Underwhelmed with last night’s Super Bowl ads? So are the people who paid for them. The majority of TV ad buyers say they think their spots are less useful than they used to be. That’s potentially good news for Google and the Web, but it will be a long time coming.
Hulu is a big hit in the U.S. But even though the video site has spent a year trying to gain a foothold in other countries, you still can’t see it anywhere else.
This should change early next year, but in the most limited way. Hulu plans to let users in the U.K., and most likely, other countries, access its U.S. site to watch a single show: The made-for-the-Web reality series, “If I Can Dream.”
Yesterday, Viacom told Wall Street that its third quarter had been better than most analysts expected. Today Time Warner delivered a similar report: Revenue was on track, but cost savings improved the bottom line. That won’t help hundreds of Time Inc. employees who face job cuts this quarter. Meanwhile, the company can’t ditch AOL soon enough: It has already spent $100 million prepping it for a spinoff this year.
Maybe this is why Comcast rushed to knock down a story that said it bought NBC Universal from GE: It knew Wall Street would hate the idea.
Heavyweight media investor Gordy Crawford–who happens to own a big chunk of Time Warner–says the conglomerate plans to dump its magazine business. But I get the sense that Jeff Bewkes and company plan on keeping at least some of the unit’s iconic titles.
Another feather for the “we’ve got real stuff” cap that YouTube is showing off these days: Google’s video site has hammered out a deal with Time Warner to show clips from the media conglomerate’s cable networks, TV shows and movies. But you won’t be seeing full-length shows or movies from Time Warner on the world’s biggest video site–it’s saving those for cable companies that play along with its “TV Everywhere” plan.
Peter Kafka has been covering media and technology since 1997, when he joined the staff of Forbes magazine. Most recently, he has been the managing editor of the tech and media Web site, Silicon Alley Insider. Read more »
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