“Watch the Show, Play the Game, Change the World” is how “Defiance” bills itself, but the combination of video game and television could be a game-changer in its own right. Read more at paidContent »
Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome might have ended up like many television pilots — abandoned and never again seen. SyFy opted to instead premiere the series through Machinima Prime on YouTube. It’s a great treat for Battlestar fans – and a potential precedent for future projects. Read more »
SyFy shows, I love you so hard. Which is why I was thrilled to see the release of an official Farnsworth app tied to Warehouse 13. The app is actually made by the same special effects wizards that create some of the show’s prop-based magic. Read more »
In the increasingly crowded mobile-app space, promotional apps are easily ignored: apps you might download and forget about a few days later, remembering them only to delete them later on. QMx Interactive would like to change all of that with a new sci-fi tie-in. Read more »
Did online viewers kill Caprica? Not exactly, says SyFy Digital’s GM Craig Engler. However, Hulu and Co. don’t bring in nearly as much money as traditional advertising, which is why Nielsen ratings still matter more than anything else when it comes to a show’s fate. Read more »
Syfy.com used to be one of a few cable network sites that let Google TV users catch up on entire episodes of its shows – but no more: The NBC-owned network is now preventing Google TV users from accessing its content, much like NBC.com, ABC.com and CBS.com. Read more »
Guild creator Felicia Day’s status as a self-made mainstream star just got a major bump this week. The SyFy original movie Red: Werewolf Hunter premiered last Saturday to an audience of 2.06 million people — a major success according to SyFy programming exec Thomas Vitale. Read more »
Happy Tuesday, steampunk fans! As promised earlier this month, episode 1 of the independent web series Riese relaunched today on SyFy.com, just one step in the process towards a potential television adaptation. Re-edited in collaboration with SyFy, the new version is narrated by Amanda Tapping. Read more »
Google TV devices are blocked by ABC, CBS and NBC, making it impossible to watch the latest CSI or Grey’s Anatomy episodes online. However, basic cable doesn’t seem to care about conflicts like these. Most shows popular on cable networks are available to Google TV owners. Read more »
The steampunk web series Riese, which will be relaunched on SyFy.com within the next month, is getting even more cross-platform than before, thanks to a iPhone/iPod Touch game to feature narration by Felicia Day, a potential series of novels, and just maybe a TV adaptation. Read more »
Another win for independent production: The Canadian steampunk fantasy Riese has been picked up by the channel formerly known as Sci-Fi — both for online distribution and development for a potential broadcast series. It’s a deal that unavoidably draws comparison to the one for Sci Fi’s […] Read more »
Over the past three years, the Internet has become a major secondary distribution platform for free-to-air broadcast programming. Whether through network programmers’ own sites, such as ABC.com, or through aggregators like Hulu and TV.com, ad-supported broadcast programming today is generally available online shortly after its initial airing at no cost to the user. However, programming such as ESPN, TNT and the Discovery Channel, which originates on pay-TV platforms (i.e. cable, satellite and telco TV services) has been a different story.
Cable system operators and other multichannel video program distributors (MVPDs) are loathe to see the programming for which they are charging subscribers hefty monthly fees made available “over-the-top” without a subscription. Over time, they fear, consumers would be tempted to drop their expensive cable service if they could access their favorite programs online.
Cable networks, for their part, collect hefty fees from MVPDs for the right to retransmit their programming, from a few cents per subscriber per month, to as much as $3.75 per subscriber per month, for the most popular channels like Disney’s ESPN. In aggregate, cable networks collect about $25 billion per year in “affiliate fees” from MVPDs, about the same amount as they generate collectively from advertising sales.
As a result, much of the original programming on pay-TV networks is not currently available online, and that which is often doesn’t appear until well after its original air date. The popularity of portals like Hulu (not to mention illegal sources of TV content), however, has accustomed consumers to expect access to their favorite shows online, putting pressure on the industry to respond. Network programmers and marketers, meanwhile, are also anxious to extend their programming franchises by tapping the broad, online audience.
TV Everywhere, which aims to make subscription programming available online exclusively to current pay-TV subscribers, represents an effort to square that circle. In this report, we look at the players, potential costs, and emerging opportunities of these efforts. Read more »
Video Companies Raise $180.9 Million in Q3; Roku, Ustream, boxee among those who received influx of cash. (VideoNuze) And kicking off the next quarter is Delivery Agent, which announced today that it has raised $25 million to expand its click-to-buy applications for video. (paidContent) YouTube Makes […] Read more »
Sony Makes Big Bet on 3D; TVs, laptops, PS3s and Blu-ray to get all third-dimension-y starting by the end of 2010. (Financial Times) Faculte Raises $2.8 Million; online video presentation startup gets its first round from Calumet Venture Fund and angel investors. (paidContent) Vudu Lands on […] Read more »
LG Electronics Adopting ARM Processors; newest TVs feature so many functions, like widgets and the ability to display web pages, a more general-purpose microprocessor is needed. (VentureBeat) White House YouTube Privacy Update; the code still sends cookies back to Google when a video is watched, but […] Read more »
