TV1Click - TV & Web Convergence Discussion Blog

Is Television Steve Job's Final Frontier? - linked from Daily Finance

By Rick Aristotle Munarriz, The Motley Fool Posted 12:45PM 10/24/11

All of us at TVissimo are curious to see how Steve Jobs is going to change the TV landscape as he moved his company so that now - Apple may be ready to think inside the box -- the television box, that is.

One of the juiciest nuggets in Walter Isaacson's authorized Steve Jobs biography is that the iconic tech visionary was working on an actual Apple-branded television as one of his final projects at the company.

"I'd like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use," Jobs told Isaacson. "It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud."

"It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it."

A History of Chatter

Professional Apple watchers have been speculating on Apple's evolutionary move into flat-screen televisions for a long time.

"Apple's fantastic ability to create exceptionally user-friendly products could revolutionize TVs just like the iPhone changed the mobile phone market," Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster said more than two years ago.

Ticonderoga Securities analyst Brian White and VentureBeat's Dylan Tweney have continued to add perspective to the speculative fire.

In a note to clients six months ago, White suggested that the Cupertino tech giant may have a Web-tethered television on the market as early as this holiday shopping season. That obviously isn't going to happen, but an analyst doesn't go out on that kind of limb unless he has pretty good sources indicating that a full-blown big-ticket television set is in the works.

Connected bloggers -- including Tweney -- began throwing out a 2012 release date this summer.

However, now that even Jobs is -- or rather sadly was -- publicly discussing an integrated TV that's easy to use, it really becomes a matter of time before Apple makes it official.

There's Nothing Good on TV

Don't confuse this with Apple TV, the small set-top gadget that's been a rare dud in Apple's arsenal. We're talking actual smart televisions.

Google  hasn't had a lot of success with the Google TV platform it introduced last year, but the search engine giant rushed that initiative to the market. Apple will have time to get it right. When Jobs told Isaacson that he finally "cracked" it, he wasn't talking about cracking the screen.

Apple's television should be able to stream your owned content backed up on Apple's new iCloud storage solution. There will naturally be apps and access to the prevailing streaming services. Google TV has apps, but developers will finally get serious about developing for Apple. In other words, even without trying, Apple will raise the bar.

(Spoiler alert: Apple will try.)

Big Boxes: Big Headaches

Apple wouldn't be the first computer company to have dreams of becoming a TV star. Dell and Hewlett-Packard rolled out branded flat screens a couple of years ago. Why not? PC monitors continue to get bigger, and the line is blurred between large flat-screen PC monitors and small flat-screen LCD and plasma TVs.Top of Form

Bottom of Form

Consumers didn't take to Dell and HP as the centerpiece of their home theater systems. HP in particular was just ahead of its time in introducing its Web-surfing MediaSmart line five years ago. However, neither of those two box-smiths have the brand panache of Apple, which can get folks camping outside its stores overnight to become the earliest of the early adopters.

Traditional manufacturers will tell you that making televisions is a cutthroat business with meager margins, but that's obviously not going to dissuade Apple. Its brand alone commands a market premium, giving it a markup advantage that has turned commodity gadgetry -- MP3 players, smartphones, laptops, and tablets -- into juicy profit centers.

Avoiding the Mickey Mouse Mistake

Now that Jobs has gone public with his new vision for television, it will be hard for Apple to resist its introduction. If and when it hits the market, it will be Jobs' baby -- his youngest and final child. And it will be a big hit, at least initially.

A lot can happen between yesterday's dream and tomorrow's reality. Several decades ago, Walt Disney discussed EPCOT on his weekly television show. His Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow was a planned city, with actual residents and self-sustaining operations. The EPCOT amusement park that opened in Florida many years after his passing bears no resemblance to his original vision.

This won't happen here. For starters, the gap between Jobs' words and the actual rollout will be substantially shorter. Apple also has no reason to deviate from the proven formula, and having $81.6 billion in cash and marketable securities gives the company the freedom to once again dream out loud.

The Apple television is coming. Start lining up and thanking Jobs.

See full article from DailyFinance: http://srph.it/rpLCS3

Steve Jobs Bio Alludes to a Fully Integrated Apple TV - linked from SignalNews

In an Oct 24, 2011 post on SignalNews - Chilton Tippin wrote that Steve Jobs completely upended several industries in his lifetime, ranging from personal computing to music.
It’s now surfacing that he paved the way to upend one more industry in his posterity: television.
In the much-talked-about biography written by Walter Isaacson, Jobs was quoted as having said:
“I’d like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use. It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud. It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it.”
In addition, investment bank analysts for Piper Jaffray released a recent report detailing a number of developments that point to Apple’s creation of a fully integrated television set.

(Abbreviated here, available in full on the CNN article.)

* Analysts believe Apple has invested in manufacturing facilities in Asia to produce LCD displays ranging in size from 3.5 inches to 50 inches.
* Analysts met with an Asian supplier contact who said Apple had already commissioned the building of TV prototypes.
* The USPTO has published Apple patents for television-related technology, including software for browsing and recording live television.
Apple will not be the first major internet company gunning for the living room. Long-time rivals Microsoft and Google have made aggressive plays, too.
Google, of course, has its not-very-popular Google TV. And Microsoft announced recently that it will begin to roll-out Internet connected televisions via the Xbox 360 in time for the holidays this year. The Xbox 360 will integrate Bing, allowing people to search the web and all of the content on their Xbox’s hard drive. It will also be controlled by the Kinect, so people can voice search and use their bodies as remote controls.
As of yet, little is known about Steve Jobs’s vision for the Apple’s television. But it’s safe to assume a few things. First of all, an easy application would make your iPhone or iPad the remote control. It could integrate with Siri, allowing you to use your voice to control your television. And all content would by fully synced in iCloud.
One of the major sticking points will be negotiations with Hollywood studios and networks, who try hard to keep their content within walled gardens. In that respect, however, Apple may have a bit of an upper hand, as it has had a strong record of protecting content with digital rights management.
Other challenges for Apple will be that it has largely failed to create a social network and it has no search engine. Microsoft has already made inroads in the living room with Xbox, and can bring Bing to bear. While Google has failed so far in producing a viable television product, it owns both a social network and search engine.
Remembering Steve Jobs’s remark, however, Apple will likely have an advantage in that its television will be “completely easy to use.” Apple, after all, built its formidable reputation on intuitive operating systems.
This development by Apple is a huge potential change for the TV industry, as it may change the entire TV landscape, much as other Apple products have changed the industries of music publishing, cellular phones, book publishing and computing, with the only remaining entertainment segment being Television. We at TVissimo are curiosu to see how Apple's revolutionary designs will change how we search for shows we like to watch and how we bring them to our living-room TV screens. As they say at the Olympics - "let the games begin" and we wish Apple much success for their endeavor.

 

TV Industry Uses Social Media for Oscars and More

Continuing its coverage of social media and TV, Brian Stelter reported in the New York Times on how TV Industry Taps Social Media, in this case for the Oscars.  Recognizing that people multiple task with their computer while watching TV as I wrote about recently, ABC created a companion Web site with behind-the-scenes video streams. Oscar winners will be seen accepting an award on the TV set, then seen celebrating backstage on the Web.

The article quoted Ian Schafer, the chief executive of the digital agency Deep Focus, who said that Twitter and Facebook messages about shows may well be “the most efficient way to drive tune-in.”  I have found this for blogs and it makes sense for TV. To me Twitter is a great traffic driver, more than a direct message deliverer.  Far from competing than TV, the Twitter “water-cooler effect” makes big shows even bigger. The Grammy Awards had its highest rating in a decade this year with a lot of online support.  Again, the same holds for blogs and Twitter, in my view.

The article also quoted Dick Costolo, the chief executive of Twitter, that online conversations about TV shows turn the programs into events, “meaning people watch them as they happen,” blunting the impact of digital video recording. This makes sense, also the Times noted that digital recording remains strong.

The Times reported more data to support this trend. During the Super Bowl this year, Twitter users set a new record by sending 4,064 messages each second, the highest number of messages per second recorded during any sporting event.. In addition, a recent study by Deloitte of American consumers ages 14 to 75 found that 42 percent sometimes surfed the Web while watching TV. I do all the time, especially during onscreen commercials. The eye balls for ads may be drifting online. 

 

Internet TV Continues to Move Forward Despite Slowing TV Sales

The New York Times noted recently that the expected n bonanza in TV sales is fading for several reasons. For one most Americans have already upgraded their old boxy televisions in favor of the sleek flat-panel displays. I have some of each. The new 3-D televisions have not yet caught on.

However, one thing continues, the move to integrate TV and the Web. It is working both ways –making the Web accessible through traditional television and putting television content on new computer devices. They report that ‘One way manufacturers are trying to make these features friendlier is by using Apple’s iPhone model, allowing outside companies like Netflix to develop applications that work on their displays.” Panasonic and LG recently announced new Internet TV platforms that will open up the interfaces of their sets to outside developers.

However, the Times also noted that there is no standard way for the Web TV convergence and this may be a problem.  They write, “But recent missteps by technology companies like Google with its Google TV service, as well as the often confusing mosaic of streaming and download providers, has left the market looking a little muddled.”

We hope that standards will be implemented to further open up this great opportunity for creative applications. TVissimo was designed for this integrated market. 

 

Will 99¢ Change TV Like it Changed Music?

This is a question Stewart Mader asks in his blog Future Changes. He writes that Apple’s announcement of a new Apple TV device with 99¢ TV episode rentals could have the same impact on the cable TV industry as the impact that 99¢ songs had on the music industry. “When Apple introduced the iTunes store with songs priced at 99¢, it changed the “single” part of the music landscape, by allowing consumers to buy only the songs they wanted.” I do it all the time. This changed the buying paradigm.

