Filed under: BROADCAST/CABLE | Tags: Cable television, Disney-ABC Domestic Television, JackNicholson, John Updike, News Corporation, Sundance Channel, Wall Street Journal, Witches of Eastwick
Sundance Channel picked up the British comedy series Pulling and will add it to the Sunday night comedy block starting October 19 at 9p. The six-episode series is about a 29-year woman who decides on the eve of her wedding to skip getting married, opting instead to move in with her wild partying single girlfriends. (Cynopsis 8/12)
NBC is in development on a new 30m comedy called Mogulettes about twentysomething female tycoons, reports Variety. The project is written by Plum Sykes and Amy Harris and Charlie Corwin will produce. (Cynopsis 8/12)
ABC gave its approval for a put pilot order for an updated version of The Witches of Eastwick based on a variation of the 1987 flick which was in turn based on the John Updike novel, per Variety. (Cynopsis 8/12)
Ah, Cher. Only you can get hair a full foot off of your head. . . Love it.
A rift is developing among the major media companies over releasing movies through video-on-demand on the same day DVDs go on sale. Time Warner and Sony support such a move; Viacom and News Corp. oppose it. Some say the switch would be “a grave mistake.” (Iwantmedia 8/12, http://www.nypost.com/seven/08122008/business/studios_vod_day_124073.htm 8/12)
Despite a parched economy and a dry advertising-sales environment, Discovery Communications took in a steady stream of new ad revenue in the second quarter. The company reported a 9% bump in U.S. ad sales during the period, which helped fuel a 10% overall increase in the company’s revenue, to $863 million. “It’s a testament to the growth prospects for cable networks,” said Rich Greenfield, an analyst at Pali Capital. “They’re attracting more and more eyeballs.” The Wall Street Journal (8/12)
ESPN’s now iconic “SportsCenter” on Monday introduced its new morning look: six hours of fresh news beginning at 9 a.m. Eastern time, which replaces repeat programming. Mark Gross, ESPN’s managing editor of studio production, said fans shouldn’t stress about the show’s format changing: “Is it going to be different? Yes. Is it going to be dramatically different? No. It’s still going to be scores and highlights,” he said. The Hollywood Reporter (8/11)
Charter Communications, the country’s third-largest cable TV provider, has struck a video-on-demand deal with Disney-ABC Domestic Television. The service costs subscribers just under $5 per month and will initially include movies such as “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids,” “Air Buddies,” “Disney Princess Enchanted Tales” and “Geppetto.” American City Business Journals/Los Angeles (8/11)
EchoStar has signed an agreement with CableLabs that will allow the former Dish Network unit to develop set-top boxes and other two-way digital-cable devices that use tru2way protocols. The wording of the agreement leaves it open as to whether the devices developed by EchoStar will be marketed to cable companies or directly to consumers. Light Reading (8/11)
Filed under: ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA | Tags: AOL, Bebo, Facebook, Facebook World Tour, Friendster, Myspace, Social network service, Time Warner
ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA
Call it the Facebook World Tour. Even though Facebook is now the largest social network in the world,—with 132 million unique visitors in June—it is also still the fastest growing.
(At least among the major social networks). According to figures compiled by comScore, Facebook’s visitor growth is up 153 percent on an annual basis. This compares to anemic 3 percent growth for MySpace. Other social networks showing strong global growth include Hi5 (100 percent) and Friendster (50 percent), despite each of those being less than half the size of Facebook. Orkut and Bebo fall in at 41 percent and 32 percent growth, respectively. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/12/facebook-is-not-only-the-worlds-largest-social-network-it-is-also-the-fastest-growing 8/12)
NBC continues to break records with its exhaustive digital coverage of the Olympics. NBCOlympics.com delivered 1 million + streams of Sunday night’s 4 x 100 swimming relay, making it the most watched video ever from the site. NBCOlympics.com’s total video streams to date are 11.1 million, five times more than the total for the entire Athens Games (2.2 million). (Cynopsis 8/12)
Comcast’s G4 network is making its X-Play Weekly video game review show available for download at the Xbox Live Video store beginning Thursday. G4′s Code Monkeys, The Block and Attack of the Show are also available on the platform. (Cynopsis 8/12)
John Malone says he is open to discussing a deal to swap Liberty Media’s stake in Time Warner for the media conglomerate’s AOL dial-up Internet business. “Clearly an exit from the Time Warner equity state into a cash-generating asset would be attractive.” (Iwantmedia 8/12, http://www.reuters.com/article/industryNews/idUSN1135103320080811 8/11)
Picking up on the Flickr craze web-based photo sharing service Shutterfly is expanding its social networking capabilities. Shutter Fly Share Sites allow users to set up their own URLs and provide tools to enhance their ability to tell stories with their pictures. Calendars, weather information, polls and events can be added to the shareable multimedia photo books. (Cynopsis 8/12)
Revision3 is launching an incubator project to help discover and develop budding web talent, per TV Week. Revision3 Beta will launch with about a half-dozen host-driven nonfiction shows including one centering around money and finance. (Cynopsis 8/12)
