North Korea to Indict Current TV Journalists; state news agency says after an investigation of the two American reporters, N. Korean officials will indict them on “hostile acts,” if convicted, the two women could face five years in prison. (CBS News)

Analyst: TV Upfront Sales Could Be Down 15 Percent; impact could be felt by sites like Hulu as web ads are thrown in as sweeteners, pushing those prices down. (MediaMemo)

Former Facebook Exec to Head MySpace; Owen Van Natta to replace ousted Chris DeWolfe. (release)

Pirate Bay Retrial? Judge in the case is allegedly a member of two copyright organizations; if conflict of interest is formally found, trial could be sent back to district court. CNET)

Blu-ray’s Prospects Better Than You Think? Lower prices, the physicality of the medium and a scant number of people connecting TVs to the Internet (so far) could brighten the outlook for the high-definition format. (Gadgetwise)

CBS.com Integrates Facebook Connect; fans interacting with CSI or How I Met Your Mother can publish their actions back on the social network. (release)

GEMA and YouTube Talking Again; two parties resume negotiations to resolve royalty payment disputes. (The Hollywood Reporter)

As long as it’s not American Idol or Dancing With the Stars of course!

Gossip Girl Cast

After being on hiatus for three weeks Gossip Girl aired new episodes on Monday, March 16, 2009. The next day TV Guide reported that the new episode didn’t bring many viewers. The post called Ratings: Once-Hot Gossip Remains Lukewarm is part of their “thing” to be a serious entertainment magazine, which influences producers a lá Entertainment Weekly – with it’s Fallen Heroes story – taking jabs at Gossip Girl and “how to fix it.” 

To quote from Gossip Girl’s Eric Van Der Woodsen: “who watches tv on their television anymore.” 

Well, yes some do – thanks to DVRs, but lately a lot of people are watching shows online. Why do you think last year’s  writer’s strike happened? They wanted royalties for online shows. When you go to CBS.com or ABC.com to watch your favorite shows you have to watch them with: “limited commercial interruption,” which means someone’s making a profit.

The Nielsen ratings are TV Networks tool in order to sell their shows to advertisers. “Yes advertise here, our show is watched by 20 million viewers – unlike the other network that only gets 2 million at the same time.” TV shows like Lipstick Jungle, Pushing Daisies, Dirty Sex Money and Eli Stone were cancelled because of low viewership, but who’s there to say they didn’t have viewers? Nielsen ratings do count DVR views, but only gives a maximum of a week after the show was original aired to be accounted for. This is semi-understandable given that if Macys’ advertising a “1 Day Sale” and you watch a week later you won’t be informed on time to make a decision. However, there are reports of the Nielsen Ratings not being as accurate as they want us to believe they are.

The Nielsen ratings use three systems to acquire their data:

Nieseln Ratings TV Viewing Diary

• People Meter

             The People Meter is an electronic metering system that is placed in randomly selected households. For a nationwide audience measurement  5,000 households are selected. This sample is not large enough because Nielsen’s statistics show that 99 million households have TVs in the United States, but they key is to be representative, well is it?. The people meter measures three things: 1) the tuning station of the tv set                      2)what channel is being tuned  3) who’s watching. Each member of a household has an assigned personal viewing button, which helps determine “who” is watching which program.

• Set-Tuning Meter

             Is an electronic metering system –  used in 49 of the nation’s largest markets – to provide set-tuning information on a daily basis. These samples are collected from  a sample of homes, separate than People Meter, and overnight household ratings are rported on a daily basis for these local areas.

• Diary

             Diaries are mailed out to randomly selected households in all 210 local markets  across the country during the “sweep” months (November,                  March, May). Each household’s member is asked to write down what programs and channels they watch on a one week period. Every year                    approximately 1.6 million diaries are collected. 

“So families must agree to have their TV watching monitored 24-7 (or to keep extensive diaries about it) and cannot tell anybody about this (Nielsen requires that those it monitors keep the fact confidential) — all for a small amount of money.  Why would anybody want to do this?  Are the type of people who choose to do this really representative of the TV-watching population as a whole?” The Nielsen Ratings: Just Who, Exactly, Participates?

The Nielsen Ratings have been a flawed system since it’s inception and now with DVR and free online episodes it shows it’s weakness. However, TV Executives will continue to use it without thinking twice. I do believe that soon networks will start profiting from the web and Nielsen will have a quick death, until then let the networks know that you are tuning in, before they tune you out. Congratulations to the CW for ignoring this ratings when it comes to Gossip Girl! The fans thank you.

One last thought: 

We should also give shows more than one chance – especially in their first season – if we hadn’t before loved shows such as Friends would never lived through 10 seasons. Viva Laughlin didn’t. 

