tag:www.iptvevangelist.com,2009://1 2009-06-17T07:43:05Z Covering Internet Television Technology iTV/IPTV, Trends and the User tag:www.iptvevangelist.com,2009://1.974 2009-06-17T06:44:42Z 2009-06-17T07:43:05Z

Change is inevitable, be it the loss of a parent or people taking to the streets in Iran to protest their need for change. Some change is personal, some global. In the case of Iran what that change ultimately looks...

Gilbert Hammer http://www.iptvevangelist.com/ YouTube and other technologies are working hand in glove with people in Iran who want nothing more then the right of self-determination I find compelled once again to evangelize about the very technologies we often write and speak about with such casual affair. ]]> Drive, by Incubus "Whatever tomorrow brings I'll be there" plays in the background and seems appropriate. The mainstream media buried the lead as they so often do in their zeal for trying to contextualize and make sense of change, sometimes I long for a news reader and not someone emoting or spinning about this or that, but I digress. The players in Iran the U.S. and the rest of the world will all play their assigned roles, be it the people in the streets, the supreme leader, that countries figurehead, or a senator critical of how the U.S. administration is or is not reacting as he would like. Aside from my wish for people everywhere to determine their own fates, The lead...be it Twitter or YouTube, (IP or iTV) is Change will find a way and we need to understand, embrace and cultivate that idea. This, all of this is stuff we do is based on IP, the very foundation that is the transport of information for change. The story about these technologies and the part they play in the order of change, just like summing up a persons life does not end here it just begins...so Comrades, go forth into your day and remember for whatever tomorrow brings we"ll all be there... For JH ]]> http://www.iptvevangelist.com/2009/06/the_revolution_is_brought_to_y.html tag:www.iptvevangelist.com,2009://1.972 2009-05-12T04:16:32Z 2009-05-15T18:08:16Z

By Adrian Smith It seems everyone is banging on about monetizing original content on the internet. Is it distribution or is it content? Well, as a former CEO of both a major film studio and a "legacy" internet company once...

Gilbert Hammer http://www.iptvevangelist.com/ By Adrian Smith It seems everyone is banging on about monetizing original content on the internet. Is it distribution or is it content? Well, as a former CEO of both a major film studio and a "legacy" internet company once said: "When we had great pictures to market content was king, when we didn't distribution was." Although the esteemed gentleman made a salient point it wasn't hip to the internet world of self-production/self-distribution. Well, yes and no. If you are a major studio with multimillion dollar budgeted productions and equally expensive marketing campaigns it's really down to capturing the zeitgeist. There is no excuse for not having a well made production (given the budgets) nor is there an excuse for shoddy marketing given the role call of MBAs (this isn't to say that excuses aren't made). ]]> But what is beyond every filmmakers control is whether the audience will embrace the film with their box-office or retail dollars. Audiences are fickle. Today's fart and frolic flick is tomorrows 3D existentialist walk in the woods (note to self: check distib. rights for 3D re-master of Tarkovsky's "Stalker"). For all the studying of memetic culture and burning pieces of string in sacrifice to the gods of synchronicity, it basically comes down to dumb luck as to why some things click and others don't. What has changed is that more low-level and wannabe filmmakers have now greater access to the tools of production, and with the internet, a potentially vast audience. While it is seldom that any HDV camcorder baring auteur (24p or otherwise) will match the production values of a major studio is beside the point. Such issues are for those with retention of the anal passages. The best artists have the skill and imagination to tell their stories with the tools available. If they don't have this prerequisite their projects will fail regardless of how cool their Apple Cinema Display is. When I was first learning my trade back in the dark ages of 16mm film, a Bolex and a flatbed we thought we were Fellini just for getting a film finished. If you could survive hairs in the gate, camera leaks and remain solvent through the entire lab process you were already ahead of the game. Some even survived cutting their own negative without a nervous breakdown. Our aims for the films were to get them into credible film festivals or failing that throw a bunfest at the local museum or library. If you were lucky the critics or influential industry people might notice your work and the potential for a professional career would begin. The aim was to make the best film you could with the resources available. I don't think anyone thought they would actually make money out of these projects. Funding came from grants, from family and friends and the occasional act of larceny. What has changes now is the distribution. And the internet has made it a double-edged sword. These days anyone can encode and stream their movie online. Granted, some applications do it better than others but with a bit of patience and a few desperate posts on the Apple users forum one gets there in the end. We can then read a book or take a class on viral marketing and a couple of clicks on MySpace and YouTube and you are an international legend (at least to your mom). This is all very groovy but you ain't getting rich. And to this I reply, well why should you be? Has anyone asked you to bare your soul to the world? Did the government send you a nasty letter saying owed Inland Revenue an ironic comedy shot in the style of Quentin Tarantino? Methinks not. What the internet allows is for our work to get shown to a huge audience. If we have done our work well, if we tell good, well-made stories our work will be noticed. And if you get noticed by the right people then momentum will gather and you will have the potential to make your next film with more support and better methods of distribution. Well, yeah, in the ideal world. In the meantime I cling to the mantra that "good work always floats to the top eventually." Of course you might be dead... but hey, it's for art, right? See you at the barricades, comrades. http://www.iptvevangelist.com/2009/05/no_honey_no_money_or_how_to_st.html tag:www.iptvevangelist.com,2009://1.970 2009-05-12T03:54:58Z 2009-05-14T12:47:31Z

Image 2001, Searchers video promo, Times Square, NYC By Adrian Smith & Gilbert B. Hammer As reported in ValleyWag, Yahoo! has seen an exodus of their video engineers as by all appearances they are a black hole collapsing on...

