Filed under: BROADCAST/CABLE | Tags: Arts, Comedy Central, Major League Baseball, Nielsen Ratings, Oprah Winfrey, Television, Terrestrial television, World Series
Comedy Central is developing a weekly series with satiric newspaper The Onion that will poke fun at the sports world. The as-yet-untitled series will play off the Onion Sports Network online video series, which is, according to Lauren Corrao, Comedy Central’s president of original programming development, “outstanding, hilarious and exactly what you’d expect from the gang.” Broadcasting & Cable (11/5)
With an average delivery of 19.4 million viewers, this year’s six-game World Series outdrew last year’s set by 38%, per Nielsen ratings data. The 2009 World Series ranks as the sixth most-watched of the 12 Major League Baseball championships covered by Fox. (Iwantmedia 11/6, Mediaweek11/5)
Oprah Winfrey has yet to decide whether she’ll extend the life of her syndicated daytime talk show on broadcast television, a spokesman for her production company said Thursday, in response to an Internet report saying her show would move to her new cable network in less than two years. (Dow Jones 11/5)
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Filed under: BROADCAST/CABLE | Tags: Alaska, Government, NBC Universal, Oprah Winfrey, Sarah Palin, Television, Television program, United States
Oprah Winfrey, aiming to climb back from last season’s ratings slump, will attempt to make up with conservative viewers on Nov. 16 when she has Sarah Palin on her syndicated talk show. Palin’s new book, “Going Rogue,” is scheduled to hit bookstores the next day. (Iwantmedia 10/21, Washington Post 10/21)
Combining metrics across multiple platforms, ESPN says it delivered its biggest audience ever in Sept., including a combined total day rating of 1.65 million homes across ESPN’s networks, a 250% spike in time spent on ESPN 360.com (per Move Analytics,) and a 21% boost in unique visitors to ESPN.com, totaling 28.8 million visitors for the month. ESPN.com also had more viewers of online video in September than ever, with 9.3 million viewers logging nearly 196 million minutes of video viewing. (Cynopsis10/21)
Traditional television viewing patterns are collapsing and the industry needs to quickly figure out how to profit in a world where people can watch TV shows anytime, anywhere, says NBC Universal TV chief Marc Graboff. “The audience is so fragmented at the expense of TV shows.” (Iwantmedia 10/21, Reuters10/20)
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Filed under: BROADCAST/CABLE | Tags: AmericanIdol, JayLeno, JeffZucker, National Football League, NbcUniversal, Oprah Winfrey, Television, The New York Times Company
As expected, Comcast and the NFL Network have made final a carriage deal. The agreement means that the National Football League‘s cable channel will be available by Aug. 1 on the digital-basic tier of the country’s largest cable provider, adding 10.8 million subscribers to the network’s roster. The Wall Street Journal (5/20) , The New York Times (5/19
As Fox’s “American Idol,” U.S. television’s No. 1 series, ends its eighth year, the juggernaut is seeing a 8.4% drop in average audience this season. While advertisers spent $903.3 million on “Idol” last year, it “has begun to show signs of wear,” analysts say. (Iwantmedia 5/20, http://www.usatoday.com/money/media/2009-05-19-ratings-american-idol_N.htm 5/19)
A few years before NBC signed up Jay Leno to host a nightly series in prime time, the network approached both Oprah Winfrey and David Letterman about taking on similar gigs. NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker says Winfrey declined his offer to move her show to the network. (Iwantmedia 5/20, http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118003977.html?categoryid=14&cs=1 5/19)
The season two finale of HISTORY’s Ax Men on Monday at 10p attracted 1.1 million A25-54 and 1.9 million total viewers. (Cynopsis 5/20)
The final episode of the first season of “River Monsters” on Animal Planet drew 1.4 million viewers, good enough to make the show the most-watched in the network’s history. “River Monsters” averaged 1.4 million viewers in its eight-episode first year, topping “Whale Wars,” which averaged 1 million viewers in its freshman season. Multichannel News (5/19)
A special sponsorship with Subway sandwich shops is enabling NBC to renew “Chuck” for a third season. Subway played a role in an episode of the series last month. Chuck’s girlfriend, Sarah, works at a mall food court. She could be selling Subway sandwiches next season. (Iwantmedia 5/20, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/20/business/media/20adco.html?_r=1 5/20)
ABC confirmed the following returning series Better Off Ted, Castle, Scrubs, True Beauty, America’s Funniest Home Videos, The Bachelor, Brothers & Sisters, Dancing with the Stars, Desperate Housewives, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Grey’s Anatomy, Lost, Private Practice, Supernanny, Ugly Betty, Wife Swap, 20/20 and Saturday Night College Football. Cynopsis 5/20
