AllThingsD » online video

DirecTV Consider Bid for Hulu

Shalini Ramachandran — Fri, 17 May 2013 23:40:19 +0000

DirecTV is weighing a potential bid for Hulu, the latest company to show interest in the six-year-old video site, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Hulu’s owners, including Walt Disney Co., News Corp., and Comcast Corp., are considering various strategic options for the site including a sale. Other firms that have bid or expressed interest in Hulu include cable operator Time Warner Cable Inc., Guggenheim Partners, Yahoo Inc. and former News Corp. president Peter Chernin’s investment group.

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At Least Two Pay-TV Operators Circling Hulu

Shalini Ramachandran and Amol Sharma — Wed, 15 May 2013 22:54:00 +0000

At least two pay TV operators, including cable giant Time Warner Cable Inc., are weighing an investment in Hulu as the online video site considers a range of strategic options, according to people familiar with the matter.

It isn’t clear how much Time Warner Cable is willing to pay and whether it is considering purchasing a minority stake in the site or an all-out acquisition. Hulu’s current owners don’t see the cable operator as the most likely buyer at the valuation it has signaled it would do the deal, one of the people familiar with the matter said.

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Ad Firms Fault Web Outlets

Suzanne Vranica — Fri, 10 May 2013 13:00:12 +0000

Online video outlets are pulling out all the stops to draw more advertising dollars, investing heavily in star-laden new series and, last week, staging glitzy presentations for marketers. But advertisers still aren’t happy.

To have a chance of boosting their share of TV ad dollars, advertisers say online outlets need to do more to promote their shows.

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Yahoo Scraps Deal for French Video Site

Sam Schechner and Amir Efrati — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 23:30:42 +0000

Online-video website Dailymotion was on track to be the first major acquisition for Yahoo Inc. Chief Executive Marissa Mayer, after her company had signed a provisional deal to buy control from owner France Télécom SA. Then Ms. Mayer’s No. 2 executive met with French Industry Minister Arnaud Montebourg.

At an April 12 meeting in Mr. Montebourg’s Paris office, the minister told Yahoo’s chief operating officer, Henrique de Castro, and France Télécom’s chief financial officer, Gervais Pellissier, that he didn’t want 75 percent of a rare French Internet success story to be sold to an American Web giant, according to people briefed on the meeting.

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Yahoo in Talks to Buy Stake in Video Site Dailymotion

Sam Schechner and Amir Efrati — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 21:55:18 +0000

Yahoo Inc. is in talks to buy a controlling stake in France Telecom SA’s online-video site Dailymotion, according to people familiar with the talks, in what would be Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa Mayer’s first major acquisition since taking over the Internet pioneer last year.

Yahoo could buy as much as 75 percent of Dailymotion as part of an ownership structure that is under consideration, these people said. The site could be valued at around $300 million, one of these people said, and would help U.S.-based Yahoo to gain a bigger toehold in online video in parts of Europe and Asia.

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Fanhattan Brings Its One-Stop Video-Discovery Service to the Web

Bonnie Cha — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 15:00:29 +0000

There’s no shortage of places to watch your favorite TV shows and movies online, but trying to figure out who offers what can be a frustrating experience.

Fanhattan made that task easier with its intelligent video-discovery iOS app, and now it’s expanding beyond mobile devices to the Web.

Starting today, users can sign up for an email invite to try out the new Fanhattan website. But if you already use the iOS app, you can start using the site right away.

As with the mobile app, you can search the Fanhattan website for a TV show or movie, and Fanhattan will not only show you which content providers offer what you’re looking for, but will also directly link you to those services.

The company has partnered with 29 content providers, including Hulu, Amazon, Netflix, HBO and NBC, and has more than one million titles in its database. Fanhattan CEO Gilles BianRosa said in a phone interview that he hopes to add new content on a weekly basis.

