AllThingsD » Dive Into Media

Shuttered Ad Tech Startup Team Lands at Intel's Web TV Project

Peter Kafka — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 01:42:22 +0000

Earlier this year, we told you that advertising exchange AdBrite was shutting down and selling itself in pieces.

Now we know where one of the pieces has gone: Intel’s TV-over-the-Web project. Intel Media has picked up five members of AdBrite’s core engineering team, according to a person familiar with the move.

In what was essentially an “acqhire,” Intel grabbed AdBrite’s CTO, along with four other former employees; I’m told they will work on data and analytics projects, which will include everything from ad systems to content recommendations.

Intel Media is a small but very ambitious project from the chipmaker, which is trying to do something that tech/media heavyweights like Google and Apple have yet to attempt. Intel Media head Erik Huggers says he plans to start selling pay TV, delivered over the Internet, sometime later this year, in conjunction with an Intel-built set-top box.

In order to do that, Intel has to clear a lot of hurdles, including getting programming deals with all or most of the big TV networks. So far we haven’t heard any of them say that they’re on board, but Intel keeps insisting that it is making progress.

Here’s a highlight reel of Huggers’ interview with Walt Mossberg and myself at D: Dive Into Media earlier this year, where he first outlined his ambitions in public:

[ See post to watch video ]

Twitter's New Video Plan: Ads, Brought to You by Ads

Peter Kafka — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 17:22:17 +0000

Want to know what Twitter is trying to do as it pushes into video?

No need to wait: You can see it right now.

Here’s an example from earlier this month. It’s a highlight clip, embedded in a Tweet from the NCAA March Madness tournament. The video comes from Time Warner’s Turner cable network, and it’s preceded by a Coke ad.

Real-time highlight: @umichbball continues its hot shooting from 3-point land. #NCAAChamp – snpy.tv/Y9h9nU

— NCAA March Madness (@marchmadness) April 9, 2013

Twitter didn’t make a lot of noise about this when they tried it out in the past few weeks, and most people who did notice it paid attention to the fact that Twitter was hosting the highlight clips in something close to real time. When it worked right, you could see a replay within minutes of the actual event. Pretty cool.

But it’s the ad model that’s more meaningful here: Content owner puts (a short) video on Twitter, a sponsor pays to promote/distribute the content on Twitter, and Twitter and the content owner share the revenue.

And that’s what Twitter is trying to build upon, as it talks to other TV networks and content owners about doing that sort of thing at scale, as Bloomberg reported last night.

So that’s a big deal — because if it works, it creates yet another revenue stream for Twitter, and pushes it closer to the TV ad dollars it (and every other digital company) pines for.

But it’s also not a really big deal — because it’s not much more than sticking an ad (for a product) on an ad (for a TV show).

And by the way — if a TV network wants to just put up a clip on Twitter, it can do that right now, without talking to Twitter about it at all.

So why bother working out a deal with Twitter? After all, the ad revenue that Twitter would get from this kind of arrangement will be much more meaningful to Dick Costolo and company than to the TV guys. And the TV guys have the content, so they’ve got the leverage, right?

Right. Which is why Twitter is telling the networks that this will be good for them, too: Their argument, according to people who have heard the pitch, is that Twitter can figure out how to display the networks’ content in front of Twitter users who might not know about their channels/shows, but might be inclined to like them if they did.

How can they do that? That’s the premise behind Bluefin Labs, the data startup Twitter bought earlier this year for $90 million.

Bluefin specializes in figuring out what people are saying on Twitter about TV, and what that means. And while that argument doesn’t convince everyone who hears about it — one executive I talked to today described it as “hocus-pocus” — it can sound convincing in the moment, at the very least.

Here’s the extended version of that pitch, via a 16-minute demo from Bluefin founder Deb Roy at our D: Dive Into Media conference in February. If you’re in a hurry, skip ahead to the nine-minute mark, where Roy starts talking about the kinds of people who like a particular Dodge ad that ran during the Super Bowl:

[ See post to watch video ]

Sony Re-Ups Movie, Music Boss Michael Lynton

Peter Kafka — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 17:00:36 +0000

Lots of people think Sony is looking to sell off its entertainment properties. But here’s an argument against that notion: The company has re-signed Michael Lynton as head of its movie studio and music business.

Lynton had run the movie studio for some time; last year, Sony bumped him up by adding music to his responsibilities. Sony won’t disclose the length of Lynton’s contract, but a statement from Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai indicates that it’s a multiyear term.

Hirai’s press release quote also telegraphs that Sony isn’t in any hurry to dump the businesses Lynton is running: “I look forward to working closely with Michael in ensuring that music and pictures remain integral parts of our global strategy.”

Lynton’s appearance at our D: Dive Into Media conference in February was one of my personal favorites; we had a wide-ranging conversation about everything from home video to Netflix to Facebook. You can see the whole thing here, or watch a highlight reel below:

[ See post to watch video ]

Barry Diller and Aereo Win Another Legal Battle

Peter Kafka — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 15:41:48 +0000

Another legal victory for Aereo, the Internet video startup that wants to upend the TV industry: A Federal appeals court has rejected a request from broadcasters and TV station owners to halt Aereo’s TV-over-the-Web service.

By a vote of 2 to 1, the Second Circuit appeals court denied a preliminary injunction motion filed by big media companies including Disney, CBS and News Corp. (which also owns this website), upholding an original decision from last summer. You can read the entire decision at the bottom of this post.