Many people also want to get a single cable show or channel rather than the entire package they are forced to select by the cable industry.  With the right rental charges these offerings could be cheaper than the DVDs covering the series.  This becomes even more attractive if it spreads to the iPad and iPhone.  What do think will occur? What will you do? 

 

NBC Partners with DC Comics for iPad App

Here is a really cool integration of computers and TV. There is a promotion going on for NBC’s new series The Cape. NBC has partnered with DC Comics to make the full pilot episode available through DC’s free comic book iPad application. This is a free way for fans to check out the pilot before it airs and is a very interesting way of making the show available for fans to see outside their traditional television set.

This is the first time DC Comics has offered long form video through their iPad application (which is also available for the iPhone). Web and TV conversion continues to be innovative and interesting.  Here is a link to download the DC Comics iPad application. 

 

The KETC Social Media and TV Experience Part Three: Tackling Immigration Issues

This is the third in a three part series covering the efforts of the PBS affiliate in St. Louis, KETC, to align social media and traditional television.  I am interviewing Rob Paterson who is part of the team supporting the KETC efforts. 

Bill: So now you have tackled a relatively easy problem with war memories and one that is a little more complex with the mortgage crisis.  Now you are going after a very controversial issue.

Rob: Yes. Immigration is an issue that divides the nation. Part of our motive is that many of the important issues in America are like this one such as the war, the economy, healthcare, and education. There is a whole range of issues that are vital to the success of the nation that are locked in ideological dogmatic dog fights that are intensely polarizing. The current media, in the so-called search for balance, enables the extremes to pull the gap even wider. There is no room for a civic discourse that was the American way. There is no room for the community to talk with each other and work out a solution.

This polarization was the context for the third project. It could have been the war or healthcare or similar tough topics. Immigration is an issue that is bubbling up in the St. Louis area so we picked it. The task before us is that we were dealing with a topic where the media often uses fear and gets away from conservation. Can we do better? My own view is that if there is not a defined way to have these conversations what is the future of the country? We will never solve anything.

Bill: I think that you have very accurately portrayed regular commercial television news and how it serves as a vehicle for further polarization in the nation. I recently viewed again the movie Invictus about Nelson Mandela as I am getting ready to go to South Africa. I am a big fan of him. Instead of a vehicle for further polarization what you want to be is a vehicle for reconciliation just as Mandela did through example.

Rob: Yes. I love it. Reconciliation is a wonderful word.

Bill: Invictus is a great movie about engaging both sides. Just like South Africa, America needs the engagement of both sides.

Rob: This is what we are after here. This is the Holy Grail. So how do we do this? We are going to try to put the control in the hands of the public. We are going to try to put the public into the center of public television. This will be a revolution. Currently it is called public television but it is made in the old way using the concept the station is very clever and it is going to give the public what the station thinks the public wants. In this project we want to be led and influenced all along by the public.

We are going to make a four-part TV documentary. We have a very active Web space and an exceptionally active community outreach program. And we have set up a school to teach people how to tell stories using video. This is the new literacy.  Any one can pick up an iPhone or a Flip camera and press the red button but it takes some skill to make a story.

Now I will weave this together.  The outreach people have been talking to thousands of people in St. Louis about their experience with immigration. We have sent out a survey to all of our members and we are getting some responses back. My job is to use Darwin to see what everyone else outside St. Louis is doing.  From this we have been designing the four part television series. In the past the TV producer comes up with a story and films it. We have done the interaction part in steroids. We are making the film as a result of the understanding and knowledge we have gained from the local community and beyond.

There has been nine months of active interaction with the community and the world beyond. We created a Web site that enables us to go out on a daily basis and ask people questions about what is going on and have the answer up on the Web site the next day.  We never used to be an instant anything but on we have learned to do online video.

What this means is that there will be a news item that I might pick up or we learn through other means. Then we will go out and have people react to this item and put up their answers within a day. So the whole thing feeds on itself. We have taken people who have never done anything like this in their life. They have now learned how to produce content on a twelve-hour cycle. 

Bill: So they produce this content but how is it turned around?

Rob: We shoot it with a Flip camera. We edit it with iMovie. Then we upload it to YouTube and it goes on our site. Nothing could be farther from a heavily produced segment.  We do not take a camera crew out. The people on the street do not even see the camera even though we tell them it is there. They sign a release form but there is no big camera presence or crew.

Bill: Once it goes on YouTube and on the site what happens?

Rob: We are building a mosaic of responses. The question is how do you have balance? The answer is that you do not try to balance everything off in one show each time.  The typical TV thing is one side says black and the other says white. You put them together and you have a dead program or just ranting.

Bill: So you achieve balance over time.

Rob: We are achieving balance over time through a mosaic.  In a mosaic the pattern emerges.  We are neutral in that we not offer judgments on what any one individual says. But the pattern over time comes out.

We spent the last two months on the site learning how to do all this. This interview is timely because we about to promote the site. It has been public for a while but we have not promoted it.  We had to learn to do many things and we were not ready for show time. Now we have enough material on the site that the mosaic is starting to appear.  This will feed into the documentary that will be filmed by the professionals. We are also sharing ideas about what will be in the documentary in the hope that people will add to or adjust what we do.

We are going to do something that is extremely difficult. We are going to film the documentary as an interactive process with the community. We will use professional filmmakers but with community involvement.  We will be finishing the documentary over the next four months and interacting with the community over this time about what we are doing.

Bill: So the documentary draws on the mosaic as raw material.

Rob: Yes and also parts of the documentary will be revealed while we are still in the editing phase and see what kind of response we get. So this will be as interactive as you can get. It has never been done before so we are a bit nervous about how it will come out.

Even though the final documentary will be filmed by professionals, much of the content comes from the community. To this end we have children of Bosnian refuges learning how to use Flip cameras to record stories and this is great fun.

Bill: What are the immigrant groups that you are looking at?

Rob: We had to learned how to best categorize them. When we started there were so many groups we were not sure what to do. Now three groups have emerged. There is the group most Americans are worried about, the very large numbers who are coming in from Mexico and other Latin American countries in the last twenty years. The majority of these immigrants have come in the last ten years. The large group of Latin American immigrants mainly work in food related jobs such as picking crops, serving food, performing lower level aspects of meat packing, etc. These are the types of jobs that many Americans will no longer take.

At the other end are what we might label as the best and the brightest. These are very clever people who come from many countries around the globe to get a better life.  At least a quarter of the best startup companies in the US have been founded by these people. This is a reliable source of new jobs. Most of the job loses have come from traditional companies and twenty five percent of the new jobs have been in companies that were founded by immigrants or children of immigrants. These immigrants are not limited to a few countries and come from all over.

The third group of immigrants are refuges. They come in completely different circumstances. There was the civil war in Bosnia and America made room for a large number of Muslim Bosnians who, if they had not come here, might have died or fared poorly. The same goes for a large group of Liberians. These two groups come from very different parts of the world but they share common experiences and have seen terrible things we would never want to see. 

The refuges have a particular process. It used to be that you would arrive from Sarajevo and you would get three months support from the Feds and that would be it. Now it is eight months. In that period you have to assimilate, get a job, and get started.  This is very difficult.

The common thing that all immigrants share is that getting legal is all but impossible.  Many people might say that I have no problems with immigrants as along as they are legal. One problem that is not understood is that getting legal status is all but impossible. Even if you have family it will take between ten and twenty five years.

 

 

 

KETC Social Media and TV Project Part Two: Supporting Those Affected by the Mortgage Crisis

This is the second in a three part series covering the efforts of the PBS affiliate in St. Louis, KETC, to align social media and traditional television.  I am interviewing Rob Paterson who is part of the team supporting the KETC efforts.

Bill: Tell me about the second phase of the social media project.

Rob: The second phase of this experiment came as the financial situation in the US started to get bad. The idea was to connect people in St. Louis to resources, both online and physical, that they could trust to help them with mortgage problems.  We started this on our own and then we discovered something about the community. There are all sorts of organizations that work on issues like the mortgage crisis but most of them never talk to each other. Many of them are quite suspicious of each other as they compete for funding. We acted as a resource to help bring these groups together. We found a means through the United Way where people could phone in and get help from any resource. 

We used the Web site to support his. We decided from a tool point of view that we were not going to use tools on the site that anyone else could not use. So we used the free and easy ones.  We used YouTube and this was a big deal for us at the time. It is taken for granted now but using a tool that everyone can access on the Web-based was new.

Bill: The concern with YouTube was losing control over the content?

Rob: Yes. But after we used it successfully we thought of other uses. The station has a wonderful series titled, Living St. Louis, that has many episodes on the community that you could no longer see after each was shown. As a result of this project, the station converted the entire series to YouTube and made it available through the Web site and a YouTube channel in a searchable archive. It gets a lot of traffic now. So as a byproduct of doing this effort we found a way to make some of our quality content more accessible and drive up traffic.

Bill: I can really see the benefit here. One of our local Boston stations has a similar series and I am always disappointed if I miss a good episode, as there is no way to see it after its scheduled showing. I would be very excited to have the ability to search an archive to see if there is an episode that covers a place where I am planning to go or to help me determine where to go.

Rob: It sounds like an obvious move but it is new for broadcast TV. By doing these new projects we can break through what is considered normal and the old culture of control. We were so successful with the mortgage project that we got funding to bring this to over 30 markets around the US. This was the first time we had a national project. There were actually over 60 stations as we did radio and TV.

As a result of this many of these stations who had never done this type of project or run this type of Web site or used YouTube, Facebook or Twitter, now did new things. In many cases the radio and TV people in same area did not talk to each other, as there was a sense of rivalry and distrust. Now they communicated on a common project.

