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Wimbledon? More Like Wimble-Done Already!
I’m in the midst of moving, so I’m stuck in between mountains of cardboard boxes and molehills of bubble wrap this holiday weekend. That means I have little access to the Internet and television and, by extension, the Wimbledon semi-finals. Evidently, NBC forgot the “live” part of its online live-streaming and is delaying the televised and online coverage, a tactic NBC CEO Jeff Zucker is fond of (tape-delayed Olympics, anyone?).
East coast bloggers are particularly perturbed:
Staci D. Kramer (the “D” is for “Damn you, Jeff Zucker!”) at paidContent writes:
I’m sitting outside on a lovely Friday morning, sipping a cup of tea and catching up on the news. What’s wrong with this picture? It’s the final Friday of Wimbledon and I’m reduced to either watching a pirated feed from a place where the broadcasters value live sports or following the Andy Roddick-Andy Murray match vicariously through Twitters and live blogs. That’s because NBC Universal (NYSE: GE) values the Today Show more than live sports and, or at least, more than this live sport and its fans, and NBC Sports has the right to “save” a match for its exclusive window.
And Henry Blodget, who seems ready to bludgeon Zucker, writes over at Silicon Alley Insider:
Following on its disastrous “coverage” of the Wimbledon quarterfinals, NBC is now wrecking the Wimbledon semifinals.
Andy Murray and Andy Roddick are a tight first set (Roddick’s up 4-3). ESPN, which owns the rights for this hour, can’t show the match on TV because NBC won’t let them.
NBC, meanwhile, refuses to show the match online, because that might dilute its TV audience when it finally bothers to put Wimbledon on the air.
If NBC’s coverage was a tennis match, this would be a double fault.
Dailymotion Names New CEO, Says Outgoing One Was Interim
Dailymotion announced today that Cedric Tournay has been named its new CEO. Tournay replaces Ian Brotherston, who had only held the post since April. Brotherston will stay on with the company but will move over to become executive vice president of international strategy.
MediaPost reports that Dailymotion always considered Brotherston’s appointment as CEO as an interim one, though that temporary status was not mentioned at the time. We dug up the April 21, 2009, press release announcing Brotherston as CEO, which didn’t say anything about his being interim:
Dailymotion names Ian Brotherston Chief Executive Officer
Paris – April 21st 2009 – Dailymotion’s Board of Directors has announced today that Ian Brotherston has been appointed to the role of Chief Executive Officer of Dailymotion…
“We are delighted to welcome Ian as new CEO. His strong management experience will help shape Dailymotion as we continue our growth and global expansion. Ian’s primary focus will be to lead Dailymotion in its next phase of development,” says Benoist Grossmann, partner at AGF Private Equity.
N.C. Sewer Monster Is the Summer’s Susan Boyle
The biggest horror hit of the summer may not come from any box-office blockbuster, but rather from video footage taken from a Raleigh, N.C., sewer system. The clip uploaded earlier this week shows a moist, throbbing blob affixed to the inside of a pipe.
The video has been a hit, watched more than 3 million times since June 30 as people tune in to see the curiosity from below just sit there. Pulsating. Waiting for the right moment to stri–aaaaahhhhflghhglhghgglggh!!!
Court Says Dish Users Can Still TiVo DVR Shows
Dish Network subscribers will still be able to use their DVRs (for now) after a federal appeals court yesterday granted a stay of a lower court injunction against the service.
After losing its patent infringement case against TiVo, Dish (formerly known as EchoStar) developed a DVR workaround, but last month a Texas court ruled that this workaround still violated TiVo’s intellectual property. Dish was found in contempt, was ordered to pay TiVo an additional $103 million, and told to disable roughly 4 million DVR receivers on its network within 30 days. Dish was given a temporary stay of that order immediately following the decision.
That temporary stay will last a little longer as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said Dish was able to “demonstrate that it has a substantial case on the merits.”
The case is being expedited, and Dish will now file its opening brief by July 17; TiVo’s brief will come August 25; and Dish’s reply is due September 4.
Joost to Become a White-Label Provider, Volpi Steps Down as CEO
Joost announced today that it is shifting business strategies and it “will focus on providing white label online video platforms for media companies, including cable and satellite providers, broadcasters and video aggregators.” As part of this transition, Mike Volpi will step down as CEO and Matt Zelesko, who is currently the senior VP of engineering, will take over while still leading the engineering team. Volpi will remain chairman of the board.