In essence, the court said that Aereo’s technical architecture — which pulls down broadcast TV signals from the air, stores them on a computer and retransmits them to its users over the Web, without paying broadcasters for the rights to do so — may well hold up to further legal scrutiny.

The ruling doesn’t mean Aereo’s court battles are over by any stretch, but it is another win for a company that knew from the outset that it would spend a lot of time and money on lawyers. Aereo is specifically designed to fit a legal precedent established by Cablevision, the cable TV company that won the right to create a “cloud-based” DVR for its customers a few years ago. So far that plan seems to be working.

If Aereo, backed by Barry Diller’s IAC, does end up winning in court, it doesn’t ensure that the company will succeed. But it would most definitely affect the bottom line of the broadcast TV networks, which pull in huge fees from pay TV providers for the right to show their programming. Aereo has already received overtures from pay TV providers like Dish Network and AT&T that are intrigued by the notion of bundling the company with Internet-only broadband packages, as the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday.

It is worth noting the dissenting opinion from District Court Judge Denny Chin, who doesn’t buy the Cablevision argument at all: “The system is a Rube Goldberg-like contrivance, over-engineered in an attempt to avoid the reach of the Copyright Act and to take advantage of a perceived loophole in the law.” We’ll have plenty of time to watch the two sides hash this out some more.

Meanwhile, if you want to see Aereo CEO Chet Kanojia demonstrate how his service actually works, here he is in action at our D: Dive Into Media conference from February.

[ See post to watch video ]

AEREO decision –

YouNow, Web Video's Live Amateur Hour, Bulks Up by Buying Blog TV

Peter Kafka — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 13:33:05 +0000

If you take “American Idol” and add “The Gong Show” and then add Chatroulette but subtract the naked dudes, you get YouNow, a Web service that lets amateurs sing and dance for each other in real time.

And now you can add one more thing to the mix: Blog TV, an older and similar take on the same idea. YouNow has acquired Blog TV, and is importing the company’s users into its own platform; YouNow CEO Adi Sideman won’t disclose a purchase price, but says his company paid cash.

The combined company is still not going to be very big. Blog TV, which has been around for close to a decade, has four million registered users. YouNow has one million, and $5 million in funding from Orens Capital, Union Square Ventures and angels.

But I think this is one to keep an eye on, because I think YouNow could be on to something: It is arguing that live Web viewing makes for compelling Web viewing, but understands that what’s compelling to you isn’t interesting to me at all.

That’s why the site offers viewers dozens of amateur singers, dancers and talkers to choose from at any given time, and allows them to stay or gives them the hook based on its users’ real-time interactions.

Each one of those performers may only draw a few thousand concurrent viewers at most — and much likely, many less than that. But if it clicks, you don’t need to know that you’re watching something that millions of other people are seeing at the same time. A few dozen can give you a little thrill, too.

Like anything else on the Web, this is also a notion that a much bigger company — most obviously Facebook or YouTube — could latch onto if it got real traction.

But Facebook has already seen Sean Parker flail at live social video, and YouTube seems like it is most interested in selling advertisers on the notion of live as an “event,” not live as an everyday thing. So, we’ll see.

You can also see for yourself. Here are two takes of Sideman demonstrating his service at D: Dive Into Media last month. The first version is the one our in-house team made; Sideman then took the same footage and reinserted some shots that give you a better sense of what Web viewers were seeing.

[ See post to watch video ]

David Carey Says Hearst Is No Time Inc.

Peter Kafka — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 19:17:09 +0000

Time Warner is so down on the magazine business that it is going to dump/spin off Time Inc., the world’s biggest magazine publisher.

But other magazine publishers insist things are fine. Or if not fine, then potentially fine.

Now, it’s entirely possible that publishers like Conde Nast and Hearst are whistling furiously and loudly past the graveyard.

But those two do differ from Time Inc. in some significant ways. For instance:

They don’t have the burden of publishing expensive weekly magazines like Time and Sports Illustrated, whose futures are especially fraught in the digital era.
They have owners who are spending some of the proceeds from their lucrative investments in cable TV (Hearst owns a chunk of ESPN, Conde parent Advance owns a slug of Discovery) to expand/diversify their core businesses (Hearst bet $1 billion on European publisher Lagardère, Advance has a $500 million M&A fund it is spreading around the Web).
They have owners that are private, not public.

Want to hear more optimism? Hearst magazine boss David Carey is happy to oblige. Here’s the extended version of our onstage interview at D: Dive Into Media last month, where Carey touches on Hearst’s international ambitions, its forays into TV, and mobile ads. Oh — and also its adventures in tabletland, where Apple is a very big deal, Amazon is, too, and Google has yet to make a mark.

[ See post to watch video ]

Jimmy Iovine Explains His $60 Million Music Plan

Peter Kafka — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 14:42:28 +0000

Hey, Jimmy Iovine! You just got $60 million to launch a new subscription music service!

What are you going to do with it?

The legendary music producer, executive and headphone marketer hasn’t spelled out all of his plans just yet. We’ll have to wait until later this year to see exactly what he’s going to roll out to compete with the likes of Apple, Spotify, Pandora and perhaps Google (x2).

But last month at D: Dive Into Media, he gave Walt Mossberg a pretty good sense of what he’s working on — a highly curated service, as opposed to the robot+friends approach most of his competitors use — as well as a history lesson on the rise and fall of the music industry.