This effort helped stations go beyond simply being a public media and better become a public service media. In other words, they could help their community deal with an important issue.

Bill: Isn’t being a public service vehicle part of their charter. Perhaps they may pay lip service to it in most cases.

Rob: Public service is specifically part of their charter. However, many forgot this and thought they were a television station. It’s like the credit unions that tried to be banks. Now the new social media is allowing public television stations to fulfill this responsibility. But the barrier is culture and mindset.

In the sixty TV and radio stations that participated in the mortgage program you could divide them into three groups. First, there were those who got it and fully participated, pushing through the cultural barriers.  Then there were the stations that understood it intellectually and partially participated but need another project like this to go further. Finally, there were those that just went through the motions because funding was attached.

Bill: Was the goal of this program to provide better coordination of mortgage relief services to the people?

Rob: Yes, and just as important it was to enable the people in the community to find a safe and trusted channel to these resources. Here is the interesting part. The TV viewership for public television tends to be age 55 or older, well educated and of European descent. Because the issue of mortgage foreclosure affected so many people outside this demographic, we started to attract people outside this core demographic who had never been part of the public television audience. We were now reaching people online who did not watch the station’s Newhour and who might not ever watch it. However, we really helped them and they got engaged with the station through the Web and remain attached to it.

Bill: So you were reaching out to people online that you were not reaching through the traditional channels.

Rob: Yes. The Holy Grail in public television is to expand the audience. With social media we can enjoy the support of a much wider audience without compromising the quality of the broadcast television.  These people become attached to the station because it helps them.

Bill: What you also do is become a role model for traditional commercial television that, I believe, has the same charter to provide a public service to the community.

Rob: Yes and the commercial stations generally pay even less attention to this responsibility.  This is a good time to transition to the third phase, the coverage of the immigration debate.

Bill: We will begin to cover this in the next post as the third part of our series.

 

 

 

The KETC Social Media and TV Project Part One: Documenting World War Two Memories

The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) St. Louis station has been conducting a series of projects integrating social media with traditional broadcast television. This integration of old and new media is a topic we have frequently covered here and KETC is doing some of the most innovative work in this space. They began with a project on preserving World War Two stories from local vets. A second effort supported those caught in the mortgage crisis. In the third initiative they are using social media to help facilitate more rational conversations on immigration issues. In this post I discuss the first effort and the other follow.

Bill: Rob can you provide some background on the KETC social media project? What are its objectives? What has resulted so far?

Rob: KETC is the public television station in St. Louis. Since Jack Galmiche took over as President four years ago, his mission is to find a new model for a public television station in America. Like others, he understands that the old financial model for public television cannot continue to be successful. The old model worked on the premise that that public TV has quality content that you cannot get elsewhere. You have to adhere to our broadcast schedule and if you like what we bring you will support us financially with donations.

This old model will not work going forward as you can get great content for free anytime you want from many sources. While there is still a legacy group of supporters, this dwindling group will not take any TV or radio station securely forward into the future.

So the question becomes if we cannot rely on the old base of support, what will become the new base? Over the past four years Jack and his team have been working on a hypothesis that social media can help reach and sustain a new base of support to augment the old one. The current project on immigration is the end result of a series of experiments using social media to expand the base of support. The hypothesis goes on to say that public television should be in a great position to become the safe place where the community can interact with itself on issues that it cares about since public television is so trusted.

The first time we did this we used a very safe topic around the Ken Burns series on World War Two. As this series was being aired we went out to the local community through social media and other means, We said that there are many veterans in our community and you may or may not have shared your personal stories with your family.  Ken Burns is providing the stories of some vets. We are going to provide an easy means for you to share your own stories of the war that can be recorded forever. We will provide a way for these stories to be shared. 

This effort around World War Two stories went really well. We found a way to enable people to use the Web to share their memories. We discovered a way to engage a community around a topic. In this case, an important one, but also a safe one. No one was going to object to us having grandpa tell his war stories. One of the great examples occurred when one vet came to the station and asked to see Jack. He gave Jack his war medals. He said that he had never told his war stories before and for the first time he felt safe enough to do it. He wanted to tell then before he died. We were all moved by this experience and felt we had learned something.

Bill: This is a topic that is very near to me as my father was a World War Two vet who as a commando, often operated behind the Japanese lines. He was reluctant to tell more that general overviews of much of what he experienced but I know that it had a profound effect on him. He gave his medals, not of disrespect, but more out of modesty, to me incorporate into my childhood reenactments of World War Two. This was a favorite play topic for us in the 50s.

Rob: We are the same age and we did this also.

Bill: This occurred in the raised cemeteries of New Orleans that we pretended were urban battlefields.  There are many friends my age who also report their father’s reluctance to take about the war.  So what do you see that occurred that enabled these men in your community to share their experiences? How did social media play into this?

Rob: There was definitely a social media component. We had a dedicated Web site. We had a way of getting content to us and then we would put it up. We ran something like an antiques road show where people came in and told their stores and we recorded them. We found that the grandchildren started to ask their grandparents to tell these stories. For many men and, in some cases, women, once they saw others telling their stories and it was safe, they felt comfortable doing it themselves. They also realized that this might be their last chance. We have now set up a permanent memorial of all these stories so they will live on through the Web.

Bill: So, if I am hearing your correctly social media was used in two ways. First, to make people more aware of what you were doing. Second, to share the content once it was collected.

Rob: Yes and we had never done anything like this before. The Web had simply been the place to find out the schedule for TV shows or asking for donations. This was the first time we had a two-way interaction with the community through the Web. We asked for stuff and we got stuff back.

Bill: So what did you learn from this first step that you applied to the next step?

Rob: We learned how to start to work together. The tools are free and easy to use. The underlying story was a breakdown of the silos. To work well on the Web you have to have all the parts of the organization working well together. So we had cross department meetings to get the work done.  We had producers, marketing, outreach people, and our one person Web department. These cross department meetings had not occurred. As we moved forward this integration was a big deal and key enabler.

 

 

Will Traditional Media Firms Control the New Web Video?

That is a question that the Economist asks and comes up with a yes answer at the moment.  I have already written a bit about how Google, Apple and Microsoft are making plays in this market.  The Economist reports that in the first seven months of 2010 that 12% of all the flat-screen televisions sold in America in the first seven months of this year were Web connected and the number may increase dramatically. However, many of these consumers do not know how to use this connection and/or are not interested in it.

The three tech giants are challenging the cable and satellite vendors and looking for ways to run around them. However, there is another group that holds much of the cards in this game. There are only a few big film and television producers, and they have slowed down this game according to the Economist. Apple has been unable to set up a subscription service for television and films. Hulu, owned in part by the studios, has similarly failed to obtain many shows from cable TV or from CBS, America’s most popular broadcast network.

Traditional television is going as strong as ever. According to Nielsen people watch online video for three hours per month, compared with 158 hours for traditional television. The only winner so far is Netflix, which rents DVDs. It has been amassing subscribers with 15 million so far. Now it is gradually moving into online distribution, and is becoming popular on connected TVs if anyone uses them. Neltflex will be built into the new Apple TV. The Economist also reports that Netflix has lots of money to spend on rights, and its wants to acquire some content exclusively.

This continues to be an interesting game to watch. 

 

Is the Clunky TV Remote Going Away?

This is the question that the Wall Street Journal recently proposed in the article, Left Behind: the Clunky TV Remote.  The growing number of smart devices with Web access have much easier interfaces that the complex TV remote. Imagine that you had to work with your computer or your smart phone with an interface w like a TV remote? Or in my case several TV remotes. Soemtimes they do not work and at best they are slow and overly complex. They only reason that they get anyway with it is that we are used to it. But now the new devices are chaning our perceptions.   

This will change. For example, as the WSJ reports, Sony Internet TV, which has Google TV software built into it, offers Web browsing, software applications and access to services like Netflix. Any developer can write apps for Google TV. In  additioin, Apple TV displays shows and movies in easy-to-navigate grids of colorful artwork, and the remote has just six buttons. At the same time, Comcast and Time Warner Cable are working on iPad applications that use the device's touch-sensing screen to browse their channel guides and switch to a new channel, so consumers can ditch their cable remotes.

 The WSJ quotes Paul Liao, president and chief executive of CableLabs, the cable industry's nonprofit research and development group, "We are headed in the direction where the cable box will go away." It will be a good move in our opioin and this is the envirobnment where Tvissimo would work well. 

 

Will TV Be the Next Target for Checkin Services?

Foursquare has become huge as a location checkin service. There are others, as well in the field. I have not gotten the bug but it took me a while to warm up to Twitter. Now, as Mashable reports, a number of services have popped up that re-purpose the checkin concept, popularized by Foursquare, and connect it to media and entertainment, as opposed to location.

Now checkin to TV and movies is more virtual than physical but that is fine in a virtual world. In practice, this entertainment checkin behavior is more familiar than location checkin. It actually emulates the way we experience entertainment in our everyday lives. Mashable writes, “the desire to share is unchanging — it’s how we share that will continue to evolve with the help of social media and entertainment checkin services.” I agree.

Mashable mentions three entertainment based checkin services: GetGlue, Philo and Miso. They all have mobile and web applications designed to support and enhance this natural entertainment-driven social behavior. Here is what Mashable wrote:

GetGlue’s iPhone app extends beyond just television content and supports checkins for books, wines, topics, celebrities and video games. Rewards come in the form of stickers earned from app activity. GetGlue has been around for years attempting to master social recommendation via the browser. With the move to mobile, the company can marry checkins to the social intelligence previously harvested.