I just read a great article (after which I named this post) in I Media Connection, written by Doug Schumacher. I Media Connection is a marketing community that posts all sorts of great marketing information. This article was as humorous for me as it was informative, as it talks about the fact that even if you make a conscientious effort NOT to participate in social media, it is ultimately inevitable that you already ARE—in so many ways!

As we continue to educate our clients and customers on how they can use social media to enhance their one-to-one communications with consumers and vice versa—fear and trepidation still tend to make them hesitant to take that brave step into the new marketing frontier. This article certainly illustrates the many ways that you are already in the social media world. And why it’s high time for those nervous Nellies to leap into the future—because it’s already here.

Doug ends his post with “so what’s a brand to do”? I ask of you that very question.

Enjoy his article.

Best Nicole

Right before the end of the year, there was a strong backlash against marketing through social media channels. If you were working anywhere near social media, it was hard to miss: People said it doesn’t work. People said it doesn’t work as they’d like it to. And people said it may work, but it takes effort (my favorite).

It was probably inevitable. There’s never been a more explosive media format than social media. As someone wrote on one of my newsfeeds, “Is there anyone out there who isn’t starting a social media company?” At any rate, backlash is practically street cred for the internet set. It’s right there in the arc of the internet’s growth.

Personally, I have no question as to whether social media is a proper marketing channel for a company, and that’s because of one simple reason: In the very near future, all media will be social media. Here’s why—and what it means for you.

Social media at point of purchase
Let’s pause for a second before heading off into the future. For many brands, you could probably argue that all marketing efforts have already gone social. How?

A high percentage of purchases are already preceded by online research. And where there is online research, there are search results. Those search engine results pages often bring up links to a number of consumer review sites. Now, if you’ve done any amount of conversation monitoring, you know that reviewers don’t exactly pull their punches. Even with shopping sites like Amazon, consumers posting negative reviews are hitting the brand where it hurts most—at the point of purchase.

So given the above scenarios, even in a “controlled” push-media world, many brands can’t even make it through the far end of the buying decision funnel without running head first into a social media situation. Compounding matters, many consumer comments are on social sites like Yelp, where they quickly rise to the top of search rankings.

This point-of-purchase invasion is heading for the physical shopping world as well. Have you tried any of the bar code scanner tools for mobile phones? I haven’t found one that works well. Today. But with several of these technologies already in consumers’ hands, how long until that’s as seamless a part of the buying process as reading an Amazon review before purchasing online? Shoppers will be able to scan an item themselves and get all sorts of product information—right in the store.

The rise of social viewing
So where’s a company to hide from social media? On TV? Whether IPTV or internet TV is the TV model of the future, TV viewing is going to be highly social. I’d say the best glimpse of that future right now is internet TV.

Last November, I watched my high school football team play in the state championship—on my laptop while waiting for a flight at O’Hare airport. Next to the video stream was a live chat box, open to anyone viewing the game. No sign-up, no identity verification—just post off the top of your mind (and many did). Welcome to social viewing.

What I found particularly interesting is that during the few lulls in the game (they set the record for most points scored in a state final), the chat conversation topics would drift outside the game video to address the surrounding content on the page—including the ads. And it certainly wasn’t all positive.

Social viewing technology is also currently available in the “Watch & Chat” section of CBS.com, on View2gether.com, and in beta at NBC.com. It’s similar to the gaming experience on Xbox Live, except that platform focuses primarily on voice instead of text.

If you project social viewing onto a national broadcast-like environment, you can imagine how vulnerable brands will be to public floggings. Social viewing carries with it all the things you were afraid of on the social networks, now fueled by anonymity combined with the reach of broadcast TV. With search engines aiding and abetting these conversations, even comments on small broadcasts could be discovered and shot into the mainstream conversation rapidly.

Commenting capabilities—everywhere
In addition to TV, the future of display advertising offers little sign of protection from social media. Have you seen the display ads on Facebook? With commenting capabilities underneath? I recently commented on one, and it went straight into my newsfeed—broadcast to all my “friends.” (Facebook didn’t even flag me that this would happen.)

You should expect comments across all online media to be more visible in the future. Disqus is already connecting comments across 45,000 websites, archiving them, making them more searchable, and tying them to database technologies like Plaxo.

Surely someone will invent something to stop all that, right? Here’s what that would require: Less data made public for everyone to see. Less inclination among people to expose deeper and deeper levels of their lives in public. And fewer and fewer brands willing to venture into new media.

But since the public onset of the web, trends in this respect have been quite the opposite—overwhelmingly so. So, in order to avoid that kind of social environment, brands would have to be practically invisible to anyone using online media—and that’s not exactly the objective of marketing departments.

So what’s a brand to do?