Gilbert Hammer http://www.iptvevangelist.com/ Image 2001, Searchers video promo, Times Square, NYC By Adrian Smith & Gilbert B. Hammer As reported in ValleyWag, Yahoo! has seen an exodus of their video engineers as by all appearances they are a black hole collapsing on itself. As two former Yahoo! veteran's we had more then a passing knowledge of video initiatives. Adrian was a Senior Producer working at Yahoo's Sunnyvale, CA headquarters and focused on marketing/corporate communications, and I was a manager for their Broadcast.com division in the New York City office and worked across several divisions delivering similar content. While we both produced many fine internal and external video projects such as the Giants of Advertising and content for their Buzz marketing group, the road is never the less littered with with failed attempts at monetizing on-line video. Names from the past included FinanceVision, Yahoo! Go, Yahoo!/Current TV, Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone, Vision Sports and Jumpcut and have gone the way of a swallow carrying a coconut to quote Monty Python as if such a thing could happen. Reuters Citizen Journalist initiative and Tech Ticker are still on-line, but for how long?. How could a company make so many missteps? ]]> It has been noted by many current and (alas) former employees that one of the main stumbling blocks of the Yahoo! ethos was/is fear. Fear coupled with a debilitating crisis of identity. Yahoo! had the good fortune in its early years to rake in the dough with very little in the way of competition. As far as advertising sales were concerned their only real competition in terms of regular eyeballs came from AOL. It was all low hanging fruit. Yahoo! didn't need to innovate it just needed to collect. Of course this arrogant order taking would later come to haunt Yahoo! when advertisers grew resentful of the my way or the highway mentality and Yahoo! had to spend many years courting Madison Avenue again with it's Y! between its legs. Yahoo! divided up its many and eclectic properties into fiefdoms - each competing against the other for advertising dollars. This, of course caused resentments, as some properties were always going to be more profitable than others (Finance versus Astrology for example). So when Broadcast.com was purchased for the baffling amount of 5.7 billion (surely the most ever paid for a bundle of Radio Shack gizmos, dishes all bundled to ageing VHS decks worshiping at the altar of the freely downloaded Windows Media Encoder) it was seen by the existing Yahoo properties as yet another threat to their revenue. There was nothing subtle about the hostility between the Yahoo! HQ in Silicon Valley and the Broadcast.com facilities in Dallas. Dallas employees complained that they were considered the proverbial red-headed stepchild and Santa Clara employees complained that Broadcast.com employees were unhelpful and obstructive. It is true that anyone wishing to avail themselves of video streaming services had to deal with multiple and baffling levels of bureaucracy to do the most simple of things - stream a video (hopefully without the picture splitting in two). When my group in New York began to offer video production and streaming capabilities this further confused site integration issues when working for various verticals withing the company. I'd be on a call with Dallas and got the impression they were wondering who we were and why we were wasting their time. So video at Yahoo! was neglected at the very time it should have been innovating. As a video producer creating content for both internal training and marketing purposes I was constantly being advised that my outrageous requests for QuickTime, Flash and Macintosh compatibility were just "un-Yahoo!" and not the direction the company wished to pursue. There were valiant attempts made, however. Finance Vision as an early example of webcasting, looked great and provided a unique service: real-time financial news utilizing the best of traditional broadcast and online technologies and creating an effective hybrid. It should have served as a model for future program development and been nurtured and used as a media laboratory. Instead somebody, somewhere panicked, looked at a balance sheet and pointed to the nearest property that wasn't making the required amount of dollars right now, right this second - and gave it the axe, (and to heck with having an eye on the future). That this property should have been Finance Vision after millions had been spent on building a state-of-the art suite of studios at the then new Sunnyvale complex is equally puzzling. On the New York side, Finance Vision was thrilled we offered free production and editing when our schedule permitted. Why the folks in Sunnyvale driving this 30-person group tried to boil the ocean as opposed to partnering with MSNBC or CNBC is still a mystery. Also, the odds you ever hear of Finance Vision were slim as they never advertised its existance, it was call an experiment. The feeling then was that Yahoo! just seemed to wish that video would just go away, this in spite of the fact that it had hired an ex movie mogul as its new CEO. There was a policy of the left hand giving and the right hand taking away. Hollywood TV execs would be hired, championed and then stymied at every turn. Such video programming that did make it through such as "The Nine" or "Kevin Sites" was an imitation of content done far better and far more accessible at sites elsewhere (CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, etc.) And from there things just stagnated further, Yahoo! was forced into a role of playing constant catch up without ever getting the chance to stop and think just who they were as a company, what is the service they provide? Meanwhile the technology for streaming video was improving. Kids fresh out of film and media schools were looking for new ways to innovate. Looking for new ways to find an audience. A generation that had gone to school considering the Internet to be as basic a tool as a pencil had come of age. Yahoo! probably seems incredibly irrelevant to them. So today every-where you turn you find quality video streaming effortlessly online. Some of it is cats and dogs making auntie laugh and pee her pants, some of it is courtesy of the networks, and some of it is stolen. Everyone is till trying to figure out how to make money from it. That will come. The days of the first taste is free are coming to an end. As Al Swearengen said of his brothel in Deadwood, "Those were getting acquainted prices." Revenue models will be worked out for quality content. Things that are worth paying for will be paid for. The crap will continue to be free for all those who are fans of it. If Yahoo! wishes to play in this market it must lose its fear of "what others are doing" and of making knee jerk reactions (buying a property just to kill it a la Flicker). It must poll its substantial user base to discover gaps that are not being served and exploit them. Yahoo! can't compete with I-Tunes, the networks or YouTube. It lacks both the will and the content. Yahoo! can be an effective partner (if it is prepared to be effective) but what it should be doing, now and always, is pushing the boundaries (so get out and push, comrades!). Onwards! http://www.iptvevangelist.com/2009/05/yahoo_was_never_serious_about.html tag:www.iptvevangelist.com,2009://1.968 2009-05-07T16:15:41Z 2009-05-11T13:38:43Z