Philo is hyper-focused on live television. Viewers use the iPhone app or web to check-in to the live content they’re watching. Philo pulls TV listings directly from cable providers, so viewers can even see the content that’s trending locally and pinpoint where to watch it. App users earn show-specific awards based on their behaviors and work their way up a Hollywood-style ladder to earn “Director” and “Executive Producer” “credits” for shows.

Miso is also about creating a social television watching experience. The alpha service currently has iPhone, iPad and web apps that support TV show or movie checkins. It bills itself as “Foursquare for TV” and has its own game mechanics and badges that are designed to hook viewers with the promise of unlocking additional content.

It seems that checking-in to television shows or other entertainment modes, if done right, can create a connection between media consumers with similar interests.

 

The Upcoming Battle for TV’s Operating System

You may ask what does an operating system have to do with TV. With the convergence of TV and the Web is has lot to do with it. One of the latest Retrevo stories by Andre Eisner covers this contest with Apple, Google, and Microsoft doing the battle here. Andrew writes that Microsoft does not have much of a chance of winning this battle for the TV OS. Google TV going for control of the living room like it controls Web search. Apple is countering with an updated version of their Apple TV that will put Apple iPhone/iPad apps firmly in the living room TV.

Andrew writes that at the moment a TV OS vacuum exists and unfortunately for consumers, TV manufacturers appear to be filling it with their own proprietary offerings. He argues for standards and we agree. He concludes that the TV industry needs to move away from closed environments and let their connected TVs work with all the apps and streaming content that consumers are finding so appealing. True Web TV convergence needs to occur. 

 

TV’s Emmy Awards Take on Social Media

I enjoyed this year’s Emmy Awards a few weeks back, especially the hosting by Jimmy Fallon. He was best when playing a character such as Bruce or Elton. Jimmy is also a master of using social media to promote television.  This year the Emmy’s also made good use of social according to Mashable. The blog reported that NBC is using web services such as Twitter, yfrog, and Ustream to bring a more real-time experience to the event. NBC set up a special website set up for fasn to send tweets to Jimmy.  During the live presentation a backstage show was streamed online via NBC.com, Emmys.com and Ustream.com.

NBC also had a backstage show with multiple cameras that fans can view from the Internet. The locations included the producer’s table, control room, makeup and the press room. Mashable wrote that this is pretty innovative, as it provides a nice compliment to the live telecast. I would agree as it is good use of parallel channels that people can watch at the same time. I also occupies the web channel to keep people from straying for the show’s content. The Twitter service yfrog also participated in real-time with its own page that will be bringing fans photos and videos in real time from the event.  It is great to see this continued convergence of the Web and television. 

Raleigh NC TV Station Launches Interactive Web Widget

The convergence of TV and the Web moves forward. The TV station WRAL in Raleigh NC was the first U.S. station to broadcast HDTV back in 1996. It is now the first station to launch a dedicated application for new “connected TVs” that use a broadband connection to pull content through the Internet.  Working with News Over Wireless (NOW), WRAL created an interactive TV widget that works with the Yahoo Widget Engine included in Internet-connected TVs from Samsung, LG, Sony, Vizio and others.

The widget allows viewers to access the station’s local news, weather and sports information, including both graphics and streaming video, with a click of the remote. The WRAL widget content is displayed as a partial overlay on the screen on top of whatever viewers are watching, whether it is normal WRAL programming, a competitor's programming or even a Blu-ray movie.

WOW is now working on new widgets for 30 stations, making use of much of the same content and graphical design it has already created for their mobile products.

Jimmy Fallon Links Social Media and TV in New Ways

I have been following the convergence traditional media and social media for a while and wrote about Jimmy Fallon in this context (see Social Media is Changing Late Night TV Landscape and Much More). Jimmy has now started his own hashtag: #whydonttheymakethat and solicited fan submissions, some of which made it on the air! Here is a link to a Late Night with Jimmy Fallon episode as Jimmy has some fun with this hashtag. He actually reads some interesting product ideas. While this has started as a humor stunt, there could be some crowdsouring potential here.

At a minimum it is another creative link of social media and traditional broadcast TV. He got thousands of tweets from his audience showing the power of TV to integrate with social media. The late night hashtag has become a regular part of the show. Some of these ideas were great and most were funny. move over Cisco i-Prize and GE. 

I recently wrote that the convergence of TV and the Web is not waiting for the single box solution. Many creative efforts, such as this one are already occurring. 

Post-Katrina New Orleans Featured on HBO

 I really appreciate the coverage that HBO has recently brought to the city. I watched the series;Treme, three times. First I saw each episode twice as it appeared and then went back and watched the whole series over again.  I think it is the best production I have seen that was originally produced for television but I may be biased on the subject matter. It showed the strengths and weaknesses of the city in a balanced way that made me want to move back. In my mind the strengths far out weight the flaws.

Now Spike Lee has returned to New Orleans to see how the ambitious plans to reinvent the Crescent City are playing out in the all-new, four-hour documentary, If God is Willing and Da Creek Don't Rise. He finds a “patchwork of hope and heartache in a story that is book-ended by a pair of momentous events — the historic 2010 Super Bowl victory and the disastrous British Petroleum oil spill — that changed the history of America’s most unique city once again.” The HBO film debuts in two parts on Monday, Aug. 23 (9:00-11:00 p.m. ET/PT) and Tuesday, Aug. 24 (9:00-11:00 p.m.).

This film continues the story of the rebirth of NOLA, begun in Lee’s epic, Emmy^®- and Peabody-winning 2006 documentary “When the Levees Broke:  A Requiem in Four Acts.”  I really liked that first effort. In this second film, “Lee documents the successes and failures in the ongoing efforts to restore housing, healthcare, education, economic growth and law and order to a battered but unbowed community, alongside the city’s storied ability to celebrate life with unmatchable ebullience.

I will be sure to see this show more than once. I also heard that HBO has signed up for a second season of Treme, a wise move. Lee’s film shows that there remains much to do in the rebuilding of the city. “A lack of affordable housing is one of several serious ongoing problems faced by the city’s poor, especially the primarily African-American residents of the devastated Lower Ninth Ward and St. Bernard’s Parish.  The four large public housing developments have been shuttered, and rents have soared, with the average fair-market value of an apartment rising from $578 in 2005 to $881 in 2009.  Only 38 percent of the private homes destroyed in the hurricane have been rebuilt.” The Treme series showed this unnecessary closing of public housing that was done more for political reasons that any damage suffered by the projects. 

 

Cisco Joins Tablet Market with Android-Based Device

Forrester projects tablets will outsell netbooks by 2012, and desktops by 2013.  Cisco is joining the rush to mine this gold field. It has announced the Cius, an Android-based seven-inch tablet computer aimed at the enterprise market. The device will feature both front and rear-facing cameras, Cisco TelePresence-compatible video conferencing and access to applications such as Cisco Quad, WebEx and AnyConnect Security VPN Client, as well as access to the Android app store.

As ReadWriteWeb reports, Cisco has been diversifying its product line beyond networking equipment in recent years. This tablet complements the company's cloud computing, collaboration and conferencing initiatives. Cisco has been selling VoIP and video-conferencing hardware for some years now, and entered the consumer video market with its Flip Video acquisition last year.

Cisco is not relying solely on an Android device to penetrate the tablet market. It is already offering WebEx for the iPad.  Needless the say, these tablets offer a great viewing platform for Web-based TV. We look forward to seeing how this potential evolves. 

The Return of Entourage and it Web-based Promotion

 The wonderful Emmy winning HBO series, Entourage, returned for its seventh season last Sunday at 10:30PM with a number of follow up play times   It will feature ten new episodes.  We were interested in its promotion through its comprehensive web site.  You can go behind the scenes, get gear, and look at the most outrageous moments from the past season.   You can also engage in conversations with other fans, become an official fan, purchase the DVD of the past season, and download wall paper for your computer with images form the show.  

The show is great but we also like their creative use of the Web for promotion. HBO is doing similar thing for other shows such as my favorite, Treme, about my home town New Orleans, and its people as they struggle to emerge after Katrina. There you can download the best songs form each episode an find out true events that inspired the writers. 

More Americans Are Paying For Broadcast TV

Despite the growth of free, on-demand entertainment options it paying TV customers appear to be growing. As PSFK posts, a new report by SNL Kagan shows that even though people purport to be moving away from traditional media sources such as cable and satellite, they are actually sticking with the familiar more than expected.

The New York Times explains in More Americans Are Paying for Television:

“Regardless, more people are paying for TV: 99.9 million at the end of 2009, up from 97 million at the end of 2008. The gain can be explained in part by the nation’s gradual population growth, but also by the enduring popularity of television in a fragmented media marketplace.

According to SNL Kagan, cable (Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cablevision, among the companies in the category) lost a total of 500,000 subscribers between 2008 and 2009; satellite (DirecTV, Dish Network) gained 1.4 million; and telecommunications (Verizon, AT&T) gained 2 million. Cable providers still dominate, however, with 62.1 million subscribers, while satellite competitors have 32.7 million and telecommunications companies have only 5.1 million.”

If you add the numbers watching the various forms of Web TV, there is only growth in this media. How to explain these results? The Times concludes that we may seeing a gap between how people feel and how they actually behave.  This is not new. My psychology studies have found this gap in many areas. The Times adds that there is already a history of this gap in the television industry: it has been well established that Americans underestimate the amount of daily TV they watch.

 

Will Google Success with TV When Apple and Microsoft’s Attempts Have Fallen Short?

Here is more on Google’s recent move into television that we covered last week. Leslie D'Monte covers Google’s linking of the web and television. She notes that Google believes there is a huge market opportunity in this space with around 4 billion people across the world watching TV. But also notes the not-so-successful forays of Apple and Microsoft to bring the internet to TV with Apple TV and MSN TV.