Gotta give some props to Greg Sandoval (pictured at left) at CNET News who did a great piece this week on the seemingly random removal of content from Netflix and iTunes. (see TV has license to kill movies at iTunes, Netflix | Digital Media – CNET News).

If you’ve been reading my posts lately, you know that “disappearing content” is par for the course. One of my most read posts in the history of this blog is my piece on Why CBS Pulled The Mentalist From CBS.com. I also briefly covered how Sony Pictures apparently pulled certain of its films from Netflix only when viewed through the Xbox 360 (you can still watch them elsewhere). 

I know it’s easy to start throwing snowballs at these guys for not understanding the power of the online channel. I have a few of those snowballs in my arsenal as well. But I have to confess, I consider these stops and starts a good sign.

What? That’s right, this is a good sign. Because if the corporate heavies had their way, none of these movies or TV shows would be available on Netflix, iTunes, CBS.com, the Xbox 360 (you get the picture) in the first place. The fact that they threw too much up there, then realized they didn’t quite have full permission to do so and have had to retrench is a sign that they’re experimenting. Importantly, the fact that they only pulled a few and didn’t just rip the whole thing down is also a good sign. Remember, danger lurks in darkness of media executives’ souls. They’d rather not do the right thing. But the dynamics of the market are forcing them to. Huzzah for us. 

Let them have their fits and starts, let them figure it out as they go along, as long as they keep moving forward.

Agree? Disagree? Feel free to weigh in.

Two weeks ago I missed an episode of The Mentalist. I just totally forgot to set the DVR and Sayra hasn’t let me forget about it since.

I figured that it wouldn’t be that big of a deal, I would just head on over to CBS.com and watch it online.  I had to do it earlier in the season when I missed the pilot episode.  Plus, with the HD stream that they offer, the quality is almost as good as the broadcast version.

Sounds good, right?  Not so fast.

It turns out that CBS has pulled all the full episodes of both The Mentalist and Eleventh Hour.  At first I thought I was just missing it and looking in the wrong place.  I soon realized that all that’s available are 2 minute clips and 4 minute recaps.

Why would CBS pull their shows when the other networks like NBC and FOX offer full episodes of their shows?  I don’t get why CBS is still showing full episodes for some shows, but not others.  CBS has provided no explanation for halting free stream versions of these shows.

CBS has really annoyed me now.  It would be different if they never aired them, but to remove them mid season only irritates people.

UPDATE

I did some digging around the boards on CBS and found a great post that led me to a site that links pirated videos.  It’s called Yidio.  I just watched the HD version of the episode that I missed.  F U CBS.com!!!

It’s a question I’ve been getting from the press since Sling.com was first placed in private beta test. “Why is Sling trying to create a website when Hulu, Veoh, Joost and others have already cornered millions of visitors?”

It’s a sensible question, but it doesn’t take into consideration Sling’s ultimate strategy.  The first issue to raise is a simple one: this is not that expensive of a site to run. The content is hosted by the content providers (including Hulu.com) so there’s no cost there. The only money they give those people is the privilege of letting them keep the lion’s share of the revenue associated with the content Sling.com is passing through.

The real point to raise, however, has to do with Sling’s secret plot to take over the world. Yes, Sling has a secret plan: they want to make it easy for you to take content from anywhere and watch it anywhere. Diabolical, no?

First piece of their plan is letting slingbox owners — the few, the proud — access their slingbox content from any Web browser, rather than through a proprietary application. This is critical. This will mean you can check your slingbox from any IP device, including iPhones and T-Mobile G1 phones. Get it? That’s a critical feature to add.

The second piece is in enabling people to watch online content on their TVs. This is not for Slingbox owners, it’s for an even smaller group: Slingcatcher owners. But it’s a very smart step, one I’ll be writing about at Forrester in early Q1 as I consider all the ways you can put Hulu on your TV set. Because the Slingcatcher lets you share PC and online content to your TV, aggregating the best content on Sling.com just makes it that much easier for Slingcatchers to access the best of the Web on the TV. It’s a small step, but it represents big thinking. 

Big thinking because once Sling can show that it has the technology in its Slingcatcher and the content on Sling.com, it will then start calling Samsung and other TV and Blu-ray makers to say, “Hey, want an Internet-connected TV strategy that puts the best of the Web on your device quickly? Partner with us!” Sling licenses the technology, pre-connects Sling.com (through a proprietary UI) to the device, and boom, instant Internet-connected TV strategy without the hassle of knocking out content relationships. It’s the same motive that led both Samsung and LG to work with Netflix. 

It’s going to be the race to watch in 2009. I’ll be tracking it: who gets Hulu to the TV, then CBS, then ABC (because that will be the order in which it happens). And all of this makes it easier for you and I to watch what we want, when we want. See why Sling.com matters now?