Veotag, their technology and customer base have been sold to an Atlanta based company, Multicast Media, a company that has staked out corporate and faith-based verticals using their Vidego self-service platform. For Veotag the end came almost a year...

Gilbert Hammer http://www.iptvevangelist.com/ Veotag, their technology and customer base have been sold to an Atlanta based company, Multicast Media, a company that has staked out corporate and faith-based verticals using their Vidego self-service platform. For Veotag the end came almost a year to the date from their last funding round of 1.2mil last May and while their statements spoke about customer satisfaction and ease of use with their self-publishing platform in the end they were not able to sustain the business model. A quote from their May 2008 funding round "Veotag is rapidly growing its customer base and establishing the technology as the de facto standard for audio and video publishing," said founder and president of Small Ventures USA Bill Perkins. "Customers are highly satisfied with the results they achieve with Veotag, and in particular with how Veotag eliminates the need for costly production services. Veotag's ease-of-use and commitment to customer satisfaction have positioned the company as the one to beat in media publishing." So what went wrong? Was it the economy, leadership choices, lack of customer traction, churn or other platform choices in the marketplace? Veotag which had a mix of business with some free UGC content may have been trying to follow Brightcoves move to win larger media outlets and shed smaller less profitable independent producers which BrightCove did last year when it dumped UGC and Indie producers trying to gain traction on-line. ]]> Mark Battaglia, EVP, Sales & Marketing for Multicast Media yesterday about their acquisition of Veotag which is due to be announced next week at Streaming Media East. According to Mark, Veotag was low hanging fruit and offered a sweet mix of platform technology and customers to augment and eventually build on Multicasts offerings. "Their technology is really compelling, especially when you look at their client base". "As budgets gets tighter, people say what's working and with live events those trends are working well in the faith-based market." Specific to why Veotag was not able to grow, Mark suggested Veotag would have needed more development work to get to where Multicast Media is already. On the technology front and citing Veotag's ability to mark and tag on-the-fly, he spoke to their use meta-tagging to improve engagement along with their Vidego platform to make a seamless connection -- "To provide an end to end solutions off a single platform", even thought they realize people want agnostic tools. He also addressed some of the other smaller players in the space though he would not identify them the universe is not that large. He indicated that while there are other companies that claim to offer rich feature sets there are only a smaller set of players that can compete against the new combined Multicast/Veotag effort. Asked about Veotag's customer base, he indicated that most of their clients are large corporations even thought there are some UGC or free users. "The plan is to use both platforms side-by-side for the near term using veotag's transcoding engine and then in the longer term to create a deep integration of both platforms". Specific to the time-line for platform integration Mark indicated the platform would take more development work through 2009. He cited training or e-learning as a growth opportunity allowing people the ability to link out to other web-based materials. Multicast Media is privately held and Mark would not disclose numbers however, he indicated the company size at about 100 people. Specific to main competitors the only name mentioned was Brightcove however, Mark indicated that different companies provided different parts of the puzzle and so there were no direct competitors. He did not rule out there might be other acquisitions for the company and if they raised additional funding it would be used only for growth.]]> http://www.iptvevangelist.com/2009/05/veotag_sold_to_multicast_media.html tag:www.iptvevangelist.com,2009://1.958 2009-04-15T06:46:32Z 2009-04-15T07:26:12Z

Gilbert Hammer http://www.iptvevangelist.com/   Photo by John Cox Copyright 2009 Capitol Broadcasting Company WRAL-TV likes being first, this time the Capital Broadcasting Company has partnered with the city of Raleigh, NC. to offer DTV on the cities buses. Right now there is one equipped vehicle with four planned for this summer. "We are proud to be the pilot to offer mobile digital television to the riders of the Downtown Circulator," stated Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker. "We salute WRAL for being pioneers in mobile digital television as they were in high definition television. We look forward to the day when all of Raleigh's CAT buses will offer this means of information and relaxation." Mobility on buses is not new, at least to the rest of the world. Singapore has had WiFi available since late 2007 in partnership with Nokia Singapore.   WRAL-TV News Coverage Related ipTVe article from July 31, 2008: WRAL-TV MPH Related ipTVe article from August 2nd, 2008: Jay Adrick, VP of Broadcast Technology for Harris Broadcast ]]> http://www.iptvevangelist.com/2009/04/raleight_nc_buses_go_mobile.html tag:www.iptvevangelist.com,2009://1.954 2009-04-07T02:13:54Z 2009-04-14T15:37:13Z

The New York State recently extended a 350 million tax credit for the film industry to try and spur feature and series production in the state, see this news report on Facebook While feature projects and TV shows may...

