A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE FROM NATPE

Cynopsis: DIGITAL

06/25/09

Good morning, it’s Thursday, June 25, 2009, and this is your first early morning digital briefing. 

Despite concerns about piracy and harming the lucrative pay TV business model, the cable industry jumped into the broadband video race with two feet yesterday. Time Warner and Comcast announced a partnership to make original TBS and TNT programming available online to Comcast customers for no extra charge under the MSO’s “On Demand Online” brand. Comcast will begin a nationwide trial to test authentication technology involving about 5,000 households next month, hoping other major cable networks will participate. The shows will be initially accessible on Comcast.net, Fancast.com and will soon also be available on TNT.tv and TBS.com. Time Warner also said it is in talks with other MSOs to join the TV Everywhere model.
 

 
Yes Network, Cablevision and MLB Advanced Media officially announced their agreement to allow YES Network cable subscribers to watch Yankees Games online via Cablevision’s Optimum Online internet service. It is the first time a MLB team has streamed games within its home market. Online telecasts will begin July 8 and will cost $49.95 for the rest of the season and $19.95 for any 30-day period.
 
Television brands’ renewed focus on driving viewers to the web continues to pay off in increased usage numbers:
 
NBCU’s syndicated entertainment show Access Hollywood announced that it cracked Nielsen Online’s top ten domains on the internet in terms of year-to-year page view growth. AccessHollywood.com, which syndicates content to Yahoo’s omg! celebrity portal, broke records in Feb. attracting nearly 3 million unique visitors, per ComScore, and delivering 3.3 million video streams, according to Nielsen.
 
Lifetime Digital announced it set monthly records for unique visitors and page views in May, netting 3.8 million unique visitors to Lifetime sites such as myLifetime.com, Roiworld.com, DressUpChallenge.com, LMN.tv and MothersClick.com ­- an increase of 55% y/y, according to ComScore. Lifetime will debut show sites for Project Runway and its new companion series Models of the Runway in July, which will feature more than 500 exclusive broadband video clips along with extensive community elements.
 
Oxygen.com is introducing a digital weight loss club to go along with June 29 premiere of its “Dance Your Ass Off” competition series. The site will feature fitness videos, chat sessions, contestant recipes, calorie calculators, mobile outreach and blogs.
 
Comcast’s G4 network announced that it will broadcast a Lucasfilm Ltd. panel live at Comic-Con next month, part of a 3-hour block of coverage for G4. Fans are invited to participate by submitting Clone Wars questions through a special G4 microsite.
 

                                                                                
Travel site start-up Oyster Hotel Reviews hopes to solve the reliability problem of user generated reviews by sending real journalists out in the field to evaluate hotel properties and take their own photos. (Most travel sites rely on doctored photos that come directly from the hotel.) The site launched this week with hotel reviews from Aruba, the Dominican Rep., Jamaica and Miami, with plans to add New York and Las Vegas in the coming weeks. The next generation of the site will add features such as price comparison tools to enable travelers to compare apples to apples, according to co-founder and CEO Elie Seidman.
 
Tribune Media Services announced an agreement to distribute eGuiders‘ Curated Video Applications to websites and networks in the U.S. and internationally. eGuiders’ Curated Video Apps feature video content from YouTube, Hulu, Crackle and other popular video sources, curated by a team of industry experts including John Landis and Damon Lindelof who review their picks for the most interesting and entertaining online videos.
 
Over 40 woman-focused More.com unveiled a redesign that coincides with its joining of Meredith Corp.’s Real Girls Media Network. The new More integrates additional UGC features around 9 content categories, including Beauty, Healthy, Money & Careers and Community.
 

 
San Juan, Puerto Rico-based OneLink Communications announced an agreement to deploy BIAP‘s Tru2way compliant “Ad Widgets” iTV advertising system. Ad Widgets deliver interactive features such as request for information, voting and polling, VOD telescoping and click-to-call to purchased 30 second spots.
 
WPP announced a research project intended to explore the dynamics between search engine marketing and brand building. WPP agencies will work on the project with help from Microsoft Advertising.
 
