CYNOPSISDIGITAL
04.15.14 Good morning. It’s Tuesday, April 15, 2014, and this is your first early morning digital briefing.
Although it looked like Disney‘s deal to acquire online video producer Maker Studios for $500 million had hit a snag, yesterday’s Maker shareholder vote approved the Disney bid. The move swiftly knocked out a counter-offer from Relativity. Maker co-founder and former CEO Danny Zappin and three other former execs last week filed a lawsuit to prevent the takeover, claiming documents Maker sent to shareholders about the merger agreement neglected to mention a pending lawsuit that alleges Maker directors issued shares to themselves to dilute Zappin’s stake. Yesterday, in a prepared statement, a Maker spokesperson said: "As per the announcement made on March 24, Maker Studios has entered into a merger agreement with The Walt Disney Company. The agreement has been approved by Maker Studios’ Board of Directors and the majority of its shareholders and is expected to close in the next few weeks, subject to regulatory approval." Further sealing any doubt the acquisition remains on track as planned, a judge yesterday denied the Zapplin restraining order.
Second-screen TV app Zeebox rebranded to Beamly, focusing further on the social side of the app with the female demographic in mind. "Zeebox becoming Beamly speaks to the major revolution it has undergone since launching in the U.S. 18 months ago," Beamly’s SVP of Marketing Jen Kavanagh told Cynopsis. "From a TV guide to a full blown social app for TV; [Our users] were looking for a singular place where they can track their favorite shows, celebrities and other fans passionate about a show. They also skewed two-thirds female, and predominantly between the ages of 16 and 24." Beamly is bringing 100 TV and pop culture influencers to host TV rooms in the app, including YouTube‘s Tyler Oakley, Sawyer Hartman and Kalel Cullen. Current partners NBCU (Oxygen and Bravo) and Viacom as well as new network partners can syndicate Beamly’s TV rooms and social suite directly on their sites. Beamly is available for free on Apple and Android devices.
RocketJump Studios (Video Game High School) struck a deal with Lionsgate yesterday. Under the deal, Lionsgate will have access to Rocketjump’s content (which boast more than seven million subs) and provide more distribution outlets for the programming.
Yahoo will continue to partner with Vevo to offer more than 100,000 music videos, live concerts and original programming to Yahoo Screen. The deal will extend to the Yahoo Screen mobile app, and to UK, Germany, Spain, France and Italy (beyond the current U.S. and Canada availability).
DreamWorks Animation may be looking to purchase a piece of Vevo, according to Recode. Although no bid range has been released, DreamWorks will join Google (which paid $40-$50 million for a 7-10 percent share in the company just last year) if a deal is made.
MSNBC and NowThis News unveiled a new daily 15-second video series for Twitter, Facebook and TV, called 15 Seconds to Truth. The series will expand on the biggest headline of a day, and clips will be featured on MSNBC along with the social network distribution.
The second season of Emmy nominated Netflix original series Hemlock Grove will premiere ten episodes on July 11. Hemlock Grove is a supernatural thriller produced by Eli Roth (Hostel), and stars X-Men‘s Famke Janssen and Orange is the New Black‘s Madeline Brewer.
Macy’s and Maker Studios launched a new branded competition series called The Next Style Star, which will peg up-and-coming stylists against each other for a chance to win $10,000. Maker’s fashion and beauty channel The Platform (358,000 subs) and Macys.com will be home for the show starting April 3, with new eps every Thursday for ten weeks.
British TV streaming network Acorn TV will exclusively debut the series finale of Agatha Christie‘s Poirot. The final feature-length mysteries: Curtain: Poirot’s Last Cast, Elephants Can Remember and Labours of Hercules, will begin streaming starting on Aug. 11. All previous 60 episodes will also be available at Acorn.TV and on Roku and Apple devices.
Esquire Network is prepping for season two of Knife Fight with Google+, by pushing out the premiere ep to the top 500 Esquire Networks on Google+ this week. The series will premiere on April 15 across Hulu, Amazon, Xbox, PlayStation, Google Play, iTunes and Esquiretv.com.
The Digital Place Based Advertising Association (DPAA) announced "video everywhere" place based ads have grown 13 percent, behind internet (display) ads with 15.7 percent growth in 2013. MyersBizNet projects 12.6 percent gain in digital place based media industry this year, totaling to $1.07 billion in revenue. Cable TV had a 7.3 percent gain, while network TV had a 3.6 percent loss.
