A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE WESTDOC

Cynopsis: DIGITAL

09/09/09

Good morning, it’s Wednesday, September 9, 2009, and this is your first early morning digital briefing.
 
Number 9, Number 9 … MTV Games & Harmonix chose 9/9/09 to launch the 45-song Beatles version of Rock Band in North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and other territories, released simultaneously with the digitally re-mastered Beatles CD catalogue from EMI and Apple Corps. The companies hope the Beatles live recordings and a selection of limited edition replicas of instruments – including John Lennon’s Rickenbacker 325 guitar, Paul McCartney’s Hofner bass, George Harrison’s Gretsch duo jet guitar and Ringo Starr’s Ludwig drums – will do for the music game genre what the Wii did for the industry at large. (That is, pull in an older demo that doesn’t usually buy games.) While the world continues to wait for the release of The Beatles catalog on iTunes, 3 full Beatles albums – “Abbey Road,” “Sgt. Pepper’s,” and “Rubber Soul” will be released for download as Rock Band add-ons later this year. Beatles Rock Band, available for the Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii starts at $60 and comes on the heels of Activision Blizzard’s Guitar Hero 5, released on Sept. 1.
 

 
Meredith and Interactivation (formerly Rainbow’s Mag Rack Entertainment) struck a partnership to bring video content from Meredith’s national and local TV brands to the company’s installed base of 25 million+ VOD homes. Both companies will share advertising and sponsorship revenues sold in association with this new programming, while Meredith will sell sponsorships for current Mag Rack network programming with a similar revenue sharing arrangement.
 
The NFL may not want its players to tweet the light fantastic, but NFL.com users are now being invited to a new fan portal designed to foster discussions around individual games. An interactive “Game Center” provides video, stats and a 3D drive chart, illustrating top and side views of plays as they are run. A new integration with Twitter also aggregates the feeds of football personalities.
 
Call for Votes: Gospel Music Channel is asking viewers to log on and vote for their favorite artists for the annual Gospel Music Channel Video Awards. Phase one of the voting will determine the nominees and phase 2, beginning Oct. 19, will name the winners.
 

 
Online video platform Brightcove struck a deal with media center software maker Boxee to bring a number of new content partners to the Boxee platform including Conde Nast Digital, Qubo, and TheStreet.com. The partnership allows publishers to maintain control over monetization, analytics, and other aspects of their digital media strategies, according to Jeff Whatcott, SVP/Marketing for Brightcove. Content producers have been intrigued by Boxee’s growing community of socially active users, who can use the interface to easily posts notes about programming to sites such as Twitter and Facebook.
 
The Broadroom, the new Maybelline-sponsored web series penned by Sex and The City author Candace Bushnell, is spreading out its 4 original webisodes across several weeks instead of distributing them in weekly increments. The series premiers today, with subsequent webisodes appearing Sept. 25, Oct. 9 and Oct. 23. 
 

A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE IAB MIXX 2009

 
Bellevue, WA-based Visible Technologies is releasing an updated version of its truCAST software platform today, designed to monitor activity on social media sites around brands. The system now monitors RSS feeds and social media sites then analyzes “conversations” to help marketers get a bead on what’s being said about their and their competitor’s brands in real time.
 
Internet ad company AdBrite has selected Contendo to power its content delivery, integrated domain service and real-time reporting duties.
 

 
Disney Interactive Studios has agreed to acquire Wideload Games Inc., a Chicago-based producer and developer of games for consoles and computers. Wideload was founded in 2003 by Alexander Seropian ­ co-founder of Bungie (Halo: Combat Involved, Myth, Marathon.) Seropian will join Disney Interactive Studios as VP of Creative, relocating to Glendale, CA.
 
VOD vendor Concurrent unveiled a new “Video to the PC” extension to its MediaHawk platform, allowing broadband operators to deliver commercial grade video via high-speed internet connections to online viewers. Meant to compliment MSO’s “TV Everywhere” initiatives, the solution offers the ability to deliver live broadcast video, in addition to VOD content, to the PC without the need for subscribers to purchase additional hardware. Concurrent also announced its Central Data Warehouse last week, a new data storage software suite designed to measure and analyze linear TV, video-on-demand, and interactive media usage.
 
