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In Media, Big Data Is Booming but Big Results Are Lacking

Ben Elowitz — Mon, 20 May 2013 19:51:05 +0000

The New York Times named 2012 the crossover year for Big Data: As a term and as a concept, Big Data broke through from the tech circle and into mainstream consciousness. (So much so that even Dilbert’s boss was talking about it.)

We’ve seen huge advances in our ability to generate, collect and store an explosion of data points: 90 percent of the world’s data has been accumulated in the last two years alone. We’re generating 2.5 quintillion bytes of data daily, and every serious company is dutifully logging and contextualizing every impression, every click and every purchase with excruciating detail.

That said, shockingly little happens to the information once it has been stowed in the database. A good friend gave voice to this dirty little industry secret the other day:

“Nobody wants to use the data.”

He’s remarkably spot-on. Even though almost every CEO says their companies are becoming data-driven, the fact is that most high-level decisions are still being made from bullet points, not data points.

What the data revolution brought us was systems for collecting data — but collecting is the easy part. And even more importantly, it’s the safe part.

The Real Problem: Data Phobia

The trouble with data is that it asks as many questions as it answers. Your engagement is down, bounce rate is up, search traffic is up — why is that, and what can we do to make it higher, lower and higher? Data almost never hands you the answers or insights directly; it just illuminates the issue. And it illuminates a whole bunch of them at once, so it’s up to you to figure out what the priorities are.

If this problem is an “opportunity in disguise,” most executives seem quickly scared off by the masquerade. In truth, Big Data raises the bar for how smart you have to be as an executive.

The easy answer — leaving the analytics to the analytics department — relieves you of the responsibility of figuring it all out, as though it’s unknowable to anyone without a degree in data science. But it also relieves you of the answers.

What is the executive’s greatest fear? That exposing the trove of data without knowing what to do with it makes them look worse, not better. In media, many have hidden that fear behind the veneer of idealistic purism. I remember talking with Martin Nisenholtz several years ago when he was at the New York Times about how data is used in a newsroom; I asked what would happen if he shared performance metrics with reporters in real time (obviously this was before Chartbeat) to see what their audience cares about. He said, “They would throw me out.”

Our strong institutions and professional commitment to standards have ensured the journalistic values of truthfulness, accuracy, objectivity, impartiality, fairness and public accountability. None of those values are furthered by closing our eyes and ears to our own audiences. The result is a paradoxical culture that boldly states “content is king” and yet refuses to quantify its value for fear of tainting the purity of the product.

The Opportunity: Using Big Data to Make Big Bets

Until recently, we have had startlingly few case studies of the transformative power of Big Data on which to model our own big changes in media. Instead we’ve had IT initiatives that promised big insights, but ended up delivering big databases and bigger IT bills. For once, it’s not the IT department’s fault — it’s those of us who are using the data (and, more often, aren’t using it) who are to blame.

That’s why I turn to those who have made the big bets to see what’s different. Netflix has long been the poster child for using data to drive results, and now they’ve proven in no uncertain terms that when you ask your data the right questions you can find hugely valuable insights — even in the sacred domain of content creation.

Before Netflix pursued the option to buy “House of Cards,” it looked to its massive data stash. Execs wanted to know: Do Netflix users enjoy political thrillers? Check. Of political thriller enthusiasts, how many also watch David Fincher films? A whole bunch. Oh, and one more thing: Is this crowd fond of Kevin Spacey? As it turned out, there was a very healthy crossover in that Venn diagram.

Not only did this insight give Reed Hastings the confidence to bid on “House of Cards” — it gave him the level of certainty necessary to outbid heavyweights like HBO and AMC for the series.

What I love most about this story is that the questions were so simple, so logical. Sometimes the sheer volume of data at our fingertips overwhelms us and makes us forget that the fundamental strategic questions haven’t changed. What has changed is that now we have far better access to the answers. And when you can give your users what they want based on the signals they themselves have been sending you, that’s when Big Data starts to earn its keep.

Five Questions You Should Be Asking Your Data

Forget about Omniture and Google Analytics and all of the data minutiae you’re already tracking. Forget about little personalization features. The most valuable data doesn’t fit on the dashboard. Think bigger and move upstream: What’s the most amazing new product or service you can create? Here are five places to start digging:

What does my audience love? Cut the data every way you can to deeply understand this, with nuance — then reorient around that product. It might be parenting advice, or current memes, or breaking news. If you can find a common thematic thread in your most-consumed content, you have a great starting point for further segmentation. Lauren Zalaznick turned the Bravo network around by pinpointing the five key interests of the audience, cutting out the clutter, and giving them more and more and more of what they loved (hence the hugely popular “Top Chef” and “Real Housewives”).
How do they want it? Netflix noticed that a significant number of users were watching marathon-style, and so they bucked TV tradition and released “House of Cards” all at once. How could you change your content packaging to better match the real habits of your users? Many have tried and failed with full-length video programming on the Web; that’s because (so far at least) most Internet audiences can’t sit still long enough to watch a 30- or 60-minute program. Adapt your delivery to what your audience wants.
How can I best relate to them? Personality is critical — so which of your brands’ public talents and personalities relate to whom? It might be a popular columnist, Don Draper, or Boo the Pomeranian. Figure out which personalities your audience connect with the most, and leverage them into the other themes and packages.
What secret signals is my audience sending? Target famously figured out how to identify pregnant shoppers and even estimate their due dates months before the woman ever purchased a stroller or a pack of diapers. Find out which clues in your data indicate that a customer may be on the path to a new phase of life, and start messaging them with your relevant content even before they get there.
Where is my sweet spot? Once you discover the key themes, packages and personalities that resonate with your audience the most (and at which relevant life stages), you can cross the data sets and identify your best untapped opportunities. Don’t just tweak your existing products and advertising — create whole new products that are designed specifically to thrive at the intersection. Just as the strong affinity overlap for Spacey/Fincher/Cards gave Netflix the confidence to make a bold bet, your own Venn diagram will spotlight your best chances to create knockout content that is destined to succeed.

Rethinking Management: Ask, Understand, Execute

When it comes to dealing with Big Data, our skills haven’t evolved as fast as our capacity. We all have a functional specialty, whether it be content creation or distribution or sales or management — so whose job is it to ask the right questions of the data? Big insights and actions aren’t led by a data scientist; they are led by an executive who has an integrated view of customers, products, distribution and sales.

But asking Big Data the right questions isn’t just a new practice to add to the management to-do list. Pulling it off requires a rethinking of the manager’s role entirely. We’ve traditionally thought of management as the discipline of managing people and managing the business. Now it’s time to add “managing our understanding” to the job description.

The time of the executives who merely “execute” is past. The successful executives in this post-Big Data world first ask, understand, and then execute with the full support of the data behind them.

ShoeDazzle Taps Rachel Zoe as New Celebrity Spokesperson

Tricia Duryee — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 22:08:08 +0000

Many subscription e-commerce companies have used celebrities to get their businesses off the ground. So, perhaps, all you need to turn one around is a second spokesperson.

That seems to be ShoeDazzle’s plan.

Three months after ShoeDazzle replaced its CEO Bill Strauss with founder Brian Lee and laid off a small number of employees, the company has named celebrity designer and stylist Rachel Zoe as chief stylist.

To be sure, Lee is no stranger to celebrity endorsements.