I’m catching up a bit here because I was traveling when this news item happened, but Download Movies 101 reported last week that CBS had mysteriously pulled full-length episodes of its surprise hit shows The Mentalist and Eleventh Hour from CBS.com, which of course means all of CBS’s syndication partners like AOL and Fancast are unable to show the episodes as well.

It’s especially confusing when it’s clear CBS is committed to full-length episode streaming. The site is full of hit shows like How I Met Your Mother which air full episodes online. Plus, CBS has recently extended certain full-length shows to YouTube.

It turns out that the fault does not fall to CBS, but to Warner Brothers Television. Not only is WBT behind the pull-down of The Mentalist and Eleventh Hour, but it’s also the source behind the removal of full episodes of Big Bang Theory, a hit comedy produced by, you guessed it, Warner Brothers Television.

Why does Warner Brothers Television hate us so much?

Maybe a better question is, why do they hate themselves so much? Remember, this is one of the entities that was behind the removal of Gossip Girl from the CW web site at the end of last season. Says one commenter on the Big Bang Theory fan forum:

If Warner Bros is really the culprit then CBS should renegotiate. This show barely made it a second season, and without people like me being able to catch up online, this show is toast. I really like the show but since I missed last episode, it kind of turns me off from watching any more of them since I missed out on what happened last episode. … It is nice that they have a recap and some clips, but not being able to see the actual show online when I miss an episode may make me turn it off for good. I did the same thing to The Office on NBC last year when they weren’t showing the episodes online. Now I don’t watch The Office at all.

Click to see full version and note how the good-until date is prominently displayed.

I want to riff on The Office for a moment because this is one show that does it right. Because there are no rules yet for how many episodes a network should put online or for how long they should remain online. The Office resolves this dilemma for viewers by showing you exactly which episodes are available, when they aired and for how long they will remain available. Brilliant. You give the audience the rules of engagement and they can’t complain when the shows disappear because you gave fair warning.

Fair warning, of course, is exactly what CBS (and Warner) did not give viewers of The Mentalist or Eleventh Hour. So what’s going on?

I’m convinced it’s renegotiation time. And that’s not just between CBS and Warner (who are parnters on so many things that it’s unlikely they are suffering a relationship breakdown). It’s also renegotiation season for producers and the actors. Remember the writers’ strike? One of the issues that strike focused on was what share of online streaming revenues should go to writers. At the time I briefly consulted an entertainment law firm that represents producers and actors who were wondering the same question. I have a hunch much of this is being done to push Warner and CBS to realize they would rather renegotiate quickly than let their popular shows languish. 

I could be way off on this, I’m not a Burbank insider so I can’t say what’s going on, but I will say this. Future TV deals are going to come with online rights completely sewn up. There will not be room for mid-season shenanigans in the future.

The 2008 election and online video have had a lot of special moments together: The CNN-YouTube primary debates. Obama Girl. Will.i.am’s “Yes We Can.” Saturday Night Live’s “Fey-lin” skits. And even though those examples might lean to the left, online video isn’t just a liberal thing. Both the Obama and McCain campaigns have active YouTube accounts, and in September, the McCain account had nearly three times as many average views per video as its rival’s. And no fewer than nine outlets offered live online video of the presidential debates.

But those were simply viral videos and two-hour events coming straight from the official debate stream. For election night, the fun starts early and could continue all night. There will be red and blue states to call, voter fraud to police, polling lines to record, partisan parties to tune into, and pundits, pundits, pundits. For those who want more detail, perspective or partisanship than TV broadcasts offer — or for the election-obsessive looking to build a multi-platform election night command center — we’ve sniffed out a few of the election night options to choose from. Continue Reading..

Image credit: CNN. This article also appeared on BusinessWeek.com.

ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA

In August Techcrunch speculated that music may be the single biggest factor helping MySpace keep its commanding lead over Facebook in the U.S. market.  About a week or so ago, Facebook began an earnest effort to build a Facebook Music application. They didn’t announce this publicly. Instead, Vice President of Business Development Dan Rose and his team reached out to 8 or 9 Internet music services to discuss what the service might look like. Facebook execs also met with major music labels in New York this week to discusss the project, says one source. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/23/facebook-dreams-of-easy-music-while-religious-battle-rages-internally 10/23)

MySpace Music continues to sign key music deals – today they announced the addition of the no. 2 independent music aggregator, IODA, to the platform. Orchard, the no. 1 indie aggregator, has been on board since the launch. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/22/myspace-music-signs-ioda-gains-6000-indie-labels-and-50000-artists 10/22)

