Hulu Spends First of its $500 Million on Original Programs Posted at Tubefilter: 16 Jan 2012 06:45 AM PST Last week, Hulu CEO Jason Kilar announced the internet's go-to destination for the on-demand streaming of movies and television is "excited to invest approximately half a billion in content in 2012 on behalf of our users." Over the weekend, Hulu revealed a handful of the projects in which that $500 million will be invested. Battleground is a "workplace dramedy" set in the world and office of a Democratic primary campaign for a US Senate seat in Wisconsin. Conceived by JD Walsh (an actor who once worked for Senator John Kerry), the seemingly more faux documentary than mockumentary action follows the activities of head campaign strategist Chris Tak Davis as he strives to make his employer the latest representative of the Badger State. Hulu picked up 13 half-hour episodes of Battleground after Fox Broadcasting Company developed and then dropped the project last year. The program premieres on February 13, with new installments released every Tuesday. In addition to Battleground, Hulu is bringing back Morgan Spurlock's seres of half-hour mini-docs highlighting 24-hour periods in the lives of well-known celebrities will be back for a second season. The sophomore installments of A Day in the Life are set to feature comedian Marc Maron, actor and The Soup houst Joel McHale, UFC fighter Jason "Mayhem" Miller and more. Hulu also announced it's behind Up to Speed, a non-scripted six-episode original web series hosted by Timothy "Speed" Levitch that will explore the crawlspace of notable destinations across the country. Both A day in the Life and Up to Speed are set to launch in the first half of 2012.

LONDON - Global online TV and video revenues will grow more than
five-fold to $21.52 billion in 2016 up from $3.48 billion recorded in
2010, according to new a new report from London-based analyst firm
Digital TV Research.
Rapid growth in the availability of PC- and TV-based online television
- both from local and international players - is driving the global
expansion in the sector.
By 2016 the report predicts that 415 million homes in 40 countries
will watch shows online up from 177 million in 2010.
The U.S. will remain the dominant territory for online TV and video
revenues, with 54 percent of the global market in 2010 - but this will
drop to around 36 percent of the total global market in 2016 as China
and other territories become meaningful consumers of online video.
Over the five-year period China's online television and video revenues
are predicted to surge from $50 million in 2010 to $1.38 billion in
2016.
"The OTT television and video sector is on the brink of a huge
take-off," said report author Simon Murray, who said expansion was
being driven by multiple factors including international expansion,
increased demand and subscription services and emerging new content
partnerships.

TORONTO (October 11, 2011) -- Given the choice between smartphones,
tablets and computers, 94% of adults between 18 and 49 prefer watching
their favourite TV shows on a television screen at home, according to
recent research from the Television Bureau of Canada (TVB). Television
Viewing Preferences and Online Synergy 2011 also found that 70% of the
same demographic think watching video content on a computer or mobile
device could not replace viewing on a television set. In a saturated
media landscape where consumers have the choice of a wide variety of
screens, TV remains the screen of choice.

--This latest research demonstrates the power of television as the
medium of choice for consuming video content developed for television
as the first screen,|| said Theresa Treutler, President and CEO of TVB.
--This bodes well for advertisers that maintain television as a core
piece of their advertising spend.|| According to the study, 52% of
respondents watch TV and browse the web simultaneously, and 57% of
them go online to research a product or service seen in a TV
commercial.

While television is the screen of choice, consumers now have the power
to record their favourite shows for viewing at any time with Personal
Video Recorders (PVRs), which according to another study (Television
and the PVR, TVB) is having a negligible effect on exposure to
television commercials. A conclusion that is corroborated by BBM
Canada's statistic that 96% of all television viewed in Canada is
viewed live - not recorded.

When using a PVR, 51% of viewers between 18 and 49 stop to watch
interesting commercials. This number is even higher in the 18 to 34
demographic where 65% stop to watch interesting commercials. According
to the study, adults who fast forward through commercials still pick
up on strong brands and creative, 72% recognize brands in ads they're
trying to skip. These Television and the PVR findings coupled with a
low 28% PVR penetration in Canada reaffirm the value of television
advertising - even when viewed with a PVR.