Gilbert Hammer http://www.iptvevangelist.com/ The New York State recently extended a 350 million tax credit for the film industry to try and spur feature and series production in the state, see this news report on Facebook While feature projects and TV shows may not be attracted to New York State this year what about trying to leverage iTV projects? Certainly most people are familiar with Quarterlife and it's large budget for iTV (many would say too large) however, there is a lot of great programming and projects that could employ people at rates lower then the Quarterlife budget, should these be encouraged at the State level through incentives and or tax credits? April 12th, update. We sent New York State Senator Kruger who sits on the intersection of spending on this front some questions however, his office declined to reply.]]> http://www.iptvevangelist.com/2009/04/ny_state_considers_350mil_prod.html tag:www.iptvevangelist.com,2009://1.950 2009-04-01T03:38:00Z 2009-04-01T04:22:14Z

Corporate slogans are so common that they often go unnoticed by the public as so much marketing noise. In the case of Time Warner Cable however, their decision today to implement tired pricing for "so called" heavy users of...

Gilbert Hammer http://www.iptvevangelist.com/ Corporate slogans are so common that they often go unnoticed by the public as so much marketing noise. In the case of Time Warner Cable however, their decision today to implement tired pricing for "so called" heavy users of Internet bandwidth could make their slogan, "The Power of You" that much more poetic. Under the new plan user will pay between $29.95 to $54.90 a month, based on data consumption and desired connection speed. Customers will be charged $1 for each gigabyte (GB) over their plan's cap. Time Warner Cable offers four cap levels of 5, 10, 20, and 40 GB. "To put it mildly," says Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett, "the decision to limit data consumption can be expected to have profound implications for [consumer] behavior." The company discounts those claims and said that in the Beaumont Texas trials only 14% of users exceeded their cap and had to pay additional fees of about $19 per month. Some have suggested that the cell phone industry model applies here, namely users who go over their allotted minutes are charged extra per month. The problem is Internet providers have never charged users based on that business model and perhaps that will change as Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt said. "We made a mistake early on by not defining our business based on the consumption dimension." While Infrastructure is not free, there is a real concern that companies will use this argument as simply a marketing tool to collect more revenues from consumers. As iTV is in a nascent period with more video content on-line is now the time to be stunting the growth of the medium? In these depressed economic times people will vote with their wallets and it may become the power of us to dump you as our provider. ]]> http://www.iptvevangelist.com/2009/03/time_warner_to_impliment_tired.html tag:www.iptvevangelist.com,2009://1.949 2009-03-30T13:56:25Z 2009-03-30T14:36:04Z

With the economy upside down, people are turning to the age-old practice of bartering for goods and services. While there are many site geared for consumer goods, there is not a lot specific to production services for iTV production,...

Gilbert Hammer http://www.iptvevangelist.com/ With the economy upside down, people are turning to the age-old practice of bartering for goods and services. While there are many site geared for consumer goods, there is not a lot specific to production services for iTV production, gear and services. Some people are using Facebook or LinkedIn to connect with other media professionals and this media bartering group based in CA. is an example of a local group on Meetup. In gauging the temperature for such a connection point on this site, we'd like your input. Would you use a section where Indies and other non-corporate professionals could list their services and products for free. Companies wishing to list would pay a nominal amount. Let us know what you think... ]]> http://www.iptvevangelist.com/2009/03/itv_production_and_services_ba.html tag:www.iptvevangelist.com,2009://1.941 2009-03-27T10:03:10Z 2009-03-27T16:03:33Z

By: Levi Shapiro image c. iStockphoto If you want to have a "show me the money" conversation in Hollywood, mention two words: online video. The discussion will quickly turn to dogs on skateboards and other content that advertisers avoid. However,...

