Daily Marauder

ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA

CBS says it raked in $23 million in ad revenue from streaming March Madness this year and that CBS Radio’s online revenue grew to $30 million in 2007. Interestingly 92% of the tournament games were viewed at the workplace, according to Nielsen. (Cynopsis 4/30)

Barry Diller’s Internet company IAC/InterActiveCorp says first-quarter profit dropped 13%, but sales rose more than analysts expected. The results indicate most of IAC’s divisions are performing well as Diller prepares to break the company into five independent businesses. (Iwantmedia 4/30, http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601204&sid=aaOiow_O0QQk 4/30)

The BBC has won rave reviews and a loyal following for its iPlayer catch-up service launched last Christmas in the UK. The BBC says 42 million shows have been viewed so far. (iPlayer has been so successful that it’s being blamed for slowing down ISPs in the UK, but that’s another story.) Now complete episodes of BBC programming are finally available digitally in the U.S. on ITunes, under the BBC America shingle. Robin Hood, Torchwood and Little Britain are currently available as single episodes or complete seasons, with more shows to come in the near future. (Cynopsis 4/30)

Microsoft is expected to make its next move in the three-month-old takeover standoff with Yahoo as early as Wednesday, as the two sides have failed to reach any negotiated acquisition deal. One option is nominating a proxy slate of directors to replace Yahoo’s board. (Iwantmedia 4/30, http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB120952733890355585.html 4/30)

Google and YouTube are announcing plans to hold a U.S. presidential forum in New Orleans in September. The forum will be a “live televised discussion.” Using YouTube’s video platform and Google’s technologies, Americans will be able to “engage in the discussion in important ways.” (Iwantmedia 4/30, http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2008/04/29/google-youtube-plan-presidential-forum 4/29)

Speculation about Twitter’s new round of financing is leading everyone to speculate on Twitter’s actual penetration into the “mainstream,” or lack thereof.  Hitwise says web visits have increased 8x in the last year, albeit from a minuscule base. Compete shows about 900,000 U.S. monthly website visitors. Comscore puts the worldwide number at 1.3 million unique monthly visitors in March.  None of that data is particularly useful, since so much of the action on Twitter occurs via mobile phones, instant messaging and desktop clients like Alert Thingy, MySocial24×7 and Twhirl. Many of Twitter’s most active users rarely visit the website.  The key measure of Twitter usage is total users, total active users and total messages sent. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/29/end-of-speculation-the-real-twitter-usage-numbers 4/29)

Universal Music Investments, Sony BMG Music Investments and The Angels Forum 74 have invested $2.8 million into Berkeley, CA-based Mog, reports VentureBeat, nearly doubling its total capital intake. With the tagline “Where Bad Music Comes to Die,” Mog is another music discovery service (Imeem, Last.fm) that scans users’ hard drives for content to share, aggregating MP3s, news, reviews, and music videos. (Cynopsis 4/30)

Google Maps has integrated Street View imagery into its driving directions functionality. In the 44 cities where Street View is available, users can click on a camera icon to see a visual of what each step in their journey will look like. (Cynopsis 4/30)

Advertising execs need to embrace the changes in media, says Google CEO Eric Schmidt, speaking at the American Association of Advertising Agencies conference. Another speaker, TBWA chief Lee Clow, advises the 380 attendees to “stop whining” and “start hiring young people.” (Iwantmedia 4/30, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/30/business/media/30adco.html?_r=1&oref=slogin 4/30)

Video may be the next content revolution on the Web, but it is still unclear how to sell it best to advertisers, say media and Internet execs. With major television networks, advertisers have a sense of scarcity. But online, thousands of choices are said to produce “the opposite effect.” (Iwantmedia 4/30, http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9931592-7.html 4/29)

The World Wide Web is still in its infancy, says its British inventor, Tim Berners-Lee, on the 15th anniversary of the Web’s effective launch. He predicts that the Web could one day be used to help manage the planet. Every user will have access to “all the data in the world.” (Iwantmedia 4/30, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7371660.stm 4/30)

Tim Berners-Lee developed the web while working at Cern.

(Below) Wow. This show scares me. So reminiscent of college radio. . .and not in that cool independent kind of way.  More like an awkward train wreck begging for someone to hit the close button.

A little confused about the whole social networking thing? Check out Social Brew, Revision3’s latest internet series featuring news, reviews and how-to’s for all the leading platforms. It’s hosted by Irene McGee, creator of No One’s Listening. (Cynopsis 4/30)

A “$10 million Viacom offer” is rumored to be “floating around” Hype Machine (hypem.com), a Web site that aggregates music uploaded to blogs. Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures once described Hype Machine as “the best thing to happen to music since the Rolling Stones.” (Iwantmedia 4/30, http://valleywag.com/385323/viacom-offers-10-million-to-buy-music-blog-aggregator-hype-machine 4/29)

IPTV platform Babelgum signed one of its biggest content deals to date, securing over a 100 hours of PBS programming for U.S. distribution including the award winning Empires series. Babelgum also launched an international PBS channel featuring 18 episodes of Scientific American Frontiers. (Cynopsis 4/30)

Top Visited US Broadcast Network TV Show Sites (Week ending April 26, 2008)
Rank     Network     Website                          Market Share of Visits
1          FOX         American Idol                              26.10%
2          NBC         Deal or No Deal                            7.77%
3          CBS         Big Brother 9                                7.68%
4          CBS         Survivor: Micronesia                      7.15%
5          ABC         Dancing with the Stars                   7.15%
6          FOX         America’s Most Wanted                  4.33%
7          ABC         Lost                                              2.45%
8          NBC         The Office                                      2.04%
9          ABC         The Bachelor                                  1.75%
10         ABC         Grey’s Anatomy                              1.72%
Source: Custom report from Hitwise

Top Visited US Broadcast Network TV Websites (Week ending April 26, 2008)
Rank     Network     Website                          Market Share of Visits
1          ABC       www.abc.com 24.81%
2          CBS       www.cbs.com 24.70%
3          FOX*     www.fox.com 24.43%
4          NBC       www.nbc.com 17.86%
5        The CW   www.cwtv.com 7.60%
6          MNT      www.mynetworktv.com .60%
Source: Custom report from Hitwise, *includes traffic aggregated from stand alone websites americanidol.com, amw.com, familyguy.com, thelot.com and thesimpsons.com.