Despite the plethora of viewing and recording devices available,
PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts television advertising in Canada will
reach $4.5 billion (USD) by 2015 - a compound annual growth rate of
4.7% year-overyear. Furthermore, Deloitte predicts consumers worldwide
will watch 140 billion more hours of television in 2011, worldwide TV
advertising will increase by $10 billion, and TV shows will be the
subject of more than a billion tweets. TVB, BBM,
PricewaterhouseCoopers and Deloitte all agree that the future is very
bright for the king of the screens.

About the Television Bureau of Canada (TVB):

The TVB is an industry association for commercial television
broadcasters (both conventional and specialty) in Canada. TVB was
incorporated in 1961 and provides leading edge research and
information about television advertising, as well as video services to
its member stations, networks, sales rep organizations, agencies and
advertisers.

Adobe said Tuesday that LG Electronics and TiVo have become the latest
companies to bring Flash-based applications to connected TV's and
other digital home devices via its Adobe AIR solution. The company
also announced the availability of Flash Player 11 and AIR 3. "With
more than 100 unique digital home devices already certified to support
Adobe Flash and AIR, including Samsung Smart TV's, Adobe expects rapid
growth for Flash-based applications across connected televisions and
other devices," the company states in its press materials. "New gaming
apps like Frima Studio's 'Zombie Tycoon,' VH1's 'I Love the 80's
Trivia' or 'Raider' from PlayJam, as well as premium video experiences
from SnagFilms, Flingo, Epix and others are just a few of the
applications that are enabled by AIR...With the AIR SDK, Flash Builder
and Flash Professional CS5.5 software, developers can build new
applications for connected digital home devices or extend existing
Flash-based experiences from desktops and mobile devices to TV's. AIR
3 brings a series of advancements to TV's including full
hardware-accelerated rendering for 2D and 3D graphics to enable
console-quality gaming applications. Content publishers are able to
deliver HD videos with Dolby and DTS 7.1 channel surround sound for
full support of home theater systems. With the new Game Input API,
developers can also make a range of devices an integral part of the
gaming experience on TV screens, including joysticks, smartphones and
tablets...Flash Player 11 and AIR 3 enable the next generation of
immersive application experiences across devices and platforms
including Android, Apple iOS (via AIR), BlackBerry Tablet OS, Mac OS,
Windows, connected TV's and other platforms. Dozens of new features in
Flash Player 11 and AIR 3 allow developers to deliver a new class of
gaming and premium video experiences, as well as sophisticated,
data-driven applications with backend systems integration across
devices, including the iPhone and iPad via AIR...Flash Player is
supported on more than 98 percent of Internet-connected PC's today and
by the end of 2011, Adobe expects more than 200 million smartphones
and tablets including Apple iOS devices to support Flash-based
applications via AIR. By the end of 2015, the number of devices that
will support AIR is expected to increase to 1 billion. AIR, a superset
of Flash Player, enables developers to leverage existing code to
create and deliver standalone applications across devices and
platforms."

Facebook F8: Spotify, Hulu, Netflix get deeper Facebook integration

After unveiling the Timeline profile redesign at Facebook's F8 conference on Thursday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled a "new class of apps" that will make use of Timeline.

The central idea here is that users will be able to share what they're doing in Facebook-connected apps as they're doing it. If your Spotify account is connected to Facebook, a message will show up in your Timeline and in the Ticker stating the song you're listening to. If a friend wants to listen to the same song, he or she just hovers over the song in the Timeline or Ticker, and if they want, they can launch that song in Spotify too.

Spotify doesn't launch inside of Facebook, but rather the Spotify desktop app launches, and a new message will pop up in that user's Timeline and Ticker as well.

Zuckerberg said these changes were made to get rid of the pop-up boxes that ask users if they want to share to their walls what they're doing on Facebook.

"People have things they want to sharek but they don't want to annoy their friends by putting stuff in their friends' news feeds," he said. "Ticker is a lightweight stream of everything that's going on around you. ... We think that this is going to make it so that people can express on an order of magnitude more things than they could before."

Until Timeline, and the upcoming apps that take advantage of Timeline, this sort of "open graph" sharing wasn't possible on Facebook, Zuckerberg said.

"We believe that eventually all apps that you use will be social," he said. "Facebook's mission is to make the world more open and connected, and the way that we do this is to map out all of the things that you're connected to."

More changes will come with this new class of apps that will change the language of sharing, Zuckerberg said.

