Geographic

Five Download VoD Launches With CSI
UK Broadcaster Channel Five have launched their Five Download, Video on Demand (VoD), service with US series CSI. They’ve previously offered downloads of the car show, Fifth Gear.
The new service is offering straight CSI: Crime Scene Investigation; CSI: NY and CSI: Miami.
This isn’t Just-Another-VoD-Service (JAVS), as there’s some innovation in here. CSI fans are mad keen on the programme (so we understand) and understanding this, Five is offering the episodes seven days ahead of the TV broadcast date. Fans will pay a premium price for this £2.49 vs the usual £1.49 per episode. We suspect that once hooked on receiving the content early, fans using the service will have to continue paying to stay ahead.
Engaging in some mutual back slapping Jane Lighting, Five’s Chief Executive, said: “I’m delighted that we are launching the service with CSI enabling us to offer the highest quality content to viewers with a viewing window which exceeds anything currently in the marketplace,” to which Ted Riley, Executive Managing Director, International Content Distribution, Alliance Atlantis whooped “The first-ever CSI Franchise VoD service outside the U.S., is both a thrilling proposition for U.K. fans,” adding that it “heralds the roll-out of other new media opportunities for this fantastic franchise internationally.”
One of the challenges for this service, as it is with all others – they’re competing against the same content being available on file sharing networks near-instantly available after they’ve been shown in the US – yonks before they hits the UK. Fanatical fan’s will more than likely not wait for the legitimate source and go the file-sharing route. The fact that the programmes won’t cost them anything will be incidental.
Five will be charging either £1.49 or £2.49 per download which we think it pretty steep given the episodes are only available for 14 days and is restricted to one computer. If you’re impudent enough to try the content that you’ve paid for on another machine, you’ll be completely locked out of that content.
To use the service you’ll need to download and install the Five Download Manager and Player which has been provided to them by BT Media & Broadcast, but the base level technology is from Entriq. Entriq’s MediaSphere is used by other companies such as BT Vision and with download services.
As Five are using Microsoft’s DRM, the service is only available to those in the UK who run Windows XP or 2000 and browse through Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 and enable ActiveX. Users of Windows XP must use Windows Media Player 10 and 2K users must use Windows Media Player 9.
Microsoft has steadfastly not introduced their latest DRM on the Macintosh, so they’re excluded.
Those of you lucky/unlucky enough to not have the above, can still view the trailers (well we could on a Mac anyway).
Five download
13 October, 2006
Spoof David Cameron Video Brouhaha
Some MP’s are trying to create brouhaha (fuss) about a spoof video put out by labour MP Sion Simon mocking the first video of Conservative party leader, David Cameron on his Webcameraon site.
If you’ve not seen Cameron’s first piece, which was put out in advance of the Tory party conference, take a trundle through – it’s only just over a minute long.
When we saw it, we found it pretty contrived, with “Dave” just about to do the “washing up” – clutching his Ecover washing-up liquid (look how green I am), without rolling his sleeves up!
Sion Simon’s video repost parodies Cameron’s “hey, I’m just like you” approach and ~~can be seen below~~ can’t been seen on YouTube anymore as someone has pulled the video. To see it now, you’ll have to watch it via the BBC.
The criticism of Simon is being lead by Peter Luff and given Luff’s comments, it appears that he’s not too secure in his position, “When you go over the top like this, you bring all of us in politics into disrepute.” If you’ve watched the film I think you’ll agree that the video is hardly over the top, just gently mocking.
Criticism of the video isn’t just restricted to the opposition. Labour MP Stephen Pound said he thought Mr Cameron’s wife Samantha would be “hurt and insulted” by remarks made by Simon, referring to his comments suggesting that Cameron would be fine with people sleeping with his wife.
It’s not just MPs that are creating spoof videos. Someone calling himself WebCameraOn has created a number of videos pocking fun as well.
Cameron is playing the “am I bovvered” card. 2:49 minutes into this piece, Cameron mentions that there had been a number of spoofs of his piece, calling them “The greatest form of flattery, imitation.” Bizarrely Cameron also says, “Hope that you people are enjoying the Web site,” “You People”?
Cameron – or at least someone in his team – has clearly seen that he now has the ability to bypass the media and the filter that they apply to his comments.
13 October, 2006
Orb MyCasting on Nokia N80 In US
Orb MyCasting has been grabbed by Nokia to be bundled in with the Nokia N80 Internet Edition, in the US only.
When US N80 owners are swanning around, they’ll be able to watch live TV, videos, listen to music and podcasts and video images on their PC. Not just that, but they can set programs to record on their PC from their mobiles.
The TV and media companies have not, to say the very least, been particularly keen on letting people do this. We’ll see if they come out against Nokia.
