Wouldn’t you like to bump elbows with media moguls and hear from the likes of Eric Schmidt, Biz Stone and James Murdoch? Me too! Alas, Quadrangle’s Foursquare conference is closed to the public and the press. But at least I can tell you whom you won’t be hearing from.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt used the opening moments of a New York City press conference to reinforce a message he’s been delivering for several weeks: The worst is over, things are looking up, and Google is spending accordingly.
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.
Just how big are MySpace and Facebook? Big enough to account for nearly one in five of the display ads Web marketers buy in the U.S. That has nothing to do the number of dollars the two social networks generate, since their ad impressions are famously cheap. But at least it gives you a sense of the services’ potential.
Did a federal court just give underemployed M&A guys a boost? Could be: The United States Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., has overturned a longstanding cap on cable-system ownership.
If the decision holds up, it could well start another round of dealmaking similar to the one we saw at the beginning of this decade in which the industry consolidated to about half a dozen major players.
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.
BlackBerry’s new Tour has garnered fairly positive reviews from the geek press. But you know who really loves it? Oldsters in the 35-49 age bracket. Or at least that’s what a new online brand survey says.
This is now an Apple earnings-call tradition: Analysts try their hardest to convince Apple executives to express interest in the booming market for cheap netbooks and Apple executives make it perfectly clear how much disdain they have for netbooks. But an $800 iTablet? That’s something else altogether…
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.
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.
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 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.
Midway through next year, Google’s $900 million, 3.5-year search advertising deal with News Corp. and MySpace expires. What are the odds that Rupert Murdoch’s social network gets anything close to that with a new contract? Very, very low.
The BlackBerry Storm hasn’t been a breakout hit. But last quarter Verizon still added another 1.4 million mobile customers, none of whom seemed swayed by the iPhone.
The Kindle may or may not be a hit–Amazon hasn’t released any kinds of sales numbers about its e-book reader, and everyone else’s guesses are… just guesses. But that won’t stop people from coming out with their own Kindle-killers or Kindle clones. And Verizon Wireless would love to help them
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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