The browser on Google TV is simply the Linux version of Google Chrome. The user interface will have to be modified for TV. The same Android software that powers Google's mobile devices is being used with Google TV. With the browser built in, Google TV is expected to help you access all of your favorite websites and easily move between TV and the web. The open platforms of Andriod and Chrome open up room for developers to add to the initial functionality.

Leslie notes that many other players have been in this market for a while. TiVO had many fo the features in 2003. Other TV hardware providers that are competitive to Google’s partner, SONY, have other means to access the Web. Moreover, one could view content from Amazon Video-On Demand, YouTube and Netflix even in 2007. Then there are competing set-top box products like Boxee, PopBox and Roku.

All this competition does seem to ensure one thing, the Web and TV are becoming more connected to the benefit of viewers regardless of which vendors win. 

Will Google TV Threaten Cable Providers?

This is the question that Sean Portnoy asks on ZDNet.  He begins by noting that despite the buzz surrounding its launch, Apple TV never gave cable companies much to worry about. Now it is Google’s turn.  Perhaps to no surprise he notes that Google’s approach is far more insidious with its more open approach.

First, Sean notes that by buying a Google TV box for a one-time fee or a new HDTV with Google TV built in, you are then not resigned to pay an extra monthly fee when pay TV providers decide to add new features like Web integration to their packages. 

And we all know that this Web convergence is coming. In fact this convergence tees up Sean’s second and potentially bigger issue. With Google TV more subscribers will no longer see the need to continue being cable customers, since much of their viewing needs could be met with online video they could watch through the Google TV platform.

However, the battle is far from over as there are still plenty of people who are perfectly satisfied continuing to order on-demand movies from their cable box instead of streaming them online from Netflix or Amazon. I am one of them so far and just paid to see two new movies through Comcast this afternoon.. Perhaps I am just lazy but ease of access is a big factor with entertainment and I am not a gadget person like many others.

Google TV may urge on more innovation or reform by the cable providers. I have seen a great increase in Comcast’s on-demand since options like Netflicks became more prominent. Hopefully this will result in a win for consumers regardless of the outcome.

The greater convergence of TV and the Web through Google TV and/or cable providers will open up the path for more services like the access of scheduling through TVissimo. 

Is The Remote Becoming Obsolete?

NPR recently asked this question, Is The Remote Control Becoming Obsolete? Omar Gallaga, the technology-culture reporter for the Austin American-Statesman, replied that the proliferation of wireless devices is making the remote control as we know it obsolete. He notes that there have been quite a few apps that have come out in the last year not just for the iPhone and the iPod Touch, but also for the Android phones and for BlackBerry and Palm that allow you to connect over Wi-fi with either a computer that's hooked up to the TV.

Omar goes on to say that there is one device that he has been trying out lately called the Red Eye, which is an app and a hardware device that beams a signal to these devices including TV and kind of doubles as a remote control. Omar notes that there's still some things about it that don't quite work, but he definitely sees that that's where things are going.

If this new way of connecting with TV brings in the intelligence of the computer that will have a lot of benefit for the viewer, including bringing in a search engine such as TVissimo. 

Is the Web Killing Broadcast TV?

Not yet perhaps but the new Retreveo study, Is the Internet Killing Broadcast TV?, shows that there is an increase in online TV watching amongst people under 25.  The study found that 23% of people under age 25 watch most of their TV content online. 6% of them watch all of their TV content online. In contrast, 8% of people over age 25 watch most of their TV programming online. 5% of them watch all of their TV programming online.  The study also found  that 17% of men watch all of their TV content online. 9% of women watch all of their TV content online.

In addition, 15% of people surveyed said higher cable and satellite prices would drive them to watch all of their TV shows online. Amongst all respondents 26% of people have canceled, or considered canceling their cable or satellite service. In contrast, 57% said they were happy with their service and would not consider canceling and 17% said they would not cancel because they would not be able to watch their favorite TV shows.

Retrevo also asked, "What would it take to get you to watch all your TV shows online?" The results indicated that 20% said HD content, 19% said premium shows like those offered by HBO, and 15% said live sports. I am surprised that more did not cite the last factor as that may be the hardest programming for online to tackle.

 

History Channel Brings in Foursquare

Here is another creative mix of new and old media. Foursquare and the History channel are partnering to promote the upcoming premiere of America,, the Story of US, a 12-hour television event and education initiative that tells America's 400-year history. The series debuts on Sunday, April 25 at 9pm ET on the History channel. You can participate through the Foursquare site.

It works like this. Upon checking-in to select locations, users will receive a “Fun Fact Pop Up” with interesting information about the location by the History channel. For example: users in New York who check in to St. Paul’s Chapel will discover George Washington worshipped there on his Inauguration in 1789 and users in Los Angeles who check in at the Cinerama Dome will find out it opened in 1963 with the premiere of 'It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World' and that it’s the world’s only concrete geodesic dome. Users are also encouraged to leave their own comments about the sites for others to discover.

Ten randomly selected foursquare users will win History channel prizes each week from April 25-June 6. Narrated by Liev Schreiber (X-Men Origins: Wolverine, A View from the Bridge), America the Story OF US is the most in-depth television series ever produced by HISTORY, as well as the broadest educational outreach initiative the network has ever undertaken. 

This effort also represents some of the potential of having old and new media form partnerships around specific topics.  It is focused and draws on the best aspects of each channel, the depth of broadcast TV and the social aspects of new media. Foursquare is the new darling of social media and it can certainly elevate awareness of the History channel project. 

Social Media Moves Further into TV with Miso

Tech Crunch reports that Miso is an iPhone app that incorporates the “check-in” idea with watching movies and television shows. So, for example, if you’re watching the current NBA playoffs, you can check-in to make your friends aware of what you’re doing. You can also send these check-ins to Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare, checking you in there in the process further spreading the social media word on your TV activities.  It is acting like a Foursqaure for TV.

There is the badge you get for checking-in at the movie or TV. Right now there is nothing attached to the badge but eventually in the future these types of check-ins could unlock special content from shows. There are a lot of promotion and ad possibilities.  For example, there could also be sweepstakes you could enter by checking-in. The creative implications of the Web TV convergence are just emerging. 

Social Media Use Rises in Traditional News Media

According to the Guardian (BBC tells news staff to embrace social media), BBC news journalists have been advised to use social media as a primary source of information by Peter Horrocks, the new director of BBC Global News. He took over last week and said it was important for editorial staff to make better use of social media and become more collaborative in producing stories. They quote him, "This isn't just a kind of fad from someone who's an enthusiast of technology. I'm afraid you're not doing your job if you can't do those things. It's not discretionary."

I would agree. Getting material for articles is of several ways that traditional television news media needs to make use of social media to survive the social media onslaught. For BBC news editors, Twitter and RSS readers have now become essential tools and aggregating and curating content with attribution are essential skills. In addition, BBC's journalists have to integrate and listen to feedback for a better understanding of how the audience is relating to the BBC brand.

This is all part of the convergence of television and the Web and traditional media with the new social media.  I am sure that other television news programs will be taking a similar turn. 

Google Getting into TV Act

We have recently written on how Apple might impact the television business model. Now Google is getting into the act. Amy Vernon writes how Google's Open-Source TV: Coming soon to a set near you.  She notes that it goes beyond a simple set top box and is truly being more of an OS.  If it goes the open-source route it's said to be headed in the impact will be huge.

With print, the Web has initially been a competitor that has brought many outlets down (see Who killed the Rocky Mountain News? from John Temple). Now, print is slowly beginning to learn how to co-exist with the Web. However, with TV, it seems that the Web firms are trying to better integrate and the traditional TV content producers are mostly on board to make this work.

Google represents one of the latest Web firms to get into the TV action. Amy writes: “if anyone is down for the democratization of Internet-based TV viewing, it's Google. And with a built-in browser plus expected apps from YouTube, Hulu and Netflix just for starters, it's conceivable that the pace with which the average consumer has been moving from the broadcast/cable/satellite model (which are all pretty much the same, just different technology and channel capacity) could accelerate exponentially.”

Now Google is partnering with Intel and Sony for technology and content. This is a smart move.  Recently they brought in Logitech to offer a single remote for all this stuff, including your laptop.

The High Def Digest picks up the story and notes that, “Google has learned a lot from Apple, and it’s pretty evident that they’ve taken those lessons to heart. What was once a humble search engine based out of a garage is now the company behind the Nexus One phone, Android operating system, Chrome OS, Chrome internet browser and now open source TV software and, potentially, a set-top box or two. The guys at Google have also learned a bit about what not to do. With Google TV, they’re taking a full 180 from the incredibly restrictive Apple TV.”

They note that Google TV is not a standalone product but an operating system for set-tops.  It will have a built-in browser so you can go after unlimited content.  This will open up a lot of ad space for them. It will also up more opportunities for Web-based devices to support TV better such as our vision for Tvissimo. 

Will Apple Impact the Television Business Model?

Things continue to move fast in this sector. Apple and other Web apps have certainly impacted the music industry and print publishing.  Now there is a move to impact television by changing the business model. Instead of subscribing to cable for a fixed fee to get a lot of stuff bundled, Apple wants to sell TV programs one at a time, like they do with music, for a low cost per program. A recent Fast Company article best that they will succeed (see: Apple's iPad Disrupting the Network TV Business Model? I'd Buy That for a Dollar!).

Naturally, the TV industry is exhibiting broad concern over this plan. While they're want to get on the  Apple's iPad bandwagon as a TV player, they are worried that lower prices will cut into their revenue streams. Now TV has its markets to protect but there are also 125 million registered iTunes users, representing a huge potential market, waiting to be tapped by someone. The main worry on the TV side is that production is expensive and each show represents a huge investment in time and money. Can they get their money a buck at a time?

