Hollywood and its supporters are feeling something akin to a hangover following the sidelining of the Stop Online Piracy Act and a companion bill in the Senate.

It’s been just over a month since an Internet blackout called attention to the legislation, and an accompanying protest forced congressional leaders to put it on hold. Although emotions have been somewhat diffused, frustrated lobbyists and skittish lawmakers don’t seem in a hurry to jump back into the fray to try and craft a compromise.

The election year makes it even less likely that Congress will act on something if it appears the legislation could become a liability.

But that doesn’t mean that the problem of piracy will be off the radar of the average consumer. In fact, this spring, consumers will start to get a very clear message from the entertainment industry as it tries to curb online copyright infringement. Following a landmark agreement finalized last year with the studios and record labels, the country’s major Internet service providers, including AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Verizon, will start sending out “copyright alerts” to users who illegally download copyrighted movies, music and TV shows. If users continue to access pirated content, they would face possible sanctions at a certain point that could include slower Internet speeds.

The agreement was reached last year without legislation — which begs the question of why at least some goals of the SOPA legislation couldn’t be achieved via a similar pact. The White House, which was critical of parts of the legislation, also said at the time that “this is not just a matter for legislation” and urged the sparring parties “to adopt voluntary measures and best practices to reduce online piracy.”

But that’s easier said than done.

The agreement for “copyright alerts” took almost three years to complete, and the biggest challenge may be just getting parties to the table. Cary Sherman, chairman-CEO of the Recording Industry Assn. of America, said that while agreements for “best practices” to combat piracy are in place with payment processors, and in the works with advertisers, search engines “have essentially declined to participate in conversations.”

Sherman, who played a major role in crafting the agreement for the copyright alerts, said that they are an “indication that if you want to make progress, you can.”

Read the full article at Variety.

Gellis found that websites’ core legal shield (Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act) continued to gain traction as courts last year again confirmed that businesses like auctioneers and consumer review sites can’t be sued over what their users do.

The legal shield, created in 1996 to ensure that the fledgling Internet economy was not brought down by lawsuits, works by ensuring websites are not responsible for obscene, defamatory or criminal acts of their users. The shield stays up as long as the sites don’t take an active part in their users’ activity—if they do, they lose their immunity and become instead content creators who can sued like anyone else. Overall, Gellis notes the shield may even be getting stronger—recent cases show sites like Yelp and Roommates.com are protected even if they curate content.

While the ongoing strength of Section 512 is good news for Internet companies, the bad news is that plaintiffs are trying even harder to use intellectual property law as a backdoor around it.

What this means in practice is that aggrieved individuals are gussying up libel complaints as copyright or trademark cases. Doctors and dentists, for instance, have been trying to use copyright law to force websites to take down negative reviews.

Such attempts to short-circuit websites’ legal shields are hardly new, of course. In Australia, for instance, a man sued Twitter last week after a media personality reportedly defamed him in a tweet.

Read the full article at Paid Content.

Advertisers are getting mixed signals about what constitutes TV.

The medium once was represented largely by the Big Three, but is fast becoming (with apologies to Thomas Hardy) the Madding Crowd.

Our children and grandchildren will never know a time when television consisted of ABC, CBS and NBC, with a few local stations thrown in for good measure. The industry jeered in the 1980s, when News Corp. came along with what was considered a bold, quixotic move in launching a fourth network — Fox. (Though none of the rivals are laughing now, we suspect Rupert Murdoch wouldn’t attempt the same stunt in today’s media climate). It has become clear that marketers aren’t always envisioning the TV set when they figure out how to use motion-and-sound video to hawk their wares. TV’s biggest strength, the transmission of moving video to a national audience, has been usurped.

As a result, never before has the road to the upfront — that annual spring ritual in which the broadcast networks and their cable counterparts attempt to sell most of their ad inventory — been so crowded with interlopers. Just last week, word broke that Big Digital (that’s Microsoft, Hulu, Google’s YouTube, AOL and Yahoo) would attempt to stage its own confab with advertisers just weeks before the biggest TV networks do.

This isn’t the craziest endeavor. Yahoo has staged a similar event intermittently for years. But the combined heft of the participants tells us that nontraditional video concerns sense advertisers want — maybe even need — to spend on more than boob-tube advertising to get the job done.