Not only did he start ShoeDazzle four years ago with Kim Kardashian, who still remains involved in the company, he is also currently CEO at the Honest Company, which he co-founded with actress Jessica Alba.

Lee told Women’s Wear Daily that Zoe will be critical in getting the word out to ShoeDazzle’s core demographic. He said among women 18 to 32, ShoeDazzle already has a 45 percent awareness level, but Zoe should help in increasing that.

Zoe is also the star of “The Rachel Zoe Project,” a reality television series on Bravo.

When ShoeDazzle first launched, it charged women $40 to receive a pair of shoes every month. The catch, however, was that if you failed to log in and tell ShoeDazzle you weren’t interested in any of the options, they would charge you anyway.

In March, Strauss did away with that model, so that members would be charged only if they made a purchase — no matter if it was once a month or once every six months.

The idea was to enable the site to appeal to a wider audience. ShoeDazzle had 10 million members, which led Strauss to say at the time, “That isn’t enough. We want tens of millions.” ShoeDazzle also started selling apparel, lingerie and handbags.

The unintended consequence of the changes was that the site became much like any other e-commerce destination, where people visited when they wanted to buy something. But with Lee’s return to the business — and Zoe all signed up — subscriptions will also make a comeback, just like a pair of black pumps.

“Do I think a subscription business can’t get to $1 billion? Absolutely not. It can,” he told Women’s Wear Daily. “It depends on the product. Subscriptions only work in two areas: Where there is an absolute need for it or an absolute desire for it.”

New PBS Documentary Takes Another Look at Silicon Valley's History

Arik Hesseldahl — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 21:55:32 +0000

It’s kind of cool that the PBS documentary series “American Experience” has plans to air a film called “Silicon Valley” in February. I’ve always liked the series — “American Experience” was the platform through which such ponderous historical TV masterpieces as “The Civil War” and “Baseball” reached the screen. I’ll certainly see this new production before I see a minute of Bravo’s maligned reality series about the Valley.

Here’s the 30-second preview clip:

Watch Silicon Valley Preview on PBS. See more from American Experience.

It’s certainly not the first time that the documentarians of public television have sought to encapsulate for the mainstream audience the story of how the unique place that is Silicon Valley came to be what it is. The new film appears to cover some well-worn territory, mainly involving the creation of Fairchild Semiconductor by the “Traitorous Eight” who decamped from their prior employer, Shockley Semiconductor. Fairchild in turn would incubate numerous other companies that would become known as “Fairchildren,” including Intel and Advanced Micro Devices.

Nor is this offering the only public television effort seeking to do so: Another film, “Something Ventured,” on the history of venture capital, is airing as well.

The first time I saw the story of the “Traitorous Eight” brought to televisions was via another public television documentary, called “Transistorized!,” which covered the invention of the transistor in 1948 by John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley. The transistor, as you know, led to the integrated circuit, which in turn led to what we now think of as chips, which gave us modern computing. You can see the first few minutes of it below; you can watch the whole thing in six parts here.

Nor was that even the first go at the history of the Valley by the public TV documentarians. In the mid-’90s there were two series, “Triumph of the Nerds” and “Nerds 2.0,” both narrated by Robert X. Cringley. The first of those was the purpose of the 1995 interview Cringely did with Apple’s late CEO Steve Jobs, which in turn became the basis for “Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview.” There are probably others, but I don’t know about them. Anyway, here’s the first few minutes of “Transistorized”:

Transistorized! from Gino Del Guercio on Vimeo.

Venture-Backed Commerce Sites Banking on TV Ads to Lure Big Audiences

Tricia Duryee — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 23:35:22 +0000

Search engine optimization, Google AdWords and email lists are all essential components of online campaigns, but several e-commerce companies are giving mass media a whirl.

Slightly ahead of the holidays, a handful of venture-backed companies have announced TV advertising campaigns, including One Kings Lane, Fab.com, OpenSky, Gilt Groupe and Wayfair.

All of the companies are hoping to see a lift in sales and increased brand awareness, but the immediate beneficiaries of this trend will clearly be TV networks that have strong female demographics, like Bravo, the Food Network, HGTV, E! Entertainment, Oxygen, Lifetime and TLC.

The advertising campaigns could cost anywhere from tens of thousands to millions, depending on the ads and how often they are going to run, but many of the companies are being conservative and labeling the launches as experiments.

The options range wildly between Wayfair’s 30-second spot, which was developed in-house for $30,000, and One Kings Lane’s two 30-second spots created by the premiere ad agency Wieden+Kennedy New York. Meanwhile, OpenSky is characterizing its commercial as a “modest test,” and Gilt Groupe said it hired Ocean Media, the agency behind ad campaigns for Priceline.com, Overstock.com and Angie’s List. Fab.com planned to run its ad in six U.S. markets for three weeks and then take it national if it was satisfied with results.

What’s interesting is that the campaigns are trying to drive traffic to the companies’ mobile sites and applications, capturing the behavior of viewers who sit on the sofa and watch TV with their phone or tablet in hand. That trend has been coined “couch commerce.”

For example, in Gilt Groupe’s minute-long spot called “High Noon,” one cowgirl is able to order a sparkling pair of pumps in a desert shootout because she uses the app to pull the trigger faster.

Wayfair said it’s also hoping to see a significant increase in mobile traffic. After launching its first ad campaign in September, Wayfair saw a traffic lift in the five minutes following the commercial. It said 35 percent of traffic was coming from mobile phones and tablets versus 13 percent normally. The home decor site’s Black Friday commercial (which is not too shabby, considering the budget), started running in late October.

The biggest indicator of whether these commercials actually pay off will be if they are still around in any significant way in the New Year, or if they will be short-lived tests. The one drawback for any of these boutique shopping sites is Amazon’s dominance in e-commerce during the holidays. As I wrote earlier today, 53 percent of U.S. consumers are planning to begin their Christmas shopping at the mega retailer.

But potentially, if the advertisements are creative and just darn cute enough, they could help change that behavior.

Below are the Wayfair and One Kings Lane commercials (others are linked above):

This Election Day, I'm Axing My Loudmouthed Facebook Friends. Are You? (Poll)

Mike Isaac — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 23:00:51 +0000

Yes, I voted. You have, too? Fantastic. But I can’t wait for everyone with an opinion to stop typing about Election 2012.

I’ve had enough. Over the past month, I’ve systematically chopped all those whose annoying updates have populated my social streams. Asking for Obama’s birth certificate? Unfollow. Just posted a 1,500-word screed on Prop 37? De-friend. Oh, a sepia-framed Instagram of your ballot? Awesome. Delete.

Click. Click. Click. It’s liberating, I tell you.

By no means am I anti free speech. I love how the Web — and specifically platforms like Facebook and Twitter — has democratized the means of communication and activism for hundreds of millions of people worldwide. And I am more than fine with encouraging others to vote, regardless of political affiliation.

However, I draw the line at vitriolic, half-baked arguments for or against either candidate, regardless of my affiliation. Whatever happened to Lolcat pics and smart, biting commentary on the latest awful reality TV series?

I’m curious how many others feel the same, so I’ve put together a quick, informal poll asking how you’re using social media this election season. Feel free to answer in the questionnaire below.

So this season, my fellow Americans, I encourage you to get to the polling booths before they close. Vote for the candidate you believe best for the job. Tell your friends to do the same.

