AllThingsD » Food Network

Food Network's New Side Dish

Shalini Ramachandran — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 17:36:49 +0000

Scripps Networks Interactive Inc., which owns the Food Network and other lifestyle channels, is offering a service that lets people make restaurant reservations online. The move pits the company against OpenTable Inc., which has offered a similar service since 1998.

Called CityEats, Scripps’s reservation website prominently displays the Food Network logo. It is already operating on a small scale in Washington and Philadelphia. So far, the service has signed up only about 130 restaurants, but Scripps executives are optimistic about its growth, and said it would be extended to several other markets, including New York and San Francisco, by the end of the year.

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HomeAway Hopes Golden Globes Ad Can Fix Super Bowl Blunder

Tricia Duryee — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 14:00:13 +0000

HomeAway hopes its new commercial, airing during today’s Golden Globes broadcast, will make its Super Bowl blunder a thing of the past.

The new campaign — set to the tune of “Let’s Stay Together,” by Al Green — is much more tame than last year’s ad. The 30-second spot focuses on creating family memories around campfires, swimming holes and hiking trails; memories that often can be made in or near homes — not in hotels.

HomeAway, which operates vacation-rentals marketplaces, including HomeAway.com, VRBO.com and VacationRentals.com, went out on a limb for its Super Bowl commercial last year. If the point was to generate buzz before filing for its initial public offering, it was a success.

But the Austin, Texas-based company ended up having to yank the ad after drawing criticism over a particularly disturbing image: In the commercial, a doll — which was obviously not a child — was thrown against a wall to demonstrate how cramped hotel rooms can be, compared to more spacious rental houses.

The updated — and more subtle — campaign will air in select markets during NBC’s broadcast of the 69th Golden Globe Awards. Following its debut, the spot will air on the Travel Channel, the Food Network, HGTV and other special promotions, including the Grammy Awards on Feb. 12, the Academy Awards on Feb. 26 and the “Survivor” finale.

Second time’s the charm?

It's Back! Scripps' Shopzilla, Nearly Left for Dead, Growing Again.

Peter Kafka — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 17:50:17 +0000

A little nugget worth tracking: Shopzilla, the comparison shopping site Scripps Network Interactive was reportedly desperate to get rid of not long ago, has rebounded.

Scripps says revenue at the site and its related spinoffs was up 38 percent, to $69 million, in the last three months of last year, while profits were up 20 percent to $21 million.

Those numbers are evidence that Shopzilla is both growing in Europe and doing much better in the U.S. following an intensive overhaul. The company says redirects from the site are up 39 percent; it’s worth noting that this is happening while Google tries to find ways to keep comparison shopping sites from clogging up search results.

Scripps’ primary business, however, is running cable networks like the Travel Channel, HGTV and the Food Network. And that business is doing fine without an overhaul: Revenue was up 32 percent, to $500 million, and profits were up 48 percent, to $248 million.

How Badly Do You Really Want Your MTV–Or Your ABC or Fox or Your Food Network? Cablevision Wants to Know.

Peter Kafka — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 17:37:54 +0000

Now this is a telephone survey I’d love to answer, and I bet many of you would too: Cablevision, the Long Island-based cable operator, has been polling subscribers and asking them how much they’d like to pay for various channels.

From Broadcasting & Cable’s report:

Among the most surprising set of questions to consumers: “Do you watch broadcast TV?” If customers responded yes, then they were asked how much they would pay for Fox, or ABC, in particular. The multiple choice offered was: pay nothing, 50 cents, or one dollar? Customers were also asked if they’d be upset to lose either of those channels entirely….Cablevision customers were also asked if they mostly watched shows on cable or on broadcast TV and how upset they’d be to lose particular cable services.

As Claire Atkinson notes, Cablevision’s (CVC) likely aim here is gather ammunition for license fee battles like the one it just had with Scripps (SNI) over the Food Network and HGTV. And the one it is about to have with broadcasters like News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox and Disney’s (DIS) ABC.

But it would be fascinating for the rest of us to see just how much value cable customers really assign to various channels.

The conventional wisdom among the kinds of people who read this site is that TV watchers only care about a few channels and are willing to do without the others. Using that logic, the argument goes that the cable industry should embrace “a la carte” pricing instead of the package deals it promotes now–or risk getting eviscerated by Internet video.

Maybe. My suspicion is that most TV watchers like a lot of the channels they have–maybe not all six versions of ESPN, but at least a couple dozen different networks–and would be loath to give them up, which real a la carte pricing would require.

