The cable provider is promoting a “Roll Over Or Get Tough” campaign, which asks consumers to…well, it doesn’t ask them to do anything, really. But there is a Web site where the company makes its case–its programming partners want more money, because that’s what they always want–and says that at some point, consumers will be able to “vote” on…something.

The thing is, the cable providers are at least half right: Cable programmers do want more money, because that’s what they always want. And now broadcasters like CBS (CBS) and News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox, which traditionally haven’t been paid for their programming–at least not officially–want money, too.

But boy oh boy, is it going to be hard to gin up sympathy for the cable guys. When’s the last time you felt anything remotely warm and fuzzy toward your local operator, which may well have an effective monopoly in your neighborhood, and certainly acts like someone who has a monopoly?

And in any case, it’s hard to see what consumers are expected to do here: Left to their own devices, they might well elect to pay for just a handful of cable channels they want instead of subscribing to dozens of ones they never, ever, watch. That might well drive down cable bills, dramatically. Which is why programmers and providers don’t want that to happen.

That’s one conclusion you can draw from a new survey showing that people who own Apple (AAPL) handsets are more willing to pay for stuff than the average Internet surfer.

It’s a U.K. survey, conducted by the Olswang media law firm, but my hunch is that you’d see similar results in the U.S. And given that consumers look much less likely to pay for stuff than publishers and distributors would like, it’s worth chewing on. Guardian:

The survey showed that 58% of people would pay to access online a film just released in cinemas, 52% would pay for access to a film that will not be on DVD for at least two months and 40% would pay to access a film which is already on DVD or pay-TV. Looking at solely iPhone users, however, those figures jump to 73%, 67% and 54% respectively….

News content, however, remains a tough online sell. The survey asked how willing consumers would be to buy a newspaper article or column which could be read on a computer or portable device such as a phone or e-reader. Only 19% of respondents expressed any willingness to pay–though that did increase to 30% among iPhone users.

I’ve repeatedly been skeptical that consumers will pay for something solely because it’s on a mobile device–this is the key idea behind the magazine industry’s digital plans–but I do think there are some cases where this might work.

My own anecdotal confirmation: My household just dropped $6 for three Pixar shorts for an iPhone 3G in a desperate attempt to provide some electronic babysitting/soothing. This, despite the fact that everything we bought is also available for free on YouTube. When you need the stuff, you can’t be dependent on a wireless connection.

Here’s one of the clips we spent $1.99 on:

Internet advertising increased a bit–1.7 percent, precisely–over the past three months. But that’s only when compared with the previous three months, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau. Compared with the same period a year ago, Web ads are still down 5.4 percent, the trade group said (see chart below; click to enlarge).

Given that I work for a free, ad-supported Web site, I’m anything but an unbiased observer here, and I’d like to put a sunnier spin on things. But recall that the economy started its freefall well over a year ago, so comparisons to Q3 2008 should be particularly easy to beat. Even the boosterish IAB can only call the numbers a “hopeful sign” at best.

Still, if you’re looking for positive signs, you can take Google’s (GOOG) declaration that the worst is over, and I’ve heard plenty of anecdotal stories from small online players that spending is perking up again–though I’m also beginning to hear that some folks may have been overly optimistic about Q4. We’ll know soon.

What exactly did Adconion buy? Some of Joost’s technology, as well as its trademark, and about a dozen of the company’s remaining 25 employees, a spokeswoman says.

So what does that leave? Does any part of the original Joost survive as an operating company? “I believe so,” says the spokeswoman, who is going to get back to us about that.

Price? Your guess is as good as mine. But I’m guessing it’s not going to be very much, and nothing close to what investors like Sequoia, Index and Viacom (VIA) were hoping when they plowed $45 million into the company more than two years ago. Index, by the way, is also an investor in Adconion and led an $80 million C funding round in February 2008.

In any case, this is all a matter of “i” dotting and “t” crossing, as Joost has officially been in hospice mode since June, when the company laid off most of its employees and replaced CEO Mike Volpi. Prior to that, Volpi and his investors had been trying to broker a sale of the company, hoping that they could convince a big infrastructure player like Comcast (CMCSA) or Time Warner Cable (TWC) to bail it out.

