AllThingsD » TV

Amazon Kills Zombies, Keeps John Goodman as It Plans First Season of Web Series

Peter Kafka — Fri, 17 May 2013 20:41:02 +0000

Just like a regular TV network, Amazon ordered up a bunch of pilot shows this year, and will end up making a series out of some of them.

Unlike a TV network, Amazon has asked the Internet to watch and rate its test shows, and has said the input will help the company make its decisions.

And now we’re getting to see some of those decisions play out.

We only have definitive word on one of the 14 pilots Amazon has ordered. That’s because Rhett Reese, the writer/producer behind “Zombieland,” has announced, via Twitter, that it’s not getting picked up:

Our Zombieland series will not be moving forward on Amazon.Sad for everyone involved.

— Rhett Reese (@RhettReese) May 17, 2013

Reese wasn’t done, though. He also complained about people who didn’t like the show — presumably fans of the original movie his series was riffing on:

I’ll never understand the vehement hate the pilot received from die-hard Zombieland fans.You guys successfully hated it out of existence.

— Rhett Reese (@RhettReese) May 17, 2013

Meanwhile, over at Deadline, Nellie Andreeva reports that Amazon has picked up “Alpha House,” its Washington satire starring John Goodman, and “Betas,” a Silicon Valley sitcom.

Neither of those moves are that surprising, since Amazon has seemed bullish on “Alpha House” from the start, and “Betas” sure seems like it would hit an online viewing sweet spot.

That said, a pedigree or concept isn’t enough to keep you on screen, whether it’s on TV or online. Deadline also reports that Amazon is not picking up “Browsers,” a musical comedy about interns at a Huffington Post-style site.

That one featured “Cheers” star Bebe Neuwirth as an Arianna-like boss, and was written by David Javerbaum, one of the main brains behind the “The Daily Show” for many years. No dice.

Also, about the voting: Your vote counts, but it’s not the only thing that counts. Amazon Studios head Roy Price said his team would look at a variety of data as they made their decisions.

For instance: I never voted on “Browsers,” even though Amazon sent me an email after I first watched it, asking me for my thoughts. But I’m sure that Amazon did take note of the fact that I only watched the first 5 minutes of the show, then never returned.

ESPN, Twitter Expand Collaboration

Shira Ovide and Keach Hagey — Mon, 13 May 2013 22:24:58 +0000

ESPN and Twitter Inc. are announcing a major expansion of their collaboration to post sports-related videos on the short-messaging service—part of a growing wave of tie-ups as TV networks and Twitter hunt for new advertising revenue.

ESPN, which is majority-owned by Walt Disney Co., plans to show video-highlight clips on Twitter of major sports events in the coming year, including from soccer matches leading up to the World Cup, college football and the X Games extreme-sports tournaments. People can watch the video clips on Twitter’s website and mobile apps shortly after the action happens on TV.

The sports network plans to sell ads that will run inside the video clips, and marketing sponsors will commit to buying from Twitter a minimum value of “promoted”—or paid—Twitter posts to circulate their marketing pitches.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Here's the McDonald's Ad All the Web Guys Think Is Genius

Peter Kafka — Mon, 06 May 2013 16:12:41 +0000

Web video doesn’t look like TV. So Web video ads shouldn’t look like TV ads, either.

Right? Maybe!

But right now that’s not true: Just about every ad you see on YouTube or Hulu, or any other video site, is either an ad that ran on TV, a shorter version of an ad that ran on TV, or an ad that could run on TV.

But there’s a school of thinking that says Web video ads should be their own special thing that takes advantage of the freedom and flexibility that the Internet offers.

And, weirdly enough, lots of people keep pointing to the same clip as an example: A three-minute-28-second mini-documentary from McDonald’s Canada, which explains why the chain’s burgers look better in ads than in real life. (Spoiler: They cheat.)

Last week, before YouTube’s big “brandcast” pitch for advertisers, I met with a bunch of people who are betting big on Web video, and they cited this ad as an example of Web advertising’s future. Then, at YouTube’s event a couple hours later, content boss Robert Kyncl said the same thing onstage. And this morning, BTIG analyst Rich Greenfield makes the same assertion in a research note (registration required).

So here you go:

Scintillating? Nope! And you can certainly think of other Web ads that were a lot glitizer, and got a lot more press. But it takes a lot of money and resources to get Jeff Gordon in costume and behind the wheel, or to drop a dude out of a spaceship. And there’s no way advertisers can treat each Web spot like a summer blockbuster.

Meanwhile, McDonald’s modest ad tells a story, flatters viewers by telling them they’re smart enough to go backstage, and still ends up pushing pretty images of hamburgers in front of them. That’s pretty clever advertising sort-of masquerading as something else but not really.

And people seem to like it: Since last June, it has racked up nearly 8.5 million views.

CBS Buys Stake in Video-Streaming Firm

Amol Sharma — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 17:09:28 +0000

CBS Corp. has taken a minority investment in Syncbak, a company that allows local-TV stations to stream programming to consumers over the Web, a move that comes as broadcasters are fighting unauthorized Internet distribution of their content.

Syncbak, founded in 2009 by Jack Perry, has created a technology to deliver broadcast-TV signals to tablets and smartphones. The service isn’t yet commercially available. It is being tested by more than 100 local-TV stations in 70 markets.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Syrian Pro-Government Hackers Take Their Fight to CBS and Twitter

Arik Hesseldahl — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 15:52:18 +0000

We now know who it was that carried out the hacking attacks on the Twitter accounts of various CBS News outlets last night: The Syrian Electronic Army.

