March Madness hit the Internet today, with CBS and the NCAA offering the first batch of the NCAA Division I Championship games online at no charge to viewers, a mass-market Internet experiment that is a record-breaker, according to CBS. CBS enabled 268,000 simultaneous streams, and chalked up 1.2 million streams served, a record-breaker for a live sports or entertainment event on the Internet.
This level of online viewership tops that of AOL’s webcasts last summer of the Live 8 concert, a move that was itself a break-through in web-based video viewing. Live 8 on AOL accomodated 175,000 simultaneous video streams.
It’s too soon to say just what kind of a turning point the online March Madness games represents, but this development has definitely captured a lot of attention, crystalizing the power of the web as a video distribution platform. The high-level awareness of the online availability of this annual sporting ritual has, moreover, sparked a lot of thought regarding the ability of Internet-delivered video to reduce worker productivity.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 10:27 PM | Print | Comments (0)Thomas Hawk has this very good overview of a potentially blockbuster online video start-up called CozmoTV. Cozmo is a combination of remote PVR recording/social networking/web video searching.
The free service (for now) finds the user’s TiVo and synchs up with the user’s TV service to enable recording choices. But Cozmo also allows a user to “tag” content so that other users can find programs using keywords not contained in the guide descriptions, so that, for example, Thomas Hawk can tag his favorite programs “Thomas Hawk” and other users can find those programs based on that tag.
Coming soon Cozmo will extend all this functionality to web-based video and will expand the tagging capabilities to encompass greater social networking relationships.
On an *opt in* basis (don’t worry you tinfoil hat privacy nuts) you will be able to publish what you watch to the world on your Cozmo including all your TiVo activity. Want to share your fine taste in TV? Go for it. You will also be able to add channels of people who have similar taste in TV and check out what they are watching and downloading via internet video.
Note: The earlier version of this post misspelled Cozmo.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:20 AM | Print | Comments (0)
The Wall Street Journal’s Amy Schatz and Brooks Barnes have this in-depth article today on how the Internet is shifting the concept that has anchored television broadcasting for nearly 70 years: localism. Broadcast television rights, from Major League Baseball games to syndicated reruns of hit TV series, are all sold on the basis of local TV markets, a business model that is seriously challenged now as TV programs are distributed over the web.
Baseball is just one example of how the TV business depends upon a network of invisible fences and geographic limitations. Now the Web is obliterating them. As broadcasters start to fear the consequences, some are trying new technical and legal tricks to fight back. In some cases, they are even re-creating online the same kinds of geographic boundaries that supported their business before the digital age.
And the impact of web-based distribution of programming is being felt in the overseas market too.
Jeffrey Schlesinger, Warner Bros.’ president of international television distribution, says foreign broadcasters have begun to express “grave concerns” about the implications of new entertainment technology, although he says none are yet trying to push down prices. Says Matt Baker, a spokesman for the United Kingdom’s Channel 4: “We obviously pay a good price for American product and the value would be reduced if residents of the U.K. could see those shows on the Internet.”
The biggest threat to the local market model is place-shifting, a concept pioneered by SlingMedia, which offers a device, the SlingBox, that enables viewers to watch their subscription TV programming anywhere in the world via the Internet.
Watching TV on a Slingbox creates an additional layer of complexity for TV executives. If those users could be counted, they could be added to a station’s ratings — after all, they’re still watching the local programming. But at the same time, the stations where the Slingbox user happens to be situated might be losing out, and it’s not clear how they could be compensated.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:00 AM | Print | Comments (0)
Light Reading’s Mark Sullivan has this excellent round-up of views on net neutrality expressed by various industry representatives during PulverMedia’s Communications Policy Summit held on the even of VON.
My favorite part in the piece is a clearly unguarded statement by Google’s General Counsel, in which he says that many in Washington think the FCC “sucks.”
Google general counsel Andrew Mclaughlin says many in Washington would rather not get the FCC involved in the Internet at all. “The FCC sucks,” Mclaughlin says. “Why would you want the FCC to get involved in anything? Its track record is pretty bad when it comes to processes and outcomes.” After his statements, Mclaughlin made it clear he was expressing the views of others in Washington who are not convinced there is a need for regulating the Internet.
