TVissimo | Internet and Television Convergence Discussion Blog

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.

American Idol Continues to Rake in the Cash

Despite declining ratings and a declining economy, American Idol continues to grow its profits according to a recent New York Times article, No Slowing in Cash Flow for ‘Idol.’ There are lessons learned here as “the manner that the show’s creators are going about it could change the way that producers and broadcast networks think about the longevity of reality television programs.”

The NYTs reports that it is generating ever-growing profits for the show’s creators and, it appears, for Fox Broadcasting through brand extensions, marketing arrangements and licensing fees. There are products as varied as ice cream and trading cards. While its rating has declined form a peak of 30 million to about 25 million, it is still the top rated show on television. Producers say it could go on forever. What do you think?

Twitter Marketing Expands in Television

I recently wrote about Twitter and TV – a Good Combination – Making TV More Social. Twitter is also being increasingly used to market television shows according to a TV Week blog post by Daisy Whitney, Twitter Qua Marketing Tool, Part Deux. This is consistent with other industries were companies like Comcast, Dell, and Zappos shoes use twitter to enhance their image.

In television, companies such as Hulu and Veoh are leaning on Twitter to track user feedback and what’s being said about them. Now PBS is getting inot the act. Look at www.Twitter.com/PBSEngage. Daisey writes that this is “one of the better examples by a broadcaster and media company of using Twitter interactively. Being interactive on Twitter—that means actually talking, responding and replying–to Twitter comments and posts about your service is what engenders viewer loyalty.”

PBS has long used blogs and now they have moved into the latest social media channel, microblogging. I think that Twitter complements blogs rather than replace them. Twitter provides the sound-bytes and headlines in 140 characters or less while the blog can give the complete story.

Top Rated TV Industry News Web Sites and Blogs

We did some research to find top rated TV industry news web sites and blogs to help you keep up with the industry. Many of these are listed in the right side bar. Here they are in order of the number of blog reactions reported by Technorati. The number of inbound links according to Google is also listed as well as the blog reactions to these site and blogs as reported by Technorati. These statistics change daily. Our data was collected at the beginning of April 2008. The descriptions below are provided by the sites or found Technorati.

We used the Technorati blog reactions since all sites had this data. Many, but not all, of these sites also have a Technorati authority rating. Technorati defines the authority as “the number of blogs linking to a website in the last six months. The higher the number, the more Technorati Authority the blog has… It is important to note that we measure the number of blogs, rather than the number of links. So, if a blog links to your blog many times, it still only count as +1 toward your authority. Of course, new links mean the +1 will last another 180 days.” Google reports all the inbound links, regardless of where they come from. Leave us a comment and let us know of any good TV industry news sites or blogs that we left out.

Starpulse Entertainment News Blog - “Updated regularly with the latest entertainment news, gossip and reviews. ” Technorati has 28,355 blog reactions and a rating of 1,773. Google reports 18,600 inbound links

Buddy TV - “The most comprehensive TV and Entertainment blog, news, and spoilers covering over 100 popular TV Shows like Lost, American Idol, America's Next Top Model, 24, Grey's Anatomy and more.” Technorati has 21,953 blog reactions and a rating of 3,683. Google reports 9,480 inbound links

TVNewser - News about the news. Technorati has 10,008 blog reactions and a rating of 1, 202. Google reports 11,700 inbound links

Reality TV Magazine - “Reality TV Magazine reports on news about reality tv shows, like American Idol, Big Brother, Survivor, The Amazing Race, and The Apprentice..” Technorati has 7,830 blog reactions and a rating of 482. Google reports 3,100 inbound links

Reality TV World - “News, information, episode summaries, message boards, chat and games for unscripted television programs.” Technorati has 6,166 blog reactions and a rating of 1,131. Google reports 3,080 inbound links

I Cringely, PBS - “Bob's been covering technology with his own brand of insight and humor for more than 20 years.” Technorati has 5,665 blog reactions and a rating of 1,023. Google reports 2,720 inbound links

Lost Remote TV Blog - “Where TV Finds the Future .” Technorati has 4,226 blog reactions and a rating of 565. Google reports 8,800 inbound links

CNET TV - Technorati has 2,395 blog reactions and no rating. Google reports 167,000 inbound links

TV Week Blogs - There are quite a few such Andrew Krukowski - Ratings Chart Attack
 where “Television addict Andrew Krukowski delivers the daily scoop on which shows are scoring. “ Technorati has 1,297 blog reactions and no rating. Google reports 967 inbound links

Blend Television - It has reviews, recaps, and previews. Technorati has 819 blog reactions and no rating. Google reports 23,300 inbound links.

