YouTube to livestream its first-ever Comedy Week May 19-25

YouTube to livestream its first-ever Comedy Week May 19-25, bolstering its channel surfing agenda - The Next Web: "YouTube announced today that it was launching its first-ever Comedy Week, which will take place May 19 through 25. The event will be livestreamed through the service and will feature names like Vince Vaughn, The Lonely Island, Seth Rogan, Nerdist, CollegeHumor, Funny or Die, and many others . . . "


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Amazon Studios original TV shows

Amazon Studios debuts all 14 original series pilots for free streaming | The Verge: "Amazon's original TV ambitions are live. Starting today, web users in the US and the UK (through Lovefilm) can stream all 14 new pilot episodes created under Amazon Studios, the e-commerce giant's original content arm. Amazon wants web users to watch the pilots and vote on which ones the company should turn into full, season-long shows of about 13 episodes, which will then only be available through Amazon Prime. But one thing is certain: not all the new pilots will make it into shows. "We don't have any particular number of shows in mind," said Roy Price, director of Amazon Studios, in an interview with The Verge. "We would like to see a few shows come out of the process. Seven would be a lot, but zero wouldn't be enough. So somewhere between there.""


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More Cracks In The TV Business Model

More Cracks In TV’s Business Model - NYTimes.com: " . . . Finally, there is the success of Netflix’s “House of Cards,” original programming delivered over the Internet, with no cable required. The company announced on Facebook that customers had watched four billion hours of streaming video in the first three months of the year. As Peter Kafka pointed out in AllThingsD, Richard Greenfield of BTIG Research calculated that eye-popping number would make it the most-watched cable television network. Except it isn’t on cable, isn’t on television and isn’t a network. Those initiatives represent assaults on different parts of the business, but each is an attack on the bundle, and the legacy industry is reacting ferociously. Aereo is a finger in the eye of broadcasters. . ."


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Movie film era over

Movie film era draws to a close | ZDNet: "Fujifilm announced that it had ceased production of most of its movie film products as of last month. With Kodak on very shaky ground and the continuing rapid improvements in digital cinema cameras it is only a matter of time until the oldest modern storage medium ceases to be in production. The culprit  What is killing the film market is not that more directors are shooting digitally. It's the fact that movie theaters are converting from film to digital projection."

MipTV: BBC Worldwide Looks for Steady Sailing at MipTV | Variety: " . . . Worldwide’s cable channels, which include BBC America, are available in more than 100 countries and generated $517 million in the past financial year. Under the leadership of new content chief, Helen Jackson, the channels biz is increasingly commissioning its own bespoke content, rather than relying on tried-and-tested fare like “Doctor Who” or “Top Gear” — although obviously these signature shows still have a big part to play. Sales and distribution last year produced $439 million, almost 26% of total sales, but new CEO Tim Davie is determined to increase this. Part of the thinking involves Worldwide, whose total revenues were $1.63 billion in 2012, ramping up business in non-English markets. . . ."

Online numbers increasing, TV watchers decreasing - The 'tuned out' Canadians who don't pay for TV - News - MSN CA: "The number of "tuned out" Canadians, those who don't subscribe to conventional TV, has doubled in recent years and now represents eight per cent of the population, suggests a new report. . . . Tuned out Canadians either didn't have a TV set, only used it to watch VHS tapes, DVDs or Blu-rays, or streamed digital content rather than paying for a TV plan. They tended to be younger and highly educated and major users of the Internet, says MTM. In the recent fall survey, about 49 per cent were between 18 and 34, and 51 per cent had a university education. Tuned out Canadians spent 20 hours a week surfing the web compared to the 15.4 hours TV subscribers were online. . . . "

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Digital on Demand TV vs Cable TV

"So, we haven't had cable TV in something like 5 years now. Today I got to see how that goes with a child who has NEVER had cable and only knows Netflix.. I was at the doctor with "J" and she was watching Spongebob on Nickelodeon. All the sudden she says "I don't want to watch this, I want to watch Dora, or no Diego" She grabs the TV remote and starts trying to figure out how to stop the show and pick something else. When I tell her this is the kind of TV that you can't change to a different Nick show, she looks at me like 0_o and says "Whaaaaat?" I have raised a digital, on demand child. To her, live cable TV is what black and white TV was to our generation" (from comment on Tech News Today shownotes archive #2)

Apple may want Yahoo to displace Google - CBS News: "According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the two companies are discussing potential deals that might include Yahoo delivering more of its Web content to Apple. That move shows two things about Apple's current situation. One is that management is as wary of, and maybe even as angry at, Google as it has ever been, absent a legendary Steve Jobs full-on rage. The other is that Apple has a major weakness that will require a major acquisition -- like Yahoo -- to bolster."

