From the who-thought-this-was-a-good-idea department:

The advert for its new drama “Brotherhood” will show a single image on the screen for the entire 30-second slot, and therefore retain its “sales message” when viewed even at the 12-times speeds enabled by Sky and other digital recorders, also known as personal video recorders, or PVRs.

Making an advert unbearably boring for the vast majority of viewers to enhance the experience for a small minority will just drive more people into the arms of PVRs.

As if filmschools weren’t pathetic enough, ASU has decided to outdo them all. They are starting a Masters film program that they call “EnterTech” that is a combo of entertainment and technology (what a brilliant idea):

David A. Young, vice president and dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, said the university was moving in the direction of mixing disciplines. ‘’We live in a trans-discipline world,’’ he said. ‘’If you look at the big issues facing society, like curing cancer, it won’t be cured from a one-discipline approach.’’

The EnterTech certificate follows on the heels of another new hybrid program, an earth- and space-exploration degree that combines engineering with science.

Dr. Young and Dr. Lehman pitched the EnterTech idea in the spring to a group of industry professionals at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles, but also listened to what Hollywood had to say.

‘’They’re saying, ‘We have a problem,’ ‘’ Dr. Young recalled. ‘’ ‘Convergence is happening, but we’re not turning out people who understand it.’ And all the production people were saying: ‘Don’t start another production program. That’s not what we need.’ ‘’

There is actually commonalities between Engineering and Science. However, this touchy-feely “entertainment + tech” crap is just a new way to exploit those desperate 18 year olds with visions of Hollywood glamour dancing in their heads. Hollywood always finds a way to spit on academia’s feeble film student output and now they are going to take it to a whole new level. Would you hire one of them? (The correct answer is “only if they read BBB").

Good luck kids, we’ll be looking out for you in the CAA mailroom.

This week can be summarized as:

The movie business is about to change: Apple Computer Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. are in the final stages of building online services that allow easy, legal access to potentially thousands of movies on demand.

Isn’t it amazing that people (especially journalists) fail to take the lessons from one arena and apply it to another?

Example: when iTunes introduced TV downloads for the video iPod everyone heralded it as a revolution. Now within months, all the TV networks realized that they didn’t need Apple to sell their content for them. They cut out the middleman and allowed people to download content from their own sites, and sometimes the let the public have it for free with ADVERTISING. What a novel concept!

How long do you think it will take the studios to realize they don’t need Apple or Yahoo to sell their content?

Actually, they already have. Remember MovieLink and CinemaNow (if you are a regular BBB reader you do)? People, you can download movies LEGALLY off the ‘net for almost six years now. Get over it.

UPDATE: We tried to use Amazon’s service but got bitchslapped:

OPERATING SYSTEM: The Unbox Video player application is only compatible with Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack 2 (SP2), Windows XP Professional SP2, Windows XP Tablet PC Edition SP2, or Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 Update Rollup 2. The Unbox Video player is not compatible with Apple/Macintosh operating systems.

We here at BBB live in Linux land.

A piece in the CSMonitor talks about ”desperation marketing” arising from the decline in effectiveness for traditional ads:

In a recent episode of CBS’s “CSI: New York,” a cellphone rings with the song “Talk” by Coldplay, which the characters discuss. At the next commercial break, the audience is invited to download the ringtone for $2.49. Over on NBC’s “Las Vegas,” sports fans en route to the Winter Olympics join the story line. The episode, which aired just prior to the Turin Games, then follows the group to Italy.
In the Monitor

Welcome to life after the 30-second TV spot. These examples are a tiny glimpse of what one media pundit calls “desperation marketing” - advertisers going beyond simple product placement to capture the hearts and wallets of increasingly ad-wary consumers who are spending more time online and on cellphones and less watching TV.

Unfortunately the piece ends up rambling about the usual suspects: cellphones and video games for younger audiences who demand “interactivity.” There is one interesting note however:

Dollars spent on TV advertising have been declining since 2004, when revenue hit $9 billion. “We’ve witnessed the peaking of TV,” says Mr. Jaffe. “We’re incrementally dissipating that spending on TV as the number of viable alternatives and substitutions continue to proliferate.”

