Daily Marauder

ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA

Time Warner Inc.’s HBO and Apple Inc. Tuesday said they have signed a deal to make HBO programming available for purchase and download from the iTunes Store. (http://www.forbes.com/markets/feeds/afx/2008/05/13/afx5002151.html 5/13)

Image from iTunes

And here’s the Programming/Pricing

The Wire - $1.99 per 1 hour episode

Flight of the Conchords - $1.99 per 30 min episode

Sex and the City - $1.99 per 30 min episode

Rome - $2,99 per 1 hour episode

Deadwood - $2.99 per 1 hour episode

The Sopranos - $2.99 per 1 hour episode

MySpace, Facebook and Google are announcing similar-sounding moves over the past week to open up their sites to external applications. The moves suggest that social-media tools and services will spread throughout the Web, say observers. Social networks will be “like air.” (Iwantmedia 5/13, http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=127012 5/12)

NBC Universal has announced that next month it will create the NBC Digital Health Network, which will allow three Web sites to distribute health-related video segments from NBC News, NBC local stations and Healthology.com. The content will be made available to Web sites Healthline Networks, Your Total Health and RightHealth, which, together, have 27 million unique viewers a month. (ClickZ 5/13)

Last.fm launched a new video channel spotlighting interviews and concert footage of artists such as Moby, Santogold and Spoon. The CBS-owned music community site also announced a partnership with Lollapalooza, the granddaddy of indie music festivals. (Cynopsis 5/13)

The broadcast networks are not the only companies trolling for advertising dollars during the upfronts this week. The new video Web site Hulu, from NBC Universal  and News Corp., is throwing itself a party to highlight its stable of television content and entice advertisers. (Iwantmedia 5/13, http://tvdecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/12/upfronts-hulu-wants-that-loving-feeling 5/12)

Twitter is an efficient technology for spreading and harvesting concise ideas. Unfortunately, it’s not so great for sharing rich media. Want to broadcast a video? You’ll have to settle for a TinyURL to YouTube, or maybe switch over to Seesmic altogether. Pownce improves on the Twitter model by supporting file transfers and at least one new data type: the structured event. It also appears to be evolving into a better system for trading music, possibly with a full-featured music player.But if music is indeed a significant part of Pownce’s future, then Blip is one step ahead. Call it “Twitter for Music” since it’s essentially just that: a way to suggest music and share your thoughts about it with a network of contacts. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/12/twitter-for-music 5/12)

In other NBCU upfront news, mun2 put a multiplatform spin on its presentation announcing year-to-year increases of holamun2.com including +138% in unique visitors and +95% in total usage, according to Omniture. The network hopes to spark more cross platform creativity such as the magazine show HolaMun2.com: El Show, which became the highest rated premiere in the channel’s history. A new quiz show called You Said What? will poll users online and on mobile devices and utilize their response on air. (Cynopsis 5/13)

Buoyed by early success with shows such as Lunchbox, IFC.com is pledging to launch at least one new original web series a month throughout the summer with a line up of commissioned and acquired fare. IFC.com’s “cyber season” includes the Australian cult hit series, Wilfred about a pot-smoking dog; a third season of Young American Bodies, a co-production of IFC and Nerve.com; as well as Good Morning Internet!, a morning parody show from the creators of Hipster Olympics. (Cynopsis 5/13)

Wilfred

Strangely enough, I think this series is pretty great.  Maybe it’s just the Australian accents. . .

Whether actors must give consent for snippets of their video work to be displayed online is the No. 1 disputed issue cited by the Screen Actors Guild after labor talks broke down last week. Studios want to pay actors a flat fee to distribute clips of television shows and movies. (Iwantmedia 5/13, http://www.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idUSN1233346620080512 5/12)

Scientists working for The Walt Disney Co. will begin measuring viewers’ biometric responses to advertising on platforms such as the Internet, mobile phones and high-definition TV. The studies will use programming from ESPN and ABC and will measure things such as heart rate, skin conductivity and eye activity. (International Herald Tribune/Associated Press 5/13)

Clear Channel is negotiating with Pandora to offer the company’s customized radio service across all its Web properties nationwide. Pandora is a personalized Internet radio service that helps users find new music based on their old and current favorites. (Iwantmedia 5/13, http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i595b48df06c95e2e82ee2ef140401133 5/12)

As television, newspapers and other media are digitized and move to the Internet, Google’s advertising system will become the financial platform on which many of these businesses depend, according to industry observers. Google is “sitting on a goldmine.” Its momentum “seems unstoppable.” (Iwantmedia 5/13, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ae08cfd8-2051-11dd-80b4-000077b07658.html 5/12)

Google extended its video market share lead to 38% thanks to the more than 4.3 billion videos viewed on YouTube during March, according to comScore’s Video Metrix. U.S. Internet users viewed 11.5 billion online videos during the month, representing a 13% gain versus February and a 64% gain versus March 2007. (Cynopsis 5/13)

Top U.S. Online Video Properties by Videos Viewed - March 2008
Total U.S. - Home/Work/University Locations
Property                       Videos(000)     Share (%) of Videos
Google Sites                   4,358,306              38.0
Fox Interactive Media         477,621               4.2
Yahoo! Sites                     328,087               2.9
Viacom Digital                    249,285               2.2
Microsoft Sites                  245,453               2.1
Time Warner - Excl. AOL     159,009               1.4
Disney Online                    108,055                0.9
ABC.COM                         100,051                0.9
AOL LLC                          100,044                0.9
ESPN                                89,760                0.8
Total Internet              11,476,886              100.0
Source: comScore Video Metrix