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Heads up, cord-cutters: If you want to watch March Madness next year, you’re going to have to pay up.

The last two rounds of next year’s college basketball tournament, including the championship game, are likely to be broadcast on one of Time Warner’s Turner network channels — TBS or TNT — instead of CBS, according to Sports Business Daily and the New York Times.

CBS and Turner share coverage of the tournament, and the switch for the final games was already scheduled for 2016. No one has explained why the two companies are moving the date up by two years, but it fits a pattern we’ve seen for several years: Big-time sports events migrating from free TV to pay TV.

In 2006, Monday Night Football moved from ABC to Disney’s ESPN. If you wanted to watch much of last summer’s Olympics, you needed a pay TV subscription that gave you access to NBC Universal’s cable channels. And as SBJ’s John Ourand notes, the BCS college championships, the NBA conference finals and some baseball playoff games have all moved over to cable, as well.

The free-to-pay move serves the interests of the TV Industrial Complex in several ways: The cable networks, flush with cash from subscriber fees, can afford to pay big bucks for the rights to what is must-see TV for many people. And because it’s must-see TV for many people, it helps raise the overall value of the cable networks (Rupert Murdoch used the same strategy to turn Fox into a legitimate broadcast operation two decades ago).

And moving big-time sports to pay TV helps pay TV, period. Nielsen figures there are five million cord-cutters, or cord-nevers, and that number would presumably be much bigger if you could get sports online without paying for TV.

Which is why I’ve been waiting for Google, or Apple, or Intel, or some other TV outsider to pony up for the rights to a slate of NFL games, or some other sports franchise that millions of people have to watch, no matter where they are. Hasn’t happened yet.

(Note that if Aereo, which distributes broadcast TV over the Web without paying programmers a penny, wins its court case, then expect just about every big broadcast show — not just sports, but everything — to move from broadcast to cable networks owned by the broadcasters. Big if, though.)

Meantime, if you’re serious about college hoops and you’re serious about not paying for TV, you might still have a legal option next year.

Last year, CBS and Turner offered a $4 package that let you watch the games live on Android and iOS devices, and that option has gone away this year. This time around, you can only stream the Turner games if you’re an “authenticated” pay TV subscriber, though you can still stream the CBS games to your PC without registration.

But Turner/CBS are offering app users a free four-hour “preview” this time around. So if you’re willing to do a little planning — and if the option is still available — you could save up your preview time for the championship game, and at least watch that one for free.

That sounds like a lot of work, right? That’s what the pay TV guys are hoping you think …

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TV image copyright antpkr

It’s finally happening. The Internet is taking over TV. It’s just happening differently than many of us imagined. There are two major transformations under way:

• The Rise of the Internet Distributors. Led by Netflix, the group of new distributors includes Amazon and Microsoft now, but maybe Apple and Google later. They are largely distributing traditional TV shows in a nontraditional way. All the content is delivered over IP, and usually as part of a paid subscription or per-episode EST (electronic sell-through). Important to note that all of this content contains no advertising and is available entirely on demand. This content falls into the “non-substitutional” content bucket. To watch it, you don’t need to be a cable TV subscriber.
• The Rise of Alternative Content Producers. Thanks to YouTube’s Channel strategy and investment in hundreds of content providers, new producers of content are emerging and offering nontraditional programming, usually in shorter form. This content is marked by dramatically different production economics than traditional TV content, taking advantage of an expanded labor pool and low-cost cameras and computer editing. This alternative content is chipping away at long- and mid-tail viewership on traditional networks (the “filler” and “nice-to-see” buckets).

Both of these transformations are successful to date, and will only become more so. Rich Greenfield has a nice summary of why the TV industry suddenly loves Netflix. (Disclosure: I’ve been a NFLX shareholder for some time.) The first transformation takes advantage of the massive pressure MVPDs place on traditional cable nets to not offer their programming direct to consumers. In this case, the HBOs and AMCs requirement that you authenticate your existing cable subscription in order to watch their programming over IP successfully persuades the cord-nevers to just avoid the programming on those networks until the hit shows are offered through Netflix or EST. Netflix, once again, looks like the hero. Those empty threats by Jeff Bewkes that he will never work with Netflix turned out to be, well, empty. The second transformation will take longer to fully prove out, but I believe it will happen. As more of our viewership takes place over IP, we lose our allegiance to networks as the point of distribution and allow new distributors to guide us toward content choice.

