iPod conquers music industry; TV next?
In a little over four years Apple's iPod music player has rewritten the business model for the multi-billion dollar music industry. Just how profound and fast this revolution has been was highlighted last week when Apple became the
biggest music retailer in the U.S. At the heart of this transformation is the innate usability of the iPod. Rather than pay $20 for a CD, the iPod--in conjunction with iTunes--offered music at prices ranging from free to about $1.20 for a track. The popularity of the easy-to-use, small and ultra-cool player has seen the once mighty record companies lose their iron fist control over the music industry. The record companies now find themselves price takers in an industry they no longer rule. Worse still for the record companies, the digital download model has seen consumers cherry pick the music they want rather than have to buy the full suite, much of what they don't want. This saw a 10 percent cut in music industry revenues in 2007.
How long before the same happens to the TV industry? Similar to music consumers, many U.S. TV consumers are discontented with the take it or leave it attitude of the cable and network program offerings. So as bandwidth gets faster we quickly are getting to a point where the only impediment to a massive migration of all pre-recorded video to the Internet is an iPod like easy-to-use device to make it all happen. When that moment arrives the shift is sure to be swift and if you are a broadcaster or cable MSO, severe. Worth noting:
U.S Video revenue to quadruple in 2008;
Internet advertising set to overtake TV; Silverlight 2 Roadmap Revealed; Joost faces TV squeeze.
Today's best video clips:
Online Video to Generate Big Bucks Informa Telecoms & Media forecasts that by 2013, US online TV and video services will generate revenues of $7.9 billion.
In 2007, the market was already worth over $1 billion and by 2008, that figure will leap to $4.7 billion.
Though these figures include a la carte and subscription-based download fees, advertising revenue is expected to account for the largest slice at 63% of the 2013 global total.
Internet advertising set to overtake TV Internet marketing has grown at such a staggering rate that it is set to overtake the TV as the largest market for advertising in the UK, which is in fact the worlds most developed market for this type of marketing.
In 2006 the advertising market share was steady at around 11.4%, but by last year this had grown to 15.3%, which is an astonishing increase and with the TV market at 21.8% and the press at 19.9% the Internet will be homing in this possibly this year on taking the top spot.
ThePlatform Inks CelebTV Deal Seattle's thePlatform Inc. will manage and publish the video and advertising for CelebTV, a celebrity news site. Per the deal, thePlatform's technology will be used to deliver CelebTV content to its partners: AOL Video, Comcast Corp. , Apple Inc. iTunes, and YouTube Inc.
CelebTV.com launched in February and claims that its viewers have watched more than 350 million on-demand videos. Each day, the site delivers 12 to 14 new segments that are about two minutes each.
Philips To Offload TV Brands In North America Royal Philips Electronics and Funai Electric Co. plan to enter into a brand-licensing agreement, under which Funai will assume responsibility for the sourcing, distribution, marketing and sales of all Philips’ consumer TV activities in the United States and Canada.
Under the five-year minimum agreement, which would take effect Sept. 1, Philips will receive royalty payments in exchange for Funai’s right to exclusively use the Philips and Magnavox brand names for consumer TV products offerings in North America during this period.
Silverlight 2 Roadmap Revealed When Microsoft began beta testing Version 2 of its Silverlight cross-browser, cross-platform streaming media technology a month ago, company executives' only comment on delivery is that it would be released in final form by year's end.
Earlier this week, however, a Microsoft developer in Bangalore, India, posted a slightly more detailed roadmap for Silverlight 2 on his blog. According to the posting by Ashish Thapliyal, the company is shooting to unleash Beta 2 of Silverlight 2 in May.
"We are targeting late Summer [for final release]," Thapliyal's post said.
Beta 2 will also feature what Microsoft calls a "Go Live" license, which enables developers to write commercial applications using the beta code, the post continued. Beta 1 comes with a "non-commercial" Go Live license.
A Microsoft spokesperson described the posting, which was evidently not sanctioned by executives, as being "somewhat correct."
Fox Buying Majority Of UK Video Ad Outfit Utarget Fox’s year-old
.Fox Networks web ads operation is buying itself more video advertising clout, taking a 56 percent stake in UK video ad platform
Utarget. The eight-year-old Windsor-based outfit has a network of over 630 publisher sites to which it delivers 15-second clickable pre-rolls, contextual videos and persistent in-page videos, as well as video pop-unders and interstitials.
AT&T, cable rivals agree on rules for TV After months of secret negotiations between AT&T and the cable industry, both sides have agreed on many of the ground rules for AT&T's entry into the television service business in Tennessee — including how many customers must get access and how many households must be in low-income neighborhoods.
Legislators set a deadline for today for both sides to come up with draft legislation so they could present it to the media this afternoon. Under draft legislation that was still being negotiated over the weekend, AT&T would have to offer TV service to a minimum of 30 percent of its telephone territory within 3½ years after it begins offering television, according to people involved in negotiations.
Comcast Spotlights Targeted-Ad Trial In Baltimore Comcast Spotlight has scheduled a third-quarter launch for an addressable TV advertising test in the Baltimore area, in partnership with media agency network Starcom MediaVest Group.
In Baltimore, the operator’s ad sales division said it will use Invidi's Advatar technology to deliver targeted ads. SMG will continue to be the media agency partner for an additional 12 months and will play a “central role in the Baltimore area trial,” the cable operator said.
SMG and Comcast Spotlight also announced results from their initial technical trial in Huntsville, Ala., which began in December 2006 – including the finding that homes receiving addressable advertising tuned away 38% less of the time than homes that received non-addressable advertising.
