Blog articles from 02/2010

Targeted and interactive TV advertising will lay the foundation for the long-term recovery of U.S. ad spending, while spending on broadcast network TV will return to pre-recession levels in 2010, leading the more immediate recovery, according to Advertising Outlook: Shifting Dollars. This new report from international research firm Parks Associates features a survey of U.S. advertising and media executives and found this group optimistic about 2010 ad spending as well as the long-term...

There's news on this from both the BBC and the Digital TV Group . SeeSaw offers 3,000 hours of content Channel 4, and Five, and BBC Worldwide programming. It's different from the BBC iPlayer in that it is ad-supported. SeeSaw joins the individual online catch-up TV services from the following broadcasters: * BBC iPlayer: Averaging five million unique users per week (with more than 114 million requests recorded in January ), BBC iPlayer content is available for viewing on more...

Yesterday, the news was that Warner Bros. was expanding catch-up TV services in Central and Eastern Europe. Today, Turner Broadcasting announced that it was working with Brightcove to roll an online video services in the U.K., Spain, France, Italy, Germany and other countries throughout Europe. Turner will use the Brightcove platform to expand its advertising-supported online video services and to introduce new programming on its web portals. The first sites to launch with the platform...

More good news for consumers from MWC. While Apple finally allows Sling Player app on iPhone, Verizon Wireless announced that Skype will be made available to its customers. Previously, the VOIP solution provider had a hard time convincing mobile carriers in North America to allow its app to appear in app stores or embedded on the phone, now the first truce is made (if you don't count iPhone's support of Skype on Wi-Fi). Which carrier will be the next? Scanning through the press...

The press release that we issued a couple of weeks ago on potential of cord-cutting has generated some good feedback. Most recently, Jim Louderback, the CEO of Revision3 , wrote a column on the GigaOm site that offered some critique of the analysis that we presented from our recently-completed All Eyes on Video study. Jim's column covered topics such as the margin of error of our surveys and raised questions about whether we were able to include the viewpoint of consumers age 18-24 who,...

Warner Bros. has launched a branded online catch-up TV service in Poland. WarnerTV is available on the Onet.pl Internet platform. Shows such as The Big Bang Theory , Gossip Girl , Friends , ER , and Fringe will be available shortly after their U.S. airing. The Polish service follows on the heels of similar European offerings in the U.K., The Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and France.

Two cable-related residential gateway announcements in one week? Things must be getting interesting. SMC Networks has launched a DOCSIS 3.0 gateway - the SMCD3USG. Some of the gateway's features include interfaces for MoCA, DECT, and 802.11n; and the ability to support value-added services such as home control and home security.

In a sign that mobile operators begin to recognize the downloadable mobile apps market as a viable opportunity and view the handset makers’ aggressiveness in this area as a credible threat, twenty-four operators announced their Wholesale Applications Community initiative today at the MWC event in Barcelona. We warned as early as in our November 2008 industry report "mobile Imaging" that operators need to come up with counter measures to prevent others from using app stores as a...