Filed under: Feature | Tags: Barack Obama, Beverages, COFFEE, Facebook, Inauguration, MSNBC, Shopping, Starbucks
FREE COFFEE WITH YOUR VOLUNTEER WORK: STARBUCKS GETS INTO THE SPIRIT
In the spirit of giving…oh wait, the holidays are over…in the spirit of the inauguration, Starbucks is giving away a tall cup of coffee (small in normal person speak) when you pledge 5 hours of volunteer time from Jan 21st through Jan 25th.
Here’s a link to the Facebook page.
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Filed under: BROADCAST/CABLE | Tags: Amy Poehler, Burn Notice, NBC, Television, United States, Universal Media Studios, USA Network, Washington Post
NBC announced new spring series arrivals including, Southland about a police precinct in Los Angeles, The Untitled Daniels/Schur/Poehler Series, the mockumentary about local government starring Amy Poehler, The Chopping Block, a cooking competition series, Kings, the extended final season of ER, and new seasons of The Office, 30 Rock and The Biggest Loser. Finally, The Tonight Show will officially have Conan O’Brien at the helm beginning on June 1. (Cynopsis 1/16)
New episodes of Burn Notice on USA Network begin January 22 at 10p. Seven new episodes with Jeffrey Donovan as Michael Westen will air on Thursdays this winter. (Cynopsis 1/16)
CBS ordered a new comedy pilot Tick Tock, a single-camera project from CBS Paramount Network Television. The cast contingent pilot order is about a single thirtysomething mom who becomes single-minded about finding love. (Cynopsis 1/16)
Universal Media Studios made a two-year television development deal with actor/producer/director Don Cheadle (Hotel Rwanda, Traitor) and his company Crescendo Productions. A variety of different television series projects will be covered by the deal. (Cynopsis 1/16)
Kevin Martin, the man who often was at odds with the cable industry during his four-year tenure as chairman of the FCC, will step down Tuesday to coincide with Inauguration Day and a new administration. Martin said he had accepted a position with the Aspen Institute, where he will work on communications issues. The Washington Post (1/16) , Financial Times (1/15)
Following the trend of expanding existing content relationships to leverage subscribers for new services, AT&T struck deals to expand its carriage of Viacom’s MTV Networks and BET Networks on multiple platforms. (Cynopsis 1/16)
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Filed under: ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA | Tags: AOL, AOL Mail, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Gmail, Myspace, Yahoo, Yahoo Mail
ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA
American Idol is turning to digital outlets to try and grow its (suddenly dwindling) audience. FremantleMedia Enterprises and teen virtual world Habbo are constructing a virtual Idol talent show slated to launch by the end of January, hoping to extend sponsors Coke, AT&T and others to the online environment. To help keep the 3 million U.S.-based “Habbos” engaged throughout the 20-week long program, Habbo will introduce new in-game virtual items and activities each month as the on-air American Idol season progresses. (Cynopsis 1/16)
MySpace is building a fully functional webmail product, Techcrunch has learned from sources with knowledge of the product. MySpace mail will compete with services like Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Gmail and AOL Mail, and will on launch be the third largest webmail provider in the world. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/15/confirmed-myspace-building-stealth-webmail-product 1/15)
MSNBC.com is launching a new feature today that will make it easier for a viewer to find a video clip online and paste it onto other sites. The launch is timed so viewers can capture their favorite parts of President-elect Barack Obama‘s inaugural address. The Wall Street Journal (1/16)
As part of its Open Strategy, Yahoo starting today is letting users add updates from their friends
based on their activities on 20 other services across the Web. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/16/yahoo-becomes-more-friendfeedlike-adds-updates-from-20-outside-sites 1/16)
Tonight Hulu will stream outgoing President George W. Bush’s farewell address live. The speech will begin at 5PM PST/8PM EST. On Tuesday, the site will also be streaming President-Elect Obama’s inauguration speech. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/15/hulu-streams-bushs-goodbye-and-obamas-hello 1/15)
Vik Singh of Yahoo’s BOSS team has just launched a new search engine called TweetNews that mashes up Yahoo News stories with some of the hottest topics on Twitter. The result is a news engine that is significantly more timely than common news aggregators like Google News and Yahoo’s standard news site. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/15/boss-developer-fuses-yahoo-news-with-twitter-to-create-tweetnews 1/15)
Google TV Ads officially launched the SpotMixer do-it-yourself video ad creation tool from One True Media, enabling small companies to put together and distribute their own measurable spot ads on participating Dish Network channels. (Cynopsis 1/16)
US online video viewing continued to rise in 2008, encompassing more than three-quarters of all US internet users according to eMarketer. And low and behold, the percentage of video viewers who consume video (in-stream, in-banner or in-text) ads is also increasing as users begin to grow accustomed to the necessary evil. Video ads are expected to reach over 80% of all internet users by 2012. (Cynopsis 1/16)
US Online Video Viewers and Online Video Advertising Viewers 2007-2012
Year Online Video Viewers % Internet Online Video Ad % Internet
(millions) Users Viewers (millions) Users
2007 137.5 73.6% 111.4 59.6%
2008 154.2 80.0% 129.5 67.2%
2009 167.5 84.1% 144.1 72.3%
2010 176.0 85.7% 154.9 75.5%
2011 183.0 86.8% 164.7 78.1%
2012 190.0 88.0% 174.8 80.9%
source: eMarketer, Nov. 2008
Video sharing site Metacafe gained market share in December attracting more than 11 million U.S. viewers according to ComScore Media Metrix figures. The total represents a 60% increase since Jan. 2008 and an impressive 20% increase from November.