Bob Garfield, Comcast Must Die - Actually, it appears the blog is just trying to keep them on their toes. Technorati has 93 blog reactions and a rating of 71. Google reports 212 inbound links

TV Decoder - New York Times - “ What’s on, who is watching, and why it matters.” not rated by Technorati. Google reports 1,490 inbound links

Lost Remote - Great Source for Local TV

Lost Remote is a group blog that covers local TV and the intense battle for local online audiences and advertising dollars. The site was created by Cory Bergman in 1999. Cory is now the director of business development at msnbc.com. In 1999, they first started discussing how technology will revolutionize the television industry. They urged media companies to invest in new ideas, DVRs to TV websites, and abandon the status quo.

Now in 2008 they have refocused Lost Remote on local TV and the battle for the web. As they write, “advertising dollars shift away from traditional media, it’s critical for local media companies to be armed with the latest ideas and competitive intelligence to take on the portals, city guides, internet yellow pages, local directories and other pure plays. Because that’s the competition — not the TV station across the street. And the future of local media information companies is riding on it.” How true.

All of their bloggers have “real jobs” in television, newspapers or the web. A recent post said that 40 percent of stations are now DTV only. Most of those are in small to mid-sized markets, as the network owned-and-operated stations are waiting until June. In other words, the switch to digital is even more confusing than ever. For example, channel numbers may change. We are working to provide a solution to help with this issue through TVissimo so you will know the proper numbers for your favorite channels

Hulu CEO Apologizes to Users

The PSFK blog recently posted, Hulu CEO to Users, “We Screwed Up Royally…” It reported that on January 9th, Hulu removed several seasons of the popular F/X series, “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia“ from their website with no advance warning. After a lot of fan complaints, “Realizing their colossal mistake, Hulu quickly moved to temporarily restore the content - with F/X’s okay - until January 25th and CEO Jason Kilar issued a public apology on the website in language that was decidedly un-corporate and sincere.” It shows the power of social media and the need to monitor it. Here is what CEO Jason Kilar said:

“Given the very reasonable user feedback that we have received on this topic (we read every twitter, email and post), we have just re-posted all of the episodes that we had previously removed. I’d like to point out to our users that the content owner in this case - FX Networks - was very quick to say yes to our request to give users reasonable advance notice here, despite the fact that it was the Hulu team that dropped the ball.”

TVissimo now allows you to search Hulu so we are pleased that they made this move. We also allow you to search Joost and TidalTV.

More Mentions of TVissimo: Cynopsis, Film News Briefs, TVover.net, Clooney's Cookie Crumbs, and Technews.am

We are pleased at the response to our launch. Here are some more reviews and mentions.

Cynopsis Media covers the entertainment industry. Wayne Karrfalt provided this review of TVissimo on their site – you have to scroll down to the website of the day section: “Sometimes you hear about a show or a movie but can't remember what channel it's on or when it's supposed to air. Enter TVissimo, an online TV search engine that allows you to search your provider's schedule by title, star, description, director, year it first ran, or anything else that shows up in the program's listing info, as provided by TidalTV. It's much more efficient than a general Google search because TVissimo only indexes TV listings. The site just redesigned its interface to add a cool new social function - now you can build customized favorite lists and send TV program alerts to your friends via email, text or Twitter. This may be a little superfluous for DVR users, many of which have their own programmable online guides, but it's a nice way to prod all your friends to check out a new show. A Facebook app would round out the alert/recommendation feature nicely.”

Film News Briefs – describes itself as “Originally this was just an internal email list sent within a film company so they wouldn’t have to buy trades for all its employees. Slowly the list spread throughout the industry and is now the best way to get a quick download of industry news. For full articles please don’t forget to visit the original sources but never stop reading the news in brief, cause come on, you only really have time for an overview of the facts. They also covered TVissimo as a website to watch.

Technews.am describes itself as “ a new community for breaking news across the technology sector. We are still in pre-alpha, so please bear with us.” We appreciate their coverage.

Clooney's Cookie Crumbs is a very active blog that covers George Clooney and wrote this post on Finding Clooney on Television. It said, "I used it and it seems comprehensive. It's free to join or use as a guest." Thanks.

TVover.net is a weblog for news and information about IPTV, Internet TV, online video and related topics. They also provide a directory of web sites offering online video and Internet TV, forums for discussion (IPTV Forums), and informational site (IPTV Information). They covered our TVissimo launch and in another recent post reported that online video is up 24.4% to 41.6 billion views in 2008. We cover online video as well as traditional broadcast TV.

