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Masters Golf an Online Hole-in-One
Talk all you want about the online viewership stats for the NCAA basketball tournament — in my book, the Masters golf event is a much better workday time-waster, for several production and sport-inherent reasons.
If you don’t like golf or don’t care about Tiger Woods’ quest for the Grand Slam, I can’t help you there. But even casual followers of the sport should at least check out the live online coverage, especially the focused segments from “Amen Corner,” the famed stretch of holes #11, #12 and #13 at Augusta National. The widescreen option and excellent camera work — and did we mention no commercial breaks? — makes for a relaxing day of golf-coverage consumption while just an alt-tab away from real work. In my mind, golf is a better fit than basketball for the small screen since there is only one golfer to zoom in on (as opposed to 10 players), with more-predictable action for the cameras to follow. Plus the announcers give you handy audio cues (”here’s Tiger for birdie”) that allow you to switch from work in time to catch the onscreen action.
Crowe: Online Video Will Keep Fiber’s Future Full
Given its proximity to the Broomfield, Colo., headquarters of Level 3, there’s always a good chance that the Silicon Flatirons telecom conference will get a visit from Jim Crowe, Level 3’s CEO. He made the short drive up Hwy. 36 on Monday afternoon for a well-reasoned talk about long-term trends in communications that had several key takeaways, including one that says demand for online video means backbone service providers won’t be going out of business anytime soon.
As one of the bigger communications infrastructure providers, Level 3 knows itself some Internet video — according to Crowe, IP-based video today accounts for between 60 and 70 percent of all the traffic on Level 3’s fiber. Read more over at GigaOM.
Paul Kapustka, former managing editor for GigaOM, now has his own blog at Sidecut Reports.
More ‘Niche’ Sports Content Headed Online
With professional leagues clamping down on the amount of game footage news and broadcast outlets can use (and yeah, we told you this might happen), programmers are looking hard at niche or ancillary content to beef up their online offerings. Perhaps a bit surprisingly, such content is finding not only ready eyeballs, but also eager advertisers, a win-win idea if we’ve ever heard one.
Neokast Beta Ready to Test
The P2P streaming video startup Neokast is scheduled to release its beta program today at 9 p.m. Chicago time, according to the company’s blog. Neokast, which we’ve written about a couple times before, says its QuicKast client “allows anyone to stream live to a broadcast, Internet scale audience.”
We haven’t tested the software yet but Bob Cringely (who first wrote about NeoKast) has, and likes what he sees so far.
Saturday Morning Vid-Biz Headlines
Fresh off the NewTeeVee news ticker, headlines from the world of online video:
Disney Gets $1.5 B from Internet Group, sees more future growth in content. (Media Post)
EA Sells ‘Sims’ Movie Rights, to 20th Century Fox. (Variety/Reuters)
Fiber Vendors Tout Triple Play, selling carriers on IPTV and video-on-demand services. (Light Reading)
SureWest picks WideVine for IPTV Security, another win for DRM platform. (Telephony)
IPTV Subscribers to hit 60 Million, by 2011 says recent survey. (Converge!)
Friday Morning Vid-Biz Headlines
Fresh off the NewTeeVee news ticker, headlines from the world of online video:
CBS Partners with Social Networks, Community Sites, will allow content to be embedded, shared across a wide range of platforms (here’s the press release list: new deals with Automattic, Clearspring, DAVE Networks, Goowy Media, meebo, MeeVee, Musestorm, Ning, RockYou!, Slide, VideoEgg, Voxant and vSocial; expanded deals signed with AOL, Brightcove, Netvibes and Veoh). (CBS press release)
DTV Transition Could Mean Old TV Trash Heap, as viewers pitch old sets in favor of new, digital and high-def boxes. (LA Times)
HP Touts HDTV, Movie downloads, in new versions of screens and media-server PCs due out later this year. (Dealerscope)
Court Upholds Initial Rigas Convictions, putting former cable magnates John Rigas and son Timothy a step closer to jail. (Light Reading)
Telefonica Turns On Narrowstep for IPTV, sees 300,000 viewers in Spain test of service. (Converge)
Leak of Crash Video Spurs N.J. Turnpike Crackdown, will now limit which employees have access to security cameras. (NJ Star-Ledger)
Thursday Morning Vid-Biz Headlines
Fresh off the NewTeeVee news ticker, headlines from the world of online video:
Turner Classic to Launch ‘Classic’ Films Portal, with shorts, clips and trailers. (Reuters/Hollywood Reporter)
Charter Offers Home-Networking Help, for a $9.99 per month fee to its cable and broadband subscribers. (Light Reading)
NCAA Football Game Fans will get Real-Time Weather, part of EA Arts online features. (LA Times)
Indy 500 Available Live on Web, for $9.99 through MediaZone. (Company Site)
Fooooo, Japan-based Multilingual Video Search, Raises Funding, $35K for an index of 28 million videos. (alarm:clock)
The Force is with Eyespot in ‘Star Wars’ Clips Deal
The latest big-name content producer to team with Eyespot Corp. for authorized online mashups of video clips is a biggie — George Lucas’ Lucasfilms, which will release a treasure trove of Star Wars clips for fan mashups Thursday at Starwars.com.
While Eyespot co-founder David Dudas emailed us Wednesday night to say a press release was on the way, we were already reading the deets of the deal online, in a story set to appear in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal.
Quickly: There will be about 250 clips, some as long as a minute in length, and mashups can be shared and embedded elsewhere (all details courtesy of the WSJ story). Eyespot will monitor videos to help keep things clean (no nudity, profanity, etc.), and of course there will be pre-roll advertising. (Silly photo courtesy of the Starwars.com site, which has had authorized still-photo mashups for the past year.)
Wednesday Morning Vid-Biz Headlines
Fresh off the NewTeeVee news ticker, headlines from the world of online video:
CNN Says ‘Pipeline’ Videos Will be Free, gives up on trying to charge for premium online content. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
Mitsubishi Puts More TV in Frame, with new thin bezel for bigger LCD displays. (Electronic House)
Denver Suburb Cool to Qwest’s IPTV Plans, wants full buildout and not only service in affluent areas. (Rocky Mountain News)
CNN Invests in Local-News Producer, will share content with Internet Broadcasting and its local-news websites. (CNet)
Video is Still the Killer App, says Cisco CEO Chambers, claiming it will drive networking growth exponentially. (Light Reading)
Roo’s Revenues Jump Up 68 Percent, but loss hits $6.5 million for first quarter. (Media Post)
Google Launching AdSense for Video
Finally, an answer as to how Google is going to help online publishers monetize video assets, just like they do now with blogs: AdSense for video, where publishers of online video can choose streaming video ads, and also select where they appear in their online videos.
The pilot program, announced Wednesday on the AdSense blog, is closed, according to the Google blog entry. (Anyone who is participating who wants to talk, contact us via comments below!) The AdSense for video effort follows closely on the heels of Google experimenting with inline ads on YouTube, a story Liz scooped out a couple weeks ago.
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