Tribune Pondering Sale of Tribune Media Services Units
Media conglomerate Tribune is pondering a sale of its Tribune Media Services businesses, which provide online TV listings and also produce and aggregate news and entertainment content, the Chicago Tribune reported. At least two suitors have expressed interest in the TV listings businesses, sources with knowledge of discussions told the Tribune.
Murdoch: YouTube Helps More than Hurts
Murdoch told the audience he didn’t sue YouTube because it provided promotion for shows like the Simpsons. And Hulu, said Murdoch, was a way for News Corp to control its copyrights. Murdoch expressed interested in online alternatives to broadcast television and traditional film releases, but said he still expects television to be “central.” Releasing movies only online? — he said that’s possible, but hasn’t been tried yet
Iger: Nets Should Embrace VOD
The Walt Disney Co. CEO Robert Iger told an audience at an industry conference Wednesday that programming networks need to embrace video on demand to survive in the changing media landscape. Iger, speaking at the Sanford Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference in New York, said that many programmers have been reluctant to provide compelling content to the VOD platform “until the opportunity becomes really obvious.”But he said the viewing habits of younger viewers will force content providers to allow more of their content to appear on the platform.
“Everybody will get there. I can’t tell you when,” Iger said. “I actually believe that consumers, particularly young consumers, are going to be much less tolerant of accessing or getting programming in a linear form on a traditional network and much more demanding of the product they get in a video-on-demand form, meaning individually.”
ImdieFlix, a marketplace for independent films, has launched MyFestival, a new streaming video site that will let film festivals crowdsource the movie selection process. MyFestival is making its debut in conjunction with the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF), which is taking place from May 22 to June 15.
Death knell for television as we know it
Japanese television technology that will give viewers access to high-speed broadcasts over the internet could render conventional television obsolete and transform the media landscape within years, analysts have predicted.The country's electronics and telecommunications industries are developing a technological standard for a new "internet television" set, which will let users browse websites and watch streaming programs at the touch of a remote control.
Best Practices: Online Video Improves Journalism
Al Morning, of Poynter Online, has published a great interview on their site with The Washington Post’s video journalist and documentary filmmaker, Travis Fox. Travis discusses how the medium of online video helps to better tell the story and goes on to discuss some best practices that he follows when it comes to producing online video, including a discussion regarding ideal length for journalistic video stories.
New Research - 1 Billion Online Video Users by 2013
A new study from ABI Research forecasts the number of viewers who access video via the Web to nearly quadruple in the next few years, reaching at least one billion in 2013.
Redlasso Refuses to Cease and Desist
In a letter to be delivered today at 5:00 PM ET to legal counsel for five broadcast content providers, Redlasso (www.redlasso.com) has said it will continue to make its site available for use by bloggers providing social commentary on newsworthy events as it continues to work towards cooperative, mutually beneficial arrangements with those and other content providers. Redlasso also announced that Michael Jordan, former Westinghouse Corporation and CBS chief executive, and one of the nation’s best-known CEOs, has joined the company as a senior advisor. Among his responsibilities will be serving as chief liaison to the networks for Redlasso, as well as providing strategic counsel to the management team.
TiVo’s Profit Quadruples to $3.6M on Lower Costs
Some cable systems are starting to complain that too many of the programs they pay for are being given away on the Web for free.
Tribune Pondering Sale of Tribune Media Services Units
Media conglomerate Tribune (NYSE: TXA) is pondering a sale of its Tribune Media Services businesses, which provide online TV listings and also produce and aggregate news and entertainment content, the Chicago Tribune reported.
Revision3 bought down by MediaDefender
Revision3 CEO Jim Louderback said MediaDefender, an ArtistDirect subsidiary formed to fight peer-to-peer piracy, caused the Web video studio’s server and site to shut down over the Memorial Day weekend
Don't Mess With Google
The search giant fired back at Viacom Inc. (NYSE: VIA), which filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against it last year, by claiming that Viacom was jeopardizing the free exchange of information across the entire Web."By seeking to make carriers and hosting providers liable for internet communications, Viacom's complaint threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information, news, entertainment, and political and artistic expression," Google stated.
State of the Internet (release)
Akamai observed that from a global perspective, South Korea had the highest measured levels of “high broadband” (>5 Mbps) connectivity. In the United States, Delaware topped the list, with over 60% of connections to Akamai occurring at 5 Mbps or greater. At the other end of the bandwidth spectrum, Rwanda and the Solomon Islands topped the list of slowest countries, with 95% or more of the connections to Akamai from both countries occurring at below 256 Kbps. In the United States, Washington State and Virginia turned in the highest percentages of sub-256 Kbps connections. However, in contrast to the international measurements, these states only saw 21% and 18% of connections below 256 Kbps respectively.