Gilbert Hammer http://www.iptvevangelist.com/ image c. iStockphoto If you want to have a "show me the money" conversation in Hollywood, mention two words: online video. The discussion will quickly turn to dogs on skateboards and other content that advertisers avoid. However, the story for professionally produced content is different. ABC's "Lost," for example, was seen by more than 1.4 million unique viewers in December, according to Nielsen. Transforming this growing traffic into a market rivaling traditional television may require decades. In the interim, the industry is working on more targeted programming and advertising. First the good news. The audience for online professional video is younger, wealthier and better educated than the broader TV audience. Advertisers crave these 18-49 year olds, lifting CPMs (cost-per-thousand impressions) for premium online video over $25, which is higher than television. Advertisers also like the ad recall rates of 21 percent for streaming video, more than double the recall for TV, according to the GfK Group. Moreover, digital consumption is additive for a loyal fan base. More than 70 percent of online viewers claim to be fans who were unable to view the original show. This high quality audience is also growing quickly. While still only a tiny fraction of the $60 billion U.S. television advertising market, research firm eMarketer estimates that spending for U.S. online video advertising will double from $587 million last year to $1.25 billion next year. By 2013, as much as 70 percent of that revenue will likely come from professional content (The Diffusion Group). That means more advertising will be available to support professional video content online, and a larger, more affluent demographic will be watching.]]> It all boils down to metrics Measurement platforms need to evolve as well. For example, panel based research presently does not differentiate the quality of page views by category. Jacobs at Turner believes "metrics need to reflect this different medium," while McGovern at ABC notes "a large portion of our audience is Mac users. That is not measured by Nielsen or ComScore. As an industry, we need to get better at measurement." In addition to the creative challenges, there are technical limitations. The video player determines the viewing experience. Move Networks, which partners with ABC and Fox, is used widely. For monetization, content owners and distributors need ad management systems with advertising targeting and optimization. "Ideally you want to optimize the effective CPM rate across syndication networks," says Kim at MTV Networks. That is the focus of Freewheel. CEO Doug Knopper, who was previously at DoubleClick, recognized that ad servers designed for display advertising were inadequate for online video content owners and distributors. "Content owners may have different shows, different distributors, and different business terms for each of those distributors. We manage that complexity and ensure they get their fair share in the revenue stream," he says. Israel based HIRO Media has a cross-platform (download, streaming, mobile) video ad management system. Co-CEO Ronny Golan says, "In every media available, our emphasis is in unique campaign optimization. The industry will grow if we can deliver the most effective campaign with the highest possible revenues to advertisers, content owners and distributors." Black Arrow has a different perspective. They follow consumer usage trends and identified that time spent watching cable video on-demand will match time spent viewing video online in a couple of years. With investment from Comcast and Cisco, Black Arrow is focused squarely on the MSO companies. "We are targeting the growth of cable VOD. The advertising will absolutely follow the audience," says Chris Hock, SVP of product. Although most agree that ad-supported online video will grow exponentially, today it is puny relative to the television ad market. Content owners and distributors, ad agencies, technology providers, and research companies are still experimenting. However, even more mature platforms tend to be more art than science. As legendary screenwriter William Goldman wrote about the movie business, "Nobody knows anything. Not one person in the entire field knows for certain what's going to work." This is even more true in online video where the consensus is that "nobody knows anything"...not even Google. Revenue is still elusive The bad news is revenue. One senior broadcast executive estimates that for the exact same viewer, revenue from an hour of online viewing is one-third that of television. Some of this difference is attributable to the difference in ad loads. There are 18 minutes of advertising available on broadcast TV compared to the 4 to 6 advertising pods online. Welcome to NBC head Jeff Zucker's "trading analog dollars for digital pennies" world. Meanwhile, the industry is experimenting with new advertising and creative formats. "At the moment," says Hardie Tankersley, VP of online content and strategy at Fox Broadcasting, "online shows are still TV shows, crammed into a different place. We need to take advantage of what an interactive computer platform does well and develop creative and interactive models for advertising. It is a creative problem more than a technology or business problem." Advertising agencies are still trying to define the right measurement metrics for premium online video. Dr. Yaakov Kimmelfeld, SVP of analytics at Mediavest, says "there are still challenges for successful planning and making the campaigns accountable. We can measure user engagement, based on viewing behavior. The trick is to tie these behaviors to branding impact and brand ROI." Standards collaboration Brands, agencies and networks are collaborating to resolve addressability. The Interactive Advertising Bureau issued guidelines last year for online video advertising standards. And ABC announced its own emerging media and advertising research lab in Austin, Texas, under the direction of professor Duane Varan. Perhaps most promising is an industry consortium, led by Starcom Mediavest, called The Pool. This unites major advertisers and content publishers to field test the efficacy of online video ad units. Participating companies include Allstate, Capital One, Applebee's, AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft, Discovery, Hulu and CBS. Various online video ad units are tested in markets across the country against the dominant pre-roll format. Findings will be available next February. For its part, the world's largest online video site, YouTube, offers advertising with its full-length, premium videos. The company has championed overlays, which appear in the lower third of video screens and are less intrusive. However, the format has failed to gain traction with advertisers and most of YouTube's $200 million ad revenue is derived from the less lucrative display ads. Hoping to validate the overlay format, Google partnered with NeuroFocus, a research firm that applies neuroscience to advertising. Biometric measures like brainwave activity, eye-tracking and skin response were used to measure attention level, emotional engagement and memory retention. Overlay ads scored a respectable 6.6 out of 10. One size does not fit all Each network is taking a different approach to programming. Walker Jacobs, SVP of ad sales at Turner Sports and Entertainment Digital, views online content as "a compliment to the television product. The online environment is a much more personalized experience." For example, passionate golf fans might watch live programming on PGA.com that isn't available on television. "That means friends at an office can follow their favorite golfer. It is not the same broadcast but an alternate view of that broadcast," Jacobs says. Turner is careful to avoid jeopardizing its multi-system operator (MSO) partnerships. "We certainly don't believe in ubiquity. We will segment some content for syndication, such as sports highlights, but keep the crown jewels like live programming in our own domain," Jacob adds. MTV Networks initially anticipated programming short-form clips for the online audience. Alice Kim, SVP of digital distribution and partner relations, acknowledges that "in the two years since launch, there have been surprises... we expected short attention spans." Instead, full episodes have performed extremely well, including over a million weekly streams of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report" during the Presidential election. This did not cannibalize iTunes sales either. "We were stunned by the appetite for archives," Kim says. One MTV show that struggled on-air but found a passionate online niche is "Bromance," in which young men humiliate themselves to join the posse of LA pretty boy Brody Jenner (uhm... Bromance?? Bro-tarded!!). MTV recognizes the different usage case for its clips online. "We wanted a way to monetize and encourage legitimate user upload," says Kim. MTV Networks cut a deal with MySpace and Auditude to fingerprint MTV content online. When MySpace users upload clips from an MTV show such as "Punk'd" or "The Hills," Auditude will identify the clip, attach some targeted ads, and share the profit with MySpace and MTV. Attention spans abound ABC is focused on long form, using its full episode player to ensure a quality viewing experience in a controlled environment. As a result, despite syndication agreements with ABC affiliates, AOL, Veoh, Fancast, and Cox, more than 95 percent of viewing originates from the ABC.com website. This has enabled high CPMs. Patrick McGovern, SVP of sales and strategic planning and digital media at ABC Television, tells advertisers "we care as much about a consistent user and advertiser experience as you do." This also has enabled easier data collection for ABC's 100-plus advertisers. "We see that additional brands and commercials per episode do not impact aided recall or ad effectiveness." Based on Nielsen numbers (excluding Hulu) in December, ABC had seven of the top 10 streamed television programs online. CBS, which has the most "open" syndication strategy of all the major broadcasters, had the fewest number of programs in Nielsen's online top 10. ]]> http://www.iptvevangelist.com/2009/03/post.html tag:www.iptvevangelist.com,2009://1.947 2009-03-25T10:03:12Z 2009-03-25T10:28:12Z