The biggest social network in the United states is still News Corp.’s MySpace, according to new figures from Nielsen. However, MySpace’s traffic has only grown by 1% since September 2007. Twitter, fueled by loads of press coverage, is seeing 343% growth since a year earlier. (Iwantmedia 10/23, http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10073531-2.html 10/22)

Yahoo director Carl Icahn is doubling his stake in film studio Lions Gate. “If Yahoo buys a traditional media company like Lions Gate, all of a sudden that takes it to a whole new level,” says one media investment advisor. Yahoo could develop “a profitable online distribution system.” (Iwantmedia 10/23, http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/the-hollywood-deal/2008/10/22/icahn-double-feature-a-yahoo-lions-gate-deal 10/22)

CBS Interactive debuted a new original scripted web series from creator Jonathan Prince (A&E’s The Cleaner), who has a first look deal with CBS Paramount Network Television. The 8-webisode Novel Adventures revolves around a woman’s book club in LA, who use the books they read to inspire them to tackle real adventures. The series was shot in HD and stars a seasoned cast. It will be distributed for an exclusive 48-hour window on CBS.com, TheInsider.com and TV.com before becoming available on iTunes and the CBS Audience Network. Saturn is sponsoring. (Cynopsis 10/23)

I don’t know about the series because currently, all that exists on the site is a trailer, which doesn’t quite speak to me.  I do, however, commend CBS on making the subscribe-for-updates box central on the screen as the loss of repeat viewers seems to be a web series’ greatest barrier.  I don’t know that I am sold on shooting in HD either.  Seems a bit like an unnecessary cost at this point.

Amazon.com revised its forecast for the rest of the year, taking a more pessimistic view three months after having raised its revenue projections, even as the company reported Wednesday a 48% rise in profit on a 31% gain in revenue for the third quarter. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said the company had seen a recent slump in demand for items priced more than $1,000, adding that the online retailer was taking a cautious view because “all companies have limited visibility right now.” ClipSyndicate/Bloomberg (10/22) , The Wall Street Journal (10/23) , Financial Times (10/23) , The New York Times (10/22)

TiVo is expected to announce deals today with two distributors that will allow the DVR manufacturer to offer hundreds of movies to broadband subscribers. The pacts with CinemaNow and Jaman plug a major hole in TiVo’s on-demand offerings because they include Disney releases. The Hollywood Reporter (10/23)

Earlier this month News Corp. celebrated the three year anniversary of the acquisition of MySpace. Today, AOL does the same for the Weblogs, Inc. blog network they acquired in October 2005.  Since the acquisition, AOL says, the Weblogs, Inc. blogs (which include Engadget, TMZ, Download Squad, TUAW, Joystiq, Autoblog and others) have seen worldwide unique visitors climb nearly 1000% (122% annually, on average) and page views rise over 1,500% (154% annually, on average), according to August 2008 comScore Media Metrix. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/22/weblogs-inc-three-years-later-impressive-page-view-and-revenue-growth 10/22)

Influential online social music portal imeem has put itself up for sale hiring investment bank Montgomery & Co. to manage the proceedings, per paidcontent.org. Imeem has struck on demand streaming deals with all 4 major labels and has pushed out its service to several third party outlets but has since seen the launch of music themed services by larger rivals such as MySpace Music. (Cynopsis 10/23)

Google is depending on hedging against fluctuations in exchange rates to prevent international profits from Web search ads and YouTube videos from evaporating. The Internet giant used hedging to net a $34 million gain that helped offset potential negative effects to third-quarter revenue. (Iwantmedia 10/23, http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601204&sid=av9oPJ.sI87Y 10/22)

Digital distribution company Myvideorights.com has signed an exclusive deal with The Onion News Network to distribute its satirical video content across the UK, Europe and Asia during the lead up to the US Presidential election and beyond. The deal is meant to capitalize on unprecedented interest foreign audiences have shown in coverage of U.S. politics, particularly that which “takes the piss” out of its subjects. (Cynopsis 10/23)

Business networking startup LinkedIn is announcing today that it has raised another $22.7 million, on top of the $53 million D round it closed last June at a $1 billion valuation. The new round is a follow-on to the series D at the same valuation, bringing on strategic investors SAP, Goldman Sachs, and McGraw Hill. Existing investor Bessemer Venture Partners also participated. This brings the total capital LinkedIn has raised to just over $100 million. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/22/linkedin-announces-227-million-follow-on-round-from-sap-goldman-sachs-and-mcgraw-hill 10/22)

United Talent Agency’s new media studio 60Frames introduced a separate production label dubbed Red Band Industries to develop and produce edgier fare that may scare off mainstream advertisers, reports Mediaweek. (Cynopsis 10/23)