No dice, though Time Warner Cable did end up hiring some technical help from Joost.

ADCONION MEDIA GROUP ACQUIRES JOOST ASSETS

New Capabilities Provide Advertisers, Content Owners and Publishers with an End-to-End
Cross-Channel Video Solution

SANTA MONICA, CALIF. – NOVEMBER 24, 2009 — Adconion Media Group (www.adconion.com), the largest independent global audience and content network, announced today that it has acquired certain assets from privately-held Joost, the online video service. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

“Video is a top priority for our company, and through the acquisition of the Joost assets we will be able to provide advertisers, content owners and website publishers with an end-to-end global video platform and cross-channel video and display ad-serving solution,” said Tyler Moebius, CEO, Adconion Media Group. “This acquisition immediately brings additional scale and content to the Adconion video pre-roll network for clients who are looking for a safe, cost-effective alternative to achieve the maximum value of online video advertising. We’ll also continue to operate Joost.com, providing clients with a destination site to showcase and distribute their branded entertainment content.”

In June, Joost announced a change in its business strategy to focus on providing white-label video platforms, and Adconion plans to pursue this strategy. On Friday, Adconion announced its first long-term licensing partnership as the exclusive display and video ad-serving solution for the Goldbach Media Group in Europe.

The acquisition of Joost assets adds many dimensions to Adconion’s existing video services and further will solidify its position in the online video and content syndication market. Prior to the acquisition, Adconion offered targeted distribution of content, including video and television commercials, to audiences around the world via Adconion.TV; as well as customized branded entertainment solutions for clients through its exclusive relationship with the digital studio RedLever. Through the Joost acquisition, Adconion.TV will add to its library of professionally-produced video content available for targeted pre-roll advertisements across 2,000 premium publishers.

Janus Friis, co-founder of Joost, said, “Over the past few months we have been actively exploring strategic options for Joost, and have concluded that the sale of certain of its assets to Adconion is in the best interests of Joost. Adconion has a strong technological platform and a compelling business model, and we believe that both businesses will benefit as a result of this acquisition.”

A leader in advertising innovation, targeting and distribution, Adconion reaches nearly 300 million unique users on a monthly basis. Prior to the Joost acquisition, Adconion was serving more than 80 million video streams per day to targeted audiences across 2,000 global websites.

The breakdown: The company did well overseas, where revenue jumped 17.8 percent after factoring out currency effects, and poorly in the U.S., where sales dropped by 7.4 percent. Digital, which grew by 11.5 percent (excluding FOREX), now makes up 21.4 percent of Warner’s (WMG) revenue.

Operating income dropped by 18 percent, to $54 million, but all of that decline stems from the severance charges. Factor those out and operating income would be up slightly to $68 million.

For years, the music industry has watched music sales drop while music publishing–money generated by the underlying compositions of songs–has increased. But this time around that’s not the case. Warner says recorded music sales were up 3.7 percent (net of currency changes) and that music publishing revenue was up 11.7 percent.

But all of the publishing increase stems from a one-time gain of $25 million “from an agreement reached by the U.S. recorded music and music publishing industries, which will result in the payment of mechanical royalties accrued in prior years by record companies.”

No purchase price disclosed, but I’m fairly confident this was in the sub-$50 million category. Teracent had been looking to raise something like $5 million earlier this year and had previously raised around $6 million, much of it from New Enterprise Associates.

I’m told the company was doing something under $2 million a year in revenue, and when I talked to CEO Vikas Jha in September, he told me that the three-and-a-half-year-old company is profitable.

One immediate beneficiary of the deal: Rival ad optimizer Tumri, which does very similar work.

Bertelsmann is looking for an investor to buy some or all of Scoyo, which it launched in Germany in January of this year and previewed in the U.S. in September, the company confirmed via email. It says that while it hunts for new money, it is keeping the German site up and running but has put development of the U.S. site on hold “as it will be a decision of the new investor how to deal with the US portal.”

