TV Everywhere

With TV Everywhere, viewers can watch shows for free, but only if they're cable subscribers first. In other words, as long as you tap a subscription code into your device—any device—you can watch anything you want, whenever you want. The service in only a few markets and there are plenty of kinks to be sorted out, such as how the ad model will work, devising a new ratings system with Nielsen and profits. Motivating the change is the pay TV industry's fear that it will find itself in the same untenable position as newspapers.

Read more at Business Week.

Internet TV Viewers Erode Trad Media

Viewers have tripled their use of watching TV shows via the Internet since 2006 -- and some of this has hurt traditional TV viewing. Media researcher Knowledge Networks says this trend affects a broad range of viewers: ages 13-54. Viewing of complete TV shows from streaming or downloaded video has climbed to 22% from 8%.
This also has climbed faster for younger 18-34 viewers, rising to 30% from 12% to 30% of 18-to-34 online users.

David Tice, vice president and group account director at Knowledge Networks, stated: "Growing numbers of "connected TVs" -- those that access the Internet -- are making this option increasingly user-friendly. The fact that over one-third of TV homes now have a bundled TV/Internet service package is no doubt accelerating this blurring of boundaries."

Read more at Media Post.

What's Google Up to?

.

Facebook's QR Codes

Facebook is experimenting with codes that act as gateways to digital content. QR code links have already been found in profiles and Fan Pages. While the links are not yet functional, they point to the development of tags that can hold much more information (links, images, videos, etc.) than traditional barcodes. QR is short for Quick Response (because they can be read quickly by a mobile phone through its camera). They could connect the digital and physical through one’s mobile phone.

There are countless ways in which the technology can be used. Quick response codes can connect people with geo-based reviews and tours, green ticketing initiatives, brand promotions, product-specific wikis, exclusive media content, and social networking profiles. These "2D barcodes" allow consumers to access dynamic content, anywhere at anytime.

Read more at Lost Remote.

Read more at Techcrunch.

Google Seeks TV Foothold

Google and Intel have teamed with Sony to develop a platform called Google TV to bring the Web into the living room through a new generation of televisions and set-top boxes. The technology will make it as easy for TV users to navigate Web applications, like the Twitter social network and the Picasa photo site, as it is to change the channel. Google intends to open its TV platform to software developers in hopes of spurring the same outpouring of creativity that consumers have seen in applications for cellphones.

For Google, the project is a pre-emptive move to get a foothold in the living room as more consumers start exploring ways to bring Web content to their television sets. The partners will face a crowded field. In addition to the makers of traditional cable and satellite set-top boxes, Cisco Systems and Motorola, many others have entered the game, including Microsoft, Apple, TiVo and start-up companies like Roku and Boxee, which already stream video from Netflix, MLB.com and other Web sites directly to television sets. Yahoo is also promoting a TV platform that uses small software programs called widgets to use certain Web services.

Read more from the New York Times.

Rapid App Growth Predicted

Global revenue from mobile applications — including paid downloads and mobile advertising — could increase to $17.5 billion by 2012, from $4.1 billion last year, according to an independent study commissioned by GetJar, an app marketplace and rival to Apple’s App store. The study also estimates that downloads of applications could increase to almost 50 billion by 2012 from about 7 billion in 2009.

Both the GetJar report and a Yankee Group report point to the clear dominance of Apple, with Yankee Group saying that iPhone users download three times the average number of applications per year.

Read more at the Wall Street Journal.

Local TV Leads with Crime

Crime was the most common subject “by far” of lead stories of Los Angeles television stations on 14 random days studied last summer, says a new report from the Norman Lear Center of the University of Southern California Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism. One out of three broadcasts led with crime stories.

Read more at The Crime Report.

The Future of Publishing

Be sure to watch to at least halfway, when the clever gets visible.

Social Media "Over Rated"

"The hype right now (of Social Media) exceeds the reality," says Larry Chiagouris, professor of marketing at Pace University. Last year, social-media adoption by businesses with fewer than 100 employees doubled to 24% from 12%, says a survey released in January of 2,000 U.S. entrepreneurs from the University of Maryland. Meanwhile, a separate survey of 500 U.S. small-business owners from the same sponsors found that just 22% made a profit last year from promoting their firms on social media, while 53% said they broke even. What's more, 19% said they actually lost money due to their social-media initiatives. "It could harm you if you end up inadvertently saying something stupid, offensive or even grammatically incorrect," says Mr. Chiagouris. To gain positive results, entrepreneurs need to regularly interact with consumers through these sites and not simply create static profiles, says Jacob Morgan, co-owner of Chess Media Group Corp., a consulting firm in San Francisco that specializes in social media.