And then please shut up about it.

View This Poll

Here's How Bravo's "Silicon Valley" Stars Pitch Start-Up Investors (Slides)

Mike Isaac — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 09:43:14 +0000

While Americans geared up for Election Day coverage on Monday evening, much of Silicon Valley was glued to a different channel.

It was the premiere of “Start-Ups: Silicon Valley,” the Bravo-produced reality show that follows a group of twentysomethings through the trials of tech entrepreneurship. It has been the hot topic of the technorati for months, all of whom were eager to see just how drastically wrong a big cable network would portray the tech scene.

Bravo didn’t disappoint. I spent the evening at one of the many Bay Area viewing parties with a group of tech reporters, entrepreneurs and other industry folk. Like any subculture enamored with itself, we took great joy in watching what amounted to something everyone expected: Strings of tech buzzwords. Engineers reciting equations amid kegstands. Waxing philosophical over Valley “ecosystems” while poolside. In essence, a laughable caricature of our own little world.

The highlight, by far, was watching brother-and-sister duo Ben and Hermione Way pitch their start-up idea, Ignite, to angel investor Dave McClure. After Hermione takes a nap under McClure’s desk (yes, really), the siblings walk a skeptical McClure through their vision of a health app for smartphones.

We’ve managed to get our hands on a copy of the pitch deck the two created for investors, which gives some insight (but not much) into their company vision:.

The second slide says it all: Ignite is meant to “enhance and extend the life of humans by providing them with the tools and the understanding to change their lifestyle in a positive way,” as the pitch goes.

How? By “combining smartphones, life expectancy, game theory, social interaction and some clever hardware to drive behavior change.”

Don’t worry, I don’t know what that means, either.

It gets foggier from there. Ignite involves custom-built hardware, social gaming and challenges, and a virtual currency called “time credits” based on extending one’s life, which is made up of a series of “micro-lives.” Initial investment asking price? A cool $500,000 in capital.

Spoiler: McClure wasn’t convinced. The angel investor passed on the deal, sending the two packing.

The dream isn’t over. Monday evening’s show was only the first in a season’s worth of founder’s follies, as Ben and Hermione have a whole Rolodex full of VCs to hit up for cash.

Here’s hoping the two refine their pitch along the way — I’ll certainly be watching to see if they do.

Check out the full slide deck, embedded below:

Ignite pitch deck from Mike_Isaac

You Can't Make This Stuff Up

Lauren Wilson — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 07:59:47 +0000

Silicon Valley is really quite a boring place. The story of start-ups should be a documentary on PBS, not a weekly reality show on Bravo.

– Nick Bilton on “Start-Ups”

Ben Huh Talks About the Other New Reality Show, "LOLwork" (Video)

Kara Swisher — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 20:24:11 +0000

Tonight, the controversial “Start-Ups: Silicon Valley” airs on the Bravo cable television channel.

But, on Wednesday, a less splashy — and perhaps more amusing — tech-oriented program is also making its debut on Bravo: “LOLwork.”

Yes, it’s about the wacky start-up with those grammatically incorrect online cats that I so love.

“LOLwork” takes the viewer inside the Seattle-based humor company, focusing a lot on its CEO Ben Huh, as well as his Cheezburger team.

Here is a video interview I did with Huh last week at the AllThingsD.com global HQ about the show, as well as a Bravo clip of it:

[ See post to watch video ]

First-Episode Clips From "Start-Ups: Silicon Valley" -- Dave McClure Is "Disrespectful" (For Doing His Job)

Kara Swisher — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 15:45:54 +0000

Here are two clips from the first episode that Bravo has put up about its new and controversial-before-it’s-aired reality television show, “Start-Ups: Silicon Valley.”

The cable program chronicles the ups and downs of a group of young entrepreneurs in tech, and some have decried it from simply seeing the promo sizzle reel that featured lots of partying and pool-hanging.

No frolicking here in a short clip, as super angel investor Dave McClure looks over a pitch deck of brother-and-sister team Ben and Hermione Way for their health-and-lifestyle start-up, apparently called Ignite.

With that reality show rut-roh music playing in the background, Ben inexplicably says he thinks McClure was “slightly disrespectful, him going through the whole thing and making his own judgments.”

Which is, of course, an investor’s job, going all Judge Judy on entrepreneurs. And, in my experience, McClure was awfully polite about grabbing the deck.

And alls I can say is that Ben is very lucky he managed to avoid bringing his pitch deck near me.

There’s also one that seems a lot more reality-show, with Hermione arguing over a botched event with another person on the show, Sarah Austin. There is mention of “making out” with Ben and SXSW.

In any case, the show looks interesting enough to take a gander when it airs on Monday, November 5 at 10 pm.

Here are the video clips:

A Second Screen You Can't Not Watch: Bravo's "Play Live" Adds Polls, Games to All Its Shows

Peter Kafka — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 10:00:45 +0000

TV programmers have been asking viewers for their vote for a long time. Some shows, like “American Idol,” are built around the concept.

Now Bravo is taking the idea a step further. The Comcast cable channel is going to add on-screen, real-time polls and graphics to all of its shows.

Starting next month, with the new season of its “Watch What Happens Live” gabfest, Bravo will start overlaying its new programing with its homegrown* “Play Live” technology. What that means: Viewers will see polls, contests and other interactive games and graphics that pop up on-screen throughout the show. They’ll be able to participate in real time, via a Web broswer, and on-screen results will change, based on viewers’ input.

Here’s a mockup of what that might look like on your LCD:

Other programmers, including Bravo, have played with live interaction before. But those generally aren’t really “live” experiments — viewers who vote for something via text message, for instance, still have to wait to see their votes tallied up.

And while some cable systems now let viewers do real-time voting via their remotes, those efforts are hemmed in by the cable companies’ geographies — if you’re a Time Warner Cable customer in New York, you can’t watch and vote in sync with a Comcast customer in Philadelphia.

This time around, though, the interactive stuff is being added directly at the source, as Bravo’s signal gets beamed out across the country from an operations center in New Jersey. Which means it will appear on any of the 90 million screens that Bravo can potentially reach.

Bravo will let advertisers sponsor the graphics, and may eventually use the same technology to create interactive advertising, as well. For now, the main hope is to make the shows that much more engaging, so the network can keep or add viewers.

That’s the same goal as every other “second screen” application, including Zeebox, which Comcast is also backing. But most second-screen apps are purely opt-in — if you don’t fire up your MacBook or Android, you won’t see them.

That’s not the case here. So, what happens if you don’t want to see interactive graphics across the bottom of your favorite Bravo shows?

Lisa Hsia, who heads up digital media for Bravo, says the network will likely deploy the graphics sparingly the first time it airs a new show — perhaps a few times per episode. But it will likely up their use during repeats, which it will promote as “interactive episodes.”

She argues that Bravo viewers have proven to be very comfortable interacting with their shows. Last season, for instance, a Web video and video-on-demand extension of “Top Chef” generated eight million views, and attracted a quarter of the show’s on-air audience.

And, while this stuff may not work at all during, say, an episode of “Breaking Bad,” Bravo’s chatty, catty programming aesthetic should sync up well with it. If you’re comfortable watching “Real Housewives of New Jersey,” you’re probably quite willing to share your thoughts on the cast — or are at least okay with seeing what other people think.