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Filed under: WIRELESS | Tags: Barack Obama, Credit card, Federal government of the United States, Interest group, Motorola, U.S. government, United States, WIRELESS
The incoming Obama administration has earmarked just $6 billion for wireless and broadband services as part of an ambitious $825 billion infrastructure spending proposal released to Congress yesterday. Advocacy groups have been calling for the U.S. government to spend $30 billion or more to help improve broadband infrastructure across the country. The money will be targeted in “under-served areas” to strengthen the economy and provide business and job opportunities, according to the proposal. (Cynopsis 1/16)
Motorola announced a device that can clip onto its wireless handhelds and enable retailers to take credit cards payments away from the cash register. The device sells for $655. Techworld (1/14)
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Filed under: TECHNOLOGY | Tags: Ambilight, Aspect ratio, Business, Electronics and Electrical, Human Interfaces, Lights, Liquid crystal display television, Philips
Philips is developing a new 56-inch, liquid-crystal-display TV that features a theaterlike aspect ratio of 21:9. The ultrawide set, dubbed the Cinema 21:9 LCD, also is expected to have the company’s Ambilight background lighting system when it’s introduced in the spring of 2009. Digital Trends (1/15)
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Filed under: BROADCAST/CABLE | Tags: Arts, David Lynch, movie, Rainbow Media, Sundance Channel, Television, United States, Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. TV insiders confirm that the much-discussed “Gossip” spinoff will revolve around the character of Lily van der Woodsen. But instead of focusing on the grown-up Lily, the show will flash back to the 1980s, when Lily, then known as Lily Rhodes, was a wild child living life as a Valley Girl. (http://www.tvweek.com/news/2009/01/gossip_girl_goes_retro_with_80.php 1/14)
Showtime, which added about 1 million subscribers in 2008 for a current total of 16.5 million households, will continue to focus on original programming in the year ahead, according to Bob Greenblatt, president of entertainment for the channel, which will debut “United States of Tara” next week. “We’re living through an evolution where original programming is the thing,” Greenblatt said. Broadcasting & Cable (1/14) , Variety (1/14)
Fox International Channels (FIC) announced the first-ever global debut of the drama series The Listener during the first week of March. FIC will open the 13-episode series produced by Shaftesbury Films on all Fox entertainment channels in 180 countries worldwide including the U.K., Italy, Spain, Portugal, Argentina, Mexico, Japan, Korea, Poland, Brazil and Turkey. FIC’s premiere of The Listener precedes that of NBC in the U.S. and on CTV, Canada later this year. (Cynopsis 1/15)
Rainbow Media’s Sundance Channel has picked up 26 independent films that will debut on the network in the coming year. Filmmaker David Lynch plays a starring role in the haul, which includes his 2006 film “Inland Empire,” a restored version of his cult classic “Eraserhead,” and “Lynch,” a documentary about the man himself. Variety (1/14)
The Screen Actors Guild decided to push ahead with plans to authorize a strike vote after a moderate faction failed to push through a proposal during a marathon meeting on Monday and Tuesday that would have ousted National Executive Director Doug Allen and taken a strike off the table. No mailing date has been set for the previously approved TV/Theatrical strike authorization referendum. (Cynopsis 1/15)
New York State Supreme Court Judge Richard Lowe threw a pass to both the Dish Network and the NFL Network, per Multichannel News. Judge Lowe did not order Dish Network to place NFL Network back on a more widely distributed channel tier. On the other hand, Judge Lowe also stated the action sparking Dish to move NFL Network’s simulcast of the New England Patriot/New York Giants game in December 2007 also “did not trigger the specific contract provisions allowing EchoStar to drop the NFL to a lower level of service last February.” NFL Network President Steve Bornstein said, “This is an important ruling for us.” Judge Lowe’s decision will likely be unsealed Thursday and a trial on the case has been scheduled for June. NFL Network filed a suit against Dish Network about a year ago after the satellite company moved NFL Network to the America’s Top 200 tier leading to the network losing approximately 4 million subscribers. (Cynopsis 1/15)