There is a third budding area of transformation, but I don’t yet see evidence that a business exists: Trying to repackage cable TV bundles and sell them over IP. Companies like Aereo and Nimble TV offer versions of this. I believe we live in a show-based world. Consumers aren’t looking for networks (with the exception of ESPN and regional sports nets) so much as they are looking for shows. Shows delivered over IP allow for the slow unbundling of television. One of the many challenges about this model for traditional broadcasters is that there is no advertising in this world. The traditional cable-net business model enjoys two great revenue streams — affiliate fees and ad dollars. In IP-delivered shows, there are no ads.

Who are the winners and losers in this model? Well, show creators continue to flourish. The new distributors enjoy great success. Of course, ISPs, who are often the same companies as the MVPDs, do fine in the ISP business, but I believe the decline in total cable subs will continue. In a world where shows do not contain advertising, why do we need Nielsen? They have been a measurement standard for decades, largely because advertisers needed a third-party validator of viewership. You can see why they have a vested interest in insisting TV ad viewership is not on the decline (despite everyone’s experience to the contrary). I don’t think cable nets are in immediate trouble. They enjoy a great business model now, and also get to reap EST or licensing benefits after the shows air. But the Netflix “House of Cards” effort shows that consumers will now expect to be able to watch shows whenever they want, and not be bothered by inconvenient broadcast schedules. The day is coming when the cable nets will have to respond.

For startups, one of the wide-open spaces seems to be in cross-provider discovery. Now that my shows are spread among Netflix, Amazon, YouTube and on my DVR, I would prefer one interface to reach them all. Companies like Dijit’s NextGuide, Peel, Squrl and Telly are taking cracks at this important space.

David Pakman is a partner at Venrock, focusing on ad tech, social/mobile media, consumer services, Web services, e-commerce, big data, SaaS and anything else hugely exciting and disruptive. This post is also live on his blog.

Dish Network alleged that the sports broadcaster violated an eight-year broadcast licensing agreement by offering more favorable rates to the satellite provider’s competitors. The agreement is set to expire later this year.

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But one thing is crystal clear: This isn’t the Magic Kingdom, folks, it’s business. We need to dispense with the magic because marketers and publishers are dealing in real money, not fairy dust, and both deserve a comprehensive understanding of online video ad metrics to help them make sound investments.

The nearly limitless variety of online content, devices and viewing habits has scrambled the measurement picture and created a lot of static around business value. Media and ratings giants have been circling around the online video ad measurement standard, each deciding where to stake a claim.

Nielsen’s recent foray into radio and social media measurement vis a vis its acquisition of Arbitron and partnership with Twitter upped the ante considerably. AOL, comScore, Google, and many others have thrown their hat in the ring by announcing their adoption of frequency and audience metrics like Gross Rating Points (GRPs) and Target Rating Points (TRPs) — but not exactly.

Industry organizations — including the Association of National Advertisers, the Interactive Advertising Bureau and the American Association of Advertising Agencies — are weighing in on the discussion, with a focus on driving definitions that can support standardization. There’s little consensus, and it seems the variations on measurement standards are as diverse as the devices, content and viewers being measured.

The irony over the entire measurement brouhaha is that practically all of the online video ad measurement methods vying for “standards-hood” are still mostly magic. Don’t get me wrong: GRPs, variations thereof and other common online video ad measurement techniques all have a place in the mix.

But they aren’t enough.

The online paradigm offers us something we didn’t have before. In a word: Accuracy. Online targeting and personalization doesn’t have to be based on a sample of data, but instead “all” of the data accessible. It’s the difference in saying males between the ages of 30-45 generally like to watch ESPN and “Bismarck Lepe” watches Bloomberg TV over breakfast on his iPad in the morning, and then watches the Food Network on Cable TV from 11-12 in the evening. The latter paints an accurate picture of a person who is more likely to consider and purchase well-targeted products and services.

