A survey of 1,000 TV viewers by Accenture offers insights into advertising via Facebook and Twitter, finding that about one-third have tweeted about the brand or show or “liked” their Facebook page after seeing the social media logos.
“The most common action for those who did interact with a show or ad while watching TV was liking its page on Facebook (20 percent). About 7 percent of viewers searched for a show’s hashtag on Twitter and 5 percent used Shazam while sitting on their couch,” TechCrunch reports.
“Surprisingly, the survey also found that 11 percent of viewers scanned a QR code while watching TV. That’s a rather large number, given that QR codes are still far from mainstream,” suggests the post.
However, those polled were less interested in being social or connecting with people of similar interests; rather, about a third of participants wanted to get coupons and others wanted to enter sweepstakes.
The survey also found that the majority of viewers who received content from these social media symbols were generally satisfied with what they found.
Panasonic, Olympus and Sony are designing mirrorless cameras to compete with Canon and Nikon in the high-end SLR market.
IDC forecasts that global shipments of mirrorless cameras will grow 60 percent this year to 6.43 million units, compared to an 18 percent growth rate for SLRs.
“The challengers are hoping to gain market share from an emerging type of camera that packs high-end features into a compact design,” reports the Wall Street Journal.
“Like SLRs, these cameras come with large sensors and interchangeable lenses that produce high-quality images. But they don’t have the conventional mirror-based viewfinders that reflect the image to the photographer’s eye. Instead, the image is digitized, allowing for a more compact body,” explains the article.
Additionally, the mirrorless models are generally more affordable than digital SLRs.
Advertisers are starting to reach out to consumers where they are spending their time: on their devices. A new report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau found online advertising in the U.S. reached $31 billion last year, increasing 22 percent from 2010.
“Mobile grew the most of all categories — 149 percent — but still represents a puny share of the overall market — $1.6 billion — according to the report issued on Wednesday. Digital video also rose 29 percent to $1.8 billion, search was up about 27 percent to $11.7 billion and display advertising jumped 15 percent to $11.1 billion, or 35 percent of all revenues. Search is still the largest category with 47 percent share,” reports Mashable.
Retail remains dominant in terms of ad spending, making up 22 percent of the overall total. Telecom and travel/leisure followed at 12 percent and 8 percent, respectively.
Internet ad spending still trails that of TV — which amounted to $38.5 billion in 2011 — but the increase shows the gap could be narrowing.
For its coverage of the 2012 Olympics in London, NBC Sports announced it will stream live video of all 32 sports via nbcolympics.com.
“The broadcaster, which launched its official Olympics website today, will offer access to the sports in real-time — before the time-delayed coverage that airs on the traditional TV stations in America. The site will also provide users with lots of archived content, stats, and other supplementary material,” VentureBeat reports.
The videos will be archived online shortly thereafter and then there’s the traditional TV broadcasts, which NBC doesn’t expect to be negatively impacted by the online offering.
“We’re not scared of cannibalization… Anytime you have a great event that happens before it shows on the air, it increases ratings and generates buzz,” Rick Cordella, vice president and general manager of NBC Sports Digital Media told The New York Times.
Following an article about his views on Internet censorship, Google co-founder Sergey Brin issued a clarification. Some believed Brin was equating the “walled gardens” of Facebook and Apple to the Internet censorship of totalitarian regimes.
“So to clarify, I certainly do not think this issue is on a par with government based censorship. Moreover, I have much admiration for two of the companies we discussed — Apple and Facebook. I have always admired Apple’s products,” Brin wrote in a Google+ post.
“Likewise, Facebook has helped to connect hundreds of millions of people, has been a key tool for political expression and has been instrumental to the Arab Spring. Both have made key contributions to the free flow of information around the world,” he added.
Although Brin approved of the original Guardian piece in which he was quoted, it only included a small part of a month-long conversation. Additionally, he suggests secondary reports of the interview did not accurately interpret his comments.
“But regardless of how you feel about digital ecosystems or about Google, please do not take the free and open Internet for granted from government intervention,” Brin wrote. “To the extent that free flow of information threatens the powerful, those in power will seek to suppress it.”
The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) hopes to fight potential cyberattacks by enabling companies and the federal government to share cyber threat intelligence with each other.
Although the bill has been supported by many big Internet players, the Obama administration is now expressing some hesitation, suggesting CISPA “fails to adequately protect critical national infrastructure, such as electrical grids and water supplies, and could threaten individual privacy and civil liberties,” reports Digital Trends.
According to Caitlyn Hayden, spokeswoman for the National Security Council, cybersecurity legislation requires strong safeguards. “Legislation without new authorities to address our nation’s critical infrastructure vulnerabilities, or legislation that would sacrifice the privacy of our citizens in the name of security, will not meet our nation’s urgent needs,” she said in a statement.