Back in August this year, Orb MyCasting were keen to “share”, that 19 months after the service was launched, they’ve had over 1.5m hours of digital media transfered over their service – equivalent to 125 years of media-idge. Interestingly up to 45 minutes per user per day, on average.
Orb has similar deals with companies such as AMD, Vodafone, Hauppauge, Intel and Creative Labs.
Programming video recordings is not unique – Sky TV has been offering this since July this year through their Mobile Sky+ Programming
Orb Networks
12 October, 2006
BBC Use Digital To Pressure Government
BBC Director-General Mark Thompson is back on again trying to justify to the British government why the BBC should be allowed to increase their licence fee above the Retail Price Index (RPI).
Thompson’s main thrust for the increase is the cost of going digital. It’s a clever approach as the UK government has publicly committed itself to switching off analogue TV in favour of digital. Thompson also knows that once the analogue spectrum is freed up, the government may make bucket loads of cash from making that spectrum available.
Thompson ratcheted up the pressure on the Government to comply, by reminding them the risks of digital transition, “If it is under resourced it will fail. It’s as simple as that – and the failure will impact on many millions of households.”
The UK public has for a long time been told, primarily by the BBC, that Digital will be amazing and their lives will somehow become increasingly glorious once they get a Digital TV. Only now are they starting to understand that it’s going to cost them more to have.
Until today, Thompson was asking for an increase in the licence fee of RPI plus 2.3%. today it’s dropped to +1.8%. Under the adjusted figures, the license fee would be £149 in 2013/14 by today’s prices. The reduction has been helped by Ofcom making the decision to no longer charge the BBC a spectrum tax.
Being publicly funded, this kind of ~~argument~~ discussion is very important to the BBCs future ambitions – digital and otherwise. The license fee is payable by all UK residents who have a TV.
Mark Thompson speech today
11 October, 2006
Carphone Warehouse Scoops Up AOL UK
Carphone Warehouse have jumped into the big boy broadband rankings with its acquisition of the UK’s third-largest Internet provider, AOL UK.
Shelling out a cool £370m for the operation, Carphone Warehouse will inherit AOL’s 2.1 million UK customers, of which 600,000 are on dial-up, with the remaining 1.5 million using broadband connections. It’s four years ago that AOL announced their broadband pricing.
Under the deal, AOL will be keeping its (somewhat inappropriate) name – short for ‘America On Line’ – with the new owners retaining the US firm’s pricing policies.
(When AOL first hit the shores of Blighty, we did wonder if they’d change their name for the UK market, but we figured that UK On Line (UOL) sounds like someone being sick, and Britain On Line (BOL) would just invite the addition of ‘LOCKS.’)
Retaining AOL UK’s management and infrastructure, Carphone Warehouse said that it’s funding the acquisition of its shiny new toy through an extension of its existing debt facilities.
Although AOL UK is being sold by its American parent company Time Warner, the deal will see AOL continuing to provide co-branded portal, content and other audience services, as well as taking care of online advertising sales through a revenue-sharing agreement.
Carphone Warehouse head honcho Charles Dunstone announced that the deal was “transformational for our broadband business,” adding that they had “accelerated their customer service recruitment plans and incurred additional wholesale broadband costs.”
“The joint development of AOL’s already successful audience platform will bring us new advertising and content revenues in a proven and low risk manner,” he added.
Ol’Charlie boy’s been getting in the neck recently, after Carphone Warehouse’s TalkTalk service was the subject of a damning expose on the BBC’s Watchdog programme.
The show had been inundated with complaints after the company failed to deliver on its promise on ‘free’ broadband, and Dunstone has claimed that the strong demand has cost the company £20m more than originally expected.
The AOL deal sees the Carphone Warehouse crew slip into third place in the UK league table of residential Internet providers, with NTL the current leaders with 2.9 million home customers, followed by BT on 2.2 million.
Carphone Warehouse
AOL UK
Time Warner
11 October, 2006
Yes, Google Buying YouTube: YouGleTube? GoogleTube?
As we\\’d previously as conjecture, Google has announced that it will be buying YouTube. The price is slightly above the rumours at $1.65Bn (€1.31Bn, £0.88Bn). It\\’s an all stock deal, with no money changing hands.
YouTube has been a fast-growing phenomenon that only started in February 2005, a mere 19 months ago.
Formed by some of the people who were in another similarly sale-price company, PayPal, which went for $1.5Bn to eBay, including Roelof Botha the former CFO of PayPal, who fortunately became a partner at VC company, Sequoia Capital partner. The other two were Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. Not much has been heard about them, so it\\’s worthwhile watching the Charlie Rose interview with them.
History (short)
In the early days, many people couldn\\’t understand how they would survive long-term given the speed that they were burning through money.
Back in November last year, long before their explosion to playing 100m videos a day, YouTube was shifting 8 terabytes a day. That kind of bandwidth is very expensive.