To achieve truly effective, useful measurement that delivers ROI for marketers and publishers alike, it’s essential we bust open the magic myth and confront the realities of the new online video ecosystem. Viewers, much like the content they enjoy and devices they use, are incredibly varied; their habits, likes and dislikes are similarly nuanced.

Those nuances, and a rich understanding of them, are the metrics that can drive advertising as well as content personalization. With the right metrics, advertisers could, for example, opt to connect viewers with only the ads uniquely relevant to them. Publishers benefit because more targeted, effective reach spawns more ad purchases.

Personalized content and advertising isn’t fantasy. It can be accomplished with measures that are dramatically more comprehensive and meaningful, that provide real-time granular metrics across dozens and dozens of variables and that combine those variables to create an accurate picture of each individual viewer in the online video world.

Real, comprehensive online video ad measurement should account for distinctions in not only geography and demography but also in psychographic variables like age, gender and especially interests. (Sure, Ariel and Cinderella are both 20-something princesses from the Magic Kingdom, but that doesn’t mean they want to watch the same online content!)

Information regarding devices — including type, operating system and domain — and viewing habits such as trending content, conversion rates, video completion rates and social sharing events, must be factored in as well. Most importantly, marketers need the tools to mix and match metrics and analyze and report on all variables in real time, so decisions can be made on the fly — because that’s how online audiences roll.

Online video ad measurement standards are important; we need consistency so the industry is comparing apples to apples when selling and buying advertising. But the proposed standards, with their samples, GRPs and a little bit of magic won’t suffice in this rapidly growing, highly diverse, dynamic market.

Measurements that provide a more granular understanding of viewer preferences, behavior, device, location and other metrics can dramatically optimize online video advertising efficacy and reach. Without more comprehensive metrics in online video ad measurement, marketers will continue to be like magicians throwing knives blindfolded — they come close to their target but rarely hit it dead on.

Bismarck Lepe is a co-founder and the President of Products for Ooyala, a provider of online video management, publishing, analytics and monetization technology. As Ooyala’s founding CEO, Bismarck raised the company’s early funding and signed many of the company’s first media partnerships. He was previously a Senior Product Manager for Google, where he managed the early growth of AdSense display and video advertising and launched more than 25 different Google AdSense products, including Click-to-Play video ads. Bismarck has a B.A. in Economics from Stanford University.

In case it’s taking you a second or two — the spot is a winking teaser for “Monsters University,” the Pixar/Disney prequel to 2001’s awesome “Monsters, Inc.”

And here it’s worth pointing out that Pixar does a particularly great job with Web promotions for its stuff (see, for instance, its viral-retro campaign for “Toy Story 3″). In this case, the entire Monsters University site is quite clever — note the “edu” suffix.

And we should also note that the Rose Bowl was broadcast on ESPN, which means that either one arm of Disney paid another arm of Disney to promote a movie on super-valuable airtime, or one arm of Disney got free, super-valuable airtime from another arm of Disney. Either way: Powerful arms!

But while lots of pay-TV operators are happy to keep things the way they are, Ergen keeps trying to blow them up: The Dish Network co-founder and chairman is constantly fighting with the rest of the TV Industrial Complex, in disputes that often end up in court.

His most recent and prominent battle is also the most important one: Dish’s new “Auto Hop” technology lets satellite TV subscribers automatically skip commercials, and that has both advertisers and TV networks in fits, for obvious reasons.

But that’s just one of Ergen’s recent adventures. He has also bought Blockbuster out of bankruptcy in an attempt to take on Netflix, engaged in bruising battles with Cablevision and its AMC Networks spinoff, and rattled his saber against ESPN and its ever-increasing sports fees.

Oh. He’s also talking to Google, and everyone else, about getting into the wireless business.

All of which means the former blackjack and poker player is someone everyone in the media world watches very, very closely, even though he doesn’t say much in public. Which means we’re very excited to interview him at our D: Dive Into Media conference in February.

