CYNOPSIS EVENTS AT NATPE 2009

Cynopsis: DIGITAL

01/23/09

Good morning, it’s Friday, January 23, 2009, and this is your first early morning digital briefing. 

Effects of the downturn continue to be felt in the tech industry as Microsoft announced it will resort to its first-every major round of layoffs, cutting up to 5,000 jobs in R&D, marketing, sales, finance, LCA, HR, and IT over the next 18 months. The company posted an 11% drop in Q2 earnings on revenues of $16.6 billion – nearly $1 billion below earlier guidance – blaming weakness of the global PC market and the rapid shift to lower priced netbooks. Intel and IBM also began major layoffs this week, displacing thousands of Bay-area workers.
 

 
Viacom reached a new multiyear deal with EchoStar ensuring continued carriage of MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and other MTV Networks on Dish Network, per The WSJ. As part of the agreement, full episodes of Viacom shows will be licensed to Sling Media’s Sling.com. Sling Media has been busy licensing content to add to the appeal of the portal and its accompanying $300 SlingCatcher device, which streams Slingbox content and web video to your television.
 
Original online video content is migrating to the growing digital Out-of-Home platform. Endemol USA struck a deal with in-store media network Access 360 Media to produce “Waiting for a Ride,” a new series revolving around five friends as they road trip in search of the West Coast’s tastiest waves. Beginning in April 2009, the comedy will run several times a day alongside other content including music videos and action sports clips on more than 12,000 screens in young adult retail stores nationwide. Two new episodes will screen each month, and will also be available online, alongside bonus content and social networking elements.
 
Tribune Interactive announced the (planned?) launch of “The Syndicate,” (how’s that for a Chicago name) a new online content “marketplace” aggregating news, lifestyle stories and sports reports culled from Tribune’s 23 television and newspaper websites and an additional 17 TV station sites owned by Local TV, LLC and various outside vendors. Interactive elements will include videos, photos, graphics, trivia and quizzes.
 
BBC.com launched a new travel module for users outside of the UK featuring content from the Lonely Planet travel website. 

 
Digg CEO Jay Adelson announced the company would be cutting about 10% of its 75-person workforce to meet a goal of reaching profitability by the end of 2009.
 
Independent news site Newsmax.com launched a WAP-based mobile edition of its site powered by Quattro Communications.
 
Mobile video start-up Buzzwire has partnered with comedy site RooftopComedy to provide mobile access to the 2nd Annual RooftopComedy National College Comedy Competition for the first time. The stand-up competition, running Jan. 29 – March 6, consists of live on campus competitions followed by a series of online and mobile voting rounds. Stand-Up and Funny Film competitions will culminate in the Finals at the Aspen RooftopComedy Festival June 11-14, 2009. 
 

 
Google put a happy face on its Q4 results, trumpeting an 18% y/y increase in paid-clicks (which include clicks related to ads served on Google sites and AdSense partner sites.) Google-owned sites generated revenues of $3.81 billion, or 67% of total revenues, in Q4 2008 – representing a 22% increase over Q4 2007 and a 4% increase over Q3 2008. However Q4 net income at Google plummeted by 68% to $382 million due to $1.1 billion in writeoffs from investments in AOL and Clearwire.
 
Publicis’ VivaKi unit and partners such as Microsoft, Yahoo, CBS Interactive and Hulu have launched an initiative dubbed “The Pool” to set a standard ad format for the online video market. Participating advertisers including Allstate, Capital One, and Applebee’s have chosen five formats to begin testing this week with the goal of choosing one to settle on for major buys later this year, per reports.
 
YouTube is getting ready to expand its contextual overlay ad program to allow larger content brands to sell their own ad inventory on the site, reports TechCrunch. A few trial partners such as CBS are already selling their own ads, both on their own channels and to uploaded videos picked up by YouTube’s ContentID management system which identifies copyright-protected video.
 
Video ad firm Extreme Reach closed on a $1.5 million firs round of funding led by Village Ventures and Long River Ventures. Extreme Reach provides an all-software platform to cost effectively enable advertisers and agencies to deliver, manage and track ads across 3 screens: TV, Web and mobile.
 

