Author Archives: scgauthor

Every May the broadcast networks take over midtown Manhattan to promote their new shows and ply advertisers with shrimp and champagne. It’s a business expense. Advertisers are expected to spend $9 billion for commercial time on ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and the CW for the 2012-13 television season. So Fox trotted out singer Mary J. Bligeto entertain the media buyers who decide where to spend money, while CBS rented out Carnegie Hall and used its”NCIS: Los Angeles” star L.L. Cool J to rap about the network’s strong ratings performance. The glitzy affairs are an old tradition in the television industry. But the upfront presentations, where networks showcase programs in development for the upcoming TV season, have taken on greater urgency as the networks fight to convince advertisers that they remain the most direct route to consumers — many of whom are no longer watching shows on television sets, but rather via other technology that can leave advertisers behind. Read More ›

Broadcast television executives came to New York this week, as they do every year, to talk up their new TV shows in front of advertisers. This year, they are having to talk about yet another technology trying to tear them down. The disruptive technology at hand is an ad eraser, embedded in new digital video recorders sold by Charles W. Ergen’s Dish Network, one of the nation’s top distributors of TV programming. Turn it on, and all the ads recorded on most prime-time network shows are automatically skipped, no channel-flipping or fast-forwarding necessary. Some reviewers have already called the feature, named Auto Hop, a dream come true for consumers. But for broadcasters and advertisers, it is an attack on an entrenched television business model, and it must be strangled, lest it spread. Read More ›

The women’s lifestyle Web video firm Deca is building out a video hub aimed at moms while pushing further into the syndication business. On May 13, the Santa Monica, Calif.-based company relaunched Momversation, a site originally built around a single Web series aimed at—you guessed it—moms. Now, Momversation.com will serve as a destination for all videos related to parenting, like a clip of President Obama’s visit to The View as well as shows from Deca’s recently launched YouTube channel Kin Community. The popular Momversation series will continue to live on Momversation.com and across the Web. In fact, Target has signed as a category exclusive Momversation sponsor for the fourth year in a row. However, two other stand-alone Deca brands, Parentsask.com and GoodBite.com, will soon be folded into the new Momversation.com. Read More ›

General Motors Inc’s decision to stop advertising on Facebook may be a wake-up call for the No. 1 social network, but Top advertising executives say it’s far too early to know if the site will take off as an advertising platform. “There’s a lot of potential but it’s not a slam-dunk,” said Martin Sorrell, chief executive of WPP Plc, the world’s largest advertising agency. “Showing the impact of branding on Facebook is going to take a long time,” he added. Facebook is due to begin trading on Nasdaq on Friday in an initial public offering that will raise about $15.2 billion, the biggest ever from Silicon Valley. With almost a billion users, Facebook generated nearly $4 billion in revenue last year, mostly from advertising. News on Tuesday that GM, the third largest advertiser in the United States, was pulling back from Facebook raised questions about whether ads on the social network are really more effective than on traditional media. Read More ›

Social TV features are twice as likely to be used during live broadcasts than time-shifted viewing, according to a study by Viacom Media Networks — highlighting the opportunity for TV networks to use social media drive live tune-in. In the study, “Social TV: Viewers C’s The Moment,” Viacom explored how people are using social media to engage with their favorite TV shows. The study found that viewers engage in an average of seven different types of social TV activities — both online and offline — on at least a weekly basis. Social TV fans reported feeling “left out” of the conversation if they missed a live airing. “One of the main goals of this research was to understand how to inspire social TV activity among our audiences,” said Colleen Fahey Rush, executive vice president and chief research officer for Viacom Media Networks. “At VMN, we’re focused on leveraging our fans’ attachment to their favorite shows by developing compelling social TV services and apps that deepen those connections and unlock the value of social chatter.” Read More ›