I’ve been told that the company has invested as much as $30 million over two years into the project, but Bertelsmann declined to comment on that figure.

I’m not in the target market, and I’d be unable to use Scoyo even if I were, as it only runs on Windows machines. But here’s the way the U.S. site describes the service: It is “targeted to the supplemental and homeschool markets, [and] will deliver high-quality educational content for children in Kindergarten through 8th grade across a variety of subjects and disciplines.”

The beta is free, and the site was supposed to launch a subscription service next year.

But Spotify has yet to make a key expansion: To the U.S., where the big music labels worry that consumers will love everything about the site except paying for it. That’s bad, since Spotify is supposed to work best as a subscription service.

Most Americans have never heard of Symbian, though it remains the biggest player in the global smartphone market (as long as you use a broad definition of smartphone). But it’s telling that Spotify made a point of making its service compatible with Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone and Google’s (GOOG) Android handsets first.

In any event, Spotify is only available via mobile to paying subscribers, who shell out around $16 a month in the U.K. (and less in some countries). They key question for the music business is how many subscribers there are.

Spotify won’t release statistics, but one number that I’ve heard from people close to the company is 100,000, which works out to less than two percent of the company’s overall user base (free users can listen to the service only on their PCs and have to endure a small smattering of ads). But U.S. music industry executives worry that the subscription number may be even lower than that.

The two sides continue to chat, and conventional wisdom is that the service will indeed get to the U.S. one day. But at one point, Spotify was talking about coming to America in 2009, but that looks just about impossible. Now, CEO Daniel Ek is talking about the first half of 2010.

So, of course, it also gets a new logo. This one will look awfully familiar, since it is the same trio of well-known letters, and if you’re not paying attention you won’t notice a thing.

But look closely:

See? Yup: Two lower-case letters and a period.

The idea is that the type will remain consistent, but will be “revealed” when it sits on top of different images. The old AOL swoosh triangle goes away, although its sort-of iconic “running man” will stick around in some form, the company said.

Here’s a canned quote from CEO Tim Armstrong about what this means:

“Our new identity is uniquely dynamic. Our business is focused on creating world-class experiences for consumers and AOL is centered on creative and talented people–employees, partners, and advertisers. We have a clear strategy that we are passionate about and we plan on standing behind the AOL brand as we take the company into the next decade.”

Branding outfit Wolff Olins gets credit (and money) for figuring this one out. But let’s see what investors think of the work when the company spins off from Time Warner (TWX) next month.

Here is the full press release:

AOL PREVIEWS NEW BRAND IDENTITY FOR ITS FUTURE AS AN INDEPENDENT CONTENT-DRIVEN COMPANY

New Aol. Brand Expresses Commitment to Stimulating Content, Openness and Inclusion

NEW YORK–November 22, 2009–AOL today previewed its new brand identity for its future as an independent company committed to creating the world’s most simple and stimulating content and online experiences.

The new AOL brand identity is a simple, confident logotype, revealed by ever changing images. It’s one consistent logo with countless ways to reveal. The new brand identity will be fully unveiled on December 10, when AOL common stock begins trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

“Our new identity is uniquely dynamic. Our business is focused on creating world-class experiences for consumers and AOL is centered on creative and talented people–employees, partners, and advertisers. We have a clear strategy that we are passionate about and we plan on standing behind the AOL brand as we take the company into the next decade,” said Tim Armstrong, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of AOL.

AOL partnered with Wolff Olins, a global brand and innovation consultancy, to develop a brand identity that speaks to the company’s future. The identity itself is a platform for expression and creativity reflecting the content, products and services which AOL offers. Some of the world’s best creative artists, including Universal Everything, GHAVA and Dylan Griffin created art and animations for the brand.

“Historically brand identity has been monolithic and controlling, little more than stamping a company name on a product. AOL is a 21st century media company, with an ambitious vision for the future and new focus on creativity and expression, this required the new brand identity to be open and generous, to invite conversation and collaboration, and to feel credible, but also aspirational. We’re delighted to have worked so closely with the AOL leadership team to create something bold and exciting that sets AOL apart,” said Karl Heiselman, CEO of Wolff Olins.

