Seth Gilbert, 07-16-2007
Just when it seems everyone is getting into Internet video, in a reverse twist, Sony is backing out; at least with regard to their strategy.
Last year, Sony bought video sharing site Grouper for a crisp $65m. It was to by Sony’s portal for sharing video, Sony’s clone of YouTube. ….now, the towels been thrown in and the fight called. Instead of trying to compete with established players, Sony will rebrand the property and redeploy it toward a new end: video creation.
Henceforward Grouper will be called Crackle. And lest there be any doubt about a change of direction, there is the official pronouncement of its demise from Josh Felser, a founder of Grouper and the man in charge of Crackle. He said unequivocally, “User Generated content is dead to us. … We are definitely leaving video sharing and focusing on emerging talent.” Crackle will help to finance, promote and syndicate the work of Internet video auteurs.
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Seth Gilbert, 07-12-2007
Tivo and Amazon cut out the need to use a PC from their video download service earlier this week. Tivo equipped users can now buy downloadable movies straight from their remote controls if their DVR is hooked up to a broadband Internet connection. Microsoft similarly cut out the PC for movie downloads when it enabled a PC-free movie rental service through its Xbox gaming platform and website Xbox Live about a year ago.
At the video gaming industry’s leading trade show in Santa Monica, Microsoft and Disney announced a deal to expand the titles available on Microsoft’s service.
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Seth Gilbert, 07-11-2007
Way back in February, web retail giant Amazon entered the video download marketplace through a partnership with Tivo. Under the initial terms of that partnership, customers could go to Amazon.com, buy a feature video on the website and designate some combination of devices to download and watch the movie on. Downloads took about an hour (over average broadband connections).
Tuesday morning, Amazon and Tivo announced an improvement to the initial offering with a new version branded “Buy on TV.” This second generation Unbox video offering will bypass the computer. Now, subscribers will be able to buy movies with their TiVo remote controls – no computer needed.
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Seth Gilbert, 07-9-2007
Peer to peer television over the Internet, a niche of so called IPTV, is an industry in its infancy. That hasn’t stopped investors from making huge bets on its future. So far, combined investments have climbed into the hundred million dollar range (Veoh has received more than $40m and Joost has received $45m). With such high stakes, the three early leaders, Babelgum, Joost and Veoh, are finding themselves in a heated race to capture marketshare as early, and as fast, as possible. Amongst this competition, exclusive content, the kind of “find it only here” video that might lure audiences from a competitor, and help separate the otherwise similar services, is revealing itself to be major part of strategy.
Today, The Hollywood Reporter reports Joost will announce a major exclusive content deal with Viacom’s VH1 sometime this week. According to the initial report, Joost’s 500k member audience will be able to watch the entire premier season of VH1’s new comedy series ten days ahead of the series Television broadcast premier.
The episodes will run with advertising to support them.
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Seth Gilbert, 07-5-2007
With the battle of HD DVD formats escalating into the summer, the launch of a consumer-friendly, potentially neutralizing dual-format disc has been delayed.
Warner Brothers has acknowledged that Total HD, a disc capable of housing an HD DVD movie on one side and a Blu Ray version of the movie on the other will be delayed until some time in 2008.
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Seth Gilbert,
Scientific studies testing the quality of TV programming or the efficiency of advertising aren’t a new thing. In the children’s educational realm, esteemed programming from Sesame Street to Blues Clues has been built around detailed research. Sesame Street actually has an Education and Research (E&R) department that reviews scripts and oversees studies aimed at revealing how to best deliver content to their target audience. In Universities, classes are dedicated to media and advertising, or psychology and advertising; all looking at voluminous studies about what does, or doesn’t, work in delivering a message (educational, advertising, or otherwise) to the audience. For as long as someone has been selling a product, there has been someone else selling a means to be a better salesman.
On Tuesday, the New York Times reported on one of the newest experiments in television advertising. The study is being run for television network NBC. What makes for an interesting twist is, in the new study, unlike prior examples, the immediate goal isn’t to sell products to consumers, rather, it is instead to help the network sell ad slots to advertisers.
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Seth Gilbert, 07-4-2007
It’s been said that “statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.” Similarly, Arthur Conan Doyle’s famed Sherlock Holmes once spouted off that it’s “a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.”
These days there’s usual more data than there is time to process it, and much might leave even Sherlock scratching his head, still some of the raw data can be revealing. Over the past few weeks, Metue has published two collections of raw statistics (Click for Part one and Part two). Here’s part three of the three part series showcasing a sampling of recent media statistics that to lend themselves to insights into the crossed, intersecting world of media, entertainment and technology.
(Editors Note: In future weeks, a dedicated page may be added to Metue to house more of this kind of information. Stay tuned. Several site additions are in development or under consideration ):
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