Nickelodeon and DreamWorks Animation are working on a triple crown of sorts. The two companies, which collaborated on “The Penguins of Madagascar” and recently announced plans for “Kung Fu Panda: The Series,” now say they will team up on a pilot for Nick based on DWA’s “Monsters vs. Aliens” movie. The Hollywood Reporter (5/19)
Eight of the 11 new shows ABC is lining up for next season are made by outside suppliers, breaking with tradition. The move could save money for ABC because most shows fail, losing millions for the studios that produce them. Even successful programs typically lose money. (Iwantmedia 5/20, http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ct-abc20-2009may20,0,441327.story 5/19)
Comcast Corporation made an agreement with Disney and ESPN Media Networks to add ESPNU to its Digital Classic level as well as ESPN360.com to Comcast.net. The launch of ESPNU will coincide with the opening of the college football season. This launch takes ESPNU to more than 46 million subscribers and ESPN360.com will be available to almost 41 million homes. Cynopsis 5/20
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Filed under: ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA | Tags: Facebook, Hulu, Mark Zuckerberg, Oprah Winfrey, Skype, Social network, TV.com, Twitter
ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA
CBS Interactive is also testing a 1080p- quality video gallery on the TV.com portal for folks with a fat pipe (3 Mbps or higher) and a fast processor. Currently there are only 4 video clips but they look amazing. Competitor Hulu upgraded its HD gallery last year to stream videos in 720p. (Cynopsis 3/13)
The video stumbled a bit on my end but indeed, AMAZING. Hulu’s strategy on most things is that they won’t deliver a product until they can perfect it. Who knows which strategy will win but this new online video battle between Hulu and tv.com is an interesting one. But to be fair, and keepin’ it real, whose at #2 in the online video ranking wars? It sure isn’t tv.com.
Conde Nast is entering a partnership to distribute video from sites such as Epicurious and Vogue.TV via Hulu, the online video hub. Hulu is selling advertising to accompany the Conde Nast content, while the partners agree to share the ad revenue. (Iwantmedia 3/13, http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=102059 3/13)
Maybe it is all the TV news mentions, but Twitter is seeing the growth in U.S visitors to its site accelerating. In February, 4 million people in the U.S. visited the site, up from 2.6 million the month before, according to the latest data from comScore. That represents a 55 percent month-over-month growth rate, compared to 33 percent growth in each of the two months prior. (ComScore has yet to release February figures for worldwide visitors, but for January that number is 6 million). (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/13/whoa-twitter-mania 3/13)
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg will take to Oprah Winfrey‘s couch on Friday. Winfrey is expected to interview Zuckerberg and show a demo of her TV show’s new page on the social network. A “celebrity Facebook addict” might Skype in to talk up the service as well. (Iwantmedia 3/13, http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/03/12/oprah-to-interview-facebook-founder 3/12)
If Oprah is doing it, Facebook has achieved mainstream status officially.
New AOL chief Tim Armstrong: “I am looking forward to taking what I have learned at Google and seeing what I can bring to really help AOL.” He adds: Time Warner wants “the best outcome” for its Internet company. “That could take the form of different paths,” including a spin off. (Iwantmedia 3/13, http://kara.allthingsd.com/20090312/new-aol-chairman-and-ceo-and-about-to-be-ex-googler-tim-armstrong-speaks 3/12)
Twitter is driving much of its traffic to social networking, search, email and entertainment sites, according to an analysis by Hitwise. The data also shows that Twitter has more in common with social networks than search engines. Twitter is “a means of distributing content.” (Iwantmedia 3/13, http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=102076 3/13)
I think the only reason why Twitter isn’t recognized as a search engine for the moment is because their search functionality isn’t prominent enough yet. Furthermore, most folks just haven’t figured out how to use the feature. Once both of these things change, Twitter will become a more functional search engine ESPECIALLY for local news. Hey LA Times, NY Times….integrate Twitter functionality now. The deal will benefit both of you being that Twitter hasn’t figure out how to monetize and all y’all can think about is monetizing. Perfect union.
Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner is developing a television series for rival Viacom’s Nickelodeon cable channel. “Glenn Martin, DDS,” a stop-motion animated series, will debut this summer. The effort will be the first TV series from Eisner’s Tornante company. (Iwantmedia 3/13, http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/content_display/news/cable-tv/e3iffcfe0c0b0255a5a8aecffcc5d1ceea1 3/12)
The WB.com has cast Jessica “LonelyGirl15″ Rose in a new 18-episode web horror series entitled Blood Cell, per THR, about a woman racing against the clock to stop a psycho killer. (Cynopsis 3/13)
Overall online video usage dropped a bit over Feb. according to Nielsen Online as those with jobs went back to work and those without spent more time networking for leads (Cynopsis’ theory). Streams were down by almost 15% during the month (which, to be fair, is a shorter one in terms of total days.) Meanwhile Hulu climbed over Yahoo! to reach the #2 spot in terms of total video streams. (Cynopsis 3/13)
Overall Online Video Usage (U.S.)
Jan-09 Feb-09 Percent Change
Unique Viewers (000) 135,617 127,613 -5.9%
Total Streams (000) 10,457,785 8,897,943 -14.9%
Streams per Viewer 77.1 69.7 -9.6%
Time per Viewer (min) 178.6 169.3 -5.2%
Source: Nielsen Online, VideoCensus, includes progressive downloads and excludes video advertising
Top Online Brands ranked by Video Streams for February 2009 (U.S.)
Video Brand Total Streams (000) Unique Viewers (000)
YouTube 5,158,727 88,136
Hulu 308,806 9,473
Yahoo! 250,425 24,085
Nickelodeon Kids and Family Network 209,465 6,039
Fox Interactive Media 194,255 14,376
ABC.COM 187,128 6,716
MSN/Windows Live 162,900 12,198
Turner Sports and Entertainment Digital Network 125,067 5,961
MTV Networks Music 100,076 4,410
CNN Digital Network 99,846 8,377
Source: Nielsen Online, VideoCensus, includes progressive downloads and excludes video advertising
African Americans are slowly but surely closing the so-called digital divide as internet usage grows among the community, according to an analysis from eMarketer. African American internet usage is expected to increase from 46.4% in 2008 to 56.4% in 2013, thanks in part to swift adoption and lifestyle changes from younger users. (Asian Americans remain the most connected demo, with 70.8% of the population now online, expected to increase to 78.9% in 2013.) (Cynopsis 3/13)
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Filed under: BROADCAST/CABLE | Tags: Disney Channel, ESPN, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Oprah Winfrey, Russia, United States, Walt Disney Company
With its venerable “WWE Raw” fightfest, USA attracted an average 3.11 million viewers during the week ended Dec. 14, according to Nielsen live-plus-same-day figures. It was the first weekly ratings race that ESPN did not win since the beginning of the 2008 football season. Mediaweek (12/16)
Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Films has made final a programming-collaboration deal with HBO that will give the cable network known for cutting-edge content access to series, movies and documentaries. The deal came together after Harpo executives, citing the need for greater creative freedom, ended a 15-year relationship with ABC. Los Angeles Times (12/17) , The Wall Street Journal (free content) (12/16)
The Walt Disney Co. sometime in 2009 will purchase a 49% stake in a new joint venture with Russian TV station operator Media-One Holdings and begin offering the broadcast equivalent of the Disney Channel in the country. Russia, according to these articles, is considered to be one of the last great untapped regions of the globe for the media industry. The Wall Street Journal (12/16) , The New York Times (12/16)
A&E Network’s sixth season debut of Intervention last Monday night at 9p attracted 1.6 million A25-54 viewers, 1.7 million A18-49 viewers and 2.2 million total viewers. GRB produces the series for A&E. (Cynopsis 12/17)
CBS Corporation is the latest entertainment company to eliminate staff as employees of CBS Entertainment and CBS Paramount Network Television were laid off Monday. A few high-level CBS Paramount TV executives were also let go: EVP Maria Crenna who served under President David Stapf; SVP/Head of Comedy Brian Banks; and VP/Current Programming Jocelyn Freid. (Cynopsis 12/17)
Viacom‘s BET, with popular shows such as “106 & Park” and “College Hill,” now is available in nearly 30 African countries. The recent move puts the network, which serves up African-American-centric content, in the U.S., Canada, the Caribbean and the U.K. MediaPost Communications (12/16)
FOX approved a 13-episode order for Glee, a musical comedy series from Ryan Murphy (Nip/Tuck, Popular). The 60m series, featuring a soundtrack of popular songs, is about an energetic high school teacher, Will Schuester (played by Matthew Morrison) who is charged with bringing back the McKinley High School Glee Club to its winning glory days by encouraging a group of misfit students to compete in the Nationals. (Cynopsis 12/17)
