Filed under: BROADCAST/CABLE | Tags: ABC Family, Bravo, Food Network, Million Dollar Listing, NBC Universal, Orange County California, Real Housewives of Orange County, Time Warner
Tuesday’s second season conclusion of Bravo’s Million Dollar Listing at 10p pulled in 949,000 A18-49 viewers and 1.27 million total viewers. (Cynopsis 9/11)
Also on Tuesday, ABC Family polished off the last episode of its freshman midseason series, The Secret Life of the American Teenager at 8p, delivering 1.3 million W18-34 viewers, 1.7 million A18-34 viewers, 3.0 million P12-34 viewers and 4.5 million total viewers. Twelve new episodes of the series will return to ABC Family next January. (Cynopsis 9/11)
Last Saturday’s premiere of “The Locator” on WE tv notched a 0.98 household rating at 9 p.m. and a second installment a half-hour later garnered a 1.08, according to Nielsen data. That performance marks the female-focused network’s best series premiere ever. Multichannel News (9/10)
Bravo has started assembling a cast of 18- to 25-year-old Orange County, Calif., denizens to star in a reality series that will begin shooting this fall, according to this report. The potential show theoretically would attract a younger demographic than the network’s popular “The Real Housewives of Orange County.” The Hollywood Reporter (9/11)
Time Warner is unlikely to acquire NBC Universal after the media giant spins off its cable unit, according to CFO John Martin. Time Warner will maintain a certain “level of discipline” to acquisitions, he says, appearing to dismiss speculation that the company is eyeing NBC. (Iwantmedia 9/11, http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6594900.html 9/10)
Food Network will debut The Chef Jeff Project on October 12 at 10p, offering viewers a new type of reality cooking show. Under the tutelage of Chef Jeff Henderson, a former prison inmate now executive chef, six troubled young adults will learn how to cook and help Jeff run his new Los Angeles-based catering company. Each episode follows Jeff as he teaches these young adults the ins and outs of food and life skills. (Cynopsis 9/11)
Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse, the midseason drama series for FOX and produced by 20th TV, closed down production for two weeks to work on scripts, per THR. After finishing the third episode, creator/executive producer Whedon decided the upcoming scripts needed time for rewrites. (Cynopsis 9/11)
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Filed under: ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA | Tags: AOL, Google, Google Content Network, Myspace, Seth MacFarlane, Time Warner, World Wide Web, YouTube
ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA
MySpace yesterday announced that it would allow users to finally upload videos directly to the site. According to the company, users can hook up a camcorder, go to MySpace TV
, and click the “Record” button to record a video to the site on-the-fly. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/11/myspace-will-allow-direct-uploads-but-is-it-too-late 9/11)
Seth McFarlane’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy is up and running with cheeky take offs on $25,000 Pyramid and Super Mario Bros. – the first major programming effort of the Google Content Network. The plan is to freely distribute a total of 50 shorts, each with an animated ad as a pre-roll such as the BK spot in this week, across thousands of websites that match his target demo. Each time someone watches a video on any site, the sponsor pays a fee shared between McFarlane, Google and production partner Media Rights and the site the video is actually seen on. Seth is also guest editor of YouTube this week. (Cynopsis 9/11)
Amazon has again announced that it will start selling US-produced wine to its American customers by the beginning of October. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/11/amazon-is-getting-into-the-alcohol-business 9/11)
Google fell to $414.16, the lowest in six months, after Time Warner said some Internet advertising sales are slowing. Waning growth at the AOL network, which buys and sells ads on third-party Web sites, may hamper Time Warner in meeting sales goals, says CFO John Martin. (Iwantmedia 9/11, http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601204&sid=awgc4_H_Gr1g 9/10)
Google repeatedly says it has no interest in rolling out a broadband service. But its actions may speak otherwise. The search giant is one of several new investors in 03b, a satellite-based broadband provider. Still, several analysts doubt that Google wants to “own or manage the pipes.” (Iwantmedia 9/11, http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/09/will-google-eve.html 8/9)
Hollywood producer Rob Fried (Rudy, Collateral) launched SpiritClips, a video greeting card site featuring professionally-produced 3-5 minute shorts that can be purchased for viewing or sharing on an a la carte ($1 each) or subscription basis. The site also invites people to submit their own inspirational stories online, which the SpiritClips team will consider for themes of future SpiritClips films. Watch Sally, starring Nancy Travis as a harried diner waitress, for free – it’s quite well done. (Cynopsis 9/11)
Bebo founder Michael Birch is teaming with TV producer Edward Baker on his next project. Wordia.com, sort of a blending of YouTube and Wikipedia, is described as “the world’s first digital and democratic online video dictionary.” The gentleman sent out invites to the launch party next week, to be held at Dr. Samuel Johnson’s former home at 17 Gough Square in London on the anniversary of the literary giant’s 299th birthday. (Cynopsis 9/11)
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Filed under: WIRELESS | Tags: Blackberry, Google, Microsoft, Microsoft Live Search, Mobile phone, Nokia, Verizon Wireless, Windows
Google on Thursday announced that it has used its Gears Geolocation API to make searching for businesses and locales in your area easier on Windows Mobile devices. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/11/google-ramps-up-mobile-search-with-my-location 9/11)
Nokia’s Ovi service was originally a simple photo-sharing system that took emailed, uploaded, and MMSed images from your phone or computer and put them online. Fair enough. Now, however, Nokia is adding some compelling features to the online suite to make it considerably more usable for personal and enterprise PIM and file sharing purposes. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/11/nokias-ovi-improved-with-pim-sync-file-sharing 9/11)
Remote viewing of your home computer files via mobile phone? Very nice.