Comcast has announced a new plan to offer two tiers of wideband Internet service to more than 10 million homes and businesses. The tiers — Extreme 50, which boasts download speeds of up to 50 Mbps, and Ultra, with up to 22 Mbps — will be available in 10 major markets, or about 20% of the company’s service area, in the “next several months,” Comcast said. The Wall Street Journal (10/23) , Light Reading (10/22)

Hulu continued its climb up Nielsen Online’s VideoCensus rankings in Sept. reaching the #6 spot in the U.S. delivering over 142 million streams for the month. YouTube remains the mac daddy in online video with over 5.3 billion streams served. (Cynopsis 10/23)

Top 10 Online Web Brands Ranked by Total Streams for Sept. 2008
Brand                       Total Streams(000)  Unique Viewers (000)
YouTube                         5,354,392               81,881
Yahoo!                              264,266               29,908
Fox Interactive Media         242,444               19,258
MSN/Windows Live            164,776                10,980
Nickelodeon Kids & Family  162,971                 6,152
Hulu                                 142,261                 6,324
ESPN                                127,794                 8,434
CNN Digital Network          117,708                 9,451
MTV Networks Music            97,207                 4,762
Disney Online                      87,193                 9,146
Source: Nielsen Online, VideoCensus, includes progressive downloads, excludes video advertising

In yet another sign of the online video times, Joost today announced it would do Flash, Web-based streaming online at joost.com rather than relying on the proprietary, P2P client it launched back in early 2007.

My take: this is the right thing for Joost to do to match the friction-free experience sites like Fancast.com, Hulu.com, and nearly everywhere else is able to provide. Requiring that people download and run a separate application (not just a plug-in, as ABC.com requires) just isn’t consistent with the ease that online video has come to offer. Sure, it made sense in early 2007 when most top content wasn’t available online anyway. But that all ended when Hulu launched.

Furthermore: the days of the proprietary video player are gone. Sorry to Miro, Vuze, and the original Veoh player. There’s no need for a dedicated video aggregation application. the only chance for such a player is in the download for offline play world, which is where iTunes sits.

Adobe Media Player, a player designed to allow the downloading of streaming video for offline playback, is going to struggle in the balance for a while as people so excited about streaming don’t see the need for it yet. One of two things has to happen there: either people will eventually see value in offline playback, or wireless broadband will become so ubiquitous that we’ll never need untethered video playback. All depends on how fast Adobe can move the ball forward and convince big content providers to release their content for secure offline playback.

As widely reported yesterday, Google is now going to add full-length TV shows to YouTube. It’s about time. Finally, we can all watch what we really want: MacGyver. See the pilot episode below. Actually, this episode has been online for a month already, and has amassed a whopping 1,023 views. Let’s give MacGyver the Rodney Dangerfield award for Least Respect For An Online TV Debut.

(Note about above video window: this is the pilot episode of MacGyver. But YouTube embedding doesn’t seem to work for full-length episodes so you may get a message saying the video is no longer available, even though it is. Hmmm, YouTube is playing a little catch-up to Hulu.com.)

This is one of those full-circle moments. Remember when the press erroneously labeled Hulu.com (before it was even called Hulu.com) a YouTube killer? This article I dug up from Reuters from March 2007 stopped short of saying “killer” but definitely pitched them as rivals. I went on record in that article disputing that idea:

“It’s not actually going to take away from YouTube because it’s as much about the social experience as the video. So YouTube is going to be fine,” said James McQuivey, an analyst with Forrester Research.

I stand by that statement. Clearly, at 5 billion videos a month, YouTube is doing just fine, responsible for 44% of all videos streamed in the US (according to that NYT article above, but probably closer to 25% of minutes, given the short nature of its clips).

But with the tremendous growth of Hulu.com, ABC.com, and the rest, it’s no surprise YouTube would finally give in and put full episodes on; in higher quality than normal YouTube fare; and with ads before, during, and after (what good are those? as Michael Eisner said on stage last week, “Those aren’t commercials, those are credits”). 

The question I got Friday from a major news outlet was: Can YouTube dominate the online TV space? It’s a valid question but the answer is this: No. 

Certainly not as long as CBS and its properties are the primary TV content featured. It’s not a knock — CBS content can rock — but CBS content is everywhere. You can see it on Joost, you can even come across it on IMDB when searching for “MacGyver” (which I’m sure you do nearly daily).  Oh, yeah, and on CBS.com.

The answer is still no even once other network content shows up there — which I’m sure it will eventually, remember Hulu.com offered itself to YouTube from the beginning, an offer which Google CEO Eric Schmidt smugly declined.

There’s little reason for people already on YouTube to interrupt the site’s social, clip-focused experience to watch a full-length episode. And if you hit the Web knowing you want a particular TV show, you’re as likely to go to its home page as you are to go to YouTube.