Ergen will be joining an all-star cast on Feb. 11 and 12 at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel, Calif. Here’s who we’ve told you about so far: Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton, Hearst Magazines president David Carey, Google chief business officer Nikesh Arora, Facebook partnership vice president Dan Rose, HBO co-president Eric Kessler, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino, CollegeHumor co-founder Ricky Van Veen, Vice Media co-founder Shane Smith, Intel media head Erik Huggers and Samsung media head David Eun, Netflix content chief Ted Sarandos (and guest), New Republic owner Chris Hughes, and USA Today publisher Larry Kramer.

And there’s more to come! Stay tuned. Meanwhile, we’re getting close to showtime, so make your reservations now.

How much that credit is worth is an open and important question for Web publishers. Because right now most of them have to offer advertisers a very steep discount on mobile eyeballs — as much as 80 percent off of desktop rates.

But addressing that problem will take some time, and at the very least this is an important first step.

And for some sites and services that exist predominantly on mobile sites, the new comScore ratings are going to be a big help. Because they’ll help them justify their pitch — hey, we may not be that big on the Web, but we’re huge on phones — to advertisers.

It’s also a nice reality check for the many app start-ups that are happy to tell you how many downloads they have, but don’t want to talk about how many people use them.

On to the new rankings, which comScore is calling its “Multi Platform” listings. They attempt to track visitors to Web sites, mobile sites and mobile apps, and then combine those tallies without duplicating visits, for a true sense of a publisher’s monthly traffic.

That is: If you visited Facebook on your iPhone app in November, you’ll count as a single unique user; if you also came to the site via your PC in November, Facebook’s unique user count won’t go up.

A few takeaways from the new rankings — you can see a Top 30 list here:

• Most of the top players on the Web are still the top players once you add in their mobile audiences. And Google, of course, is still the biggest. But many publishers are now much bigger, and that’s enough to move them up a slot or two. It’s a big deal for Facebook, for instance, to move from No. 4 to No. 3, passing by Microsoft, which used to be No. 2.
• The new rankings definitely boost some big players with very big mobile audiences: Note the huge leaps for ESPN and Pandora, with the latter cracking the Top 30 list for the first time. Twitter’s argument that it’s very much a mobile company gets additional credence here, too, since the new rankings bump its total audience up by more than 50 percent.
• Note that these rankings are only for the U.S., so it’s possible that some sites would see their scores shoot even higher when you factor in countries where phones are more common than PCs.

And here’s another interesting way to look at the new data — a list of the sites that saw the biggest percentage increase from mobile (click chart to enlarge):

Cooliris, by the way, is a native app on many Android devices, which accounts for the huge spike there. And Zynga’s rise is likely a bit overstated, since most of its real Web traffic gets assigned to Facebook, which is where most of its users encounter the service.

But there are lots of other good nuggets in there. Yesterday, for instance, Groupon’s embattled Andrew Mason said that his company has seen a huge uptake on phones; comScore says he’s right.

(Image courtesy of Shutterstock/Mikhail Pogosov)

A handful of networks, including Disney and ESPN, will stream shows to your tablet, but you’ll need a cable subscription to make them work.

And if you live in New York City, Aereo will let you watch programming from broadcast networks. But since it isn’t paying the networks for that programming, the networks are suing to shut Aereo down.

So here’s another choice: Dyle, which launches for Apple’s iOS devices today. You’re probably not going to love it.

Dyle is backed by a consortium that includes NBC, Fox* and a lot of broadcast station owners, and it does have some things going for it:

• Dyle is free, for now.
• Dyle doesn’t require Wi-Fi or wireless service, because it’s beamed over the same airwaves the TV stations (still) use to send signals to TV sets. That means you can watch all you want, without worrying about data caps or charges.
• Since Dyle is backed by (some) of the networks and TV stations, there’s no legal gray area: It’s 100 percent legit.