The trick will be figuring out exactly how much interaction Bravo’s audience wants. “It’s our job to do it in a fashion that makes the fan enjoy it,” Hsia says.

*Bravo says it spent a year on the technology, which is built on interactive TV software from start-up MegaPhone Labs.

Ahead of the Holidays, OpenSky Releases Its First TV Commercial

Tricia Duryee — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 21:31:22 +0000

OpenSky is launching its first-ever TV commercial today as it prepares to enter the crazy holiday shopping season.

The 30-second spot shows a day in the life of a woman who uses products she discovered on OpenSky, including a meat and cheese platter recommended by Bobby Flay, an iPhone case from Alicia Silverstone and perfume from actress Mariel Hemingway.

As the company gets ready for its second-ever Christmas season, OpenSky founder and CEO John Caplan calls the TV commercial a “modest test” to tell the world about the emerging commerce company. The commercial, created by ad agency dw+h, officially begins airing today on Bravo, the Food Network and HGTV.

Since its start in 2011, the company has been focused on connections-based e-commerce, meaning that consumers “follow” people on their network to receive product recommendations. The end result is that consumers can find new items serendipitously, much like scrolling through Pinterest or Facebook, rather than entering terms into a search bar. “In traditional e-commerce, consumers suffer from the paradox of choice,” Caplan said. “And in connections-driven commerce, everything they’ve seen is relevant to who you are. It’s entertaining and it’s engaging.”

A year ago, the company raised $30 million in capital; today, it has two million members who have made more than 30 million connections. In six words, he boldly calls it, “Pinterest with a universal shopping cart.”

Some of the company’s other metrics are also trending in the right direction: The average repeat buyer makes seven purchases a year and places an order size of around $85. Caplan declined to provide the company’s annual revenue, but said sales jumped almost 50 percent between August and September. During a recent week, sales topped $700,000.

The company provides plenty of incentive for experts to become product endorsers since they receive a share of the gross profit from each item sold. Shaquille O’Neal, who recently joined, already has 180,000 connections and has adopted the theme of doing “the shopping for the kid in all of us.” In a video, he recommends a turntable that plugs into your computer and converts vinyl to digital, while telling folks to follow him at OpenSky.com/shaq. Honestly, it’s more entertaining to watch than OpenSky’s commercial, but here’s that anyway:

ATD Pays a Visit to Bravo's "Silicon Valley Start-Ups" Reality Show House (Video)

Kara Swisher — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 15:00:28 +0000

Bravo has finally given a Nov. 5 air date for its much-discussed — in tech circles, at least — television reality show, which is now titled “Silicon Valley Start-Ups.”

Luckily, last month, I got a visit to the house where the show is being filmed — which is actually located in my San Francisco neighborhood — before security could kick me out.

Along with my AllThingsD sidekicks Liz Gannes and Mike Isaac (here on the red carpet at the house), I made my own reality video — secretly hoping for one of the “Real Housewives of New Jersey” to show.

No dice on Teresa Giudice, but cast member Marcus Lovingood — yes, that’s his name — was pretty fantastic.

“Silicon Valley Start-Ups” follows a group of young entrepreneurs who are trying to take their ideas to the big time. A Bravo press release noted that the docu-series “explores the intertwining lives of a group of young professionals on the path to becoming Silicon Valley’s next great success stories.”

The show is executive-produced by former Facebook marketing exec Randi Zuckerberg, and has attracted some criticism before it has even been seen.

Whatev — Silicon Valley needs to chillax and enjoy it, no matter how it depicts the place.

Personally, I am really looking forward to another Bravo show that looks “inside the office for ICanHasCheezburger.com, one of the largest humor publishers on the Internet, with ‘LOLwork’ … The 30-minute doc-com goes inside the world of Ben Huh and his eccentric staff as they attempt to make the world laugh five minutes a day by putting nimble yet grammatically incorrect captions on cute photos of domesticated pets and animals.”

I love those crazy cats.

Here is my video, as well as a promo for the upcoming Bravo shows, including “Silicon Valley Start-Ups.”

Enjoy:

[ See post to watch video ]

New Bravo Food Show Partners Up With Gilt Taste

Tricia Duryee — Tue, 08 May 2012 15:48:37 +0000

Bravo Media’s new cooking competition, “Around the World in 80 Plates,” is teaming up with Gilt Taste, an online food marketplace, where fans will be able to purchase products and ingredients featured in each episode. Since Gilt Taste is part of the megaretailer’s flash-sales kingdom, be prepared to sign up in order to visit the special site.

Real Geeks of Silicon Valley (Comic)

Nitrozac and Snaggy — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 16:07:53 +0000

Here is the latest comic from our Joy of Tech friends at Geek Culture, Nitrozac and Snaggy. Joy of Tech appears three times a week in the Voices section of this site.

Viral Video: Bravo's Andy Cohen Is Very Cute (Mocking Him Even Cuter)

Kara Swisher — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 07:15:51 +0000

Here is a perfect impression — on “Saturday Night Live” this week — of Andy Cohen, the Shih Tzu of a television talk show host who helms “Watch What Happens Live” on Bravo.

The skewering is epic, especially since it is so spot-on.

Enjoy:

Maybe You're Going to Have to Pay for Cable After All, Silicon Valley

Peter Kafka — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 18:47:10 +0000

Cue up the righteous anger, Silicon Valley. Here comes a clueless effort by a big, dumb TV channel to portray you world-changers as a bunch of vapid schemers. Even worse, it’s from a cable TV channel — the kind you crazy dreamers won’t even watch because you won’t pay to watch TV! Fail! Etc.

Oh. Sorry.

Turns out that Bravo’s upcoming “Silicon Valley” is produced by Randi Zuckerberg, described by a press release as an “Internet guru.” (Weirdly or not, it doesn’t mention that until last summer, she worked at Facebook, or that her brother is her brother.)

So maybe it will be good, after all.

Apologies for the long pre-roll ad that comes before this clip, which is also an ad. The Silicon Valley part kicks in at 1:20:

So, who wants to identify these future “techie superstars”? AllThingsD’s current techie superstar Liz Gannes flagged The Next Web’s Hermione Way for me — she’s the one who sounds like her name might be Hermione — but the rest are unknown to this cranky old New Yorker. Help me out, crowd!

But that’s not all! Bravo is doubling down on techie glamour with a second show, which will follow around Cheezburger Network’s Ben Huh and the rest of his LOLcat-ing crew. Working title is … “Huh?” Really. Sadly, no teaser clip here. But I am 100 percent confident that Kara Swisher is watching every minute of both of these.

(PS: There’s an Easter Egg at the end of this preview clip, at least for fans of Gawker’s fameball coverage, circa 2008.)

Want to Cut Your Cord? The NBC U-Comcast Deal Won't Make It Easier

Peter Kafka — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 22:47:42 +0000

If you were hoping that the government restrictions on the NBC U-Comcast deal would make it easier for you to stop paying for cable, you’re out of luck.

At a very first glance, some of the new rules imposed by the feds might seem like they require the new company to offer up programming to any online player that wants to pay up.

And technically, they do. But the new rules have plenty of conditions and limits. So the bottom line is you’re not much more likely to get access to “30 Rock” via YouTube, or CNBC via iTunes, then you were before.

