User Experience Could Hamper TV Everywhere Adoption
Questions about the overall user experience could get in the way of mass adoption of TV Everywhere-type services, a panel of TV executives told audiences at today’s Future of Television conference in New York.
While panelists agreed that there is a great opportunity for broadcasters and cable programmers to profit off the availability of broadband video services tied to users’ cable subscriptions, most believed that the success of such services would depend on companies’ execution in rolling them out.
“The biggest risk to the industry is if it’s not done well,” said Dave Evans, senior vice president of broadband for Cablevision’s Rainbow Media Holdings. “If it’s not done well, consumers won’t use it.”
The biggest questions revolve around the overall ease of use for the service, which could hamper adoption if users find it too difficult to authenticate with their ISPs or are unable to reach content that they should have access to.
Vevo Gets a Launch Date
Vevo, the forthcoming music video site from Universal and Sony Music and powered by YouTube, announced via Twitter this afternoon that it is officially launching on Tues. Dec. 8th. Here’s a screen grab of the Tweet:
The only thing missing from Vevo’s Twitter post was a “suck it, Hulu!” (it still would have still been under 140 characters). Last night Hulu announced it was getting into the music video game in a very minimal way with a limited distribution deal with EMI, kicking off with a Norah Jones music video section.
Hurtling Through Space Crashes for Want of Trimming
- Editor rating:
- Premiere: November 2, 2009
- Length: 10-13 minutes
- Budget: Medium
- Cast
-
- Mike: Michael Davies
- Stuart: Stuart Papp
- Crew
-
- Director: Michael Davies
The series, marking a definite shift in tone from the team who created Streamy-nominated drama After Judgment, charts the adventures of Mike (Michael Davies) and Stuart (Stuart Paap), two beer-swilling dudes flying about through space in a ship that looks like a modern two-bedroom apartment. How does the apartment manage interstellar travel? What are these guys supposed to be doing aside from ridding space of “annoying creatures” (which makes them sound like the astronaut equivalent of exterminators)? No freaking clue. The main point of the show is to fling about sci-fi references, goof around with toy weapons, and talk about boobs, while facing foes like a monstrous pile of dirty laundry, a planet filled with oddly timed bombs, and Comicbook Orange’s Casey McKinnon in an upcoming guest appearance.
Unfortunately, while Hurtling means well, the series is uneven, specifically because the show is at its best when the guys are just being guys, and there’s no serious effort being made to spoof sci-fi franchises. Read more of this story
Nielsen: Facebook Now the No. 3 Video Site
Looks like the sleeping online video giant that is Facebook may finally have awoken. According to Nielsen’s latest VideoCensus numbers, Facebook jumped to No. 3 behind established video powerhouses YouTube and Hulu in terms of total streams. That’s up from No. 10 just last month. Facebook generated more than 217 million streams in October to more than 31.5 million unique viewers, up from 110 million streams to 23 million viewers in September.
| Video Brand | Total Streams (000) | Unique Viewers (000) |
|---|---|---|
| YouTube | 6,632,964 | 105,923 |
| Hulu | 632,662 | 13,472 |
| 217,765 | 31,594 | |
| MSN/WindowsLive/Bing | 183,556 | 17,301 |
| Yahoo! | 173,482 | 24,265 |
| Fox Interactive Media | 160,698 | 13,142 |
| ABC Television | 136,348 | 5,642 |
| Turner Sports and Entertainment Digital Network | 119,850 | 5,741 |
| ESPN Digital Network | 109,799 | 8,625 |
| CBS Entertainment Network | 103,741 | 6,973 |
Source: Nielsen VideoCensus
Note: Includes progressive downloads and excludes video advertising
Facebook actually had more than double the number of unique viewers than Hulu had for October, though this isn’t too shocking given the nature of short, personal video sharing that goes on on Facebook versus the longer-form viewing that happens on Hulu. But the social network’s ascendancy should have the Hulu folks on alert. Facebook already got the early premiere of the NBC (and Hulu owner) show Community earlier this year, and Zuckerberg and Co. could flex their newfound video muscles to snatch even more premium content from the Hulu-gurus.
Overall, the number of total U.S. video watchers dipped slightly to 138.6 million unique viewers from 139.3 million in Sept., but the number of total streams was up to 11.2 billion in Oct. vs. 11.02 billion in Sept. The number of streams per person was up to 81 in Oct. vs. 79.1 in Sept., and the time spent per viewer was up to 212.5 minutes vs. 195.2 in Sept.
| Oct.-09 | |
| Unique Viewers (000) | 138,623 |
| Total Streams (000) | 11,226,935 |
| Streams per Viewer | 81.0 |
| Time per Viewer (min) | 212.5 |
Source: Nielsen VideoCensus
Note: Includes progressive downloads and excludes video advertising
Notional Reveals New Slate of Programming
Notional, IAC’s new video production company headed by former CollegeHumor-er, Ricky Van Veen, introduced its initial lineup of programming yesterday (via Variety). In addition to the shows Chopped and Don’t Sweat It, which are already on-air and were inherited when Notional absorbed the City Lights TV crew; Notional is also working on:
-Ready, Set, Dance: people who post dance moves online are forced to dance on the spot for a cash prize.
