One of the main conclusions of the NAB Show this week in Las Vegas –which we attended representing IBLNews- is that broadcasters are still in transition from an economic model built over a 60 year period to an unknown digital HD/internet & mobile/on-demand/anywhere-anytime-any device territory. Advertising budgets fed by insatiable consumption habits are gone and the great consumptive bubble has burst, as broadband consultant Will Richmond said during a conference at NAB.
Among the key announcements during the show we knew that Adobe is extending Flash in HD quality into Internet-connected televisions, set-top-boxes, Blue-ray players TV sets and other digital home devices. Comcast, Disney, Intel, Netflix, The New York Times and others have announced support for this technology (to be shipped in the second half of 2009.)
CNN acquires popular CNN Twitter account with nearly 1 million followers
CNN has acquired for an undisclosed sum CNNbrk’ Twitter account, which became one of the Twitter’s most popular account, with 944,000 followers. The owner, a British web developer called James Cox, handled the account for three years, feeding it with CNN’s breaking news alerts and links. He said he did so as a way to get CNN news alerts on his mobile phone.
Experts suspect that CNN could have paid a lot of money for the account, since it generates hundreds of thousands of extra page views per day.
Celebrities Asthon Kutcher and Britney Spears have each over one million followers. No other single Twitter account has attracted 1 million followers, according to TwitterCounter and Twitterholic, two sites tracking the most popular Twitter users.
CNN maintains 45 official Twitter accounts with a total of more than 1.3 million followers.
Community video content –low cost programming, high customer value and local advertising revenue
In these challenging economic times, community content internet television can be a good business opportunity.
Examples of community content systems include universities, residential neighborhoods, hospitals, hospitality resorts, senior living communities, and other community areas which provide access to television systems.
The key difference between existing traditional TV systems and community internet television (or TV 2.0) is the content upload capability and the ability for station managers to receive, manage, approve and schedule content remotely.
In community tv viewers both consume and provide content. Therefore, community content is low cost, high value for viewers. Also, program creation and management cost may be low as people from communities may volunteer their time to create the programming.
Since community content is provided to a highly targeted audience, this is an ideal opportunity for local advertisers such as restaurants, contractors, professional services, and other types of businesses that serve the community.
Advertising revenues can be kept by the service provider, who, in addition may charge fees for providing services like operating community programming, hosting fees, video cameras, studios and equipment rentals, support services.