Some civil liberty and privacy advocates criticize the bill’s broad language, which could “allow companies to hand over private information about their customers and users to the federal government without sufficient oversight or consequences for mishandling the data,” explains the article.
The “Stop Cyber Spying” campaign against CISPA also raises concerns that the shared information could be given to spy agencies with little public oversight.
Although the White House has not made any plan to veto the bill, there is definitely some question as to whether the proposed legislation will do much to protect against cyberattacks.
Despite the economic downturn, television is experiencing a new “golden age” in both creative and business terms, according to Bruce Rosenblum, president of Warner Bros. Television Group.
“Revenue from international has improved dramatically. The domestic broadcast, cable and syndication businesses are at a high point, and there are new buyers” such as Netflix and Hulu, Rosenblum noted during an NAB Show industry discussion group.
Rosenblum explained that international markets currently comprise almost one-third of their revenue. He said that revenue “from international more than covers the production costs of our entire sales of 26 shows.”
He noted that streaming services are becoming useful for library product and new shows, adding that Hulu and Netflix deals for CW content may have “saved the network.”
Rosenblum also stressed the growing importance of social media: “Where Facebook and Twitter can help is when you have shows that are on bubble. Several shows have gotten renewed [in recent years] because networks were aware of how much chatter was out there.”
At the NAB Show in Las Vegas, Netflix took the stage to talk about the variety of original programming it is currently working on. If the shows prove successful, this could be a new direction for the streaming service that has devoted a lot of time and resources to acquiring licensing deals.
“The freedom to make interesting shows — without a network controlling the process or the output — seemed to be an underlying theme, though I don’t think anyone actually came out and said it,” comments GigaOM writer Ryan Lawler. “In that respect, Netflix could use its newcomer status as a way to recruit more talented content creators who are frustrated by the usual network system.”
Jenji Kohan, the creator of “Weeds” and the head of Netflix’s “Orange is the New Black” series, said working for Netflix on original content is a great new business model and provides opportunities that might not be available at a traditional TV network.
Netflix’s Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos acknowledged that delving into content creation does put the company in competition with the same people they try so hard to get licensing deals from.
“But if Netflix ends up competing for a greater share of viewers’ attention with its streaming offering, it’s only fair, Sarandos posited. After all, the increasing number of TV Everywhere apps and services are starting to encroach on its turf,” reports GigaOM.
Google is expected to release its Dropbox competitor, Google Drive, by next week.
Draft specs for the new cloud storage service have leaked. Google Drive will reportedly include 5GB free storage, will work in desktop folders on Mac and Windows systems, and will be available via http://drive.google.com.
TheNextWeb predicts that the service will also feature in-app document editing.
“Now as for the reliability of the information? It’s not at all uncommon for big companies to launch with partners for new features,” explains the post. “When that happens, the partners will often-times have a heads up to integration and specifics, and that’s exactly what appears to have happened here as it did with the Lucidchart leak from last week.” (The earlier report showed a leaked page for linking Google Drive to online diagramming tool Lucidchart for automatically syncing documents in the cloud.)
Nicira, “the most intriguing startup in Silicon Valley” according to Wired, has created a network virtualization technology that enables companies to program their networks as they do with server virtualization.
The technology runs on top of any network hardware which is used only to move network packets. The network virtualization software provides all the intelligence allowing one to reconfigure the network infrastructure. Thus, rather than be locked into a specific network configuration, the entire network architecture can be altered in software rather than hardware to fit the current requirements.
Nicira’s Open vSwitch goes beyond OpenFlow, which requires vendors to incorporate the protocol in their hardware. It can work with any network gear, even inexpensive hardware.
Companies like Google, AT&T, eBay, NTT, Fidelity and Rackspace are already using Nicira to manage their networks.
“We have hundreds of thousands of customers, and that translates into multiple hundreds of thousands of network or network segments that customers want to create,” says John Engates, CTO of Rackspace, which is currently using the Nicira platform for a beta version of its cloud service. “Nicira gives us the ability to put any customer, any end point, any location on one common virtual network.”
Google is already buying inexpensive network hardware from Taiwan and China, thus bypassing more expensive options from Cisco and Juniper. Martin Casado, Nicira’s CTO, thinks over time that network hardware will become less important compared to the network software.
Facebook is making it easier for fans to listen to music through Musician Pages with a new “Listen” button right beside the “Like” button.
The button launches the user’s most frequently used Facebook music streaming app — or if there isn’t one, prompts users to set up a service like Spotify, Rdio or MOG.
When a user hovers over the “Listen” button, it will indicate which service it requires to play the songs or album.
This new function won’t bring in a lot of revenue for artists who get very small streaming royalties, but it could help capture fans, getting them to “fall in love with their recorded music,” suggests TechCrunch.