Here’s the entire interview:

[ See post to watch video ]

Big Data, Soft Sell: Netflix Pitches a Hands-Off Approach to Hollywood

Peter Kafka — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 18:48:11 +0000

Here’s a narrative lots of people like right now: In the old days, the movie and TV guys had to guess about what kind of stuff you wanted to see. But Netflix doesn’t need to guess: It knows so much about your viewing habits that it knows exactly what you want, so it picks films and shows accordingly.

And now it’s using all of that Big Data to create stuff you want to see, using its analytics to shape the original videos it is funding.

Take that, William Goldman!

But if you’re a Hollywood creative person, that narrative wouldn’t sound nearly as appealing: You’re already used to getting tons of input and edicts from suits. Now Netflix is promising to up the ante by using computers, too?

Which is why Netflix is not selling that pitch to writers, directors and actors.

Instead, it is promising a hands-off — or mostly hands-off — approach: We’ll give you a bunch of money to go make something, and you go make it. And maybe we’ll offer some suggestions. (Which is the same approach, by the way, that networks like HBO and Showtime used to coax Hollywood talent for their originals for a long time.)

No need to take my word for it, though. You can hear it straight from the folks who are working with Netflix on the new stuff.

At our D: Dive Into Media conference last month, we had Mitch Hurwitz and Will Arnett, creator and star, respectively, of “Arrested Development,” onstage with Ted Sarandos, the Netflix executive who paid them to make a new season of the show. The whole segment is a bunch of fun, but if you want to hear about the input Sarandos did and didn’t have on “Arrested Development,” skip ahead to the 30:30 mark:

[ See post to watch video ]

Hollywood Goes Digital -- But Not Too Digital. Sony Boss Michael Lynton's Candid Dive Into Media Interview.

Peter Kafka — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 21:55:06 +0000

Technology is driving huge shifts in the way we consume media. But some parts of the media world aren’t changing much, or soon.

The only way you’re going to see a blockbuster movie like “Skyfall,” for instance, is if a studio like Sony foots the bill. And once they do, they’re not going to let you see it anywhere but in a theater in the first few months it’s out.

Sony boss Michael Lynton made that clear during his interview at D: Dive into Media. There are plenty of reasons why people like me (and maybe you) would like to see “Skyfall” at home while it’s still in the theaters. But Sony has very good reasons for keeping things the way they are.

That said, Lynton is happy to experiment when it comes time for other windows — perhaps there’s a way to charge viewers a premium for home viewing before the movie makes it to DVD, for instance. Hollywood has tried this before and failed, but Lynton says it will likely come back.

And Lynton, who is thoughtful and candid onstage, has lots to say about the other ways technology is affecting his business, from the rise of cable dramas like “Mad Men” — if you love Don Draper, you have Netflix and the DVR to thank — to the way it is grappling with the gabbers on Twitter and Facebook, who can sink a mediocre movie in record time.

This one was a lot of fun to do live. Now you can enjoy it on your own time:

[ See post to watch video ]

Facebook Media Czar Dan Rose Shares His Sharing Plans

Peter Kafka — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 20:21:26 +0000

Facebook has a billion users, which makes it very attractive to media companies. Media companies have lots of content those billion users might like to look at and talk about, which makes them very attractive to Facebook.

Easy match, right? Not exactly: The media guys have been here before, with Google and Apple, and are trying to figure out how to work with Facebook without getting worked over. And Facebook … well, sometimes it’s hard to figure out exactly what Facebook wants from its partners, media and otherwise.

That’s where Dan Rose comes in. The Facebook executive is the one in charge of creating and sustaining those links with the outside world, and that can be a tricky task. See: Zynga. Oh. And bear in mind that Facebook has a $4 billion advertising business, and has plans to make that number much bigger, which means it’s competing with those partners, too.

Ace Facebook reporter Mike Isaac talked to Rose about that dynamic — and much more, including Facebook’s mobile ambitions — at D: Dive into Media earlier this month. Here’s the full interview:

[ See post to watch video ]

Here's What Happens When You Combine a Comic Book, an iPad and Augmented Reality

Peter Kafka — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 20:14:21 +0000

What happens when you add digital technology to an old-fashioned book? You get a Kindle, obviously.

Unless you do it the way Anomaly Productions is doing it: Then you get a comic book that looks and works just like the kind you used to see — except it can leap off the page and interact with you and your iPad.*

Co-founder Brain Haberlin showed off his graphic novel and technology at D: Dive into Media, and it’s pretty eye-popping stuff. The fact that his partner is Skip Brittenham, one of Hollywood’s most important power brokers, means certain people are going to pay attention to Anomaly out of the gate. But if it works it’s going to be because regular people want to read this way. Maybe they will!

[ See post to watch video ]

*Or Android tablet, or whatever.

Samsung Wants to Be a Media Giant. Meet the Guy in Charge of Getting Them There.

Peter Kafka — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 17:27:49 +0000

Apple used media — first music, then lots of other stuff — to help build its giant hardware business. Samsung already has a giant hardware business, and now David Eun is trying to help it with the other stuff.

Eun, who is EVP of Samsung’s Open Innovation Center, gave us a sense of what he’s up to at our D: Dive Into Media conference last week, and you can watch the full interview below. He’s reluctant to talk about specifics, but there’s plenty to chew on. And if Samsung ended up launching, say, its own video portal, or advertising business, or both, you’ll be less surprised after watching this one.

