Cynopsis: DIGITAL

03/23/09

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

Productivity must have taken hit at the workplace last week. CBS fired all on cylinders with its multiplatform coverage of March Madness, tipping off tourney simulcasts on Thursday with record traffic. Broader distribution, heavy promotion and the addition of Silverlight 2-powered (and Akamai-served) HD-quality streaming this year helped drive 2.7 million unique visitors to the NCAA March Madness on Demand video player, a 56% spike from last year. Users consumed 2.8 million hours of live video and audio streaming, up 65% from 2008. Hundreds of web and mobile properties signed on to participate in the NCAA March Madness on Demand Developer Platform, providing access to games across Facebook, YouTube, CBS Interactive and Audience Network sites, CBS Television and CBS Radio stations and affiliates and major sports and media websites including ESPN.com, Yahoo! Sports and SI.com. Rather than cannibalizing on air, the increased availability of (quality) tourney hoops online actually coincided with higher linear ratings this year-up 9% on Thursday.
 
A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE FROM ACADEMY OF TELEVISION ARTS & SCIENCES

 
Encouraged by the success of BBC.com’s hugely popular catch-up service, The BBC Trust agreed to increase is the pubic broadcaster’s online budget by 27% to more than £145m per year over the next three years, per the Guardian.
 
To help keep Ugly Betty fans appeased during the show’s spring hiatus, ABC.com premiered the first of six new short-form episodes of the web exclusive Ugly Betty: Mode After Hours series starring Michael Urie and Becki Newton. The initial six webisodes garnering over 10 million views, according to ABC.
 
Following the launch of Conceptis Sudoku, King Features and logic puzzle creator Conceptis Ltd. have added a whole suite of downloadable games for newspaper site clients. Available seven days a week as a package or a la carte, the new games include “Battleships,” “Hashi,” “Mega” and “Diagonal,” a new take on the classic Sudoku word game.
 

 
Ad-supported, DRM-encumbered online music service SpiralFrog went dark on Friday just 18 months after launching, per CNET. SpiralFrog, which had output deals with only two of the four major labels, had trouble competing with better-established music streaming services.
 
MyDamnChannel, home of the much beloved You Suck at Photoshop, has secured the rights to stream Pilot Season, one of the real gems to come from NBCU’s now defunct Trio network. It stars a wonderful cast of comedic talent including the promiscuous Sarah Silverman.
 
Web video and roller derby girls? – sounds like a natural fit. Purveyor of downloadable, web ready, HD royalty free video clips Footagehead.com is rolling up its sleeves to sponsor the L.A. Derby Dolls, one of five women’s roller derby leagues in the U.S. that now fight on banked tracks. 

 
Strategic media agency Media Storm partnered with Creative Images and the Big Ten Network to create a hologram of Big Ten Network analyst and ex-Titan Eddie George to promote the network’s Big Ten Squad show. The “Virtual Eddie” was on display throughout the Big Ten Men’s and Women’s Basketball Tournaments in Indianapolis. The partners also created a microsite where users were able to download pictures they took with the two Eddies. In all, over 1,200 photos were posted and nearly 1,000 people logged in to get them.
 

 
Live Nation and Ticketmaster Entertainment have each received an expected “request for additional information” from the United States Department of Justice regarding their proposed merger announced on Feb. 10. The news comes a day after Ticketmaster reported a fourth-quarter loss of $1.07 billion, as the company took a goodwill charge of $1.1 billion to reflect the decline of its stock price. Live Nation reported losses of $337.5 million earlier in the month.
 
Multiplatform Olympic sports service Universal Sports signed a deal to utilize the web video services of Ooyala. Sites such as Skiracing.com, skireport.com, skispace.com, trackandfieldnews.com, tilastopaja.org, intlgymnast.com, and fasterskier.com have partnered with Universal Sports to roll out video implementations using Ooyala’s video publishing and monetization platform, Backlot.
 

 
Recessions drive interest in job listings and classified listings for used stuff. Craigslist overtook MySpace as the most searched-for term on the web last week, according to traffic-tracking firm Hitwise. U.S. searches for the term ‘Craigslist’ increased by 105% for the week ending March 14, 2009, compared with a year ago. MySpace had been the top searched-for term since March 11, 2006.
 
