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NCAA's MMOD Offering In-Game Highlights, Powered by Digitalsmiths
An exciting feature of this year's NCAA March Madness on Demand (MMOD) is the availability of highlight clips during the games themselves. This near-real time metadata tagging and indexing capability is being powered by Digitalsmiths, and it represents a key milestone in the online sports experience.
As I described last month in my review of MLB.com's "Fantasy Baseball Commissioner" product which this season will include in-game highlights as well, these initiatives move metadata tagging and indexing from the realm of on-demand libraries to live streams. Digitalsmiths' GM Patrick Donovan wrote a post about this last Thursday, and I got a chance to catch up with him about it further.
Categories: Sports
Topics: CBS, Digitalsmiths, MMOD, NCAA, Turner Sports
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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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CBSSports.com College Network To Mine Value of Universities' Sports Video Archives
Sports continues its role as a leading online video innovator, as this morning CBSSports.com College Network, a division of CBS Interactive, is announcing an initiative to enable its 175 university partners to mine the value of their
extensive sports video libraries, in a new partnership with technology provider Thought Equity Motion. Last week Rob Schupler, CBSSports.com College Network's SVP of University Relations and Dan Weiner, VP of Marketing and Products at Thought Equity Motion briefed me on their plans.
Rob explained that CBSSports.com College Network has a broad mandate with its university partners - to create their web sites, manage content, help build their fan bases, protect their brands and monetize through different business models. A key area of fan interest has been audio and video content, which is often available through premium subscriptions. However, when it comes to archived video content, the sites have mainly only offered a tiny fraction of what's in their vaults, usually just highlights from the past season. Rob said that the traditionally manual process of producers accessing archived content made providing a richer assortment operationally and economically unviable.
Categories: Sports, Technology
Topics: CBSSports.com College Network, Thought Equity Motion
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Who Will Win the Chance to Watch Every 2011 MLB Game?
This past Monday night was the application deadline for "MLB Dream Job," a new web series that Major League Baseball and Endemol are creating, in which one lucky fan will be sequestered in a New York City apartment to watch every single game of the 2011 season and blog frequently about his/her experience. It's an attention-grabbing idea that, according to this THR article, had already attracted over 5,000 submissions, as of about 2 weeks ago. When I first read about the web series, my initial thought was, "wow, if only I were 22 again, what a great way to spend 6 months," but then that yielded to a memory of what happened to filmmaker Morgan Spurlock when he went on a McDonalds-only diet for 30 days in the 2004 documentary "Super Size Me."
Categories: Indie Video, Sports
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Op-Ed in the L.A. Times and NPR Interview
I was very pleased to have an op-ed piece published in the L.A. Times this week, "Pay-TV's Full-Court Press" in which I explained how the recent Time Warner Cable deal with the L.A. Lakers is going to be very costly for pay-TV subscribers in the L.A. area, whether they are sports fans or not. The piece echoes points I made last month in "Not A Sports Fan? Then You're Getting Sacked For At Least $2 Billion Per Year."
Producers at the main L.A. NPR affiliate, KCRW noticed the op-ed and called for an interview on the "Which Way, LA?" program with Warren Olney which runs at 7pm weekdays. The recording is here, and my interview segment starts about 1 minute into the broadcast. I continue to believe that the huge cost for pay-TV's non-sports fans and casual fans to receive expensive sports networks they don't watch is ultimately going to cause them to re-evaluate the value of their pay-TV subscriptions. With the rise of lower cost and free over-the top options like Netflix and Hulu - plus the proliferation of connected devices - entertainment-minded consumers will be very tempted to save money by reducing their pay-TV service.Categories: Sports
Topics: Hulu, KCRW, LA Times, Netflix
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It's NCAA March Madness On Demand Season Again
Speaking of sports, Turner Sports, CBS Sports and the NCAA announced this week that March Madness on Demand will be back online and free to users yet again. MMOD is by far the highest-profile sports event offered live online and the NCAA and networks just keep on improving it every year. For the 2011 tournament, the big new drawing card will be an iPad app, along with new features like personalized channel lineups, social interaction and live stats updates.