Microsoft announced plans to release a next generation tool set at The IBC conference in Amsterdam next week that enables Live HD streaming through the Silverlight platform. The company will also be previewing Silverlight 4, which supports live streaming as well as digital rights management (DRM) powered by Microsoft “PlayReady” technology.
 
Consumer Watchdog and the National Writers Union joined the chorus of criticism against the Google Book Search Settlement agreement as the deadline for comment passed yesterday. “The proposed Settlement Agreement, if approved, would so massively reallocate the existing rights and remedies under copyright law that it would effectively rewrite the existing statutory regime for the benefit of a single player ­ Google,” according to the Consumer Watchdog brief.
 

 
Better late than never. DTV Adoption has finally topped the 99% mark in the U.S., according to Nielsen (99.4% to be precise,) as only 710,000 homes remain unable to receive digital terrestrial signals.
 

 
Apple is hosting a big event today to unveil some sort of music-related product and the blogs are buzzing about what that product may be. The iPod Touch is expected to take center stage.
 
Networking hardware player Netgear has introduced a broadband-connected set-top box that makes it easy to play video from YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, CBS.com, CinemaNow and other services directly on a television. The Digital Entertainer Live EVA2000, retailing for $150 plus $40 for a wireless USB adapter, also enables users to access movies, music and photos stored on a USB hard drive. The box is shipping bundled with a 14-day trial of MediaMall Technologies’ PlayOn software ($39.99 for the full version), which provides access to various online video sites including Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Video On Demand, BBC iPlayer and NFL.com.
 
Yahoo’s ubiquitous photo sharing site Flickr finally released an iPhone app, enabling users to share photos (and videos) you take with the phone, geo tag them, and instantly upload them to the Flickr.com. The interface also sports a cool search feature which combs through photos and videos via metadata tagged with the content.
 

 
AOL has hired former Yahoo SVP Brad Garlinghouse as President of Internet and Mobile Communications, putting him in charge of some of AOL’s best-known properties, including the company’s IM software and its popular e-mail system. Brad is probably best known for his “Peanut Butter Manifesto,” an internal memo he penned at Yahoo back in 2006 that called for an elimination of redundant initiatives.
 
Serena Kappes has joined iVillage from People.com as the new Editor of the Entertainment site. Serena has nearly two decades of experience in entertainment news reporting, and will play an integral role in setting the tone of the site.
 
Tremor Media upped Rich Knopke to VP/East Coast Advertising, a newly created position.  Rich joined Tremor in Nov. 2008 after serving as Director of Cable Entertainment and Pure Play at NBC Universal.
 
Adconion Media Group hired digital media veteran Allan Hersh as Sales Director of the New York office. Allan joins Adconion after an 18-month stint as an account director at Advertising.com/Platform-A. 

Comedy-themed multiplatform publisher Rooftop Media hired former IGN Entertainment President Rick Boyce as SVP of Business Development. He will be based in the company’s San Francisco headquarters and report to Will C. Rogers, founder and CEO.
 

A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE FROM THE NEW YORK TELEVISION FESTIVAL

 
NBC Universal’s expensive woman-targeted iVillage.com (the company paid $600 million for the site 3 years ago) begins yet another relaunch today with a renewed emphasis on entertainment news and community features. iVillage’s new Chief Content Executive Angela Matusik, former People.com editor, is charged with keeping the celebrity-themed features flowing, which continue to generate a lion’s share of the traffic for many of the internet’s leading portals. A new community toolbar download performs a virtual takeover of your browser, inserting toolbars populated with the latest iVillage stories – an interesting idea but a tough sell for web surfers who are increasingly reluctant to download and install desktop apps. iVillage originally grew around its active message board culture. Rebuilding the site around a more flexible platform built to integrate with social media sites and mobile apps (for instance, a meal planner app connects to a personalized health planner) may be iVillage’s best chance to weather the storm from competitors such as Glam.com. The iVillage.com properties attracted 20.2 million monthly uniques in July, vs. 54 million for Glam Media.
 
Later — Wayne
 Wayne Karrfalt for Cynopsis: Digital
09.09.09

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