Hulu’s big TV ad campaign helped it reach 55% more unique visitors in Feb, making it the #2 top gaining property on the internet according to comScore behind Firefox creator Mozilla (thank Alec.) Valentines Day and Tax time proved to be big drivers as well. Travel sites also experienced seasonal gains in February sparked by spring travel bargain hunting.
 
comScore Top 10 Gaining Properties by % Change in Unique Visitors (U.S.)
Feb. 2009 vs. Jan. 2009
Total Uniques (000)         Jan-09     Feb-09     % Change  Rank by Unique Visitors                                                               
  The Mozilla Organ.         14,161     22,851        61                 35
  HULU.COM                      5,022      7,796        55                127
  Wells Fargo                   11,724     18,121        55                 53
  IRS.GOV                       14,663     22,068        51                 39
  TaxACT                         5,883      7,771        32                130
  Hallmark                        3,827      4,863        27                222
  News International          4,040      4,902        21                221
  Intuit**                      16,172     19,563       21                  46
  H&R Block**                  6,073      7,269        20                143
  Betawave Partners-Partial 3,582      4,279        19                245
Total Internet : Total
   Audience                    191,863    192,187        0         N/A
Source: comScore Media Metrix
  *Ranking based on the top 250 properties in February 2009.
  **Intuit and H&R Block properties include non-tax related products
  and services such as Quicken, Quickbooks, and H&R Block Banking Services
 
comScore Top 50 Properties (U.S.) – Feb. 2009 Unique Visitors (000)
   Rank  Property  Unique Visitors     Rank       Property   Unique Visitors
                                (000)                                                   (000)
   1   Google Sites           148,885     26   Target Corporation    26,961
   2   Yahoo! Sites           144,304     27   Bank of America        26,148
   3   Microsoft Sites        121,093     28   Time Warner             25,911
   4   AOL LLC                105,016      29   Weatherbug Property 25,515
   5   Fox Int. Media          84,632     30   Answers.com Sites     24,997
   6   Ask Network             71,343     31   Demand Media          24,574
   7   eBay                        67,474     32   United Online, Inc     23,860
   8   Wikimedia Sites        60,892     33   Gorilla Nation            22,968
   9   Amazon Sites            59,944     34   Expedia Inc              22,880
  10  Facebook.com           57,375     35   Mozilla Organ.          22,851
  11  Glam Media              51,121      36   Photobucket.com      22,606
  12  Apple Inc.                 50,867     37   Gannett Sites            22,289
  13  Turner Network          48,904    38   AT&T, Inc.                22,137
  14  CBS Interactive         48,872     39   IRS.gov                    22,068
  15  NY Times Digital        46,199     40   WordPress                22,015
  16   Viacom Digital          44,346     41   JPMorgan Chase        20,800
  17   craigslist, inc.           39,016     42   Real.com Network     20,407
  18   Weather Channel      37,215     43   Shopzilla.com Sites   20,154
  19   AT&T Interactive       35,324     44   CareerBuilder LLC     20,083
  20   Adobe Sites              33,287     45   Everyday Health       19,942
  21   Comcast Corp.          31,958     46   Intuit                       19,563
  22   Wal-Mart                  29,415     47   Monster Worldwide    19,559
  23   Superpages.com       28,956     48   iVillage.com network  19,433
  24   Verizon Comm.         27,979     49   WebMD Health          19,339
  25   Disney Online           27,615     50   NBC Universal           19,091
        Total Internet : Total Audience      192,187
Source: comScore Media Metrix
 

                                                                                    
There are tons of elegant sports-related apps for the iPhone but sometimes they’re more than you need. If you’re looking for something to give you basic scores or stats in the fewest steps possible check out the free SportsTap for no-nonsense NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, soccer, Golf Tennis, Auto racing and, of course, NCAA info in two taps or less.
 

A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE FROM ACADEMY OF TELEVISION ARTS & SCIENCES

 
So far the competitive online travel segment has addressed the problem of trigger-shy consumers (worried about booking tickets that later drop in price) with the idea of the rebate check. Priceline was the latest to introduce a price guarantee program last week. But this assumes users will trust these sites to accurately track price drops after the fact. If you can’t trust your insurance company to not pocket their government bail-out money, how can you trust a website to cut you a check after it already made its commission? Seattle-based Yapta.com has a better idea. Yapta tracks flight and now hotel prices before you book and alerts you when there’s a price change. Initially a browser plug-in, Yapta enables you to track multiple airlines and destinations at once and even tracks the availability of frequent flier seats. Yapta also offers a cool embeddable FlightFares widget that will track flights for users of third party sites. For instance, this is a great way to encourage people to come to that tech conference they’re on the fence about. Tools that empower the consumer are what the economy needs right now.

Later — Wayne
 Wayne Karrfalt for Cynopsis: Digital
03.23.09

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