It’s a band of digital activists and hackers who support the beleaguered government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The group, which claimed credit for the attacks via a statement on its website, has a history of attacking the websites and social media accounts of various western media organizations.

On April 16, it attacked websites and some Twitter accounts belonging to NPR. Last month, it attacked the website of Human Rights Watch, as well as its Twitter account. Also in March, it breached a Twitter account belonging to the BBC. And last year it gained access to a blog belonging to Reuters, and posted a fake story, detailing a retreat by Syrian rebels that hadn’t happened.

CBS experienced at least one more attack last night after the initial one. The Verge captured images of three more tweets from the account belonging to its high-profile Sunday night magazine show “60 Minutes,” presumably sent by hijackers. Today, as of 8:15 am PT, the “60 Minutes” Twitter account and that of another CBS show, “48 Hours,” were suspended.

Matt Polevoy, a social media producer at CBS News, announced the suspension:

Update: We’ve suspended the 60 Minutes account while we investigate with Twitter.

April 20, 2013 7:59 pm via Tweetbot for iOS ReplyRetweetFavorite

@CBSMatt

Matthew Polevoy

Obviously, those messages posted did NOT come from 60 Minutes staff. This is serious matter and we’re treating it as such.

April 20, 2013 8:09 pm via Tweetbot for iOS ReplyRetweetFavorite

@CBSMatt

Matthew Polevoy

A Twitter account belonging to the Syrian Electronic Army has also been suspended, but, in what appears to be a rolling battle with Twitter, the group appears to have created a new one. It seems to be doing the same thing with Facebook, creating new accounts every time an old one is shut down. A message posted to the current Twitter account contained the following video that appeared to take credit for the attacks against CBS:

No comment yet from Twitter. Since it’s a Sunday night, it will be interesting to see if there’s any mention of the incident on “60 Minutes” tonight.

Of course, this is all taking place against the backdrop of a quickening of events with regard to the U.S. and Syria, so it’s no surprise that pro-Assad hackers would seek to make a statement of some kind and get attention. And while most of our attention has been focused on Boston, there’s been a lot going on.

Last week officials from the United Kingdom told the United Nations about concerns that chemical weapons had been used by the Assad regime. And that’s important because President Obama has often referred to that as a “red line,” though he hasn’t exactly spelled out what crossing it means. Presumably, it could mean military intervention.

Also this week, the Pentagon ordered 200 people into neighboring Jordan to help that country deal with the potential use of chemical weapons, and to prevent the fighting from spilling over its borders. Separately, the U.S. said it would double the amount of nonlethal aid that is going to the rebels.

So you can see why pro-Assad sympathizers might want to get your attention right now.

Some 75,000 people have been killed in the three-year-old civil war, and many thousands more have been displaced. It has effectively become a military stalemate, and a bloody one at that.

Amazon Shows Off Its First TV Shows, and Wants to Know What You Think

Peter Kafka — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 14:13:36 +0000

This is the time of the year when the TV networks show off the programs they’ll be running next fall, via glitzy invitation-only presentations for advertisers.

But you can see what Jeff Bezos has in store for his viewers, right now, over at Amazon.com.

And he wants to know what you think.

As promised, Amazon has put up 14 pilot episodes for shows it is considering producing for its first foray into original programming — eight comedies and six kids’ shows. It wants viewers to rate them, and says it will use their input as it figures out which ones to actually order.

Right now you have to navigate over to Amazon’s video section to find the shows, but I imagine that Amazon will make a much bigger deal of them fairly soon. (Perhaps after a breaking news story resolves itself.)

Amazon isn’t promising that viewer voting alone will make or break a show. But their feedback will be “very influential” as Amazon makes it decisions in the next couple months, says Roy Price, who is heading up Amazon’s original video program.

After Price and his group make their calls, the shows will eventually be available only for Amazon Prime members, just like other videos in its on-demand subscription service. But anyone can watch the pilots, and anyone can vote.

In other words: This is sort of a novelty, designed to generate attention for Amazon’s programming, and a counterpoint to the way Netflix has gone about its original marketing, where it has preordered up full seasons of shows like “House of Cards” before ever showing them to the outside world.

And it’s also indicative of the way Amazon would like to go about making programming decisions down the road — some of it will come from old-fashioned gut calls about what might be good, and some of it will take advantage of the data that a Web player can aggregate and create.

So, what about the videos themselves? Take a look for yourself.

I previewed several of them, and found the standout to be “Alpha House,” a Washington comedy starring John Goodman, created by Doonesbury’s Garry Trudeau. It’s the one that seems most TV-like in terms of production value and star power (look for a Bill Murray cameo). And I get the sense that it’s the one Amazon is most excited about, as well.

Other videos don’t seem nearly as polished as the stuff you’d see at a conventional TV “upfront” presentation — most of the animated shows, for starters, are unfinished. But it’s also important to remember that the TV guys have years of experience making their stuff look incredibly compelling — and the overwhelming majority of the shows they promote in the spring are canceled within a year.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[ See post to watch video ]

MLB.com Boss Bob Bowman Is Still an Apple Man. But Samsung Is on Deck. (Video)

Peter Kafka — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 22:37:57 +0000

The last time we asked MLB.com boss Bob Bowman for his take on mobile platforms, it went something like this: He loved Apple and Apple users, supported Android because he had to, and thought BlackBerry was still a viable market.

That was two years ago. What do things look like now?