Tivo and Blockbuster will announce today a joint distribution and marketing deal. I recall as late as last August when some analysts were talking as if we would all be dancing on Tivo's grave. Their prognostication (you see how...

Gilbert Hammer http://www.iptvevangelist.com/ Tivo and Blockbuster will announce today a joint distribution and marketing deal. I recall as late as last August when some analysts were talking as if we would all be dancing on Tivo's grave. Their prognostication (you see how well they can predict the future) was that while Tivo while experiencing consecutive quarters of growth it would continue to see a weak forecast due to customer churn and competition from other sources. While it's correct that MSO's are offering cheap DVR alternatives, Satellite and platforms like Roku for Netflix all draw profits away from Tivo, it is curious to see Blockbuster, the once monolithic symbol for DVD rentals will announce today they are partnering with Tivo to offer between 5,000 too 10,000 titles at any one time, mostly newer releases like "The Dark Knight" that will typically cost $3.99 to watch over a 24-hour period. In addition, Blockbuster will sell Tivo DVR's in their stores however, specific models and pricing were not discussed. The Blockbuster feature will be available for standalone users of the TiVo Series 2 and 3 units, TiVo HD and TiVo HD XL DVRs. Blockbuster On Demand will be accessible only to the approximately 800,000 TiVo owners who have broadband Internet connected directly to their TiVo boxes. The company already offers online rentals through the Movielink service it bought from a group of studios in 2007. "We are excited to be teaming with TiVo, the company that created the DVR, to make Blockbuster's entertainment content readily available to their millions of subscribers," Jim Keyes, chief executive of Blockbuster, said in a statement. "Ultimately, our vision is to work with TiVo so that their subscribers can access movies not only through our On Demand service but also from our stores and through our by-mail service as well." Considering Blockbuster is trading below one dollar, a level at which some companies had been delisted in the past, Tivo on the other hand is trading at about seven times that amount. The company still offers an unrivaled OS and UI which has provided the company with the agnostic means to attract players like Amazon and Blockbuster. That no one platform has yet cemented the lean back entertainment crowd, it should not be lost on analysts, who my friend now calls the idiots who just downgraded your stock that forecasting is more then looking at formulation trends and tables, it's about customer excitement and desire. ]]> http://www.iptvevangelist.com/2009/03/tivos_dance_card_is_filling_up.html tag:www.iptvevangelist.com,2009://1.942 2009-03-12T19:58:26Z 2009-03-12T23:39:39Z

By: Francesco Calonico The Italian TV market has the peculiarity that cable television never developed, due to regulatory approaches, while the analogue television market developed very strongly between two main players, RAI (the public broadcaster) and Mediaset Group, a private...

