Today's best video clips -- 2 May 2008

Worth Noting: NBC's Silverman: Broadcast to Be Event-Driven; Apple to Lose Money on Same-day Movies; Media sales flat in 2007; Google TV Ads Now Available to U.S. Advertisers

ABC.com To Experiment With More Ads Per TV Stream Viewers of video at ABC.com might soon be seeing two advertisements, one after the other, within each video break. "It would be premature for us to say people only want one ad," said Albert Cheng, executive vp digital media at Disney-ABC Television Group, to the Hollywood Reporter. "It's a likely sort of thinking, but we want to push it a little bit to see how it would go."

Google TV Ads Now Available to U.S. Advertisers
CNET reports that Google announced on its AdWords blog that Google TV Ads, a program that has been in beta since June 2007, is now available to all U.S.-based advertisers. The program allows advertisers to reach over 13 million households nationwide on 94 channels.

NBC's Silverman: Broadcast to Be Event-Driven
In 15 years, broadcast television will only be useful for high-profile live events like the Super Bowl, awards shows and programs like “American Idol,” Ben Silverman, co-chairman of NBC Entertainment, said during a keynote interview at the TelevisionWeek Upfront Summit in New York. Other shows will have to live on multiple platforms to survive. “[Broadcast] will also be where we launch our episodic storytelling vehicles, but they will be living and breathing everywhere,” he said. NBC plans to experiment with driving viewers to the Web from TV with its new fall show “Kath and Kim.” NBC will offer continued scenes online after each episode airs, Mr. Silverman said. “Around our new offerings there will literally be shows that end on air and the last scene will continue online,” he said.

Media sales flat in 2007
The industry's prevailing fear that home video sales are fast eroding was confirmed in the report, which indicated that the 5% uptick in international sales could not offset the eyebrow-raising 17% plunge in the U.S. domestic market. Moreover, the summary notes, a 4% growth in DVD in 2007 was not enough to offset the 850% decline in VHS. Booming movie rentals and a steady flow of TV license fees combined to compensate for sluggish home video revenue and bring about a "flat" all-media sales performance worldwide for the major Hollywood studios last year. A healthy 9% hike in foreign tallies made up for an 8% domestic decline "to balance each other out," according to a confidential summary sent to member-company executives by the MPA and obtained by The Hollywood Reporter.

Apple to Lose Money on Same-day Movies
Apple said yesterday it had finally scored deals to sell movies from almost every major studio on the same day they come out on DVD. What’s surprising is that the company will lose a dollar on every new release it sells, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Redbox to file for IPO
Redbox, the DVD vending machine provider co-owned by McDonald’s and Coinstar, is hoping to become a publicly traded entity. The company, which offers $1 a night rentals on new releases, said on Thursday it will file a registration statement for an initial public offering of common stock, subject to market conditions.

Movie Gallery to sell MovieBeam
Movie Gallery has asked the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Richmond, Va., for permission to sell the MovieBeam set-top service, which the company shut down at the end of last year.

Amazon growing the digital music market
New figures from NPD Group suggest that the Amazon DRM-free digital music service is doing more to grow the overall digital music market as opposed to simply stealing customers from iTunes. The research group says only 10% of Amazon customers had previously bought music from Apple's iTunes service. While many tagged the Amazon service as an "iTunes killer" when it first launched, the music industry's hope all along was never to cannibalize iTunes sales but rather encourage new digital buyers. NPD's data suggest exactly that is happening.

Flash for Video Pros
Greg Rewls shows off how sophisticated video tools in Adobe Flash Professional CS3 help you create, edit and deploy streaming and progressive-download FLV content with comprehensive video support.

That's it folks