Today marks the latest step in Aereo’s legal battle with major broadcast networks like Fox, ABC, CBS, and NBC, with the live TV streaming/DVR service filing a declaratory judgement action against CBS, in particular. → Read More
Continuing its rapid-fire addition of new content deals, Amazon announced today that it has signed an agreement with CBS which will bring the forthcoming summer TV series “Under the Dome,” based on a best-selling Stephen King novel, to Amazon’s Prime Instant Video. This deal is unusual because it allows Amazon Prime members to stream all the series’ episodes four days after their initial… → Read More
John P. Falcone over at CBS-owned CNET posted a quick piece on Aereo, the TV-over-Internet startup that is giving broadcasters fits. The story, which would have been a short piece on Aereo on a Roku device, is now awash with ridiculous disclaimers and discussions of lawsuits filed against Aereo by broadcasters. → Read More
CBS Interactive is exiting the German IT publishing market, selling its stable of local sites – ZDNet.de, Silicon.de and CNET.de – to NetMediaEurope (which also owns Gizmodo.de, ITespresso.de and Channelbiz.de).
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Read more at TechCrunch Europe. → Read More
In what I think is an interesting experiment, CBS this morning debuted a “60 Minutes” application that you can find in and launch from the Chrome Web Store (which just got a major facelift).
Granted, “adding it to Chrome” doesn’t really do anything but take you to this page, which you can just open in Chrome just like you would any page, but the Web app does look pretty nice. → Read More
Back in November 2006, I published the Top 10 Greatest Internet Digital Media M&A Deals of All Time. It included eBay’s $1.5 billion acquisition of PayPal, Yahoo’s $1.6 billion acquisition of Overture, and Microsoft’s $400 million purchase of Hotmail back in 1998. It also included News Corp’s $580 million acquisition of MySpace. Don’t laugh. The list was published a month after the… → Read More
Amazon has just announced a deal with CBS to allow Amazon prime customers to stream television shows from CBS’s library of content. Financial terms of the non-exclusive deal were not disclosed.
According to the release, Amazon Prime customers will be able to instantly watch thousands of episodes from the CBS library at no additional cost to their membership. In February, Amazon officially… → Read More
CBS has acquired Clicker, a TV Guide for internet programming, according to a release just issued by the companies. Clicker’s CEO Jim Lanzone has been named President of CBS Interactive. Terms of the deal were not disclosed; Clicker raised a total of $19 million in funding. According to multiple sources, the deal was in the $50 million to $100 million range.
Clicker is a comprehensive search… → Read More
The wheels are in motion. The rumors have persisted for a while now that a new Apple TV (soon to be called “iTV”) is approaching. It’s thought to be a cheaper, smaller version of the current device that puts an emphasis on streaming rather than storage. The killer app of such a device could literally be apps — as in, the iPhone/iPad/iPod touch variety. But don’t forget about the iTunes… → Read More
Software testing marketplace uTest today announced the results of its so-called “TV Networks Bug Battle” competition. More than 500 software professionals from 30 countries around the world participated in the quarterly competition, reporting a total of 908 technical, functional and GUI bugs in the web and mobile apps of NBC, CBS, Fox and ABC.
Testers were challenged to search the sites for bugs… → Read More
Well, TV manufacturers are definitely embracing 3D for the home. Obviously it’s going to require the networks to jump in too, as evidenced by Sony and CBS building the “Sony 3D Experience” in the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas. → Read More
In the advertising industry overall, revenues generated by direct and brand advertising are roughly split 50/50. But in the online world, where direct advertising is represented mostly by search and email ads and brand advertising by graphical display ads, the split is closer to 70/30 in favor of direct ads.
Last year, with the economy down, the display portion of the U.S. online advertising… → Read More
The cable companies suck. All of them. Some suck less than others. But they all suck. We need someone to whip them into shape. And that someone may be Apple.
Apple may be on the verge of gaining two key television network agreements, according to The Wall Street Journal. Specifically, CBS and Walt Disney (which runs ABC) are said to be considering a proposal by Apple to offer a subscription-based… → Read More
I don’t know about you, but I have a male geek crush on Cooliris, the startup behind this splendid technology that enables users to browse photos and videos from the Web, their desktops or their iPhone devices in a visually attractive 3D manner that one really has to try to get a feel of how amazing that can be.