"You can connect to anything by liking it," he said. "This year, were taking the next step; we're going to make it so you can connect to anything you want, the way you want."

"You don't have to like a book, you can read a book," Zuckerberg said. "You don't have to like a movie, but you can watch a movie. You can just eat a meal, you can hike a trail, you can listen to a song."

Zuckerberg did say that "building this language is pretty important , so were doing it carefully and slowly," he said, not yet revealing when the Timeline or these new apps would roll out to users.

The CEO also said that the two categories of apps will be especially able to take advantage of the new Facebook media apps (music, movies, TV, news, books) and lifestyle apps (exercise, food, fashion, travel and more).

"The new class of apps will help you post stuff to your Timeline but also find new things you might like," he said. "It's a frictionless experience. If your goal is to just add lightweight activity, you'll never have to see one of these prompts ever again. So to make this work, we completely redesigned the permissions dialogue so that the entire reason you're adding an app, you're doing so to get that activity on your wall."

Mog, Vevo, Rhapsody, Turntable.fm, Songza, Spotify, DirecTV, IMDb, DailyMotion, Metacafe, Hulu, Netflix and other apps will make use of this new, more open sharing permissions change, Zuckerberg said.

Hulu and Netflix will be among apps that will make use of what he called a "canvas app" that will allow users to watch movies and TV from Hulu or Netflix right on top of Facebook itself, popping up in a video player in the same way that the prompt boxes -- which Facebook wants to get rid of -- do now.

Reed Hastings then took the stage to talk about what Netflix was doing with Facebook's "open graph." He said he hadn't started watching "Breaking Bad" even though the TV show had been recommended to him by both Netflix itself and friends. Once he saw on Facebook's new Timeline feature that a friend of his was watching "Breaking Bad" too, he finally got to watching it after more than a year of recommendations.

"Watching content my friend did really trumped watching content because of an algorithm," Hastings said.

However, Netflix will be one of the few apps that won't be able to list on Facebook in the U.S. what a person is watching in Timeline or Ticker. That's because the U.S. has a law, which Hastings described as outdated, that forbids the disclosing video rental information. Companies that violate the law are liable up to $2,500 for each infraction. Netflix is looking to get the law overturned, and Hastings promised Netflix would publish a blog post about the issue later in the day.

News agencies will launch canvas apps as well, such as News Corp.'s the Daily (which launched as an iPad-only news magazine), as well as the Washington Post. Games will also take advantage of canvas apps.

Costs squeeze 3D TV content
By ANDREW WALLENSTEIN
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118042974
Posted: Mon., Sep. 19, 2011, 3:00pm PT

Of all the problems bedeviling the growth of 3DTV, the dearth of
quality content may be the thorniest.

Research firm Ovum interviewed execs worldwide and reported in May
they rated production of 3D programming their lowest priority --
primarily because of the cost of the content. And consumers have
noticed the consequences of that reluctance: nearly 60% of respondents
to a NPD/CTAM survey in June complained there wasn't enough 3D
content.

That hasn't discouraged a few ambitious ventures in the U.S. from
making serious investments in this sector. "For 3D to take off,
content is going to be the key driver," said Tom Cosgrove, president
of 3net, a 3D-only cable net from Discovery Communications, IMAX and
Sony.

3net bowed in February, the same month ESPN launched ESPN3D. They are
the only networks stateside devoted to this nascent space, though
distributors including DirecTV and Comcast have also licensed 3D
movies for 3D-only channels and VOD offerings.

Building a 3D channel is tough. Most 24/7 nets are built by acquiring
a library of existing programming, but 3D is so new there is next to
none of that. That essentially forces channels into original
production, where shooting and post-production costs are high and
"will remain that way for the foreeseable future," according to
Cosgrove. 3D conversions are also pricey and problematic because, as
the film world is experiencing, the quality leads a lot to be desired.
"We're not necessarily opposed to it, but it has to be done right."

Though rumors swirls about their future viability, ESPN3D and 3net
have made to supplying original programming. In June, 3net bowed over
20 hours of original native 3D content across a range of genres. As of
Labor Day weekend, the amount of college football ESPN3D will
broadcast will double from the previous year.

Related link:
• Auds push back on 3D upcharges

http://gigaom.com/video/online-video-finally-chipping-away-at-broadcast-tv/