Well, Bowman, who runs Major League Baseball Advanced Media, baseball’s digital business, is still a big Apple fan.

But he has acknowledged that his users are increasingly picking up Android devices — particularly the high-end Samsung units. And BlackBerry? Gone but not quite forgotten: “We hope BlackBerry comes back.”

Some details from Bowman’s chat with Walt Mossberg at D: Dive into Mobile today:

His user base, which used to split 80/20 in favor of iOS over Android, has now moved to 70/30. “The Samsung phone is quite a good Android phone,” Bowman said.
But the uptick in Android users, he said, doesn’t track with revenue. That still splits 80/20 in favor of iOS users. “Maybe even 85/15.”
Bowman figures this is because iOS users are still, on average, paying more for their phones than Android users, and that means they’re more willing to pay for content like his apps/subscription service, which starts at $20. (Note that other developers have told me that when you compare high-end Android buyers to iOS buyers, the differences in behavior patterns tend to go away.

[ See post to watch video ]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[ See post to watch video ]

Amid PC Sales Slide, All Eyes on Intel's Quarterly Results

Arik Hesseldahl — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 13:28:12 +0000

When the chipmaker Intel reports its quarterly results today after markets close in New York, no one is expecting especially good news, nor much of a positive outlook.

Intel shares have traded lower since last Thursday, when the market research firms IDC and Gartner said they had tracked one of the largest year-on-year declines in sales of personal computers since records have been kept. Intel is the largest supplier of microprocessors to PC manufacturers like Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Apple, and it’s hard to see how much good news it can possibly bring to the table today.

Analysts are expecting Intel to report a profit of 41 cents per share on sales of $12.6 billion, and missing either would be seen as more or less proving that the PC market is in a state of permanent decline. So would a weak outlook for the current quarter, for which analysts currently expect earnings of 40 cents on $12.9 billion in sales.

There are other aspects to Intel’s business. It has a healthy data center business selling chips for use in servers, but out of more than $53 billion in sales last year, $34 billion, or more than 61 percent, was in its “client,” or PC, unit, while the data center group accounted for about $10.7 billion.

In the past, Intel executives have quarreled with the analyst firms, and said it was seeing more promising conditions in emerging markets. Indeed, in prior years there has been a disconnect between the dour pronouncements of Gartner and IDC and the peppier market conditions that Intel would later describe in its financial results in places like Brazil, Indonesia and Russia. In more recent quarters, the differences between their views have narrowed.

Aside from PCs, Intel has some new ideas that it hopes will kick its data center business into a higher gear. And it certainly has higher hopes about selling more chips for use in phones and tablets, but as yet they’re only hopes. It also plans to launch a TV product later this year.

Aside from the numbers, expect some questions — and maybe even some answers, but probably nothing conclusive yet — about the search for a replacement for CEO Paul Otellini. The smart money says the choice will be an internal one (here’s a rundown on the contenders), though there’s a slim chance that Intel’s board might be in the mood to surprise everyone and name an outsider. But don’t bet any money you can’t afford to lose on that.

Logitech Harmony Ultimate Remote Pairs Up With Smartphone Apps, Mood Lighting

Bonnie Cha — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 10:52:36 +0000

Though Logitech is looking to sell its Harmony remote division, the company is continuing to release new products like the Harmony Ultimate and Harmony Smart Control, and is still expanding the capabilities of the universal remote.

Announced today, the Logitech Harmony Ultimate is the higher-end version of the two remotes, and is designed for the user who invests a fair amount of money on their home entertainment system.

Priced at $350, the kit includes a 2.4-inch touchscreen-enabled remote, much like the Harmony Touch I reviewed a couple of weeks ago, but with a couple of improvements. It now has a motion sensor, so the display awakens as soon as you pick up the remote. The screen also vibrates when you touch it, to let you know that it has registered your commands.

Meanwhile, the Harmony Smart Control is more of an entry-level model. The remote doesn’t offer a touchscreen, and it only connects up to eight devices, instead of 15 like the Harmony Ultimate. But it’s also cheaper, at $130.

Both remotes come with the new Harmony Hub. This puck-like device serves as an IR blaster, so you can control devices stored inside a media cabinet, and integrated Bluetooth brings support for game consoles like the Sony PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii and Wii U.

Logitech is also thinking beyond traditional home entertainment equipment and remotes. Case in point: All of the Hub’s activities and remote functions can be operated via the Logitech Smartphone App (available on iOS and Android).

Though it doesn’t see conventional remotes going away anytime soon, the company recognizes that most people always have their smartphones within reach, and wanted to give customers the option of turning their mobile into a personal universal remote.

Logitech is also looking to incorporate more smart home features, starting with the Philips Hue Lights. Using Harmony Hub, you can adjust the brightness and color of the Wi-Fi-enabled lightbulbs using the Harmony Ultimate.

Chad Thompson, worldwide marketing director for Logitech, said the company is looking to add support for other home components, like thermostats, in the future.

Logitech announced its plan to sell the Harmony business in January, after reporting disappointing third-quarter earnings. However, a company representative said it will continue to support and develop products until a buyer is found.

The Logitech Harmony Ultimate is expected to be available later this month, while the Harmony Smart Control is scheduled for release in May.

AppGratis Gets the Boot & WhatsApp Ain't Selling: The AllThingsD Week in Review 4/07/13 — 4/13/13

Eric Johnson — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 01:00:32 +0000

For our readers who are not inclined to constantly hit the refresh button, here’s a quick look back at the Top 10 stories that drove AllThingsD this week:

[note: this article is from February, but resurfaced this week]

For more of the week in review, you should follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Who's Paying Aereo to Watch Free TV?