The new FCC and DOJ rules do give, say, Google the ability to buy access to some of NBC U shows or channels. But it would require Comcast’s competitors to do the same thing, first.

That is: Unless the people who are reluctant to put their stuff online because they don’t want to upset Comcast go ahead and put their stuff online, Comcast doesn’t have to, either. So it’s theoretically possible, but not probable.

And if it happens, it will happen haltingly. If Viacom sells someone online access to its MTV lineup of reality shows, that might require Comcast to offer up its reality show lineup on Bravo. But it wouldn’t entitle an online outlet to the police procedurals on USA.

The government also gives the option to, say, Netflix, to set up shop as another cable operator, and buy access to all of NBC Universal’s programming. But it would have to buy all of it–just like Time Warner Cable and Cablevision do when they make a carriage deal for NBC U’s shows.

And again, Comcast wouldn’t have to do that unless its peers did. Which means that if Netflix really wanted to set up shop as a direct competitor of the cable guys, it can do so. But it would have to operate exactly like the cable guys, just like the satellite guys did when they entered the market a couple of decades ago.

So if Netflix, or Apple or whoever really wants to offer a full suite of cable programming, at cable prices, it could. But that would be very, very expensive: Analyst Rich Greenfield estimates that the bill for NBC U’s programming alone would run a new entrant $1 billion a year.

Just as, or even more, important, is that those kind of bundled, take-it-or-leave-it deals are exactly the kind of thing that the cord-cutting crowd complains about.

They don’t want to have to pay for USA and Bravo and Syfy and MSNBC–they want to pick and choose channels, or shows. And pay a lot less.

“I don’t think cord-cutting was a major focus” of negotiations, Comcast EVP David Cohen said during a press conference this afternoon. And that may be true!

But the net result reads very much as if Comcast wanted to make sure the government didn’t force it to break its business model. And if that was the case, it got what it wanted.

As Promised: Here's Hulu Plus, for Some of You

Peter Kafka — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 17:42:46 +0000

Here it is, finally: Hulu Plus. Otherwise known as: “The chance for some of you to fork over $9.99 a month to watch Hulu.”

What does that money get you?

As I’ve discussed before–most recently, last week–it gets you more shows than the free version offers, and more devices, most notably Apple’s (AAPL) iPad. It won’t get you ad-free shows, though. Hulu officials say the company will use the platform as a chance to extend the reach of its advertisers and that they’ve already got Nissan and Bud Light signed on.

Hulu and its joint venture owners–News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox, GE’s (GE) NBC, and Disney’s (DIS) ABC–have been working for most of the spring to get this worked out, but for now, it’s still an invite-only trial. Last week, I heard the trial might be limited to just 10,000 people, but I’ve yet to hear an official number from Hulu.

But! Hulu is allowing users with subscriptions to download a Hulu app for the iPhone, iPad, etc., to give the thing a test drive with a limited selection of shows.

Is it worth it? It should be interesting to see what consumers say. The pitch to gadget-centric folks: Check out all the hardware you can use! In addition to the iPad, Hulu Plus will work on the iPhone and iPod touch. Also included: Internet-connected TVs, Blu-ray players and game machines from Samsung, Sony (SNE) and Microsoft (MSFT).

The pitch to TV nuts: Look at all the shows you can see! But here the pitch is a bit more nuanced, because Hulu and its owners have had to hammer out, show by show, what they’re going to offer you. So it’s not an all-you-can-eat proposition, it’s an eat-a-lot proposition. Most notably, the service is light on content from cable networks, even those owned by the Hulu’s partners. Thus, no “Justified” from FX or “Top Chef” from Bravo.

That shouldn’t be a surprise, by the way: One of the main problems the original Hulu created was an increased tension between its owners and cable companies like Comcast (CMCSA), which fretted that Hulu was providing consumers with a reason to cut their cable subscriptions. Since FX, Bravo et al are getting paid by Comcast and the like for access to their shows, it will be tricky for Hulu to bundle those into its own service as well.

Is that a deal killer? I’ve found that with music subscription services, the absence of a single song I want rankles me in a slightly irrational way: Who cares if I can listen to millions of songs on demand for $9.99 a month? I want to listen to “99 Problems” right now, and I can’t! It’s easy to see Hulu Plus subscribers taking a similar view if they can’t find a favorite show when they want it.

But let’s wait and see what’s there first. Hulu says it has 120 seasons and 2,000 episodes available. Dig through and let me know if any absences are particularly problematic for you.

Press release, for those of you who like that kind of thing:

Hulu Launches Preview of Subscription Service Hulu Plus™

First subscription service to bring current TV programming from top broadcast networks ABC, FOX and NBC to 4 screens–computers, TVs, mobile phones and tablets–in HD Quality

Hulu Plus will complement the free, ad-supported Hulu service allowing consumers to enjoy more wherever, more whenever, than ever

LOS ANGELES—June 29, 2010–Hulu™ today launched a preview of Hulu Plus™, the first ad-supported subscription service to offer full current season runs of hit TV programs from ABC, FOX and NBC across multiple Web-connected devices, in HD, for only $9.99 a month. Now, TV lovers can watch full current seasons of shows such as Glee, Family Guy, Grey’s Anatomy, Modern Family, 30 Rock and The Office and full series runs or multiple back seasons of shows like The X-Files, Arrested Development, Desperate Housewives and Law and Order: SVU on PCs and Macs as well as on Apple’s iPad and iPhone, and select 2010 Samsung Blu-ray players, Blu-ray Home Theater systems, and TVs through Samsung Apps, in up to 720p high-definition resolution. Hulu Plus will also be coming soon to the PlayStation®3 (PS3™) computer entertainment system.

“We’re thrilled to begin sharing this revolutionary new service with subscribers” said Jason Kilar, Hulu CEO. “Hulu Plus is the first subscription service that offers consumers a wide array of today’s top current TV series on all four screens, in HD. With Hulu Plus, now your favorite TV shows love you back.”

View the Hulu Plus demo video for an overview of the full service.

More Content–Over 100 Content Providers, Hundreds of Shows, Thousands of Episodes
Hulu Plus builds on the extensive content offering of the ad-supported, free Hulu service and brings together one of the deepest offerings of TV shows, both current and classic, to subscribers in the U.S. Every episode of more than 45 current hit programs from ABC, FOX and NBC will be available all season long, from Modern Family and Grey’s Anatomy to Glee and Family Guy to The Office and 30 Rock. In addition, TV lovers will be able to enjoy full series runs and numerous back seasons of dozens of classic shows like The X-Files, Law and Order: SVU, Arrested Development, Saturday Night Live, Miami Vice, Ugly Betty, Quantum Leap, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Roswell and Ally McBeal.

The Hulu Plus library aggregates content from more than 100 providers across broadcast networks, major studios and independent content creators. For content owners, Hulu Plus offers a compelling new way to distribute and monetize their programs across multiple screens.

For a full list of content providers and shows available, view the Hulu Plus Content page.

Access Anywhere–Across Four Screens on Multiple Devices
Subscribers to Hulu Plus will be able to watch their favorite shows not only on their PCs and Macs but also on select mobile phones, televisions (through gaming consoles and other boxes connected to the TV, or directly through Internet-connected TVs), Blu-ray players, and tablets, including Apple’s iPad and iPhone. Hulu’s preview launch device partners include the Apple iPad, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, and third-generation iPod Touch; select Samsung connected TVs, Blu-ray players, and Blu-ray home theater systems; and PS3 coming soon.

