NBC Announces New Chapters of Webisodes For NBC.com

From Media Post - NBC DIGITAL ENTERTAINMENT ON WEDNESDAY announced its full slate of content for the summer and fall seasons, including original webisodes for "Heroes," "Chuck," and "The Office," as well as "30 Rock 360," a new original digital production--"Fears, Secrets & Lies"--and digital features for each new show.

New chapters of webisodes for "Heroes," "Chuck" and "The Office" will debut on NBC.com beginning in July. Additional chapters of webisodes for each show will roll out throughout the season. Each chapter of webisodes will continue to weave online with on-air creative to give fans a deeper entertainment experience.

NBC.com will also debut its second season of original productions with "Fears, Secrets & Desires." This series will be available exclusively on NBC.com.

Networks see little profit in online broadcasting

There is no surprise in this article for me; online “broadcasting” is so new and ad models are still emerging. It’s going to be a while until this kind of service draws the audience and revenues (and develops the right ad models) that are more effective than what’s online today. I also doubt that it will replace TV (why is there always this mention in articles?) - but will find its place along side broadcast media – at a larger scale than at present, as people’s behaviors shift to match new content availability... And at the end of the day, it can be profitable, just not as much as TV — which is the same as how selling music through iTunes is profitable, but not as profitable as the old CD/in-store sales model.


From The Globe and Mail -- The biggest thing keeping television networks from wholeheartedly embracing the Internet is that online programming does not make nearly as much money as traditional TV, a new report says.

The report, to be published today by Convergence Consulting Group Ltd., indicates online broadcasting, despite its growing popularity, is still viewed by networks as a complementary business, rather than a replacement for TV.

"There is no current economic rationale for broadcasters and cable networks to abandon traditional TV or attempt to accelerate a transition to a total online model," says the report, which looks at the North American broadcasting and telecom sector.

The findings indicate why online TV in the U.S., though growing much faster than in Canada, still lags behind the prime-time offerings of network television, even though the broadcasters hold digital rights to most of their content. In Canada, where broadcasters don't own those rights, much less content is available online.

Smaller audiences and fewer commercial minutes during Web episodes and clips make it difficult to earn ad revenues comparable to television, said Brahm Eiley, president of Convergence Consulting. | Read full article

Big picture in a small package

Sony's OLED TV is vivid, small and ‘cute'

ust when you thought it was safe to buy a TV again, along comes the next wave of technology to make your recently purchased wall-sized liquid-crystal or gas-plasma television appear quaint.

It's a display technology called organic light emitting diode, or OLED, and Sony is the first to reach the consumer market with it as a standalone TV, which Sony has placed in its Bravia series. The XEL-1 model is a cute little thing, small enough to pass for a digital picture frame on a desktop, but one that happens to deliver TV.

Aside from the new screen, the XEL-1 is a basic TV with a couple of à-la-minute goodies tossed in. It comes with a remote control and two HDMI ports to connect to video from, say, a Blu-ray disc player and an HDTV set-top box. There's also a memory-stick port and a USB DMeX connection so you can watch content from Sony's Bravia Internet Video Link service. That service requires another box (selling for about $249), which will stream, via your cable Internet service (not DSL), Internet video, music videos, movie trailers and RSS feeds from AOL, Yahoo, Grouper, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Sony BMG Music.

Early prototypes reported there would be an Ethernet port to connect the XEL-1 to your home computer network, but that seems to have fallen by the wayside in the production model. | Read full article

Can Apple Jump-Start Internet Movie Rentals?

From The New York Times - The iTunes movie rental announcement at Macworld Expo underscores that this is among the hot categories right now. It’s part of an earnest and chaotic attempt by consumer electronics companies to both bring Internet content to the living room and to get themselves into the process and profit it from it.

This is the Set-Top Box Generation. Everyone’s got an entry and consumers, while they may ultimately benefit, are left to figure out what to choose — how to hook up, whether and when to jump in. | Read full article

Video Podcasts: The Sleeping Giant on AppleTV

From The New York Times - While Steve Jobs talked for a long time Tuesday at Macworld Expo about the movie rental feature of iTunes and Apple TV, he spent only a short time demonstrating its capabilities for podcasts. In fact, the ability of Apple TV to view podcasts may in the long run be its most important feature.

