A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE FROM CBS

Cynopsis: DIGITAL

05/20/09

Good morning, it’s Wednesday, May 20, 2009, and this is your first early morning digital briefing. 

The once-mighty gadget makers at Palm announced the street date for the much-anticipated Palm Pre. The touchscreen/keyboard hybrid will go on sale at Sprint, Best Buy, RadioShack and some Wal-Mart stores on June 6 for the iPhone-matching price of $200 with a 2-year commitment. By combining the touchscreen of the iPhone and the QWERTY keyboard of the BlackBerry, Palm hopes to snag both the professional and casual users. One of Palm’s new WebOS claims to fame is its ability to run more than one app at a time – meaning you can check your email then zing over to your Facebook profile with a flick of your finger, instead of having to shut down and open up a new application. Palm’s innovative Synergy messaging service allows you to group all your conversations with the same person together in a single chat-style view, enabling you to reply via IM, email, text or phone.

A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE FROM PRODUCERS GUILD OF AMERICA

 
One of the more bitter and public carriage disputes in recent memory has come to an end. Comcast has finally reached a carriage agreement with the NFL Network to move the channel from its dreaded sports tier to its Digital Classic service from Aug. 1, which now reaches some two-thirds of Comcast’s digital customer base. (The league had been asking for 70 cents per subscriber but agreed to just .50/sub according the WSJ.) The 10-year deal also includes a video-on-demand component as well as carriage of the NFL’s upcoming RedZone Channel.
 
ESPN snagged a major ISP for its ESPN 360.com video streaming service, signing a deal with Comcast, the cable industry’s largest MSO. The company’s 15.3 million broadband footprint brings a measure of critical mass to the free service, which is only accessible if your ISP signs a licensing agreement with ESPN. ESPN360.com now has deals with the top 3 internet service providers in the U.S. (Comcast, Verizon and AT&T) and has doubled its distribution to 41 million households during the last year. Comcast, which also agreed to carry college sports network ESPN U in select systems, will utilize ESPN 360.com to help drive traffic to its Comcast.net portal, which now averages 17 million uniques/month. ESPN also announced an expanded digital rights agreement to nearly double its coverage of Wimbledon this year on ESPN 360.com. The deal also expands live mobile streaming of the event on ESPN Mobile TV by nearly 60% and adds additional highlights on ESPN.com and ESPNdeportes.com.
 
Discovery Communications has finalized three new interactive entertainment licensing deals based on hit series Deadliest Catch and Cash Cab. The Cash Cab game will be developed by CapCom for mobile platforms including the iPhone by the end this summer. Guitar Hero Mobile developer Hands-On-Mobile will power the Deadliest Catch mobile game. Slitherline will build a Discovery Channel Trivia Game for consoles and PC’s, expected to launch late 2010.
 
MyLifetime.com has produced more than a dozen online tributes to real life army wives under the banner of Homecoming: Real Army Wives.  Each tribute was shot on location at the Fort Hood U.S. Army base in Texas and features wives whose husbands have been deployed for 15 months or more in Iraq.
 
Online Casting Call: M Theory, Real World producer Bunim/Murray’s digital arm, is casting high school students for season 2 of its web based travel reality series Life on Tour. Visit Bunim/Murray’s site for details.
 

 
What’s in a name? Well, name changing in the technology space can better define a company. But it can also be seen as last-ditch effort to rescue a sinking ship. Video streaming provider Mogulus officially changed its moniker to Livestream to emphasize its premium live streaming capabilities. The company, which also offers a free ad-supported service, says it now has more than 1,000 paying customers for its premium service, with clients including C-Span, USA Today (Gannett is an investor) and the World Economic Forum. 
 
Socially-oriented video streaming service Joost signed a deal with TV Guide Broadband to add short-form TV Guide video to the platform including celebrity interviews, behind-the-scenes access to television shows, original music performances and highlights from TV Guide Specials.
 