I’m not saying YouTube won’t stream millions of TV shows. It will. I’d guess at least 25 million in the month of December, roughly half of what NBC.com or a similar site streams in an average month. But it won’t dominate. So put it this way: YouTube won’t be a Hulu.com killer…

Add your thoughts: will you watch full-length episodes on YouTube? (Other than MacGyver, of course, which we know you’ve already watched there).

If you follow the video space, you have been waiting for Sling Media’s SlingCatcher for more than a year now. First announced at CES of 2007, it was hard to tell whether the SlingCatcher was going to be more Apple TV or more SlingBox. It was reannounced at CES of 2008, and now it has finally arrived.

My verdict: This baby was worth the wait.

Sling CEO Blake Krikorian came by the office to demo the box a few weeks back. I was surprised he made the trip out to Boston just to demo the unit. Until I saw the demo. That’s when I realized why: in this case, seeing really is believing.

The SlingCatcher looks like the rest of the Sling family

No, it’s not the Darth Vaderesque unit itself that impresses. It’s the fact that this is the first over-the-top (OTT) set top box that can compete directly with cable. As I’ve recently written, the whole OTT set top category is very challenged. If you have a DVR and a DVD player, you have the killer combination that gives you access to and control over most of what you want to watch. Why get a box like this?

The SlingCatcher answers that question. As I wrote in my OTT ranking report, the number one thing that these boxes need to do to stand a chance is call CBS.com, ABC.com, and Hulu.com and set up deals for content distribution (sorry, CW, I, uh, didn’t have room to include you). With those deals in place, any OTT box would jump light years ahead of the pack and provide the first serious threat to cable at a time when people are already starting to consider cutting the cable cord.

The SlingCatcher does one better: If you have a computer in your home, you can use the SlingProjector software to sling anything from your computer to your TV without Sling having to cut a deal. And as you know, you can find just about everything you like, ad-supported, on your computer these days — prime time shows, classic episodes, even more and more movies (see recent Netflix-Starz deal). For everything else — by which I mean HBO — there’s iTunes, which, guess what, you can also sling to the TV.

For the increasing number of people who watch video on their laptops at home, this is a content boon that is not only rich, but elegant. The SlingProjector software can automatically identify the video image on your screen, so you don’t have to worry about PC menus or the taskbar showing up on your TV. Want to zoom in on just a portion of the screen? Go ahead. Want to play an online game on the big screen? You’re not limited to slinging just video.

Yeah, it’s that innovative. and yeah, this is going to change the game. At $299 (look for it on Amazon), the Catcher is not for everyone, even though it’s cheaper than putting an extra PC in the living room. But the real point is that this SlingCatcher system is ripe to be plucked from the box and embedded in TVs, DVD players, and even game consoles (Wii, anyone?). I expect the phone to be ringing at Sling once Samsung, Philips, and LG figure that out.

Last night I had a chance to be the peanut butter and jelly in an impressive online video sandwich. I was spread between Michael Eisner on the one side and a panel of online TV heavyweights on the other. I’ll end the metaphor there before it gets out of hand, but it was a power-packed event, sponsored by Veoh Networks, where I presented the results of a study commissioned by Veoh and performed by Forrester Consulting about online video viewers.  

The panel, moderated by Veoh CEO Steve Mitgang, really packed a punch, with Albert Cheng of ABC, arguably the father of online TV viewing, Amanda Richman, SVP of digital at MediaVest, Greg Clayman (you have to follow the link, trust me), EVP of digital distribution at MTV Networks, Tom Morgan, CSO at Move Networks, and Patrick Keane, CMO of CBS Interactive. 

Pardon the lousy Blackberry photo quality

Some weeks ago, Nick Wingfield at the Wall Street Journal and I had a conversation that went something like this:

Nick: So are people ready to cut the cable cord yet?

[note from me: "cutting the cord" does not refer to childbirth, sorry; it's a play on what has happened to the phone business as so many people -- nearly 10% have gone cell-phone only in the past decade]

Me: No. We don’t see it in our data, in fact, we don’t really measure it that much because the numbers are so small.

Nick: Hmmm. [silence]

This silence made me uneasy. It’s a good question and it’s one I wanted to have an answer for. I told Nick that we would probably start tackling this in earnest in early 2009 because by then it would be measurable via surveys. 

Then something funny happened. In a series of in-depth interviews I did with people who watch more than an hour of online video a week (the average is 56 minutes a week), these participants volunteered to me that they had recently abandoned cable.