It’s not hard to lump digital players who stream video into the “new TV” mix. But other, even less traditional combatants are trying to storm the arena. Cinema-advertising company NCM Media Networks is staging its own sales pitch on the Wednesday of Upfront Week — typically the same day CBS and Time Warner’s Turner are in the spotlight. NCM will make the point that when TV viewership drops over the weekend, the movie screen deserves some consideration when trying to put an ad in front of a hard-to-reach 18-to-49er.

If video’s leap from living-room screen to other flat panels hadn’t been clear, it is now. The fog has lifted: Yes, it’s true that traditional TV continues to lure the biggest audiences, as with the Super Bowl broadcast on NBC. But it’s also true that more of what broadcast TV has to offer doesn’t strike the same chord it did two decades ago. Let’s be honest: If ABC aired “Love Boat” on Saturday nights today, it would probably do about as well as “Hart of Dixie.”

Read the full article at Ad Age.

Just how serious is Comcast about attracting Latino and African-American viewers?

After all, in order  to land NBCUniversal, the cable giant was required to commit to minority targeted programming.

On Tuesday, Comcast said it would will carry four new independent channels from Earvin “Magic” Johnson, Sean “Diddy” Combs, “Desperado” director Robert Rodriguez, and Spanish language TV veteran Constantino “Said” Schwarz.

Whether or not Comcast diversified willingly, supporters say that there is a real financial opportunity to attract an underserved demographic — provided the company takes the time to create a credible slate of programming as opposed to simply making a few token gestures.

“If Comcast puts its weight behind this then it should be successful, but the question is how important is it to them and are the right people in place,” Todd Boyd, a professor of critical studies in the USC School of Cinematic Arts, told TheWrap.

Boyd said that he was not entirely convinced that the cable giant’s initial slate of offerings showed a true commitment, suggesting that the company took the easy way out with bold-faced names rather than choosing people with TV programming know-how.

Clearly the need to satisfy the Federal Communications Commission’s diversity requirements is largely responsible for Comcast’s announcement Tuesday. Comcast also stands to profit financially.

“They have seen the Census as well and would love to know how to hit that demographic,” Rodriguez told TheWrap. “This is a requirement for Comcast, but they didn’t treat it like that. They want this to be successful.”

Supporters say that entertainers likes Rodriguez and Combs, who know this audience, are key to helping this slate of programming stand out in a sea of cable channels.

Read the full article at The Wrap.

The study, conducted by Melbourne-based Neuro-Insight, gauged the live brain response of 150 people using 24 ads in categories ranging from automotive to entertainment to retail. The ads were within six series on Bravo and competitive networks, and compared consumers’ brain reaction to ads related to the content with those where there was no direct link.

The research found that in the brain regions where long-term memory is stored, neuro-activity on average is 15% greater when ads are contextually relevant to the content.

Bravo said, however, that effectiveness is not simple — such as a natural link between a Macy’s ad and “Fashion Hunters.”

A “stronger impact” comes when the creative content has a certain appeal — even if it is in a somewhat unrelated category — such as when a car ad highlights the “beauty and glamour of the driving experience” airs during a fashion program.

Bravo’s sales team pitches vignettes that can blend elements of a program with a brand. The network said those bring the highest level of recall. “Hybrid” spots that use a type of branded entertainment show “long-term memory storage” that is 19% higher on average.

Pranav Yadav, the CEO of Neuro-Insight, stated that the company’s technology can work to help advertisers go beyond ratings and alter the program mix where there is a better chance of generating positive consumer response.

Read the full article at Media Post.

If all goes well for ABC and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences on Sunday, the must-have accessory coming out of this year’s Academy Awards won’t be a Cartier bauble or a Chanel clutch but rather Oscar’s official app for the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch.

ABC and the Acad are banking on a digital makeover to boost viewer engagement before, during and after the live telecast.

ABC and AMPAS stepped up their game for the 2011 telecast with the launch of an iPad app and a host of features on Oscar.com. But last year they went the subscription route, charging 99¢ for the app and $4.99 for access to all of Oscar.com’s red carpet and backstage coverage.