On the other hand:

• You’ll need a $100 adapter — basically a combination antenna and battery — in order to use Dyle on Apple devices.
• Dyle only provides you with a handful of programming choices in the 35 cities it operates in — basically, whatever’s on most NBC and Fox stations, and a smattering of other channels.
• Dyle doesn’t offer any DVR functions, which means you have to watch in real time or not at all. And you can’t fast-forward through commercials.
• One of live TV’s biggest selling points is sports. But a rights blackout means you can’t watch NFL games on Dyle. (That’s the only programming hole, though: An earlier version of the service did let users watch NBC’s Olympics broadcast, and Fox’s World Series games this year.)
• If you’re the kind of person who doesn’t want to buy an iPad mini because it doesn’t have Retina display, you’re not going to want to come near Dyle, which doesn’t broadcast in anything like HD. The picture looks okay on an iPhone, but by the time the image gets blown up to an iPad-size screen, it’s quite grainy.
• Dyle’s backers can’t promise that the service will remain free after the end of this year. It probably will. But, for whatever reason, they won’t say that out loud.

That’s a lot of hurdles to put in front of a consumer pondering a purchase. So why is Dyle bothering at all?

Dyle’s backers won’t come out and put it this way, but this appears to be a proof-of-concept test instead of a full-fledged product launch (Dyle has already been on the market for a few months, via MetroPCS’s Samsung Galaxy S Lightray 4G, which comes with a preinstalled app and a built-in antenna).

You can imagine a future where Dyle would make more sense: It would offer TV from all the broadcasters, and the hardware it needs would get built directly into the gadgets themselves; it would also offer features like recording capabilities.

And at that point the Dyle guys could play around with different business models: They could charge a monthly fee for service. Or bundle it for “free” with a cable TV subscription.

But in order to get to that point, the Dyle guys need to prove that there’s demand for what they’re already offering. It’s a tough chicken-and-egg problem, but you can at least give them credit for trying.

*Fox is owned by News Corp., which also owns this Web site.

Google is funding a new batch of video makers to join the 100 it launched in the last year. And it’s making an international push, by adding content for the U.K., German and French versions of the site.

YouTube says it will put money into more than 60 new “channels” — branded destinations that show a mix of original programming and clips pulled from around the Web. The idea is to make the site more “TV-like” — and convince viewers and advertisers to spend more time and money there.

Meanwhile, YouTube is in the midst of renewal talks with its first set of channels, that expect to hear about their fate in the next few weeks. In the announcement touting its new deals, YouTube is spending more time playing up the Web brands it is working with, like Everyday Health and PopSugar. A year ago, it touted links with the likes of Jay-Z and Madonna.

The expansion announcement comes as some channel partners have begun questioning the way YouTube has run its experiment. Their biggest gripe: They haven’t received much guidance or support from the video platform and have been left to their own devices — especially when it comes to marketing and distributing their clips.

Privately, YouTube officials argue that channel partners shouldn’t be complaining, since the deal terms were well-established at the beginning. Publicly, they point to statistics that show growth for the new channels. They say 25 of the channels now average more than a million views a week, for instance, up from 10 channels earlier this year.

Robert Kyncl, the former Netflix executive who has spearheaded the channel push for Google, says new YouTube programmers may need “a couple of years to gain a certain velocity and a certain volume.” Once they do, he says, the company plans on offering a group of them even more incentives to work for the platform.

“What we will look to do is provide them with greater revenue predictability, for multiple years, so they can focus on building their channels and on building their audiences,” he says. (Full interview)

YouTube’s new channels deals are roughly similar to the ones they offered last year: Google hands the channel makers interest-free advances in exchange for exclusive access to their content for a year or more; Google keeps all ad revenue until it clears its advance and shares it with creators after that.

But there are some variations. People familiar with the deals say that Google is likely handing out smaller advances to European programmers, because the video ad market pays out less than in America.

And some of the American deals are different than last year’s as well. In some cases, for instance, Google has made multiple-year committments to the content-makers, instead of making them year-by-year renewals.

