Media companies to take minority stakes in Internet companies
Media companies, known for the show response in the digital age, are now showing appetite for technology start-ups. Those media companies are measuring success not just by the financial return but also by the chance to better understand and establish partnerships with emerging technology leaders. So it is not about developing content but keeping pace with delivery technology and new media.
According to the New York Times, a growing number of media conglomerates have established divisions to take minority stakes in small Internet and technology companies. Other media companies that already have such venture capital arms are expanding.
”The impact is being made not necessarily by large companies but by some very small and rapidly growing players,” says Digital Media Investment group at Bertelsmann.
Fox Business network launched with a flashy video Website
Fox Business Rupert Murdoch’s new network is on air, along with website foxbusiness.com. It has video 16x9, embeddable, and a pop-out feature so you can surf the site while still watching your selected video. And design looks great.
A desktop news alert program
See how nice is the news alert desktop application launched by CNN. It has a clear look, and it is free. You download it here, and install it on the desktop tool bar. When a news breaks, it will pop up.
Traditional TV viewing in U.S. household is flat for the first time
It seems that we have reached the peak of TV viewing, due to disruptive new video technologies. TVByTheNumbers.com presents a chart, released by Nielsen that shows historical TV viewing. The average time spent in front of the tube started at about 4 hours 30 minutes per day in the early 50s to about 8:20 in 2005-2006. But for the first time in since 1966, viewing was flat from 2005-06 to 2006-07.
Another interesting data is that DVR ownership more than doubled in the last two years to 20.5 % of TV households up from 8 % in January 2006.
Online TV offer is greatly improved this fall
This month Joost has opened its doors, and you don’t need a private invitation to download its player software. Once installed, you can access, for free, to more than 150,000 episodes of TV shows and Web videos. In addition, it has social-networking functionalies, as chat with other viewers, send links…
Counterattacking the Internet TV phenomenon, the U.S. networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and CW) have improved their online video offer, putting short mini-videos and full-length free on-demand episodes, with suprisingly pleasant results. You can’t download those shows; you can only match them streamed in real time. In general, you can catch the four or five more recent episodes of a show online, but just in the United States.
Techies have something much better. Using free BitTorrent, eDonkey, or Gnutella file-sharing networks, they can find and download (illegally) almost any episode of any recent TV show.
People can also by TV shows at iTunes store, for $2 an episode.