Joost faces TV squeeze
JOOST, the online television service launched with a fanfare last year by the founders of internet telephony firm Skype, is preparing for a major retrenchment after failing to attract enough users and top-flight broadcasting rights.
The company is expected to rein in its global ambitions to focus solely on the US market.
Set up as an antidote to YouTube by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis after they sold Skype to online auctioneer Ebay, Joost has been overshadowed by the success of the BBC’s iPlayer, and in America, Hulu, a collaboration between NBC and News Corporation, the ultimate owner of The Sunday Times.
Joost Denies: No “Major Retrenchement”, Or “Sole U.S. Focus” Joost, the online video service which has had more than its share of troubles since its founding, had another story this weekend to contend with, this time a sketchily-sourced story from Times UK. The story said that the London-based company is in for a “major retrenchment” and “is expected to rein in its global ambitions to focus solely on the US market.” And everyone went to town with the story, though no one bothered to check with Joost on it.
Turns out, neither of the points are true, as Joost PR told me this morning. The company has about 100 employees and is not planning any major layoffs, but is doing “re-alignment”, whatever that means. Also, Joost is not planning to only focus on U.S....that part is “completely untrue” as well, according to the company PR rep. The company is based in London and has major European roots, and will continue to do cross-border deals.
Singapore to set aside $724 mln for next generation broadband
The Singaporean government announced Monday that it will set aside a grant of up to 250 million Singapore dollars (about 181 million U.S. dollars) to the winning bid to bring the country's broadband network to a new level.
The Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) launched the request for proposal for an operating company to design, build and operate the active infrastructure of Singapore's next generation national broadband network.
The network, which is expected to be available nationwide by 2015, will offer users an upload speed of at least 50 megabits per second and a download speed of at least 100 megabits per second, according to the IDA.
Apple passes Wal-Mart, now #1 music retailer in USOver the past few years, we have watched Apple climb the music sales chart courtesy of the iTunes. Last month we learned that Apple passed Best Buy to become the number two retailer in the the US in December. Now, Apple has ascended to the top of the charts, surpassing Wal-Mart for the first time ever, according to an NPD MusicWatch Survey for the month January contained in an internal Apple e-mail which was leaked to Ars Technica but has not been officially published.
Sony Aims to Increase Blu-ray Market Share to 50% This YearSony plans to increase distribution of its Blu-ray Disc players this year and hopes its share of the total DVD market can increase from 20% to 50% by the end of this year, Digitimes reports. Sony Electronics CEO Ryoji Chubachi made the projection at a press conference in Taipei last week.
Fiber Awash In War of Words
Who can boast supremacy in the delivery of digital products over fiber?
Both cable operators and Verizon Communications are staking that claim. Verizon touts its superiority in a new round of commercials, featuring customers raving about the picture clarity and fast Internet upload and download speeds.
Yahoo extends Flickr with video In a bid to broaden Flickr if not actually crush YouTube, Yahoo is adding videos to what has just been a photo-sharing site.
The change, which the company plans to launch publicly later Tuesday, is a modest but significant extension of Flickr's features. The videos, limited to 90 seconds and 150MB, will be shown as thumbnails alongside users' photos, and will inherit all the features of photos stored on the site: users can add comments, captions, comments, geotags, and privacy restrictions so only friends or family may view the videos, the company said.
Yahoo News Videos Reach 200 Million Monthly StreamsYahoo! News, the
most popular news destination, is experiencing strong growth the views of its videos. A spokesman for Yahoo! told me that monthly viewership is way up over past six months and has averaged from 150 to 200 million steams per month. I am told views in February were up 163 percent over last February. I assume the Presidential primaries have helped.
I sat down with Alan Warms, General Manager of Yahoo! News at the Beet.TV executive summit in Washington last week. Alan joined Yahoo! last year through the Buzztracker acquisition, which Kara Swisher
first reported in September.
Modern Feed: Good Idea, OK Solution Modern Feed is a Los Angeles-based trying to tackle this need, but I’m not hopeful that it’s going to find the solution. The year-old company is coming out of stealth by announcing itself to the world on Monday. It has a promising user interface but too much funding and not enough flexibility.
Modern Feed basically connects users to an index of some 25,000 videos that have been determined to be high quality by an editorial staff. It’s a lot of TV content with some original online productions sprinkled in.
Gulfnews: Indonesia blocks YouTube, MySpaceFive Indonesian internet companies have been ordered by the government to block the popular YouTube and MySpace sites to stop people watching a controversial anti-Islam film by a Dutch filmmaker. The film was posted on the web by Geert Wilders, an anti-immigration lawmaker, at the end of March. The government has said Wilders’ film “could disturb relations between faiths."
Nielsen’s VideoCensusNielsen Online has just released the latest numbers on online video consumption from its VideoCensus measuring tool. While total online video viewers decreased to 115.8 million in February from 116.7 in January, the total number of streams increased to 6.3 billion from 6 billion. Streams per viewer increased to 54.7 from 51.3 as did average time per viewer, up to 130.7 minutes from 124.4 minutes. YouTube garnered 2.9 billion streams in February, while Fox Interactive Media came in second with approximately 406 million and Yahoo came in third with 244.8 million streams.
Industry Moves: Tribune Taps Clear Channel’s Chase As Interactive PresidentThe Tribune Company has hired Marc Chase, Clear Channel’s former SVP for programming, as president of interactive. Chase replaces Mark Sotir, who had been heading up the interactive area since mid-February on an interim basis.
That's it folks.
Yahoo and Major League Baseball have reached a three-year video and advertising partnership, under which the Web portal will exclusively manage online advertising for 
