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Netflix Lays Down Its Bets on "House of Cards"
Netflix served notice of its official arrival on the Hollywood scene this afternoon, announcing a bold deal for first-run rights to the new David Fincher directed TV series, "House of Cards," starring Kevin Spacey. Whereas the company has built a base of 20 million plus subscribers and a streaming franchise largely on catalog movies and TV series, the first-run deal signals that the company will not rest on its successful content acquisition strategy.
In my analysis of the rumored deal (as it stood just a couple days ago), I pointed to three ways that a first-run deal for "House of Cards" contrasted with Netflix's traditional approach. Having discussed the deal with a Netflix spokesman this afternoon, and having read other interviews and analysis, this afternoon, following are updates on those three items:
Categories: Aggregators
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5 Items of Interest for the Week of March 14th
Happy Friday! Below is VideoNuze's end-of-week feature, recapping 5-6 interesting online/mobile video industry news items that we weren't able to cover this week. Enjoy! -
Still No Consensus On Broadband ISP Usage Cap Policies
AT&T made big headlines this week for unveiling a plan to cap monthly usage by its DSL subscribers at 150GB and its U-Verse subscribers at 250GB. Whereas other broadband ISPs like Comcast have long had a 250GB cap in place, what's different about AT&T's plan is that it is proactively saying it will charge $10 for every 50GB users exceed the limit. Other ISPs have tended to use the cap solely as a mechanism for throttling the tiny portion of users who exceed the cap, rather than as a way of generating extra revenue.
Categories: Broadband ISPs
Topics: AT&T, Comcast, FCC, Netflix, Verizon
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Hulu Also Making Move Into Original Video Production
While Netflix got a lot of attention this week for possibly moving to distribute an original TV series, "House of Cards," an interesting scoop in Adweek notes
that Hulu may also be looking to ramp up its original production efforts. According to the article, Hulu has been building two content groups, one focused on branded entertainment and the other on niche comedy and documentaries.
Categories: Aggregators, Branded Entertainment, Indie Video
Topics: ABC, FOX, Hulu, NBC, Netflix
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ESPN Continues Dampening Cord-Cutting Fears
ESPN released the its latest round of research on cord-cutting this week, finding that a tiny .18% of American homes with both pay-TV service and a
broadband connection dropped their video service between the fourth quarter of 2010 and the first quarter of 2011. ESPN said the .18% is actually lower than the .28% it found in its prior period research and is fully offset by a comparable number of people who upgraded from a "broadcast-only" service level to a full pay-TV package. Not surprisingly, ESPN said that among medium-to-heavy sports viewers there was zero cord-cutting.
Categories: Sports
Topics: ESPN, Nielsen, SNL Kagan
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NCAA MMOD Runs Home Page Takeover Ad On NYTimes.com
Speaking of sports, here's how big a deal live streaming of March Madness on Demand (MMOD) has become for the NCAA and its TV partners CBS and Turner Sports: yesterday, which was the tournament's big kickoff, the parties ran a pricey full-page, rich media takeover ad on the NYTimes.com home page (see below). MMOD has developed into the highest-profile live online video sporting event of the year. It's hard to believe any real college hoops fan doesn't know about MMOD's availability, but with the NYTimes ad, clearly the parties weren't taking any chances.
Categories: Broadcasters, Cable Networks, Newspapers, Sports
Topics: CBS, MMOD, NCAA, NYTimes, Turner Sports
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NeuLion Gets In the Game With NAIA Hoops Online
NCAA MMOD wasn't the only online college basketball story this week, as video platform provider NeuLion announced that it is powering the NAIA's men's
and women's basketball tournament, also now underway. But whereas NCAA MMOD has pursued a free, ad-supported model, the NAIA games are only available through a subscription, with the full package running $40.
Categories: Sports
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VideoNuze Report Podcast #92 - Mar. 18, 2011
I'm pleased to present the 92nd edition of the VideoNuze Report podcast, for March 18, 2011.
In this week's podcast, Daisy Whitney and I discuss Netflix's rumored $100 million deal for first-run rights to "House of Cards," a new TV series directed by David Fincher and starring Kevin Spacey. As I wrote earlier this week, the deal would be a very significant shift in strategy for Netflix, and Daisy and I get into some of the details.
On a related note, yesterday I posted the audio recording of an interview I did with Netflix's chief content officer Ted Sarandos at the NATPE conference in January. Ted didn't allude to any first-run deals in that interview, but he did talk about his interest in bidding against HBO for the rights to Warner Bros. films when their deal was up for renewal among other topics.
Click here to listen to the podcast (13 minutes, 12 seconds)
Click here for previous podcasts
The VideoNuze Report is available in iTunes...subscribe today!Categories: Aggregators, Podcasts
Topics: HBO, Netflix, Podcast, Warner Bros.
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