 
President Obama named Democratic FCC Commissioner Michael Copps as acting Chairman of the commission, replacing Republican Chairman Kevin Martin who stepped down earlier this week. Longtime Obama friend and former FCC General Counsel Julius Genachowski is widely expected to be named as Martin’s permanent replacement but the President has yet to make an official announcement on the issue.
 
Sony once again downwardly devised earnings forecasts saying sales of electronics, games and consumer gadgets are “significantly lower” than October forecasts. The company expects to report an annual loss (of about $1.7 billion) for the first time in 14 years. Sony also said it would “accelerate” previously announced job cuts that will result in 8,000 full-time layoffs and another 8,000 part-time cuts.
 

 
Broadcasters by and large seem determined to go through with the digital transition as planned, despite calls for a delay from the new administration, but networks (and advertisers) may be having second thoughts after reading Nielsen’s latest report on the subject. Nielsen reported that 6.5 million households – about 5.7% of the TV nation – remain completely unprepared to receive digital signals. That figure jumps to 9.9% and 9.7% for African American and Hispanic households, respectively. More than 10% of the populations of cities in the southwest such as Albuquerque/Sante Fe and Dallas remain completely unready.
 
Least Prepared Local Metered Markets Based on Percentage of Households
Currently Unprepared for Digital Conversion
                                       Comp. Ready% Part. Ready%   Comp. Unready%
National People Meter Sample 85.08            9.24                         5.68
Local Metered Samples           82.31          12.36                         5.33
Albuquerque-Santa Fe            81.29            6.47                       12.24
Dallas-Ft. Worth                     77.39          12.40                       10.21
Houston                                 72.63          17.42                        9.95
Tulsa                                     76.50          13.97                        9.53
Portland, Or                           80.85          10.08                        9.08
Salt Lake City                         81.58           9.85                         8.58
Memphis                                73.31         18.16                         8.53
Austin                                   80.73          10.82                         8.45
Los Angeles                            82.54           9.80                         7.66
Source: Nielsen
 
U.S. game sales took off during the holiday season and Nintendo was once again the big winner, selling over 10 million Wii units in the U.S. in 2008 according to NPD – a first for any console. The Wii now enjoys a 55% market share of the console industry. Its smaller cousin the Nintendo DS sold 9.95 million, representing 72% of the portable gaming market.  The big game titles of the year were:
 
Top 10 Games of 2008
Game                           Platform     Studio            Units Sold
Wii Play w/ remote           Wii        Nintendo            5.28 million
Mario Kart Wii w/ wheel    Wii        Nintendo             5.00 million
Wii Fit w/ balance board   Wii        Nintendo             4.53 million
Super Smash Bros. Brawl Wii        Nintendo             4.17 million
Grand Theft Auto IV    Xbox360    Take-Two            3.29 million*
Call of Duty:World @War Xbox360Activision            2.75 million*
Gears of War 2            Xbox 360   Microsoft            2.31 million*
Grand Theft Auto IV       PS3         Take-Two           1.89 million*
Madden NFL ’09          Xbox 360  Electronic Arts      1.87 million*
Mario Kart                      DS         Nintendo            1.65 million
* Includes Collector’s, Limited, Legendary, and Bundled Editions
Source: NPD, via GameDailyBiz

                                                                                    
How do you take a group photo with your iPhone with yourself included? Meme Incorporated launched TheSnapper in the Photography section of Apple iTunes App Store. The new $.99 app “listens” for snaps or claps to operate the iPhone shutter. Options include auto save of pictures, snap to save, and shouting “Cheeeese” instead of snapping.
 
Japanese gaming company Konami released versions of two of its more popular games for the iPhone and iPod Touch: Silent Hill: The Escape and DanceDanceRevolution S Lite.
 

 
Clearwire Corporation named David Sach as Chief Financial Officer, effective February 2, 2009.
 
Rentrak Corporation hired Cory Sher as Director of Business Development for the company’s Advanced Media and Information (AMI) division which manages the company’s On Demand and linear television measurement services. She reports in Portland, OR to Carol Hinnant, SVP/Business Development, AMI division.
 

