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CNBC Missing Out By Not Livestreaming Obama Town Hall
President Obama is in the middle of a town hall, hosted by CNBC, from the Newseum in Washington, DC. The town hall is on CNBC on TV, but oddly, it is not being livestreamed. That's a missed opportunity for CNBC, which could be attracting lots of online users who don't happen to have easy access to a TV. Live blogging something is just not the same! In fact, it was odd for me to have to swivel my chair to turn on the TV; that's how accustomed I've become to expecting big events like this to be livestreamed.Categories: Cable Networks, Live Streaming
Topics: CNBC
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Sezmi Snags Another $17.3M; Positioned for Shift to Affordable Pay-TV Service?
Late last week Sezmi, the startup pay-TV replacement provider raised another $17.3M, bringing its total raised to date to $92M. Sezmi has intrigued me from the start both because of its clever hybrid broadcast/broadband delivery
architecture and its ability to be a full substitute for existing pay-TV services. Now, as Sezmi is poised to begin expanding is rollout, its value-pricing approach could find its mark with recession-weary consumers.
As I described last week in "Are Pay-TV Providers Getting Hit By a Perfect Storm in Q3?" increasingly expensive incumbent pay-TV services are up against a belt-tightening process that households across America are going through. While cable and satellite now eat up 1.4% of discretionary spending, negative income growth, higher savings rates and chronic unemployment/under-employment are forcing many households to re-evaluate their entertainment spending. Forking over $80, $100 or even $200+ per month to their cable, telco or satellite provider is no doubt coming under closer scrutiny.
Categories: Aggregators, Cable Networks, Cable TV Operators, Devices
Topics: SezMi
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5 Items of Interest for the Week of Sept. 13th
It's Friday and that means once again VideoNuze is featuring 5-6 interesting online/mobile video industry stories that we weren't able to cover this week. Read them now or take them with you for the weekend. Enjoy!
Meet YouTube's Most In-Demand Brand Stars
A fascinating look at how major brands are hiring amateurs who have gained large followings on YouTube to pitch their products. The concept of "celebrity spokesperson" is getting redefined in the online video era.
Logitech Revue with Google TV Coming 9/29 for $299, Dish Network Offering Discounts?
We may be less than 2 weeks away from Logitech's "Revue," the first implementation of Google TV, hitting the market, with Dish Network subscribers possibly getting a deeply discounted $179 offer. The connected device space is increasingly crowded and there's high anticipation to see how Google TV stacks up.
Pre-order a Boxee Box Now
Speaking of connected devices, Boxee announced this week that pre-ordering is available from Amazon for its Boxee Box connected device, manufactured by D-Link. Like Google TV, but unlike Apple TV or Roku, Boxee offers the prospect of browsing the full Internet for video, not just what's been integrated with the device.
Samsung Reveals Tablet Launch Plans
Meanwhile the strongest potential competitor to the iPad, Samsung's "Tab" will begin shipping in just a few weeks, with availability from all 4 major U.S. wireless carriers. The Tab is very focused on mobile video, running Android 2.2 which supports Flash 10.1. That means Hulu and all other Flash-based video should work, significantly expanding the universe of choices beyond what is available on the iPad. No pricing yet, but the Tab looks like a meaningful iPad alternative.
Ivi Seeks to Become an Online Cable System
Can an online service retransmit network TV through the Internet, and charge for it without having any underlying agreements in place with the networks themselves? That's what Ivi, which unveiled its software this week, is attempting to do, pointing to U.S. copyright law as making its offer legit. We'll see; with TV networks gaining no new revenue coming in plus the risk of cannibalization we should expect them to raise vigorous legal challenges.
Categories: Aggregators, Brand Marketing, Broadcasters, Devices, Mobile Video
Topics: Boxee, D-Link, Google TV, Ivi, Logitech, Samsung, YouTube
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VideoNuze Report Podcast #75 - Sept. 17, 2010
Daisy Whitney and I are pleased to present the 75th edition of the VideoNuze Report podcast, for September 17, 2010.
Daisy gets us started this week, adding detail to her New Media Minute in which she discusses the range of hyper-local online news and advertising initiatives currently underway from companies such as AOL, ESPN, NY Times and NPR. Daisy offers her assessment of the pros and cons of this area which has gained a lot of recent attention.