What makes this move seem all the more doomed is that Joost is already enlisting another white-label video provider, Ooyala, to manage its ingesting, transcoding and metadata management. How exactly will Joost pitch itself as a competitor to Ooyala (where Volpi is also on the board) when it uses Ooyala itself?
Joost said it will maintain a core team in New York and London to work on the new white-label biz, as well as operating Joost.com. The company will “wind down” operations in its Leiden development center. According to a statement attributed to Volpi, Joost “will say goodbye to many of our colleagues and friends,” which seems like it could not mean anything other than layoffs, but Joost wouldn’t elaborate further or provide specific numbers.
In April, it was rumored that Joost was looking to sell itself and had even talked with Time Warner Cable.
We used to joke here at NTV that becoming a white-label video provider was what a business did when all other strategies failed. And it looks like Joost is no exception. After starting off as a P2P-based app, the company found that requiring a download hampered its ability to gain traction. It then moved to a plug-in and eventually moved completely to a Flash based method for watching web TV.
The Pirate Bay Being Acquired, Going Straight
In what sounds like an elaborate April Fool’s prank, the Swedish software company Global Gaming Factory X (GGF) says it’s in the process of acquiring The Pirate Bay, the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker, for 60 million Swedish kronor ($7.8 million), 30 million Swedish kronor ($3.8 million) of which will be in cash. And if that wasn’t enough, GGF says that after the acquisition is completed in August, it “intends to launch new business models that allow compensation to the content providers and copyright owners.”
In addition to The Pirate Bay acquisition, GGF also said it would be acquiring file-sharing technology company, Peeralism, for 100 million Swedish kronor, at least 50 million Swedish kronor of which will be in cash. From the press release:
“Peerialism has developed a new data distribution technology which now can be introduced on the best known file – sharing site, The Pirate Bay. Since the technology is compatible with the existing it will quickly allow for new values to be created for all key stakeholders and facilitate new business opportunities”, says Johan Ljungberg, CEO Peerialism.
According to its web site, Global Gaming Factory X AB has the biggest network of Internet cafés and gaming centers in the world.
The Pirate Bay was on the losing end of a court case earlier this year. The founders were found guilty of infringing copyright law, sentenced to a year in jail each, and ordered to pay $4.5 million in damages to 17 entertainment companies.
Needless to say, this is huge news and creates a tectonic shift in the world of online piracy. We’ll have more throughout the day.
Update: Janko Roettgers’ analysis: 5 Things to Know About The Pirate Bay Sale
Wednesday update: So What Will Become of The Pirate Bay?
When It Comes to TV Content, Is YouTube Screwed?
Over the past year, YouTube has made a concerted effort to embrace premium content like TV shows to attract ad revenue. But according to a new report from Screen Digest analyst Arash Amel, the video-sharing giant faces an uphill battle as the Hollywood networks and studios gobble up most of the market for ad-supported TV programming online.
In his report “US Networks claim half of free online TV market,” Amel says that the broadcasting and cable business in the U.S. will shed $2 billion in ad revenue by 2013, dropping to $67 billion from $69 billion in 2008. While TV ad dollars go down, there will be an increase in ad revenue generated by TV programming on the web. Amel says that ad-supported, web-based TV programming generated $448 million in revenues in 2008, and the total ad revenues from online entertainment programming, sports, news and events will be more than $1.45 billion by 2013.
Supremes Won’t Hear Cablevision Case, Hello Remote DVRs!
Cablevision can do a victory lap today as the Supreme Court decided to not hear the appeal over the cableco’s remote storage (or “network”) DVR. The decision paves the way for DVR functionality and storage to move from a set-top box in a user’s home to Cablevision’s facilities, where users would access and control recorded content remotely through their TV sets.
The case against Cablevision was brought on by a group of Hollywood studios and networks who claimed that the technology violated their copyrights. After years of working its way through the legal system, the Supreme Court asked the Justice Department to weigh in on the topic in January. In May, the Solicitor General recommended the Supremes not take up the case, and it looks like that advice was heeded.
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