Microsoft and RIM announced today that they have struck a deal that will see all BlackBerry smartphones running Microsoft Live Search. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/11/rim-turns-to-microsoft-for-search 9/11)
MTV has announced that it is launching its first mobile VOD service that will include advertising. The U.S. Air Force is the service’s first sponsor, and its ads will run leading into “The How To Show,” a mobile VOD series in which various people, including athletes and musicians, unlock the secrets to their professions. mocoNews.net (9/11)
Verizon Wireless announced a number of new content deals at the CTIA conference for its V Cast video service. TV episodes on V Cast, which runs $15/month for unlimited use, are presented in segmented clips to make it easier to skip around. Verizon customers downloaded more than 71 million video clips and songs from the service during the first half of 2008. (Cynopsis 9/11)
- Current and classic full length episodes from NBCU properties including NBC (30 Rock, The Office), Telemundo (El Juramento), USA Network (Starter Wife), SCI FI Channel (Ghost Hunters) and NBC Universal Digital Studio (Gemini Division) are now available
- Discovery launched 4 channels on the service – TLC, Animal Planet, Planet Green and Discovery Kids
- Comcast’s G4 Network now has its own channel featuring segments from Attack of the Show, X-Play as well as web originals from G4tv.com
- Scripps’ HGTV and Food Network were also added
The Apple iPhone was the fastest growing device in the world last month in terms of smartphone usage according to AdMob and ended August with more than 2.9 million requests per day. Worldwide Smartphones accounted for 25.8% of network traffic in August, up 3.4% since May 2008. The top five smartphones in the US – the BlackBerry Pearl, Palm Centro, BlackBerry Curve, Apple iPhone, and Samsung Instinct – generated 12.9% of all US traffic in August, a 2.4% increase over July. Nokia continued to dominate the market in everywhere but the U.S., accounting for 62.4% of worldwide smartphone traffic in August. (Nokia does not even have a top 20 ranked smartphone in the U.S..) (Cynopsis 9/11)
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Filed under: GAMING | Tags: Apple, Backchannel, Hewlett-Packard, MTV, Online game, Reality television, Steve Jobs, Television
MTV on Monday will launch Backchannel, a live, play-while-you watch online game. Users will join a “room” of other viewers while watching an MTV show, and submit snarky or insightful one-liners in a competition for points that may become a virtual currency for real-life prizes. (Iwantmedia 9/11, http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10038221-36.html 9/10)
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Filed under: TECHNOLOGY | Tags: Apple, Hewlett-Packard, LG, New York Times, South Korea, Steve Jobs, us, Wall Street Journal
TECHNOLOGY
Amazon.com has secured exclusive content rights for its Kindle e-reader to publish a biography of the next first lady. While the books on Michelle Obama and Cindy McCain already are written and will be on sale online well before the election, Kindle will publish a version with exclusive content on the wife of the next president. The Wall Street Journal (free content) (9/11)
Citing a mixture of falling prices coupled with weak demand, South Korea’s LG Display said its third-quarter results would not meet earlier projections and offered a new estimate of a percentage rise in its LCD sales in the “mid-teens” instead of its original guidance in the “low 20s.” The world’s No. 2 LCD maker by sales is not alone: Other LCD companies have said they would decrease output because of declining prices. The Wall Street Journal (free content) (9/11)
Apple CEO Steve Jobs and other company executives and officers past and present have reached a tentative settlement in a shareholder lawsuit that alleged they received favorable stock option grants. The agreement is expected to be finalized next month. The Wall Street Journal (free content) (9/11)
AT&T has certified Qualcomm’s Gobi mobile Web technology, and the companies tapped selected notebooks from Panasonic and Hewlett-Packard for access to the broadband network, AT&T and Qualcomm said Wednesday. Within weeks, AT&T plans to launch a marketing program with the laptop companies touting the service through which certified notebooks that run on AT&T’s network will gain 3G connectivity without a USB card. infoSynch World (9/10)
Global demand for affordable mini-laptop computers is driving strong sales for notebook computers, according to the latest quarterly sales figures from the research firm IDC, which reported a 37% rise in portable-computer sales for the second quarter, compared with a year earlier. In the U.S., laptop sales grew 17.7%, while sales of desktop computers and servers fell 4%. The New York Times (9/10) , CNET (9/10)
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