Peter Kafka — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 20:04:50 +0000

Is Aereo legal?

We’ll see.

If Aereo is legal, what does that mean for the TV business?

We’ll see.

Who exactly is Aereo’s target market? Who’s going to pay them $8 a month to watch broadcast TV — but only broadcast TV — on the Web?

Ah. That we can start to answer.

Or, at least, we can see who Aereo thinks is using the service today.

Aereo has yet to talk about how many people are using the service, which is currently only available in the New York City area. But at our D: Dive into Media conference in February, CEO Chet Kanojia sketched out a rough sense of his customers.

Half of them, he said, are either cord-cutters or cord-nevers — people who used to have cable TV or have never signed up for it — and half are people who are still paying for cable.

And now, via a customer survey Aereo is sending out, we can deduce a bit more about Aereo’s sense of itself and its customers. Here’s a screenshot from the survey, which landed in my inbox today:

“Professional working parent” is a pretty broad group of people, I suppose. Same for “sports enthusiast” (though I think those people usually call themselves “fans”). But if you’re like me, you take one look at this list and you have a good sense of the ideal Aereo user — an edge case of some sort or another.

Which doesn’t mean Aereo thinks the business will be small — hence the $63 million it has raised so far. But until there’s a box there labeled “Just a normal person who watches TV like everyone else,” it’s hard to argue that this is aimed at a wide swath of America.

New Threat to Aereo TV

Shalini Ramachandran — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 14:30:03 +0000

The TV industry’s best hope of shutting down TV startup Aereo Inc. anytime soon could rest, bizarrely enough, on a legal case involving something called Aereokiller LLC.

Aereo is the company backed by media mogul Barry Diller that last year began streaming broadcast-TV signals over the Web to New Yorkers for a monthly fee, prompting major TV networks to sue, alleging copyright infringement.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

News Corp. Threatens to Pull Fox off the Airwaves if Aereo Wins

Peter Kafka — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 18:08:38 +0000

Goodbye, free TV?

News Corp. COO Chase Carey said his conglomerate is considering moving programming from its Fox broadcast network, which viewers can receive over the air, for free, to its pay cable networks.

Carey floated the idea during a speech at a TV industry conference today, in response to a recent court ruling that gave startup Aereo the go-ahead, at least temporarily, to show programming from Fox and other broadcasters on its Web TV service, without paying for the shows.

Here’s the money quote, via Variety:

“If we can’t have our rights properly protected through legal and governmental solutions, we will pursue business solutions. One solution would be to take the network and make it a subscription service. We’re not going to sit idly by and let people steal our content.”

If Carey and News Corp. (which also owns this website) follow through on the move, it would be a dramatic response to Aereo, which irks the broadcasters because it threatens billions of dollars in “retransmission” revenue.

The broadcasters get that money from pay TV operators, who pay for the right to carry network programming even though it’s available for free to anyone with antenna.

Moving programming to cable networks, which you can’t get unless you pay a subscription fee, would theoretically protect the value of that programming. But it would presumably come at a cost to Fox, as it would lose access to the 10 percent or so of American TV viewers who don’t have a pay TV subscription.

Given that Aereo and the broadcasters are still duking this out in court, and that Aereo has a small subscriber base at best — for now, it’s only available in the New York area, although the company has a big rollout planned this year — you can probably file this under “sword-rattling aimed at regulators” more than “things Fox actually intends to do.” (Wall Street, meanwhile, likes what Carey has to say.)

But it’s still a fascinating public response. Here’s more, via a News Corp. PR statement:

“News Corporation has a long-standing commitment to the broadcast television business, and to delivering the highest-quality entertainment, sports and news programming to our viewers on a localized basis. We are committed to broadcasting under a business model where programmers receive fair compensation from parties that want to redistribute our product while continuing to make our product available for free to individual consumers that want to access our signal.

“We believe that Aereo is pirating our broadcast signal. We will continue to aggressively pursue our rights in the courts, as well as pursue all relevant political avenues, and we believe we will prevail.

“That said, we won’t just sit idle and allow our content to be actively stolen. It is clear that the broadcast business needs a dual revenue stream from both ad and subscription to be viable. We simply cannot provide the type of quality sports, news, and entertainment content that we do from an ad supported only business model. We have no choice but to develop business solutions that ensure we continue to remain in the driver’s seat of our own destiny. One option could be converting the FOX broadcast network to a pay channel, which we would do in collaboration with both our content partners and affiliates.”

And here’s a statement from Aereo PR rep Virginia Lam:

“Aereo has invented a simple, convenient way for consumers to utilize an antenna to access free-to-air broadcast television, bringing television access into the modern era for millions of consumers. It’s disappointing to hear that Fox believes that consumers should not be permitted to use an antenna to access free-to-air broadcast television. Over 50 million Americans today access television via an antenna. When broadcasters asked Congress for a free license to digitally broadcast on the public’s airwaves, they did so with the promise that they would broadcast in the public interest and convenience, and that they would remain free-to-air. Having a television antenna is every American’s right.”

UPDATE: News Corp. isn’t going alone on this one – while none of the traditional networks have chimed in to support the company’s stance publicly, Spanish-language broadcaster Univision is making the same argument. Here’s a statement from chairman Haim Saban, who is making a habit of aligning himself with Rupert Murdoch.