Oh, and what about Apple and its ongoing fight/partnership with Samsung? Of course Kara Swisher asked him about that, too. And he answered!

[ See post to watch video ]

Fox Says No to Dish's TV to Go, With a New Lawsuit

Peter Kafka — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 14:23:38 +0000

New box, new lawsuit for Charlie Ergen: Fox has asked a federal court to put the kibosh on the newest version of Dish’s Hopper set-top boxes, which are supposed to let users watch live and recorded TV on the go.

That’s separate but related to the lawsuit the big broadcasters have already filed against Dish for last year’s version of the Hopper, which lets users automatically skip commercials.

The new version of the Hopper incorporates some of the Sling “place-shifting” technology that Dish has offered for years, so some TV observers have thought Ergen and company might be able to roll this out without a lawsuit.

On the other hand, Fox (which, like this website, is owned by News Corp.) and the other networks are hammering out Internet and mobile rights with TV distributors on a slow, case-by-case basis. So having Dish offer those capabilities without a deal would pose a problem for programmers, to say the least.

And the Dish guys knew it: “We’re trying to be at the forefront of existing technology,” Dish CEO Joe Clayton said when the company showed off the new Hopper in early January. “If that means some lawsuits, okay.”

And Ergen’s very happy to take his chances in court — or at least move the negotiations there for a while. For more on his take on litigation, and everything else, see our hour-long interview with him from last week’s D: Dive Into Media conference.

Okay, Microsoft -- What's Your Next Game Machine Going to Look Like?

Peter Kafka — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 15:50:45 +0000

Sony showed off its next-generation gaming machine last night — except it didn’t.

So what does Microsoft plan to do when it replaces its own gaming console? We asked Xbox head Yusuf Mehdi when he stopped by the D: Dive Into Media conference last week, along with Nancy Tellem, the former CBS executive hired to build up Xbox’s video business.

You can see what they had to say below, in the full-length version of their interview. Warning: Neither Mehdi or Tellem wanted to spill much (then again, they didn’t promise a “launch” event, so you can’t blame them).

But you can read between the lines and get a sense of where they’re headed: While lots of people are interested in lightweight casual games and low-cost machines that can play them, Microsoft seems committed to the idea of a heavy-duty machine with lots of proprietary bells and whistles. So you shouldn’t expect an Apple TV-sized box, for instance.

Tellem, who is building a full-fledged studio in L.A. to create shows, series and events for Xbox, is noncommittal as well (likely because she is still figuring it out). But she is talking about the same kinds of ideas: Video that isn’t just proprietary to Xbox, but that takes advantage of the device’s hardware and processing power. Assume that once she gets going, for instance, she’ll create stuff that takes advantage of Microsoft’s Kinect motion sensors.

One big difference between Sony and Microsoft is the way the two companies are positioning their machines: While Sony’s customers spend plenty of time streaming video on the PS3 (they log more Netflix hours than Xbox users), Microsoft is much more explicit about using the Xbox as an entertainment device, period.

Which is why it’s interesting that Microsoft has decided, at least for now, not to go ahead and simply become a pay-TV provider, like Intel says it will do this year.

[ See post to watch video ]

Intel Inside Your TV: The Chip Guys Want to Become Cable Guys

Peter Kafka — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 16:28:23 +0000

Who’s going to take on the cable guys? Lots of really big, powerful tech companies with heaps of clout and money — Google, Apple and Microsoft, for starters — have looked at the pay-TV business and decided it doesn’t make sense for them to try to really compete.

But Intel says it’s going to do it, starting this year.

That was the most important takeaway from Intel Media head Erik Huggers’s appearance at D: Dive Into Media last week. You can see the entire interview below.

And for those of you who like to read: While Huggers wouldn’t go into lots of detail, the BBC transplant gave us a pretty good advance of what Intel thinks it can do:

Launch a new Web video service, with a new brand, that combines all or most of the channels pay TV customers are used to getting, along with programming from the Web — at prices that are close to what the pay-TV guys are charging today.
Add a new user interface that is significantly better than the ones people get now from their cable guys, along with features like “catch-up” viewing.
Roll out a new Intel-based set-top box, which would include a sensor that could “see” people in their living rooms.

That’s the first time Intel has ever commented publicly about its plans, which have generated a lot of skepticism in the TV industry. Conventional wisdom among programmers I’ve talked to is that Intel has yet to demonstrate that it’s truly serious about pay TV, by pulling out its checkbook and paying up for the stuff it will need.

And even if Intel does get programming deals, convincing consumers that the stuff it’s selling is worth ditching their current service for will be a challenge. And that all-seeing eye on the TV box (even if it does come with a shutter you can pull down) …

But consumers and critics have been crying out for one of the tech giants to take on the pay-TV guys for a long time. Now Intel swears it will deliver. Grab your popcorn.

[ See post to watch video ]

Dish Network's Charlie Ergen Gets Real: The Full Dive Into Media Interview

Peter Kafka — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 14:26:02 +0000

Last week, we hosted our second D: Dive Into Media conference in Dana Point, Calif. If you joined us in person, you got a day and a half to talk with and listen to the most interesting people in the media business as they spoke about the future of their industries. If you tuned in to our livestreams, you got a free, real-time sample of what that was like.

