Rich Ross was hired by Disney’s film studio 30 months ago to transition over the multi-platform digital-marketing success he’d experienced at the Disney Channel with programs like High School Musical. But he couldn’t overcome mega-flops like Mars Needs Moms and John Carter From Mars. Read more at paidContent »
With upgraded apps for iPad and Roku, and a growing library of lesser known independent film titles, Screen Media believes its year-old movie site is poised for major expansion within the ad-supported streaming market. Read more at paidContent »
With Nielsen releasing figures Thursday suggesting the U.S. TV ad market is even bigger than projected at more than $72 billion, Hulu kicked off a series of presentations by digital giants to Madison Avenue, all intended to pry away ad dollars from traditional TV incumbents. Read more at paidContent »
Earlier this week, service publishing company Rodale parterned with Los Angeles-area production shop to launch a new health and fitness-oriented YouTube channnel, 3V. Like the Wall Street Journal and Motor Trend, Rodale is the latest publishing brand to sieze on Google’s video production seed funding Read more at paidContent »
Driven by strong growth in the search and display sectors, U.S. digital advertising revenue expanded by 22 percent in 2011, reaching a record $31 billion, according to a report prepared by Price Waterhouse Coopers U.S. and released Wednesday by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB). Read more at paidContent »
After holding back popular events shown in prime time for its previous Olympics coverage, NBCUniversal — now operating under Comcast instead of General Electric — plans to stream each and every sport live for the upcoming London Games. Read more at paidContent »
With Hulu making its big pitch for traditional TV ad dollars this week in New York, Bernstein Research wonders if the business undermines the corporate goals of its owners, which include re-transmission fees and TV Everywhere. Read more at paidContent »
With the movie distribution business convening in Las Vegas for its big CinemaCon trade show, analyst Richard Greenfield renews calls for Hollywood to collapse theatrical windows. But forget that the box office is suddenly in a rebound year. Remember the last time the studios tried this? Read more at paidContent »
Marking a continued shift in its strategic allegiance toward the traditional multi-channel TV service model, Starz has extended its carriage deal with DirecTV, giving the satellite company access to online content for its new TV Everywhere product. Read more at paidContent »
A deal with Dreamworks Animation gives Walmart much-needed animated kids’ flix for its new Disc to Digital while UltraViolet gets a Shrek-sized boost. Read more at paidContent »
Google announced Monday that it has reached a deal to bring about 600 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film titles, including such classics as Rocky, The Terminator, Hoosiers, Robocop and Rain Man, to the film-rental catalogs of YouTube and Google Play. Read more at paidContent »
The internet is supposed to be cannibalizing traditional TV viewership, not offering marketing support for its premieres. But the Big Four broadcaster networks seem to be settling into a buzz-building strategy of sampling new shows online before putting them on their air. Read more at paidContent »
Three months after it hired Vivaki founding partner David Kenny as its new CEO, the Weather Channel is bringing in another former top operative from the Publicis-owned media and digital-agency division, Curt Hecht. Read more at paidContent »
Quickly ground into ratings dust by stiff competition on local TV, a Korean youth drama finds a global audience — and a profit — through streaming TV service ViKi. Read more at paidContent »
DVD sales may not be what they were, but the road to Hollywood riches still goes through Walmart’s Bentonville, Ark. headquarters. Fortunately, to see a demo of the retailer’s new UltraViolet cloud service, we only had to drive to Rosemead, Calif. Read more at paidContent »
Netflix put the finishing touches on mobile-device rollouts in the regions it’s aggressively expanding into. The company announced Wednesday that its streaming video service is now available on Windows Phone in Latin America, the U.K. and Ireland. Read more at paidContent »
The Ford Motor Company, which will typically spend up to $100 million on a TV-rich ad campaign when it launches a new car, is creating its own original reality competition series on Yahoo to spark interest in its new Focus Electric model. Read more at paidContent »
