Media 3.0 with Shelly Palmer

NEWS CORP. and NBCU announced that Jason Kilar would be CEO of their joint venture into online video. During a conference call, News Corp. COO Peter Chernin backed off claims of a September release for the still-unnamed service, saying it "might not happen" in September.

JAMAN, a P2P movie download company that focuses on indie and international content, has found a way to install its service on AppleTV. Jaman offers both rentals and downloadable purchases, and copyright-protected status will remain in place when content is viewed on AppleTV. Video quality of the downloads is said to be "stunning" compared to videos purchased from Apple. The software will be released within the next few weeks.

TiVo announced yesterday that its software for Motorola cable boxes was accepted by Comcast, after two years of development. Starting this August, the software will be available to Comcast subscribers in the New England area as a seamless upgrade for their Comcast DVR's.

NETFLIX has responded to BLOCKBUSTER's recent price-cutting. Netflix will match the price cuts, bringing their two-DVD rental package down to $13.99 per month.

APPLE's iPhone will be released today at 6 p.m. During an interview yesterday, Steve Jobs admitted that web surfing on AT&T's EDGE network would not be as fast as he would like it. However, he chose EDGE because it was more widely available and would allow the iPhone to have greater battery life. Despite this drawback, anticipation for today's release remains high.

TUBEMOGUL, a video analytics company, has conducted a fascinating study of video sites to determine how viewers are counted. YouTube, Yahoo Video, and Metacafe were found to have strict counting requirements - generally requiring long views, and often ignoring multiple views from the same computer. AOL, MySpace, and Revver were found to have much looser counting methods. These sites often count very short partial views, and reloads from the same computer. TubeMogul is recommending standardization of viewer-counting practices, to make Internet video a more credible advertising platform.

THE FTC issued a report on Wednesday recommending that policy-makers take no immediate action to institute Net Neutrality laws. The report states that the free market is working for broadband and that no signs of consumer harm have been demonstrated. FTC Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras said that data prioritization can be beneficial to consumers, although the report admits that consumers have a strong preference for an open, single-tier internet.

NIELSEN will acquire Telephia, a firm that tracks mobile media usage in Europe, Canada, and the United States. Telephia tracks mobile calls, Web traffic, and video views. It will be integrated with Nielsen Wireless, and improve Nielsen's ability to give a more complete view of media consumption.

THE MPAA has filed suit against two "linking sites," on behalf of several Hollywood studios. The sites, YouTVPC.com and Peekvid.com, provide an index of direct links to video files stored on other sites. YouTVPC claims they are not committing copyright infringement, because they are merely cataloging links that are available on the public internet. This is the first time the studios have sued a linking site.

ESPN has signed an extensive multi-platform deal with the NBA through 2016. ESPN will have the rights to stream full NBA games on a live, delayed and on-demand basis across all of its platforms (including ESPN MobileTV, ESPN podcasts, and ESPN.com) and any new media platforms that ESPN creates or partners with.

NBC2Go will broadcast the Wimbledon tennis tournament live to mobile phones using Verizon's V Cast service. Coverage will extend for ten days, beginning this Saturday.

MYSPACE will roll out MySpace TV this Thursday. The site will mix user-generated and professional video content. It will accept amateur uploads and feature programs owned by News Corp., as well as the Sony Minisode Network. The site will make it easy for MySpace users to integrate videos from MySpace TV with MySpace profiles and blogs.

TURNER is heavily pursuing single-sponsor arrangements for its weekly movies. Pod exclusivity has already been used during airings of Castaway, Air Force One and Ocean’s 11, with positive results. The company wants to make single-sponsorship the standard for its film offerings. During the first quarter, 15 of ad-supported cable's top 20 movies aired on TBS and TNT.

VUGURU, backed by Michael Eisner, is preparing for its second Internet TV series. The All-For-Nots will follow a touring indie rock bank around the country, in mockumentary style. 24 episodes are planned, ranging from 7 to 20 minutes long. Vuguru recently completed a successful first season of "Prom Queen," and plans to continue the series.