The Fast Company article, which builds a story in the New York Times, suggests that they would be fools to not do this. If they do not offer programs at attractive prices, people will just steal the shows as it is not that complex to do in the digital world. If the price is right, it will convince most people not to do to the trouble and potential risk to resort to piracy.  It will be very interesting to see how this shakes out. 

Broadcast TV Goes Mobile

The New York Times recently reported on a trend, Local TV for Devices on the Move. “Beginning in April, eight television stations in Washington, D.C., will broadcast a signal for a new class of devices that can show programming, even in a car at high speed. In all, 30 stations in Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle and Washington have installed the necessary equipment, at a cost of $75,000 to $150,000.”

This is different than Web TV on mobile devices. This is broadcast TV on a mobile device.   The device is currently, for lack of a more marketable name, as “ATSC Mobile DTV Standard.” The Timnes writes that first devices will become available in April. They will include a $249 TV-DVD player from LG. There is also a $120 device cigarette box size device from Valups, a Korean set-top box maker, that retransmits a mobile signal to an iPhone, iPod or BlackBerry over Wi-Fi. There is also PC dongles and set-top boxes for automobiles from iMovee and a $149 iPhone/iPod mobile TV cradle from Cydle. The race is on.

The Mobile DTV standard also provides two-way communication. When viewing an ad, you can push a button to see more information or have it sent by e-mail. The system can also be used for voting, polling and audience measurement. Mobile TV devices with GPS function could also feed location-specific ads so that, for example, an ad for a restaurant would appear only to someone nearby.

Things are moving quickly in this niche. 

Clicker Brings You What’s On Online

Clicker is a search service to find what is available in video on the Web. There motto is “What’s On Online.”  At the site you are greeted with a simple Google style search filed as well as links to what’s new, what’s hot, recommended and your playlist if you have signed up for the premium service. The basic features are free. You can search by show or by topic. Clicker indexes television shows, movies, music videos, and original web content. 

 Clicker recently received $11 million in expanded venture capital funding. The series B round was led by Jafco Ventures. Benchmark Capital and Redpoint Ventures also participated. The company has now raised approximately $19 million since its launch in January 2009. The site does not provide video itself. It links you to the growing amount of content that others are producing. The Clicker catalog now includes more than 600,000 episodes from 10,000 shows. It lists those titles in more than 14,000 categories.

Jeremy Scott provides a nice Clicker review at ReelSEO,  Clicker Wants To Be Your Web TV Search Engine – They’re Mine. He writes that Clicker solved his frustration in finding out what is on the Web after he dropped cable. Jeremy gives the example of searcing for his favorite show, Lost. It “reveals a host of options.  The first thing you’ll notice are some brief stats:  there are apparently 129 episodes of Lost available online for free, with another 86 available for purchase.”  Plus there was a lot of related content on the same theme.

This is a nice discovery and one that will make Web video content much more attractive to me. It is the same concept that led to the design of TVissimo to address the issue of what is on in broadcast television and our listing of selected Web video sites such as Hulu. It will be interesting to see how Clicker evolve as the Web and broadcast TV continue to converge. 

Demand for TV and Web Convergence on the Rise

Rob Paterson recently wrote about TV and Radio and the web on the Fats Forward blog. He reported some interesting survey data. The desire to hook up their TV to the Web is rising in US Internet users. In 2009, the percentage of US interest users that would like to hook up their TV to the Web:  ages 14-26 – 74%,, ages 27-43 – 71%, ages, 44-62 – 59%, and ages 63-75 – 46%. In talking with a number of people in their 20s and 30s, they say that they only watch TV in the OnDemand mode. I have tried this and it was a great way to watch and tape the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concert.

Rob wrote that he has cancelled his cable access and has been connecting directly to the web for 2 months now. He writes that the reasons for doing this are: greater control, , no ads, no paying for unwanted content, and plenty of good Web TV content. Also the the pathways there – iTunes, Veoh, YouTube are good enough and getting better. He uses a simple mini connector on his MacBook to link to his TV set and uses the screen management feature to synch the screens. I can do the same on one of my TV sets, the one I purchased in 2009. Rob adds that in 2010 even these simple technical hurdles will go away.

Rob predicts that in 2011 the Web will be the channel for TV. Others have said it will happen in 2010. For example, eMarketer CEO Geoff Ramsey writes in his 2010 Predictions Round-Up, “The Consumer Electronics Show in early 2010 will usher in TVs with direct Internet connectivity, or with on-screen access to content portals such as YouTube, Blockbuster and Netflix. As online video becomes intertwined with the living-room TV experience, download and streaming services will take on a prominent role in the home entertainment ecosystem.”

I am looking forward to this as I watch Van Morrison’s live performance of Astral Weeks on my TV through DVD. It should only get better. 

TV Rose in Popularity in 2009

Television does not seem to be suffering the same way as the newspaper,  its older mainstream media cousin. Deloitte’s 2009 “State of the Media Democracy” survey reports a 26 percent increase in the Americans choosing TV as their favorite type of media compared to the previous year. This is likely influenced by the recession. More than 70 percent of those surveyed rank watching TV in their top three favorite media activities. When ranked alongside activities such as surfing the Web, listening to music or reading, 34 percent of consumers place it at the top. This is a substantial increase from last year and more than double those selecting the number two choice, the Web, which came in at 14 percent. 

When watching their favorite TV shows, 86 percent of respondents prefer watching on their television set, either live, via their DVR/TiVo, or using an “On Demand” feature.  While less than 10 percent of Americans say they prefer watching the same content online, a growing number of consumers are using online platforms to watch their favorite TV shows. 

Consumers are watching close to 18 hours of television programming on their home TV in a typical seven day week — up notably from less than 16 hours last year. Looking at the interest in TV – Web convergence, 65 percent of respondents would like to be able to easily connect their home TV to the Internet so that they can view videos or downloaded content. This is a significant trend that has gained strength over the last three years. Of course, the reverse could occur with more TV on computers.  A move in this direction would allow for more search and data mining capabilities. 

The report also looked at advertising. TV still holds strong here with 83 percent of consumers identifying TV advertising as one of the top three media with the most impact on their buying decisions.  In the online world, over half of all U.S. consumers believe that online customer reviews and ratings influence their buying decisions more than any other type of online advertising, and 51 percent have purchased products based on an online recommendation. In addition, 24 percent of U.S. consumers would like to have an online service that recommends a product based on other consumers’ preferences.

Will 2010 be the Year of Social TV?

This is the time of year for predictions and Steve Rubel predicts that television will integrate social media (see: What To Watch In 2010: Social TV). Television has always been a focal point for conversations. It is a common experience that people often like to discuss. New media work often get a great start when they offer new ways to do this we have been doing all along.  So far social media and television have been largely separate e. People certain talk about TV on the Web and through social media but the is discussion has not been integrated into the TV set itself. Now this will change as I have been discussing on this blog from time to time.

Oprah is getting in on it so we know it is big.  There will be the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN), a joint venture between Discovery Communications and Oprah Winfrey launching January 2011. This goes along with her departure from traditional TV. OWN is betting that the hundreds of thousands of viewers that have participated in Oprah's Webcasts will partake in other social experiences. And that social TV, more so than the Web, "could provide the right vehicle for advertisers who want to combine the reach and audio-visual power of television with the engagement and two-way dialogue offered by social media," said Robert Tercek, president of digital media for OWN quoted by Rubel.

Mark Kroese, general manager in the advertising business group of Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices Division, believes that Oprah's departure from network TV is a sign of the times. Rubel quotes him. "The lines between television, video and gaming are beginning to blur," wrote Kroese on Microsoft's blog. "When the entertainment history books are written, and the long, inexorable decline of The Big Four (networks) is a well-documented Harvard Business School case, I think we're going to look at the creation of OWN as the tipping point. And I predict 2010 will be the year that most major brand advertisers shift substantial portions of their budgets toward more targeted, measurable, engaging and accountable mediums."

It will not just be traditional television sets that will be more social. The gamers are getting involved. In October, XBox Live updated the platform to pull in users' Facebook and Twitter streams. Rubel writes that already, it's a hit. Microsoft last month said more than 2 million Xbox Live users logged into Facebook.  Next we may have social refrigerators where we can discuss what to cook for tonight, There are already social scales that lets us share the outcome of these meals (see Tweeting Your Weight - But Not Mine). 

The Race is on for Clickable TV

TV has always been a "push" medium, where its content and advertising is pushed out to its mass audience. With the introduction of Web 2.0 with social media and user-generated content, a major paradigm shift has occurred with the introduced "pull" marketing, where a two-way dialogue allowed users to identify and control the content they found meaningful. Ron Callari writes about the Race for Clickable TV to develop a two way capability for television.

Ron notes that "while the evolution of TV has taken more than 60 years to make this transition, the internet has moved from contextual ads (banner advertising) and behavioral targeting (user clicks) to consumer-generated content in less than a decade."   The is relatively fast for both as it took over 2,000 years to make use of an index in book publishing. Every new media takes time to have people discover its potential but this evolution seems to be getting s with new medium.

Clickable TV will naturally accelerate the convergence of the Web and TV.  Ron writes that BackChannelMedia invented Clickable Television, and according to the founder Michael Kokernak, "other interactive services are being launched by several companies that could complement BackChannelMedia's product and service." Michael also notes that, "Verizon FIOS and DirectTV are both launching TV widgets. Whereas Canoe Ventures, a consortium of the five largest cable companies, also have plans for further research and development in this space."