Judge to halt broadcast streaming service | Variety: "Los Angeles federal court is ordering a halt to a start up company’s service that offers streaming of broadcast signals to the Internet and mobile devices, delivering a victory to the networks as they seek to protect their revenue stream from retransmission fees. Alki David, the colorful entrepreneur who already has faced broadcasters when he offered digital streaming of broadcast signals via his company FilmOn, had launched a new service last summer, dubbed Aereokiller, that provided local stations via remote digital antennas. His company defended the service as legal given a decision by a New York federal court in July to allow startup Aereo to continue to offer digital broadcast signals in the New York market . . ."


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Cable TV Against the Open Internet

Cable television companies are distressed about how quickly they are losing customers to internet and mobile viewing-- Arming Cable Against the Open Internet - NYTimes.com: "Companies as diverse as Cisco Systems, known for enterprise networking equipment, and Adobe, with its origins in graphics, are working closely with cable companies and other broadcasters to deal with competition from Internet broadcasting. They don’t want people to stop watching video on their phones, or away from their living room boxes, but they do want to control it. “All the cable companies recognize that there is a fundamental shift in video consumption, driven by device proliferation and broadband over the air,” said Jeremy Helfand, vice president for video at Adobe. “They have gone from a fear of cannibalizing their business to looking for opportunities for revenue growth.”"


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Why did Ericsson buy Microsoft's Mediaroom

It's all about changing TV habits--


Q&A: Why Ericsson snagged Microsoft's Mediaroom
USA TODAY
Microsoft's fizzled efforts in IPTV is viewed by Swedish telecom equipment maker Ericsson as a bright opportunity. USA TODAY asked Ericsson's senior executive Per Borgklint why the company is so bullish about it acquisition of Microsoft's Mediaroom IPTV ...The manner in which consumers watch television is changing. . We believe we are the right partner for the operators in this new world of changing consumption behaviors. Mediaroom further enhances our portfolio and complements existing components of our portfolio . . . .  (read  more at link above)


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Media Deals for Intel Pay-TV Service

Intel Said to Be Nearing Media Deals for Pay-TV Service - Bloomberg: " . . . Networks such as Time Warner’s CNN, NBC’s USA Network and Viacom’s MTV would give Intel critical mass to offer consumers an alternative to established pay-TV services. Using its own set-top box, Intel plans to offer an online product this year, Erik Huggers, Intel’s vice president for media, said last month. That would represent new competition for incumbent operators like Comcast Corp. (CMCSA) and DirecTV. (DTV) . . . Intel is seeking access to live television, a library of on-demand shows and rights for a cloud-based digital video recorder, the people said. Customers would receive programming on TV sets, computers and mobile devices, Huggers said. The push into the media business is part of Intel’s effort to lessen its dependence on the personal-computer market, which is predicted to decline for a second straight year in 2013."


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DreamWorks Uses HP Converged Infrastructure

HP’s Converged Infrastructure Goes Hollywood | ZDNet: " . . . HP’s relationship with DreamWorks is more than a decade old and for their latest film, DreamWorks relied almost entirely on the HP technology infrastructure; networking, servers, workstations, storage, and management tools all were part of the HP converged infrastructure. The network was built for continuous availability and utilized the HP FlexNetwork architecture with management via the HP Intelligent Management Center. Storage duties were handled by centrally managed HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage, HP MSA P2000, HP StoreAll Storage and HP StoreOnce Backup. HP Workstations were used to create the world that the Crood characters inhabit, and the extensive rendering necessary, reported as 80 million hours, was delivered with a compute infrastructure that consisted of four rendering farms, located globally (Glendale and Redwood City, Calif.; Las Vegas; and Bangalore, India,. featured the HP Proliant BL460c Gen8 server blades, which HP claims were able to deliver more than 40% greater performance than the previous generation hardware they supplemented and replaced. On average, 500,000 rendering jobs were completed each day of work at the rendering datacenters. . . ." (read more at link above)

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Yahoo! no longer a digital media company?