TV Tango Provides Everything About Television

TVTango.com provides a comprehensive and up-to-date guide to online TV information, including TV Series, TV Movies/Miniseries, Episodes, Awards, TV DVDs, and TV Downloads. The site is run by Maj Canton and is headquartered in Los Angeles. Her award winning book, "Maj Canton's Complete Reference Guide to Movies & Miniseries Made for TV and Cable" is trusted guide in the entertainment industry. Maj and her staff have now moved this extensive database onto the Web through TVTango.com.

It provides an innovative, user-friendly way to search and browse TV show databases. It is a great complement to TVissimo’s search capabilities as you can find information about shows you want to watch. We were very impressed with the offerings. You can find more than 30,500 TV series and 4,200 TV Movies & Miniseries.

With a comprehensive interface, the site aggregates more than 35,000 titles, offering the user a fast and effective way to find the information they want. From any page on the website you are one click away from finding the information you want. A team of experienced editors review all content prior to publishing it to TVTango.com, ensuring that all content and links are viable and correct. Maj is a very experienced reviewer and has provided television program data and reviews for numerous media outlets including over 400 reviews for the BBC's "Radio Times Guide to Films" and for their weekly entertainment magazine, "Radio Times".

Here are some of the features of the site:

Aggregated External Links - there are nearly 75,000 links to title pages at IMDb, TV Guide, Wikipedia, tv.com, British Film Institute, and Zap2It. All links load on the TV series home pages — just click the tabs to quickly switch from site-to-site.

Broadcast Grids – you can type in a date and see what aired on TV that day. To generate these grids, TVTango.com uses a table of ~918,000 shows, including series episodes, TV movies, miniseries, theatrical films, specials, awards, and sporting events.

Media Links - media links are provided for individual episodes and TV movies. Not just a single link for the entire series or season. TVTango.com has more than 150,000 links to shows so users can watch or buy video.

Search Capability - you can obtain a list of people who wrote TV movies about many topics, such as true crime for CBS or get a list of military sitcoms on ABC that premiered in the '70s.

Ratings – TVTango.com has household ratings data for all shows since June 1, 1983 and viewer/share data for shows since September 25, 2000. For example, you can find ratings for which TV movie had the highest rating in 1990. You can find the ratings data for a specific episode of "Friends"?

Today in TV History – this is an interesting feature as you can find out which TV series, Movies, and Miniseries premiered on this date in the past. You can see what TV characters had life-changing events (births, deaths, weddings) as well as learn about firsts and lasts in TV history.

Maps of TV Land – allows you to navigate real maps to see where TV characters lived and worked.

We highly recommend that you check out TVTango. It will give you a lot of ideas for shows to search for on TVissimo.

Innovative TV and Web Site Interaction: SnapMyLife Partners with Travel Channel

There is an increasing web and television interaction (see Twitter and TV – a Good Combination – Making TV More Social, as well as all the TV related blogs lists and review sites in our side bars). Here is another creative example, SnapMyLife, a Newton MA based mobile photo-sharing site, and The Travel Channel have a partnership giving viewers early access to content from the popular No Reservations program. I have enjoyed this show a number of times.

No Reservations features host Anthony Bourdain and his culinary and cultural adventures around the world. It is now in its second season with SnapMyLife. Before new episodes air on Mondays at 10:00 p.m. ET on the Travel Channel, SnapMyLife will post ‘sneak peek’ photos and content at at a special section of their SnapMyLife site. Their SnapMyLife users are able to comment on the photos. (photo from No Reservations story on this move)

The sneak peek photos are taken by Anthony and his crew as they are shooting episodes on location. The photos capture behind-the-scenes footage of the show’s production, giving millions of SnapMyLife users a unique look into the life of a traveling television crew. Thus far this season, a loyal following of SnapMyLife users and No Reservations fans have subscribed to receive No Reservations photo alerts in the form of MMS and emails when new content is available.

SnapMyLife was launched in April 2008 and has quickly grown to more than 1.5 million unique visitors per month and more than 600,000 registered users. Mobile phone users from every country in the world use SnapMyLife to share pictures, make friends, see location-tagged pictures on interactive maps, add favorites, comment, and chat. SnapMyLife recently raised an additional $5 million in venture capital funding from its current investors North Bridge Venture Partners and Carmel Ventures.

Monkey See – Great NPR Pop Culture Blog

I was listening to NPR in the car and heard about the Monkey See blog. It covers “popular culture — the good and the bad; the high and the low. We aspire to be a haven for the geek and a translator for the confused, and to carve out a space where both longtime residents and curious visitors can comfortably roam the pop-culture landscape.” There is a lot on television. The writer is Linda Holmes who has been a pop-culture writer for more than 10 years.