“Simply put, we believe that Aereo is pirating broadcasters’ content. As Chase Carey said, no broadcaster can afford to sit idly by and allow Aereo’s theft to continue unchecked. To serve our community, we need to protect our product and revenue streams and therefore we too are considering all of our options — including converting to pay TV. With Hispanics watching over-the-air news and entertainment at twice the rate of non-Hispanics, being forced to convert to cable would significantly impact this community.”

And finally, here’s an interview I conducted with Aereo CEO Chet Kanojia in February’s D: Dive into Media conference, where he showed off the service and talked about its long-term programming plans.

[ See post to watch video ]

Google Fiber Is Coming to Austin, Eventually

Arik Hesseldahl — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 16:49:36 +0000

So it’s increasingly looking like Austin, Texas, is going to be the second market for Google Fiber.

Having yesterday sent out invitations to a bunch of reporters about a “very important announcement,” speculation quickly turned to Google Fiber, the one-gigabit service that is about 100 times faster than speeds available from almost any service provider — almost — in the U.S., along with pay TV service.

Local TV station KVUE, an ABC affiliate, finally nailed down the story, citing sources in the city government. (See the video below.) And Engadget briefly spotted overnight an empty post on a Google blog with the headline “Google Fiber’s Next Stop: Austin, Texas,” which was quickly taken down.

So that pretty much answers what the important “something” is. And it certainly makes sense. Austin is certainly the kind of mid-sized community that could benefit from the speed of Google Fiber. There are several tech companies either based in or with significant corporate presences there, including Dell, Apple and Samsung.

But it’s probably going to be a long process before anyone in Austin has the superpipes installed at their house. If Google follows the same path it did in Kansas, it has to first get approval from local regulators to offer pay TV service. In Kansas City, that process started months before Google made its big announcement.

Then it has to select local neighborhoods where it will build out the network. Again, if it follows the same process it did in Kansas City (notably on both sides of the Kansas-Missouri border), it will hold a competition, pushing different sections of town to campaign for the distinction of being among the first. In one case, the Colorado-based venture capitalist Brad Feld bought a house in a Google-Fiber ready neighborhood, and then held a contest, the prize being getting to live in the house.

Once the neighborhoods have been selected, its a matter of waiting on the construction itself to get done, and that will take some time. Hint to Austin residents: Here’s a site you’re going to want to become familiar with: The Google Fiber status update dashboard, where you can either enter your address or click through on a map to see which parts of town are up and running. It’s worth noting that it’s been nearly nine months since the initial announcement in Kansas City, and as yet no installations are expected to begin before the fall of this year.

So, Austinites, be happy that you’re benefiting from Google’s big experiment. But be patient, because it’s probably going to take a while.

Here’s the local TV report from last night:

Google Plans to Announce Something in Austin Next Week

Arik Hesseldahl — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 21:02:43 +0000

Google and the city of Austin, Texas, will be making what they call a “very important announcement” next week — at least, according to a batch of invitations that have been sent to reporters in the last few hours.

VentureBeat is speculating that the company will reveal the next city selected to become part of the Google Fiber project, which the search giant started in the Kansas City area last year. Or that Austin might become the home of the latest Google campus.

In case you missed it, Google’s idea with Google Fiber is to offer smoking-fast 1 gigabit broadband Internet connections — almost but not entirely unique in the US — along with pay TV service, all via its own fiber optic lines.

One reason that it’s probably not Google Fiber is that months before Google made its formal announcement about the service, it first petitioned local regulators to allow it do so, and it was widely covered by the media. (Cable TV rights are, in most states, regulated at the city or county level.) There hasn’t been a peep about regulatory approval for Austin.

What else might it be? A new building? Maybe. There are plenty of tech companies, including Apple and Dell, with big presences in Austin. Or maybe just free Wi-Fi for a few neighborhoods. Google did that in New York City — not the whole city, mind you, just the neighborhood surrounding its massive office in the Chelsea section of Manhattan — earlier this year, and even got Mayor Bloomberg himself to show up at the announcement.

If Google Fiber it is, it may mean that Google is simply announcing its intent to start a process that will include seeking local regulatory approval. Indeed, Austin has been campaigning to be among the next cities to which Google brings its fiber pipes. Here’s a short video in support of that effort starring game developer and space tourist Richard Garriott.

(Image is of this awesome t-shirt from KONG Screenprinting in Austin.)

Trusty Viewers Get Free Video With Ad "Work"

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 22:09:30 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

People will do almost anything to get free digital access to movies and TV shows. One company believes people will even “work” to earn money to pay for this content. The job: Watching ads.

For the past week, I’ve been using HitBliss to watch new movies and episodes of television shows without paying anything. I earned money to pay for them by watching video ads that I chose. HitBliss made sure I was watching the ads by displaying little on-screen prompts for me to click.

An ad for the new movie “42” with a strip below showing ads that can be watched to boost a balance.

I found HitBliss to be a refreshing change from video-watching alternatives, including monthly subscription models like Netflix or free videos on Hulu that intersperse ads most people ignore. On HitBliss, once I watched enough ads to pay for a video, I could forget about ads altogether and enjoy a movie or TV show without interruptions.

HitBliss must be downloaded to a Mac or Windows PC, though a cable can connect a PC and TV for big-screen viewing. It’s still in a beta phase, with a waiting list for interested viewers. For access now, go to http://hitbliss.com/wsj. Android and iOS apps are in the works.

