CBS-owned CSTV Networks announced today a college sports junkie’s dream come true — the launch of more than 100 new broadband channels devoted to live college sports. Collectively the channels will offer more than 10,000 live events, including audio, video and live data feeds of press conferences, news, features, archived games, plus ticketing, e-commerce and other features.
These channels are subscription-only, but the fees are relatively low, with some schools, such as Notre Dame, offering their programming at no charge to users. The schools are in charge of the content that gets put up on the site (accessible at www.CSTVXXL.com) and prices range from $4.95/month to $9.95/month.
The channels are a natural idea for the broadband era, given how many college sports games there are, how few of those events make it to TV and how loyal students and alumni are to their schools. “Every year there are over 100,000 games that take place across the college sports landscape and maybe only 1,000 or 1,500 make it onto television,” CEO Brian Bedol said during a call to announce the new channels.
The technology back-end, provided in part by thePlatform, has sophisticated black-out capabilities Bedol said, to get around market-based sports black-out rules. The other major tech vendor supporting this massive effort is Maven Networks.
Each of the channels corresponds to a college or university and CSTV has lined up practically every major college sports powerhouse in the nation, including Auburn, BYU, Memphis, Miami, Navy, North Carolina, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Pittsburgh, Stanford, Tennessee, Tulane, Villanova, UCLA, UNLV, USC and Washington. The schools that haven’t signed up will probably do so soon. “My guess is that you’re going to see pretty rapid adoption,” Bedol said.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 6:44 PM | Print | Comments (0)
This election season has seen a lot of Internet firsts — candidates podcasting, flocking to YouTube, posting MySpace profiles and distributing campaign literature under Creative Commons licenses. Now, unofficial Democratic presidential candidate Mark Warner will appear today on hot virtual world site Second Life. Governor Warner will appear, as is required, in animated avatar form (see picture) at 3:30 pm.
Warner sees a role for virtual world social communities in the democratic process.
“Social technologies can be great tools for political change, and virtual worlds like Second Life might be the next tool for engaging people in the real world democratic process,” said Governor Warner. “We want to use Second Life to continue the conversation about the direction of our country. My avatar is also pretty funny looking. That alone makes it worth checking out.”
While Governor Warner may think his avatar is “funny looking,” W. James Au, a former “embedded journalist” at Second Life who will be interviewing Warner, thinks he looks “presidential” in animated form.
Mark Warner’s avatar seems presidential, too—tall, stern, and statesman-like.
The event was proposed by Warner’s Forward-Together PAC and is being produced by Millions of Us, a firm dedicated to “helping businesses understand and harness the power of virtual worlds.”
(Tip to Cory Doctorow.)
Update: OK, being a newbie to Second Life, I tried for about 30 minutes to figure out how to get my avatar off “Orientation Island” and into some kind of auditorium where Mark Warner was speaking. The best I could do was fly and wave my arms around and make my avatar say “you there” to equally aimless and bumbling avatars all hemmed inside a fenced corral. My advice to Mark Warner’s team and the Second Life people: next time, please help us lame neophytes with some kind of instructions.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 11:19 AM | Print | Comments (2)
With Congress in its August recess, I haven’t written a word about telecom reform legislation or net neutrality in weeks and weeks. That’s ending now as the Senate heads back to Washington, particularly given that net neutrality advocates are taking advantage of the end-of-recess to lobby for their cause.
Tim Karr has a round-up of nationwide grassroots efforts that kicked off yesterday and continue today. SaveTheInternet.com has organized events in 25 cities, with supporters mostly handing over signed petitions pressing the Senate to incorporate net neutrality provisions in its pending telecom reform bill.
He’s got videos of various Senators, some of which appeared on local news stations, endorsing net neutrality. Rallies are planned for today in Montpelier, Wilmington, Orlando, Honolulu, Louisville, Columbus, Providence, Madison, Spokane and Charleston.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 10:11 AM | Print | Comments (0)Thanks to Steve Rubel, I came across this item from e.politics that provides a nice wrap-up of The Washington Post’s forays into user-generated content, social media, blog linking and even blog advertising.
Aside from encouraging blogging on the site, the Post has built-in Technorati-powered “Who’s Blogging” features, formed its own blog ad network and encouraged Del.icio.us tagging. The paper is now incorporating user comments into articles (Rubel provides this link as an example) and plans to allow readers to incorporate their comments in user profiles.
e.politics’ Colin Delaney gives the Post very high marks for its forward-looking Internet development.
