Not only does LittleBigPlanet 2 come out today, but the FCC pproved the merger between Comcast and NBC Universal. Will the two companies use their combined powers for good and not evil? A healthy skepticism may be in order. → Read More
DONE! Ventures, a Manhattan Beach, California-based Internet marketing and publishing firm, is slapping NBC Universal with a lawsuit after a domain name sales deal went awry.
DONE! CEO Ben Padnos claims NBC Universal accepted an offer to sell the domain names Women.com and Women.net for $1 million, only to have President & CEO Jeff Zucker overrule and block the transaction after the agreement was reached.
The complaint, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Thursday, June 3, alleges breach of contract on those grounds. → Read More
The pending $30 billion merger of Comcast and NBC-Universal is going to complicate things for Hulu, the second most popular online video site after YouTube. Hulu is a joint venture between NBC, News Corp/Fox, and (since last year) Disney/ABC. It was created by the TV networks as a counterweight to YouTube, a safe place where they could run their full-length TV shows online with their own ads.
Comcast, however, is championing TV Everywhere, which is an entirely different model for professionally-produced Web video. TV Everywhere is going to put TV channels online behind a paywall where only existing cable subscribers can watch them. Once Comcast owns a part of Hulu, there will be more pressure to put parts of Hulu behind a paywall as well. One knowledgeable industry source speculates that “Comcast will push Hulu very hard to become an authenticated destination for TV Everywhere.” → Read More
Just in time for the passing of the U.S. government’s massive health care legislation, NBC is launching a branded iPhone app for one of its key political news shows. NBC’s popular political and public affairs show “Meet the Press with David Gregory” is getting a free iPhone app today, which was created by branded content app developer Zumobi. You can download the app here.
The app features interviews with journalists, political experts and politicians from the show’s weekly roundtable. Consumers can easily share clips via Twitter, access podcasts and send host David Gregory questions directly from the app. The app also features the show’s extra web interviews which are expanded roundtables on the top news of the day. → Read More
Comcast and General Electric announced early this morning that they agreed to form a joint venture that will be 51 percent owned by Comcast and 49 percent by GE. The joint venture, which will consist of the NBC Universal businesses and Comcast’s cable networks, regional sports networks and more, will be managed by the newly formed Comcast Entertainment Group (CEG).
GE will contribute to the joint venture NBCU’s businesses valued at $30 billion, including its cable networks, filmed entertainment, televised entertainment, theme parks, and unconsolidated investments, subject to $9.1 billion in debt. Comcast will put in its cable networks (including E!, Versus and the Golf Channel), its ten regional sports networks, and certain digital media properties, collectively valued at $7.25 billion. Comcast has also agreed to pay GE approximately $6.5 billion in cash. → Read More
Barely a month after taking most of its videos off of iTunes and going home, NBC is ready to play again. In a story about NBC CEO Jeff Zucker, the Financial Times reports: Mr Zucker appears to have patched up relations with Apple after a pricing dispute last year led NBC to pull its shows from the iTunes digital media store. “We’ve said all along that we admire Apple, that we want to be in business with Apple,” he said. “We’re great fans of Steve Jobs.” Still no sign of the missing NBC shows on iTunes. But it looks more and more like NBC’s walkout may have just been a negotiating tactic. → Read More
I’m often reminded of the Monty Python line “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition” as being the perfect analogy for the unexpected, so its apt that I use it here because it looks like what you download online in the United States could soon be monitored and blocked (presuming it breaches copyright) if new plans by AT&T are implemented. At a panel discussion at the CES conference Tuesday, Senior Vice President of external & legal affairs for AT&T James Cicconi said that “what we are already doing to address piracy hasn’t been working” and further AT&T has been talking to technology companies, the MPAA and RIAA and “we are very interested in a technology based solution and we think a network-based solution is the optimal way to approach this.” But just in case you think this might be a per-download basis, the target could be much larger than that. General Counsel for NBC Universal Rick Cotton has P2P downloading as his first target, saying “The volume of peer-to-peer traffic online, dominated by copyrighted materials, is overwhelming. That clearly should not be an acceptable, continuing status…the question is how we collectively collaborate to address this.” This ISP level blocking would be fairly unique, given that most countries that implement censorship online do so at a national level, and usually target porn, moral or political subversion, such as in Australia and China. Although this would be implemented by AT&T only at this stage giving customers who prefer their internet access without the hand of big brother the ability to change providers, remember that nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. It could well spread to other ISPs as well, particularly once the MPAA and RIAA have one big win on the board. With apologies to Monty Python again “Amongst our weaponry are such diverse elements as fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, an almost fanatical devotion to copyright, and nice red uniforms.” (via Engadget) → Read More
While NBC Universal is making deals left and right to try to make up for the fact that it is no longer distributing its digital TV shows through iTunes, don’t get distracted by all the small-fry announcements. For instance, today it announced that it would make NBC shows available to SanDisk for its new Sansa TakeTV/Fanfare service. Is anyone going to buy a USB TV device from SanDisk? We’ll see. In the meantime, NBC has something brewing that could actually make a difference to the digital-download appeal on its own site, NBC Direct. NBC will soon start using peer-to-peer technology from Pando to distribute its downloads, a story StreamingMedia broke a couple weeks ago. Yesterday at the Web Video Summit in New York City, where I was moderating a panel, I was able to confirm that a stripped-down version of Pando’s technology will be incorporated into the NBC Direct video player. I also learned something new. The reason NBC wants to go with P2P technology is because it wants to start distributing high-definition videos. Pando’s P2P system can help NBC not just to lower the cost of distributing large files, but also to differentiate itself with HD video downloads. No special Vudu box or SanDisk USB video device will be necessary. NBC will be betting big on HD to drive viewership of Web video. It is already playing around with HD streams on Hulu, its joint venture with News Corp. And it is not going to be just NBC. HD video is going to come to the Web a lot faster than most people think. It may even come to many people’s computer screens before it comes to their TV screens. Just think about that for a second. If you can get a better viewing experience off the Web than you can on your TV, that might just be the incentive you need to really start shifting away from TV. CrunchBase Information Pando Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Seems NBC Universal isn’t getting along with anyone these days. With no announcement whatsoever, NBC has pulled its channel from YouTube.com. Sources say that NBC will concentrate its efforts on Hulu, a joint venture with News Corp that is going into private beta soon. Hulu is supposed to be a direct competitor with YouTube that comes directly from the studios with shows. Users will be able to stream or download new programs for a nominal fee. With services like Joost becoming increasingly popular and sites like YouTube and Dailymotion chugging along, NBC really has its work cut out for it this winter. NBC pulls plug on YouTube channel [Afterdawn] → Read More
NBC Universal has announced they will be providing on-demand mobile TV content in conjunction with MobiTV for the US market. Primetime NBC shows like The Office and Heroes will soon be available on your mobile phone. A slew of other NBCU channels, including USA, Bravo, SCI FI, Telemundo and mun2, will offer ad-supported programming. MobiTV will also have several ad-supported on demand shows for free including Friday Night Lights. Service will be $1.99 per primetime show for a 24 hour viewing period. No word on who the provider will be, but service is expected to hit the ground running sometime in Q2. My prayers have been answered: Hayden Panettiere on my phone whenever I want. MobiTV Press Release [via Reuters] → Read More
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