“Overall, this is a smart build-out of Facebook’s music partnerships from f8, and the synchronous “Listen With” feature it added in January,” adds the post. “This could make Facebook Pages your first stop when you want to check out a new band.”
For now, the button is only available on the Web, but TechCrunch is hopeful a mobile version will eventually follow. “Down the line, Facebook could even add a similar ‘Watch’ button to TV show and movies Pages that would launch Hulu or Netflix,” the post states.
A survey of U.S. consumers by RBC Capital Markets showed a marked preference for choosing an a la carte selection of channels rather than a bundled package as offered by the MSOs.
If consumers could choose, they would subscribe to an average of just 19 channels which would cost $1.50 each or $28.50 per month. As a comparison, they now pay $84 for at least 91 channels.
“But the investment research firm’s math confirms long-held views by both content companies and MSOs that a la carte economics would dramatically hurt a business that is a major revenue driver to both industries,” reports Variety. “A likely scenario sketched out by RBC’s report envisioned the $34 billion content companies received in affiliate fees last year getting cut roughly in half if consumers could cherrypick channels.”
The a la carte approach has been debated for many years. The FCC studied the prospect of making the model mandatory in 2004, and more recently cable operators have considered the idea.
Instead, MSOs have been experimenting with lower-priced tiers, but with surprisingly limited market traction. “We are not quite sure why the consumer who supposedly wants an a la carte solution has not simply ‘traded down,'” the RBC report notes.
Skitter has announced an affordable alternative for cord-cutters with its video streaming service that provides local stations via the Internet.
“Launched recently in Portland during March 2012, an Atlanta-based video platform company named Skitter has started streaming ten broadcast channels that includes CBS, the CW, TBN and two PBS affiliates at a price of $6 a month for the basic package,” reports Digital Trends.
“Accessible through the Roku platform as well as the Western Digital Live set-top box and the Western Digital TV Live Hub, Portland consumers can view upcoming programming through a channel-grid guide and watch live television without the need for an external antenna.”
Skitter has plans to launch in five additional markets in the upcoming months that will reportedly include NBC, FOX and ABC. The cost is expected to run $12-15 per month. The company hopes to go nationwide in the future.
“A similar service called Aereo launched in New York City earlier this year for a cost of $12 per month, but has come under legal pressure from local broadcasters due to claims of copyright infringement. While the concept of the service is the same, Skitter is avoiding the legal kerfuffle by obtaining retransmission licenses from broadcasters in order to bring the service direct to consumers. Skitter was already acquiring these licenses to sell their technology to telco operators in areas around the country,” explains the article.
The new digital media box from Sony called Nasne will connect to Sony’s various products with satellite and terrestrial TV tuners.
The unit can be used as a playback or standard media storage device and is expandable via external hard drives.
“Nasne has a 500GB hard drive of its own, however, and will extend deeper into the Sony ecosystem by letting Sony Tablet and Xperia phone users access recorded content when on the same home network. There will also be an app for the PS Vita, which currently offers limited streaming ability with Torne, and VAIO users will be able to watch and record TV broadcasts from their computers,” reports The Verge.
The Nasne’s predecessor, the Torne was also a PlayStation 3 TV tuner accessory that recorded TV broadcasts. If the Torne is any indication, the Nasne could very well never be sold outside Japan, suggests the post.
James Cameron is calling for Hollywood to “wake up and smell the coffee” when it comes to 3D. At the NAB Show in Las Vegas, Cameron said that films should be shot in 3D rather than produced in 2D and later converted to 3D.
Cameron recently released “Titanic” in 3D, a work that took 14 months and cost $18 million. “If you are willing do that, fine. But who is willing to make a $150 million movie and then sit on the interest costs for a year while you post produce it in 3D? It is going to be a helluva lot more expensive (than shooting native 3D),” he said.
Cameron is at NAB alongside business partner Vince Pace representing Cameron Pace Group (CPG) to promote a business model for making 3D more profitable.
“With an eye toward live sports, CPG has been offering a Shadowcam ‘5D’ system, meaning that a 2D and 3D production is piggybacked on a single rig,” explains Carolyn Giardina writing for The Hollywood Reporter. “It has already been used on productions including last year’s US Open Tennis Championship and recent The Masters golf tournament. At NAB, the team is extending the camera system, with the introductions of new tools including a Shadowcam handheld camera rig and a Shadowcaster ‘5D’ mobile unit.”
“If I were producing an episodic series, I would produce it like Avatar with one 3D camera system (and extract the single eye for the 2D),” Cameron added in regards to TV production. “I would encourage people to go right to a native 3D and extract the 2D. I think episodic will gravitate toward the feature model.”
