Viacom’s Hollywood studios, which include Paramount and Lionsgate, are gonna give that Internet thing another go. Since its contract with Showtime ended, Viacom wants to explore new ways to distribute pay TV (Showtime, HBO, etc.), and is looking to create a new online service to do just that. Said Viacom’s chief executive, “We want it to be available for consumers any way they want it.” Pretty sure consumers want “it” DRM-free and for a reasonable price, so we’ll see how that goes. Or maybe they’ll go the Hulu route, which I’ve actually heard my tech illiterate friends mention. I was truly shocked. Don’t expect other studios to join in on the fun, however, as their pay TV contracts aren’t up for some time yet. → Read More
When it comes to market share gains in advertising dollars, Google outstripped every other media company in 2007, whether you look at the Web, TV, print, or radio. Earlier this morning, Henry Blodget compared the advertising revenues of 17 major media businesses (including News Corp, Time Warner Cable, Viacom, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL,, the New York Times, and CBS Radio). He left out Disney for some reason, but otherwise it’s a pretty good set of data (see the spreadsheet here). According to his calculations, total online ad revenues across these 17 companies grew 9% last year, online revenues grew 28% (versus 3% for offline ad revenues), and Google’s online ad revenues grew 44% (versus 15% for the combined online ad revenues of Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL). But let’s take a deeper dive into these numbers. Google added $2.6 billion in advertising revenues last year. Next in line and far behind was News Corp., which grew its ad revenues by $915 million. To better visualize how much Google is creaming every other media company, I put together the charts above and below (click on them to see a larger version). And here’s a table with each company’s ad-revenue gains (or declines), in descending order: Now, what about absolute market share? Google does pretty well there too, with 14.9% of the total $58 billion represented by all 17 businesses. That is up from an 11.3% market share in 2006, and makes Google No. 2 behind News Corp’s 16.5% market share. (No.3, actually, behind Time Warner, but Blodget separated Time Warner Cable, Time Inc., and AOL, which combined would have a 15.2% market share). Looking at the absolute numbers in the pie chart and table below really helps you put these businesses in perspective. For instance, check out Yahoo in the No. 4 spot, with $4.7 billion in ad revenues last year. It is right behind newspaper company Gannett, which is still a cash cow, but saw its advertising dollars decline by $338 million last year. Yahoo, in contrast gained $361 million in ad revenues. That’s still a fraction of Google’s growth, but looking at the absolute numbers let’s you see why Microsoft wants to buy it. A combined Yahoo-Microsoft would be No. 3 on this list. And here are the underlying numbers: → Read More
[photopress:rock_band_street_date.jpg,full,center] It’s no secret and no surprise that Rock Band is selling quite well. The game is one of the most fun multiplayers around and is on both major gaming platforms and will hit the Wii soon. The talk of the Web today, though, is the $208.7 million payout Viacom has ready for Harmonix, the Rock Band developer. This is a performance-based earnout, as Viacom’s MTV bought Harmonix in 2006, so the money would go to Harmonix shareholders. This is great news for Harmonix as well as Rock Band fans; this means the promised updates are sure to materialize, which is going to be the key moneymaker for this game. Harmonix Earns Possible $208.7 Million Bonus From Viacom [Gamasutra] → Read More
In another move to strengthen the anti-YouTube coalition, Viacom is syndicating its videos (from Comedy Central, MTV Networks, Nickelodeon, and Atom Films, among other properties) to a whole new slew of video-sharing Websites. The new recipients of Viacom’s video love are Dailymotion, Veoh (which already has Hulu and CBS videos), imeem, GoFish, and MeeVee. They join AOL, Bebo, Joost, MSN, and Comcast’s Fancast in gaining access to Viacom’s video library. Viacom obviously wants to strengthen the hand of other video Websites against Youtube by spreading its videos everywhere except on YouTube. Viacom has a $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube for copyright infringement and yanked its videos from the site last year. As Comedy Central’s own Jon Stewart said last night regarding his parent company’s lawsuit against YouTube, “A billion dollars? What are they four-year olds?” I’ve embedded the clip below (which is mostly about the Hollywood writer’s strike) from The Daily Show‘s Website. The comment is about four minutes in: http://www.thedailyshow.com/sitewide/video_player/view/default/swf.jhtml CrunchBase Information DailyMotion Veoh Imeem MeeVee Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
