The majority of the American TV networks consider broadband video to be their network's number one new business priority, far outpacing all other advanced services, including video on-demand.
This is revealed in a survey of broadband video executives at 42 of the top 75 cable TV networks, conducted by Broadband Directions U.S. consulting firm.
Would you spend your ad bucks on your own broadband channel?
For a number of brands a way to continue to be relevant to teens and to young adults is creating their own video content and putting it online. Advertisers realize that Broadband TV is a cost effective way to get their messages out. Also are alarmed as consumers increasingly bypass commercials using digital video recorders like TiVo, and spend more time flipping among a wide array of television networks, Internet and video games.
Bud TV and Snickers' Instant Def are two examples. Anheuser-Busch plans to start a seven-channel TV network online, called BudTV. So far, about one million people have visited InstantDef.com, where five episodes around four hip-hop performers are available.
Branded content, a nascent trend
Advertiser-produced content, or branded content, is a nascent trend. According to The New York Times. Companies commonly pay to place their products in TV shows and movies, but only a few dozen have created content from scratch. About 25 national companies produced online films this year, up from 5 last year, said Broadband Enterprises, a New York company that helps companies like Warner Brothers and AT&T circulate their videos on the Internet.
On TV, only a handful of such shows and movies have been shown. Advertisers say they are prepared to give the shows to networks free or in exchange for commercial air time; such offers could appeal to networks looking to control costs. But some network executives voiced skepticism that advertiser-created shows would draw much audience and said, for now, they do not expect to run many of the programs.
Procter & Gamble, Nike...
Most of them are put on cable networks, specially when shows are focused on niche topics, like Procter & Gamble's show, Home Made Simple, based on home-making tips, and available on the company’s online magazine, is on TLC, for example. Office Max produced a reality show about preteenagers getting ready for high school ("Schooled"), and featured it on ABC Family. On TV, about one million households watched the show, which featured several Office Max products. It was viewed more than six million times online.
Advertisers are also making movies. Nike has produced several, including a documentary on CBS about Lance Armstrong's training for the Tour de France, than ran on the Sundance Channel. And Mountain Dew, a PepsiCo brand, produced a movie about snowboarding that ran in theaters nationwide.
Instead of programming, assembling... A new trend on the soft industry
A number of start ups are building new ways to put the power of the programmer into the user hands. The main idea is less programming and more assembly, rolling your own applications without writing or knowing a single line of code. Some of them are Palo Alto-based Ning; Coghead, of Redwood City, California; and Teqlo, of Santa Clara, which lets people use a simple drag-and-drop interface to weave Web services together and build tiny apps.
It could be a solution for small workgroups that need custom apps but can't get the IT departments in their own corporations to devote the time. However, expert say the transition to this type of platform is going to be slow; it could take about three years to realize its potential.
MSNBC launches Flash video player. Is Windows losing the battle?
MSNBC.com has launched a new video player that detects user's system settings and play either a Windows Media or Flash file, which means it now works in Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari. Advertising functions identically in both players.
MSNBC.com is the one of the leader in online news video serving an average of 60 million videos per month, including on-demand and live video from NBC News and MSNBC.com.
Al-Jazeera English launches
Al-Jazeera started this week its English language news and current affairs channel to over 80 million cable and satellite households across the globe. Al-Jazeera is the first global news channel in English headquartered in the Middle East, in Doha, Qatar.
With anchor teams in broadcast centers in Doha, Kuala Lampur, London and Washington, Al-Jazeera features half of its programming with news bulletins, and the other half will be made up of news features and analysis, debates and documentaries.
They release also a new website in English, aljazeera.net/english.
Here is the first six minutes of the launch of Al-Jazeera English. This channel will not get carriage in America, since it is considered anti-American channel.
Search site Blinkx unleashes the video wall
The search site Blinkx has launched an original feature to watch in a video wall clips from a selected search term. Also, Blinkx allows bloggers to embed it. The displays is fed by RSS, so it updates automatically as new search results come in. You can select any size you want. Mouse over the clips is even more fun.