However inadvertently humorous this statement is, it nonetheless touches on a conundrum that net neutrality advocates face: implementation of any net neutrality regulations will fall to the FCC, which has an utterly abysmal track record of doing anything good for the industries it regulates.
It is true that most lobbyists, communications policy experts or informed observers think the FCC “sucks.” That’s because once the Commission gets a grip on an important aspect of communications, you can bet the affected industries will get screwed up as a consequence.
The bureaucratic bungling and pointy-headed legalistic contortions the FCC goes through once it implements legislative mandates are time and again painful to witness. While net neutrality regulations may be justified, it’s a sorry fact that the FCC would ultimately find a way to put those regulations into place in a way that would benefit, um, no one.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 8:26 AM | Print | Comments (2)
A fun battle has been joined in New Jersey, where the phone companies are trying to gain state-wide franchising rights. It seems that the cable industry has refused to accept TV ads by Verizon that blast the cable industry for hiking service prices and also advocate video competition by Verizon as a solution to rising cable prices. While Comcast and Time Warner are running ads that attack Verizon, they refuse to accept ads by Verizon that are critical of their positions.
The best part is the statement by a Verizon spokesman that cable is being “un-American” for refusing to air both sides of the debate.
“This [is] about cable stifling debate in New Jersey,” said Verizon spokesman Rick Young, “and frankly, it’s un-American.”
Both Time Warner and Comcast say Verizon’s ads are misleading.
In a statement, Comcast said the cable company “will not run advertising which contains unsubstantiated, false and misleading claims.” It cited a National Cable TV Association study that found Verizon’s claims against the cable industry are “demonstrably false and misleading and are part of a larger lobbying effort intended to secure preferential treatment for them at the expense of consumers.”
Cablevision Systems, which also operates in New Jersey, won’t answer Verizon’s request to buy ad time. But like the other two operators, Cablevision challenges the accuracy of Verizon’s ads.
Cablevision spokesman Jim Maiella said the spot in question is “purposely misleading.” He added: “A $90 billion phone monopoly complaining about high rates and not being able to get its message out is laughable. Is there anyone in New Jersey who hasn’t seen hundreds of Verizon ads?”Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 8:10 AM | Print | Comments (0)
The National Journal’s David Hatch has this piece about a potential cable programming a la carte bill that may be introduced by Representative Mark Kirk (R-IL), a member of the House Appropriations Committee. News of this gambit (Kirk would have to attach his bill as an amendment to an FCC appropriations bill) follows a press briefing by the cable industry yesterday during which the NCTA and Disney unveiled two new economic analyses that counter the FCC’s recently revised analysis which shows that, contrary to an earlier FCC determination, selling cable channels on a per channel basis might benefit consumers.
NCTA presented the results of an economic analysis conducted by economist Steve Wildman of Michigan State University. In his study, Professor Wildman takes apart the FCC’s latest assessment of cable program bundling (The Further Report) and concludes that the Commission has simply missed the boat when it comes to the nature of television programming economics.
The Further Report’s optimistic perspective on the impact of a la carte on cable network advertising revenues neglects critical realities of contemporary media buying.
Moreover, Professor Wildman takes on the great lengths the current FCC went to in trying to completely reverse the policies of the previous Commission, which was headed by Michael Powell.
It is rare to see an expert agency completely reverse its own study-based findings over a period of less than 15 months, and it is even rarer to see an agency publicly go to such lengths as the Further Report to discredit the work that supported its own recently articulated position. But this is not a simple “after further study and reflection we changed our mind” type of announcement. In attacking the analysis and conclusions of the First Report, the Further Report misinterprets and misrepresents various statements and claims of the First Report and the supporting documents on which it relied.
Cable programmer Disney also presented an economic analysis conducted by DC economic consulting firm CapGroup, which concludes that the FCC “got it right” when it first looked at a la carte programming and found that consumers are better off without it. During the press briefing, Disney’s chief lobbyist Preston Padden said that his company is in a unique position to assess the merits of a la cartet, having sold The Disney Channel on both an a la carte and bundled basis.
“Disney operated as an a la carte channel for 15 years. At $12 to $14 per month per consumer we never reach beyond 30% penetration,” Padden said. “We’ve been to a la carte and we know it doesn’t work.”
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 7:00 AM | Print | Comments (2)
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