NBCU and NEWS CORP.'s new venture will focus on professional content, not user-generated videos. On Tuesday, George Kliavkoff, the joint venture's interim CEO, said the press has incorrectly labeled the forthcoming site a "YouTube Killer." He believes the two sites will not compete, because the new venture will only feature premium, professional content.

UNILEVER plans to release a branded online entertainment show, to be featured on Yahoo Food. The series will promote the Hellman's brand, by having a chef from the Food Network prepare recipes that use Hellman's. The online initiative reflects the growing popularity of branded entertainment. The show launches tomorrow.

AT&T continues to rollout U-verse. The IPTV service is now available in Ohio, the eighth state to gain coverage. U-verse currently has fewer than 50,000 subscribers, but At&T expects to sign up 10,000 new customers per week by the end of the year.

ABC plans to fight commercial-skipping with a “Tease ‘n’ Reveal” strategy. At the top of commercial breaks, the network will post trivia questions and other enticements, which will be "revealed" sometime during the break. Audience retention during commercial breaks has gained increased importance due to Nielsen's new commercial ratings.

INTEL has licensed the OpenCable Application Platform from Cable Television Labs, and will include OCAP in chips designed for consumer electronics devices. The agreement is a major shift for Intel, who formerly opposed the OCAP licensing terms.

GENERAL MOTORS is expected to switch from Interpublic to Publicis for advertising two of its major brands - Buick and GMC. The switch will be a huge loss for Interpublic. The two brands spend more than $400 million on advertising each year.

iPHONE frenzy is reaching new heights. A line has already formed outside of Apple's 5th Avenue store, in anticipation of the iPhone launch. Two men claimed their spots at 5 AM Monday morning, more than 100 hours before the phone will be released. Sales begin this Friday at 6 PM.

OGILVY & MATHER's Internet ad for Dove took the top prize at the 54th Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. The 60-second spot was widely distributed on the web via blogs and YouTube, and the award is being called a "milestone" for web advertising. The ad can be viewed here.

NIELSEN and NETRATINGS have officially completed their merger.

CLEAR CHANNEL will use ARBITRON's Portable People Meter to measure radio listeners in the top 50 radio markets. The portable meters detect inaudible signals embedded in a radio transmission, and track a listener's exposure to media. Advertisers have been clamoring for a more modern tracking system than handwritten, self-reported diaries of listening activity.

EBAY has resumed advertising on GOOGLE, after abruptly dropping all AdWords campaigns. However, it will significantly decrease AdWords spending, and embrace other advertising partners. EBAY has increased its advertising on Yahoo, AOL, Ask.com, and MSN.com.

APPLE's iTunes has surpassed AMAZON and TARGET to become the country's 3rd largest music retailer. WALMART is currently the largest, followed by BEST BUY.

CORBIS will launch a "microstock" photography site that lets any user upload and sell photographs. The new service will be called SnapView. Corbis joins Getty Images in trying to capitalize on the "crowd-sourcing" phenomenon. Last year, Getty acquired iStockPhoto.

If you happen to own an AppleTV box and it happens to be connected to the Internet, you can get an up close and personal view of one very probable f uture of personal media. Go to the settings menu, choose update software and in about 30 minutes your AppleTV will feature video content from YouTube over the public Internet.

For most people, watching YouTube content on a big television screen will constitute a sub-optimal viewing experience. The video clips must be searched individually and just as you are starting to enjoy something, it ends and you have to search for something else to watch. And, just to give the curmudgeons more fodder for estival nay saying, only a small portion of YouTube's vast library is currently available on AppleTV.

I acknowledge all of the problems with this baby step towards the future and I beg you to ignore them. YouTube's commitment to transcode its library to the H.264 video format and the content deal they have struck with Apple are serious potential game changers.

Later this month, Apple will release the iPhone and it will have some features that are so important, it's worth taking a minute to think about them. iPhones will have 3G network connectivity as well as Wi-Fi connectivity. This means that they will be capable of playing video content from YouTube almost as quickly and easily as the content currently plays on your computer. Whether or not the iPhone is a successful piece of consumer electronics equipment, its impact on the media business and how we consume media will be profound.