Categories: Broadcasters, Cable Networks, Sports
Topics: CBS, MMOD, NCAA, Turner Sports
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Disney Has Religion on Digital, ESPN Is At the Core
Disney held its annual investor day yesterday, and as usual, technology, and the opportunities it creates for the company, was at center stage. Disneyintroduced a new initiative called "Disney Studio All Access" providing a central location for consumers to securely access the company's range of content. Though details were sketchy, key to the plan is more flexible consumer ownership and multi-device playback. For paid, downloadable video, that remains the holy grail.
Aside from the company's digital initiatives on the entertainment side of its house, the most important asset that Disney is trying to re-imagine digitally is ESPN. Just yesterday, the company announced a new distribution deal with Verizon, which emphasizes live online streaming of ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU and ESPN Buzzer Beater. The deal is similar to one inked last September with Time Warner Cable, the country's 2nd-largest cable operator. No doubt others will follow.
Categories: Cable Networks, Cable TV Operators, Sports, Telcos
Topics: Disney, ESPN, Time Warner Cable, Verizon
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VideoNuze Report Podcast #88 - Feb. 18, 2011
Daisy Whitney and I are pleased to present the 88th edition of the VideoNuze Report podcast, for February 18, 2011.
In this podcast, Daisy and I discuss a deal announced earlier this week in which MLB.com will provide near real-time video clips to CBSSports.com's Fantasy Baseball Commissioner users, among other things. The deal caught my attention because the video is driven off of metadata that's created and published almost immediately after the video is shot. That contrasts with metadata creation happening with library content. The deal also speaks to the way video can be used to enhance various online experiences. Listen in the learn more.
Click here to listen to the podcast (12 minutes, 1 second)
Click here for previous podcasts
The VideoNuze Report is available in iTunes...subscribe today!Topics: CBSSports.com, MLB.com, Podcast
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Time Warner Cable-LA Lakers Deal Is More Bad News For Pay-TV's Non-Sports Fans
If you live in the Los Angeles area and are not a sports fan, or you are a casual one, Time Warner Cable's new 20-year deal with the LA Lakers is more bad news. That's because, as I explained last week in "Not a Sports Fan? Then You're Getting Sacked For At Least $2 Billion Per Year," virtually all digital pay-TV subscribers in the LA area - sports fans or not - are going to be footing the bill for this massive deal.
The TWC-Lakers deal is just the latest example of how ever-higher monthly fees pay-TV distributors must fork over to carry sports networks help drive up subscription rates. In this case, TWC, the 2nd largest pay-TV operator, is
positioning itself to also be a major sports network owner, just as Comcast has with Comcast SportsNet. TWC's deal will help create an even bigger inequity for non-sports fans and casual fans than already existed. For this group of subscribers, who are primarily entertainment-oriented, and likely more on-demand focused in their viewership than ever, higher subscription rates - tied to a small cluster of very expensive sports networks - are inevitably going to drive them to drop their pay-TV service.
Categories: Cable Networks, Cable TV Operators, Sports
Topics: Hulu Plus, LA Lakers, Netflix, Time Warner Cable
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MLB.com's Near Real-Time Video Enriches CBSSports.com's Fantasy Baseball
CBSSports.com and MLB.com announced an exclusive multi-year partnership yesterday that illustrates well how video clips generated in near real-time can add significant value to online experiences. Under the deal, MLB will supply CBSSports.com's Fantasy Baseball Commissioner users with in-game video highlights on live scoring pages for every single player, as the games progress. In addition, MLB will provide a highlights package for each player so users can get a look at him before in action before drafting or trading him. Lastly, MLB will provide live audio feeds of all 2,430 regular season games. All of this is being provided at no additional charge to Commissioner users.
The addition of near real-time video highlights to the live scoring pages is the aspect of the deal that really caught my attention because it requires MLB.com to quickly and accurately create descriptive metadata for each play. The MLB.com example shows how sophisticated metadata creation/management has become, moving it from on-demand video to live video. I don't know which metadata technology MLB.com is using (or if they've created their own, as MLB.com tends to do) but their ability to generate clips, attach metadata and publish them in near real-time is quite impressive (with the caveat being that I haven't seen the video updates feature actually work yet).
