cbs

Hulu keeps winning viewers over

Pete Wylie — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 12:13:40 -0400

Hulu's September numbers are in, and they show another stellar period of growth for the NBC/News Corp. venture. Hulu was just another online video platform in beta back in February, with a paltry number of streams a month. Now, NielsenOnline is reporting that Hulu processed 142 million streams in September, making it the sixth most popular online video website by streams.

It can't touch YouTube's 5.5 billion streams, but it can monetize all of its content and its long form videos keep users engaged longer than the short-form, user-gen content on YouTube. Probably sensing the threat of ad-supported professional content to its current model, YouTube announced earlier this month that it will begin to stream and host CBS shows.

Looks like Hulu has got the big guys jumping through hoops.

For more:
- see the newteevee.com post here

IMDB gets online video

Pete Wylie — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 12:28:17 -0400

IMDB, the popular destination for movie trivia and Hollywood minutia owned by Amazon, announced the addition of an online video component Tuesday. The site will host 6,000 free television shows and movies, embedding some CBS and Hulu content on the site and also hosting some of its own content.

Links to the video will be part of the extensive entries the site maintains on everything from TV series to foreign films, to actors and cinematographers.

Although the addition of online video to the site is an exciting development, Techcrunch.com blogger Jason Kincaid wishes the site were more streamlined and searchable. Also, the video interface lacked necessary features, such as a browseable database of videos.

Currently, only the top videos are browseable and all other content must be found through search. Kincaid also notes that the search results are sometimes less than perfect, and TV series especially are often grouped incorrectly and labeled erroneously.

For more:
- see Kincaid's blog where he discusses the IMDB's new feature here.

FreeWheel-ing Ad Management

Doug Mohney — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 15:55:04 -0400

Web ad management gets a boost in a CNET blog listing the strengths of FreeWheel.

About 15 media firms, including CBS, Joost, and an "undisclosed top film studio," have signed up to use FreeWheel Monetization Rights Management (MRM) system. RMR works with existing ad management systems, automatically allocating ad inventory, keeping track of ad revenue, and account for revenue splits between websites and content owners.

If you're syndicating content, FreeWheel is supposedly the "simpler" place for content owners to sell and manage ads across numerous websites. MRM is smart enough to take the terms for different deals and calculate where the money goes.

According to FreeWheel execs, if you syndicate content all over the web people are less likely to steal content if they easily find it. If you do that, you don't need to be DRM paranoid.

FreeWheel also gets brownie points since of all of its founders come from web-ad powerhouse DoubleClick.

For more:
- CNET blog piece on FreeWheel

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Comcast Has a Better Eye than CBS

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 13:45:26 -0400

By Carl Ford

While the world was complaining about the CBS purchase of CNET for $1.8 billion Comcast bought Plaxo for $150 million. This is probably the best purchase yet in social networking.

For those who have not been following the controversy between Rob Scoble and Facebook; Rob Scoble decided to part ways with Facebook for a variety of reasons and wanted to stay connected to his community. Given Rob's presence in the blogosphere when he gets upset, it can form a ground swell of support. So Plaxo enabled a functioning (but not ideal) tool for exporting out of Facebook into Plaxo's Pulse social network. Facebook cried foul and blocked the application. Rob ended up with more support and an offshoot has been the formation of the data portability forum.

The Data Portability Forum has become frenzied with activity and, thanks to folks like Phil Wolfe and others, I expect it to yield some good strategies. (Although I am not sure I would use all of them.) The forum is probably going to yield some agreements in formats and may be a good place to think about your own social network strategies.

From my perspective Plaxo stands to gain a lot from the controversy and the formation. I cannot describe Pulse well. It feels like everyone is posting to a common wall, but I am sure given the two million end users on Plaxo there is some discernment about "my" network. But the point is that Pulse has found a high ground in a world of social hysteria.

So what made Plaxo sell for $150 million now? After all, Facebook and MySpace are valued far higher. Could it be because of the Millenials? After all, I have been using Plaxo for at least four years. It has legitimately about 2,500 of my names (it claimed I had 10,000 but the dedupe killed off a 4-to-1 problem I had in Outlook). If I am part of the demographics so, probably, is the Lawrence Welk fan club.

We can take at face value Comcast (the buyers) investing in the growth opportunity, and the sellers probably have lots of ideas what they can do with the money. But in these days of widgets, is the money that important for development? What about for marketing? Where would you place the money?

And, as the buyer, what is the benefit to Comcast in buying into a still-to-be-separate social network.

