Daily Marauder

ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA

Media companies appear to be losing the battle over illicit digital copies of television episodes and films. Illegal downloading and streaming is increasingly becoming a mainstream behavior. NBC Universal exec Richard Cotton says: “Young people conclude that if it’s so easy, it can’t be wrong.” (Iwantmedia 2/5, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/05/business/media/05piracy.html?_r=1 2/5)

Doesn’t this feel kind of nostalgic? Anyone remember a little Deathmatch called Napster vs. the music business? Hmmmm… The world has a funny little way of repeating itself when the snooze button is depressed.

A high-quality streaming video version of “Slumdog Millionaire” as seen on a secondary site reached through a “link farm” featuring pirated movies.

Media CEOs say they are seeing their audiences move toward free or lost-cost Web video — both television and movies — and away from traditional delivery methods, such as cable television and DVDs. More young people are saying: “All I need is broadband.” (Iwantmedia 2/5, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123377977256648981.html 2/5)

With Time Warner reporting earnings yesterday, we now have online advertising numbers for the fourth quarter from the four largest players: Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL. Tallying up their online advertising revenues provides a decent proxy for the health of the overall online advertising industry as a whole, since they represent a majority of those revenues. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/05/is-the-worst-behind-us-online-ad-revenues-pick-up-in-the-fourth-quarter 2/5)

Things are not going well for Universal Music Group’s in its lawsuit against video-sharing site Veoh. First, the Los Angeles judge, A. Howard Matz, ruled last month that the safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act do apply to the case, contrary to UMG’s request for summary judgment. On Monday, Veoh scored another point in the preliminary legal sparring that always precedes the main event. The same judge threw out the part of the complaint that named Veoh’s investors as defendants in the suit. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/04/judge-tells-umg-no-you-cannot-sue-veohs-investors-for-copyright-infringement 2/4)

Microsoft is partnering with entertainment firm BermanBraun Interactive to create a celebrity news site. The creators of the new Wonderwall say it will attempt to “decommoditize” the stream of celebrity images, with a balance of the editorial tone found on TMZ and People.com. (Iwantmedia 2/5, http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/techtracks/2009/02/05/msn_launches_new_celeb_gossip_site_wonderwall.html 2/5)

And here I thought Wonderwall was an Oasis song? Microsoft take down Perez or TMZ? Doubtful.

Online film site Jaman signed a deal with E1 Entertainment to add nearly 3,000 of the studio’s titles to its download service including feature films, documentaries, episodic series and classic American TV shows. E1′s library includes the works of cinema masters including Jacques Demy, Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer. (Cynopsis 2/5)

The comedians at Team Tiger Awesome have come up with an imaginative spoof of their own for MTV Network’s Atom.com to celebrate Oprah Winfrey’s recent birthday. Oprah is Dead riffs on just how much the queen of daytime television has come to mean to America. (Cynopsis 2/5)

JuicyCampus, an online hangout for college students to spread anonymous rumors, is shutting down, citing a lack of advertising revenue and funding. Despite expanding to more than 500 U.S. campuses, the site was unable to “muster the resources needed to survive,” says CEO Matt Ivester. (Iwantmedia 2/5, http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/02/juicy-campus.html 2/4)

U.S. Web surfers watched 14.3 billion online videos in December, a 13% increase from the month before, according to a study by comScore. YouTube had the biggest gain in viewers, a growth of 49%, and it represented about 41% of the market. TVWeek.com (2/4)

Google Sites once again ranked as the top video property in the U.S. with 5.9 billion videos viewed (a 41% online video market share), with YouTube accounting for more than 99% of all of its videos viewed, according to ComScore‘s latest Video Metrix report. Fox Interactive Media ranked second with 445 million videos (3.1%), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 330 million (2.3%) and Viacom Digital with 291 million (2.0 percent). Hulu continued its impressive growth trajectory, climbing 6% versus November to 241 million videos viewed. Nearly 150 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 96 videos per viewer in December. Google Sites surpassed 100 million online video viewers during the month, representing two out of every three Internet users who watched video. (Cynopsis 2/5)

Top U.S. Online Video Properties* by Videos Viewed – December 2008
Property Videos (000) Share (%) of Videos
Total Internet 14,318,722 100.0
Google Sites 5,905,854 41.2
Fox Interactive Media 444,865 3.1
Yahoo! Sites 330,025 2.3
Viacom Digital 290,558 2.0
Microsoft Sites 247,903 1.7
Hulu.com 240,585 1.7
AOL LLC 197,135 1.4
Turner Network 183,948 1.3
Disney Online 148,434 1.0
ESPN 102,542 0.7
Source: comScore Video Metrix
*Rankings based on video content sites; excludes video server networks. Online video includes both streaming and progressive download video

Top U.S. Online Video Properties* by Unique Viewers – December 2008
Property Unique Viewers (000) Average Videos per Viewer
Total Internet 149,587 95.7
Google Sites 100,092 59.0
Fox Interactive Media 56,895 7.8
Yahoo! Sites 42,761 7.7
AOL LLC 31,522 6.3
Microsoft Sites 29,534 8.4
Viacom Digital 27,370 10.6
Hulu.com 24,572 9.8
Turner Network 20,499 9.0
Time Warner – Excl. AOL 17,294 2.8
CBS Corporation 14,840 3.7
Source: comScore Video Metrix