Cynopsis: DIGITAL
08/23/12

Good morning. It’s Thursday, August 23, 2012, and this is your first early morning digital briefing. If you would like to read this or any other Cynopsis editions online, click here.

The newly launched YouTube Elections Hub wants to be your go-to source for coverage of key political moments throughout the election cycle. With that in mind, the channel will offer election-related video clips, live streams of the big speeches and official debates, and Google+ Hangouts with “power brokers” who are behind the scenes, among other content, from now through November 6. Along with videos from politicians and the political parties, there will be original reporting and analysis from eight news organizations and voices, which include the likes of ABC News, Larry King, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, on the Hub.

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Not done with YouTube and politics just yet: Univision News has agreed to provide Spanish-language coverage of the upcoming Democratic and Republican conventions as well as of the presidential campaign trail on the YouTube Elections Hub. Up until Election Day on November 6, the Hub will feature reporting and analysis from the Univision News team. Univision News is the only Spanish-language news outlet to partner with Google’s video behemoth on this initiative. The company says it also plans to provide additional political coverage, beyond what it’s doing here on YouTube, over the next several months. These plans, which Univision says cover multiple platforms, from linear to mobile and social, will be announced soon.

Even more political stuff! CNN Digital also has a lot of plans for its coverage of the 2012 political party conventions. It will offer a live stream of key speeches and important events from both conventions online and on the network’s mobile apps. Additionally, on CNN.com, reporter Peter Hamby will host a 15-minute web show from the CNN Grill on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday during both conventions, where he’ll discuss what happened that day and take questions from social media. CNN’s Election Center will offer candidate profiles, a polling center, live-blogging, and continuous coverage throughout each event; it will also be available on the network’s mobile apps for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone 7 devices, and CNN’s mobile website. On the social front, CNN and Facebook’s I’m Voting app will enable users to endorse specific candidates and answer questions posed by CNN editors. And finally, CNN iReporters will launch what it calls an “Open Story” from each convention, through which iReporters will be able to document their thoughts and experiences and add them to a running timeline.

Hulu has received a makeover. The refreshed site, which places a larger emphasis on helping users discover new content, features:

• Larger artwork in order to highlight new programming, including the previous night’s TV episodes.
• A new tray-style format for users to browse and discover content, particularly on the home page, on which Hulu categorizes content based on what users have watched in the past, what’s popular this week, what is “going viral” currently, popular networks, movie trailers, and all-time favorite clips, among others.
• A new “Browse” tab at the top of the screen, allowing users to find and get to content quicker.
• An upgrade to the search bar, which now pulls up links to shows and clips as the user is typing.
• A new page layout for shows that allows users to pick up a show from where they left off. Hulu says it also surfaces the next episode if the user is in the middle of the series, the pilot episode if the user is new to the series, or the latest episode if he or she is all caught up.

The Tribeca Film Institute (TFI), in partnership with Ford Foundation’s Just Films Initiative, has announced the grant recipients for the 2012 TFI New Media Fund, which recognizes compelling, interactive non-fiction projects that “activate audiences around issues of contemporary social justice and equality.” The six winning projects from around the world, each of which receive anywhere between $50,000 to $100,000 in funding, include:

• Alma, A Tale of Violence: Explores Guatemalan street gangs through a web/tablet dual-screen storytelling experience.
• Immigrant Nation: Personal narratives told through documentary film, user-generated storytelling, and social mapping.
• Laika’s Adventure: Follows a traveling robot that facilitates collaborative problem solving and taps Connected Sparks, an online social change platform for children.

Amazon has expanded its licensing agreement with ESPN to add films from the sports network’s critically lauded 30 for 30 documentary series to Prime Instant Video. A subset of Amazon Instant Video, which offers more than 120,000 movies and TV episodes for users to rent or buy, Prime Instant Video now has over 22,000 movies and TV episodes that users can access on a variety of devices, including the Kindle Fire, Roku, iPad, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3.

NBC News has launched a new Xbox 360 app that delivers video clips from an array of NBC News shows, including Rock Center, Nightly News, Meet the Press, Dateline, Morning Joe, The Rachel Maddow Show, and others. Content is aggregated under the following categories: News, Politics, Lifestyle, Popular, and MSNBC.

Redbox Instant by Verizon, a subscription-based streaming service that has been pegged as an upcoming competitor to Netflix, may not end up being one, at least completely, according to what Coinstar CEO Paul Davis told Fast Company in an interview this week. “I think there’s a point where as consumers, I mean, do you really need 100,000 titles?” Davis says in the interview. To that end, he points to HBO Go as the model that the service will attempt to replicate, by offering less titles and more curated content.

Red Wall Productions has premiered Justice, a new short-form web series created by and starring Damian Bailey, on Blip. The crime drama, directed by Rosalyn Coleman Williams, follows the titular character as he tries to solve his wife’s murder in New York City. Red Wall says an accompanying iOS app will soon be made available on iTunes, which will provide access to the episodes, behind-the-scenes footage, character blogs, and other content.

Singer Alanis Morissette has joined Mommalogues, a video blog website that is published by SheKnows, Evolve Media Corp.’s women-centric digital property. She will regularly post personal videos while on tour discussing a variety of topics, including music and motherhood. The singer is the latest celebrity vlogger for the site, which in the past has brought on Cindy Crawford and Melissa Rivers, among others, to share content and discuss issues relevant to women.