Don't get me wrong, I can make a case. Comcast has embraced end-user video and one thing that Plaxo can be is a Personal Video Answering machine. It can also be used to build communities around Comcast content. Last year at this time, Comcast integrated Plaxo into their portal for Voice customers. Given the fact that no press release about the acquisition is on the Comcast side, maybe the cost of buying Plaxo was a wash given the payment for the services to their customers.

Meanwhile, imho its clear Comcast has a lively Pulse in Plaxo.

Carl Ford is Strategic Advisor and Community Developer for FierceMarkets. His words of wisdom can be found at www.carlford.net.

Yahoo Syndicates CBS

Doug Mohney — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 12:18:35 -0400

Yahoo has announced a distribution agreement with CBS Interactive, making Yahoo! the latest and greatest distribution partner of the CBS Audience Network.

In the deal, Yahoo TV will gain access to (i.e. syndication rights) to CBS's catalog of content with all those full episodes and hours of (broadcast) network programming. CBS's content will be added to Yahoo's existing lineup which also includes content from NBC, Fox and more than 15 cable networks. Yahoo will host and stream CBS's entertainment content free to viewers with ads.

Currently, Yahoo News showcases CBS's 60 MINUTES news program with specially produced segments and content; the CBS Stations Group also provides local news and sports videos to Yahoo from 16 CBS-owned stations. CBS gets to brag about increasing its online video numbers, racking up more than 300+ partnering sites and an "unduplicated" total reach of 92 percent of the U.S.-based web audience.

Online video syndication is the in-thing these days, NBC Universal sees a lot of money in aggregating and syndicating their video for use by third-party websites.

For more:
- Yahoo/CBS partnership announcement

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SPOTLIGHT: The Money of College Sports

Doug Mohney — Thu, 22 May 2008 16:16:51 -0400

CBS has launched an online ad network built around college sports, a move expected to draw media buyers to spend more money with the media company by offering them a way to target the all-important 18 to 49 male demographic. College Sports Media includes CBSSports.com, NCAA.com and the CBS College Sports Network 215 college partners.

Media buyers are spending tens of millions of dollars for CBS online properties to reach college sports fans and the new ad network is expected to help CBS boost that amount. A video streaming product rolled out in March for the NCAA basketball tournament generated $23 million in online ad revenue alone. The new organization will allow CBS to more easily serve media buyers in the other 11 months.

Another advantage to the new setup is the ability to bundle online ads (both web and video) with CBS television sports coverage, giving buyers a streamlined way to buy ads on multiple platforms.

At Streaming Media East, VP and GM of Subscription Services Tom Buffolano said the CBS College Sports Network runs websites for around 200 colleges and provides streaming media services for around 100 colleges. CBS is sending out film crews with a $2,000 Sony HD handheld video camera and a Mac loaded with video editing software to produce features throughout an entire season. Pieces are being fed both to online and TV, depending on the content and relevance. Short pieces are good, but they must be engaging to capture a viewer's attention and the ad dollars drawn in by lots of viewers. For around $3,000 in equipment, they can get around 100 per film crew--great economics when compared to the traditional cost of television production.

For more:
- CBS Announcement of College Sports Network via Yahoo!

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CBS and 'Lonelygirl15' creators team up

Doug Mohney — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:56:37 -0400

EQAL, the guys who bought you the YouTube mock reality of "Lonelygirl15," have teamed up with CBS to bring the traditional broadcaster some online video hipness.

The deal is a non-exclusive partnership that gives CBS a first look at new concepts EQAL creates for "multiplatform TV"--the combo of broadcast, Internet and mobile; "three screens" in geek speak. EQAL will also act as a "consulting partner" with CBS programs to help them flesh out online and mobile content to complement broadcast offerings, working closely with CBS television writers at the script and production level to create online narratives that tie directly into TV series and promote network shows.

EQAL will also build and provide the entire infrastructure to host the online show components, an announcement that has no doubt put the company into the speed dialers of CDNs.

"Lonelygirl 15" established EQAL's claim to fame, a mythical drama about a 16-year-old video blogging girl in L.A. who was unmasked to be a 20-year-old New Zealand actress working out of the bedroom of one of the creators. The company continues to create episodes with distribution through YouTube and MySpace and has produced a companion series/hit, KateModern.

In April, EQAL announced a $5 million funding round that included participation from VC firm Spark Capital, a former Mark Burnett Productions executive and Netscape founder Marc Andreesen.

For more:

- EQAL talks about their CBS production deal
- The Hollywood Reporter's schoop on EQAL and CBS teaming up.
- Wired's Lonelygirl15 Creators Team With CBS

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