-You vs. America: a web-based game show.
-Chase the Money: reality game show combing pratfalls and tag.
-Love Taxi: a dating show that takes place in a cab.
Looks like Notional is sticking true to its promise of bridging the TV and Internet worlds with this mix of online and on-air concepts, though the ideas seem decidedly low-budge and low-brow. Probably why they called the company Notional and not “Innovational” (bah-dum-bum). Notional is also looking to partner with Ben Silverman’s branded entertainment company (and IAC sibling), Electus.
California Approves Energy Efficiency Measures for TVs
The California Energy Commission just approved measures to ensure new televisions are energy efficient. The proposed standards have been a point of contention with the consumer electronics industry and Hollywood, and a decision had been delayed after extended comments from the Consumer Electronics Association.
The standards will apply only to new televisions sold in California starting in January 2011. Further, they are only for TVs 58 inches or smaller. TV makers, with the exception of Vizio, had opposed the measure on the grounds that they expect to make their TVs greener on a voluntary basis, and the regulation is overkill.
California also thinks that TVs are more of an energy suck than TV makers do; the CEC estimates they account for 10 percent of household power use while TV makers say it’s closer to 5 percent. The CEC says the measure will save 3,831 gigawatt hours (GWh) in 2011, at a cost reduction of between $18 and $30 per year, per television.
thePlatform Announces New TV Everywhere Features, Customers
thePlatform is updating its white-label video management solution with new features designed to make TV Everywhere-type services easier for service providers and publishers to deploy. And the company says it is seeing results, with a bevy of new programmers and a big cable firm announced as customers today.
thePlatform already provides the technology behind On Demand Online, the TV Everywhere project that parent company Comcast plans to introduce to subscribers next month. But with a suite of new features, the online video platform provider hopes to address authentication and authorization issues that challenge other service providers and media companies when rolling out these services.
Since each ISP introducing TV Everywhere services has chosen to implement a different authentication scheme, media companies need to support multiple login types on their own web properties. To deal with this, thePlatform released a new authentication adapter that enables publishers to verify customer identities across a number of different ISPs. thePlatform has also rolled out tools to map each online video to an individual service provider’s channels, which can then be used to match content available to a given user based on his or her subscription package. Read more of this story
EveryZing Changes Name (Again) to RAMP
Pardon the dated reference, but EveryZing is the P. Diddy of the online video world, as the company announced today that it is changing its name to RAMP. The company was originally known as Podzinger, but changed its moniker to EveryZing, and then must have realized what a horrible, horrible name that was and changed it to RAMP today to align itself with its RAMP content optimization product.
RAMP was initially spun out of military research firm BBN Technologies as a speech-to-text podcast search engine. The company has since expanded its product to enable media publishers to make content discoverable and optimized through parsing of data from video, text, audio and images.
RAMP (the company) has raised $22 million in funding from investors like NBC, which is also a customer. Other clients include FOX properties FOXNews.com, FOXBusiness.com and FOXSports.com.
Hulu Music Video Play All About Norah Jones
Hulu keeps trucking along with Plan A, even though its corporate parents and the rest of the market have developed a case of the meanies. As long expected, the site is making a play into music, today announcing a limited distribution deal with EMI and the launch of a Norah Jones music video section.
The market for music is not as wide-open as was Hulu’s opportunity with TV shows a couple years ago. Universal Music Group and Sony Music are working with YouTube on the launch of a new destination site called Vevo, which has been called from the outset a “Hulu for music videos.” Warner Music also just made up with YouTube, allowing for its content to return to the site itself.
The Norah Jones deal includes a library of the artist’s music videos, concert footage and interviews accessible to Hulu’s U.S. users. and accompanied by lovely 30-second pre-roll ads (grr). EMI said artists from its Virgin, Capitol and Blue Note labels will follow Jones onto Hulu.
Hulu’s Andy Forssell, senior vice president for content and distribution, told the New York Times that Hulu has revised its idea of a massive music video library to building “an immersive experience around certain artists.” While a more limited approach is going to seem odd to users, it might be financially prudent; the music labels have been able to extract an arm and a leg for their content from many web startups, and Hulu doesn’t want to give up any more of its limbs.
New Moon Premiere Stream a Huge Draw
It’s pretty clear at this point that the secret to success on the Internet is Twilight. Check out the numbers from yesterday’s live web cast from the red carpet of the premiere of The Twilight Saga: New Moon, exclusively hosted by MySpace and powered by Ustream.
The Twilight Saga New Moon Red Carpet Premiere
New Moon Premiere | MySpace Video
The two companies report that they had nearly 3 million total views, to a very nice ratio of 2 million uniques, the latter of which is a new all-time record for a Ustream event. And the Twilight kids easily topped out Ustream’s last big red carpet for the premiere of Michael Jackson’s This Is It, which had 1.8 million total views.
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