The founders have a fair few quid in their pockets after the PayPal sale, but in November 2005 they raised $3.5m from Sequoia Capital, which was followed up in April 2006 by further funding of $8m was also supplied by Sequoia.
See how Chad and Steve break the news to their users.
Given the sale price (don\\’t forget $1.65Bn), the return for the investors is tremendous. As the company is closely-held, ie it\\’s shares aren\\’t publicly available, we don\\’t know how much was put in by the funders, but taken at face value, the $13.5m that was put in by Sequoia returned upto 100 times their investment. Not bad for 19 months.
Copyright issues
There\\’s been much controversy within media companies as they\\’ve objected to their content being uploaded to YouTube. Given that video has been uploaded at the rate of 65,000 a day, the only way that YouTube has been able to stay on top of new copyrighted material is by removing it when complaints have objected.
Google Video has been less concerned with similar pieces of video, probably due to their financial muscle and less need to feel threatened by the media companies legal departments. Expect a long list of deals like Warner Music\\’s
Of course, most of the material on YouTube is people making their own videos and uploading it, a few of which have become stars on the service and a couple mega-stars being signed by Hollywood agents.
For the latest (brief) views on the deal of Hurley and Chen have just hit Reuters.
10 October, 2006
DiddyTV: YouTube Gains A Paying Partner
In true online video blog style, the announcement was made by Mr Diddy (not one of Ken Dodd’s little friends), but differing from the norm, he’s filmed walking in to a Burger King and happens to drop their catch phrase a couple of times while order his burger to “have it his way”.
Interestingly Mr Diddy says that he’s going to “Buy a channel on YouTube,” so we’re assuming that there’s money involved, especially as Mr Diddy refers to “The Contract” in his video piece.
Also of note, is that Mr Diddy has his own URL on YouTube – YouTube.com/diddyTV – certainly the first that we’ve seen that uses such a short form.
There’s also a great spoof of Mr Diddy’s video by Lisa Nova.
Details of the deal between Mr Diddy and Burger King haven’t been disclosed, but we’d imagine that it’s going to be worth more that a couple of orders at their stores, even if his entourage are ordering large.
Of course, this big step up by Mr Diddy has absolutely nothing to do with the new album that he’s releasing this month and is cunningly blip-cut into his video pieces.
We attribute much of Mr Diddy’s knowledge and acceptance of YouTube down to Ryan Leslie, who is part of Mr Diddy’s posse (which we believe is the common parlance). Ryan has been using MySpace and YouTube for a long time to promote himself, his label Next Selection (for life) and his artists like Cassie. We’ve spoken about his work in many consultancy sessions that we’ve done with media companies – and frankly have great regard for the way he’s used the medium, such as his idea to get people to post their own lip-sync video on YouTube.
The absolute proof of this is Mr Diddy’s message to Ryan saying that he’d “finally talked him into it,” asking him to send over some of his friends to Mr Diddy’s Myspace. To show how these things roll, you’ll note that Mr Diddy doesn’t have Ryan in his Top 16 friends on his MySpace. You may also note that Mr Diddy has had over 10m plays of his tracks – some 4m of which for Come To Me, that was produced by Ryan Leslie. Where’s the friendship?
Google interested in buying YouTube?
Over the weekend there has been much chatter about YouTube being bought by Google, after it was rumoured by the WSJ. The figure banded around was $1.6Bn.
This would be the most expensive purchase that Google has made. Up until now they’ve been very smart and picked up other compaies at early stages for relative small change. The rumored figure for Blogger was $30m.
Google Video hasn’t been the boon that they had hoped it was going to be. Buying YouTube will take Google into the forefront of serving video online and with the $10Bn they’ve got in the bank, not an unfeasible amount for them to pay for it. When put into historical context, it appears a pretty cheap price – don’t forget that Yahoo paid $7.5Bn for broadcast.com back in the Web 1.0 days.
9 October, 2006
Vonage V-phone Gets To The UK
Vonage have launched a new means of making VoIP calls on you PC – a USB stick with headphone socket.
The invite to Vonage’s event to launch the V-phone billed it as ‘The World’s smallest phone.” Whether you feel that is a marketing spin or correct is personal interpretation.
It’s not a phone in old understanding of it … but frankly, what is? The USB stick has Vonage Talk software pre-loaded on it, with a detachable stereo earpiece/microphone and you’ll be left with 250Mb of usable memory. You also get a new Vonage phone number. All for £20.
With it, you can use any PC as a way to send and receive phone calls on a Vonage – even PCs without the Vonage software installed. To use it, just plug the neat USB stick in with the the headphone, the software temporarily runs and you’re ready to go. When you’ve finished chatting, simply software-eject the USB stick and remove it. There’s nothing left on the machine.
Skype has done a similar thing through a deal with SanDisk to have their software on their Cruizer USB stick. We’ve used it and found it pretty impressive. The only thing missing is the headphone socket.