“Huh,” you say, thinking that podcasts are Wayne’s World run amok. But in Apple’s world, podcasts are any free video and audio programs. They are usually organized as a series to which you can subscribe, but you can also choose one program at a time. | Read full article

Netflix Partners with LG to Bring Movies Straight to TV

From The New York Times - Netflix, the DVD-by-mail company with more than 7 million customers, has a new strategy that may one day make those red envelopes obsolete.

The company wants to strike deals with electronics companies that will let it send movies straight to TV screens over the Internet. Its first partnership, announced Wednesday night, is with the South Korean manufacturer LG Electronics to stream movies and other programming to LG’s high-definition televisions.

The partnership will extend a novel feature from Netflix, announced a year ago, that allows paying subscribers to watch any of 6,000 movies and television shows on its Web site free. But that service can only be accessed with a personal computer.

Reed Hastings, chief executive of Netflix, said he hoped to strike other such deals and that Netflix would soon be viewed as a movie channel that might appear on a myriad of devices. | Read full article

Webisodes of ‘Lost’: Model Deal for Writers?

From The New York Times - On the picket lines, striking television and film writers adamantly claim that studios are refusing to pay for the use of writers’ scripts on the Internet.

But ABC Studios is doing just that. Over the next three months fans of the hit show “Lost” can go to ABC.com to view weekly episodes of “Lost: Missing Pieces,” a series of new two- to three-minute shorts that reveal background information and previously undisclosed details about the stranded inhabitants of the show’s mysterious island.

The “Missing Pieces” episodes were produced under an agreement with the writers’ union that provides for much of what the writers say the studios have been refusing to offer. | Read full article

NBC brings Web series "Quarterlife" to TV network

From Yahoo - NBC on Friday said it will begin airing the highly touted Web series "Quarterlife" on its television network early next year, making the program the first to originate online and then move to a major U.S. broadcaster.

The deal with "Quarterlife" creators Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick, Emmy-winning producers of shows "thirtysomething" and "My So-Called Life," comes as a strike by screenwriters against Hollywood's studios nears the end of a second week. | Read full article

Networks Start to Offer TV on the Web

From The New York Times - Music and TV were lazily paddling their canoes down Prosperity Creek when Music suddenly heard a deafening roar ahead. “Help! What’s happening?” cried Music — but it was too late. The canoe tumbled over the Internet Falls, knocking Music upside-down into the churning vortex.

TV, following at a short distance, was determined to avoid Music’s fate. “I shall go with the current and not fight it,” vowed TV. And with only seconds to spare, TV threw every shred of brainpower and muscle into avoiding its doom.

End of Chapter 1.

Now, nobody knows how that story will turn out. But everybody knows that fewer people are watching network TV with every passing year. This year, the networks have mounted their first counterattack. In addition to short mini-videos for the short-attention-span generation, they’re putting full-length free on-demand episodes online. ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and CW are all in the game, with surprisingly pleasant results. | Read full article

Watching TV on the laptop--and on the cheap

From The New York Times - I know this may sound crazy, but I don't have a television.

This isn't a problem, except when I get glimpses of what I might be missing, like when the New York Mets choked and it was all anybody could talk about in the office that day.

I also happened to catch some episodes of Animal Planet's Meerkat Manor on a public hospital TV recently. I was captivated by the story of matriarch meerkat "Flower" and her tragic death from a cobra bite while saving her pups in the Kalahari desert. I just had to watch the next episode to see which of her daughters would win the power struggle to succeed her. But how could I do that without cable or even a TV? | Read full article

People Do Watch Commercials

From The New York Times - Nielsen’s hotly anticipated commercial ratings landed with a thud on Tuesday, and network executives and media buyers quickly analyzed the premiere week numbers that most of this season’s advertisements were bought and sold based on.

And the spreadsheets contained… hold your breath… no big surprises, according to Alan Wurtzel, the president for research at NBC Universal.

“It was literally a confirmation of what we expected to see,” Mr. Wurtzel said. | Read full article

TV on the Web Embraced by Viewers and Advertisers

From Live Science - If you don’t watch TV shows on your computer, it's probably only a matter time before you do. And the networks would love for you to do so, since your eyeballs are worth as much as 40 percent more when they’re parked in front of a computer than in front of a TV.

Today, 18 percent of the nation's online population watches TV shows on their computers.