Fox Business Network has inked a new digital-carriage deal with Charter Communications that will add about 200,000 homes in the Midwest and Northeast to FBN’s subscriber total. The network recently completed a similar deal with Cox, and the two new agreements mean the FBN soon will be available to 45 million homes. TVWeek.com (12/16)
CBS Paramount Network Television signed a first-look deal with actor Laurence Fishburne and his Cinema Gypsy Productions, reports Variety. Fishburne recently joined as star of CBS’ CSI: Crime Scene Investigation also produced by CBS Paramount Network TV. (Cynopsis 12/17)
MTV introduces a diverse slate of new reality series set to debut in first quarter 2009. Also new for the network next year will be a two-hour primetime block on Sundays starting at 9p. (Cynopsis 12/17)
AT&T’s U-Verse IPTV service reached a milestone, signing its 1 millionth subscriber across 79 markets in 16 states. (Cynopsis 12/17)
Fox Cable Networks made a deal with DIRECTV and Verizon FiOS to make FUEL TV On Demand available to viewers, with 10 original hours of action sports programming each month. (Cynopsis 12/17)
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Filed under: BROADCAST/CABLE | Tags: Alan Ball, Anna Paquin, Barack Obama, Leah Remini, NBC Universal, Oprah Winfrey, Sookie Stackhouse, True Blood
Tuesday night’s season finale of Tori & Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood on Oxygen at 10p delivered 932,000 A18-49, 751,000 W18-49, and 1.3 million total viewers. (Cynopsis 8/14)
HBO sinks its teeth into a new series True Blood which opens September 7 at 9p. The 12-episode freshman series is about Bill Compton, a 173-year old vampire played by Stephen Moyer who moves to a remote Louisiana town and meets Sookie Stackhouse, an unusual woman who can read minds, played by Anna Paquin. The series is created and executive produced by Alan Ball (Six Feet Under) and is based on the Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris. (Cynopsis 8/14)
Oprah Winfrey plans to be in the audience but will have no stage role during Barack Obama‘s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. Winfrey’s daytime talk show is believed to have paid a price in popularity for taking a political stance in the past year. (http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/08/oprah-obama.html 8/14)
NBC Universal’s cable networks, particularly MSNBC and CNBC, are seeing big ratings increases, thanks to their parent company’s wide-ranging coverage of the Summer Olympics from Beijing. Alan Wurtzel, NBCU’s president of research, said that America’s focus was on China right now and that the company’s wall-to-wall coverage of the Games was “a win-win in every way” for its cable networks. The New York Times (8/13)
Leah Remini (King of Queens) and CBS Television Distribution are reportedly developing a daytime syndicated series for the actress, tho no full details are yet available, reports THR. (Cynopsis 8/14)
Aspiring fashion designers will get their big chances in a new TLC reality show called “Who Are You Wearing?” that’s slated to debut on Aug. 22. Here’s the setup: Four celebrity-designer wannabes will create outfits for actual celebrities who will be attending a red-carpet event. TVWeek.com (8/13)
VH1 presents three new series beginning Thursday, August 21: The Fabulous Life, Glam God with Vivica A. Fox, & The Cho Show. (Cynopsis 8/14)
Cable TV networks have spent a cumulative $19 billion in original programming since 2003, according to a recent study from the Cable Advertising Bureau. All that money has added up to two things: Cable shows such as “Mad Men” and “Project Runway” are stealing all the buzz from the broadcast networks, and, not coincidentally, cable’s ad-revenue growth will increase more than 10% for the rest of the year, SNL Kagen said in a separate study. Advertising Age (8/13)
Cablevision executives have completed what some are calling a “listening tour” of investors’ suggestions and concerns. One investor present at the meetings said that the company’s leaders were open to a number of alternatives that potentially could boost the cable provider’s stock price and that they also would hold off on any major acquisitions. Cablevision, however, did not provide comment for the report. The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) (8/14)
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Filed under: WIRELESS | Tags: Channel 4, Computers and Internet, FCC, Jeremy Clarkson, Microsoft Windows, Oprah Winfrey, United Kingdom, WIRELESS
Verizon Wireless said it would introduce a new set of Flash games and content after Qualcomm and Adobe’s formation of a partnership to embed Flash into the BREW platform. The new alliance could have a major impact on content: It will provide BREW’s modest development community with important new tools as well as give Flash’s ample pool of developers a mobile outlet. Telephony Online (5/28)