Linda had a little movie-review site at one time. She has written about movies, books and television at MSNBC.com and was a longtime writer and editor at Television Without Pity. Linda said she once interviewed Donald Trump for TV Guide, and intends to be buried with my minicassette of him asking, "Hello, Linda, how-a you?"

The blog appears to have started in August 2008, about when we started here. There is also stuff on the web. I really liked the post, 'Far Side' Reenactors Are Delightfully Odd Ducks. It covers a flickr forum committed to photos illustrating Far Side cartoons. Below is an illustration of the famous “objects are closer than they appear” cartoon by the Rocketeer via Flickr and Monkey See. Check out the blog and the forum.

TV Week’s Big Blog Line-Up

Like many mainstream media sites, TV Week is running a series of blogs. It is nice to see blogs becoming adopted more widely as an alternative forum of communication that compliments regular web and print channels. Here is their current line up described in edited down versions of their own descriptions. Let me know your favorites.

Blink
 takes a sardonic look at happenings across the television business.

Cristina Perez - Five Minute Recess
 - Judge Cristina Perez, host of Twentieth Television’s Emmy-nominated “Cristina’s Court” blogs about the latest entertainment legal news headlines.
 
 


Daisy Whitney - Trial and Error - 
TelevisionWeek contributing writer Daisy Whitney is blogging about the pinnacles and pitfalls facing viewers who want to consume television in new ways.
 
 


Marianne Paskowski - TV Watch 
- TV industry veteran Marianne Paskowski passes along some of the morsels she's hearing on the grapevine.
 
 



 - National Editor Michele Greppi's weekly column about key events in the TV industry.
 
 


Patricia Handschiegel - Digital Dish
 Entrepreneur Patricia Handschiegel dishes about moving from the Internet to the TV arena.
 
 


Ratings Chart Attack - 
The TelevisionWeek staff delivers the daily scoop on which shows are scoring.
 
 


Tom Gilbert - Timeless TV
 - TelevisionWeek Executive Editor Tom Gilbert blogs about classic television, where anything from "Leave It to Beaver" to "Malcolm in the Middle" is fair game for discussion. Reunion specials, DVD releases of classic shows, vintage commercials -- anything that's ever been telecast is the hot topic here.
 
 


Michele Greppi - The Insider
 - 
The Pulitzer Prize-winning critic blogs exclusively at TVWeek.com with strong opinions and humor.

TV Guide Online and On Screen Goes for Big Bucks

Advertising Age recently reported that Tech company Macrovision has sold off the rest of TV Guide, including the cable channel and website, for about $300 million to TV producer Allen Shapiro and private equity firm One Equity Partners. (see - TV Guide Cable Channel, Web Site Sold for $300M). The sale ends Macrovision's short stewardship of the storied company. In October, Macrovision sold off TV Guide Magazine for $1 plus the assumption of debt, and even agreed to loan PE firm OpenGate Capital $9.5 million to finance the deal. TV Guide Channel is distributed in 83 million U.S. homes; the website draws 15 million unique visitors a month, according to the company.

This certainly validates the value of digital content over print. In commenting on the TV Guide sale, Nicholas Carlson also noted that the related story, PC Magazine Goes Out Of Print. He wrote, “Founded in 1982 and at times so rich with ads its issues reached as many as 600 pages, Ziff Davis's PC Magazine will issue its last print edition this January, thereafter becoming an online-only publication. Ziff Davis, which recently exited bankruptcy will lay off seven print production employees. Gadget and PC shoppers stay online now, preferring sites such as AOL's Engadget, Gawker Media's Gizmodo or CNET to print. Ziff Davis will follow that model and PC Magazine will become PCMag, part of a network of sites called the PCMag Digital Network.

TVissimo is pleased to see this transaction. We provide online access to television schedules with such features as preset alerts and the sharing of favorites. We also offer content related shopping based on your television show search returns.

Is Online TV cannibalizing Regular Broadcast TV? Two Opposite Views

Fast Company recently published an online article, Online video is not cannibalizing TV. It said that IBM released a report showing 36% of people watched significantly less TV as a result of their online video viewing. Their study was based on 2,800 people polled across six countries.



However, they reported more recent report from Nielsen that indicates the opposite: In the US, TV viewership is not declining, but is in fact at peak levels. "The new report from the media analysts at Nielsen found that video viewing across all three screens - TV, Internet, and mobile - increased from last year. As of the third quarter 2008, the average person in the U.S. watched approximately 142 hours of TV in one month. In addition, people who used the Internet were online 27 hours a month, and people who used a mobile phone spent 3 hours a month watching mobile video.”