Clickable TV's developments also taking advantage of the recent US transition from analog to digital-only broadcast. It works like this, when cable companies download BackChannelMedia's software, they can use the data stream to link TV content to web pages/ Then consumers can control through what happens with one click of the button on their remote control.

This will certainly set the stage of Web services to better support TV such as TVissimo's Tv schedule search capabilities.  We look forward to it. 

Will We Get iTunes TV in 2010?

Here is more on 2010 predictions. I am a great fan of Apple. I have a Mac, and iPod, and an iPhone. Now there are rumors about Apple taking its already big iTunes library of TV shows and its Apple TV hardware device and greatly expanding what content they offer and what they can do. Rumors are surfacing in such posts as: 2010’s hottest contenders: 8 products to watch, iTunes turned the music market on its head. Could iTunes TV do the same for TV?, and more aggressively, Apple May Be On The Verge Of Kneecapping The Cable Industry. Finally. This move would certainly enhance the convergence of TV and the Web I have been discussing from time to time.

Venture Beat writes that iTunes TV is “likely to do for TV what iPod did for music industry. Apple, as usual, will bundle the service with its hardware to sell more Apple TVs. In the meantime, better broadband speeds and dedicated hardware will make the internet-TV watching experience comparable to TV quality on cable. Key, however, will be Apple’s ability to get content producers on board.”

There are a number of hurdles here. For now the Apple TV hardware device has limited functionality. I looked at it myself in an Apple store and could not see the reason to get one yet.  However, this could change if Apple was able to bring in more quality content partnerships. They could do what they do with music: break even on the content to sell more hardware. This hardware could be several devices, just as iTunes music is a driver of iPhone sales as well as iPod sales. Apple has the best hardware (outside of TV sets), including computers, iPhones, and iPods to play the TV shows.

I am listing to iTunes on my computer as I type this and play iTunes on my iPhone in my car or whenever else I am away form my computer.  Goodbye CD player. I already have a big screen monitor next to my laptop when I am home. Will these devices also become my TV player?  Of course I would need a lot more memory but that is likely doable. Another option mentioned is to move iTunes(TV) to the cloud.

Once all these delivery issues get worked out, the strategy of cheap content to sell hardware would allow Apple to give better deals to the quality channel provides than the cable companies.  However, expect a knock down drag out fight here. The cable companies have seen what Apple did in the music industry. Hopefully the consumer comes out the winner here and quality content gets good distribution. 2010 will be an interesting year to see what happens in this space.

 

TV Stations Using to Social Media to Attract More Viewers

Many TV news organizations are now on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, trying to connect and woe the participants in these social media sites as reported in TV stations turn to social media to attract viewers. There is concern as more people turn to social media for their news, moving away from TV news. So now TV stations are going to these social media sites to lure back departed views and gain new ones.

In one example, Seattle TV station, KCPQ/13, recently sponsored a Tweetup at the Waterfront Seafood Grill in Seattle Friday night. It brought together hundreds of people who follow "Q13Fox News" and its personalities on Twitter, and who may be followed by "Q13Fox News" in return. A number of the Q13 Fox News personalities attended, and the gathering was a marketer's mix dream.

KCPQ/13’s social media strategy is working as KCPQ/13 as its 10 p.m. newscast regularly draws more viewers in the 25-54 demographic than the 10 p.m. newscast on other Seattle stations: KONG at 10 and the 11 p.m. newscasts on KING, KIRO and KOMO.

They are also taking a sense of community into their broadcasts. Christine Chen, a marketing consulting firm in Redmond, was quoted in the article: "Q13 has embraced the concept of 'sharing' information with their viewers, acknowledging their power and making Gen Y/Millennials seem more like 'peers' who are participants in the information flow rather than 'viewers' who receive the information."

The TV staff are also tweeting and blogging. For example, weekend anchor Bill Wixey's has been tweeting on his battle against cancer. On his own blog, Wixey last April shared this vision of TV in the future: "Using the social media websites and our own, we can easily gauge what stories people are talking about and engage them. (We can) create content initiatives in which we solicit content from the viewers, so they not only provide the stage but also provide the script for the production. It's their show. We are just providing the theater."

I hope channels other than Fox pick up on this idea. I think it will benefit all news coverage to get great user engagement in the selection, creation, production of news. Social media can provide this participation if used creatively.

A Counter View on Internet TV Convergence and a New Hope

Matt Richtel offers a counter view in his New York Times article, What Convergence? TV’s Hesitant March to the Net. Matt pointsout that you find the Web on almost all the screens we use today except perhaps the biggest one in our lives, the television. He writes that there is movement by chip makers to spur a new generation of TVs with full browser capability, like a personal computer. Intel released its own TV-centric chip in October 2008 and many other semiconductor designers and manufacturers are following them. However, Matt adds that television manufacturers such as Sony and Sharp do not seem to want this TV and Web convergence to occur. They claim that people are not ready for this. We find that hard to believe.

Matt speculates that television viewers do not want Web viruses to infect their TV during the Super Bowl, a valid point. He adds that TV viewers are used to a passive relationship with their TV and would not want to have the active involvement the Web brings. We think most people would welcome it. He also writes that TV manufacturers do not want to added cot of adding TV functionality to an already thin margin activity. Perhaps so but that is punishing the consumer. Let them decide.

For these reasons few TV manufacturers are using the new Intel chip. We think the winners will be the ones who do. TV makers risk losing control of the process if they do not figure out a solution soon enough. Perhaps cable boxes will allow for a work around. There is hope as Gordon Campbell’s new company, Personal Web Systems, is now shipping its first product, a $150 adapter that will attach to televisions to make them fully Internet-enabled. They are reducing the technology included in the TV adapter device into a single stamp-size semiconductor that would enable full Internet access in TVs in more developed markets. We see promise here.

TV Web Convergence During the Oscars

Here is some interesting data from last year’s Oscars harvested through Nielsen’s “Convergence Panel” – a sample of homes in which we measure both television and Internet in the same households. A study was done to monitor the people in the panel who were simultaneously following the Oscars on live television and over the Internet. They found that:

More than 1 in 10 people (11%) watching the Oscars this year did so while logged onto the Internet. This is nearly four times greater than the normal rate of simultaneous usage they observe.

While there was some expected surfing to places like IMDB for more information on movies, the true winner of the night was Facebook. People who used Facebook during the broadcast used it for an average of 76 minutes. This compares to a little more than 30 minutes on average for MySpace, and just a little more than 20 minutes for the major portals. People who used Facebook while watching the Oscars watched about 50% more of the broadcast than the average Oscar viewer.

Also more than 100,000 messages were sent via Twitter during the broadcast - that’s more than 400 message per minute, or nearly 7 per second. Tweets came in from all over the world in a range of languages. It was a true world wide event and yet the content reflected what you might find in conversations in the average living room.

We discussed the possibilities earlier in the post, Twitter and TV – a Good Combination – Making TV More Social. It seems that twittering about TV while watching is not limited to the Oscars. Darren Waters in a BBC blog post, TV becomes social again, discussed how, “Last night I was watching Eurovision with Twitter running on my
laptop. In real time, my Twitter friends and I shared comments and made observations about the event as it was happening. Twitter was being used to extend the experience of watching the event together, but also for people to share links to sites with backstory, or explainers etc.”

The possibilities are interesting. In fact according to the Wall Street Journal, Verizon is working making Twitter feeds available on TV screens to its FIOS subscribers as we reported in Twitter Coming to TV? What is next?

Verizon Looking to Sell TV Programs for Computer Use

According to Bloomberg News, Verizon’s FiOS television service will soon start offering applications for a fee through its new online store, taking a cue from Apple Inc.’s approach to selling virtual games and tools. It is also exploring the expansion of its rights to offer TV shows and other content over multiple devices so it can beam TV programs to laptops and other mobile devices and it may work on the project with Verizon Wireless. Verizon believes that next year is going to be a big year for a broad variety of content on different devices, another signal of the convergence of TV and the Web.

When Will Web TV Really Take Advantage of the Web?

The New York Times reported again on the increasing convergence of TV and the Web, in Rise of Web Video, Beyond 2-Minute Clips. Brina Stelter wrote, “When motion pictures were invented at the end of the 19th century, most films were shorter than a minute, because of the limitations of technology. A little more than a hundred years later when Web videos were introduced, they were also cut short, but for social as well as technical reasons.”

We always tend to first use new media like old media. In this case, we were reluctant to first use Web TV like broadcast TV for the reasons noted. Now broadcast TV is increasingly moving to the Web. The article says that by some “estimates, one in four Internet customers now uses Hulu, an online home for NBC and Fox shows, every month. “Dancing With the Stars,” the popular ABC reality show, draws almost two million viewers on ABC.com, according to Nielsen.”

It goes on to quote Dina Kaplan, the co-founder of Blip.tv, “People are getting more comfortable, for better or for worse, bringing a computer to bed with them.” I have not done this yet even though I have a TV in viewing distance of bed. However, this newer trend is doing what is usually done, simply using the new medium to convey content form the old medium. The first book captured the current version of the epic poems of Homer.

The next move is the take advantage of what the new medium offers. This should happen now that the money and audiences of TV are starting to migrate to the Web. This is what we are doing at TVissimo but proving a comprehensive search tool to explore television schedules.

Watch Shows and Movies on YouTube

You Tube has announce a new destination for television shows and an improved destination for movies on YouTube. They are working with partners like Crackle, CBS, MGM, Lionsgate, Starz and many others to provide thousands of television episodes and hundreds of movies to watch. You can also do the other YouTube social functions such as comments, favorites, and sharing.

This addition is one of many efforts underway at You Tube to expand the offerings from bedroom vlogs and citizen journalism reports to music videos and full-length films and TV shows. 