For instance, ESPN currently gets something like $4 for each subscriber, but only about 25 percent of cable subs actually watch the network. So in an a la carte world, Disney would end up charging something like $16 per ESPN customer to keep its revenue steady. ESPN is at the top of the food chain, but still, you can see how an a la carte bill could jump up fairly quickly.

In any case, I don’t think we’re going there anytime soon. In the meantime, I’d love to see that polling data. What do you say, Cablevision?

A Clicker To Watch TV Online

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 01:43:07 +0000

Finding TV shows online can be a major hassle. If you can remember which network hosts the show, you then must hunt through a maze of listings of several other television shows on that network’s Web site to find it. The show you want to watch might not even be available since many networks rotate only a handful of recent episodes online at a time. And if you do finally find the correct episode, you may be required to download a special media player to watch it.

Some services make this process a little easier. Hulu holds episodes from 1,200 television shows, but is still missing many. Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes Store offers over 50,000 episodes, but unlike network sites or Hulu, it requires viewers to pay to download and watch them (though they are commercial-free). Video search engines like Truveo browse the entire Web, returning an often-overwhelming number of results. And while YouTube is the king of Web video, it can too easily return a search result that isn’t a complete and genuine episode of the show you’re seeking.

[ See post to watch video ]

This week, I’ve been testing Clicker, a free Web site that aims to be the TV Guide for all full episodes available to watch on the Web. It searches over 1,200 sources, so it can index some 400,000 episodes from 7,000 shows. Results include television programs as well as “Web originals,” or shows that are native to the Internet and are of broadcast quality. Clicker either plays the video on its site or links you to where this content is shown on another hosting site—like NBC or Hulu. If a show isn’t available online, Clicker tells you so you don’t have to keep hunting all over for it.

I like Clicker and found it to be a quick resource for finding all sorts of shows online. In many cases, it directed me to find the episodes I wanted to watch and saved me the hassle of less efficient searching. It also suggested shows I might like and offered a playlist where I could subscribe to receive episodes as they became available or save available videos to watch later.

Clicker makes descriptive pages about each show

Though it has a search box, Clicker feels more like a directory than purely a robotic search engine that relies mainly on algorithms. In fact, Clicker created a descriptive page for almost every show, and these pages can be edited or created via user submissions, which Clicker will review before posting them to the site. And because it’s focused on TV shows or Web originals, it won’t clutter your results with kids’ birthday parties or cats on skateboards.

The site is still rather new, so it has some kinks to work out—like links to videos that didn’t actually play if, for example, they were pulled by the network. But these were rare, and for the most part, if a video wasn’t available, a clear, brief explanation was displayed at the top of the page. Also, if Clicker sends you back out to a network’s site and that network uses a special player for videos, you’ll still have to download that player.

Filtering Results

Clicker’s program pages contain a description of the show, and a way to filter results by season, airdate or popularity. And the site shows the actual airdate of each video—something that not many other sites do. A column on the right side of each page displays several related shows, like the suggestion of “Modern Family” for fans of “How I Met Your Mother”; and “Roswell” and “Dead Like Me” suggested for people who like “Heroes.” In December, these recommendations will become even more personalized.

Some of Clicker’s sources include NBC, Fox, ABC, PBS, the Food Network and Web original content (i.e. “The Onion”). It also can search movies and music videos; the movies can be watched free in some cases, or paid for via Amazon’s (AMZN) Video on Demand or Netflix (NFLX) Instant Streaming. In January, Clicker plans to incorporate shows and movies from iTunes, using Apple’s pay-and-download method.

Clicker is especially handy when you’re looking for a show that isn’t where you think it should be. “Seinfeld,” for example, is on TBS rather than NBC, where it originally aired, and only nine episodes are available at once before they rotate out and are replaced by nine more. “Friends” is found on theWB.com, rather than on NBC’s site. “Damages” isn’t available on its network site, FX; instead, it can be found at Crackle.com, another video-hosting site. It’s easy to understand why people settle for missing an episode rather than trying to find a show online.

Clicker finds over 400,000 television and Web-original episodes so you can search less and watch more.

Clicker also comes in handy when you’re querying something or someone you need to learn about. By typing in a term like “Thanksgiving travel,” I get news results from NBC’s “Nightly News with Brian Williams,” the “CBS Evening News” and the Associated Press. I also get tips for traveling during this busy time of year from an AOL Travel online video, as well as a 1968 episode of “The Beverly Hillbillies” called “The Thanksgiving Spirit.”

Clicker isn’t the site to use if you want to find the hot video clip that everyone is watching. When I searched for “Whitney Houston” the morning after the American Music Awards, the most recent video I found was the singer performing on “Good Morning America” in September—not the one showing her singing during the awards show the night before.

