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It was looking like News Corp was getting off its quarter-long roller coaster ride yesterday with a go-ahead vote to buy Dow Jones but elsewhere in media stocks, particularly entertainment, a different roller coaster ride kept going. After the close of market Tuesday,  DreamWorks Animation and CBS both released quarterly earnings.  It was a good day for animators, not such a good day for TV.

DreamWorks Animation(NYSE: DWA:)
DreamWorks Animation reported towering second quarter revenue with net income of $61.8m (60 cents a share) for the quarter ended June 30th.  Even subtracting a one time gain of 11cents a share for a reduction in reserves for home video sales, and another one time gain of 4cents from tax accounting,  it was huge return relative to last years income of 13.7m for the same period. 

Quarterly revenue in the film industry is highly variable and heavily influenced by the volume and quality of titles released at any given time.  DreamWorks strategy is to release one franchise title and one new film every year.  Shrek the Third was the franchise film for this year and it released this past quarter.  They’ll be living off of it for the rest of the year.

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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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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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Cambridge, Ma based Internet TV and syndication service Brightcove announced it has signed a definitive agreement to become the video platform for Fox Entertainment Group’s internet TV efforts.

Under the terms of the deal Fox broadcasting, FX and its other channels will begun running programming and hosting ad-supported channels on Brightcove’s technology platform. Additionally, Brightcove’s services will allow FEG properties to manage the syndication of their programming to website affiliates and promotion their content with social media features.

While Brightcove also has a limited relationship with CBS, the New York Times, MTV Networks, and other media properties, this will be the first deal where they will act as the sole network provider for a major network.

The deal is a significant milestone for Brightcove, and arguably the company’s most significant news to date, besting even its nearly $60m private placement in January.

Fads come and go and while at their peak they often get a lot of press attention.  Babelgum and Joost are the two most mentioned names when it comes to Peer-to Peer IPTV, and both are trying to prove their marketplace is no fad.

London based,  Joost has been the initial front runner.  It was first to market, raised a large amount of capital, is signing up partners, hired a big name CEO, and even hired a talent agent. Babelgum’s PR machine hasn’t been as active in informing the world of their progress but the Ireland based company has been quietly moving ahead in preparation to compete.  A few days ago, Babelgum  rolled out its own beta offering. 

Like Joost, access to Babelgum is limited to invitation, and like Joost, there’s a lot still being developed.  The offerings are anything but complete.  Still both are far enough along to merit a side by side comparison; so here’s a first look. 

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No matter who gets whacked, who goes to jail, or who turns into Tweety and starts singing secrets, tonight the world will say goodbye to the Soprano family.  But their family name will stay present next to the Corleone’s from the Godfather, Tony Montana from Scarface and all the other legends of Mafiosa Entertainment. 

Whatever happens in the episode, the curtain call will also mark the end of a program that, arguably, changed the fabric of Television programming as much as any other show in recent decades.  Just as Mash and All in the Family opened new doors for sitcoms – from the subject matters considered, to the tone of the dialog – the Soprano’s too, altered TV.  In bringing a gritty, edgy, violent concept and layering it with complex psychological nuance and wildly detailed character development, the Soprano’s ushered in a new era.   The Soprano’s was more than just mafia TV.  It was a program written and filmed with the kind of creative ambition and techniques usually reserved for feature films.  The Soprano’s brought the air of film making and story telling back to the short form.

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Michelangelo Volpi, known generally as Mike, was for a long time the person most mentioned as successor to Cisco CEO John Chambers.  Before leaving this year, the man named after an artist,  spent 13 years at Cisco, including seven as the head of their mergers and acquisitions group.  During that tenure, he was responsible for the first seventy acquisitions – many across the time zones of the world.  He was also active in pushing the sale of Cisco’s networking equipment to many media power houses.  Now, Mr. Volpi will be taking on a new challenge as the CEO of hugely funded, largely hyped, talent-agency-represented, IPTV company Joost. 

In his new endeavor as CEO,  Mr. Volpi’s will likely find some overlaps to his past experiences and a host of new challenges to resolve. Click to Read More