To help navigate through all this content, they are also introducing two new tabs to the YouTube masthead: the "Shows" tab allows you to browse shows by genre, network, title and popularity, while the "Subscriptions" tab will grant logged-in users one-click access to fresh content from their favorite creators. 



There is also a wider roll-out of in-stream ads, which they have been testing since October, to support their shows and movies content -- not unlike what you might see when viewing this type of content on TV. The difference between the Web and TV continues to blur.

Web TV Revenues Up In 2008

Liz Gannes reported that according to a new report on the U.S. content market by Convergence Consulting, TV networks made $1.63 billion on web advertising last year. This amounted to 2.4 percent of total U.S. broadcast and cable TV advertising revenue, which Convergence pegged at $66 $67.6 billion. The web figure increased from $1.27 billion in 2007, and it includes both display and video advertising on everything from local news to full-episode viewing of prime-time shows.

Convergence estimates online ad revenue will nearly double by 2011, to $3.23 billion, or 4.6 percent of total TV ad revenue. They forecast that the growth will be driven more by increasing usage than increasing volume of ads; Convergence thinks 4 minutes per half hour is the max people will tolerate online.

We found more interesting that on average, 15 percent of people who watch TV on a weekly basis also watched full episodes online in 2008. That number is expected to rise to 24 percent in 2011, a slight bump over last year’s prediction. This is a big shift and will open up new opportunities. They revenue will climb to be closer to the usage numbers as people figure out new ways to monetize this trend.

More Tools to Support Web and TV Convergence

NYConvergence recently posted that Boxee is Now Available for Windows. The online video platform and NYC-based startup, allows users to watch television shows from the Internet on their televisions. It has released an alpha version of its software for Windows. The new version can be downloaded here once you have registered.

In addition, Boxee users will now be able to watch Major League Baseball games live and on-demand from MLB.TV and the company has new content partnerships with Digg, allowing users to watch videos that have been "dugg," and Current TV, making shows, including The Rotten Tomatoes Show, infoMania, Vanguard, and the SuperNews animated series, available to users.

This in an excellent move to further support this convergence.

Twitter Coming to TV?

In yet another example of TV and Web convergence, according to the wall Street Journal, Verizon is working making Twitter feeds available on TV screens to its FIOS subscribers, The WSJ mentioned that Verizon is testing a service that will show a stream of real-time Twitter posts related to the show a viewer is watching. The Twitter TV “widget” is in beta now, and employees are trying it out, but Verizon has bigger plans. It quotes Jen Byrne, director of business development for Verizon, “This seems to be an experience people really want.” I would agree.

Now you can tweet about a TV show while it is happening and see everything on the same screen. Like many other Twitter add-ons, Twitter says it officially has “little to do” with the project.

Twitter May be Joining Reality TV

Twitter may be coming to a television near you according to the Hollywood Reporter. Reveille and Brillstein Entertainment Partners have announced they have partnered with the social-networking and micro-blogging service to develop the first TV series that incorporates Twitter into the action of the show.

The series is created by novelist Amy Ephron, sister of Nora and Delia Ephron, It will feature ordinary people competing while on the trail of celebrities. The Hollywood reporter wrote that the untitled series will be executive produced by Reveille managing directors Mark Koops and Howard T. Owens, Brillstein CEO Jon Liebman and Lee Kernis, Ephron, Kevin J. Foxe and Steven Latham.

"Twitter is transforming the way people communicate -- especially celebrities and their fans," Owens said. Some people feel that the introduction of celebrities has compromised Twitter, others feel that it has given it more exposure. Perhaps both are right but this will certainly take the exposure a step further.

More on Convergence of the Web and TV

Gant Robertson wrote on the movement from the Web to your TV set in the Globe and Mail. He noted that Aux TV will become what is believed to be the first Internet broadcaster to be converted to an actual television station in Canada about a year after it was created online. He added that the “Internet has always been seen as the next frontier for television, but the move by Aux marks a shift in the other direction, where a channel is tested first online, then draws enough of an audience that the cable companies want in.”

We see this movement in both directions continuing as the distinction between TV and the Web continues to blur. They are both channel for video based content and increasingly they are carrying some of the same content. Each channel influences the other. It is nice to see the movement go the other way with Aux TV. Grant notes that In the “fiercely competitive world of television, where dozens of prospective broadcasters vie for placement on the dial, ideas can be tested online without having to first convince regulators or cable and satellite distributors.”

The Web opens up a great sandbox for the low cost exploration of concepts for television. Then the successful ones can migrate to TV and then back again through vehicles like HUlu and Joost. Some high-profile investors are betting on this through Aux TV, including Toronto venture capital firm JLA Ventures and several well-known names in the broadcasting sector, who combined to inject $5-million of capital. I think they are making a safe bet on the trend. We will have to see if the content on Aux TV makes them a real success story.

David Purdy, vice-president of television services at Rogers, expects to see more of the Aux TV model. He is quoted, "I think you're going to see an increasing cross-pollination from TV to PC, and PC to TV…And ultimately everything is going to be available on a mobile device. So where something started, which platform it started out on, is probably not as important." Wise words.

What Television Audiences Can You Reach with Twitter?

I came across an interesting article, TV Twittering: a Subtle Art by Daisy Whitney on TVWeek. She wrote about the social media campaign that Fox ran to promote the TV show, Prison Break. In this case, the studio posted clues on social forums rather than issuing a blatant promotional message. Daisy pointed out this effort was consistent with the findings of a study that suggests networks will likely have more success using social networks for brand building, as Fox did, than for directly driving audience.

The research firm Knowledge Networks reports that Twitter is best used by TV networks to connect to influential people, such as bloggers, reporters and critics, than it is to encourage viewers to tune in at 8 p.m. Despite Twitter's meteoric rise, the service is still only accessed regularly by a small percentage of the population. A recent Nielsen study found that 60% of people who sign up for the service stop using it after one month.

Of course that means that 40% continue and that percentage is becoming part of a bigger pie. However, David Tice, vice president of the media practice at Knowledge Networks was quoted by Daisy, "With Twitter, people don't succeed with the hard sell. It needs to be more subtle.”

This TV story is consistent with what I am seeing in other areas. For example, Wyndstorm used Twitter and a variety of other social media to promote, Moogis, an Allman Brothers inspired music site where you can see concerts among other things. Wyndstorm felt was likely that many of the Allman Brothers fan base are not avid social media users. So they reached out through social media to the people who know have a strong reach to this audience such as Twitter followers of Rolling Stone magazine, bloggers and PR people in the music space, message boards in social networks that fit the demographics of an Allman Brothers fan, and the web communities of similar bands.

Wyndstorm began Twitter conversations (through twitter/moogis) with 50 people in this space that also included NFL radio stations, TV syndicates and IPTV sites, as well as retail ticket sites. After this Twitter campaign and the other social media efforts, 58% incoming traffic to the Moogis site came from sites where they did not have ads and this is not typical.

So they used Twitter to reach influencers and it worked. However, they needed to have an appealing message and product. At least, the Allman Brothers appeals to me. This will not work if all you are offering are the get rich quick on Twitter schemes that seem to be expanding.

Being subtle is also is also key, as I have heard from many others (see for example, Central Desktop Using Twitter for Sales, Service, and Brand Monitoring Conversations).

Social Media Changing Late Night TV Landscape and More

Josh Catone of Mashable recently posted an interesting article, How Social Media is Changing the Late Night TV Landscape. New “Late Night” host Jimmy Fallon is someone you understands the power of social media. His debut was one of the best for a late night show, beating Ferguson’s 2005 premiere, and Jimmy Kimmel’s debut on ABC in 2003. Josh suggests that one of the reasons Fallon might be doing so well, so quickly, is his superior use of social media compared to his competitors.

One of the reasons Fallon might be doing so well, so quickly, is his superior use of social media compared to his competitors. Jimmy is one of the most followed people on Twitter, with just over a million followers. He is how according to Josh:

“In January, when Twitter’s traffic was about 25% of what it is today and largely made up of a more tech-oriented audience, Fallon began making key appearances on web sites whose users are generally active in social media. His CES video with Engadget editor Joshua Topolsky received over 100,000 views, for example, and a week after that he appeared on geek-favorite web video show Diggnation. Later, Fallon invited Diggnation hosts Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht on his show as guests during its first week, and helped turned a random audience member into a Twitter star (that person’s follower count went from 7 to over 30,000 in just a couple of days). He also won the 2009 “Webby Person of the Year” award for being the celebrity who is “most actively engaging with his audience online.”

This is a brilliant case study and stands in sharp contrast to Dave Letterman’s luddite approach. Why does this matter? Look at what Josh goes on to say: Fallen’s efforts “could be very valuable down the road as more eyeballs shift from the television screen to the computer screen. Because make no mistake, that is slowly happening. In February, Nielsen — the company that measures TV audience numbers — released their first-ever web TV rankings, because as Nielsen Online CEO John Burbank said, people are “using the web like it’s a giant DVR.”

This is spot on and what we are saying here, TV and the Web will merge. Those that understand this will emerge the winners.

Google TV Ads Goes Online

Google recently announced the beta launch of Google TV Ads Online. This new feature of Google TV Ads lets advertisers place commercials into the ad breaks of TV programs watched online. It works in the same way as Google TV Ads: advertisers can target specific programs and select their cost-per-thousand (CPM) bid. Based on their targets, budget and bid, ads are inserted in the same program breaks that were designed for advertising when the programs first aired.

As Google notes, “these days, many full-length television programs are also available for Internet users to watch online. These programs may appear in various places, including the websites of the networks which originally broadcast them and on other sites that specialize in video content.” This extension of Google TV Ads allows an advertiser to reach the audience of a particular program, no matter whether they're watching on a television or online. This is a good idea.