I got a sneak peek at the website, and it’s elegant and smart. I could have used this a few weeks ago when I was looking for Season 2 of “Downton Abbey,” after realizing it wasn’t on Netflix. Instead, I did a frantic Google search (you know how it is when you get hooked on a show) to find out who else offered it. I also liked that the site offered actor bios, movie trailers and plot synopses.

Beyond connecting users to content, Fanhattan wants to create a social experience. As such, members can share their watch lists with other users, or sign in to Facebook to see what their friends are watching (provided that they also use Fanhattan). There’s also a section of the site that lists trending shows.

Fanhattan’s ultimate goal is to bring its entertainment-discovery service to every screen, though BianRosa told me that the company is taking it one product at a time to ensure the best experience.

To that point, the Fanhattan Web service is only in beta for now. The site will eventually open up to everybody, but BianRosa didn’t provide any specifics of when that might be.

YouNow Gives Stage to Internet's Wannabe Stars, Leaves Judgment in Your Hands

Bonnie Cha — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 20:01:39 +0000

Shows like “American Idol” and “So You Think You Can Dance” have unearthed some great (and not so great) talent. But not everyone gets their 15 minutes in the TV spotlight, so a service called YouNow is looking to provide it to the rest of the world, with a talent show for the Internet.

YouNow CEO and founder Adi Sideman and a colleague joined AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka at the D: Dive Into Media conference today in Dana Point, Calif., to demo the service and its mobile app, which Sideman said hosts more than 500 hours of “curated content” each day.

Launched in September 2011, YouNow allows people to perform online via website and app, and to receive real-time feedback from an audience that can encourage them or boot them off the air.

Sideman showed the conference audience a live clip of a singer named Michael performing for YouNow’s users.

“If the audience likes Michael, they give him the green thumbs-up, and he stays on-air,” Sideman said. However, if YouNow users give him the thumbs-down, the next person in line behind him moves up into the broadcast slot. Fifty different channels, each with their own broadcast spot, are live at the same time.

The most popular performers are promoted on a daily leaderboard, and earn points toward prizes. But their biggest reward is new followers on their social networks. That’s all part of Sideman’s vision for the future of the television experience: One that combines broadcasting with social gaming and social networking.

Sideman added that people in the YouNow queue are three things at once — performers, viewers and voters. “We’ve built a social engine that guarantees an audience to each person,” he said.

[ See post to watch video ]

YouTube's Reign Threatened by a Spotified Revolution, and Other Reel Truths for Video in 2013

Mo Al Adham — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 23:50:29 +0000

From the continued growth of online video to Socialcam and Viddy’s up and down spiral, 2012 was a crazy year for the world of digital video, and I expect it to take a turn for the insane in 2013.

In the past year, we’ve seen several niche social media networks blow up around images, music and ideas — Instagram, Spotify and Pinterest. But what happened in the digital video space? Many mobile video start-ups entered the scene this year, yet despite the increasing demand among consumers for Web video, none of these companies could crack the code on the most critical element of digital video: Discovery. But as content multiplies at an increasing rate, 2013 will finally be the year that the future becomes clear on the next advancement in video.

Online video consumption hits a historic inflection point, doubling in 2013
We are at the threshold of the second digital video revolution spurred by better and more affordable hardware and connectivity. Smartphones are in the hands of nearly one billion across the globe, and tablets, or “the second television,” are blowing up. The iPad alone has climbed the ladder of adoption three times faster than the iPhone and Gartner predicts tablet sales will hit 13 million in 2012, with this number expected to triple by 2016.

Couple the rapidly increasing penetration of tablets and smartphones with LTE connectivity, and it’s pretty much guaranteed that consumer appetite for video will grow, transforming mobile video consumption into a daily habit. This will ignite a digital video revolution that mirrors the shift from dial-up Internet to broadband. The revolution that happened on desktop years back is about to transpire on mobile, as 2G and 3G are traded up for LTE networks on smartphones. Even with its incredible user adoption, the broadband’s impact on desktop video will pale in comparison to the more accelerated mobile video craze that’s about to kick off.