And if you missed the whole thing? Your loss!

But no worries: This week, we’ll start running complete videos of each of our onstage interviews and demos, so you can review them anytime you want. We’re kicking off today with Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen, who rarely speaks in public, but sat down with us for an hour.

We’re so glad he did, because he has got one of the most interesting perspectives on the way technology is reshaping the TV business — and the ways that the TV business is stubbornly and successfully resisting change.

Some of this stuff parallels thoughts you’ve heard from other people — but usually not those with this much skin in the game. Ergen is a billionaire with the third-largest pay-TV business in America. So getting this stuff right matters a whole lot to him.

There’s a lot of great stuff in here. Like:

Ergen’s assessment of his odds as he tries to grab Clearwire’s spectrum out of Sprint’s clutches (low), and why he’s taking on CBS and every other broadcaster with his ad-skipping Hopper DVR (both for leverage and because his customers want it).
His explanation of why he bought Blockbuster (real estate) and why he failed to challenge Netflix (too late, too timid).
His take on cord-cutting, which you never hear pay-TV bosses say out loud. (Yep, it’s real. And cord-nevers — kids like his who don’t have pay TV and never had — are even real-er.)
What he thought of the Bloomberg Businessweek piece that described Dish as “The Meanest Company in America,” and whether his company’s work culture will let it compete with the likes of Google and Facebook. (Dish is not going to be supplying private buses for its workers anytime soon).

And the nice thing is that you get to sample as much, or as little, as you like. Enjoy, and come back for more over the next few weeks:

[ See post to watch video ]

HBO's Berkes Restructures Digital Team (Memo)

Kara Swisher — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 18:00:33 +0000

About two weeks ago, I heard about a restructuring under HBO SVP of consumer technology Otto Berkes, who also takes over the job of CTO in March from longtime vet Bob Zitter. The former Microsoft exec and Xbox co-founder was named the top tech figure at the premium cable network at the end of last year, after being the primary developer of its popular HBO Go and MAX Go streaming video offerings.

As part of the changes, the memo of the Time Warner unit said, product strategy and development exec Hans Deutmeyer is leaving HBO.

HBO has been very active in the digital space, increasingly offering its shows on a variety of mobile devices. Earlier this week, at our D: Dive Into Media conference, HBO said its subscribers will be able to stream programming from an Apple iPhone or iPad onto their television via AirPlay.

All the various details are below, in a memo HBO sent to its employees at the end of January:

HBO GO has established HBO as a company that understands the value of technology as a tool for delivering great content and experiences to consumers, and HBO.com has become a primary means of driving broad consumer engagement and awareness of our offerings. We are proud of these achievements and also recognize that we have more ahead of us to accomplish. Over the course of the next several years, our mission is to build best-in-class technology execution capabilities. That mission is central to ensuring that HBO has the tools available to support our business through the ongoing technology-based disruption of media and to support new areas of growth. Like other leading Internet-based video service providers, we will design, build, and deploy scalable products with global reach.

Achieving these goals will require focus and a disciplined approach. Roles and responsibilities must be clear and well-defined to ensure efficient distribution of work and smooth collaboration between groups and people. In order to provide the organizational framework needed to achieve our goals, I am restructuring Digital Products around four functional groups (listed alphabetically):

1. Infrastructure Operations & QA,
2. Program Management,
3. Software Engineering,
4. User Experience & Product Design.

Each of these groups will have responsibilities for both HBO GO and HBO.com as appropriate for the functional areas of each group. This will enable more efficient end-to-end integration and coordination of our design, platform architecture, and infrastructure development.

The attached “Digital Products Organizational Pillars” slide illustrates the roles and responsibilities of each of these four functional groups in greater detail. The leaders of these groups will report directly to me and will continue to do so after my transition to the CTO role.

Donna Stalworth will continue to head up the infrastructure operations and QA efforts in Digital Products. She will also add build and release management to her responsibilities.

Rebekah Calabrese will be stepping into the role of VP of Program Management for Digital Products. She and her team will be responsible for cross-group coordination, project management, budget management, technology vendor relationships, and overall status communication for Digital Products. Rebekah will also continue to provide contract support for Digital Products as well as the other technology groups. Her team will consist of the existing Digital Products program and project management staff and her current reports.

Drew Angeloff will lead all of Digital Products’ software engineering activities in New York as well as in Seattle. Centralizing consumer software engineering in one group under one leader will maximize coordination and the flow of information, and will help ensure a consistent and robust software architecture. This is especially important given geographic distance between the New York and Seattle teams. The engineering staff working on device application development and the GO service currently on Rob Caruso’s team will now report to Drew.

Rob Caruso and the workflow team led by Jason Kui will transition to Diane Tryneski’s organization; Rob will report to Diane. Rob’s new charter is to build software engineering capabilities to optimize digital asset creation, management, and security, and to create technologies that unlock the full potential of software in the digital content area. Rob and his team will collaborate closely with Digital Products to ensure that our digital content technologies and our consumer-facing products inform each other to enable unique and innovative content-driven user experiences. This new role and group will be critical to achieving end-to-end software technology excellence.

Dina Juliano will lead the User Experience & Product Design organization. Her team’s responsibilities will include HBO GO, HBO.com, and HBO On Demand. Dina’s team will conceive, design, and realize new digital experiences in partnership with key stakeholders across HBO. She and her team will incorporate consumer and market insights to create a coherent product vision and roadmap that engages our users. Dina’s team will consist of her existing team and the groups formerly in Hans Deutmeyer’s organization.