Yahoo! says it's no longer a digital media company | ZDNet: " . . . . Yahoo! is trying to get its mojo back and that means rebranding itself as a "technology company." But is it?" Colleen Taylor at Techcrunch, reports that Yahoo! has changed the way it describes itself in its latest 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Yahoo is now labeling itself first and foremost as a “global technology company,” in the place where it used to call itself a “digital media company.” She writes that it's a small change but symbolic. A far better description of Yahoo! would be as a "technology media company." It uses sophisticated media technologies to publish digital content and advertising. What's not "media company" about that? Technology companies develop and sell technologies, such as databases (Oracle), microprocessors (Intel), software as a service (Salesforce.com). What technology can you buy from Yahoo!? Google is a media company and so is AOL, Facebook, Twitter, and hundreds of Silicon Valley companies, too. . . . Even Eric Schmidt, Chairman and former CEO, often refers to Google as a media company. Silicon Valley is a "Media Valley." It's a giant virtual Gutenberg machine made up of powerful media technologies that have replaced the innovation of movable type with that of programmable type -- the extraordinary ability to publish pages of complex content on-the-fly and change them in real-time -- across a massive distribution network that has enabled the end-points to publish back.  It's now a two-way Internet, a two-way media Internet. Now it gets really interesting." (read more at link above)

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Amazon Prime builds audience for Amazon digital content

Amazon Optimus Prime - John Paczkowski - Commerce - AllThingsD: " . . . Accounting for cost of sales, shipping, marketing, technology, etc., CIRP and Morningstar figure Amazon made about $78 per Prime subscriber last year. In other words, that $79 annual Prime fee is almost entirely profit. Not bad. Particularly since the research firms expect Prime membership to reach nearly 25 million by the end of 2017. And there’s more upside to that spike in membership than just the $78-per-subscriber profit Amazon’s reportedly collecting here. For one thing, Prime members have little reason to shop elsewhere for anything they don’t need immediately. So, with Prime, Amazon is creating a community of dedicated customers, and building a moat around them in the process. Note that CIRP found that more than 95 percent of current Prime members plan to renew their memberships. For another, Prime is helping to build an audience for Amazon’s digital content offerings; one third of Prime members use Amazon Instant Video weekly. . . .Said Morningstar analyst R.J. Hottovy, “We believe that as more members take advantage of the Prime content offerings, this will have a halo effect on other digital media purchases and should become an increasing meaningful free cash flow contributor in the periods to come.” Prime was responsible for about a third of Amazon’s consolidated segment operating income in 2012. . . . ." read more at link above

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House of Cards Used Big Data to Guarantee Its Popularity

For ‘House of Cards,’ Using Big Data to Guarantee Its Popularity - NYTimes.com: " . . . already the most streamed piece of content in the United States and 40 other countries, according to Netflix. The spooky part about that? Executives at the company knew it would be a hit before anyone shouted “action.” Netflix, which has 27 million subscribers in the nation and 33 million worldwide, ran the numbers. It already knew that a healthy share had streamed the work of Mr. Fincher, the director of “The Social Network,” from beginning to end. And films featuring Mr. Spacey had always done well, as had the British version of “House of Cards.” With those three circles of interest, Netflix was able to find a Venn diagram intersection that suggested that buying the series would be a very good bet on original programming. Big bets are now being informed by Big Data, and no one knows more about audiences than Netflix. A third of the downloads on the Internet during peak periods on any given day are devoted to streamed movies from the service, according to Sandvine, a networking provider. And last year, by some estimates, more people watched movies streamed online than on physical DVDs. . . . " read more at link above

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iPads came to work for NCAA March Madness

Managers: Those iPads coming to work, it's not what you think | ZDNet: " . . . It's the time of year that a lot of iPads, and this year iPad minis, are coming to the office in the U. S. Managers may be wondering if BYOD is picking up momentum in their domain, but that's not it. There's one app that is responsible for all these iPads coming to work. It's NCAA March Madness Live causing the influx of tablets. March Madness is a unique sporting event that lasts several weeks. It just got started in earnest yesterday and the nature of the big basketball tournament draws people in to the action. Even those whose alma mater or home team didn't make the cut get sucked into March Madness due to its instant elimination action and the design that sees little schools facing the big names in the early going. We all love the underdog and the tournament always has a few big upsets. The iPad app that brings March Madness to life is NCAA March Madness Live. It runs on the iPhone too, but it really shines on the bigger screen. . . . " read more at link above


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