Publishers are starting to notice that too, and are increasingly turning to the… → Read More
Bias much, CBS? The network ran a report on 60 Minutes the other day (which shows how far off our radar the show is, seeing as though we just found out about it) that, according to TechDirt’s fantastic report, is basically a piece of MPAA propaganda. It makes all sorts of ridiculous claims that can easily be disproven by, you know, spending two minutes looking this stuff up. → Read More
There is no love lost between CBS and Hulu. You won’t find any full episodes of CBS shows on Hulu, and CBS’s own site TV.com is so similar in look and feel that one might call it a product of envy. So it should come as no surprise that the knives are still out for Hulu at CBS Interactive.
An email with an article critical of Hulu from CBS Interactive CEO Quincy Smith that was passed around… → Read More
When Twitter decided to start using Bit.ly as its default URL-shortener, usage exploded. But the service was able to handle the rise in usage, and has been steadily adding new features. And now other major players on the web are rewarding that reliability by also embracing it. Today on its blog, Bit.ly details a few of the new API uses and partnerships that they’ve been cooking up.
The biggest is… → Read More
A couple of months ago Erick Schonfeld wrote a post titled “Did Last.fm Just Hand Over User Listening Data To the RIAA?” based on a source that has proved to be very reliable in the past. All hell broke loose shortly thereafter.
Before posting Erick reached out to the RIAA, Last.fm and parent company CBS for comments. The only response was from CBS – “To our knowledge, no data has been made… → Read More
CBSNews.com is undergoing a major overhaul and redesign of its sites to make them easier to navigate, more visually compelling, faster and more focused on driving users to content.
The new home page features a rotating list of top stories on the left, next to the list of the latest and most important headlines. CBS News programs, as well as the latest videos, photo galleries and blogs, are all… → Read More
Ashton Kutcher got his start on the small screen. His roles in That 70s Show and development of the MTV show Punk’d (which is being kind of reborn with Ustream) allowed him to become a movie star. But these days he seems more interested in using the web to further his career. His recent race with CNN to be the first user with a million Twitter followers was just one facet of what he’s doing… → Read More
March Madness is in full swing as the nation’s best college hoops teams face off in this year’s NCAA Basketball tournament, and there is no shortage of online applications looking to help you keep tabs on your favorite teams.
CBS has built an iPhone application that allows users to stream live video of any NCAA basketball game, provided they are on a Wi-Fi network (you can only listen to an… → Read More
Big Media’s love affair with the Internet ebbs and flows with the markets. When they see money pouring into Web startups, they feel threatened and rush to do the same. They ramp up their digital divisions, which usually are no more than venture arms, and hope to strike it rich. When the markets are down, as they are now, their attention drifts elsewhere—exactly at the time when they can pick… → Read More
Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried of EQAL, the producers of Web video hits Loneygirl15 and Kate Modern, have just released a trailer for Harper’s Globe, their latest online show in partnership with CBS. The Website will feature its own original side story to accompany Harper’s Island, a new show that will debut on CBS proper in April. Apparently, everyone dies by the end of the season—one… → Read More
We broke the story of Hulu pulling the content plug out of TV.com earlier this week, and two days ago we also reported that content owners forced Boxee to stop streaming Hulu content as well. Now the owners of TV.com, CBS Interactive, have responded with a message that sparked the Wall Street Journal to headline an article on the reaction “CBS Strikes Back at Hulu”.
What did CBS Interactive’s… → Read More
Something is up at TV.com, the CBS-owned site that recently relaunched as a competitor to Hulu. Since last summer, when TV.com was owned by CNET and was still primarily a community hub, the site has featured content from NBC and News Corp through a partnership with Hulu. Now, only two months after TV.com relaunched as a CBS-supported direct competitor to the popular media portal, it looks like… → Read More
Now the DTV Delay Act succesfully navigated through the US Capitol, there are some large, looming questions. Primarily, now that the analog switch-off is optional until June 12, what stations will switch off when? And is the Government going to pump more money into the bankrupt DTV vouchers program? → Read More
It is early days for HD video on the Web, but already we are starting to see jostling for position in this nascent part of the Web video market. Less than two months after YouTube started streaming high-definition videos in a major way, CEO Chad Hurley is now claiming bragging rights as the biggest HD video site on the Web. At a panel today at Davos, he said:
We feel we have the largest… → Read More
Of the top 100 sites on the Web, which ones grew the fastest in 2008? In a report it is preparing to release tomorrow, The comScore 2008 Digital Year In Review (which you can sign up for here), comScore ranks the 20 fastest-growing Web properties. These are out of the largest 100 sites overall. They are shown below, as measured by growth in unique visitors. (Interestingly, in a separate list… → Read More
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Disrupt Europe: Berlin Hackathon
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