 
Popular video portal Veoh has just released a new version of its browser plug-in that promises to help make video a more useful component to what you search for on the web. The Veoh Video Compass, currently available for Firefox 3 and IE7, but coming soon for Safari and Chrome, is a nifty bit of engineering. It pulls up videos from the vast library of clips and episodes Veoh indexes when you type in a query on top search engines including Google, Yahoo!, MSNLive, YouTube, eBay and Ask.com. Videos that reside on Veoh.com seem to be listed first, but they include offerings from YouTube, Hulu, CBS, ABC, TheWb.com, etc. There’s also a recommendation engine that comes into play to suggest videos of related topics based on the classic Amazon formula (those who liked A also viewed B.) All search data Veoh collects will be poured back into the recommendation engine to make it smarter and potentially create a powerful contextual ad engine for the company. (Ads will be served as overlays beneath the video, both of which can be viewed directly on the page.) To top it all off, Veoh also unveiled a redesign, accessible from a link in the top right corner of the homepage. The boring video checkerboard has been replaced by extensive genre-based navigations and a cool featured video bar that rotates like a bar of Toblerone. But clearly it’s the recommendation engine – deployed both on the Video Compass and on the new site itself – that stands to become the secret sauce for Veoh. Discovery tools are the spice of life on the web.   

Later — Wayne
 Wayne Karrfalt for Cynopsis: Digital
01.23.09

Cynopsis Digital Ad Sales:
Chuck Bolkcom – 646-468-6180 / [email protected]
Mark Bohn- 203-583-1224 / mark@cynopsis. com
Classifieds – Trish Pihonak- 203-926-9878 / [email protected]

To subscribe to any Cynopsis edition(s) click here . 
To unsubscribe , click here or click the button at the end of this email.

Cyn opsis CLASSIFIEDS – For More classifieds, visit the Cynopsis.com classifieds page here    .

JOB OPENING: TEMP CREATIVE MANAGER/ION/NY: Lead NY based team in creating on air/ adv campaigns for ION TV. Oversee design/writers/production. 5 yrs exp in TV brdcst promotion/cr. service depts. [email protected] (1/30)

JOB OPENING: NEW BIZ ACCT EXEC/American Latino Synd/NY: Sell nat’l ads for 2 Synd TV shows & New Scripted Series, 2-5 yrs sales exp req. Fast growth opp in an entrepreneurial envir. Min. travel req. Info: www.americanlatino.tv/jobs   (1/30)

JOB OPENING: Hallmark Channel/Studio City/FREELANCE PRODUCER & HOST: Create hosted entertainment pieces. Must write/produce/host See full posting and apply @ www.hallmarkchannel.com (1/28)

JOB OPENING: PRODUCT PLACEMENT PRODUCER/NY: Must have vendor contacts. Neg. & prep contracts for leading prod. co. EM: [email protected] (1/27)

JOB OPENING: ACCOUNT COORD/BBC/LA: Support cble & dig ad sales team. Admin support, data entry, liaise w/ contacts & agencies. Excellent comm & org skills. www.bbcamerica.com/employment.jsp. EEO/AA employer M/F/D/V (1/27)

JOB OPENING: ACCOUNT COORD/BBC/NY: Support cble & dig ad sales team. Admin support, data entry, liaise w/ contacts & agencies. Excellent comms & org skills. www.bbcamerica.com/employment.jsp. EEO/AA employer M/F/D/V (1/27)

JOB OPENING:SR MGR DIG SYNDICATION/BBC/NY:Mng clients/prgrm supply to dig media synd partners. Create line-up of BBC prgrms, promotion & mktg. Strong knwldg BBC Prgrms. www.bbcamerica.com/employment.jsp EEO/AA employer M/F/D/V (1/27)

JOB OPENING: MGR TV SALES/DISTRIB/BBC/NY: ID new clients, pitch/conclude deals w/ cbl ntwrks & clients. Take prgrms from library & repckg for sale. Strong negotiation/sales skills. www.bbcamerica.com/employment.jsp EEO/AA empl M/F/D/V (1/27)