Beantown lost one of its most active tech-themed venture capital firms. Greylock Partners announced it is moving its headquarters from Boston to Menlo Park. The VC firm, whose hits include Facebook, DoubleClick and LinkedIn, has been based in Mass. since the early 1980’s.
 
Call for Content: Virtual animation studio Aniboom is inviting animators to their submit holiday-themed creations for a chance to win cash, prizes and a Fox development deal. o be eligible to win, entries should be 2-4 minutes in length and must relate to any holiday observed in the U.S. Animators can submit their shorts online by uploading them directly to the Aniboom website.
 

 
In another name change, IPG company Macrovision now wants to be known as Rovi Corporation following its annual shareholders meeting on July 15. Macrovision, which acquired Gemstar-TV Guide last year for $2.8 billion then sold off the TV Guide Network and online properties to Lionsgate earlier this year, says the name change reflects its new direction and corporate identity.
 
Online video search engine Blinkx reported that revenue more than doubled during FY’08 to $13.93 million although marketing and R&D costs led to a loss of $8.87 million for the year. Blinkx says its unique visitors are up from 56 million to 88 million and that it had signed 175 new content partners during the year, including syndication partnerships with ITN, MSN UK and Rambler.
 

 
Often reinvented music streaming service Napster introduced a new cheaper service. Now for just $5/month, users can gain access to unlimited on demand songs online and download up to 5 MP3s a month. The offer represents a significant price drop from its unlimited $15/month, which allowed unlimited downloads of DRM-protected tracks to Windows-enabled devices.
 
Microsoft opened its cloud-based backup and synching service My Phone to the general public. The free-for-now service allows Windows Mobile users to back up contacts and appointments and share photos with friends and family. Data is limited to 200 MB.
 
The Netflix site has put together a handy compendium of apps that allow you to manage your movie queue from multiple websites and mobile devices.
 
Now there’s a Rock Band pack for boomers. The $30 Rock Band Track Pack: Classic Rock was released by Harmonix, MTV Games and EA for the Xbox 360, PS2, PS3 and the Wii, featuring 20-songs from such classic bands as The Who, Rush, Boston, The Police, and The Steve Miller Band.
 

 
Former Electronic Arts and Activision executive Kathy Vrabeck will run Legendary Pictures‘ new Interactive Entertainment division which will look to develop high profile video games into movies and TV shows, according to Variety. Initial projects include properties around Blizzard Interactive’s “World of Warcraft” and Epic Games’ “Gears of War.”
 
LGBT news source The Advocate named Andrew Harmon as News Editor of the monthly publication and Advocate.com. He will be based in The Advocate’s Los Angeles office.
 
New York-based website design firm Catalyst Group hired Ethan Farber to the position of Director of Client Development­a new post at the company.
 

A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE

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Online video is all about engagement and rapid advances are being made to offer snazzy interactive features to advertisers. But there’s no reason why program producers can’t take advantage of the same technology. PBS announces a new integration with ad insertion platform Panache today into PBS’s video management system, allowing PBS producers to place interactive casual game elements directly into the video streams. At certain points during the episodes of shows such as Arthur, Cyberchase and Wordgirl the website’s video content pauses to present viewers with the option to play educational minigames. PBS says viewership numbers tripled month-to-month after the feature went live and that engagement increased exponentially. Panache’s reporting capabilities allow the PBS Kids Go! portal to track how effective the interactive elements are at guiding users through a lesson and gage how well kids performed actions within the games. Word has gotten out about just how effective the games have been, says Panache President Steve Robinson ­- spurring inquiries from a variety of programmers. Such interactivity and the data resulting from it should prove invaluable to producers in their quest to create programming that takes advantage of the medium. Also, if these kinds of integrations don’t motivate cable operators to get serious about interactivity, we’re not sure what will …
 
Later — Wayne
 Wayne Karrfalt for Cynopsis: Digital
05.20.09

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