TVissimo is looking at both options. We are currently targeted at broadcast television in the US but we are working on adding online or internet TV to our search capabilities.

Amazon Creates Dedicated TV Show Stores

Amazon.com has launched new, dedicated "stores" focused on specific TV shows and series. According to the company, it is launching 500 new stores specifically dedicated to TV shows like Battlestar Galactica, Family Guy, and Supernatural. The dedicated sites will include free episodes, video clips, cast interviews, and links to Amazon Video On Demand, in addition to allowing customers to buy DVDs from Amazon. Amazon also said it will soon also feature TV schedules when the shows are playing.

 You can get these schedules through TVissimo. Then when there is TV related merchandise available through Amazon, you provide a link to this stuff. Take a look at TVissimo.

 

UK TV Show Search Engine 123WebTV is a Success

We were pleased to see this story, TV show search engine hailed a success, in Tech Watch. 123WebTV was launched in September. It is a search engine, that searches for all British TV and Video content available in the internet. In a few weeks the site has already notched up over a hundred thousand visitors from the UK. The company counts this as a great milestone.

123WebTV was started by former executives from UK television efforts, Sky and Kangaroo. They are expecting the visitor levels to reach around 250,000 within six months, started up the search engine. This number of visitors will establish the site as the UK’s number one search engine for TV and video content. Tech Watch reported that most of the content and site access is free to visitors, although there is some content which is only available through subscription.

I took a look. The site favors browsing and shows how the UK television is much simpler than the US television. At TVissimo we need to understand your town and cable provider and then look at hundreds of stations. In the UK it is only a few stations on a national basis. If you are interested in what is happening n British television, you should take a look. If you are in the US, we welcome you to TVissimo. 

With Fewer People Going Out, Finding Home Entertainment Should Go Up

The Boston Globe recently ran a story, Local arts world wobbles as patrons feel squeeze, about the decrease in spending on entertainment outside the home. It said, “As the economy veers swiftly and sharply downward, arts lovers are faced with tougher choices about where, and if, to spend their money on entertainment.” And goes on to say, “Many would argue that a concert or a play is a bona fide nonessential, a luxury item compared with a tank of gas or a bag of groceries. But it's also true that art provides the sort of sustenance some feel is more vital than ever in uncertain, high-stress times.”

With an increasing variety of options available on television, including movies and music events, it becomes an option for the arts if you can find all this good content. The same goes for sports events, where you often have a better view on TV. You can create your own crowd by inviting friends over. Making better use of television is the goal behind Tvissimo and we are also looking into how we can help with internet TV.

Who is Your Most Trusted TV News Source?

The New York Times recently had an article, Is Jon Stewart the Most Trusted Man in America? It described the transition from the shows 2000 Republican Convention where “Mr. Stewart self-deprecatingly promised exclusive coverage of “all the day’s events — at least the ones we’re allowed into.” In this year’s promotional spot for “The Daily Show’s” convention coverage, the news newbies have been transformed into a swaggering A Team — “the best campaign team in the universe ever,” working out of “ ‘The Daily Show’ news-scraper: 117 stories, 73 situation rooms, 26 news tickers,” and promising to bring “you all the news stories — first ... before it’s even true.”

The Daily Show has also gained as a trusted news source. The Times reported that “when Americans were asked in a 2007 poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press to name the journalist they most admired, Mr. Stewart, the fake news anchor, came in at No. 4, tied with the real news anchors Brian Williams and Tom Brokaw of NBC, Dan Rather of CBS and Anderson Cooper of CNN.”

Jon Stewart “describes his job as “throwing spitballs” from the back of the room and points out that “The Daily Show” mandate is to entertain, not inform. However, he and his writers have go after the big issues of the day, sometimes more than the regular news. While Jon Stewart says straightforwardly than he is there to entertain, the network news are likely thinking of their entertainment value, or at least their rating value. Jon Stewart is clear in his more progressive political focus but, at he same time makes fun of both sides of the political spectrum. While every regular news show makes claims of being neutral, some are more neutral than others.

The show reviews multiple TV news and newspapers each morning to put together their nightly show. While, they will often do things with these tapes to make them more entertaining or absurd to emphasis a point, the Times noted that “often a video clip or news event is so absurd that Mr. Stewart says nothing, simply rubs his eyes, does a Carsonesque double take or crinkles his face into an expression of dismay.” I wonder how some of the regular news guys can deliver some of their material with a straight face? I guess they are attempting to be neutral with their serious tone. It does seem that the regular news people who more openly biased for the both liberal or conservative sides are more likely to use deliveries that borrow some of Jon Stewart’s methods.

Who is your most trusted new source? How neutral should the news delivery be and this possible to achieve?