A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE FROM ESPN

Cynopsis: DIGITAL

09/15/08

Good morning, it’s Monday, September 15, 2008, and this is your first early morning digital briefing.

The entertainment industry may finally have found an alternative to the all-powerful iTunes/iPod solution. A group of media, entertainment and consumer electronics companies will announce the “Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE)” today, a push to set standards and usage rules to insure interoperability of digital content on multiple devices and platforms. Devices built to DECE specs would be able to play DECE-branded content and work with any DECE-certified service, eliminating annoying territorial divides. Charter members of the group include Alcatel-Lucent, Best Buy, Cisco, Comcast, Fox Entertainment Group, HP, Intel, Lions Gate Entertainment, Microsoft, NBC Universal, Paramount Pictures, Philips, Sony, Toshiba, VeriSign, and Warner Bros.
 

 
MySpace has already lined up three of the four major music labels – Universal, SonyBMG and Warner Music – to participate in its new music portal MySpace Music, reports Fortune. Users will be able to tap into the entire catalog of these companies for the first time, with the option to listen to tracks from over 5 million artists for free or create and share personalized playlists of their favorite tunes. The site will also offer download-to-own mp3s, concert tickets and merchandise. McDonalds, State Farm, Toyota and Sony Pictures are among the sites charter advertisers.
 
Note to TV syndicators: serialized shows may be more valuable in second runs if online components are used to help keep audiences engaged. Comcast’s G4 and NBCU’s Sci Fi both kick off reruns of Lost with a little help from other platforms. G4 is calling its interactive play Lost in 2.0. Enhancements include facts, character profiles and creators’ commentary appearing on screen with the broadcast and polls, games and chat functionality available online. SciFi.com’s Lost minisite, (not to be confused with the one for miniseries Lost Room) features more of the same. It will be interesting to see how many Lost fans return to cable to relive the experience. G4 is stripping the show M-F at 9 pm while Sci Fi is airing 4 episodes at a time each Monday night beginning at 7 pm/6C.
 

Online studio Generate struck a distribution arrangement with Vuze for season 2 of its Webby-Award honoree comedy Pink: The Series. (Pink is about a reluctant government assassin who yearns for a more conventional life.) The first of season-two’s 10 webisodes premieres today exclusively on Vuze’s P2P-powered HD platform. The series will also be syndicated across other portals including Blip.tv, Break, Dailymotion, Hulu, iTunes, Joost, Metacafe, MSN, MySpace, Veoh, TheWB.com, Yahoo and YouTube.
 
Automotive broadband programming start-up Torque.tv has learned something interesting about its online audience. Sixty percent of its ½ million audience actually prefers to use the service like a linear network, checking in to view regularly scheduled programming rather than calling up on demand programs, according to CEO Jesse Raiford. There’s a little irony to this revelation. Torque.tv, founded by the Cablevision veteran and the executives behind Speedvision, was put together as a multiplatform destination where advertisers would find a variety of ways to get in front of an engaged, passionate audience after cable’s VOD platform failed to follow through with options like dynamic ad insertion. Microsoft’s Atlas is taking care of the site’s ad serving duties providing much more flexibility than cable. But Torque’s users themselves still like that lay-back viewing experience. 
 
YouTube amended its posting guidelines to ban terror training videos or other content that may incite others to commit violent acts. The move follows criticism leveled by Sen. Joe Lieberman and others that the platform was too open to becoming a propaganda tool for terrorists.
 

A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE FROM THE NEW YORK TELEVISION FESTIVAL

 
Microsoft introduced a new platform that will allow Media Center PC and TV tuner makers to support premium broadcast TV channels. Microsoft’s previous Broadcast Driver Architecture had become outdated as digital content providers now routinely require DRM in order to protect unauthorized broadcasts. The company says it will continue to advance the platform, aiming to make pay TV reception over-the-air possible by next year.
 
The SEC is launching an investigation into the drop of United Airlines’ share price after an old 2002 story about UAL’s bankruptcy proceedings was accidently republished on the website of Tribune’s South Florida Sun-Sentinel and spread around the web via Google News. Tribune released a statement last week saying the confusion started with the inability of Google’s Googlebot automated search agent to differentiate frequently viewed stories from breaking news items.
 
Electronic Arts officially gave up trying to acquire Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two Interactive more than 7 months after it made its initial unsolicited offer.
 

 
Microsoft also unveiled its Mediaroom Advertising Platform over the weekend at the IBC 2008 conference in Amsterdam. The IPTV platform will allow service providers to insert traditional and new ad formats into programming (including video-on-demand and DVR content) and alongside program guides. Because content is delivered over a two-way internet connection, ads can also be interactive. Mediaroom is currently used to power AT&T’s U-verse service in the U.S.
 

 
M&A firm AdMedia Partners appointed Michael J. Klingensmith as Managing Director specializing in media and publishing. The former Time Inc. senior executive was the founding publisher and President of Entertainment Weekly and also served as President of Sports Illustrated.
 
Jason Binks has joined ITV Worldwide as VP/Digital and New Media. Reporting to Steve Gallant, Director of Global Content Publishing, Jason’s role is to develop the company’s digital business and create further opportunities within the international market.
 

 
Sony Pictures Entertainment‘s broadband content portal Crackle (no jokes about those Vaio laptops that were recalled for sparking) launches a new fall line-up of shows today. In Dating Brad Garrett the Everyone Loves Raymond and ‘Til Death star turns to user generated video to cast for suitable dates. A panel of Garrett “experts,” including his ex-wife, mother, exterminator, friend, and urologist, will review the submissions and decide which applicants get to spend a night on the town with the comedian. Cloverfield lead Michael Stahl-David is the subject of yet another day-in-life series. And there could be some real gems among the newly featured Groundlings collection of sketches, the L.A.-based comedy troupe’s first concerted online effort. It’s good to see Sony invest resources in the programming part of its multiplatform business. Until now Sony has been known more for technical innovations like the Bravia Internet Video Link system that streams movies and shows from your PC to your living room TV. (The $300 module got a big boost last week when Amazon’s Video on Demand titles became available through the interface.) But so far Crackle, formerly known as Grouper Networks, has failed to make much of an impact in the content space. These shows will get every chance to catch on with the help of online distribution partners YouTube, Hulu, MySpace, AOL Video, Adobe as well as mobile partners AT&T and Sprint.

Later — Wayne
 Wayne Karrfalt for Cynopsis: Digital
09.15.08

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JOB OPENING: DIR. PARTNERSHIPS/LIFETIME TV/NY: resp. for utilizing Lifetime assets to lead the Part. division in the dev. & exec. of customized sponsorship packages Apply at: http://www.mylifetime.com/about/jobs.html (9/20)

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SITUATION WANTED: BIZ DEV EXECUTIVE/(NY/LA): 10 yrs sales exp, start-up, turnaround & F100 exp., strong in all media pltfrms. Open to top tier assistant and c-level pos in any entertainment field. Email at [email protected]  (9/17)

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