Condé has a demo video it has been showing to advertisers, employees and plenty of other people, including me. The demo gives you a pretty good overview of what the publisher and Adobe (ADBE), which is building the software to produce and view the magazines, have in mind. But the publisher has turned down my request to show the clip to my readers.

This doesn’t mean you can’t see it, though. If you’re in New York City, you can troop down to the promotional “store” Wired magazine sponsors each year, located this time in the Meatpacking District (keep an eye peeled for the Betaworks guys). The publisher is showing off at least part of the clip there, and you can see some of it in this YouTube clip below (thanks to Brian Chen for spotting):

Obviously, it’s a much better experience if you can watch the video directly, instead of through someone else’s video camera. Also, I think you’d prefer to see it outside of the store, where you’re not subjected to slit-your-wrists techno music. So perhaps this will prompt the Condé folks to put the entire clip out in public.

In the meantime, here’s a gallery of “Saturday Night Live” cast members and other sort-of-famous people checking out last year’s store.

Want to watch YouTube on your TV? There are plenty of devices and services that let you do that, with more on the way.

But starting next month, at least one gadget is getting its YouTube feed shut down. Syabas Technology, which makes a line of set-top boxes called “Popcorn Hour,” says Google’s (GOOG) video site has told it to remove YouTube content beginning December 2.

This one is a straight he said/he said: Syabas, via a blog post from COO Alex Limberis, says it has an agreement to use YouTube’s clips, but that YouTube had changed the terms of the agreement recently. YouTube won’t address that claim directly, but offered this statement:

Since July of 2008, YouTube’s Terms of Service has restricted implementations for televisions based on our APIs. YouTube has been in active discussions with various developers on how best to implement YouTube on set top boxes and TVs. There are several companies, however, that have deployed solutions, like video scraping technology, to circumvent the rules and violate YouTube’s Terms of Service.  Companies that have negotiated agreements to use our APIs, like TiVo, Sony, Panasonic and PS3 are not impacted.

The first-gut reaction here is to draw a parallel between this move and Hulu’s attempt to prevent video software start-up Boxee from using its stuff.

But in that case, at least, Hulu was trying to restrict access to a data stream it was making freely available to the rest of the world. Here, both sides agree that YouTube requires a contract before it will release its API to commercial partners.

So, the real question is: Did the two companies have an agreement, and what if, anything, has changed recently.

Gentlemen?

[T-shirt image courtesy of Zazzle.com.]

But what do Oprah’s plans mean for the TV business? Not that much, argues JP Morgan (JPM) analyst Michael Meltz. Short version of his note published this morning: It’s not bad for OWN, the cable network Oprah co-owns with Discovery (DISCA). But it’s also not terrible for CBS (CBS) and Disney’s (DIS) ABC, the two broadcasters currently in the “Oprah” business.

That’s because while the move makes for unpleasant “optics”–bizspeak for “looks bad”–for broadcast, it turns out that Oprah didn’t make that much money for the business. (But plenty for herself, obviously.)

Medium-sized version of Meltz’s argument:

• The show made $50 million a year for CBS, which syndicated the program. CBS would rather have that money than not, but losing it will amount to a “rounding error” in 2012.
• The show was a big ratings hit for local TV stations, but they paid a lot for it–upward of $200,000 a week in big markets. That made it a loss-leader for most broadcasters, Meltz says.
• And yes, the show provided a big lead-in audience to local TV news broadcasts, particularly in top ABC markets. But given that it’s not going to end up on a rival broadcast channel, “it is conceivable that station audience/ad share won’t change much for the day-part.”

Okay. Back to the crying and teeth-gnashing.

Call me Professor Positive if you must, but I don’t think that’s terrible: It means that 60 percent of phone users are okay with ads. And I suspect the number will be higher once the ads move from the theoretical/novelty realm into something you see whenever you use your phone or in exchange for getting something of value.

(And yes, I understand that a vocal minority absolutely hates advertising of all sorts and is reading this story on a computer that runs ad-blocking software. Good for you! Please let me know how you’d like to pay for this stuff and everything else you consume on the Web).