Overall, the Post.com folks show an endearing tendency to try just about anything that might help build their audience, and I’m a big fan of editors who’ll throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. In a world in which many traditional media outlets are wondering how to survive, it may be the only approach that works.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:57 AM | Print | Comments (1)
California became the seventh state in the nation to pass a state-wide franchising bill yesterday, a move that will speed the entry of phone companies into the video business. AB 2987, “The Digital Infrastructure and Video Competition Act of 2006,” was passed by by the California Senate on a 33 to 4 vote and will now go back to the Assembly for concurrence and then to the Governor’s office for consideration. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to sign the bill as early as today.
Unlike most other state-wide franchising initiatives (Virginia’s legislation is the other possible exception), this bill received the backing of both cable and phone companies due to compromises that ease franchising burdens for cable operators and allow them to enjoy the benefits of state-wide franchising once telco competition has set in. The cities, on the other hand, are not happy, even though they get to keep their 5% franchise fees.
They fear, among other things, that the state legislature will take away their franchise fee revenues if California hits another financial crisis. In an 11th hour bid to derail the bill, the state’s cities warned that the legislation, which doesn’t mandate build-outs for telcos once they enter a community, will result in red-lining or denial of advanced communication service deployments in poor or rural areas.
The happiest campers are, of course, the phone companies — AT&T, the biggest telco in the state, reportedly spent around $18 million to get the bill passed. With the burden of community-by-community franchise negotiations lifted, AT&T and Verizon, the other major telco in the state, have promised stepped-up roll-outs of triple-play services.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:14 AM | Print | Comments (0)
An amusing and oddly catchy video devoted to the FCC’s stepped-up enforcement of indecency rules is making the rounds among DC types. (YouTube video is at the end, but for our feed readers, here’s the link.) Entitled “FCC FU,” it features a pretty decent operatic quartet singing a lampoon to the tune of “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.”
Here are the first three verses — the lyrics are strictly PG-rated (or should I say TV-MA rated) because, according to the group that produced the video, “it’s simply more fun to insult the FCC using words and phrases they can’t censor!”
My country used to be
Sweet land of liberty
That once was true
Until the FCC
Chose what we hear and see
On radio and on TV
FCC FU!
When you deny our choice
You censor every voice
That’s what you do
We’d say “go fly a kite”
But that’s far too polite
For stealing First Amendment rights
FCC FU!
What makes your ass so tight?
Does the religious Right
Rule over you?
Those few fanatic fools
And your outrageous rules
Kick freedom in the family jewels
FCC FU!
It’s not exactly clear to me what group is responsible for the video’s production, but evidence indicates it’s either The First Amendment Center or FreePress.net. The main site promoting the video is a robust one, with news feeds and even a store that sells T-shirts, thongs (I kid you not), coffee mugs and posters emblazoned with the phrase “FCC FU.”
(Hat tip to Gary!)
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 7:47 AM | Print | Comments (0)The New York Times’ John Quain has this review piece today covering the leading online movie sites, from Vongo to CinemaNow to Movielink to the recently unveiled AOL movie download destination. Bottom-line: although downloading movies over the web seems like a good idea, the reality doesn’t yet match the promise.
Vongo, which is limited by Starz’ licensing agreements, has a limited selection, won’t let users purchase-to-own and shuts off viewing after the licensing window closes. Prices at CinemaNow and Movielink are steep and downloads can take forever.
Until recently the biggest problem plaguing movies-over-the-net has been the “last ten feet problem,” namely restrictions placed on the films that bar viewing them on anything other than a PC or mobile device. Most consumers want to burn DVDs and watch the downloaded films on TV sets. CinemaNow is one of a handful of services that now allow burning to TV-capable DVDs, but as Quain points out, that process is fraught with technical pot holes.
There are other problems too — limited selection, confusing options. But the real reason web-delivered movies remain a novelty is that it’s still cheaper (and easier) to rent DVDs.
Ultimately, what may hamper sales of downloadable movies may not be download times or trouble with DVD burning. The obstacle will be price. It is often more economical to rent DVD’s from local rental kiosks or mail-order outfits like Netflix (www.netflix.com). So for now the best way to solve the “last 10 feet” problem is still to get up off the couch.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 7:21 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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