First, let's think about what YouTube is and how it is used. YouTube is not Television. It is a video-based social network that facilitates the consumption of video snacks. These are short (under 5 minutes), relatively low-resolution video clips that are meant to be consumed immediately while leaning forward (like at your computer). The Google sales department has a PowerPoint deck that says that prime time for YouTube is during the business day and on Saturday afternoons. This is not when most Television is consumed -- YouTube is a new and important video art form.

When you think of all of the other places one might consume video snacks, the first thing that comes to mind is mobile. Aside from your personal computer, your mobile device is probably the next most powerful computer you own. At your office, you can consume video snacks while sorting through your email. They're short and if your boss doesn't catch you, it's a nice way to break up the day. But, in a very real way, a mobile device may provide an even better environment to consume video snacks. Especially if the iPhone lives up to its promise and delivers clips in contextual, rich media emails or widgets from trusted sources in your social network

So why should you care about a very expensive handset from Apple and some low-res video content you can get faster and easier elsewhere?

Because you must imagine a time, in the very near future, when the handsets are free with a wireless plan and all of the content that any publisher wants to make available to consumers is just a click away from any mobile customer anytime and anywhere. Remember, mobile customers seriously outnumber computer users and broadband households. In fact, depending on the country, the number of mobile customers is on par with, or in some cases exceeds, television households. If consumers demonstrate a preference for mobile video snacking, this transition will not take long. Mobile life cycles average two years, so we may see extremely wide adoption of this technology inside anyone's five year plan.

If you are thinking that YouTube is filled with user-generated content that no one wants to watch, you are falling into a very dangerous, last-century line of thought. Quality is a highly subjective, and very fluid concept. Do not use your level of taste or your personal perception of "quality content" to impact your understanding of the potentially dramatic sociological change that is occurring around us. Popularity has never been a measure of quality and quality has certainly never been a measure of popularity. And, most important of all -- the pure production value of this medium will steadily increase until it is indistinguishable from other video consumption tools. Over time, tastes change -- this is an axiom of evolution. Need a history lesson? Look at video production prior to and post the launch of MTV or have a look at the 1971 and 2005 versions of Willy Wonka (Charlie) and the Chocolate Factory. Camera angles, lighting, shot composition, editorial, directorial -- you name the production element, and you can be sure the concept of quality has changed over time.

I spent a good part of this evening enjoying healthy video snacks from YouTube on my AppleTV. No, the content didn't look great on my 60" flat screen, but I didn't care. What I saw was the future. And it's what you should see too.

Shelly Palmer is Managing Director of Advanced Media Ventures Group LLC and the author of Television Disrupted: The Transition from Network to Networked TV (2006, Focal Press). Shelly is also President of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, NY (the organization that bestows the coveted Emmy® Awards). He is the Vice-Chairman of the National Academy of Media Arts & Sciences an organization dedicated to education and leadership in the areas of technology, media and entertainment. Palmer also oversees the Advanced Media Technology Emmy® Awards which he created in 2003 to honor outstanding achievements in the science and technology of advanced media. You can read Shelly's blog http://www.shellypalmerblog.com. Shelly can be reached at shelly@palmer.net

BLINKX is planning to launch a new online video ad platform. The system is called AdHoc, and it will use audio recognition to place targeted ads inside and next to online video. AdHoc is expected to be announced on Monday.

VERIZON's FiOS TV service will fail to comply with the FCC mandate to offer CableCARD-ready set-top boxes by July 1st. The company submitted a request for exemption from the deadline in July 2006, but the FCC has not yet ruled on the request. Verizon is "hopeful" they will get the exemption.

CABLEVISION said it will have the capacity to offer 500 HD channels by the end of the year, using switched-digital-video technology. The cable operator will add 15 new high-def channels from VOOM HD Networks on June 26, bringing its total HD channel count to 40.

