Networks & Studios
Want to Watch the Britney Spears Documentary Online? Not So Fast
You know it’s the attention that keeps building Britney Spears up and tearing her back down, but you just can’t turn away. Now the pop star is trying to climb back up the charts, so she’s inviting you back in once again. Spears produced a documentary about herself (an auto-documentary?) on the Britney-friendly cable network MTV (which is rather pretentiously calling it a “film”). The TV airing starts at 10 p.m. tonight. As for posting the full thing online? Nope, not for now. MTV just has five different trailers and some behind-the-scenes clips (which are accompanied by interstitial commercials for Spears’ “Fantasy” perfume).
The full show won’t be posted online until Dec. 3 at 8 p.m. ET, according to the official page on MTV. MTV is usually one of the most liberal networks when it comes to syndicating its content, but it gets protective when it comes to the Britney goldmine. Last year, hanging onto the exclusive distribution of Britney’s train wreck of a performance at the Video Music Awards netted MTV 7 million visitors over the next two days.
Needless to say, the most memorable moments will be popping up on YouTube and gossip blogs in no time — though Viacom’s copyright police will just as surely be playing whack-a-mole trying to bring them down.
Joost Launches iPhone App
Joost launched an iPhone app over the holiday break, making its P2P web TV service mobile. With the app, users can watch Joost’s content library of more than 46,000 videos on the go for free. The service streams video over Wi-Fi connections and not over the phone’s EDGE or 3G network. The content available is a mix of full-length movies like Men in Black, music videos and TV shows.
VentureBeat had some troubles with the app’s video playback being choppy. CNET praised the app as falling “just short of greatness,” lamenting the lack of decent content.
These outlets have frothed over the prospect of a Hulu app running on the iPhone with all its premium content. But the bigger wildcard may be YouTube, which is already on the iPhone and is making aggressive moves to acquire premium content with the likes of CBS and MGM.
Mobile video has bigger problems than what content is available. Finding a solid signal to stream a full-length movie while on the go is a dicey proposition (hello, train tunnel!). Even Joost’s Wi-Fi solution requires you to stay near your connection, limiting your “mobility.” In a conversation this morning, Liz called the Joost iPhone app “cute,” but thinks they should focus their efforts on the living room. While I agree with her, I like the notion that we are inching (no matter how slowly) to a world where we can pull down a video wherever we may be. Baby steps.
Vid-Biz: TVTonic, Mobuzz, TiVo
TVTonic Shuts Down Service; popular Windows Media Center application that moved content from your PC to the TV being retired. (Zatz Not Funny!)
Mobuzz TV Closes; popular European online video show couldn’t afford to keep going, closes down. (Mobuzz)
The Economics of TiVo; how much is the time freed up by zapping commercials worth to you? (Freakonomics Blog)
Some Sony Flicks Return to Netflix-Xbox; licensing deals cause some titles to come and go on the Netflix streaming service. (CNET)
Big Love Webisodes Being Released This Weekend; three episodes of 3 Days Past Midnight to debut on Saturday in advance of the HBO series’ return in January. (Reel Pop Blog)
2 Billion Online Videos Watched in France in Sept.; 25 million people (77.8 percent of the population) watched 156 million hours of video content online. (comScore)
ABC: Original Online Shows Not Our Thing
Give an Ugly Betty fan more Ugly Betty, and attracting viewers to your online video is like shooting fish in a barrel. Millions of views, at your service. But “purely original” web content hasn’t worked nearly as well for ABC as leveraging TV programs like Betty with webisodes, said Alexis Rapo, who runs ABC.com, at our NewTeeVee Live conference. So the network is funneling its efforts toward leveraging its existing brands.
ABC hasn’t always been so down on original online shows. In fact, it has its own original content studio, Stage 9. ABC has done two web original programs to date: Squeegees, a project from web video makers Handsome Donkey, which from all accounts was hindered by too much network input (our story), and Voicemail, a light concept series in which a guy acts out actual voicemails (our review).
Since then, Stage 9 hasn’t exactly been prolific. As far as we know, it still has the sci-fi epic Trenches in the can. It also promised a second season Voicemail earlier this year, but I can’t find it online. So where will original projects be distributed? “At this time I don’t think there are any plans to run them on ABC.com,” said an ABC spokesperson.
Vid-Biz: Sling.com, Hulu, Apple
Sling Launches Video Portal; hardware maker’s Sling.com features content from Warner Bros., Sony, MGM, CBS and more. (See our previous coverage.)
Hulu Users Prefer Front-Loading Ads; 88 percent choose to watch a two-minute ad prior to the program in exchange for no ads during the content. (Advertising Age)
Apple (Kinda) Fixes External Display Problem; update allows standard definition content to be played from laptops to external monitors. (MacRumors)
Verismo to Launch its Set-Top Box in December; the VuNow will cost $149 for the premium HD version, one of its hardware partners is Netgear. (PC Magazine) See video of Verismo CEO, Prakash Bhalerao explaining the Verismo platform from his talk at NewTeeVee Live.