On the downside, HitBliss offers a portion of the catalogs found in stores from Apple and Amazon. Though content is new, including current-season TV episodes and new-release movies, I found fewer than 700 movies and about 140 TV shows (with thousands of episodes) in the HitBliss Store. Shows like AMC’s “Mad Men,” FX’s “The Americans” and PBS’s “Downton Abbey” weren’t available.

Another caveat is you can’t rent or purchase more than seven titles a day using the Earned Pay option, so if you want to binge-watch several seasons of a TV series in one day, you’ll have to pony up the dough for the eighth episode on. (HitBliss takes Visa or MasterCard for payments, just like a regular digital video store.) Earned Pay is acquired in $5 increments before you have to spend your earnings.

HitBliss is divided into two sections: HitBliss Earn, where you view ads to make money; and HitBliss Store, where you find the content you want to watch. A handy History box shows all of the videos you’ve watched, while a Saved section lets you keep TV episodes or movies you might want to watch in the future.

The HitBliss page for “Flight” shows the movie costs $3.99, but the user only has a balance of $2.50, shown in the lower right.

Your HitBliss trust level rises or falls depending on how conscientious you are about clicking on the pop-up prompts, and this trust level affects how many pop-ups you see and how fast you earn money. If I muted my computer, turned the volume down too low or navigated to another window, the ad stopped. If I missed a prompt, my earnings stopped accruing and my HitBliss trust level dropped, resulting in seeing these pop-ups more often.

If you want to earn money faster, you can give HitBliss ad partners access to personal information like Web-search history, Web-browser history, current location, age, gender, income, education and children’s ages. If you don’t want to spend money on videos, you can have a check mailed to you or have HitBliss donate the money to a charity of your choosing.

I started out by opting into the slowest Earned Pay pace, which didn’t let advertisers know any of my personal information. Only a handful of companies (around five or six, depending on the week) are currently advertising on HitBliss, so I saw quite a few of the same Dr Pepper and Aflac commercials.

But waiting for the little pop-up attention tests added a game-like quality to watching ads. The faster I clicked on the prompts, the more trust I earned, giving me more points and money.

Oddly, the HitBliss Earn video player doesn’t display how much money you’ve earned as you go. Instead, it shows five rectangles in the bottom right of the screen, which the company’s founder, Sharon Peyer, says represent a dollar per rectangle. When I earned $5, a message popped up saying I had reached the maximum balance.

At this point, users can’t watch any more ads and can navigate back to the HitBliss Store where TV shows cost $1.99 an episode and 24-hour movie rentals range from $1.99 to $3.99.

The first time I used my earnings, I bought the pilot episode of the thrilling crime show “The Following” for $1.99. On the pay screen, I could choose to use either my Earned Pay or credit card. All HitBliss content is only available in standard definition and not high definition, but I didn’t miss HD. The video — like the most recent episode of “The Mentalist” — looked crisp and clear.

The HitBliss viewing experience was good. I especially liked being able to rewind or fast-forward to the exact second of a show, using a slide bar. I experienced a few instances of slow buffering on my typical home Verizon DSL Internet connection, including one that lasted 15 seconds. Otherwise, video streamed easily with few delays and HitBliss auto-adjusted the quality of my video stream according to my connection. Video can be watched in a small- or full-screen view, and captions can be turned on or off.

I rented the DreamWorks animated movie “Rise of the Guardians” for $3.99 and rated it after I was finished. These ratings, which include funny canned comments you can click on or your manually added comments, can be shared with other friends on the service, or via Facebook and Twitter.

If you’re tired of paying for video, HitBliss offers a smart solution that doesn’t take much work for the rewards. Just prepare yourself for its current limitations.

Email Katie at katie.boehret@wsj.com.

Barry Diller and Aereo Win Another Legal Battle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[ See post to watch video ]

AEREO decision –

Here's Why You Hate Your Cable Company

Peter Kafka — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 11:00:38 +0000

Hate your cable TV (or satellite TV, or telco TV) company? Here’s why — and why it’s not going to change anytime soon — explained in 98 concise seconds.

Hard to believe no one has done this before, but kudos to Extremely Decent Films for nailing it.

Warning: If your workplace or home isn’t cool with some well-placed profanity, then this video isn’t safe for your workplace or home.

Netflix Taps "Matrix" Makers for New Series

Peter Kafka — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 18:55:10 +0000

Here’s the newest high-profile foray into original content from Netflix: A deal with “Matrix” creators Andy and Lana Wachowski for a new sci-fi series.

Netflix describes “Sense8” as “a gripping global tale of minds linked and souls hunted,” so who knows what that means. But we should expect to see it toward the end of 2014, the video company says.

Like other original content deals, Netflix isn’t creating the show in-house, but is funding an outside production company — in this case, Reliance Entertainment’s Georgeville Television — to make the show so it can debut exclusively on the site.

As you are very well aware, Netflix debuted “House of Cards,” the Kevin Spacey/David Fincher series, last month, and in May will show off a new season of “Arrested Development.” In between those two, Netflix has another original on tap — next month it will debut “Hemlock Grove,” a horror series from director Eli Roth.

Meanwhile, Amazon, which is increasingly competing with Netflix for both content and press attention, is working on its own originals strategy by funding a slew of TV-like pilot episodes, which it will stream for free on its own site, and will eventually order up a full slate of shows from that pool.

Meanwhile, back to the Wachowskis: The Netflix deal doesn’t mean they’re getting out of the movie business, though their last few non-“Matrix” efforts haven’t worked out at the box office. They’re slated to start work on a new film, “Jupiter Ascending,” for Warner Bros. next month.