INTERNET RADIO STATIONS are planning a Day of Silence on Tuesday to protest the pending rate increases by the Copyright Royalty Board. Thousands of Internet radio stations will shut down for the day, including stations from YAHOO, MTV ONLINE, and RHAPSODY. On July 15th, royalty payments are due at the increased rates -- including retroactive payments for the last 17 months. Many stations will be forced to shut down.

NBCU is planning to make the 2008 Summer Olympics the Broadband Olympics. The network will offer over 1,000 hours of live streaming media on a dedicated web site. Executive Officer Bob Wright said that NBCU is "going for multi-platform coverage" -- offering content for TV, computers, and handheld devices.

APPLE issued two YOUTUBE announcements yesterday. AppleTV's were sent a software update that added YouTube functionality, and the forthcoming iPhone will feature a special Apple-designed YouTube application. YouTube is re-encoding its entire video library in the H.264 format to reduce battery usage on the iPhone and other mobile devices. 10,000 videos will be ready in the new format for the iPhone launch.

VERIZON has reached almost 500,000 FiOS TV subscribers and over 1 million FiOS internet subscribers, according to CEO Ivan Seidenberg. During a speech on Wednesday, he said that FiOS will allow Verizon to increase broadband speeds at a faster rate than cable operators.

CBS's Audience Network has officially begun, with the release of CBS soaps on the net. Full episodes of The Young and the Restless, Guiding Light, and As the World Turns are available at 6 pm every evening, across a large number of web sites. Gerber will sponsor the online episodes.

VISIBLE WORLD is partnering with MTV NETWORKS to dynamically customize and target video ads across MTVN's TV channels and web properties. Visible World's technology will allow MTVN to dynamically target, monitor, and update video ads.

SLING MEDIA releases SlingPlayer Mobile for Windows Mobile 6 today. The update brings SlingPlayer to the latest smartphones, and allows users to watch their home televisions from anywhere in the world.

VEOH has launched VeohTV, an application that aggregates video from thousands of video sources on the web. VeohTV pulls video feeds from all the major network sites, MySpace, Google, YouTube and "thousands of others." It even allows recording of content and offers personalized recommendations based on viewing habits.

IMEEM officially launched its social-networking, ad-supported music service. Imeem allows users to upload tracks for other users to stream. Artists receive a share of the revenue generated by advertising. The service launches with music from several well-known artists, including Jimi Hendrix, Sarah McLachlan, and Barenaked Ladies.

DISCOVERY struck a deal with STARCOM USA based on Nielsen's "All Minute," which provides minute-by-minute ratings. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Discovery officials say this is the first agreement based on All Minute data.

NEUTROGENA has initiated a "promotional partnership" with "Lonelygirl15," the popular Internet TV show. A character on the program will be identified as a Neutrogena employee, and the show will be promoted on Neutrogena's site. Financial terms were not disclosed.

GETTY IMAGES will acquire PUMP AUDIO for $42 million. Pump provides music licensing for everything from network TV shows to podcasts.

YAHOO CEO Terry Semel has resigned from the company's top position, and will be succeeded by Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang. The transition occurs after a year of steadily declining stock value and failure to effectively compete with GOOGLE in the online advertising space.

HBO is consolidating digital operations in its New York headquarters, and disbanding its digital team in Los Angeles. Several executives in charge of digital distribution will be leaving the company. Thus far, HBO has been noticeably absent from the surge in online video.

YOUTUBE is going international. The company will translate its existing site into seven different languages. After the initial translation, YouTube will gradually tailor the sites to each individual country.

THE UPFRONT is proceeding at a rapid pace. FOX has completed deals with four major agencies. NBC is over 65% finished with prime-time. CBS has finished with several agencies. However, ABC is taking its time. Sources say ABC sales president Mike Shaw is holding out, expecting increased CPMs.

GOOGLE unveiled modified hybrid cars that have almost double the fuel-efficiency of current hybrids. One model is capable of sending energy back to the power grid when it is needed. The cars are the work of Google.org, the company's philanthropic foundation. They are currently in use by Google employees.