Cynopsis: DIGITAL

11/20/09

Good morning, it’s Friday, November 20, 2009, and this is your first early morning digital briefing.

Sony is taking on iTunes? The electronics and content giant confirmed plans to launch an online content outlet (with a working title of Sony Online Service) that will sell music, movies, TV shows, books and apps that will play across not only the PlayStation Network, but also on computers and a myriad of Sony devices. Plans include enabling photo and video sharing as well. Sony has gained experience with downloadable content with its growing PlayStation Network, which has over 33 million registered users, of which about 5.4 million sign on daily. (The company has been reaching out to more third party providers as of late to build out the platform, including integrations with Facebook and Netflix.) The move is part of a broad organizational reorg at Sony to cut costs, improve synergies and drive users to its next generation TVs, phones, and network-connected gadgets.  After posting its first annual loss in over a decade, Sony is now targeting an annual 5% operating income margin and a 10% return on equity by the end of the fiscal year ending March 31, 2013.
 
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ABC‘s soapy medical drama Grey’s Anatomy is launching a new web series, Seattle Grace: On Call, sketching out further development happening with the show’s characters when they’re off duty. A half-a-dozen 4-minute webisodes, set primarily in the fictional “Joe’s Emerald City Bar,” are sponsored by Bertolli and will premiere following the broadcast of new Grey episodes on ABC.com through Jan.
 
MTV’s Logo is launching its year-end online video hub, combining content from its family of sites LOGOonline.com, TripOutGayTravel.com, AfterEllen.com, AfterElton.com, 365Gay.com, DowneLink.com and NewNowNext.com. Logo says unique visits and user engagement within the “Logo Constellation” soared in 2009, with the ave. monthly visitor averaging 46 minutes time spent and consuming nearly 4 video streams per visit.
 
A partnership between Screenvision and Major League Baseball will enable New York TriState area Yankees fans to relive the Bomber’s 2009 World Series win at participating Bowtie Cinemas, Clearview Cinemas, Frank Theatres and National Amusements theaters. The one-time-only event kicks off on Nov. 23rd at 7:30pm.
 

 
Roger, Rerun and Dwayne would be proud. Twitter is officially changing the update question it poses to its users from “What Are You Doing?” to “What’s Happening?” The idea is to represent the platform’s evolution from a simple status update mechanism to also encompass “accidents, organizing events, sharing links, breaking news and reporting stuff their dad says,” says founder Biz Stone.
 
Blogging platform Six Apart announced a partnership with Twentieth Century Fox to introduce an official online community on TypePad around James Cameron’s upcoming Sci Fi epic Avatar. TypePad will feature Avatar-themed microblogs and aggregate content from around the web, including exclusive images, behind-the-scenes video, and real-time updates of Avatar activity occurring on Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr.
 

 
Indie kids producer Cookie Jar Entertainment has engaged Gorilla Nation’s GNKids and Teens to handle the online advertising for Jaroo.com, its new streaming video portal for kids.
 
Privately-held ad network Adknowledge announced that it has added social ad product provider SocialMedia.com to its network.
 

 
The downsizing at AOL continues as the company announced plans to cut its workforce by a third in the coming months, hoping to get as many as 2,500 employees to accept buyout offers. The deep cuts are aimed at saving the company approximately $300 million a year, but will cost it $200 million in the first six months of next year. AOL’s new CEO Tim Armstrong, who sent out a company-wide email and video yesterday to announce the cuts, will take one for the team and not accept a bonus for 2009. The company is cleaning house in preparation of a “demerger,” set to take place on Dec. 9.
                                                         
Writers Guild of America, East Executive Director Lowell Peterson will testify today before the New York City Council on the importance of Net Neutrality in protecting the creators of digital content. The WGA, which introduced a digital media initiative in Sept. 2009, is throwing its support behind Resolution 712-A, the FCC’s attempt to codify principles that will limit ISP’s ability to throttle traffic and discriminate against content providers they may not be affiliated with. “There is an entire community of writers and other creators with enormous imagination and enthusiasm, but without the financial backing of major corporate enterprises. We are very worried that their access to audiences will evaporate if net distribution is skewed in favor of large-scale commercial interests,” states Peterson in the pre-prepared address obtained by Cynopsis.
 

