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Seth McFarlane is known for creating The Family Guy and American Dad. Raven-Symone Pearman is recognized among teen and tween audiences for her staring role on Disney’s “That’s So Raven.”   (older audiences may know her from her debut on the Cosby show) Now the two will take their name recognition to a different video format: Internet Video.

In their new venture, McFarlane and Raven-Symone will join forces with Google and film finance company Media Rights Capital (MRC).  The deal was announced Thursday. Google will handle distribution. MRC will provide capital (reportedly into the millions). And the talent will provide…talent.  There’s just one catch. The content will not be syndicated on YouTube as most would expect. Click to Read More

Last week, on August 8th,  when Blockbuster acquired Movielink, the purchase price for the transaction was widely reported to be a steal at an amount less than $50m and maybe even less than  $20m.  How low a price, or how much less than those numbers, however, was unclear at the time.  

Today, just how much of a bargain Blockbuster got came to light.  According to  Blockbuster’s official 8-k filing, the purchase price (less adjustments for cash and working capital) was a tiny $6.6m.

That’s an off–the–back–of–the–truck, fire–sale get–it–off–my–hands kind of bargain price; Click to Read More

Yesterday, NBC announced the planned launch of Didja, an  “All Ads, All the time” Internet video site.   In the press announcement introducing the new site, it was noted Didja would not launch until some time in early 2008.  That schedule was set to insure the much larger YouTube targeting Internet video joint venture between News Corporation and NBC would launch first.

Today, that joint venture (which was announced in March and is still referred to as New Co) received an added shot of working capital.    Providence Equity Partners, a media-centric investment company based in Rhode Island, confirmed they’d take a ten percent stake in the joint venture for $100m.

That investment sets the pre-money valuation for the as yet unlaunched effort at a staggering $1b.   It’s an enormous number for a company that does not yet have its product on the market. Click to Read More

About a year ago, around June 2006, Movielink, the Windows only movie download service owned by a consortium of movie studios planted a sign in the yard and put itself up for sale.  As hot as Internet video has been, and despite the success of some download services like iTunes, Movielink has sat on the market like a house needing major repairs in a bad real estate market.

Late Wednesday, after months of talk, rumor and innuendo, rental company Blockbuster stepped in to buy the unwanted property.  Terms weren’t disclosed but reports have estimated the deal was well below $50m and possibly as low as $20m. Click to Read More

You know you live in a consumer culture when advertising spots become entertainment on their own.  Today, NBC Universal announced the planned roll out of their next step into Internet video – an advertising only video site.  To clarify, this is not an ad supported video website (well, technically it’s that too) but this is a site showing nothing but video ads.

The site, which is named Didja (in tribute to the opening line of the water cooler conversations they hope their programming will inspire), will launch in early 2008, Variety reported.   The site’s  roll out will be staged to follow the launch of NBC’s other video effort, New Co, (which is its much larger joint venture with News Corp to build a true YouTube rival called).

The Didja site will showcase both new and old TV ad footage.  It’s expected that advertisers will have the opportunity to pay for featured billing or placement similar to the way sponsors buy top search result placement with sponsored search. Click to Read More

Rupert Murdoch’s media empire spans the globe (for a map see here).  With such breadth and scope (and in the wake of the $5b purchase of Wall Street Journal parent Dow Jones)  it was easy to almost overlook another acquisition but sometimes the little things can be as  telling than the big.

For $11.3m, NDS Group (Nasdaq: NNDS) , an UK based subsidiary of News Corp, is buying a small Israeli streaming video company called CastUP. 

Click to Read More

Discovery Communications is moving ahead with confidence into new media.  A day after acquiring a popular environmental lifestyle site to be a companion site for a their soon to be launched Planet Green channel, the company has also announced they will be making first run full length episodes of some of their programming available online.

Beginning August 3rd , Discovery will premier Meerkat Manor, a program its Animal Planet cable channel, online a week before airing the episodes on television.  Episodes of Discovery Channel’s  program Dirty Jobs and The Learning Channel’s new tattoo art spin off LA Ink will also air online (both of those programs will debut on television and then be made available online a day later). Click to Read More