Speaking of advertising, we then chat about my post from earlier this week, "YouTube Gets Center Stage in Google's New 'Watch This Space' Ad Campaign" which I believe is the first time that Google has heavily promoted the attractiveness of its display ads and more specifically video advertising on YouTube for major brands. With Google TV coming soon and a new head of content partnerships, Google is on the march to the living room.
Click here to listen to the podcast (16 minutes, 2 seconds)
Click here for previous podcasts
The VideoNuze Report is available in iTunes...subscribe today!Categories: Advertising, Podcasts
Topics: Google, Local, Podcast, YouTube
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Google Poaches Key Netflix Executive to Run Content Partnerships
Here's an interesting executive change: Google has apparently nabbed Netflix VP, Digital Content Acquisition Robert Kyncl to be its new VP, Content Partnerships. AllThingsD.com is reporting the move, though neither side has confirmed. The Google role has been open since David Eun moved over to AOL as President of Media last February.
Assuming the move is true, it would be a key step forward for Google - and more specifically YouTube - in gaining access to premium content. Kyncl would bring not just his relationships with Hollywood, but an insider's
understanding of the economics behind all of Netflix's streaming deals with partners such as Epix, Warner Bros., Universal, ABC, Starz and others. That kind of credibility and insight would be a huge boon to YouTube, which has made some progress with premium content providers (e.g. Univision, WWE, etc), but has still had trouble breaking through. Google certainly has the stature to be a major distributor of premium content, but actually getting things done in Hollywood is notoriously tricky for outsiders.
Categories: Aggregators, People
Topics: Google, Netflix, YouTube
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5Min Expands Reach With Dailymotion Partnership
5Min, a leader in online video syndication, will distribute its 200K lifestyle and how-to videos to aggregator Dailymotion, in a partnership deal announced this morning. For 5Min and its content partners, Dailymotion with its 66
million monthly unique visitors, offers a huge additional audience. For its part, Dailymotion gets a curated library of premium quality content across 21 categories such as sports, health, travel, games and others. A quick check of Dailymotion today indicates the 5Min integration is not yet live.
5Min has been an early leader in video syndication, using its "VideoSeed" technology to understand publishers' text pages and then contextually match relevant content to them, from content partners like IGN, Hearst, Meredith, Scripps and others. Premium content providers have been attracted to work with 5Min because it drives significant incremental viewership of their videos beyond their own destination web sites.
Categories: Aggregators, Syndicated Video Economy
Topics: 5Min, DailyMotion
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Hulu Opening Development Center in Seattle
Hulu is opening a development center in Seattle by the end of the year, according to a blog post by Richard Tom, VP, Platform Technology this
morning. According to the company's job section it's currently recruiting for 27 open positions, with most in its LA office and a half dozen in China. As the company scales up in Seattle, it sounds like the number of recruits will grow.
Tom notes in his post that almost half the LA development team has some experience in Seattle, and given CEO Jason Kilar came from Amazon, the move makes sense. There's also a huge technical community in the area, lead of course by thousands of current and former Microsofties. One lure for prospective employees will no doubt be stock options; Hulu is rumored to be exploring an IPO later this year. I've been skeptical of the timing given the uncertainty that remains in both Hulu's ad and subscription models, but given the excitement over online video, Hulu could find a receptive market.
As a side-note, Hulu CTO Eric Feng recently left Hulu to become technical advisor to Al Gore at the venture firm Kleiner Perkins.
Categories: Aggregators
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Are Pay-TV Providers Getting Hit By a Perfect Storm in Q3?
The U.S. pay-TV industry, which as a whole lost multichannel video subscribers for the first time in Q2 '10, may be heading for a soft 3rd quarter as well. As Multichannel News reported yesterday, Time Warner Cable's CFO Rob Marcus said at a conference this week that Q3 "video net losses are pacing ahead" of where they were in Q3 '09. He attributed the downturn to recession-related factors of high unemployment, high home vacancy rates and slow new home formation. Though that's a fair explanation, it's only one element in a perfect storm pay-TV operators now find themselves battling.
Aside from the above recession-related matters, pay-TV operators are also up against belt-tightening that's rooted in basic household economics. As Craig Moffett at Sanford Bernstein pointed out in a note last weekend, in the past 25 years, cable and satellite spending has increased from 1/2 of 1% of discretionary spending to 1.4%, a growth rate that's triple other household discretionary line items.
Categories: Cable TV Operators, Satellite, Telcos
Topics: Sanford Bernstein, Time Warner Cable
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