plans include launching language specific channels with the platforms. (Cynopsis Digital, 3/27)
ROO Group signed a deal to integrate Viewdle‘s white-label facial recognition search software into its media player environment. The software will be able to search faces instead of just metadata tags. (Cynopsis Digital, 3/27)
Online video views recovered in February, according to the latest Nielsen VideoCensus results. A total of 115.8 million users (down from 116.7 million in Jan.) watched 6.3 million streams (compared to 5.9 million last month.) YouTube increased its share of worldwide videos served on the web significantly. The sites were responsible for 2.9 million videos (48.5% of all videos, compared to 42.9% last month) and 70 million of the web’s 115.8 million unique video viewers. (Cynopsis Digital, 3/27)
Top Brands by Video Streams for Feb. 2008
Name Total Streams (000) Unique Viewers (000)
YouTube 2,918,799 70,222
Fox Interactive Media 405,996 21,028
Yahoo! 244,784 21,220
MSN/WindowsLive 163,812 9,323
Nickelodeon Kids & Family 155,961 5,769
Google 122,948 18.638
Disney Online 121,933 9,606
Turner Entertainment New Media 96,991 6,850
ESPN 84,053 4,464
AOL Media Network 81,537 11,469
Source: Nielsen Online VideoCensus
Filed under: WIRELESS
Motorola introduced six new products and technologies Wednesday, including its first mobile TV with a touchscreen interface. Dubbed the Mobile TV DH02, the phone cannot actually access digital-TV signals until U.S. regulators allocate spectrum for the broadcasts, but Motorola is confident a standard will emerge by early next year. (Computerworld 3/26)
WiMax is going nowhere fast but that is not stopping a consortium of cable and tech companies from considering a plan to invest $3 billion more into a proposed bailout-through-merger of Sprint Nextel’s WiMax business (known as Xohm) and Craig McCaw’s Clearwire. The consortium that is reportedly being put together would include Comcast ($1 billion), Intel ($1 billion), Time Warner Cable ($500 million), Bright House Networks and Google ($500 million). (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/26/why-cable-and-wimax-shouldnt-mix 3/26)
Filed under: GAMING
Grand Theft Auto game publisher Take-Two Interactive recommended to its shareholders to reject Electronic Arts‘ $2 billion takeover offer, complaining it undervalues the company. Consensus is that Take-Two is trying to bide time until Grand Theft Auto IV hits stores on April 29; the gleefully violent first-person shooting game is one of the industry’s best selling titles. (Cynopsis Digital, 3/27)
Grand Theft Auto IV from Take-Two Interactive
Sony Computer Entertainment Europe has warned of a possible breach of its online PlayStation Store that could allow computer hackers access to users’ personal information, but not their credit card numbers. In a statement posted on the Web site, Sony said it was unlikely but “possible that the passwords of a small percentage of PlayStation Network users may have been changed through unauthorized access.” (GameDaily BIZ 3/26)