Hans has decided to leave HBO to pursue opportunities that better align with his future interests. Hans has been a part of the HBO GO story since its genesis and has played a key role in bringing it to the market successfully. Given the new organizational direction, he has decided that this is the right time for him to pursue other opportunities. I want to thank Hans for his contributions and wish him success in his new endeavors.

Please welcome Donna, Rebekah, Drew, Rob, and Dina in their new roles. The changes in their teams and roles are effective immediately.

I am very excited about the new organization and am confident that we have the right the structure, leadership, passion, talent, and creativity needed to deliver best-in-class digital products to our users.

Please let your manager or me know if you have any questions.

Thank you-

— Otto —

Day Two at D: Dive Into Media 2013, in Pictures and Tweets

Eric Johnson — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 11:30:45 +0000

After Monday’s kickoff with Nancy Tellem, Yusuf Mehdi, Anomaly Productions, David Eun and Charlie Ergen, D: Dive Into Media 2013 already had plenty of star power and great moments in the bank.

Tuesday was a parade of still more great guests — 19 in all — and the discussion online was vibrant. Here’s a sampling of what our attendees saw at Day Two of #DMedia:

You can also get the overview of the day’s events via Storify.

Vice's Shane Smith and CollegeHumor's Ricky Van Veen Are Kings of All Media

Liz Gannes — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 02:38:10 +0000

Build a brand and an audience, and you can do whatever you want.

That’s the takeaway from a wild interview with Shane Smith, founder and CEO of Vice Media, and Ricky Van Veen, co-founder of CollegeHumor, which closed out D: Dive Into Media tonight.

Both are about to release big projects through traditional channels. Smith has a crazy travel show for HBO coming out next month, and Van Veen is finalizing plans to release a movie called “Coffee Town” that’s “an updated ‘Office Space’ for the generation that sits in coffee shops all day and freelances.”

“It’s very highbrow,” Van Veen said, completely facetiously, after a NSFW video clip of three guys sitting around cracking jokes about homophobia.

Both Smith and Van Veen were early to Web video creation — circa 2006 — and have jumped from one medium to another.

“Once you have an audience, you can go anywhere,” as Smith put it, in between anecdotes about a “helmet-headed flesh-eating parasite in my bowels” and his aspirations of earning an “Amadeus wig.” (It’s impossible to capture this performance in words. Watch the video.)

“I make all my money online,” Smith said. “If I can license on TV at pure margin, why wouldn’t I? Quite frankly, if HBO is going to pay me to market my brand, why would I say no?”

What online video can do is help create brands, according to Van Veen. “We think of the Internet as the core IP generator,” he said.

But how do you get to the point where people pay you to do whatever you want? It’s not that easy.

Van Veen said he explored the idea of a digital distribution studio, a la Louis C.K., but decided it wasn’t viable.

“What you realize, after you explore it deep enough, is that anybody that has the pull to get their audience to pay money for something can fund it themselves and can market it themselves, because they probably have the social media presence,” Van Veen said. “And so I didn’t see the room for a studio.”

As for making money online, Smith has found success with YouTube, where Vice is producing 12 channels, up from five last year. He also said that embedding advertising and sponsors into content authentically works. “The only way to circumnavigate the bullshit filters is no bullshit,” is how he put it.

Meanwhile, Van Veen espoused using sponsors to pay for cool stunts. “The stuff that’s done that has the most success is awesome things that would not have happened if the brand had not been here.”

Both men raved about their jobs. IAC bought CollegeHumor in 2006, but Van Veen’s still sticking because he likes the support for creative freedom. Smith reeled off a list of media moguls who have tried to buy Vice, but said he has no interest in losing control. “We’re throwing off more money than I can spend anyway,” he said.

[ See post to watch video ]

With Beats, Jimmy Iovine -- Not Facebook -- Will Tell You What Music You Want

Mike Isaac — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 02:00:53 +0000

“There’s an ocean of music out there,” said iconic engineer, record producer and Beats CEO Jimmy Iovine. “And there’s absolutely no curation for it.”

This is a familiar pitch from Iovine, who comes from the “old school” of the music industry. It’s the tastemaker school of thought; labels, producers and music vets know what the public wants to listen to before the public even knows itself.

But, as Iovine discussed at our D: Dive Into Media conference on Tuesday, times have obviously changed. The compact disc happened. Napster happened. Spotify, iTunes, Facebook happened. Essentially, technological change happened.

While times have indeed changed, Iovine doesn’t think the old ways are entirely dead. His proof positive comes in the form of Beats, the massively popular line of high-end headphones that he’s managed to sell at a premium to millions of kids who were once satisfied with low-grade, Apple-produced earbuds.

He has managed to turn the tides of the headphone hardware industry with his ways, and believes he can do it again with his forthcoming Beats music subscription service.

The main sell? Just what he has always been able to do well: Curation. Iovine plans to blend a mix of human music curators alongside smart algorithms to serve up a better way to listen to music. A “guide” that doesn’t have to be used to listen, but one that Iovine believes we’re better off using.

Who can’t do this sort of thing, according to Iovine? All the players that are currently trying to.