Mog, a platform for music blogs with backing from Universal and Sony BMG, is launching an ad network dubbed MOG Music Network. In conjunction with the announcement, MOG is also adding experienced record producer Rick Rubin to its Board of Directors. MOG Music Network will allow partner blogs to embed widgets that display content from other blogs, and will also allow bloggers to have their own posts syndicated to Mog.com. The network will also allow bloggers to customize the ads that appear on their sites, and to generate revenues greater than what they’d get from a typical ad network like Google AdSense. Partners will be able to participate in a 50/50 rev share agreement on a CPM basis. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/11/mog-launches-ad-network-columbia-records-exec-joins-board 8/11)
Digital distribution specialist New Video Digital announced it has acquired the rights to more than 5,000 hours of indie content from over 85 different content owners. New Video acts as a middleman for filmmakers, working with distributors like Apple to help producers maximize sales by improving their placement on the iTunes portal. (Cynopsis 8/12)
Several Internet companies are acknowledging using targeted-advertising technology without informing customers, according to letters released by the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee. Google states that it has begun using tracking technology to follow Web surfers. (Iwantmedia 8/12, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/11/AR2008081102270.html 8/12)
Broadband internet subscriber growth fell to its lowest level in 7 years according to Leichtman Research Group. The top 20 MSOs and telco providers added just 887,000 net high-speed subscribers during the quarter ending June 30, half of their growth rate in Q2 of 2007. Top cable companies added some 670,000 new subs, representing 76% of the growth. (Cynopsis 8/12)
NBC Olympics.com and Yahoo.com are proving to be the go-to places to view Olympics content online so far, according to a new custom Netview report from Nielsen Online. On the video side, NBCOlympics.com saw a steady increase of visitors to its video portal, increasing from just 36,000 on Aug. 7 to 436,000 on the 8th then 858,000 on Aug. 9. (Cynopsis 8/12)
Unique Audience (in 000′s) to Olympics-related Sites, ranked by UA on August 9, 2008
Name August 6 August 7 August 8 August 9
NBC Olympics 841 1,392 2,664 4,008
Yahoo Olympics 1,505 1,430 1,477 3,324
AOL Olympics 511 718 395 1,010
Beijing2008.cn 39 114 429 780
NYTimes Olympics 432 369 341 466
ESPN Olympics 196 80 273 343
USA Today Olympics 34 55 280 184
Olympics.org NA* 10 16 153
BBC Olympics 33 27 97 128
SI Olympics NA* 15 45 112
Source: Nielsen Online, NetView Custom Analysis
*Not reportable for daily data
Filed under: WIRELESS | Tags: Handhelds, iPhone, iPod Touch, LG, LG Group, Samsung Group, Smartphones, Wireless network
The much anticipated DataCase application for the iPhone launched this morning. The app, which costs $6.99, turn your iPhone into an easy-to-use wireless storage device that can be access by any other device on your wireless network. A one way drop box can be added to a normal machine to drop files onto the iPhone, or alternatively you can set up a two-way shared drive to move files between the iPhone and a computer. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/12/datacase-launches-turn-the-iphone-into-a-wireless-drive 8/12)
DataCase Demo Video
Strategy Analytics reports that the popularity of touch-screen phones has helped LG expand its U.S. market share. The company has replaced Samsung as the second-largest maker of handsets for the U.S. Financial Times (8/11)
Yahoo unveiled a mobile version of its fantasy football portal offering the ability to set your line-ups, receive injury updates and make last-minute roster changes. Yahoo’s PC-based Fantasy Football app also added some new goodies including a new draft application featuring a drag-and-drop queue and audio alerts. (Cynopsis 8/12)
Filed under: TECHNOLOGY | Tags: Apple, Carnegie Mellon University, iPhone, iPod Touch, MacBook, Steve Jobs, University of California, University of California Berkeley
TECHNOLOGY
Trend experts foresee smaller MacBooks and a revamped iPod Touch and predict that Apple may release the products as soon as next month. Analysts also say the company is readying touch-screen features for its laptops that will use iPhone technology. InfoWorld/IDG News Service (8/11)
INVISIBILITY devices, long the realm of science fiction and fantasy, have moved closer after scientists engineered a material that can bend visible light around objects. The breakthrough could lead to systems for rendering anything from people to large objects, such as tanks and ships, invisible to the eye – although this is still years off. Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley, whose work is funded by the American military, have engineered materials that can control light’s direction of travel. The world’s two leading scientific journals, Science and Nature, are expected to report the results this week. (http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article4494440.ece 8/10)
Disney is teaming with Carnegie Mellon University to form a research and development lab for the media conglomerate’s theme parks, television networks and animation studios. Disney plans a similar lab setup at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. (Iwantmedia 8/12, http://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/stories/2008/08/11/daily6.html 8/11)