Categories: Sports
Topics: CBSSports.com, MLB.com
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VideoNuze Report Podcast #87 - Feb. 11, 2011
Daisy Whitney and I are pleased to present the 87th edition of the VideoNuze Report podcast, for February 11, 2011.
In this podcast, Daisy and I do a deep dive into the role of sports in pay-TV packaging, based on my post from Monday, "Not A Sports Fan? Then You're Getting Sacked For At Least $2 Billion Per Year." I think this is a fascinating topic and something that has been under-reported even though it has huge implications for pay-TV subscription rates as over-the-top services gain awareness.
The basic premise of my post was that since a relatively small cluster of sports-oriented channels (e.g. ESPN, TNT, Regional Sports Networks and others) collectively cost pay-TV operators $10 per month, then the charges being incurred by non-fans and casual who fans who rarely, if ever watch these channels, could amount to at least $2 billion per year. Since writing the post and gaining feedback from various sources, it's actually quite possible that the annual charges incurred in exchange for little-to-no value could exceed $3 billion. Whatever the number is, it's very large, and effectively represents a massive subsidy that non-fans and casual fans pay each year because of escalating sports TV rights deals and astronomical player compensation.
Click here to listen to the podcast (17 minutes, 8 seconds)
Click here for previous podcasts
The VideoNuze Report is available in iTunes...subscribe today!
Categories: Cable Networks, Cable TV Operators, Podcasts, Satellite, Sports, Telcos
Topics: Comcast SportsNet, ESPN, Hulu, NESN, Netflix, Podcast, RSN, TNT
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Not a Sports Fan? Then You're Getting Sacked For At Least $2 Billion Per Year
Last night 100 million plus people tuned into the Super Bowl, once again highlighting the game's singular popularity. But aside from this huge once per year spike in sports enthusiasm, a simple fact remains: if you subscribe to pay-TV services and are not a sports fan (or are just a casual one), you are paying a lot of money each month for very expensive sports-oriented cable TV channels which you mostly don't watch. This degree of wasteful overspending, which could amount to at least $2 billion every year (as I'll detail below), creates a mile-wide opportunity for entertainment-oriented over-the-top entrants to prosper.
The value of sports programming was a topic we tackled last week at the MIT Enterprise Forum (panelists included Mark Cuban, Avner Ronen, Paul Sagan and me). Moderator Woody Benson challenged us at the start with how he could reduce his current $260/mo cable bill. As part of the discussion, Mark volunteered that pay-TV operators probably spend around $10 per month in licensing fees just for sports-oriented cable channels (these include channels like ESPN and its sister networks, TNT, and Regional Sports Networks, "RSNs" like NESN and Comcast SportsNet here in the Boston area and others). Mark estimated that this adds up to about 25% of the total monthly amount pay-TV operators spend on programming. My sense is that Mark's $10 per month amount might be a little high, but since he owns the NBA's Mavericks and sees the TV deals, he's in a good position to know.
(The video starts with about 40 minutes of one-on-one discussion between Mark and Woody and then shifts to the full panel)
Categories: Sports
Topics: Comcast SportsNet, ESPN, NESN, Netflix, RSN, TNT
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Super Bowl Advertisers Finally Tapping Into Power of Social Media and Online Video
A great article in today's NY Times shows how numerous Super Bowl advertisers have been building excitement for their ads through social media, and in some cases by already releasing the ads in their entirety. It's the right approach, though a little late in coming. Deep in the pre-VideoNuze archives is "The $10 Million Super Bowl Ad," which I wrote back in 2006, asserting that online video would dramatically enhance the value of these expensive spots. Super Bowl spots have risen in price since, to $2.8-$3.0 million apiece, and in the very long-term I'd maintain they still may get to $10 million as the Super Bowl further separates itself as the last mass broadcast event. But regardless of the price, the key is extracting the most value from them; that's what social media and online video do best.Categories: Advertising, Sports
Topics: Super Bowl
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New "ACC Vault" Launches With Classic Men's Basketball Games
Online video continues to make reliving the best moments of your favorite sports teams easier and the latest example is the new "ACC Vault" launching today. Through a partnership of the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), Raycom Sports and Thought Equity Motion, an archive of full-length, classic ACC Tournament and regular season men's basketball games from the 12 member programs dating to 1983 are now freely available to visitors (for an example, see the below clip of UNC's Michael Jordan hitting a nice jumper against Duke in 1984). The partners plan to add more sports highlights over time and envision ACC Vault eventually becoming an "all sport video Wikipedia."
