Daily Marauder

ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA
Will the music subscription business ever grow beyond its current niche? It looks increasingly doubtful. Today, eMusic announced that since it launched its current music subscription service in 2003, customers have downloaded 250 million songs. Apple’s iTunes, by comparison, has sold more than 5 billion songs since it opened the iTunes Store in April, 2003. That makes eMusic one twentieth the size of iTunes. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/20/emusic-250-million-songs-downloaded-itunes-5-billion 11/20)

CBS will extend the Victoria‘s Secret Fashion Show event to multiple platforms. The special will be televised on CBS December 3 at 10p yet can be previewed prior on the special dedicated website at www.cbs.com/victoria with videos, photos and more. CBS.com will also host a Social Viewing Room where the complete fashion show can be viewed following the broadcast at www.cbs.com/socialviewing. In addition, CBS Mobile is working with MediFLO USA allowing a Victoria’s Secret TV channel on FLO TV. (Cynopsis 11/20)

Multiplatform men programmer RipeTV has teamed with Ultimate Fighting Champion creator Art Davie to come up with an entirely new sport created exclusively for digital: XARM fighting. XARM combines arm wrestling with boxing and various martial arts. The winner of the XARM tournament will earn the title of “XARM Heavyweight Champion” and take home a $10,000 prize. (Cynopsis 11/20)

Fancast.com will be hosting a live forum with Sons of Anarchy star Charlie Hunnam and series creator Kurt Sutter on Monday, Nov. 24, two days prior to the FX show’s season finale. The hour-long live chat will start at 2 pm ET and will be available to embed live on third party sites. Email Fancast’s Derek Collins at

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Derek_Collins@Comcast.com to arrange a live embed. (Cynopsis 11/20)

Yahoo appears to be quite serious about openness and promoting third party content and applications on their massively visited home page. Today they’re announcing the addition of an eBay widget to the new Yahoo home page, which is still being tested with just a subset of Yahoo users. The widget will be added to the My Applications dashboard area on the left. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/20/yahoo-continues-to-embrace-this-openness-thing-ebay-widget-on-yahoo-home-page 11/20)

The Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers just released their quarterly report on U.S. online advertising revenues. For the quarter, they estimate online advertising revenues were almost $5.9 billion ($5.865 billion, to be exact), which is an 11 percent increase from the same quarter a year ago and a 2 percent increase from the second quarter of 2008. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/20/iab-reports-us-online-advertising-reaches-59-billion-in-the-third-quarter 11/20)

Platform-A led ComScore‘s October Ad Focus rankings reaching 91% of the 190.6 million Americans online. Yahoo! Network followed reaching 86% and Google Ad Network captured the third position reaching 83% of Americans online. ValueClick Networks moved up one position to #4 reaching 82% of online users and Traffic Marketplace rose one position to #8 reaching 74%. (Cynopsis 11/20)

Top Visited US Top Visited US Broadcast Network TV Sites (Week ending Nov. 15, 2008)
Rank                Network Website    Market Share of Visits
1  ABC             www.abc.com 29.60%
2  NBC           www.nbc.com 24.10%
3  CBS             www.cbs.com 22.25%
4  FOX*            www.fox.com 14.92%
5 The CW      www.cwtv.com 8.36%
6 MNTV   www.mynetworktv.com .78%
Source: Custom report from Hitwise, *includes traffic aggregated from stand alone websites americanidol.com, amw.com, familyguy.com, thelot.com and thesimpsons.com.

Top Visited US Broadcast Network TV Show Sites (Week ending Nov. 15, 2008)
Rank   Network       Website                      Market Share of Visits
1          NBC          Heroes                                 6.41%
2          NBC          Deal or No Deal                     5.86%
3          ABC          Dancing With The Stars          5.70%
4          FOX          America’s Most Wanted          4.67%
5          NBC          The Office                             4.35%
6          CBS          Survivor                                3.71%
7          NBC          The Biggest Loser                  4.29%
8          FOX          American Idol                        3.21%
9          ABC          Grey’s Anatomy                     2.70%
10         CBS          Ghost Whisperer                    2.33%
Source: Custom report from Hitwise

Top Visited US Cable Network TV Show Sites -Excluding Children’s Programming (Week ending Nov.15, 2008)
Rank   Network                   Website                   Market Share of Visits
1    Comedy Central       South Park                        6.74%
2    Food Network          Paula’s Home Cooking        4.95%
3    Comedy Central       The Daily Show                 2.92%
4    Discovery Channel   Dirty Jobs                         2.91%
5    MTV                       The Hills                           2.67%
6    BET                        106 & Park                       2.64%
7    Fox News                O’Reilly Factor                   2.63%
8    Bravo                     Real Housewives of Atlanta 2.51%
9    Food Network         30 Minute Meals                 1.99%
10   MSNBC                   Countdown with Keith O.    1.98%
Source: Custom report from Hitwise