Cynopsis: DIGITAL
05.30.13

Good morning. It’s Thursday, May 30, 2013, and this is your first early morning digital briefing.

Roku‘s shiny new $60 million investment, led by Fidelity and Hearst Corp., extends the company’s total funding tally to more than $140 million. The latest round, announced yesterday, also includes recent Roku investors BSkyB and News Corp. Roku said the new investment will accelerate the company’s growth around its streaming software and services businesses, which has augmented considerably during the past year with broad acceptance of its Roku 3 streaming player in the U.S. where it has sold more than 5 million streaming video players in total. The company said it is working with 24 original equipment manufacturers that will produce some 3.5 million Roku-ready devices, “predominantly TVs,” that will be available at retail by the end of the year. Roku-ready devices access the Roku streaming platform through the Roku Streaming Stick, a small USB-sized device sold by the company.

All hail digital democracy. After assessing spirited public feedback, Amazon Studios is green-lighting five pilots for development into full-season series. The early winners are comedy pilots Alpha House and Betas, along with kids pilots Annebots, Creative Galaxy and Tumbleaf. The shows will debut exclusively on Prime Instant Video later this year and in early 2014. Look for Amazon to follow the same model with additional pilots. “The success of this first set of pilots has given us the push to try this approach with even more shows this is just the beginning,” said Amazon Studios director Roy Price.

Looking for more advice on love, life, religion and red lipstick, Maria Bamford-style? Fans of funny girl Bamford (Arrested Development) and her always heartfelt, sometimes absurd look at her dysfunctional family will want to check out her new online series Ask My Mom, premiering today on My Damn Channel Comedy Network. Bamford fittingly plays both herself and her mom.

You still have time to submit to Cynopsis Digital’s Model D Awards, taking place this November, to honor the excellent creators and companies powering the online video content and advertising industries. If you did something cool in the past year, you should submit.

ESPN is redesigning its women’s sports site espnW.com site to include responsive design across desktop, mobile and tablet platforms; a time-based feed; reorg of content into three sections (News & Commentary, Athlete’s Life and W in Action) and more social media integration. The site is also launching two promos: The Summer of W social photo challenge, and the Nine for IX summer film series.

After a lengthy build-up, Spotify is finally making the Discover function available to all customers through its Web player. The feature, first announced last winter, is meant to help Spotify users choose what they listen to, and it includes daily personalized recommendations based on the user’s favorite music, new releases from artists they follow and playlists their friends share. Discover also provides information on when an favorite artist is performing nearby, through a show recommendation feature produced by Songkick. Spotify plans to eventually roll Discover out to desktop and mobile apps.

It’s a good news/bad news kind of story for Netflix and Arrested Development. After the streaming video service released all 15 episodes of “season four” in all-you-can-eat style to mixed reviews over Memorial Day weekend, Netflix stock took an immediate hit, dropping by 6.4%. Shares tumbled yesterday another 0.5%, to $213.50. The decline was the largest one-day drop in nearly six months. On the other hand, fans who were thrilled to welcome the series back after its cancellation in 2006 gobbled it up. No official numbers yet from Netflix, but outside sources including network intelligence firm Procera, are reporting Arrested drew twice as many viewers during opening weekend than Netflix’s other recent original TV series foray, House of Cards. According to Procera, 10% of viewers watched all 15 Arrested Development episodes by Sunday evening/Monday morning and for one DSL network, 36% of Netflix traffic on Sunday went to at least part of an Arrested Development episode, compared to just 11% for House of Cards on the same network.

Latino sports hub Fox Deportes is relaunching its website to include more U.S. and international event coverage and original content with exclusive video and photo galleries. The network has been amassing social networking friends, too. Fox Deportes says it currently has more than 1.5 million Facebook fans, delivering 4-times more than its nearest competitor in U.S. Spanish cable sports.

We got the wrong due date: WE tv’s upcoming reality series Pregnant & Dating premieres on May 31, not May 13 as we reported yesterday. We regret the error.

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Taking Stock: The NYSE and Time Inc. are launching branded responsive design site The Big Stage, primed with exclusive stories about companies and activities the 225-year-old Exchange has proprietary access to, including developments around IPOs, profiles of listed companies and their leaders and pieces on policy actions.

Dish Network launched a new app called Social for its Hopper whole-home DVR system. The app enables customers to join social media conversations about shows on their TV screen, and they can multitask between watching a show and following social media posts about that show on the same screen. Accessible via Dish’s “quick launch” bar, Social lets customers link up to four Twitter and four Facebook accounts to the app. Viewers have three options for the type of content displayed in the status bar: Now Watching shows the Twitter feed relevant to the show or channel the user is currently watching. My Twitter gives full Twitter functionality, and My Facebook displays the user’s personal Facebook feed with full functionality. Perhaps even more interesting, the Social app contains a data bar at the bottom of the TV screen that displays information related to the program being watched like stats about the top areas in the country where people are tweeting about the program, the program’s sentiment rating and percentage of Tweeters by gender and frequency of tweets.

Jared DeMarino is heading to Real Media Group as director of East Coast Sales. DeMarino hails from Brand.net, where he was senior sales director, working with both agencies and clients.

Mark Chowdhury has joined Madison Logic, a provider of data-powered lead solutions for advertisers, as VP of finance. Additionally, Dennis Syracuse has been promoted to GM at Madison Logic in addition to his current role as chief marketing officer.
   

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BandPage, a 500,000-member strong virtual community of musicians who create custom pages and update information, is teaming with social platform developer Ning to give bands a new way to combine publishing, community and their BandPage content. A band initiates the process by connecting its BandPage account to Ning. Ning’s technology then transforms that content into a unique social site with a news blog, fan forum, music, tour dates, band photos, band videos and an “About” page. Bands can upload a header and background image and adjust copy font and color. Rock on.

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Later – Sahil
Sahil Patel, Editor for Cynopsis Digital
05.30.13

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