JOB OPENING:  DIRECTOR, PROGRAM PLANNING/Disney Channel/Burbank: Oversee Progrm Planning/Schedlng Disney Ch + Playhouse. Mngmnt exp req. Devl/Implmnt Progrm Stratgy. 7 yrs exp Progrm Plan/Sched. www.disneycareers.com REQ 186232 (1/27)

JOB OPENING: RESEARCH MGR/The Golf Channel/Orlando: Responsible for the ratings/rsrch support for programming/marketing needs. Proficient in NPower, StarTrak. 5+ yrs preferred w/ TV/Sports research. Apply at www.comcast.com EEO/AA (1/24)

JOB OPENING: DIR, PRIMARY RSRCH/LA: Mng qualitative/quantitative primary rsrch efforts for E!, Style, G4 & Fearnet incl online & new media efforts. Design/execute studies to meet company objectives. Resume: [email protected] (1/24)

INTERNSHIPS – These positions are for credit only – nobody gets paid here. These ads are always posted for free , and students work for school credit only. For more information on the specs for posting an Internship ad, email Trish at [email protected] .

SPRING INTERNSHIP/CREDITS ONLY: Scribble mats is looking for TWO CREATIVE INTERNS. Must be proficient in Illustrator and Photoshop and/or Flash, web experience is a plus. Contact Arlene at [email protected] to apply. www.scribblemats.com (1/30)

SPRING INTERNSHIP CREDITS ONLY: A fast-paced boutique ent PR firm/NY: Seeks smart, hard-working & reliable self starter. Starts Jan thru spring semester &, possibly, beyond. Jr/Sr only. Resume/cover letter: [email protected] (1/29)

SPRING INTERNSHIP/CREDITS ONLY: LICENSING INTERNS/Licensing Link, Ltd/NYC: Asst President as needed in daily licensing duties. Highly orgnzd & reliable; Must have skills in MS Word/Excel/Powerpoint. Contact: [email protected] (1/29)

SPRING INTERNSHIP/CREDITS ONLY:  INTERN / HGTV & DIY/UNPAID/COURSE CREDIT REQ/NY: Working with Ad Sales MKTG team on projects such as sweepstakes and sponsorships. Full details, http://www.scrippsnetworksinteractive.com/careers & select req 213 (1/29)

SPRING INTERNSHIP CREDITS ONLY: Premiere NYC-based agency is searching for Spring and Summer DIGITAL MARKETING & STRATEGY INTERNS: Must have interest in social networking. Contact [email protected] (1/28)

SPRING INTERNSHIP CREDITS ONLY: NEW MEDIA/DIGITAL INTERNS/NBCU/NY: Asst New Media Manager w dig content, mktg & rsrch. Highly innovative & reliable Soph/Jrs/Srs; Excellent Word/PPT/Photoshop/HTML skills.Email [email protected] res & cvr ltr (1/28)

SPRING INTERNSHIP/CREDITS ONLY: ENTERTAINMENT/MKTG & COMM INTERNS/Cynopsis Media/Shelton CT: Asst various depts as needed in advrtsng sales, mktg, & rsrch. Highly orgnzd & reliable Sophomores/Jrs/Srs; Excellent MS Word/Excel skills. Contact: [email protected] (1/27)

SPRING INTERNSHIP/CREDITS ONLY: Razor & Tie Entertainment: Independent music label is looking for qualified interns for Winter/Spring 2009. Internships available in MKTG, PRESS, A&R, NEW MEDIA AND MUSIC PUBLISHING Please mail [email protected] (1/27)

SITUATION WANTED ADS, POSTED BY THOSE LOOKING TO BE HIRED …  There is no charge for placing your Situation Wanted ad … for more information contact Trish Pihonak at [email protected]

SITUATION WANTED: TONY NOM. B’WAY PROD/THEATRE CONSULT/ACQUIS. & DEV./NYC 30+ yrs exp. in theatre. Superb theatre/film/TV contacts seeks FT or Consulting Position w/Studio/Prod Co. looking for properties. Contact: [email protected] (1/30)

