What happens to a start-up whose business never materializes? One option is to try to peddle the company based on the value of its human capital–aka the “acqhire.” Or would-be employers can simply wait for the start-up to flame out, then pick up the people they want on an a-la-carte basis. Did that just happen with Time Warner Cable and former Joost CTO Jason Gaedtke?
There is no shortage of places to watch TV shows free on the Web. There’s a glut of them, really. But here comes another: AT&T Entertainment. How is it different than Hulu, TV.com, Sling.com, Fancast, etc.? It’s not.
Newish AOL CEO Tim Armstrong hasn’t gone on a massive firing binge. But he’s still shaking up the ranks at the Time Warner unit. Today, for instance, he is installing a new chief financial officer: Artie Minson, the deputy CFO at sister company Time Warner Cable. Minson replaces Nisha Kumar, who held the spot for two years.
Another big player has signed onto Comcast’s Web TV trial: Discovery Communication is handing over a few of its shows for the cable provider’s program, which gives subscribers online access to (some) of the shows they get on TV. Discovery joins other big names like CBS and HBO in Comcast’s “On Demand Online,” which launched last month in a few thousand homes.
Now that Joost has given up the ghost and bailed out of the Web video portal business, who’s next? A good bet: Veoh, one of the best-funded would-be YouTubes. Multiple sources tell me the company is aggressively marketing itself to would-be buyers, and it’s asking for less than the $70 million investors like Michael Eisner have plowed into the company. Meanwhile, rival MetaCafe is looking for a “strategic investor.”
Here’s the beginning of the inevitable online video shakeout: Joost, the once-hyped video service that was supposed to rival Google’s YouTube, is restructuring to focus on “white label” services, i.e., a back end for other video players.
The site is laying off the majority of its 100-plus employees, and CEO Mike Volpi is out, replaced by Matt Zelesko, who had been SVP of engineering.
Comcast was mum about other cable networks it has persuaded to join its “OnDemand Online” program, which will offer TV shows over the Web to its customers. But word is getting out anyway. The people who bring you Food Network and AMC, for instance, have signed on.
Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes and Comcast CEO Brian Roberts will announce this morning that their two companies are linking up for a trial of an “authentication” effort. That means a handful of cable subscribers will get online access to Time Warner TV shows that have been previously kept off the Web. The idea is to protect cable subscription revenues by giving pay TV subscribers–but only subscribers–Web access to all the shows they get on TV. It’s a simple idea, but making it a reality will be very, very complicated.
Twitter notched yet another milestone yesterday when it finally showed up on comScore’s index of Web search milestones. The catch: It barely registered, pulling down a search share of just 0.001 percent. But I’m sure that comScore is missing the majority of Twitter’s searches. So what’s the real number?
I’m pecking this out from the bowels of the New World Stage, where Day Two of the Twitter-centric 140 Character Conference is meandering along. But the most interesting Twitter-related news is coming from outside the conference: Data from comScore showing that Twitter-related search has become both measurable and meaningful.
Well, measurable, at least.
Comcast and Disney didn’t see eye to eye over the latter’s decision to join Hulu last month. But they’re still able to work together on other online video projects. Hence today’s announcement that ESPN, the Disney-owned sports behemoth, will be offering its streaming video service to 17 million Comcast broadband subs.
A bad quarter for Disney, but it could have been worse–at least Wall Street was expecting it. After factoring out one-time charges and write-offs, Bob Iger and company earned 43 cents a share on revenues of $8.1 billion. Wall Street had been looking for 40 cents and $8.15 billion, respectively. The bright spot for the entertainment conglomerate is the same one you see at every media giant these days: Disney’s cable business.
That was quick. Time Warner Cable is shelving plans to charge its Internet customers based on usage. For now, that is.
The cable giant had planned on charging customers in four locations on a “consumption” plan in which they’d pay between $15 to $150 a month based on the amount of data they hoovered via the Web. But noisy opposition to the plan surfaced immediately and has been getting louder over the past few weeks.
More drum-beating from Eric Massa, the Democratic congressman who has decided to make an enemy/example out of Time Warner Cable, which wants to charge its broadband customers based on their Web usage. The New York rep says he’ll introduce a bill that will prevent Time Warner and other pipe providers from “capping” their broadband offerings.
A New York congressman has a message for cable companies that want drop their all-you-can-eat broadband Internet plans: Don’t even think about it. That instruction comes from Rep. Eric Massa, a Democrat who represents the Rochester area, and it’s aimed specifically at Time Warner Cable, which is starting to experiment with broadband “caps” in Massa’s hometown. But any of the big Internet pipe players contemplating charging their users on a per-use basis–and most of them are–can expect to get similar blowback from lawmakers.
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.
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
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