Why Netflix Money May Be Expensive for Viacom

Peter Kafka — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 14:22:23 +0000

Like lots of other Big Media companies, Viacom has seen a flood of new revenue show up from digital services in the past few years, primarily via Netflix and Viacom.

At first blush this seems like the best-case scenario for Viacom and every other Big Media player: Netflix, et al, pay a lot of money for shows the networks have already aired, and that money is almost pure profit.

And in some cases the story gets even better, as Netflix claims that for shows like AMC’s “Mad Men,” the reruns it carries boost the ratings for the show’s new episodes, as binge watchers/catch-up watchers become new fans.

But Bernstein analyst Todd Juenger is convinced that, at least for kids’ programmers, and Viacom in particular, the Netflix deals are bad ones, because they train Netflix subscribers and their kids to watch the shows on the Internet instead of on TV.

This makes intuitive sense to people like me, who have kids who watch a ton of Viacom shows — and almost never watch them on TV. Viacom has said that this isn’t the case, but today Juenger has a new note making the same argument, with new data.

Here’s what happened to ratings for kids’ programming last year, split up by homes that have Netflix and those without. Note that the only case where a network did better in a non-Netflix household was Time Warner’s Cartoon Network, which didn’t have a syndication deal with Netflix until January 2013:

Smile: People Like Your Picture More Than Your Words

Chas Edwards — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 21:41:34 +0000

On March 7, Facebook announced a major overhaul to its News Feed, the scrolling page of friend-news where we spend the bulk of our Facebook time. The central change: Facebook is making room for bigger pictures.

It’s a logical move when you look at the data. In November 2011, one-fifth of posts uploaded to newsfeeds were photos. Today, every other status update is a photo. My math friends tell me it that it’s hard to meaningfully show percentage gains when you start with a really big number. Even with my quantitative limitations, I have to believe Facebook qualifies. Last year it told investors (as part of its IPO roadshow) that users were uploading more than 300 million photos every single day, and from that very large starting point photo activity just jumped 150 percent in 15 months. So much for the law of large numbers.

If you’re a brand, though, it’s not the fact that photo-enabled devices will soon outnumber humans on the planet, or that we’re piping all those pictures into social media. The important trend is that consumers are looking at them. In other words, your art-directed fashion spreads have a lot more competition these days.

There was a time when professional photography had a monopoly on our attention. When mass media meant national magazines, TV networks and big-city newspapers, only deep-pocketed corporations could afford access to large audiences. Back then it made economic sense to build your story around professional-grade photography: A single print ad would reach millions of readers, so a few tens of thousands of dollars spent on art and photography chewed up only a negligible percentage of a campaign’s costs. And for a few generations, this approach worked great.

It turns out, though, that cost-to-produce and magnitude-of-consumer-delight don’t plot analogous curves in an Excel graph. In fact, it’s hard to find a direct correlation between the two. A photo that captures something important or interesting or timely wins our attention — regardless of who took it or how much it cost to make. It also turns out the spans of our attention are shrinking. Google economist Hal Varian observed as far back as 2010 — before SnapChat, and back when we uploaded a mere 30 million photos to Facebook every day — that we pay less attention to stuff when we consume it online. “The average amount of time looking at online news is about 70 seconds, while the average amount of time spent reading the physical newspaper is about 25 minutes a day.”

So corporate storytellers need to master a new narrative technique. It’s as if they need to shed those florid sentences that played so well in Victorian novels and dial it down to the Hemingway-esque. The good news: This new approach to storytelling still employs a language in which brands are fluent: Photos. There are three ways that brands should modify their visual storytelling.

One, feeds move faster than print magazines, so you need to tell your story in a series of frequent episodes, anecdotes and updates — not the grand gestures of Ogilvy or Draper. Photos are the currency of social media, but it’s a currency doled out in nickels, not twenty-dollar bills.

Two, let photos do more of the talking for you. Humans process visual information much faster than we process text. And when we’re online (remember those stats from Hal Varian), we navigate more quickly from story to story. If you’re going to capture attention in a digital landscape, you have to do it fast. So steal a page from the playbooks used by Pinterest, Flipboard, USA Today’s new design or the NYT’s TimesCast: Use visual content instead of words to invite consumers into the story.

Three — need I say it? — let them interact with your story, let them re-mix your assets and choose their own adventures. Let them steal your photos so they can more easily share them with friends. Let them explore inside your images to find links to products, deals and related links. And let them contribute their own. If the Web conversation is going visual, encourage them to talk to you in the local dialect — images snapped on their phones looking for a place to be uploaded.

Chas Edwards joined Luminate, the worldwide leader in interactive images, in 2010 as chief revenue officer and head of publisher development. Prior to Luminate, Chas served as publisher and CRO at Digg, and before that he was the co-founder (with John Battelle), publisher and chief revenue officer at Federated Media Publishing (FM), a next-generation media and publishing company that develops content marketing strategies for leading brand marketers. He blogs at http://ChasNote.com and @chasnote.

HBO Explains Why It's Not Going A La Carte Anytime Soon

Peter Kafka — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 13:36:01 +0000

Buy HBO without paying for cable TV? To a bunch of you, that sounds very exciting. But it’s not happening anytime soon.

On Wednesday, HBO CEO Richard Plepler floated the notion of letting broadband providers — the same people who sell you cable TV — sell HBO as a standalone add-on to your Internet bill.