“Everyone … really struggles to get the absolute right kind of music for where you’re going,” he said onstage in conversation with Walt Mossberg. “Apple knows a lot about your music taste. Google knows a lot. Facebook. But no one is using it to curate.”

Indeed, the major pitch from tech companies over the last few years has been the power of technology blended with social; we’ll be better served by the recommendations of friends and automated algorithms, both smarter than the tastemakers of the past.

Obviously, Jimmy isn’t down with that.

“Who doesn’t know what song comes next is your best friend on Facebook,” Iovine said. “When you put that record on, you don’t want somebody guessing … somebody has gotta be interacting, building real music and serving it up for you.”

Can Iovine upend the music industry yet again? There are many subscription services in the space, and aside from the smart, curated “guides,” Iovine’s Beats service doesn’t sound terribly different from the existing players.

But for now, Iovine is playing it close to the chest. He’ll let you know when he’s ready for us to start listening.

Here are highlights from the session:

[ See post to watch video ]

And here is the complete session:

[ See post to watch video ]

Oculus Rift Shakes Up Gaming With Virtual-Reality Headset

Lauren Goode — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 01:50:57 +0000

To say the videogame industry is in a transition phase is putting it gently. Physical videogame sales have been on a continual decline, while console makers are approaching a new device cycle just as everything’s shifting to “the cloud.”

So a gadget like Oculus Rift might be just the thing that’s needed to keep game hardware feeling fresh.

Shown off today at the D: Dive Into Media conference in Dana Point, Calif., the Oculus Rift is a virtual-reality headset that immerses the wearer in the videogame world playing around them.

Oculus VR CEO Brendan Iribe joined AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka to demo the headset, which was connected to a large computer monitor for audience viewing. Peter good-naturedly agreed to wear the Rift headset, showing a reaction comparable to the one he had during this erotic e-book demo last year at D: Dive Into Media 2012.

Iribe explained that the Rift could work with games ranging from shooting games to “my little pet games.” Right now, the company is working to get thousands of kits into the hands of developers.

The CEO said the Oculus headset represents the first time gamers can be fully immersed in a 360-degree videogame environment. He expects play time will increase gradually over time: “We’ll see when it gets to getting lost in the Holodeck.”

SoCal-based Oculus, which was created by Palmer Luckey, first launched back in August as a Kickstarter project. Oculus’ initial goal was to raise $250,000. It raised $2.4 million instead.

As explained when we first saw the Oculus Rift at CES, the Rift isn’t a computing device itself, and the games aren’t streaming inside the headset, so it needs to be attached to a computer to work.

Unlike past attempts at virtual reality (like, most notoriously, Nintendo’s Virtual Boy), the Oculus Rift works because “the hardware’s finally ready,” Iribe said.

The current asking price for the Rift is $300, but Iribe is hesitant to say when it will become available to consumers.

So, what did Peter think? “I’m a little queasy, but it’s awesome,” he said.

“You definitely don’t want to be drinking too much,” Iribe responded.

With reporting by Eric Johnson.

[ See post to watch video ]

Live Nation Aims to Unify Ticketmaster, Ticket Resale Businesses

Ina Fried — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 00:25:20 +0000

Ticketmaster has long been the place to turn for concert and sports tickets when they go on sale.

But, starting later this year, it will also be a place to go even when the initial supplies are sold out. Ticketmaster’s owner, Live Nation, plans to start offering the ability to resell tickets on the site within a few months’ time. The move will allow content owners, venues and other participants to benefit when tickets get resold for higher prices.

“I think that’s a step forward in bringing two markets together,” Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino said, speaking at our D: Dive Into Media conference. In addition to Ticketmaster, Live Nation has its TicketsNow business, which focuses on the so-called secondary market.

“We have to be … always available,” he said.

But, under its current 28-year-old Ticketmaster platform, the company essentially shows a “closed” sign after its initial supply of tickets is sold, leaving a huge market on the table. It also lacks the software tools that let others build apps to tap into its ticket database.

Rapino acknowledged that Ticketmaster is still mostly associated with consumer ire over its high convenience fees. However, he notes that the entity is a bit of an intentional bogeyman, since a portion of those fees goes back to the artists, promoters and concert venues.

“Ticketmaster was made to be a bit of a villain,” Rapino said.

The company has successfully moved into advertising and sponsorships, Rapino said, but wasn’t successful in other ways, such as expanding into being a record label and promoter as well.

It did get touring rights for U2 and a handful other artists through big upfront deals. But trying to be in the music-selling business was a bad idea, Rapino said.

“We should have never taken any of the record rights along with those deals,” Rapino said. “We sold those back to the record labels.”

[ See post to watch video ]

Old Media Is the New Hotness for Chris Hughes and Larry Kramer

Liz Gannes — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 00:13:56 +0000

The business of news is a hard one, but at least two people running publishing institutions say they’re optimistic.

For the moment, printed publications are valuable because they’re an established way to make money, said Chris Hughes, publisher and editor in chief of the New Republic, and Larry Kramer, president and publisher of USA Today, speaking today at D: Dive Into Media.

“I think we still belive that print has some future,” said Kramer, whose paper has a staff of 200 to 300 reporters and a circulation of 1.6 million. “Can I tell you how long? No.”

Meanwhile, the leading criticism of Hughes, who co-founded Facebook with his Harvard classmates and left in 2007, is that he bought the New Republic as a sort of feel-good personal project.