Gilbert Hammer http://www.iptvevangelist.com/ By: Francesco Calonico The Italian TV market has the peculiarity that cable television never developed, due to regulatory approaches, while the analogue television market developed very strongly between two main players, RAI (the public broadcaster) and Mediaset Group, a private one. This two groups take more than 95% of the TV advertising market in Italy, which is about 5€ billions; other nation-wide broadcasters are Telecom Italia Media and MTV (with less the 3% of the market share) and hundred of local broadcasting stations. In this scenario, another player, a satellite one, emerged in the last 6 years: SKY; SKY is from News Corporation group and has reached 5 millions paying users at the end of 2008 in Italy, with advertising revenues in the order of some hundreds millions of euros. Since 2004, according to the European defined scenario, digital terrestrial television (DTT) has been introduced, with a plan to switch off analogue transmissions from 2012. Currently more that 5 millions DTT Set Top Boxes have been sold in Italy and all new sold TV set should be DTT enabled; DGTVi, a consortium of the broadcasters for technical rules. Last January RAI and Mediaset announced a new satellite services, named "Tivu' Sat", similar to the Freeview model in UK (some info in Italian at Sat-Zone ) Meanwhile, all major telco operators in Italy launched IPTV services in the last years: Telecom Italia (the incumbent), Fatsweb (the first operator with an iptv service in his portfolio) and WIND. While Wind is in his very early stages, Telecom and Fastweb have both reached about 300K customers. The services offered are both linear channel (via multicast), and video on demand services. Value added services offered are typical IPTV ones, such as content categorization or channel list customization, HD for both live transmissions and vod, content recommendation and some advanced search feature or like PVR functionality. Nevertheless IPTV is going to become one of the key services telcos will bet on, in Italy. The switch off from analogue TV broadcasting to DTT one, will take place for the next 2 years and opens a lot of opportunities. People will find themselves in the condition to choose to buy a new TV set with an integrated tuner or a DTT stb. But there is a third way. IPTV service could become one of the alternatives the customer will choose among: all IPTV services in fact are ready with Hybrid STB (i.e. both DTT and IP). Combining in one STB its offer with the other four major Italian TV broadcaster ones, both air and satellite, a Telco is able to offer a complete solution to customers coming from the analogue world. The "all in one box" is the way followed, with DTT, IPTV, internet, DLNA for home media sharing. The business requirements are pushing hard the evolution of the software platforms that are used to deliver IPTV services In fact, to achieve this goal the SW "platform" managing the IPTV services should be open and flexible, able to offers Digital Asset Management - DAM - services and to integrate with external Operation and Business Support System (OSS/BSS). To cover all the "broadcasting" offers already present in the market, agreements have been be made with SKY ( the most important satellite operator in Italy) and with the other three major broadcaster: RAI (the national one), Mediaset and LA7. Each agreement has its own peculiarity and telco platforms should be flexible enough to interface itself with OSS/BSS/CMS of the external company. This is achieved by putting in place a complex architecture with several components. Among them, a contribution network, which carries all the signals coming from broadcasters to the DAM, where all the asset management is performed. For example, a provider (both broadcasters and content providers) can manage directly its own piece of content by using services exposed (e.g. vary the asset metadata or ingest an epg variation) or control all the content life-cycle. Also, a Service Delivery Network could be used to give the content provider the possibility to manage their own customer, even on the IP network that is viewed by the broadcaster only as another distribution channel. This is achieved always by services exposed that provider can directly access. So each TV broadcaster who views IP-network just as a another distribution channel can send grants relative to his own content offer to his own customer. From the customer point of view, he has only one stb, can subscribe services from several providers (telco, broadcasters, content providers) and can choose to have separate relationship (e.g. bill) with each one or delegate the telco to manage all the offers with only one bill (the same of the telephony service) So, many business models can be chosen: the same customer is an "IP" one for the telco, but also a TV one for the broadcaster. Another model could be a wholesale one with telcos selling a kind of a "white label" iptv to the broadcaster that will customize the experience he wants his customer to have. Naturally a traditional revenue sharing model could also be adopted. The "platform" should also offer a DRM/CAS services and the efforts during agreements are to not have more than one cas on the stb. So broadcaster should send their clear signal to each distribution platform (the IPTV being one of them) leaving the encryption step to the distributor (Telco in this model). The aim is to find in every scenario a model convenient not only for telco but also for broadcasters and providers that can use IP network as an additional distribution channel. For Telcos this is the best way to compose a complete offer giving the customer only one box: dtt, iptv, and with an hard disk, also a home NAS. Clearly, the more the system has appealing to attract customers coming from different realities, the more telcos can attract ADV investments. But the market is continuously changing, and new trends must be followed since now. Not only traditional TV customers, used to interact with TV set only by changing channels, but also users who wants to combine the usual TV experience with a "2.0" one e.g. remaining in contact with communities, chatting, sharing contents, video-calling etc. And IPTV is the most natural way to merge these services and give customers an integrated experience. This is the way Telcos will follow, enabling their platform also to be open to "add" service as market will require them. The aim is to attract again to TV a lot of younger people already used to interact with web oriented services while bringing near the Internet services the more traditional TV customers. Francesco Calonico is a Broadband Services & Multimedia Engineering specialist in Italy for a Telecom provider ]]> http://www.iptvevangelist.com/2009/03/the_iptv_landscape_in_italy.html tag:www.iptvevangelist.com,2009://1.937 2009-03-05T22:29:00Z 2009-03-06T03:02:24Z

image c. iStockphoto In bidding on an Indie feature as a DP, I experienced the harsh reality of the New York feature market, to wit DP's are not working much and I guess for that matter others in the craft...