Fees paid by multi-channel operators to program suppliers rose 8.2 percent to nearly $33.5 billion last year, surpassing the nearly 6 percent growth of the average cable/satellite/telco subscription bill. Read more at paidContent »
Universal has reached an agreement with HBO, relaxing rules that limit cloud storage of movies. That leaves Fox out in the cold as the only major restricted from all the cloud-based fun. Read more at paidContent »
With connected videogame consoles and Blu-ray players leading the way, 38 percent of American homes have at least one TV that’s hooked up to the internet — up 8 percent from a year ago. Read more at paidContent »
Something’s got to give. That’s the takeaway of a Bernstein Research report, which says that the sky-rocketing cost of sports television is undermining the pay TV model and could soon send angry consumers into an unbundled fury of cord-cutting. Read more at paidContent »
There’s been avid interest among private equity in TV “check-in” start-ups like GetGlue and Shazam, and new research from Nielsen may help explain why. Read more at paidContent »
After a year and a half, Amazon Studios finally announces the 15 films that it has in development. Is the world ready for “I Think My Facebook Friend Is Dead”? Read more at paidContent »
For the last several months, the talk of the kids cable TV business has been Nickelodeon’s double-digit ratings declines — and how the Viacom-owned network’s streaming deal with Netflix might be somewhat to blame for fragmenting the audience for the network’s shows. That doesn’t seem to […] Read more at paidContent »
Sure, DVD revenue is going bye-bye. But studios like Warner Bros. are finding new ways to monetize every last frame of their films in the digital market. Read more at paidContent »
Google has reached an agreement with Paramount Pictures to rent studio titles including Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Captain America and Hugo through YouTube and Google Play. With this deal in place, Google now has titles from five of Hollywood’s six major studios — 20th Century Fox […] Read more at paidContent »
While rival streaming services have been widely available in the game console realm for some time, Amazon’s fledgling Prime Instant Video has been limited to a handful of over-the-top services. Well, no more. Read more at paidContent »
Variety is hardly the only once-thriving print brand to struggle to make the digital curve. But perhaps more so than many other print publications, Variety has been hit from several sides. Read more at paidContent »
Low-cost reality lifestyle programming aimed at female audiences – from Hoboken cake bakers to pro house flippers — has acted as a kind of revenue growth hormone for cable TV programmers over the last decade. Now, some of the biggest internet companies want in on the action. Read more at paidContent »
Cable and satellite TV subscription growth slowed down more than had been previously reported, and cord-cutting was a primary factor. But do… Read more at paidContent »
Faced with a maturing market for satellite TV services in the U.S., DirecTV (NYSE: DTV) is pinning its future growth needs on the Latin Amer… Read more at paidContent »
When a movie opens to nearly $153 million dollars, the studio executives backing it always tend to look like geniuses. But in the case of th… Read more at paidContent »
How does a faded Major League Baseball franchise– one that hasn’t won a championship in 24 years and has fallen into disrepair under consec… Read more at paidContent »
For more than three decades, cable TV programmers enjoyed steady ratings gains — mostly at the expense of broadcasters. Inspired efforts li… Read more at paidContent »
It’s doubtful that the U.S. Supreme Court will ever hear digital movie server maker Kaleidescape’s case against the studio backers of DVD’s… Read more at paidContent »
The consumer electronics trend that had us shuffling out our perfectly good but perfectly bulky CRT televisions in favor of fancy-new flat s… Read more at paidContent »
SnagFilms has already proven it can be profitable. But now, with several fresh rounds of funding, the indie video on demand service is tryin… Read more at paidContent »
In what would be a watershed for home entertainment, IHS Screen Digest is predicting that the number of movies and TV shows legally streamed… Read more at paidContent »
The Motion Picture Association of America released statistics today saying that Chinese theatrical revenue grew 35 percent to nearly $2 bill… Read more at paidContent »
As companies like Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) make big investments into video content channels with name-brand film and television talent, they might… Read more at paidContent »