Mark Cuban: All Your Videos Belong to Us
Addressable set top boxes. Encoded Triggers. Video Hot Spots. Video Quality. Broadcast costs per user rather than unicast. All the features that have been promised as part of internet video and TV for years are finally starting to happen for real on your HDTV. While internet video is looking for a box to replace the set top box, Digital Cable is looking for ways to completely remove the set top box. The excitement in video over the next 5 years is not going to happen on the Net. Deal with it people. As exciting as people watching 10 minute videos on Youtube is. As exciting as the growth patterns for those videos are, digital video is no longer limited to the internet. While Google and others are searching for ways to monetize video, its already happening on your HDTV. Which also means that for video content producers, the money will be where the money is right now. On TV rather than the net.
Death to the Set-Top! Long Live the Set-Top!
Some folks missed the real implication of the Sony agreement, anyway. It had less to do with removing set-tops from the equation, and much more to do with the fact that Sony and the cable industry have, at last, found common ground on the sticky two-way issue.With so much weight behind tru2way now from the consumer electronics industry and some top MSOs, that means the FCC may look more favorably upon tru2way as the method to open up the retail market for cable boxes and nifty digital TVs, and, therefore, may opt not to saddle MSOs with a competing platform called DCR+, which now appears to be the one that's dying a slow and almost certain death. That sound you hear is a collective sigh coming from the cable industry's video engineers. The prospect of supporting DCR+ is one monster headache they'd just assume to avoid.
Viral video cashing in or selling out?
Depending on how you look at it, product placements in viral videos are either a benefit to video makers and brand owners or simply a sad development
TiVo Service Will Deliver Selections of TV Critic
Television viewers have been reading the recommendations of local critics for years. Soon a subset of TiVo users will be able to automatically record a critic’s picks of The Chicago Tribune. TiVo, a leading maker of digital video recorders, is expected to announce on Wednesday a partnership with The Tribune that will deliver the recommendations of Maureen Ryan, the TV critic for The Tribune, straight to the TVs of users who sign up for the service.
New York Times to go programmable with API
The goal, according to Aron Pilhofer, editor of interactive news, is to "make the NYTprogrammable. Everything we produce should be organized data."Once the API is complete, the Times' internal developers will use it to build platforms to organize all the structured data such as events listings, restaurants reviews, recipes, etc. They will offer a key to programmers, developers and others who are interested in mashing-up various data sets on the site. "The plan is definitely to open [the code] up," Frons said. "How far we don't know."
AT&T VRADs in CT Need Landowner Approval
The Connecticut DPUC yesterday ruled that AT&T must get the permission of abutting landowners and municipalities before it can install utility boxes for its U-verse VDSL/IPTV service. The large VRAD cabinets have been a sore spot for a growing number of communities, who consider them property value killers.
New YouTube numbers
Forbes says YouTube will make $200 million this year and $350 million in 2009. For reference, that’s about twice the number we’ve printed here — some $70 million to $90 million — and had corroborated by other sources.Forbes says YouTube homepage ads cost $175,000 a day, plus a commitment to spend $50,000 more in ads on Google or YouTube. That’s a bit different from what TVWeek reported in January (a $100,000-per-day flat fee plus a $100,000 incremental spend on Google and YouTube within 90 days.) Branded channels cost $200,000, according to Forbes (TVWeek had said $250,000 across Google and YouTube, $100,000 of which must be on YouTube).
Amazon Launching Pay-Per-View Streaming Next Week
Word that Amazon will be launching a pay-per-view streaming service next week. Amazon, of course, already has a pay-per-view rental/download service -- the pretty-much-ignored Unbox -- so unclear what exactly they'll be rolling out. Sadly, Walt Mossberg, who's already seen the service, presumably under NDA, didn't bother to talk about it.
MediaDefender Takes Down Revision3?
Online video studio Revision3 suffered web site outages over the long weekend and extending to Tuesday that it is now blaming on the anti-piracy outfit MediaDefender. Rev3 CEO Jim Louderback posted a long and well-written account of the events on the company blog this morning. Rev3 operates a BitTorrent tracking server to distribute high-quality downloads of its shows.
That's it folks