Comcast this week is launching Skype on Xfinity, a new HD video calling service priced at $9.95 per month, in 10 markets including Boston, Seattle, Chicago and Atlanta. By the end of the week, the MSO said, the service will also be available in Augusta, Ga., Detroit, Harrisburg, Pa., Indianapolis, Miami and Pittsburgh. Additional markets will launch through the summer. Skype on Xfinity, which Comcast announced at last year’s Cable Show, is available to qualifying Xfinity Triple Play customers who have an HDMI-capable set-top box. The service lets customers make and receive video calls from their TV in 720p HD quality, as well as send and receive instant messages via Skype while watching TV at the same time. Comcast is delivering the service using a Technicolor-manufactured adapter box — which provides an Internet connection the TV, as well as the Skype client software — as well as an HD-quality video camera from Quanta. Read More ›

NBC Sports Network will kick off its cable-record coverage from the London Olympics with the U.S. women’s soccer team taking on France. Coming two days before the opening ceremony, the July 25 telecast of the match at 11:30 a.m. (ET) from Hampden Park in Glasgow, Scotland will mark the first piece of NBC Sports Network’s 292.5 hours of coverage, the most ever for an Olympic cable network. All told, the national sports service, which was rebranded from Versus on Jan. 2, will proffer 257.5 hours of original programming, an average of 14 hours per day. As first reported by Multichannel News, NBC Sports Network will serve as the home to U.S. team sports. In addition to the U.S. women’s national soccer side, NBC Sports Network will put its cameras on the 2012 version of the men’s basketball Dream Team and women’s field hockey squad, among other competitions. Originating from Olympic Park in London, the network will air up to 20 medal rounds and 22 sports, according to NBC Sports Group official. Read More ›

David Zaslav shouldn’t be on the defensive. After all, the Discovery Communications chief’s 14 cable networks, including red-hot Discovery, ID and TLC, collectively have grown their primetime market share 8 percent this year; his company has a $19 billion market cap and reported revenue up 16 percent to $1.1 billion for the first quarter; and his 2011 compensation hit a cool $52.4 million. But because of his high-profile partnership with Oprah Winfrey, the Brooklyn-born former lawyer — who splits his time among New York, Maryland and overseas travel — has spent most of the past year defending his $300 million-plus investment in the low-rated OWN network. Zaslav, 52, who was intricately involved in the launch of CNBC and MSNBC during his nearly two-decade tenure at NBCUniversal, is assuring investors that the fledgling net will be cash-flow-positive by the end of 2013. Read More ›

Apple Inc plans to use a larger screen on the next-generation iPhone and has begun to place orders for the new displays from suppliers in South Korea and Japan, people familiar with the situation said on Wednesday. The new iPhone screens will measure 4 inches from corner to corner, one source said. That would represent a roughly 30 percent increase in viewing area, assuming Apple keeps other dimensions proportional. Apple has used a 3.5-inch screen since introducing the iPhone in 2007. Early production of the new screens has begun at three suppliers: Korea’s LG Display Co Ltd, Sharp Corp and Japan Display Inc, a Japanese government-brokered merger combining the screen production of three companies. Read More ›

CBS Chief Executive Leslie Moonves blasted satellite broadcaster Dish Network’s new Auto Hop feature that allows consumers to more easily block commercials from recorded programming. “They can’t just take our signal and change it and put on a black spot where our commercials were,” Moonves said during a Wednesday morning news conference to unveil the network’s new fall schedule. Moonves joined executives from Comcast Corp.’s NBC and News Corp.’s Fox in criticizing the Dish feature, which lets customers block commercials from recorded shows that have aired on broadcast networks ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox during the previous day. Although consumers with digital video recorders can already fast-forward through commercials of recorded shows, Auto Hop takes it a step further. The screen goes black when a commercial break appears. A few seconds later, the program returns. The Auto Hop feature can’t be used on a show during the same day that it’s being broadcast, or on live event programming, such as a sporting event, that has been recorded. Read More ›