Travel Ad Network announced it will add Virgin Atlantic’s fast growing vtravelled.com to its roster of more than 200 travel planning sites.
 

 
Nielsen is releasing a new report at the What Teens Want conference in New York today that sets out to reassure media folks that teens are not abandoning television for new platforms. (Nielsen says TV viewing for teens is actually up by 6% over the past 5 years as the typical teen television viewer watched 104:24 (hh:mm) of television per month.) But while teens spend far less time in front of their computers than adults (11hrs. 32 min./month vs. 29 hrs. 15 min./month) and thus watch less short form and long form video online, they do tend to be more engaged in the ads they see online than the ones they see on television. (The company’s Nielsen ID engagement service determined this but surveying teen’s brand recall on both mediums.) Other findings include:

• Teens’ favorite TV shows, websites and genre preferences across media are mostly the same as their parents; Idol is the top teen show and Google is the top teen site
• U.S. teens actually watch less TV per day than in most other metered countries
• In the U.S., nearly half of online teens 12-17 visited MySpace and Facebook in May 2009 (45% and 44%, respectively). All said, teens 12-17 accounted for 28% of MySpace’s page views and 12% of Facebook’s during the month
• 73% of U.S. teens have access to a handheld video game system vs. 30% globally

 
Another 400,000 homes have become digital ready since the week of the June 12 DTV transition, according to Nielsen. That puts the digital unready figure at 2.1 million households or 1.8% of the TV market.
 

 
Handset maker HTC will be the first company to release a phone supporting Adobe Flash for the Android platform, potentially giving HTC Hero users access to close to 80% of the internet’s videos. Adobe is working with several players as part of the “Open Screen Project” to release a version of Flash 10 for mobile phones. (Apple’s iPhone remains a Flash holdout.)
 
AT&T released another iPhone app you have to pay a $10 monthly fee for. The AT&T Navigator is a turn-by-turn navigation application that offers both voice and on screen directions, automatic map updates and traffic alerts. Apple announced that TomTom was also building a navigation app for the new iPhone 3.0 OS but there’s no word yet on its release date.
 
Online radio app Stitcher, which streams channels of business, sports, politics, entertainment and current events content, released a version for the BlackBerry App World. Stitcher also said it will launch a renewed version of its iPhone app in July adding full seek functionality and support for Bluetooth streaming.
 

 
Jeff Weiner has been named CEO of the professionally-themed social networking site LinkedIn, replacing founder Reid Hoffman who will move up to Executive Chairman. (Here’s Jeff’s updated profile.) Prior to LinkedIn, Jeff was an Executive in Residence at Accel Partners and Greylock Partners and spent over 7 years at Yahoo.
 
Fox Mobile Group appointed Markus Thorstvedt as Chief Technology Officer, FMG and Joe Bilman as SVP/Global Products, Fox Mobile Distribution, a unit of FMG.
 
Gabe Doppelt is leaving as W’s West Coast Bureau Chief to join The Daily Beast, founded by Tina Brown at InterActiveCorp. Gabe, a former Editor-in-Chief of Mademoiselle and a VH1 producer, will be hiring reporters for the new bureau and will be working out of IAC’s Los Angeles building.

 
Media center software provider Boxee released its long-awaited alpha version for Windows users and announced a deal with Major League Baseball to integrate MLB.TV onto the platform. The custom interface, stripped down for the “10 foot experience,” will support live and on demand HD out-of-market games. Adding Windows support and sports programming to Boxee should attract an entirely new demographic of users. Power struggles with Hulu aside, Boxee is providing a valuable laboratory for the entertainment industry, testing how users who have access to a variety of content mix and match brands and services. Social media functionality is becoming a big part of the Boxee experience. New integrations with Digg and Tumblr allow users to drive videos they like to the top of the heap and stream music and photo sideshows from people they are following. If you haven’t played around with the Boxee interface yet or have been waiting for the Windows release, give it a try.
 
Later — Wayne
 Wayne Karrfalt for Cynopsis: Digital
06.25.09

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