It’s not the first time the HBO guys have talked about how that might work. But the pay TV company isn’t actually talking to the cable/broadband guys about doing that, according to people at HBO and at its parent company Time Warner.

So, could it happen one day? Sure, I guess. But not for a long time, because right now the current system — where HBO (and Showtime) are only available to pay TV customers who also buy a lot of other TV channels — works well for the guys who own the shows, and the guys who own the pipes.

But even if we do get to a world where HBO lets you buy HBO without paying for other cable networks, it’s important to note that it’s still not talking about a direct-to-consumer, Netflix-style proposition. Instead, it wants the pipe guys to handle all of the retailing, including the marketing that Time Warner Cable is doing for HBO right now (and was doing for Showtime a few months ago):

If you want a longer explanation of why HBO likes the wholesale/retail set up, watch this interview with HBO COO Eric Kessler from our D: Dive Into Media conference last month. He goes into extensive detail about HBO’s rationale for the status quo, starting around the four-minute mark.

Note that, like Plepler, he leaves the door open for a broadband-only option one day — but argues that the market is “too small” to contemplate breaking up the bundle today. (And if you keep watching, you’ll see why he thinks Netflix-style “binge viewing” is overstated).

[ See post to watch video ]

The Battle for the Living Room Is Over -- The War for the Consumer Is On

P.J. McNealy — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 21:19:07 +0000

The ultimate goal for consumer electronics companies 10 years ago? Control the consumer living room experience. That way, they could control consumer identities, consumer experiences, consumer credit cards and commerce — business model nirvana as consumers in markets such as the United States were upgrading from clunky cathode-ray televisions to the new, slim, high-definition TVs. Key players in this battle? Sony, Panasonic, Sharp, Nintendo and Microsoft.

Fast forward to today: The battle for the living room is already over, and the overall war for the consumer is on. Key players in this big war? Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Samsung and LG. Sony, Panasonic, Sharp and Nintendo? By and large on the outside looking in, wondering how the vision for living room dominance blew up.

When do we stop calling them phones or tablets or TVs?
Thanks to Moore’s Law, the advancements in storage, battery life, screen display, processing power and improved networks in the past 10 years have allowed numerous “screens” to become pervasive in a consumer’s daily life. These screens are ubiquitous, and not typically locked to a location, except TVs. Consumers spend time on phones, tablets and notebooks both in the home and while mobile.

We are rapidly iterating devices to simply be powerful screens connected to the Internet, connected to clouds. The main question for a consumer will soon be, “Which size screen will I use in the car? On the train? In rooms in my house?” That answer will be driven by which hardware vendors have aggregated the best services for consumers, coupled with a compelling user interface (UI), frictionless commerce opportunities and social and communications layers built in.
The reality today is that consumers can do nearly the exact same things on a device with a 4-inch, 8-inch, 12-inch, 15-inch or 20-inch screen. There will naturally be some functions that will be more appropriate on one screen size over another, but interchangeability is already here.

So who is leading in the war to control the consumer?
The single biggest key to everything? Control the UI on the connected screens. Companies who control the UI will then dictate how software is accessed, and which software. Making a compelling, fun, friendly UI is considered to be a very special sauce — rarely made and hard to do.

As shown in the chart above, most of the leading companies for controlling consumer interactions have at least a decent UI. Apple clearly leads the way, but Amazon and Google have made strides with improved UI. Microsoft took a big step forward with the Windows 8 UI, and Facebook has worked on improving its UI on both laptops and mobile.

If you take the same chart and substitute the companies for the countries of origin as shown in the second chart, the subtle trend of UI success becomes clear — companies based in Silicon Valley and in the greater Seattle area are dominating, and Japan-based companies are seriously lagging. While the hardware manufacturing base may still be in Japan and Korea, UI and software development are still based in the U.S.

To this point, efforts have been made by both Japanese and Korean companies to build a presence in Silicon Valley. Nintendo moved many of its operations from Redmond, Wash., down to Silicon Valley in an effort to become more in touch with connected companies and potential partners. Earlier in February, Samsung announced plans to open up a research and development (R&D) center in Silicon Valley as well, largely focused on software — with an assumption for UI development, too. For all Samsung’s dominance in phones, memory, TVs and appliances, UI has not been a strength.

While much of the focus today is on phones, tablets, laptop and TV screens, part of the connected consumer idea will soon include connected appliances. Remote management of the oven, inventory management for food in the refrigerator, or remote management of home security or heating systems are going to become more mainstream. It’s not quite a Star Trek-type leap of faith, but software solutions will have to be built for the TV and the fridge. Samsung, given its pole position in many hardware solutions, would have great potential in these expanded connected devices, but it is still early. Hence, the investment in a Silicon Valley lab could prove hugely strategic over the next 10 years.

How do TV manufacturers change to stay competitive? How does Japan stay relevant in a connected world?
Partnerships are going to be more critical than ever because software development and UI are not core strengths for many Japanese-based consumer electronics companies. However, partnerships with non-Japan based companies are rare, and a huge challenge is to change the corporate culture of many Japanese companies. Many of these companies are engineering-driven cultures with long-standing histories of making successful products over the past 50 years. Unfortunately, the analog age of standalone devices is over, and the connected, digital world awaits. For many companies, it’ll mean partner or perish.

P.J. McNealy is founder of consulting firm Digital World Research and has conducted research in the technology and gaming sectors for 15 years. He authored “Early Days: The Market for Social Gaming and Facebook’s Potential Achilles’ Heel,” in May 2013; it is available on Amazon.com.