HD DVD’s booth at CES was a sad, sad sight to see. You could tell by the demeanor of everyone working the booth. They knew. Blu-ray’s booth was less than 20 yards away and they were rocking out and people were milling around trying to watch demos, take pictures with Captain Jack Sparrow and the Spartans from 300. Don’t get me wrong, I’m in HD DVD’s camp, but how are they going to recover from Warner Bros. departure? The Financial Times is reporting that Paramount has a purported clause in their contract that allows them to switch sides in the event Warner Bros. backs out of HD DVD. Why the two studios have anything to do with each other is beyond me, but that’s what ‘people familiar with the situation’ are claiming. Biggs says it’s not over because Samsung is still producing dual format players and apparently they have more say in the situation then one is to believe, but we’ll wait and see what Paramount does. Paramount in HD DVD blow [FT] → Read More
As we noted earlier, the FTC has indeed cleared Google’s $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick. Notably, the FTC required no conditions for clearing the transaction, which is a big win for Google. It won’t have to sell off any businesses or change any of its current business practices. Google’s chief legal officer David Drummond gives a rundown of the reasoning behind the FTC’s decision: Third party ad serving markets are highly competitive. [No argument there]. Privacy not a part of the merger review. [You lucked out, boys]. Data combination wouldn’t pose problems. [That means Google won't be hobbled by any separate-but-equal clauses keeping Google and DoubleClick data apart, which would have probably squirreled the deal]. Advertisers and publishers aren’t concerned. [Well, at least not enough to complain publicly about it to the FTC]. Now that the U.S. is cleared, Google still has its toughest hurdle ahead. The European Commission won’t bow out so easily. It could very well delay a decision until April. (Those Old World regulators like to take things at an Old World pace). In the meantime, Microsoft will keep trying to steal away more business from DoubleClick, as it did yesterday with its Viacom deal. Oh, and it will be spending a lot of time lobbying its good friends at the EC as well. The longer the delay, the more Microsoft can use that time to try to catch up. But come April, DoubleGoog will start to punch back. → Read More
In yet another move to strengthen the anti-Google coalition, Viacom announced a complicated deal with Microsoft that combined Web advertising, TV advertising, video licensing, and an online gaming partnership. Back in April, Viacom signed another deal with Yahoo for search advertising across its sites, which is still in place. The media company’s Web strategy seems motivated by its hate for Google as much as anything else. Here is the short version of today’s deal. (Bear with me). Microsoft’s Atlas business (part of recently purchased aQuantive) will serve display ads across Viacom’s U.S. sites, which include MTV.com and ComedyCentral.com, and get an exclusive right to sell remnant inventory as well. The value of the deal is $500 million to Microsoft, but it is hard to tell exactly where that comes from because there was a lot of bartering going on. For instance, as part of the deal, Microsoft agreed to purchase TV ads on Viacom’s cable networks like MTV, Comedy Central, and BET, as well as some of those online ads that it will be serving. Microsoft will also license video from Viacom TV shows and movies on MSN. (Round and round is the name of the game . . . ). So the $500 million is most likely the net amount after the value of all of these sub-deals were calculated. Media companies love doing complicated deals. They used to call it synergy, but they usually turn to be sub-optimal. Rather than striking the best online advertising deal, the best TV advertising deal, or the best content licensing deal on a standalone basis, everything gets cobbled together in a take-it-or-leave it proposition. Inevitably, some of the underlying business units from both sides end up getting screwed. But by that time the corporate biz dev guys are onto their next deal. In other Viacom news, MTV Networks signed up Hollywood producer Jerry Bruckheimer to make video games. I think we all know how that’s going to turn out. Hollywood has been trying to get into the videogame business for years by bringing star power to the medium. The results have been largely uninspiring. What most Hollywood types tend to ignore is that in videogames, the stars are the players themselves. → Read More
Viacom sues YouTube for 1 billion, writers get 75 cents a word. Viacom estimates downloadable content is worth $500 million and writers get bad coffee. There’s the bottom line. Hopefully this strike destroys the media conglomerates and a new, communal writing system takes root and flourishes in the wasteland of dead media, but it won’t. We’ll just have to wait longer for Lost to roll back around. Besides, they should just go online where all of us are rich as lords. via BB → Read More