Categories: Sports, Technology
Topics: ACC, ACC Vault, NCAA Vault, Raycom Sports, Thought Equity Motion
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ESPN Wades Into Cord-Cutting Research Fray With New Data
Not content to sit by and watch the headlines claiming significant cord-cutting is underway, ESPN is wading into the cord-cutting research fray, releasing a new analysis of its own, which it asserts that the activity has been totally overblown.
By analyzing Nielsen data, ESPN says that in the past 3 months, .28 percent of U.S. households have cut the cord, though mitigating this decrease is that .17 percent of households that had been subscribing to the lowest tier of pay-TV service (dubbed "broadcast-only") upgraded to pay-TV and broadband Internet services. With approximately 110 million households in the U.S., ESPN is saying around 308,000 homes cut the cord, with 187,000 upgrading from broadcast-only, for a net loss due to cord-cutting of 121,000 households. Interestingly, that 121,000 households is quite close to the 119,000 subscribers that SNL Kagan said that U.S. pay-TV operators lost in Q3 '10.
Categories: Sports
Topics: ESPN, Nielsen, SNL Kagan
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Are Live Sports Pay-TV's Firewall or Its Albatross?
I've long assumed that live sports carried on cable TV networks (e.g. ESPN, Fox Sports, TNT, TBS, NFL Network, regional sports networks, etc.) would be a key firewall against cord-cutting since the games they air are unavailable online. In other words, if you're a sports fan, dropping your pay-TV subscription would be unthinkable. While I still believe that's mostly true, recently I've started wondering if it's possible that sports actually may also be an albatross for pay-TV operators, limiting their ability to effectively compete with online-only alternatives.
I use the word albatross because pay-TV providers actually have very little flexibility to offer non-sports fans lower-priced packages that don't include sports-oriented channels. In fact, the most surprising aspect of last week's announcement by Time Warner Cable of a new lower-priced tier called "TV Essentials" it's testing is that it will exclude ESPN, which is virtually unheard-of in pay-TV packaging. Because the underlying deals that cable networks have with sports leagues and rights-holders are so expensive, the networks try to get carried on the most popular pay-TV service tiers, thereby ensuring the highest number of subscriber homes (basic cable networks are paid by distributors on a per subscriber basis, so the more subscriber homes, the higher their revenue).
Categories: Cable Networks, Cable TV Operators, Satellite, Sports, Telcos
Topics: ESPN, Fox Sports, NFL Network, TBS, Time Warner Cable, TNT
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Cablevision is Now Offering to Reimburse Subscribers To Watch World Series on MLB.com
The Cablevision-Fox retransmission fight just took another ugly turn, as Cablevision is now emailing subscribers an offer (see below) to reimburse them $10 if they subscribe to the MLB.com's "Postseason.TV" package which includes the World Series starting tonight.
The gloves are clearly off in this fight, and Cablevision is obviously not hesitating to introduce its subscribers to the virtues of over-the-top streaming, which could have longer-term negative consequences. What comes next in this battle?
What do you think? Post a comment now (no sign-in required).Categories: Broadcasters, Cable TV Operators, Sports
Topics: Cablevision, FOX, World Series
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NCAA and Thought Equity Motion Renew Deal For Video Archive Access
The NCAA and Thought Equity Motion are announcing this morning a multi-year extension of their technology and rights management agreement. Last March, in conjunction with the NCAA Men's Basketball March Madness, the "NCAA Vault" was introduced, which contained searchable access to every moment of video from the last 10 years of the final 16 teams' games. One of the things I was most impressed about with the NCAA Vault is how flexibly exact clips could be found and also how fast the response times were.
In the renewed deal, Thought Equity will also be adding other NCAA Division I championship events like Women's Basketball and Baseball and Wrestling, plus add social media capabilities and enhanced metadata. Thought Equity will also be working with the NCAA to identify other rights windows and business models.
Categories: Sports, Technology
Topics: NCAA, Thought Equity Motion
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