In the last three years we’ve seen about a 140 percent increase in the amount of video content viewed online. comScore’s Video Metrix from April 2009 — when total video views hit 17 billion — sharply contrasts with 40 billion videos viewed across Web on November 2012. As consumption of video continues its march from the living room and desktop to smartphones and tablets, I predict that demand, production and consumption of video will double, and video views will hit 80 billion per month by the end of 2013.
A newcomer will challenge YouTube for the other half of video consumption
Declining hardware and distribution costs coupled with a steady increase in consumer demand for video has provoked a huge surge in production of pro and semi-pro video. Because of this increase in more professional-grade video, we have seen a major shift in where people are going to find digital video content.

People are still watching just as much video — but they are now looking to different sources on the Web. In the past five months there has been a 34 percent drop in the total volume of video consumed on YouTube compared with the rest of the Web. YouTube views peaked in June 2012 at 18.3 billion, but have since declined to 12 billion on November 2012. comScore’s Video Metrix measured total Web video views in June 2012 at 32.9 billion; fast-forward to November 2012 and total video views across the Web hit 40 billion. While YouTube lost about six billion views within that five-month period, the other half of Web video shot up by 13 billion. As online video fragmentation increases in 2013, so will the need for a newcomer that aggregates YouTube and the second half of the Web’s video under one roof.
TV networks and the top content creators will be forced into unchartered distribution and economic models
Big media has seen the rapid shift toward Web and mobile consumption, and sites like Discovery.com, Disney, MTV and CNN continue to produce more online content. Now the real challenge becomes the fight for more audience, monetization and market share. These content creators and their advertisers won’t be satisfied with the results they get within their own silos, and will start looking for a way to expand their reach while still maintaining control over their videos.

We have seen that relying on social networks like Facebook and Twitter for viral spread is not enough. At Twitvid, we saw major brands with over five million followers post videos to Twitter and receive only a few thousand views. Even major television networks such as CBS and ABC are struggling with this issue. ABC’s Modern Family and Glee, which previously only distributed episodes to Hulu, are now opening distribution to anyone as the effort to reach viewers continues. But no one has found a sustainable combination of large audiences and ability to drive traffic and revenue back to content creators.

In 2013, studios and networks will be eager to experiment with new disruptive models, and expect to see a new breed of startups that can cater to their desire for both large audiences and strong control over content.
All of this will lead to a new opportunity in video discovery that resembles something more like Spotify and less like Instagram
Digital video is currently plagued by the lack of any real means of video discovery capable of meeting the needs of a social, mobile world. I’m confident that in 2013, someone will solve video discovery through social content aggregation — not just from YouTube, but from the exploding long-tail of semi-pro video. Many have pointed to an “Instagram for video” as the cure-all for the video space’s current state of disarray. But this is much bigger than that. Instagram focuses on user-generated content, which as Socialcam and Viddy proved this year, is not the way to win in the long term. Digital video is insanely larger than just user-generated content. The long-tail of video content is where consumer eyes draw the brands, and ultimately, revenue.

In the same way that Spotify, Instagram and Pinterest successfully solved discovery for music, pictures and ideas, new models will emerge aiming to figure out a way to tap into this massive new world of video and somehow find a way to weave it all together.

What other predictions do you see for the world of digital video in 2013? Please submit your predictions in the comment section below.

Mo is the CEO and Founder of Telly, a social video network for discovering and sharing the best videos. You can follow him on Twitter @maladham and on Telly.

Home-Entertainment Revenue Ticks Up

Erica Orden — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 22:25:48 +0000

Hollywood in 2012 was able to arrest a seven-year slide in sales of home-entertainment — specifically movies — as online revenue grew enough to offset a continued slide in DVD sales and rentals.

Total home-entertainment spending in the U.S. inched up 0.23 percent to $18 billion, according to a report released Tuesday by Digital Entertainment Group, a trade association.