This year, the offerings marketed as the Oscar Digital Experience are free to all comers, and there will be exponentially more content and much deeper integration with Facebook, Twitter et al. The site and the app are advertising-supported, but it’s clear that the effort is as much an investment in the event’s future as it is a revenue-driver for 2012.

“We’ve been looking at research all year. People really are watching TV with a device in their lap now,” said Karin Gilford, ABC’s senior vice president of digital media. “What really completes the experience is having something providing relevant content that is (enhancing) what they’re seeing on TV.”

The app gives official Oscardom the chance to crash the social-media tailgate party that inevitably crops up around big television events. The goal is to make it easy for the online obsessors to connect with one another, post authorized clips and get perks that won’t be seen by those who watch the show the old-fashioned way.

ABC will have an army of digital producers and directors coordinating the feeds from 20 cameras on the red carpet and dozens more in the backstage area, as well as at the Governors Ball.

Read the full article at Variety.

Political campaigns, which have borrowed tricks from Madison Avenue for decades, are now fully engaged on the latest technological frontier in advertising: aiming specific ads at potential supporters based on where they live, the Web sites they visit and their voting records.

In recent primaries, two kinds of Republican voters have been seeing two different Mitt Romney video ads pop up on local and national news Web sites. The first, called “It’s Time to Return American Optimism,” showed the candidate on the campaign trail explaining how this was an election “to save the soul of America.” It was aimed at committed party members to encourage a large turnout. The second video ad, geared toward voters who have not yet aligned themselves with a candidate, focused more on Mr. Romney as a family man. Versions of the two ads were seen online in Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

Kenneth M. Goldstein, the president of the Campaign and Media Analysis Group at Kantar Media, part of the advertising giant WPP, said Mr. Romney’s directed ads represented a sea change in political advertising.

“Forty years ago, you’d watch the same evening news ad as your Democratic neighbor,” Mr. Goldstein said.

The technology that makes such customized advertising possible is called microtargeting, which is similar to the techniques nonpolitical advertisers use to serve up, for example, hotel ads online to people who had shopped for vacations recently.

In the last few years, companies that collect data on how consumers behave both online and off and what charitable donations they make have combined that vast store of information with voter registration records.

As a result, microtargeting allows campaigns to put specific messages in front of specific voters — something that has increased in sophistication with the large buckets of data available to political consultants.

Zac Moffatt, the digital director for Mr. Romney’s campaign, worked with a company called Targeted Victory for the online ads. “Two people in the same house could get different messages,” Mr. Moffatt said. “Not only will the message change, the type of content will change.”

Few campaigns like to talk about this kind of advertising. Representatives from the Obama campaign and the Gingrich campaign would not confirm whether they were using targeted ads tied to voter data. Saul Anuzis, chairman of the Republican National Committee on Technology, said he expected spending on digital political ads to reach 10 to 15 percent of campaign budgets in the 2012 election season.

Read the full article at The New York Times.

Execs at cable MSOs and satellite operators are looking over their shoulders at a worrisome trend: A small but growing number of subscribers are cutting their expensive links to multichannel content providers and turning instead to lower-cost Internet video. Others have even gone back to free over-the-air broadcasts, relying on rabbit ears or rooftop antennas.

Worse, Internet-savvy younger viewers — potential future subscribers — may opt to embrace online video delivery, also known as over-the-top, or OTT, content delivery, snubbing cable and satellite entirely.

To be sure, much the evidence for this is anecdotal. It seems everyone has a friend who got fed up at paying an ever-growing monthly cable bill and cut the service, or a kid who never watches TV and seems unlikely to ever buy one.

But facts are emerging that seem to confirm such a trend. According to a Nielsen report released earlier this month, the proportion of U.S. homes that rely on the Internet or on free broadcasts for their video consumption rose by almost 1 million — a rise of almost 22.8% — from the third quarter of 2010 to the third quarter of 2011.

This translates to 5.1 million broadband and aerial antenna homes that shun cable and satellite services, which Nielsen characterized as a “small but growing” number of consumers. The group represents less than 5% of all TV households.

Simply put, the number of cable homes dropped by more than a million. Receivers of video via telcos such as Verizon and AT&T rose by a quarter million, while satellite services gained 173,000 subs.