Several of the new American channels are extensions of brands that already existed prior to YouTube’s involvement. Mahalo and Vice will contribute channels, for instance. So will ESPN’s Grantland site, run by Web star Bill Simmons. Several of those sites, like Grantland, have already launched their channels in recent weeks.

Also signing up: Revision3, the Web studio now owned by Discovery Communications. In August, Revision3 CEO Jim Louderback argued that some YouTube stars were abandoning the platform, a move he called misguided.

Here’s a clip from SourceFed, arguably the most successful of the new YouTube channels launched in the last year. It’s run by Phil DeFranco, who was already an established YouTube star prior to his deal.

(Shutterstock/Tatiana Popova)

The Walt Disney Company will finally be unveiling a newly refurbished Disney.com site — aimed at delivering a robust entertainment experience — which the digital division of the company has been working on for a year.

In an interview Friday, Disney Interactive co-President James Pitaro said that the new site has been built from the “ground up,” keeping in mind delivery to multiple devices, especially increasingly popular tablets and smartphones.

Making such a dramatic shift to what he called the “digital gateway to Disney” is not without risk, he said.

“The new Disney.com is a much cleaner and more elegant site and a significant change from the legacy site, and any time you make material changes to a Web experience that has a large audience, you have potential to unsettle some users,” said Pitaro, who came to Disney from Yahoo in late 2010. “That said, we take a lot of pride in the new entertainment experience we’ve created and are confident that the multi-platform site will both further engage our current Guests and bring in new ones.”

The rollout began with a video beta site appearing in May.

Pitaro said the load time on the site had been drastically improved, along with the new minimalist design, which “puts Guests first.”

(“Guests” is how Disney refers to its customers, wherever they are.)

Instead of positioning the site as the marketing vehicle it has been in the past, Pitaro said the new Web and mobile destination is much more of the entertainment experience throughout.

That has meant getting fresh content from a wide range of Disney units, from its high-profile theme parks to its television channel to its movie studio. Content from its ABC and ESPN divisions are not part of the site, but both Marvel and Pixar are included.

The new site does not mean Disney’s online efforts will be less available outside the site. The company has a large-scale relationship with Google’s YouTube, for example, as well as being partial owner of the Hulu premium video site.

“We still need to take Disney where our Guests are,” said Pitaro.

Disney’s efforts online in the past have been decidedly mixed — from its doomed Go.com portal in Web 1.0 to its highly successful Club Penguin acquisition many years later.

Thus, said Pitaro, what is now appearing today on Disney.com — a new front page, movie and music pages — is still a work in process, with more changes coming.

Here are some screenshots of the new look:

But it’s a good one!

So: Look what happened at the end of Monday Night Football last night, after the “replacement referees,” brought in by the NFL after the league locked out its regular officials, blew the last call of the game. The move gave the Seattle Seahawks the victory instead of the Green Bay Packers, and kicked off a social media explosion:

This data comes from social chatter tracker Bluefin Labs, which tracks several social outlets, but it’s most heavily weighted toward Twitter. And if you were on Twitter last night you got to enjoy a torrent of entertaining commentary, from both amateur and professional wags.

The two tweets that seemed to resonate the most, though, came from Packers player TJ Lang, who’s going to end up spending a lot of money for these two outbursts, which have been retweeted more than 130,000 times. Avert your eyes if you don’t like cussing!

Got fucked by the refs.. Embarrassing. Thanks nfl

— TJ Lang (@TJLang70) September 25, 2012

Fuck it NFL.. Fine me and use the money to pay the regular refs.

— TJ Lang (@TJLang70) September 25, 2012

The most interesting question for Twitter, and for the media companies it is trying to court, is what all the chatter did for last night’s ratings.

A core part of Twitter’s story now is that its online discussion will end up generating more offline eyeballs for the TV networks, and my hunch is that this happened last night at ESPN.

It certainly did for me — I had lost interest in the game about an hour before, but switched it back on after Twitter exploded, and ended up watching another half hour of outraged post-game coverage while amusing myself online.

I’ve asked ESPN if they’ve got data that backs my theory up, and will update when I hear more.

(Image: Rachel Nichols via Twitter)