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Diller Wins A Broadcast-TV Clash

Christopher S. Stewart and William Launder — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 23:25:32 +0000

A federal judge denied TV broadcasters’ request for a preliminary injunction to shut down online video start-up Aereo, dealing a major blow to broadcasters.

U.S. District Court Judge Alison Nathan denied the request for a preliminary junction despite finding that Aereo threatens the broadcasters “with irreparable harm,” including by luring away cable subscribers, that she said was “substantial but not overwhelming.”

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Vevo Seeks New Financing

Ethan Smith, Amir Efrati and Christopher S. Stewart — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 10:57:08 +0000

Vevo, the online music video company, is seeking to raise new equity financing, people familiar with the company’s plans said, amid plans to expand its operations overseas.

Vevo hired Allen & Co. to look for investors, the people added. One of the people said Vevo hopes to raise $100 million to $150 million, at terms that would value the company at nearly $1 billion. Another person said Allen & Co. has pegged the video company’s value at $700 million to $800 million.

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U.S. Probes Cable for Limits on Net Video

Thomas Catan and Amy Schatz — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 04:11:04 +0000

The Justice Department is conducting a wide-ranging antitrust investigation into whether cable companies are acting improperly to quash nascent competition from online video, according to people familiar with the matter.

Justice Department officials have spoken to several online video providers, including Netflix Inc. and Hulu LLC, those people said. Investigators have also questioned Comcast Corp., Time Warner Cable Inc. and other cable companies about issues such as setting data caps, limits to the amount of data a subscriber can download each month, these people said.

Representatives of all those companies and the Justice Department declined to comment on the investigation.

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Dish Chief: TV Needs to Change

Shalini Ramachandran — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 12:30:11 +0000

Dish Network Corp. Chairman Charlie Ergen said a new ad-skipping feature that has infuriated major broadcast TV networks is a “competitively necessary” response to the explosion of cheap Internet video. That Web video threatens the pay-TV ecosystem, he added, and it is partly caused by the TV networks themselves.

In a rare interview, Mr. Ergen for the first time explained publicly his rationale for introducing the ad-skipping service called Auto Hop last month. The reclusive satellite TV pioneer said the broadcast networks, several of which have sued Dish over the ad-skipping feature and have refused to run Dish ads promoting a Dish digital video recorder, have been “more emotional than realistic.”

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The Mythical Viewer

Voices — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 06:59:24 +0000

They all seem pitched toward the same mythical viewer, presumably the one prized by Internet advertisers, whose mind appears to be occupied with a sticky mix of celebrity gossip, blockbuster movies, video games, zombies, action sports and news of the weird.

– Mike Hale of the New York Times, writing about new channels on YouTube

Online Video Turns Up Heat

Suzanne Vranica and Sam Schechner — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 22:13:38 +0000

Though television may be losing viewers to online video, it has been holding on to advertisers. But with online-video outlets this week making their most organized push yet for ad dollars, that may be starting to change.

Early expectations are that TV networks will win an increase in total ad commitments for the fall season in the coming weeks of negotiations with advertisers known as the upfront. Yet, some big marketers, including General Motors Co. GM -2.71% and Samsung Electronic Co.’s mobile arm, say they are planning to shift some of their TV budgets to the Web.

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Fanhattan Demo at D9: Consolidating Online Video on Your iPad (Video)

Joe Ciolli — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 21:53:24 +0000

Even for the most experienced Web user, sorting through the vast landscape of online movies and television can be confusing. Fanhattan, is a cloud-based app trying to aggregate the Web’s many scattered video sources into a single location.

Fanhattan has partnered with Apple, Amazon and Hulu, among others, in an attempt to streamline how users discover and then connect with TV and movies, but that is just one crucial piece of this very big puzzle.

Fanhattan CEO Gilles BianRosa gave an onstage demo of the iPad app at D9 on Wednesday afternoon. His company hopes the app will help consumers of online video content who don’t currently have a comprehensive selection of movies and television shows.