SITUATION WANTED: Well networked Sr. RECRUITER (LA base) w/10 yrs exp in online media & entertainment. (Yahoo! Disney, etc) Open to FTE, Contract, short term or long term gigs. Can work remotely as well. Contact [email protected] (1/30)

SITUATION WANTED: Professional SINGER & EXPERIENCED VOCAL TEACHER seeks voice students for expanding private studio in Nassau County, NY. All experience levels & musical styles welcome. For more info email: [email protected] (1/30)

SITUATION WANTED: SPONSORSHIP MARKETING/NY: Experience in evaluating and negotiating sponsorships and promotions. All media types- broadcast, outdoor, print, digital, mobile, hospitality, etc. Contact: [email protected] (1/29)

SITUATION WANTED: LIFESTYLE SEGMENT PRODUCER/DESIGNER: Produce /design lifestyle segments for NBC, ABC, Disney, E!, Martha Stewart Living, and Turner Classic Movies.SAG Member [email protected]  / www.andrewpaulbinder.com (1/29)

SITUATION WANTED:POWER COPYWRITERS– headed up by former broadcast network player,specializing in tv promos & taglines. Credits from Fortune 500 entertainment companies. [email protected] (1/29)

SITUATION WANTED: A WRITER’S WRITER! Not a prod./dir./ed.-turned-writer-b/c-of-the-economy! Written: MTV scripts, nat’l print ads (Pepsi, X-Box), & for NY Post, RS, Vibe. Gen. X, smart, witty, bi-lingual. [email protected] (1/28)

SITUATION WANTED: PRODUCER/WRITER/DIRECTOR (NY) Ultra-creative, award winning, all formats, all genres, all major networks and major cable.  Fast, frugal and fun! [email protected] (1/28)

SITUATION WANTED: TV PROGRAM EXECUTIVE 15 + yrs exp, Creative, great work ethic, knwldgbl, sense of humor, can relocate. See www.linkedin.com/in/joepauly. Looking for next great opp in cable or brdcst TV. Contact [email protected] (1/28)

SITUATION WANTED: DOCUMENTARY PRODUCER, DIRECTOR, WRITER in L.A. Credits include National Geographic, PBS, Discovery, History Channel, TLC and MSNBC. Contact email: [email protected] (1/28)

SITUATION WANTED: NON-FICTION DEVELOPMENT PRODUCER. I will write and develop your pitch & produce and direct a winning sales tape. 3 Emmy noms; unscripted or narrative formats; LA based, will travel. [email protected] (1/27)

SITUATION WANTED: INNOVATIVE PRODUCER/DIRECTOR: Award winning and highly creative. Major network & cable experience, all genres: Childrens, Reality, Lifestyle, Documentary. In NY but will travel. View reel & CV: www.kirstynordal.com (1/27)

SITUATION WANTED: Seasoned TALENT ACQUISITION Specialist, HR Generalist (NYC based) w/ significant exp in fashion, PR, marcom & entertainment industries seeks PT, FT, Freelance or Consulting opportunities.Contact [email protected] (1/27)

SITUATION WANTED: FREELANCE DRTV MEDIA BUYER with more than 15 years experience buying national and local cable, syndication, and local broadcast markets seeking FT or PT work from home office. Please contact me at [email protected] (1/27)

SITUATION WANTED: FREELANCE or Full-time MEDIA BUYER w/ over 25 yrs of buying exp. is newly available. Seeking F/T or Freelance wk from your office or my home (New York based) Please contact me @ [email protected] (1/27)

SITUATION WANTED: EXPERIENCED PRODUCER. I’ve worked in talk/reality/game show genres. Produced shows overseas & on location. Hard working, detail oriented, motivated, creative, ready to start today, will travel. Contact: [email protected] (1/24)

E-mail [email protected] or call Trish Pihonak at 203.926.9878 for rates and specs for Job Openings.

Are you looking for a job? Post your Situation Wanted Ad here — Email [email protected] for specs.

Cynopsis Media LLC
One Corporate Drive, Suite 724
Shelton, CT 06484
203.926.9878

All outgoing e-mails are scanned and sent out virus free. Copyright Cynopsis 2009