The range was surprising:

- A 24-year old employee by day and student by night. He and his young wife can’t afford cable on their tight budget. By buying a few iTunes episodes each month, streaming a bunch for free on CBS.com, ABC.com, and Hulu.com, and by having a Netflix subscription (and an Xbox 360 through which Netflix streaming can occur), they get all their video needs satisfied for half the price of their prior cable bill.

- A 37-year old homemaker with three kids who has never had cable before because it was costly (and because most if it was inappropriate for her children – I need to comment on that in a later post), is now happy that she will never need cable.

And then this: Nick’s article in today’s WSJ about cable cord-cutting. I’m not surprised he found the examples he did. I found mine without hardly looking. Looks like our next survey is going to have to dive deep into this!

Exciting times ahead, eh, cable companies?

Biden likes to talk like an idiot.

What follows is an excerpt from a Los Angeles Times article written after Joe Biden announced his desire to be president.

Biden’s charming cluelessness was on display in a recent ABC news interview. The famously verbose senator was asked to state in 25 words or less why Democrats should nominate him. His response was 45 words. I suppose that, by Biden’s standards, coming in at just under twice his allotted length counts as a victory of sorts. Biden then explained why he could win: “If people learn my story, learn my record, I think I can compete. The question is, can I raise the money?” This is sort of like me saying that I think I can compete for a starting NFL quarterback job, but the question is, can I avoid injuries? It’s a question, but it’s certainly not the question.”

Source

Wow, becoming president really is like being an NFL quarterback.

Here’s another statement from Biden you might have difficulty reading into.

Biden Claimed He Does Not Meet With Lobbyists. Biden: “I believe this to be true – I just speak for myself, is that I don’t meet with lobbyists, I don’t meet with lobbyists. It started off as an accident because early on in my career, I didn’t have time to do it and I’ve just never done it. My staff does. And I don’t mean, when I say lobbyists, I didn’t meet with interest groups out there, my staff does.”

Biden: “Lobbyists aren’t bad people. Special interest groups are not bad people. But guess what? They’re corrosive. People who accept money from them aren’t bad people. But it’s human nature. You go out Lynn and bundle $250,000 for me, all legal, and then you call me after I’m elected and say, ‘Joe, I’d like to talk to you about something.’ You didn’t buy me, but it’s human nature, you helped me. I’m going to say, ‘Sure Lynn, come on in.’ Just like by the way, if I turn around and I’m elected President of the United States of America and you call me and say, ‘Joe, I want to come and see you’, I’m going to see you. You helped me. You didn’t raise me 250 bucks but you put your neck out for me. So they are not bad people. But what it does mean – it means that, the front of the line is always filled by people whose pockets are filled. People who are special interests.”

Source

Say it ain't so Joe

Thursday

Woke up for Keifer and the last episode of The Unit online. Spent the morning using the washing machine in the apartment basement. Now we have clean clothes for the upcoming week.

Costco run was a success. We made it all 1.5 miles with our old lady grocery cart, found what we needed, and even found a short check out line. (That never happens!). I will say that I love Costco and Target because they are convenient. My friend Scott says I shouldn’t shop at places like these and that I should support the local mom and pop stores that line my street. I try and often do support them for some items… I bought cooking oil at the Korean store around the corner, ice cream from another store, and the occasional donut. But when I went in search of cat litter, I found that the mom and pops charge $16.00 for eight pounds, where as Whole Paycheck charges $6.00 for fourteen pounds. Costco offers thirty pounds for $6.75. Yeah, I’ll take the small package for a lot of money… Sorry Scott.

Went back to Westfield Mall to return Elli’s new shoes. Woo Hoo! Had the AT&T booth transfer her phone book from her old phone to her new one, and then to Borders to look at magazines while Elli broke her new phone in by chit chatting her friends from Missouri.

Melrose Place

Left the mall 30 minutes later to eat dinner and watch Melrose Place online. Our library won’t interlibrary loan DVD’s (unlike the Johnson County Kansas library), so we are reduced to the episodes she finds online. I miss the 80s. Big shoulder pads, hair bangs, poofy hair, catty drama..

There was of course a Tetris battle, some reading and getting ready for work tomorrow. I have to go to Mass tomorrow (I work at a Catholic School and it’s part of my job). Not sure what to expect.

Read, sleep, good night…

       I am so happy football is beacuse of mostly of Fansty Football. Yep it is going to be a good year for fanasty football. But they are different fanasty football leagues they are ESPN.com, Yahoo.com, CBS.com, and least but not least NFL.com. To tell you the truth they all the same to me yahoo is the easiest one to use beause how they set up. But I have to choose to have one i have to choose ESPN.com by a slight amount over NFL.com. I just love how everything is on ESPN.com they set it up very well and it’s easy to do and for advanced users its good also. But its opinion choice so choose the best one that suits you.