2:52 pm: Gilles BianRosa showing off Fanhattan for the iPad. “It’s an immersive experience creating gorgeous imagery that takes you right into the movie.”

2:53 pm: A user can read reviews and actor/director info when browsing a movie/TV show.

2:53 pm: BianRosa: If you don’t have a specific application to which Fanhattan is linking, it gives you the option to install or subscribe on the spot.

2:54 pm: The filmography option on Fanhattan shows films in production, movie premieres and soundtrack data. According to BianRosa, all of this information is either stored on Fanhattan servers or sourced from various partnerships.

2:55 pm: BianRosa showing the app’s “Smart Browse” feature, which utilizes filters across genre, release date and ratings to make the user experience customizable.

2:58 pm: Now demonstrating a stream of “Modern Family,” which can be pulled from Hulu and ABC.com.

2:58 pm: Fanhattan launched its app on iPad today.

BianRosa: The app is free, but we make money from partnerships. He points out that if someone subscribes to a service like Netflix through Fanhattan, Fanhattan gets a portion of the proceeds.

3:00 pm: BianRosa now demonstrating prototype software for Fanhattan on a Web-connected TV.

3:00 pm: Fanhattan is working on a feature that allows viewers to get info about and view film series with multiple installments. BianRosa is currently using “Pirates of the Caribbean” as an example.

3:02 pm: BianRosa points out that it’s too early to say right now which platform will be dominant for Fanhattan.

Here’s video of the demo:

[ See post to watch video ]

Comcast Takes Online Rivals' Technology for a Spin

Jessica E. Vascellaro — Wed, 25 May 2011 23:18:55 +0000

Comcast Corp., facing a growing threat from online video services, is fighting fire with fire.

The country’s largest cable-service provider soon will start testing a new way to deliver its television channels, co-opting the same technology standard that upstart Internet rivals have used to challenge traditional pay-TV business models.

Using the MIT campus as its proving ground, Comcast in coming months will try delivering TV channels using the same standard used to deliver data over the Internet, known as the Internet protocol, or IP.

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Hand-Wringing in Comcast-NBC Deal

Amy Schatz and Jessica E. Vascellaro — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 13:00:43 +0000

Major media companies are raising concerns that government conditions on Comcast Corp.’s impending deal to acquire control of NBC Universal from General Electric Co. could put them at a disadvantage in future negotiations to shape the burgeoning online video market.

At issue is a condition proposed by the Federal Communications Commission that would require Comcast to offer NBC programming to any online video service that has reached a similar deal for content from at least one of NBC’s competitors, such as Walt Disney Co. or News Corp.

Lobbyists for both Disney and News Corp., along with Time Warner Inc. Chief Executive Jeff Bewkes, have been voicing their concerns this week with the FCC, worried that such conditions could undermine their own efforts to profit from the nascent online video industry. News Corp. owns The Wall Street Journal.

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Fanhattan Seeks To Unify Web Movie Services

Nick Wingfield — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 13:00:27 +0000

There are a lot more movies and television shows on the Internet than there once were, but viewers often have to work really hard to hunt across different services for what they want. A company called Fanhattan is trying to stitch together as many of those services as it can to make life easier for Web watchers.

Fanhattan, previously known as Vuze, on Thursday announced a service of the same name that will provide a single interface from which consumers can search for movies and television shows from a variety of distributors of online video. In theory, the distributors Fanhattan can search include Netflix, Apple’s iTunes Store, Hulu, Amazon and others, though Fanhattan doesn’t yet have deals with those providers.

The problem the company is seeking to address will be familiar to power users of Web video. No single source of online video provides anything remotely approaching a comprehensive selection of movies and television shows, in large part because of arcane Hollywood licensing schemes that dictate when certain material can be made available through which distribution vehicle and under which pricing models (rental, sales and subscription services).