In the coming months, Hulu Plus will also be available on additional Sony Electronics Internet-connected entertainment devices including select BRAVIA® TVs and Blu-ray Disc™ players, as well as select TVs and Blu-ray players from VIZIO. In early 2011, Hulu Plus will launch on the Xbox 360. Hulu will continue to evaluate opportunities to extend Hulu Plus to other hardware devices and platforms as well.

For more information on supported devices and system requirements for Hulu Plus, please refer to the
Hulu Plus Device Partner page.

High Quality Viewing Experience–Streaming in HD
Hulu continues to push the quality of the online video viewing experience forward. Hulu Plus will bring many programs to users in 720p high definition to take advantage of the high-resolution screens on HD-capable devices. On select devices, adaptive bitrate streaming will ensure the highest quality video streams for the viewer’s bandwidth.

Advertising
Hulu Plus enables Hulu, for the first time, to extend its innovative and targeted ad platform across four screens, reaching Internet-connected users wherever they are. For the preview launch of Hulu Plus, Hulu is partnering with leading marketers Nissan and Bud Light who are expanding their reach with Hulu’s engaged and connected audience. Hulu expects to include additional advertisers for the broad consumer launch of Hulu Plus.

Pricing & Availability
Hulu Plus is available to U.S. consumers for $9.99 per month. Hulu Plus is currently available as a preview during which subscriptions are offered by invitation only to enable Hulu to ensure the highest quality experience for each user and to responsibly scale the service over time. To request an invite, visit www.hulu.com/plus.

Even without an invite, during this preview period consumers are welcome to download a free Hulu Plus application to the iPad, iPhone 3GS and 4, and third-generation iPod Touch, and other supported devices to test the experience with a limited selection of free episodes and clips. Hulu Plus is expected to be made widely available to the public in the coming months.

LIVE from New York: Twitter Pitches Ads to Madison Avenue

Peter Kafka — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 17:39:41 +0000

Twitter has quietly been reaching out to marketers about its new ad platform for a few months, but now it’s a full-fledged marketing blitz. The messaging service rolled out its ad strategy to the press last night; today it’s going directly to the ad industry, via COO Dick Costolo’s presentation at Ad Age’s Digital Conference.

I’m not sure how much more Costolo will reveal that Twitter hasn’t put out already–or may be waiting to talk about at tomorrow’s Chirp conference. But since I’m here I’ll liveblog it anyway.

Liveblog

Costolo says he has been waiting five or six months to give this presentation. It’s time to walk through the rollout, he adds, making note of his “fascinating nontraditional” prediction last fall.

He explains the Twitter ecosystem. The ad platform has to go everywhere, not just to Twitter.com. He refuses to call the ads, “ads.” They’re “just tweets.”

“Promoted tweets,” that is.

He walks through the @hashtagtees example.

There’s a menu from which ad buyers can pick search terms and associate them with specific tweets they’ve already published.

Promoted tweets look and act like regular tweets except that they’re labeled as promotions and stay at the top of the Twitterstream.

A promoted tweet “combines earned media and paid media in one space,” Costolo says.

“Earned” media are free, Costolo reminds the audience. That is, if people retweet your paid tweet, there’s no charge additional charge.

The pitch continues: Ads are “real time,” and so are analytics–you can see how ads are performing second-by-second.

Twitter will start with Twitter.com search. That’s phase one. The plan will roll out more broadly, but the company is doing it this way because it wants a “thoughtful, user-centric approach” to figuring it out. “We will quickly expand into syndication…all of our syndication partners.” And here, Costolo specifically mentions UberTwitter in the list of partners.

Important: Twitter will definitely expand into the regular timeline at some point. That is, you will be getting ads in your stream whether you search or not. Ad-free Twitter is over.

Costolo talks about the “resonance” metric Twitter will use to figure out which promoted tweets show up and where.

Each ad partner will see a scoreboard with different metrics: Retweets, @replies, #tag click, avatar clicks, link clicks, views after RT.

Advertisers won’t pay for ads that don’t resonate with users.

Next, Costolo describes communication on Twitter as both “one to many” and as a “real-time interest graph.”

Pricing will start as CPM. Twitter is doing this because it doesn’t know how to correlate “resonance” with value yet. As the company figures this out, it will move to a pricing model based on ROI.

Here comes Porter Gale, VP of marketing for Virgin America, a launch partner. She notes that @jack is flying VA right now.

[You're not missing anything here.]

Um, here’s a free ad for two-for-one tickets on Virgin. Don’t really follow it but sure you can figure it out if you’d like.

And here’s Ellen Stone, SVP of marketing at Bravo.

She is also excited!

[You're not missing anything here, either.]

Stone describes some sort of live, real-time convergence between shows broadcast and users’ tweets. Makes my head hurt. Hope it doesn’t pop up during “Top Chef.”

Back to Costolo: More monetization coming. Commercial accounts coming after promoted tweets will “feather into this platform very very nicely.” One dashboard will manage both products.

Q&A

Will tweets be syndicated to Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO), and other partners that take the stream?
Costolo says yes, without mentioning any specific search engine or media pub.

Will there be revenue-sharing with publishers and bloggers?
Yes, with developers and publishers. Costolo says Twitter will talk about this at its Chirp conference and focus on the syndication piece there. Revenue sharing will be “very transparent,” he adds.

Early reaction from consumers?
Yes, Twitter is getting a “wait and see,” Costolo notes. [From whom? Who's seen it?] The company will take its “learnings” from search and go forward. Twitter ads should be live and running now.

What CPM are you charging?
Twitter is playing around with different numbers, trying to figure it out. When a term is owned or created by a client, like Virgin America, should it have “rights” to that hashtag, whereby no one can outbid it? Some hashtags only have value at certain times. Like “Super Bowl,” which is only useful for a couple hours in the year. So we have to play around and test different kinds of pricing. “We don’t know the answer to that yet.”

What kind of reactions are you looking for from users?
Costolo says Twitter is looking to see whether people click or interact with ads and paying attention to the tenor of reaction: Positive or negative, etc. Think about the iPad launch this month. People were having battery issues. Someone could have jumped in in real time and bought a promoted tweet that dealt with that. Twitter’s hope is that when people see these, they’ll get why they work.

Please talk about search volume.
“Massive. It’s huge.” Will talk about hashtags tomorrow. But on Twitter.com, it’s a small piece of traffic. So we’re not maximizing revenue now. We’re figuring it out.

How will location work with ads?
“We think significantly.” There are lots of opportunities down the road. As this gets more sophisticated, will see opps for small and big business.

Will marketers be able to get resonance scores for companies that aren’t using promoted tweets?
Not at first. But possibly.

Will you share revenue with TweetDeck, etc.?
Yes. We’ll talk about this tomorrow so we can save something for those guys. Revenue-sharing will be very transparent. Costolo name-checks Iain Dodsworth of TweetDeck and Loïc Le Meur at Seesmic.

Finished up. I will have some questions for Costolo myself, a little later this afternoon.

Why Comcast Will Stay Hands Off Hulu, for Now

Peter Kafka — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 20:16:31 +0000

Hulu and its broadcast TV owners have been pretty clear about their interest in creating a premium/subscription offering for the free site. Conventional wisdom is that we’ll see something early next year.