That's double the rate of last year, and the figure is expected to double next year, said James McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass. McQuivey notes that the online population is about two thirds of the total U.S. population. | Read full article

Blu-ray vs. HD DVD: War without end

From The New York Times - What if somebody started a format war and nobody came?

That was the question posed at the opening session of the DisplaySearch's 5th Annual HDTV Conference here. The much-hyped battle between opposing next-generation packaged media formats HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc still has no clear winner. Each of the panelists onhand to hash out the question of which side will prevail predictably had an agenda--to explain why his camp will win. | Read full article

Set-top box makers still waiting for customers

From The New York Times - Sounds like a raw deal, and it's a situation similar to when you buy a set-top box that downloads movies via the Web: You invest a significant amount of money when you buy the box, then whenever you want to watch a movie, you have to pay again. It's one of the reasons that, so far, the few companies to introduce standalone products in this space, such as Akimbo and MovieBeam, have called it quits, or at the very least no longer exist in their original incarnations.

Now the makers of a more evolved version of the Internet-based video download box hope they can change things. | Read full article

eCrush & OTX: Teens Learn About New TV Shows From TV, Not the Internet

From Online Media Daily - WHATEVER TEENS ARE DISCUSSING ON their social networks, it isn't the new fall TV season.

That's the conclusion of research conducted by Hearst Magazines Digital Media's own teen social networking site eCRUSH, in conjunction with OTX, the Online Testing exchange.

The "Teen Topix" study, which surveyed 750 13- to-17-year-olds across the country about their TV viewing behavior and preferences, found that most teens (51%) still learn about new TV shows the old-fashioned way: from on-air ads and promos. | Read full article

Analog TV in Countdown to Oblivion

From Live Science - The old TV with the "rabbit ear" antennae that brought us Howdy Doody and the original Star Trek episodes has a date with the Grim Reaper. After Feb. 19, 2009, it will only display static.

That’s because old TVs relied on analog technology, and the U.S. Government has mandated that analog TV broadcasting will cease after that date. | Read full article

Mobile TV among highlights at Berlin consumer electronics show

From CBC.ca - Mobile TV and 3-D TV are among the consumer products being pushed at the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin.

The show, which runs from Aug. 31 to Sept. 5, bills itself as one of the largest such shows in the world. This year, it included 1,212 exhibiters from 32 countries. | Read full article

TV Meets the Web. All Is Safe.

From The New York Times - Just to get this out of the way: “i-Caught,” which had its premiere last week on ABC, is not a sequel to “I Spy.” It is, according to the voice-over at the beginning of the program, “what happens when Internet video comes together with television.”

What happens, apparently — besides a bout of temporary show-naming insanity — is a scramble for the familiar and the reassuring. That would explain why this attempt to recapture some of the eyeballs being drawn away to video-sharing Web sites like YouTube is structured as a combination of “20/20” and “America’s Funniest Home Videos.” | Read full article

TV Time-Shifting Boon To Key Demo Numbers

From Media Daily News - PRIME-TIME PROGRAMS CONTINUE TO BENEFIT from time-shifting technology--with many top local TV markets witnessing large 14% to 22% increases in key viewer group ratings. In new research released by the Television Bureau of Advertising (TVB), the TV advertising group says rating-point increases of 2 points or more, in virtually all top markets, were common when it comes to household rating and popular demographic groups, 18-49 and 18-34, during the May sweeps period.

For instance, in Chicago, the market witnessed an 18.5% gain in 18-34 viewers when comparing live viewing plus seven days of DVR playback versus that of live-only viewing--a jump of 2.2 rating points to 14.1 in total. For 18-49 viewers, there was a 16.6% gain or 2.6 rating points to a collective 18.3 rating points. | Read full article

NBC Making a Clean Start in a House of Mixed Media

From The New York Times - After it bought the Web site iVillage.com last year for $600 million, NBC Universal bragged that it had landed a digital darling. The women-focused Internet business was a perfect fit with the “Today” show, executives said, and would turbo-charge their online efforts.

Few people at NBC Universal are boasting about iVillage now.

Promotions on “Today” did not spike traffic to the Web site as expected. Veteran Web employees fled after a decision to move iVillage’s offices to New Jersey from Manhattan. Hearst, which had long featured content from Cosmopolitan and Redbook on the site, severed ties so it could bulk up its own Internet business. | Read full article