Gilbert Hammer http://www.iptvevangelist.com/ image c. iStockphoto In bidding on an Indie feature as a DP, I experienced the harsh reality of the New York feature market, to wit DP's are not working much and I guess for that matter others in the craft may not be much either. Rental houses are slow, Producers have their pick of the litter when it comes to owner operators who can charge next to nothing for a Vari-cam package with all the bells and whistle's, this just so they are working. For those of us who do not own gear, well were screwed. This would have been my first feature and I've not needed to rent any gear in the past year or so. My friends at a small rental house said the market is flat and people are not renting except for little stuff, he used another word for stuff. This was echoed by another friend who sees a reduction of camera work, good that she has editing work to keep her busy. Yet, I speak to iTV CEO's all the time and they see sufficient amounts of work to keep their tools, development or platform company busy. Is this stability in that part of the market so media outlets can create content to go on-line? Well I doubt it. Quarterlife was several million an episode (and I'd suggest about 80% of that was wasted money for distributing on-line) and while it had a following, it failed to gain enough eyeballs to drive cpm and make it worthwhile for established media execs who've gorged on the fat of OTA and Cable revenues for years. If this is the case how are Indie producers going to make it under the current economic model forget about that we are in the deepest recession since the 1040's? Back to the feature, I was already planning out the a look in my mind (minimalist without too much camera movement, I love it when actors walk into focus, or when the shot makes it just due to great composition) for this 21-day project - it would have been great for my reel and the DP part of my ego. I guess I'll stick to 1's a 0's for the moment, at least there it seems I can find the dog food. ]]> http://www.iptvevangelist.com/2009/03/dog_wants_to_eat_dog_but_there.html tag:www.iptvevangelist.com,2009://1.933 2009-03-03T18:12:25Z 2009-03-03T20:06:05Z

This morning I spoke with Mike Glickenhaus, the President and CEO of VMIX, a company in the SaaS, software as a service space. VMIX, headquartered in San Diego recently opened a New York City office and Mike and I...

Gilbert Hammer http://www.iptvevangelist.com/ This morning I spoke with Mike Glickenhaus, the President and CEO of VMIX, a company in the SaaS, software as a service space. VMIX, headquartered in San Diego recently opened a New York City office and Mike and I met last week before the Nor'easter to discuss his company, the iTV space and how VMIX has seen growth year over year since inception, the company forecasts profitability in Q4 of this year. Interview with Mike Glickenhaus]]> http://www.iptvevangelist.com/2009/03/interview_with_mike_glickenhau.html tag:www.iptvevangelist.com,2009://1.915 2009-02-03T14:49:24Z 2009-02-03T20:43:15Z

The folks over at Android Community have written about the possible migration of the SlingPlayer Mobile for the Android platform, currently with the T-Mobile G1 as the primary unit here in the U.S. Brian Jaquet, Director, Public Relations at...

Gilbert Hammer http://www.iptvevangelist.com/ The folks over at Android Community have written about the possible migration of the SlingPlayer Mobile for the Android platform, currently with the T-Mobile G1 as the primary unit here in the U.S. Brian Jaquet, Director, Public Relations at Sling, told ipTVe "We're absolutely interested in the platform and are following it very closely." In addition, " We see it picking up momentum and obviously customers as more handsets come to market this year." So stay tuned for more news...]]> http://www.iptvevangelist.com/2009/02/sling_for_android_1.html tag:www.iptvevangelist.com,2009://1.912 2009-01-31T17:34:57Z 2009-01-31T19:10:57Z

Richard Livesey © 2009 ipTVe I attended a Gotham Media Ventures conference on January 15th at the Harvard Club in New York City. The theme for the conference was The Future of News & Information with the goal to...

Gilbert Hammer http://www.iptvevangelist.com/ Richard Livesey © 2009 ipTVe I attended a Gotham Media Ventures conference on January 15th at the Harvard Club in New York City. The theme for the conference was The Future of News & Information with the goal to "Examine how entrepreneurs in new media are creating effective and profitable models in order to reach consumers directly and how traditional media companies are attempting to adapt to changing times. The Future of News will look at the successes, challenges, failures and changes in a field where the rules are changing daily." The comments of most note we those of Tom Bettag, former Executive Producer, Ted Koppel Unit, Discovery; ABC News "Nightline who inspired the cartoon above. To paraphrase Mr. Bettag put forth the idea that in order for a new economic model to take hold in news and entertainment it might require gathering all the old media guard in a room to shoot them. While his comments we humorous and drew considerable laughs in the audience there is a valid point, namely that executives who control news and entertainment programming have gotten use to a high fat diet from the financial success of OTA to appreciate a leaner yet opportunistic on-line platform to fully embrace it so that consumers can slice and dice it to pick and choose what content they want to view and in what order, as they see fit. © 2009 Pew Research Center Currently, OTA has noting to fear from iTV with 70% still getting their news from OTA verses 40% for iTV, this according to a recent Pew Research, News Interest Index from December of 2008 However, this trending data supports the cartoon and Mr. Bettag's point, namely that the 18-29 year old demo is driving the growth in on-line sourcing for their primary news consumption. While execution seems too severe, what is it going to take for an effective and profitable economic model to take hold for iTV news programming? Perhaps members of the former administration can oversee waterboarding... ]]> http://www.iptvevangelist.com/2009/01/of_digital_and_breakfast.html