It didn’t take long for all the media companies to respond to Google’s launch earlier this week of its copyright fingerprinting system on YouTube. Today, they announced a set of limp-wristed “guidelines” that both technology and media companies should abide by in order to protect copyrighted content going forward. Companies who signed on to the guidelines include Viacom, News Corp., Disney, CBS, NBC, and Microsoft. Notably absent was Google itself. Just now at the Web 2.0 conference, Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman was asked what he finds insufficient about Google’s system. It seems that the biggest problem the media companies have with the Google system is that it is not theirs. Here is Dauman’s combative response: I don’t think we are quite there. Google can do things very quickly when they want to. I guess they haven’t wanted to up to this point., Maybe they will join the consensus that they need to be a part of, either voluntarily or involuntarily.What no one wants is a proprietary system that benefits one company. What we need is to work together to benefit the consumer. If the media companies (and Microsoft) actually have a competing copyright protection system to offer up rather than some vague guidelines, they should do so. An industry standard that works across all media and technology companies is preferable in theory to one imposed on everyone else by a single company. But someone needs to create that system. (A startup called Attributor thinks it has the answer. Maybe the media companies should take a look at it). → Read More
Comedy Central will today launch a dedicated website for “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” that is designed to offer fans free video clips from the show. Although it would be easy to mock Comedy Central’s I can’t believe 2004 called launch of free Daily Show clips, the offering is slightly better than it first appears; the site includes 13,000 clips representing every minute of the show since it launched in 1999, according to the LA Times. Comedy Central content has long been a favorite illegal upload on YouTube, and BitTorrent provides ample downloads of most of Stewart’s back catalog. Previous Stewart understudy and South Carolina Presidential Candidate Stephen Colbert has long had his own website at Colbertnation.com, and offers a program that is preferred by some. Its later time slot never seems to prevent high peer and seed ratios on BitTorrent. Comedy Central’s parent company Viacom sued Google for copyright infringement on YouTube in March. CrunchBase Information YouTube Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
A new joint copyright alliance that includes CBS Corp., Dailymotion, Microsoft, NBC Universal, News Corp.’s Fox and MySpace units, Viacom Inc. and Walt Disney Co is due to launch Friday, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal. Google is noted as not being a member of the grouping, but in discussions to join. The group will address copyright-related issues including video piracy, with a focus on using technology to eliminate copyright-infringing content and blocking any infringing material before it is publicly accessible. Google launched anti-piracy technology on YouTube Monday.Viacom sued Google over YouTube content in March. → Read More
With the debate over copyright between YouTube and Viacom heating up, the online video site is hoping that some of its biggest stars will help them out in the debate over fair use of TV clips. YouTube intends to question Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert on what they think about Viacom’s decision to sue YouTube. The company needs 30 depositions from people to keep the legal battle going strong. Burn the DMCA, re-write it, and stop taking away the right for me to watch clips like this. YouTube wants to question Jon Stewart [AP] → Read More
Google responded to Viacom’s $1 billion lawsuit over alleged YouTube copyright infringement today. Their answer: Let’s fight this out, in front of a jury. We earlier predicted that there was no way Google would agree to a settlement with Viacom that involved any damages, and assumed that they would work to sign a licensing deal instead and convince Viacom to simply settle the lawsuit. Viacom later signaled that they weren’t much interested in a deal when they agreed to provide content to Joost and then did a search advertising deal with Yahoo instead of Google. I have visions of bloggers fighting to get a good seat at the trial, and live blogging the entire thing. The fate of YouTube’s buisness model, as well as many other web startups, will likely be linked to the outcome of this litigation. CrunchBase Information YouTube Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Nobody likes piracy. Well, we do, sure, but content providers aren’t as cool with it as we are. Enter PodZinger, a start-up whose main widget—true video search—could finally save YouTube and the like from constantly being sued by the Viacoms of the world for copyright violations. With its video search technology, users are able to pinpoint, with a 70 percent accuracy so far, exact conversations in video. Looking for the scene where George and Jerry discuss growing up and changing their lives for the better? Simple search for a relevant keyword—here, “we’re not men”—and the video pops up. Neat-o. → Read More