 
Social networking sites aren’t only used for pinging friends. Time spent viewing video on social networking sites was up 98% year-over-year to nearly 1 million aggregate minutes in October, according to Nielsen, with Facebook again capturing the top spot among social networking destinations in terms of video streams. In conjunction, the number of online video streams viewed on social networking and blog sites increased 45% year-over-year, from 240.8 million streams in October 2008 to 349.5 million in October 2009. Year-over-year, total time spent viewing video on Facebook increased a staggering 1,840%, from 34.9 million minutes in October 2008 to 677 million in October 2009. The number of unique viewers of video increased 548% and total streams grew 987% during the same period. Overall, Facebook was the third most popular site to view video in the U.S. in Oct. in terms of streams, behind only YouTube and Hulu.
 
Top 4 Social Networking & Blog Destinations Ranked by Online Video Streams – Oct. 2009
Destination   Total video streams
Facebook          217,765
MySpace             85,200
Stickam              26,312
Ning                   14,079
Source: The Nielsen Co.
 
CNN Digital led all Current Events and News sites in unique audience, time spent and total usage again in Oct., according to Nielsen. The Turner property attracted 38.3 million uniques, besting MSNBC Digital by 3.2 million and Fox News Digital by 22.1 million. CNN Digital also led in mobile unique audience, totaling 11.9 million unique visitors.
 
Current Events & Global News Unique Audience – Oct-09
Site                                         Unique Audience (000)
Current Events & Global News          114,568
CNN Digital Network                           38,270
MSNBC Digital Network                      35,133
Fox News Digital                                16,212
ABC News Digital                               13,785
CBS News Digital                               10,000
Source: Nielsen Online
 

 
Former MTV Networks marketing executive Catherine Balsam-Schwaber has joined iVillage as SVP/ Marketing, reporting to Jodi Kahn, EVP/iVillage. Catherine will lead iVillage’s brand strategy and marketing efforts, charged with striking partnerships to further iVillage’s brand priorities as well as developing and managing internal relationships across NBCU.
 

 
YouTube unveiled a couple of useful new features yesterday, making the world of online video even more accessible to the masses. An automatic captioning/subtitling feature, currently only available to a few educational partners, will soon be available to YouTube’s general audience. Choose “transcribe audio” from the captioning menu of any video and you’ll be able to use Google’s speech recognition software to place captions or subtitles at the bottom of the screen so that viewers who are hearing impaired can follow along. You can also choose to translate the captions into foreign languages. The software’s not perfect, but it’s come along way from the early days of voice-to-text. Google also announced auto-timing, which makes it easier to create a simple text file of the words within a video, then couple that with Google’s technology to match up the words with the video. All this should also greatly improve indexing when search algorithms starting combing through this text, which is a bonus.

Later — Wayne
 Wayne Karrfalt for Cynopsis: Digital
11.20.09

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JOB OPENING: DIR PRGRMNG/HGTV/NY: Mng all aspects of commiss’d shows. Maintains & evolves ongoing series. Showrunning Exp req’d along w/6 yrs cable nets exp in program prod or mngmnt w/sig creative input. www.scrippsnetworks.com #1241 (11/24)

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SITUATION WANTED: EIC/LINE PRODUCER with 10+ yrs exp. Variety, Docu-Reality, Game Show, Scripted, Live, Competition- Mngd biz of Prod. Co’s. for major TV & cable nets. MM/EPB budgets, union&non [email protected] (11/24)

SITUATION WANTED: RESEARCH DIR/STRATEGIST – See what 20+ yrs media, Nielsen, Hisp, research, sales, presentation experience can do for you.Email: [email protected] (11/24)

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SITUATION WANTED: DESIGN, ILLUSTRATION & ART DIRECTION (NYC)20 years experience working concept through completion. Portfolio: www.baerdavis.com Email: [email protected] (11/21)

SITUATION WANTED: DESIGN, ILLUSTRATION, WEBSITE, VIDEO EDITING & ART DIRECTION (LA) Extensive industry experience.  Portfolio: http://www.unlaccess.com / Email: [email protected] (11/21)

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