Daily Marauder

ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA

NBC Universal’s Olympic Games promotional plan for affiliates includes spots in 20 markets starring local Olympians, a free-video-on-demand campaign, both in advance of and during the event, 2,000 hours of live content on broadband, with placement available on individual station sites and on-air, direct mail and bill stuffers to tout HDTV ad sales. (Multichannel News 6/11, Broadcasting & Cable 6/11)

A Piper Jaffray analyst painted three possible pictures for the revenue for Apple’s new iPhone App store, saying the market could be as low as $416 million in a worst-case scenario to as high as $1.2 billion if iPhone users spend an average of $15 a year downloading two applications. But skeptics say Apple will price the games much lower than many observers anticipate. (InformationWeek 6/11)

Google should be seen by media companies as an ally that is trying to make advertising work on the Internet, says CEO Eric Schmidt. “It’s a huge moral imperative to help here.” Google’s goal “isn’t to monetize everything. The goal is to change the world. . We don’t have an evil meter.” (Iwantmedia 6/12, http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9966236-7.html 6/11)

Hmm.  Perhaps the TV networks have finally figured out that Google could potentially be the next online TV network?

Google CEO Eric Schmidt speaks in San Francisco.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News.com)

Martha Stewart’s Video Podcasts reached #1 on iTunes during their first day on the platform. The company is delivering about 2 hours of ad supported content (in 27 segments), all selected to tie-in to seasonal themes. The segments are also offered on the Martha Stewart On Demand service, currently available in 13 million Comcast and Cox digital homes. (Cynopsis 6/12)

Starting June 16th, for eight straight weeks, Hulu will be premiering TV shows and full-length movies daily in a campaign called “The Hulu Days of Summer.” (Iwantmedia 6/12, http://popwatch.ew.com/popwatch/2008/06/hulu-days-of-su.html 6/10)

Angel premieres on Hulu 6/23.  Hulu is becoming more of a TV network every day.  Interesting. . .

Online auction house eBay is shutting down its Internet-based system for buying and selling television and radio ads. The 1-year-old system won little support from the cable networks, which mostly stayed away fearing the process would cheapen the value of their ads. (Iwantmedia 6/12, http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/media/e3i95a8c8893ac9738a77d4f8849f19c1b0 6/11)

Microsoft’s Office Labs team, a testbed for ideas from company employees, is testing a Facebook-like social network to help employees keep tabs on each other. The network, called TownSquare, is intended to operate as an internal service within a company. (Iwantmedia 6/12, http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Messaging-and-Collaboration/Microsoft-Goes-Facebook-on-its-Employees 6/11)

Michael Eisner’s latest web project Foreign Body, meant to be a prequel leading up to the latest Robin Cook novel, is nearly DOA, points out Silicon Alley Insider, racking up only 140,000 views since launching May 27 according to Tube Mogul. That’s hardly enough to justify its $500,000 budget. (Cynopsis 6/12)

Why buy the Weather Channel? News Corp.’s Fox Interactive Media is launching Fox Weather, at weather.fox.com, a Web site with social tools intended to help build a network of amateur weather watchers. Users can register profiles and write blogs and post photos and videos. (Iwantmedia 6/12, http://mashable.com/2008/06/11/fox-weather 6/11)

Video-based Entertainment Shares by Platform 2008, U.S. Online 12+
Platform                        % of total viewing
TV (cable/DBS/OTA)               63.9%
Video Games                         13.0%
PC Video                              10.3%
DVDs                                    7.2%
Video on personal devices        3.9%
Video on cell phones                1.7%
Source: SRC