Does Comcast (CMCSA) have other plans? COO Steve Burke made it seem so this morning, when he told analysts that a “Hulu Premium” was “certainly not in the cards.”

An odd comment to make given that 1) Team Hulu’s premium plans didn’t slow down once news of the GE (GE)/Comcast deal broke, and 2) Comcast won’t own NBC, and thus its stake in Hulu, for another year or so.

Burke did go out of his way to say that he liked NBCU’s strategy of putting its broadcast shows up for free via Hulu, while keeping cable programming, which it sells to people like Comcast (CMCSA), more or less off of the Web.*

Of course he does! That’s the rationale behind the company’s “On Demand Online” plan, whereby cable programming is offered on the Web only to cable subscribers.

I asked Burke to clear this up during a media Q&A call this morning and he gave me an extended nonanswer/walk-back that amounted to something like actually, you know, we don’t actually own NBC, so we don’t have anything to do with Hulu, which we think is great, by the way. And then he kicked the question to NBC CEO Jeff Zucker, who offered up a nonanswer of his own about not wanting to discuss roadmaps, etc.

My hunch here: Burke would like a mulligan on this one. And Hulu’s short-term plans haven’t changed at all.

But down the road, things may very well get interesting: For starters, note that NBC’s exclusive Web licensing deal with Hulu (which is actually only sort of exclusive, but more on that later) expires in the spring of 2011, which could be within a few months of the close of the Comcast deal. And recall that Comcast was one the parties hollering loudly at Disney (DIS) not to sign on with Hulu earlier this year.

Still, I’d be surprised if Comcast makes a major overhaul with Hulu as soon as it gets a chance. The company is going to spend the next year promising politicians and voters that it’s not going to use its clout to cut off anyone’s access to anything. So to pull back on a wildly popular Web site would make for difficult optics, as they say.

At first, that is.

Related note: I can sadly confirm that Comcast does indeed intend to rebrand its awkwardly named “On Demand Online” service, which is supposed to roll out nationwide within weeks, with the infinitely worse “Xfinity” moniker.

As in “Fancast Xfinity TV” and “Xfinity.com,” as Broadcasting & Cable first reported last night.

Ugh. All I can say is that I used to refer to the whole thing as “Web TV You’ll Need to Pay to See” and got guff from the folks in Philly, who thought that was misleading. But it’s accurate, and it is way, way better than the new option.

*Sort of: NBC keeps most of its cable offerings off of Hulu, but not off of the Web. You can’t see last night’s episode of “Top Chef” (Goodbye, Jen!) on the joint-venture site, but you can see it on NBC-owned Bravo’s site.

Comcast Pitches NBC Deal to Investors: Check Out Our "Wow Chart"!

Peter Kafka — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 13:35:57 +0000

Comcast investors have been upset with the company ever since its plans to acquire control of NBC Universal from GE appeared in September. Now’s the time for the company to start wooing them back (at least publicly).

On the call: Comcast (CMCSA) CEO Brian Roberts, COO Steve Burke, CFO Michael Angelakis

CEO Brian Roberts: The deal will make us “strategically complete.” [Translation: We promise not buy anything else!]

Obligatory praise for Jeff Zucker for “completely transforming NBC into one of the premier cable operators in the business,” which is the same way Zucker likes to describe himself.

This deal is so incredibly easy for us to finance that we’re increasing our dividend by 40 percent. [Also, we're doing this with both hands tied behind our back!]

CFO Michael Angelakis: If you get confused, there’s an appendix at the end of our presentation.

Did you know that Fandango is a “female-oriented” site? Me either.

Comcast has a “clear path to control” the joint venture by buying out GE’s (GE) interest, but future payouts are capped at $5.75 billion.

Debt ratings agencies have signed off on this, so don’t worry. They never get this wrong.

Roberts: Can’t stress this enough: We’re not buying a faltering film company and a flailing broadcaster; we’re buying a bunch of profitable cable channels. Cable channels. Cable channels.

Also, we’re buying at the bottom of the cycle, so some of the duds that we’re buying may end up having upside.

[Roberts is right about this, by the way: Networks really do rise and fall over time, almost independently of what management does. Remember ABC's peril in the pre-“Lost" era?]

Oh yeah. There are some theme parks, too.

Okay. Back to the deal: Cable channels, cable channels, cable channels. They are great. We love them. Affiliate fees are growing 12 percent a year, ad sales are up seven percent a year. Check out the awesome slide on page 19. “I think this is a wow slide” (see below).

Some more praise for Zucker.

COO Steve Burke: Cable channels. Cable channels. Cable channels. We love the ones we own, but they’re “subscale” compared to what we’re buying from GE.

We’re going to cross-promote the heck out of these and figure out how to make G, Style and Versus more valuable, like NBCU does with Bravo, etc.

[We're about 40 minutes into the call, and this is the first discussion about the Web.] The JV will be a Top 10 company with 82 million uniques.

At least for now, Comcast is still talking about “On Demand Online,” not XTREME ONLINE RAWKS or whatever the company is supposedly going to call it.

Q&A:

Can you give us more color on new businesses you may create once you combine? Also, what are you going to sell off?

Burke: There are “literally dozens of innovative ideas that come out of this combination.” Like interactive advertising. Targeting, etc. (via cable, not Web). We can launch new channels, new video-on-demand packages, more windows. A lot of opportunities.

Roberts: We don’t plan on selling anything. But “we have a long time between signing and closing” to learn about the assets we’re buying.

A lot of people have tried vertical integrations like this and they haven’t worked. What’s going on here? Also, how are you going to work with businesses like Hulu, which threaten your business?

Roberts: Some of these have worked. Think of [Liberty Media Chairman] John Malone’s deals. Or Time Warner (TWX) buying Turner. Or even News Corp. (NWS) and DirecTV. Anyway, that’s the past. Let’s look to the future. More important is that we believe this deal works with zero synergy benefits. [That's for you, Jeff Bewkes.]

[Um, anyone else get bumped off the call? Nope, just me. Apologies, will go get the Hulu the rest of Roberts's answer later, but I'm guess it was something along the lines of "we love Hulu and have no intent to crush it like a bug, and besides, we're one of three networks that will own it."]

Please explain how you’ll negotiate for, say, the Olympics and other assets when you don’t actually own NBC yet.

Roberts: [GE CEO] Jeff [Immelt] and Jeff [Zucker] will have to run their business until the deal closes.

What about regulatory hassles?

Roberts: No worries. This is a “pro-consumer transaction.” And check out all the things we said to that effect earlier this morning.

Burke: Both local advertising and national advertising are recovering. An analyst notes that GE has never told us much about NBCU because it hasn’t had to. So we’re going to get a much better look at how the business works going forward.

Why are you sticking your regional sports deals into this joint venture? Also, why not just hand the money you’re spending on this deal back to investors, via share buybacks?

Burke (I think): When you think of sports, its hard not to think of NBC Sports and Dick Ebersol [ahem]. Also, we think there’s some synergy with some of NBC’s local broadcast stations.

Angelakis (I think): We’ve already bought back $14 billion worth of stock in six years, and we’ll keep buying back stock. Also, check out our dividend. But we need a balance. This deal gives us financial returns and long-term strategic returns.