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Boxee, Roku Announcing Deals for Streaming Live Sports on TV

Lauren Goode — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 16:58:31 +0000

Watching live sports on television via the Web may have just gotten easier.

Starting Monday, Web-to-TV software company Boxee will distribute the National Hockey League’s Game Center Live online video content. In addition, the National Basketball Association is set to announce a similar partnership with Roku, maker of a digital video player that streams Netflix (NFLX) and Amazon (AMZN) Video on Demand via the Web, for the distribution of NBA digital video content, beginning with some of this season’s playoff games.

The NHL’s Game Center Live streams approximately a thousand of the league’s 1,200 games per season, or any games that are not national exclusives on Versus or NBC, the league’s partner networks, for $19.95 a month. No additional fees will be applied for the streaming of NHL Game Center Live content through Boxee’s social-media enabled, web-to-TV platform. Since the NHL is currently wrapping up its 2009-2010 season, the new NHL content available through the Boxee platform is minimal, but a spokesman for Boxee says this should lay the groundwork for a continued partnership into next season.

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Baidu to Enter Online Video Market

Aaron Back — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 17:40:28 +0000

Chinese search engine Baidu Inc. is entering a field that is quickly becoming crowded and highly competitive in China’s online video market.

Baidu is launching a new business unit that it envisions will work on a similar business model to Hulu, an advertising-supported video site in the U.S. that has licensed, copyrighted content from several television broadcasters.

Hulu, which is not available in China, is jointly owned by NBC Universal, Walt Disney Co. (DIS), and News Corp. (NWS). News Corp. also owns The Wall Street Journal.

“As the country’s leading search engine, we’d like to grow in this space to meet our users’ needs. We see large volumes of our users searching for high-quality licensed videos and currently there are no video sites that can fulfill this need,” said Ren Xuyang, vice president of marketing and business development at Baidu.

But Baidu will be competing with many other players all eyeing the same market opportunity in China, such as online video sharing sites Youku.com and Tudou.com.

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News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.

Why Online Video Ads Still Don't Work

Peter Kafka — Fri, 15 May 2009 21:12:03 +0000

From the funny-and-true! department: A biting clip from the dudes at College Humor satirizing the lousy ad options and mind-numbing ad jargon that dominate the online video business.

And a good reminder that even though Google’s (GOOG) YouTube generates more than five billion streams a month and Hulu has grown 490 percent in the last year, no one has really figured out a good way to turn all those eyeballs into dollars. Yet.

A short cheat sheet: The guys on the left side of the table are College Humor co-founders Josh Abramson and Ricky Van Veen, who sold their company to IAC (IACI) in 2006, yet remain employed by Barry Diller. They’re also pretty sharp business guys, it turns out. The guys on the right side are Jake Hurwitz and Amir Blumenfeld, College Humor employees who have had a long-running series of clips on the site. Dina Kaplan, who gets name-checked several times, is COO of New York-based video site Blip.tv, which happens to be the distributor of this clip.

"DoubleClick for Web Video" Start-up FreeWheel Raises $12 Million

Peter Kafka — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 22:01:55 +0000

Yes, investors are still betting on Web video. Just not in the way they used to: FreeWheel, one of the buzzier online video start-ups you’ve never heard of, has raised a $12 million C round from Battery Ventures, which had provided financing for the company’s first two rounds, and Foundation Capital.

No word on valuation for the company, or the total amount raised to date. If anyone wants to weigh in, you can reach me at peter@allthingsd.com.

FreeWheel is essentially an online ad video network operating behind the scenes and connecting Web video advertisers and publishers. If that sounds a bit like DoubleClick, the display ad infrastructure company that Google (GOOG) acquired last year, that’s not a coincidence. Co-founders Doug Knopper and Jon Heller are both DoubleClick vets.

FreeWheel won’t disclose most of its customers, but it’s been watched widely by Web video players to see if can make good on its promise to make the fractured market more efficient. That’d be an important problem to solve for the Web video industry, which has yet to deliver on its huge promise.