Warner Bros. Re-Ups TMZ; show spawned from Hollywood gossip web site gets two more seasons. (MediaWeek)
Eight Million Homes Not Ready for DTV Switch; Nielsen finds that 7.4 percent of TV households are not prepared, down from 7.7 percent in October. (Broadcasting & Cable)
VGTRK to Stream Programming Online; Russia’s state-run television holding company will show content on Mail.ru and split the ad revenue. (Variety)
Vid-Biz: Magnify.net, AT&T, Jathia
Magnify.net Raises $750K; Innovation Ventures led this Series A1 round for the video publishing company. (Silicon Alley Insider)
AT&T’s Viral Series Not So Viral; Lost in America stars iJustine, but is not attracting lots of eyeballs. (Advertising Age)
Open-Source Movie Lets Fans in on the Action; footage from Jathia’s Wager will be uploaded and fans can edit together their own version of the movie. (io9)
Universal Music Group Hooks Up With Meebo; agreement will deliver ad-supported videos from UMG acts like Kanye West and Ludacris to the online chat platform. (release)
Hulu Adds to HD Gallery; episodes of The Office, 30 Rock and Heroes now streaming in high-definition on the site. (Broadcasting & Cable)
Dori Media Group Taps Kaltura; open-source white-label video service to power Novebox.com, a new social network dedicated to telenovelas. (emailed release)
Warner Premiere and Bryan Singer Do H+
Warner Premiere, a digital content production division at Warner Bros., will team up with director Bryan Singer’s (The Usual Suspects) production company, Bad Hat Harry Productions, to create the new live-action sci-fi series H+.
The Hollywood Reporter writes that John Cabrera and Cosimo De Tommaso will executive produce and write the show. Singer will not be serving as director, however, so the production will be searching for one of those, as well as a cast.
H+ reportedly revolves around people who hardwire their brains to the Internet and the aftermath of a cyber terrorist attack that wipes many of them out.
Up to this point, Warner Premiere has focused on motion comics, such as Batman: Mad Love, Watchmen and Peanuts. Its slate is expected to be more balanced with live-action series going forward.
Warner will have to leverage Singer’s name, as it has chosen a crowded genre to get into. Sci-fi series are all the digital rage these days. NBC has Gemini Division, Disney’s Stage 9 will be releasing Trenches and 60Frames is doing Ark, to name just a few.
Network TV and the Web: Fox’s Take
This has been the year TV networks finally embraced the web. As 2008 wraps up, nearly every broadcaster posts its shows online within half a day of first airing them on TV. And the audience for such programming is growing, especially among desirable younger demographics. Twelve percent of teens and 11 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds watch online TV at least once a week, respectively, as compared to 4 percent of 35- to 64-year-olds, according to Knowledge Networks.
But network strategies aren’t cut from the same cloth. For instance, ABC employs a dedicated premium player, for which users must download a plug-in, and mandates that even official partners send users to the player to watch its long-form content. Meanwhile, Hulu, a project from News Corp. and NBC Universal, has made freely embeddable content the norm, allowing online publishers large and small to publish snippets, full episodes and even movies from its library, and in some cases share ad revenue.
There’s no real public measure of which particular network is tops in online streaming, though Hulu (which now has more than 100 content providers) does have a significant traffic lead, rising to the No. 6 video site in the 8 months since its launch, according to Nielsen, and seeing an 87 percent increase in unique visitors from September to October, according to comScore. It’s instructive to consider each network’s overall strategy holistically, and we recently got a chance to do that with Fox, which sent Hardie Tankersley, who leads online strategy for Fox Broadcasting, to our NewTeeVee Live conference.
Vid-Biz: Disney, YouTube HD, Diggnation
Disney Fights Piracy on Site it Funded; 56.com, funded by Steamboat Ventures had bootlegged Disney content like full-length copies of WALL-E up on the site. (The Wall Street Journal)
YouTube Testing HD Videos; video giant stealthily trying out the higher quality 720p format. (Epicenter Blog) CNET teaches how to tweak your YouTube embeds for HD playback.
BitGravity Launches Multi-View, Will Be Used on Diggnation; viewers can choose from five different simultaneous video streams of the show. (emailed release)
BBC’s Local Video Plan Blocked; regulators say the the $100 million project to add video bulletins to 65 local UK web sites would hurt video efforts of struggling local newspapers. (paidContent)
DVD Sales Are Down; sales of the shiny discs off 9 percent during the third quarter, Blu-Ray’s prospects even bleaker. (The New York Times)
Justin Timberlake’s SNL Skit Pulled Because of Music Clearances; embeds of the Single Ladies sketch did disappear, but not because Timberlake wanted more money. (LA Times)
Mr. Internet Wants to Be the “Talk Soup” of Web Culture; created by agency Crispin, Porter + Bogusky show will collect all manner of web-based stories and air on Plum TV. (MediaWeek)
ComScore: NBC, Hulu Had Big Gains in October
We knew Tina Fey’s impersonations of former V-P candidate Sarah Palin helped boost the online video fortunes of NBC and Hulu, and now we know just how much of a bump each site got in October, when the election was in full swing.
According to comScore, Hulu went from 2.85 million unique visitors in September to 5.34 million uniques in October, for an 87 percent increase. NBC Universal jumped from 16 million uniques in September to almost 24.8 million uniques in October, for a 33 percent jump. Further, NBC’s online Saturday Night Live channel shot up 85 percent to 4.4 million visitors in October.
Of course, it wasn’t all Fey-lin’s doing. The Palin-Biden and Obama McCain debates were live-streamed during October as well.
The question becomes, how much of that new traffic will Hulu and NBC be able to hang onto now that the election is over?
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