Here’s the research from Parks Associates, via Mediapost (click to enlarge):

Remember that even if mobile ads do take off as expected, it’s still going to be a relatively small business for some time. Bernstein Research figures mobile ads may generate $2.2 billion by 2013, which is nothing to sneeze at, but still a small fraction of the $32 billion Web ad market. Most of the mobile ad dollars, of course, are expected to flow to Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO).

As many readers noted, one big problem–potentially–with the plan is that Adobe (ADBE) and Apple (AAPL) generally don’t play well together. And in the case of Apple’s iPhone, they don’t play at all: Adobe’s flash platform doesn’t work in the iPhone, which is why many video sites, which depend on flash, don’t work well on the gadget.

So what if this happens again with Apple’s tablet, if and when the thing finally arrives?

I noted this yesterday, but didn’t get to talk to Adobe and Condé about it until later. Now I have their responses. The short version: They sure hope it works out.

The longer version is that both Condé and Adobe plan on running on all sorts of devices. And there’s not a lot they can do to satisfy Apple’s (AAPL) tablet requirements in advance, since Apple won’t discuss the tablet or even acknowledge that the tablet is in the works.

Here’s Adobe’s official line, provided by Senior Experience Design Manager Jeremy Clark:

Adobe has taken initial steps to prepare Adobe AIR to support mobile with performance improvements (reductions in memory usage, runtime size, JavaScript CPU consumption, and reduced CPU usage for background applications), and support multi-touch input used by mobile phones and presumably a new generation of slate devices. In fact we just announced a beta for AIR 2.0 that incorporates many of these features.

Our job at Adobe is to help create a great digital publishing platform. If publishers like Conde Nast and NY Times are delivering brand-name content via Adobe AIR, we believe that the devices that will win in the marketplace, will be the ones that support this open format. It should also be noted that Adobe recently announced plans to enable Flash applications to be brought to iPhone and indeed several are available on the iTunes store.

So we’ll continue to look for ways to enable publishers to deliver their content to the widest possible range of platforms, even on platforms that don’t yet support our runtimes.

It’s a reasonable enough response, given the alternative, which is to wait around for Apple to bring forth the wondergadget–or not. And in the meantime, the companies would miss an opportunity to help set standards for other guys’ gadgets.

On the other hand, there’s the less politic response, which you’re not going to hear from either company on the record: “Boy oh boy, are we screwed if our stuff doesn’t work with the market leader.”

But here’s one version of that take, from Time Inc.’s Josh Quittner, who is working on producing tablet-ready magazines for the Time Warner (TWX) publishing unit:

I am a hyperbolic guy, not to mention a purple writer, but I think it’s conservative to say that in the miserable publishing business, there is no greater hope for salvation that the iThing. With visions of giant iPhones dancing in our heads, all of us are working on prototypes of magazines and newspapers that will work on 9.7-inch, multi-touch screens linked wirelessly to stores. And, while there are at least a dozen manufacturers heatedly working on their own iterations, we all await the iThing because history has shown us that Steve Jobs leads the parade. Chaos will ensue, with many idiotic and competing platforms drawing precious resources from content makers who have to try just about everything until a frontrunner emerges.

Oh. One more quick item: As Quittner says, there are lots of publishers working on this stuff, and I look forward to seeing all of their efforts. And in case anyone gets the idea that I’m only paying attention to the biggest dogs, here’s what FastCompany.com’s Noah Robischon has to say about his company’s digital plans:

We’re working on delivering the magazine in several different digital formats right now, including to e-readers. Assuming the iTablet is a real product, and it uses any of these formats–and I’ve got no inside knowledge, it’s all based on rumor and guesswork–then we’ll be on the device too.

We’ve been approached by a few different companies working on e-reader formats for magazine publishers, as well as a couple that want to create digital versions of the magazine pages for online display. So we’re evaluating our options now. This space has become very active in the last 6 months, and it’s great to have so many options.

So there you go. Next?

[Image credit: clarity]