Hughes, whose publication has a circulation of 44,000, admitted that he’s not expecting to get rich (again). “I think we can be profitable. Certainly not this year, and not next year. But I think there’s a route to it.”

But he added, “We have a double-bottom-line business. I’m not here to make a lot of money for myself. But I also have to prove to ourselves and to the world that we can find a model of journalism that is sustainable.”

Both men described ways they are modernizing old media to make sure it provides value.

Kramer said he believes news is best when it’s timely and delivered to users wherever they are, and then later made relevant with things like unique angles and graphics.

For instance, the announcement that the pope was resigning broke at 7 am yesterday, and drove strong Web traffic to USA Today for about three hours, but then dropped off. So, by the time the paper came out the next morning, it led with the story, but took a a “second-day lede” rather than treating the story as straight news.

“Handing them a newspaper the following day that acts as if this is the first time you’re hearing it isn’t relevant,” Kramer said.

Meanwhile, Hughes described an approach to long-form journalism that treats stories as the beginning of a conversation, which is then later “curated” through conversation and further marginalia that “give it the dimension it deserves.”

He said that the New Republic receives more than a quarter of its traffic from social media. But the Facebook co-founder was more positive on Twitter as a driver of traffic, because it’s hard to stand out on Facebook. “We spend probably more time thinking about Twitter and the environment where people are passing around links than we do Facebook,” Hughes said.

[ See post to watch video ]

How Should You Watch Netflix's Original Programming? However You Want.

Mike Isaac — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 23:53:31 +0000

Netflix’s first foray into original programming with “House of Cards” has turned heads in the media industry for a number of reasons. The two-season deal cost Netflix $100 million bucks. Netflix isn’t releasing its own metrics on “ratings.” And perhaps the biggest deal of all: Netflix released the entire first season of “House of Cards” all at once. And it’s freaking everyone out.

How do we shift from a weekly, episodic model of watching television shows to this? Is Netflix promoting bingeing?

No, it’s not, according to Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos at our D: Dive Into Media conference. It’s promoting whatever sort of watching habits you prefer.

“We’re starting a different style of water cooler,” Sarandos said. “The rules of it are different. There’s no extra points for binge-watching. It’s 100 percent about consumer choice.”

To say it’s a change in business as usual is an understatement. As noted by Mitchell Hurwitz — creator of the cult-hit show “Arrested Development,” which is next in line for a Netflix original content reboot — it acts against many of the constraints and best industry practices. Actors are usually locked into five-year-plus contracts, which restricts their movements and ability to commit to other projects simultaneously. Viewers aren’t always in sync with one another, as some will binge and some will space it out. And forget about ratings — something that Sarandos won’t even discuss.

But Hurwitz and Will Arnett — who plays G.O.B. Bluth, the hilarious and oft-maligned magician in “Arrested Development’”s dysfunctional Bluth family — embrace the staggered form, claiming it gives them creative liberties that they wouldn’t have been able to take otherwise.

It allows, for instance, the particular level of nuance and in-jokery that “Arrested Development” is known for, able to be appreciated upon repeat viewings by anyone, no matter at what point they discovered the show itself. To that point, Hurwitz and Arnett pointed to the success of “Arrested Development” on Hulu and DVD release in particular.

Thus, Netflix’s model of wide, single-season release seemed a better fit for shows like “Arrested Development” and “House of Cards” in particular.

“Netflix subscribers are right at the core of those who would watch ‘Arrested Development,’” Arnett said. “All of the little nuances of ‘Arrested Development’ were not for the kind of viewer who wants to come home after a long day of work and turn on the TV,” Hurwitz added.

So, ultimately, their argument goes, the medium is apt for the message. The question is, can Sarandos scale that to other shows which perhaps aren’t as playful with form and substance as, say, an “Arrested Development” or a “House of Cards” deigns to be?

Who knows? Sarandos maintains that Netflix is trying to “evolve television” rather than destroy it, so perhaps we’ll be used to this release mechanism in a few years if the method takes off. And Sarandos is playing the part of a true believer (at least, as long as those unknown engagement metrics and viewing numbers stay high).

“We created an international content brand on Netflix,” Sarandos said. “But, over time, it won’t be as novel, for sure.”

[ See post to watch video ]

Netflix Says "House of Cards" Is Its Most-Watched Program

Ina Fried — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 22:39:27 +0000

Taking a page from Amazon’s Kindle playbook, Netflix says its homegrown series “House of Cards” is its most-watched title, but declined to give any numbers.

“I don’t want to give ratings, because it is a real apples-to-oranges comparison with network ratings,” Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos said, speaking at our D: Dive Into Media conference. “We’re thrilled.”

Sarandos said that, the way he looks at it, the question is, did Netflix get more for its millions by creating the show than it would have by spending that money elsewhere? The answer to that, he said, is yes.

In another positive sign, nearly all of the early viewers who watched the first episode watched multiple episodes, Sarandos said. And, of course, Netflix has already ponied up $100 million for two seasons of the show.

Sarandos was asked what levels of viewership it would take for him to give details.

“I honestly have no motivation” to talk numbers, he said, noting that there are no advertisers.

In another break from TV tradition, the service is offering the whole 13-episode first season at once. It also streamed the first episode for free.

Sarandos said the company will do more original programming, but insisted that “we’re not trying to dismantle television.”

[ See post to watch video ]