Roberts (I think): The timing is good. Size is appropriate–we can handle it. “You gotta like the business….We think it’s a reasonable risk. That’s what we’ve always done at Comcast.”

As for regulatory risk, if Washington wants us to make a really really serious change that blows up the rationale for doing this, we have the ability to back out. But we don’t think that’s going to happen. “Is there a break-up fee?” the questioner asks. Answer: No.

What does this mean for TV Everywhere/On Demand Online? (and Hulu)?

Burke: NBC has been careful not to put too much cable content on the Internet. We think that’s a smart strategy, “not that they asked us.” We think that going forward, you’re going to continue to have free broadcast stuff on Hulu, and cable stuff on TV Everywhere.

Roberts: Windows in general, our focus has been on expanding offerings, putting them on multiple platforms. All of those things are more likely to occur in a way that benefits distributors, content owners and consumers. “What about Hulu premium?” the questioner asks. Answer: “That’s certainly not in the cards.”

Here’s Comcast’s pitch in chart form:

ComcastNewPDF_12.3.09 –

Report: Comcast Buying NBC for $35 Billion. Comcast: "Inaccurate"

Peter Kafka — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 01:23:37 +0000

Here’s the big media deal everyone has been waiting for. Or at least, here’s the report: Sharon Waxman of TheWrap says cable giant Comcast is buying all of NBC Universal from GE for $35 billion.

The deal was hammered out by reps at a Tuesday meeting, Waxman reports, citing “two individuals informed about the meeting.” The $35 billion price tag happens to be the value that a recent JP Morgan report assigned to the company.

Comcast (CMCSA), in a statement, says the story is untrue: “While we do not normally comment on M&A rumors, the report that Comcast has a deal to purchase NBC Universal is inaccurate.” NBC Universal has no comment.

Clintonian parsers will note that Comcast’s denial has potential wiggle room: It isn’t denying, for instance, that the two companies had or are having talks. On the other hand, this is exactly the situation where corporate PR protocol calls for the “we don’t comment on market rumor and speculation” line. That way, you have the option of updating your statement if the story does turn out to be true. And for what it’s worth, I can’t recall the last time I saw a big, publicly traded company respond to an M&A story with this specificity.

UPDATE: The Los Angeles Times’s Joe Flint now says that Comcast is “kicking the tires” at NBCU, according to ”people familiar with the situation.” His report is much more hedged than Waxman’s.

All that said, this is a tie-up that has a first-blush logic to it: Comcast is flush with cash and could presumably take on more debt if it wanted to, and the company has shown an interest in branching out into content before. In 2004, it made a run at Disney (DIS). And the drumbeat for GE (GE) to dump its 80 percent stake in NBCU has been more or less constant, even while the industrial conglomerate insisted it had no interest in selling.

Those drumbeats get louder every year around this time, by the way. That’s because Vivendi, which owns the remaining 20 percent stake in NBCU, has a put option that kicks in every November and that could theoretically force GE into buying out the stake or spinning the whole thing out to the public.

More theoretical ammunition for a deal: Comcast is one of the few potential buyers that could swallow up all of NBCU. While there might be lots of people interested in NBCU’s cable properties (USA, Bravo, SciFi, etc.), there aren’t many who also want the company’s flailing broadcast property.

And while Universal’s film library is potentially attractive to some buyers, many of them–like Time Warner (TWX), for instance–have no interest in the film studio because they already have one.

If you want to play out the theoretical implications for digital, things could get very interesting. NBC is one of the founding partners at Hulu, the free Web TV portal that’s caused consternation for Comcast and other cable providers, which worry that the site is undermining the value of the TV programming they spend big money on. And Comcast and Time Warner have been trying out a “TV Everywhere” strategy that is, in part, a reaction to Hulu’s initial success. But let’s let the dust settle for a minute before we head in that direction.

Yahoo's $100 Million TV Ad

Peter Kafka — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 15:58:31 +0000

Don’t say they didn’t warn you: Last week, Yahoo formally rolled out its new $100 million-plus marketing campaign. Today, the TV ads begin. Here’s what you’ll be getting if you watch AMC, ESPN, USA, Comedy Central, Bravo or any of the broadcast networks in the U.S. (Live in the U.K. or India? You’ll have to wait until Oct. 5.):

My armchair ad criticism: Why is Yahoo (YHOO), which already has enormous reach (as the company never fails to point out, it has a half-billion people hitting its homepage every day), marketing the fact that it has enormous reach? Why not, say, advertise some awesome new products?

That way, if I’m not a Yahoo user, I might have a reason to become one. And if I am a Yahoo user (which I am–I’m at Yahoo finance a dozen times a day or more), I’ll have more reason to stick around and explore.

I ran that one by Chief Marketing Officer Elisa Steele last week when she unveiled the campaign, and to her credit, she didn’t roll her eyes in disgust at my caveman ignorance. In fact, she said, Yahoo has every intention of rolling out awesome new products, and ads that highlight them–down the road.

So stay tuned. Then again, given the money Carol Bartz and crew are committing to this, it will be very difficult not to see this stuff.

(Disclosure: In case you didn’t notice, there is a giant honking Yahoo ad at the top of this site. As best I can tell, it appears to be part of a Yahoo buy made across The Wall Street Journal Digital Network. Just to spell it out: I’ve got nothing to do with ad sales at All Things Digital, though I am happy when people buy ads from my employer.)

Google's Top Chef Leaves Las Vegas

Peter Kafka — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 11:28:11 +0000

Sorry Googlers, I have no choice but to deliver this important and sad news: The woman who runs your cafeteria will not be crowned “Top Chef.”

In retrospect, it’s not a shock that Preeti Mistry, the contractor who oversees “Charlie’s Cafe” at Google’s (GOOG) Mountain View headquarters, only lasted three episodes on Bravo’s reality show.

In the first episode of the new season, she struggled to open clams. And in last night’s iteration, she delivered a mediocre pasta salad, then got the boot.

Mistry seems to have taken the experience in stride. Her Twitter account now quotes a quasi-inspirational aphorism from Kanye West, and her post-elimination interview finds her in what seem to be pretty good spirits.

Google's Top Chef Tripped Up by Shellfish

Peter Kafka — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 10:00:58 +0000

Hey Googlers! Ever wonder what life is like on a big-deal, nationally televised reality show? If you’re working at the main Googleplex in Mountain View, you may be able find out: Just ask Preeti Mistry.

You can find Mistry at Charlie’s Cafe, where’s she’s back to work running Google’s (GOOG) much celebrated cafeteria. Earlier this year, though, she was a contestant on Bravo’s “Top Chef,” which kicked off its sixth season this week on the cable network, owned by GE’s (GE) NBC Universal.

No idea how Mistry did, and reality show contestants generally sign ultrapunitive contracts that prevent them from spilling the beans about the results of the show. And her Twitter account has yielded zilch so far. But doesn’t hurt to ask.

I checked in with a rep from Bon Appetit Management Co., which operates the cafe for Google, and got confirmation that Mistry is back on the job and “recovering” from the taping.

Oh. And if you do see her, be careful about bringing up oysters clams. She had a bad experience with them on Wednesday’s show, as you can sort of see from his promo clip (I’d show you the whole thing, but NBC hasn’t put up the clips on its sites or on Hulu, presumably because it doesn’t want to upset cable providers. But that’s another story…).