Affiliate Programs and Affiliate Reviews
The incoming Obama administration wants to clear the air regarding the switchover from analog to digital television, so it has sent a letter to Congress asking for an extension of the Feb. 17 conversion date in order to address “weaknesses” that it says are hurting consumers.
It’s time to fire the cable guy. And the satellite guy. If you have a high-speed Internet connection, you have so many new ways to watch shows and movies on TV that you don’t need those guys any more. I can connect my laptop to my TV to watch YouTube videos and network shows — NBC, CBS, ABC — online.
Forget about the boob tube. Places to watch TV on the Internet are proliferating, from NBC Universal and News Corp.’s Hulu to Joost — a site that plans to relaunch Tuesday to make it a more interactive experience. Joost’s relaunch, which will let users watch shows like “Friends” or “The Daily Show” directly on the Web, comes as YouTube also is beginning to offer full-length, commercial-supported television shows.
Online movie rental company Netflix has signed distribution deals with two heavy hitters from the TV world — the CBS Television Network and the Disney-ABC Television Group. Netflix will soon have a stable of new and syndicated television shows that its users can stream over the Internet, including “CSI,” “NCIS” and “Hannah Montana,” to name a few.
Google and NBC Universal have inked a multiyear agreement under which Google will distribute ads through its Google TV Ads service for placement on some NBC cable channels. Sci Fi, Oxygen, MSNBC, CNBC, Sleuth and Chiller are among the channels covered by the deal, which will go into effect later this year.
It’s only fitting that Jerry Seinfeld’s first Microsoft ad is — well, about nothing. The 90-second spot, which debuted during Thursday night’s NFL game, shows Seinfeld and Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates meeting in a shopping mall shoe store. Seinfeld casually saunters in, munching on a churro, and gets into a conversation with Gates about shoe size and finding the proper fit.
The 2008 Summer Games will not go down in history as a watershed online event, even though it drew a record number of viewers on the Web. That’s because NBC could have gone further, putting content on more devices, making it easier to access and providing more live coverage. That’s the view of several executives from content and technology companies whom I asked to comment on NBC’s online coverage.
When I covered the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show for CNN, I wasn’t just peeking into the future of technology. I was getting a very personal look at how technology is changing journalism and the consumption of news. For the four days I was in Las Vegas, I was a true multi-platform journalist.
Live sports coverage on the Internet, far from threatening TV networks, might let some lucky networks become sports giants bestriding the earth. Amid unprecedented live online Olympic coverage in the U.S., we have the umpteenth example — following the proliferation of sports radio and TV highlight shows and events appearing live online. When it comes to sports coverage, enough is never enough.
U.S. television programming is moving toward on-demand status, judging from a federal appeals court ruling Monday in favor of Cablevision’s proposed network-centric digital video recorder. U.S. Circuit Court Judge John M. Walker Jr. found that Cablevision’s plans to store recorded programs on a central server instead of a set-top box’s hard drive do not violate copyright law.
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