Viacom hasn’t been gentle with Google this year. In February they slammed Google/YouTube with a massive DMCA take down demand (and an equally massive press outreach). A month later they sued Google for a billion dollars. Between those two events they signed a content deal with Joost, a YouTube competitor in the professional content space. All of this seems to stem from the fact that Google promised Viacom a revenue share deal on YouTube, then failed to table a compelling offer. Today Viacom snubs Google again, choosing to work with Yahoo on search advertising. There are few details of the deal, but it doesn’t appear that Yahoo is making any revenue guarantees, which are becoming standard in large search advertising deals. Google gave Fox certain guarantees in a $900 million deal announced last year, and Microsoft almost certainly guaranteed revenue to Facebook in order to get access to their search traffic. In this case at least, YouTube appears to be a liability to Google, and Yahoo gets the benefit of being the next strongest player. → Read More
Viacom announced today that MTV Networks, BET Networks and Paramount Pictures have made significant changes to each of their mobile portfolios and they’ll soon be taking over the world. OK, I made the latter of that up, but they are trying to gain a bigger presence in the mobile content market. MTV Networks already provides Sprint with VOD (video on demand) content that includes MTV, Country Music Television, Spike TV and Logo programming, but they want to shove some more content down Sprint users’ throats. The new deal will provide 14 different live streams and VOD content from other MTV Network channels. Other services only offered to Sprint users will include mobile Web sites from MTV, VH1, Comedy Central and Game Trailers. MTVN has also teamed up with Pepsi and Intel to blitz your mobile phones with super lamo ads. → Read More
After Viacom sued YouTube/Google for 1 billion bucks, we all thought Google would be really screwed. Well apparently the tech-giant isn’t worrying much, saying that the DMCA justifies its actions and it’s not liable for jack. Sez Alexander Macgillivray from Google’s legal mumbojumbo department: “Here there is a law which is specifically designed to give Web hosts such as us, or… bloggers or people that provide photo-album hosting online … the ‘safe harbor’ we need in order to be able to do hosting online,” “We will never launch a product or acquire a company unless we are completely satisfied with its legal basis for operating,” Google feels like it’s completely in the right this time around and that Viacom is just being a sourpuss. Google has won similar cases in the past, but Viacom is a media monster that has the power to keep this thing in court as long as it takes. So next time you want your MTV, you’d better be willing to give up your Google Video for it. Google confident digital liability law protects it [Reuters] → Read More
When Viacom announced that it was going to sue YouTube and Google, plenty of folks on the Web did that whole, “you’ll never beat YouTube, YouTube forever, etc” schtick. Turns out these silly geese may have a point. → Read More
Viacom, owner of fine media outlets like MTV and Comedy Central, will sue Google and YouTube for $1 billion for failing to prevent “massive intentional copyright infringement.” (Can Google counter-sue Viacom for producing base drivel?) Viacom isn’t happy that Google hasn’t taken “proactive” steps to prevent the unauthorized use of its content. Never mind that it already demanded that Google remove more than 100,000 videos last month. Google still hasn’t responded to the suit. Maybe they should offer a video response like this winner? Slippery slope! Viacom to sue Google and YouTube [BBC News] → Read More
You may remember that last week, Viacom demanded that YouTube pull 100,000 copyrighted videos own that belonged to the media giant. Turns out, it wasn’t just because some guy uploaded an old Hall & Oates video, rather Viacom has decided to go with Joost instead. That’s right: Joost users will be able to enjoy programming from networks like MTV, Comedy Central, and Nickelodeon thanks to a new deal in the works between Joost and Viacom. Now if everyone plays their cards right, Joost could very well end up being a YouTube killer. Viacom lands video deal with Joost → Read More
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