Game of Thrones had another major night on Twitter for its fourth season second ep premiere, according to Kontera data. The peak tweets hit 70,000 as fans weighed in on the character King Joffrey‘s demise. Mad Men‘s final season premiere on Sunday also garnered in a slice of Twitter’s attention, with 19,000 related tweets while the ep aired. Brands named in the ep were also spotlighted on the social network, with Accutron getting a 48 percent lift with Butler Shoeswear. Chevy had a 19 percent lift, and GM a 14 percent lift in real-time conversations throughout the premiere.
OpenSlate Engagement Data for comedy channels, based on the engagement metric for the week ending 4/12
Channel/(Engagement)/Monthly Views/Total Subs/SlateScore
elrubiusOMG (9.8) / 46,979,160 / 6,612,634 / 736
HikakinTV (9.7) / 39,594.000 / 1,317,158 / 678
JimmyKimmelLive (9.6) / 48,050,400 / 4,059,198 / 733
DrossRotzank (9.6) / 35,855,850 / 2,602,971 / 696
latenight (9.5) / 100,684,710 / 3,002,727 / 711
IISuperwomanII (9.3) / 18,437,280 / 2,531,304 / 686
carambatelevision2 (9.1) / 488,190 / 267,398 / 478
vistolovistoTV (9.1) / 366,000 / 117,682 / 498
rhettandlink2 (9.1) / 25,982,070 / 1,576,810 / 664
collegehumor (9.1) / 118,326,600 / 6,698,888 / 704
Source: The Engagement metric is one of OpenSlate’s component scores, and is a measure of a producer’s ability to evoke meaningful interaction with their audience. It is calculated on a scale of 1 – 10 with higher being better. The OpenSlate Engagement score uses a subset of the data incorporated in the SlateScore to perform a set of unique calculations. It factors in views, comments, likes, and more.
NIELSEN TWITTER TV TOP TEN for the week of 4/7-13/2014
Program, Date, Unique Audience (000), Tweets (000)
2014 MTV Movie Awards (MTV), 4/13 9,100, 2,411
Game of Thrones (HBO), 4/13, 4,513, 250
WWE Monday Night RAW (USA), 4/7, 3,010, 364
Mad Men (AMC), 4/13, 2,562, 60
2014 Movie Awards Preshow (MTV), 4/13, 1,949, 31
Scandal (ABC), 4/10, 1,895, 347
The Voice (NBC), 4/7, 1,771, 66
The Voice (ABC), 4/8, 1,506, 60
Dancing With the Stars (ABC) 4/7, 1,405, 66
Basketball Wives LA (VH1) 4/7, 1,400, 177
Source: Nielsen SocialGuide. SocialGuide captures relevant Tweets from three hours before, during and three hours after an episode’s initial broadcast, local time. Unique Audience measures the audience of relevant Tweets ascribed to an episode from when the Tweets are sent until the end of the broadcast day at 5am. The data includes new/live primetime and late fringe episodes only and excludes sports events. Nielsen Twitter TV Ratings are only available for English-language U.S. Broadcast and Cable Networks
Yahoo has appointed former Elle Creative Director Joe Zee as the new Editor and Chief and Executive Creative Officer for Yahoo Fashion. He is also known for editorial roles with W, Details and Vanity Fair.
Evolve Media has hired Travlin McCormack as the new Chief Technology Officer. McCormack most recently served as founding CTO for CareerArc Group (of Internships.com, TweetMyJobs.com and CareerBeam.com).
Dstillery named Ori Stitelman as its new Senior Data Scientist and Tobey Van Statvoord as Senior Director of the West Region. Prior to Dstillery, Stitelman was Strategy Manager for Wells Fargo, and Santvoord was Director of West Coast Sales for EXelate.
A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE
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Cynopsis Digital VC Roundtable
Thursday, May 1, 2014 | 8:30 AM to 10:00 AM | Hosted at Shareablee
Speakers Include:
Kiran Hebbar, General Partner {Valhalla Partners}
Alex Iskold, Managing Director {Techstars}
Rick Heitzmann, Managing Director {FirstMark Capital}
Joy Marcus, Venture Partner {Gotham Ventures} & CEO {Bloglovin}
Registration: Pete Romas, 203.899.8483 | Sponsorships: Mike Farina, 203.218.6480
Oreo launched a new web series showcasing top chefs incorporating the cookie into food entrees called Oreo Snack Hacks. Adweek reports branched from the #OreoSnackHack campaign and Vine video series. The show features chefs Roy Choi (known for the Korean taco truck) Michael Voltaggio (Top Chef winner) and Nguyen Tran (of Asian fusion restaurant Starry Kitchen) using the Oreo beyond the standard milk or peanut butter combination. Check out an ep at www.cynopsis.com.
See you tomorrow,
Jessica Reese @JMarieReese
04.15.14
Roberta Caploe: Editorial Director @robertacaploe
Diane K Schwartz: Senior Vice President, Media Communications Group
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