But the fact that Clicker can find Whitney Houston on “Good Morning America” is useful in itself. A search for Warren Buffett’s most recent appearance on the “Charlie Rose” show can be conducted in a similar manner—either by typing his name into the box at the top of the page or by opening the show’s page and searching within that show for anyone who has appeared as a guest. Performing a search within a show like this anywhere else is nowhere near as easy as on Clicker.

Playlist of Your Shows

Clicker can be used as a TiVo (TIVO) of sorts if you create a username on the site or simply sign in using Facebook Connect, which I did.

Users can make playlists where they can add just one episode, all episodes, or new episodes to this list—subscribing to receive all new episodes in the playlist as they become available. I added episodes of “The Amazing Race” and “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” to my playlist. This list can be accessed anytime, and it’s helpful for people who don’t have enough time to watch a show that they found. In December, email and Facebook notifications will be added to tell users that new episodes are in their playlists.

If you spend a lot of time in front of your computer and find yourself searching all over the Web for the TV shows you’d like to watch, Clicker will be a huge help. And even if your show isn’t available, you might find something similar—or better—in Clicker’s recommendations.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg. Email mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Scripps, Rainbow Join the Authentication Bandwagon

Peter Kafka — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 22:17:09 +0000

I wasn’t expecting a whole lot of information out of Time Warner and Comcast at their joint press conference today, but the two still underdelivered. They formalized the old news that Time Warner (TWX) would offer up some shows from its TNT and TBS channels for Comcast’s (CMCSA) coming “OnDemand Online” trial and…well, that was it, really.

Time Warner did announce a set of principles for its “TV Everywhere” program, and if you’d like, you can read those at the bottom of this post. And Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes and Comcast CEO Brian Roberts did get into some philosophical/optical discussions with us reporters.

For instance, was the cable industry being “defensive” or “offensive” as it rolled out its authentication plan, which is supposed to give pay TV customers–but only pay TV customers–Web access to all the shows they get on TV? Offensive, declared Bewkes. He also decreed that authentication was a “free gift” to TV watchers.

But authentication is going to involve a whole lot of coordinated effort by a lot of different players, and that means details matter at least as much as philosophy.

For instance: Who else is joining Time Warner when Comcast rolls out its first authentication trial next month? Roberts wouldn’t talk about that–”today’s about Time Warner,” he said–but word is still leaking out. Scripps Networks, for instance, said today that it would play along. Here’s the statement from Lynne Costantini, who runs affiliates sales for the network.

“Scripps Networks’ media brands, such as Food Network and HGTV, enjoy a strong connection with a passionate base of consumers who likely would find value in this type of service. We are committed to providing viewers with content on the platforms on which they engage with our brands, in a manner that adds value to the viewing experience and enhances our current business relationships with distributors. Our participation in the Comcast authentication pilot will help us make some initial assessments regarding this innovative platform.

Also confirmed: Cablevision’s (CVC) Rainbow Media, which owns networks like AMC and Sundance. This one makes particular sense because Cablevision has been more vocal than other networks about not putting its programming on the Web without getting paid for it. I’m also told that A&E Television networks, co-owned by Hearst, Disney (DIS) and GE’s (GE) NBCU, is expected to participate, but haven’t heard back from those folks yet.

None of these buy-ins are huge moves by themselves, of course. They’re commitments for the trial only, and it’s unlikely that any of the companies are going to offer up their best shows at the start. For instance, I’d be (happily) surprised if AMC’s “Mad Men” makes the cut. And we’re likely to see a dribble of announcements over the rest of the year as more programmers dip their toes in and as competing/parallel authentication efforts that the likes of Time Warner Cable (TWC) and the telcos roll out.

In the meantime, in lieu of hard facts, here’s what Time Warner has to say about its intentions:

PRINCIPLES FOR TV EVERYWHERE MODEL
These principles were developed to ensure the TV Everywhere model is consumer-friendly; pro-competitive and non-exclusive.

•    Bring more TV content, more easily to more people across platforms.

•    Video subscribers can watch programming from their favorite TV networks online for no additional charge.

•    Video subscribers can access this content using any broadband connection.

•    Programmers should make their best and highest rated programming available online.

•    Both networks and video distributors should provide high quality, consumer-friendly sites for viewing broadband content with easy authentication.

•    A new process should be created to measure ratings for online viewing. The goal should be to extend the current viewer measurement system to include advertiser ratings for TV content viewed on all platforms.

•    TV Everywhere is open and non-exclusive; cable, satellite or telco video distributors can enter into similar agreements with other programmers.