Perhaps of even greater concern to the cable biz is a report released in June by research outfit Knowledge Networks (KN), which found that 15% of U.S. households rely solely on over-the-air signals — or 46 million individuals, up from 42 million the year before. The National Association of Broadccasters believes that KN’s numbers are more accurate than Nielsen’s, according to a spokesman for the org. KN does not address OTT viewing.

The fact remains that multichannel video service is a mature market. Households that want it already have it, and some TV execs worry that an increasing portion of the U.S. population may never want it.

Read the full article at Variety.

After another night of oddly depressed ratings, executives at several networks found themselves scratching their heads, checking their wallets, and wondering if something weird and scary has been taking place this week.

Certainly Thursday’s results continued the scrambling for explanations of why most long-established shows have taken a nosedive, including such hits as “Grey’s Anatomy” on ABC, “The Office” on NBC, “The Big Bang Theory” on CBS and “American Idol” on Fox.

The ratings among 18- to 49-year-olds (the audience advertisers value) were truly eye-popping in some circumstances — and not in a good way. “Grey’s Anatomy” hit its lowest rating ever. So did “The Office.” And “Idol,” which had shown signs of stabilizing in its most recent editions, plunged again, down 14 percent from last week and a striking 34 percent from the same night a year ago.

“Big Bang” which has been on a steady upswing, suddenly dropped 11 percent.

This has all occurred even though overall television viewing levels have remained relatively constant. Even without an obvious draw on cable like “Monday Night Football,” the networks’ losses have been the cable channels’ gain.

Thursday’s 18-to-49 network ratings follow several nights filled with other stunning results: Fox’s “Glee” on Tuesday hit its second-lowest numbers among those viewers. The CBS comedy lineup on Monday was down across the board, even though its main competition, “The Voice” on NBC, was also down. ABC’s big comedy hit, “Modern Family,” saw a sharp decline on Wednesday.

As often happens when Nielsen numbers show sudden and seemingly unexplainable anomalies, network executives have begun a (thus far) quiet search for answers.

The immediate speculation turned to extra DVR use, perhaps as fallout from the huge viewing levels for the Grammy Awards Sunday night. Some long-time favorites like “Family Guy” on Fox and “Desperate Housewives” saw their ratings collapse that night against the music show (the ABC drama also scored its worst numbers ever).

Read the full article at The New York Times.

Following in Oprah Winfrey’s footsteps, “American Idol” host and media mogul Ryan Seacrest, “rapperpreneur” Sean “Diddy” Combs and actor Clint Eastwood have all been linked to new cable channels in recent weeks. But there’s one big difference between these networks and Ms. Winfrey’s OWN Network: The celebrities won’t be the names or faces of their channels.

Take Mr. Seacrest, who will be working with Mark Cuban to rebrand the HDNet channel this summer as AXS TV, which will focus on live entertainment and lifestyle programming. “Ryan is an investor — he isn’t going to be the defining creative voice for the content on the channel,” a spokesperson for Mr. Seacrest said.

A clear separation between the celebrity and the network is the right decision, according to media experts, who said Ms. Winfrey’s close association with OWN may have actually been a detriment. The network has suffered from anemic ratings and disorganization in the corner office.

Ms. Winfrey’s longtime associate Lisa Erspamer, who was exec VP-production and development, left OWN last month — the latest in a string of departures. CEO Christina Norman was replaced by Discovery Communications Chief Operating Officer Peter Liguori in May 2011; programming chief Rod Aissa left for Oxygen Media in December; and Ms. Winfrey’s own BFF, Gayle King, went to CBS’s “Early Show.”

Ms. Winfrey now shoulders the burden of rescuing OWN, adding the roles of CEO and chief creative officer to her position as chairman.

“Anyone else launching a network would be wise to keep their name off of it,” said Gary Lico, CEO of CableU, which studies the cable industry. “It can be polarizing; if you don’t like Seacrest, you don’t like the network if that’s how it’s billed. And look at the heat Eastwood took for a simple commercial. If you’re behind the scenes, that’s better; an almost-silent investor, better yet.”

Read the full article at Ad Age.