YouTube has launched TrueView in-stream video ads on mobile devices. The TrueView ads are those that allow users to skip after five seconds; advertisers only pay when a consumer chooses to watch the ad. As All Things D notes, this unit is currently only applicable for YouTube on Android devices, as the iOS app, which was developed by Apple, doesn’t allow ads at the moment (something that’ll change once it’s replaced by a rumored new version built by Google). YouTube says all new and existing TrueView in-stream campaigns are now enabled to run on mobile platforms, and can be managed via AdWords for Video.

Video ad tech provider Jivox has partnered with Music Interactive to launch Maestro, a new video ad unit that offers users a free song download in exchange for watching an ad. Here’s how Maestro works: Once a Jivox-delivered ad has played for a set duration, viewers receive a free sponsored MP3 download from the Music Interactive library. Both the ad and the music reward are contained within the unit, thereby removing the issue of directing the viewer somewhere else to download their reward. To further incentivize viewers, Maestro also pushes the most popular songs to the top whenever the ad loads. Moreover, these songs aren’t tethered or DRM-encoded, which gives viewers the ability to move them to any device. As for the ad itself, social functions enable brands to allow viewers to share the ad on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest.

With the new NFL season right around the corner, Yahoo’s unveiled new features for its fantasy football product, for which brands such as Citi, Miller Lite, Snickers, Toyota, and Visa have signed on to sponsor. Of note is what Miller Lite, Toyota, and Snickers are doing beyond simple sponsorships: Miller is pushing out video ads about fans getting together to enjoy “real beers and real fantasy football action”; Snickers is using Yahoo’s Smart Ads technology to deliver personalized messages on the “Match Ups” pages; Toyota is offering videos and other content across mobile, tablet, and Yahoo Connected TV platforms.

Apple has secured a US patent for “seamless switching between radio and local media,” according to Apple Insider. What this means is that the technology covered in the patent would allow users to automatically skip programming segments they’re not interested in (including advertisements) by replacing them with content that is stored on the user’s device, such as a song or video. The patent also accounts for employing a system to determine which content to skip based on user preferences (“liking” or “disliking” a song or another piece of content) and even user tendency. The language in the patent initially covers broadcast radio as the target for this technology, however, Apple takes care to define media as “any audio or video source that can be broadcast by a content source and received by an electronic device for playback.” In other words, it’s hard not to speculate that this might be applied to an Apple TV device or the cable set-top box that the company is rumored to be building.

Barry Diller has filed a lawsuit against BarryDriller.com, the Aereo-like streaming service founded by Alki David. Guess why. Per the complaint,  “Defendants are using Plaintiff’s name in their ‘BarryDriller.com’ business to (1) associate their service with Plaintiff, and (2) mislead the public into believing that Defendants’ service has been judicially sanctioned.” Barry Diller also accuses BarryDriller.com (say it out loud for the full effect) of cyber-squatting. Both Aereo and BarryDriller.com are on the receiving end of copyright infringement lawsuits from broadcast networks.

Ericsson has unveiled the Ericsson SVP 5500 HEVC encoder, which is designed to enable operators and content providers to deliver live and linear TV over mobile networks to mobile devices. The company says the HEVC product will reduce the bandwidth requirements for delivering video by more than 50% when compared to H.264/MPEG-4 AVC solutions.

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The new Super PAC App from Glassy Media, which is available for free on iOS devices through the App Store, allows users to discover who and how much money is behind a political ad they see on TV or YouTube. Funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the app uses TuneSat’s audio-fingerprinting technology to identify the ad and provide the user with relevant information about it. Users can also rate the ad, see how others have rated it, and look up additional info regarding claims made in the spot.

GroupM has appointed Ari Bluman to the role of Chief Digital Investment Officer/North America, a new position at the company. “Ari’s job is to synchronize and direct our agencies’ investment leaders in North America and harmonize our approach to the markets in both inventory and the data which informs our investment strategy for individual clients,” said Rino Scanzoni, Chief Investment Officer at GroupM, who Bluman will report to.

A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE FROM WITC

Makers is a multiplatform video project from AOL and PBS that spotlights remarkable women from all walks of life. It consists of an ongoing weekly video series that appears on Makers.com and the project’s YouTube channel, featuring interviews the likes of Gloria Steinem, Madeleine Albright, Hillary Clinton, Bethany Hamilton, and Tavi Gevinson, as well as a three-hour documentary that will air on PBS this coming February. Now, AOL, PBS, and series brand sponsor Simple have announced a six-week search for the “Next Makers.” Up until September 27, the three partners are encouraging people to nominate remarkable women they know who are making an impact in their communities. Six finalists will be invited to a special dinner event in New York City with other Makers, will be taped for an interview that will appear on the website, and receive a $10,000 grant from Simple.

Later – Sahil
Sahil Patel, Associate Editor for Cynopsis Digital
08.23.12

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JOB OPENING: AD SALES MRKTG COORD’S/TRAVEL CHANNEL & FOOD NETWORK/NYC: 1-3 yrs exp; Detail oriented, creative thinking, knowledge of media/cable/creative process. scrippsnetworksinteractive.com – Req 3270 Travel / 3281 Food (9/1)

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JOB OPENING: VP DEVELOPMENT & CURRENT PROGRAMMING/NBC UNIVERSAL/LA: Develop new series for Universal Cable Productions and oversee day-to-day on current series. Min. 4 yrs in TV development. Apply: nbcunicareers.com (6772BR)(8/30)

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