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Filed under: ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA | Tags: Apple, Burger King, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Facebook, Myspace, Warner Music Group, Whoopi Goldberg, YouTube
ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA
YouTube wants to be on your TV set bad. It’s squeezing its way in through Apple TV, TiVo, and now videogame consoles: the Nintendo Wii and the Sony PS3. Just point those videogame browsers to www.youtube.com/tv and you can now watch a customized version of YouTube from your couch. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/15/youtube-comes-to-the-wii-and-ps3-but-not-xbox 1/15)
Facebook’s ongoing effort to launch a free streaming music service is stalled, according to multiple sources familiar with the situation. The company was close to a deal that would bring free streaming music from three of the four big labels (Universal, Sony, EMI) through the Total Music joint venture. But the deal stalled when the lone holdout, Warner Music, refused to participate. (
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/15/how-warner-music-killed-facebook-music 1/15)
Burger King, through their insanely creative advertising agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky (see their recent Burger King perfume launch), launches a Facebook application that encourages users to remove Facebook friends. Sacrifice ten of them and you got a free Whopper. 233,906 friends were removed by 82,771 people in less than a week. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/14/facebook-blows-a-whopper-of-an-opportunity 1/14)
MySpace Music
added a few hundred thousand songs to its streaming music service today by signing up four more independent-label aggregators (Nettwerk Music Group, INgrooves, IRIS Distribution, and RoyaltyShare) plus indie label Wind-up Records. This comes at a time when Facebook is still facing hurdles to launching its own music service. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/15/while-facebook-fiddles-myspace-music-signs-up-another-five-indie-partners 1/15)
Whoopi Goldberg, once a regular on Star Trek: The Next Generation, is set to executive produce and star in the sci-fi miniseries “Stream” for FEARnet.com, per Variety. The series will air in six 5-minute weekly installments both online and via on demand beginning Jan. 15.
Highlight of Whoopi’s career? The Color Purple. Low point? This series. Ooooooo. This first episode is bad…and not in that Twilight so-bad-it’s-good sort of way.
At Google, when it rains, it pours. In the wake of announcing its first round of layoffs this afternoon, Google has released several blog posts detailing the upcoming shutdown of a number of services (compiled here by Danny Sullivan). Included among the upcoming closures are: Google Notebooks, Google Catalogs, Dodgeball, Google Video, Google Mashup Editor, and future development of Jaiku (though the service will live on). (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/14/google-axes-dodgeball-jaiku-video-and-more 1/14)
Google padded its lead in search dramatically in 2008 growing by 33.5% to achieve nearly 63% of all U.S. searches, according to Nielsen Online‘s MegaView data. MSN/Windows Live was the big loser, declining by 15% to capture less than 10% of the market for December. If the Yahoo and MSN were to combine search services they would have 26.6% of the market. (Cynopsis 1/15)
Top 10 Search Providers for December 2008, Ranked by Searches (U.S.)
Provider Searches (000) YOY Growth Share of Searches
All Search 8,623,705 19.6% 100.0%
Google Search 5,421,943 33.5% 62.9%
Yahoo! Search 1,448,140 13.7% 16.8%
MSN/Windows Live 841,457 -15.5% 9.8%
AOL Search 357,025 5.1% 4.1%
Ask.com Search 169,116 6.0% 2.0%
My Web Search 62,415 -11.6% 0.7%
Comcast Search 50,385 45.1% 0.6%
NexTag Search 29,219 0.7% 0.3%
AT&T Worldnet Search 27,176 8.0% 0.3%
BizRate Search 23,593 37.1% 0.3%
Source: Nielsen Online, MegaView Search
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