We think this kind of approach – temporary software – will become more common as computing become ubiquitous and more a utility than rarity.
Vonage V-Phone
6 October, 2006
BTPodshow: The How and Why
A few week back, BT confirmed that they have closely tied themselves with US podcast aggregator, PodShow, so closely in fact, that they’ve stuck BT at the front of PodShow domain to form BTPodShow.
We were at the launch of the service a few weeks ago and chatted to Gavin Patterson, group managing director, consumer division and group marketing, BT; Adam Curry, President and Co-founder, PodShow and Ron Bloom, CEO and Co-founder, PodShow. Strangely for the launch of a podcast network, we were the only ones there recording interviews.
Looking for the podcast interviews? They’ll be available in part two tomorrow.
Rather than just rattle off the news, we felt it was worthwhile digging a bit deeper and understand the How and Why of the deal.
What makes this interesting?
Quite a few reasons really. Not the least being that, showing a change of approach, BT aren’t making the service exclusive to only their network – their normal approach to try and encourage people to subscribe to their DSL service. BTPodShow will in fact be open to anyone in the UK.
This alone shows a major shift within BT that shouldn’t be underestimated. It demonstrates an understanding that, although they dominate broadband provision in the UK (with nearly 3m accounts of their own, without all of the BT Wholesale lines sold via other UK broadband providers), they can’t own the whole market.
Having acknowledged this, they’ve clearly decided that they just as well make some income from the people who don’t buy broadband from them.
Where does the income come from?
While the financials of the deals haven’t been disclosed. We understand that there will be a revenue share between the two parties, expected to mostly come from advertising income.
The PodShow side of the business is responsible for finding, maintaining and managing the relationships with the advertiser. At launch they reported that they had 40 global brands lined up to advertise on the network. If these are unique to the UK version, or are extension of relationship they already have with their previous site isn’t clear.
Why this deal. Why now? BTVision
We think a major reason is BT Vision, their soon to be launched ipTV service.
BT have recognised that the current fodder broadcast on TV, will not continue to satisfy the wants and desires of the public in the future. In the words of BT’s consumer division group managing director, Gavin Patterson’s words, “The trend to user-generated content, and social media networks is clear cut. We see ourselves as a distributor of content. What we anticipate is more people wanting get involved with creating content.”
To fill the gap left by the dissatisfaction with ‘normal TV’, they have to open a collection channel for the content to flow to them and then build a collection of User Generated Content (UCG). While they could build PodShow’s technology themselves, it’s clear that BT don’t want to miss out on this, wanting to get into this area quickly, as confirmed by the speed at which they put this deal together.
We wondered if the higher resolution video might not be put out on the Website, but reserved for BTVision, to which Patterson said, “The experience that people have over the Internet will not be sufficient for the TV space. I anticipate it will happen.”
The advantages for PodShow are obvious. If they export this idea to any other country, they’ll be able to hold BT up as their first partner, something that really can’t be beaten.
As BT have a near monopoly on broadband and land line provision in the UK they can expose BTPodShow to the 17m ‘customer relationships’ they have, not just to encourage people to go to BTPodShow to watch the content, where they’ll make income from advertising, but to encourage those same people to produce and upload content.
Moves like this cannot help but strengthen BT as a media brand in the mind of the public – especially the youth. Vital for their service growing in the future.
Continued in the concluding piece, covering the advantages for PodShow and the chances of success of the service.
5 October, 2006
Ed Richards Gets Ofcom CEO Job
Ofcom has announced that Ed Richards is taking over the uber-communications agency CEO reigns, effective today.
As we back in January), the then current CEO Stephen Carter was leaving.
Richards name has been in the frame for a long time. He’s politically very well connected, given that he was previously the UK Prime Minister’s Senior Policy Advisor on media matters.
Watchers of all things Ofcom, our good buddies OfcomWatch see the challenges for Richards to be
* Steering Ofcom through its day-to-day implementation of the various strategic reviews. This means real bread-and-butter regulatory work like conducting radio spectrum auctions and supervising BT-Openreach as it starts to deliver on its Sept 2005 undertakings. Gone – for the most part – are the days of strategic thinking combined with predictive statements about the future.
* Ensuring that Ofcom’s voice is heard on key issues. Ofcom to its credit, tend to think and act in an evidence-based manner, but are surrounded by a regulatory environment which is highly politicised. This has been particularly true in both the media and new media, an area where Stephen Carter’s Ofcom often produced good thinking, but was unable to translate that into actual policy (eg, BBC charter review). Richards comes from the political world, and this might benefit Ofcom in that respect.
* Being a champion of ‘better regulation’ in dealing with the European Commission, health advocates, and other populist causes.
Given they spend all of their time studying Ofcom, who are we to argue of them.
5 October, 2006