Read more at the Wall Street Journal.

New Twitter Feature

Twitter is introducing a new feature that will let users send and receive its short messages while they are browsing other Web sites. It's called @anywhere and is similar to the Facebook Connect.

Read more at the Wall Street Journal.

A PBS Docu Airs First on FB

On April 11, PBS will offer its documentary Earth Days on Facebook, eight days ahead of the film’s television broadcast on April 19. This will be the first time a major broadcaster has introduced a full-length documentary on the site.

Read more at the New York Times.

Telling Friends Where You Are (or Not)

Mobile services like Loopt and Google’s Latitude have promoted the notion of constantly beaming your location to a map that is visible to a network of friends — an idea that is not for everybody. But now there is a different approach, one that is being popularized by Foursquare. After firing up the Foursquare application on their phones, users see a list of nearby bars, restaurants and other places, select their location and “check in,” sending an alert to friends using the service. This model gives people more choice in revealing their locations. Since it was introduced a year ago, Foursquare has swelled to more than 500,000 users. It now has 1.6 million check-ins a week. One of the drawbacks to the check-in model, as opposed to constant tracking, is that people have to remember to use a service.

Read more at the New York Times.

The State of the News Media

The annual Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism’s “State of the News Media” report is out. Its findings include:

Local TV news audiences fell by an average of 5-6% in the past year, depending upon the hour of the newscast. Local television ad revenue fell 22% in 2009, triple the decline the year before. One estimate puts the losses in the last two years at over 1,600 jobs, or roughly 6%.

Network TV fell 8%. Only cable news among the commercial news sectors did not suffer declining revenue last year.

Newspaper circulation dropped 10% in 2009. Ad revenue (for print and online combined) fell 26% which brings the total loss over the last three years to 43%.

Newsstand sales of magazines dropped 9%, having already dropped 11% a year earlier. Magazine ad revenue dropped 17%. Staffing at the Time and Newsweek since 1983 is down by 47%.

Radio audiences remain stable, despite the varied choices for audio, but ad revenue still fell 22%.

In local TV news, PEJ estimated that about 450 jobs were lost at stations in 2009, on top of 1,200 jobs lost in 2008. Despite staff reductions, the average amount of news increased to 4.6 hours, from 4.1 hours the previous year.

Online ad revenue over all fell about 5%, and revenue to news sites most likely also fared much worse. Online advertising dropped for the first time since 2002, losing about 4.6% over the same period a year ago.

Market research and investment banking firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson projects that by 2013, after the economic recovery, three elements of old media — newspapers, radio and magazines — will take in 41% less in ad revenues than they did in 2006.

We estimate that the newspaper industry has lost $1.6 billion in annual reporting and editing capacity since 2000, or roughly 30%. That leaves an estimated $4.4 billion remaining. Even if the economy improves we predict more cuts in 2010.

The majority of Internet users (59%) now use some kind of social media, including Twitter, blogging and networking sites. But 79% of online news consumers say they rarely if ever have clicked on an online ad. American Life Project, finds that only about a third of Americans (35%) have a news destination online they would call a “favorite,” and even among these users only 19% said they would continue to visit if that site put up a pay wall.

J-Lab, a project that studies new media, estimates that roughly $141 million of nonprofit money has flowed into new media efforts over the last four years (not including public broadcasting). That is less than one-tenth of the losses in newspaper resources alone.

Most news organizations — new or old — are becoming niche operations, more specific in focus, brand and appeal and narrower, necessarily, in ambition.

Facebook Tests a Payment Service for Virtual Goods

Facebook is looking at promoting a virtual currency that could be used to collect 30% of the sales of virtual game props, like those in FarmVille. That's the percentage that Apple gets of sales of applications on its iPhone.

The research firm ThinkEquity estimates that sales of virtual goods and all the rest on social networks and mobile phones could quadruple, to $3.6 billion, in the U.S. by 2012.

Read More at Business Week.

Updating All Your Social Networks in One Place

Lifestream is an independent social network integrating all of the other social networks you are likely to use daily. Introduced last fall, there are now nearly 2 million users. So now, the company is launching it as a standalone product. Lifestream pulls together social networks like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Foursquare, Delicious, Digg, Flickr and YouTube, allowing you to see your friends' content on all of these sites. Filter out content from specific networks if you like and publish only to certain networks if you choose. Your Lifestream status updates can be posted back to Facebook, Myspace and/or Twitter. Plus, you can conveniently sign through your phone and use your Facebook account, so there's no extra information to remember.

Read more at Tech Crunch.