Welcome friends, to the death-of-TV. Long live TV.

As TV slowly slides into oblivion:

TV viewers must have taken to the beach: It was the least-watched week in recorded history for the four biggest broadcast networks.

CBS, ABC, NBC and Fox averaged 20.8 million viewers during the average prime-time minute last week, according to Nielsen Media Research. That sunk below the previous record, set during the last week of July in 2005.

I bet they’re glad that mideast violence always picks up in the hot summer months to help generate some ratings. [via BoingBoing]

Did you notice that Google now offers certain “premium” content for free if you watch advertising? What a novel concept, I wonder if anyone has thought of that before…

With Google’s just announced “test” of “free today” sponsored streaming of premium videos at Google Video, Schmidt may no longer be disclaiming that as the company seeks to “organize the world’s information,” it is a media company.

Bogatin’s piece rightly points out the hypocrisy coming out of Google Video.

We’ll get back to you after the Google overlords have convinced everyone that they invented the 30-second spot.

And it brainwashes you better too:

Prime-time ABC television shows were viewed more than 11 million times on the Web in the first month of a test by the Walt Disney Co of whether consumers will watch ads online if the shows are free.

An online exit survey posted the first week of the two-month trial showed that 87 percent of respondents could recall the advertisers that sponsored the episodes they watched.

That compares with typical ad recall of about 40 percent for commercials viewed on television, industry sources said.

A retooled version of the free site, which incorporates data gathered during the test, will be launched in the fall, Disney officials said.

Recently in the NYTimes:

In the first episode of “Lovespring International,” a new comedy on the Lifetime channel about a dysfunctional dating service in Southern California, the owner of the agency storms into an office, furious at two employees.

“Do you know how many people have signed up for Perfectmatch.com in the last five minutes?” she barks. “1,623.”

In real life, Perfectmatch.com is a subscription-based online dating service with more than three million members. On “Lovespring International,” Perfectmatch.com will appear throughout the season as a faceless nemesis that is mentioned flatteringly as it steals clients from Lovespring.

Call it sponsorship, branded entertainment or product integration, but Perfectmatch’s deal with Lifetime is increasingly common in advertising — weaving the name of a product into a television show or film, not as an obvious ad, but as a distinct part of the story. (In another episode, a disgruntled client screams, “I would have had better luck on Perfectmatch.com.")

As the idea of the 30-second spot becomes extinct, the TV world is scrambling to come up with new ideas. Branded entertainment is a return to the early years of TV before the advent of content-interrupting commercials. Branded entertainment has the advantage that it survives ripping, bittorrenting, Tivoing, slingboxing and just about any other kind of time-shifting or place-shifting technology.  The problem is that this is the equivalent of burning in a giant corporate logo over the entire screen. Sure, everyone will see your logo but does that mean they want to watch a show all about your logo?

Naturally AdAge is the type of publication to understand the importance of this development:

Walt Disney Co.’s ABC issued a statement today confirming the network was prepared to negotiate with agencies using the existing ratings metric of “live only,” meaning it will only charge marketers for viewers who watch programs when they are aired (and not for viewers who watch later using a digital video recorder).

The issue of which metric to base this year’s upfront negotiations on has held up deals. Media agencies were united in their stand that they would only pay for live viewers, while the broadcast networks wanted to charge for those viewers who watched programs either later that same day (live plus same day) or later that week (live plus seven days). But late last week, ABC began to soften its stance, offering to negotiate with buyers on “live plus same day.”

Perhaps the silver lining in the networks’ clouds is that they will try to make up for the loss of advertising in TV via their new internet properties.

Remember when people like George Lucas said they were looking forward to using digital tech to replace sets and actors? Those “movies” already exist, they’re called videogames:

Activision will be opening a dedicated studio facility on the DreamWorks Animation campus in Glendale, California, following on the heels of their strategic alliance. The move, which establishes an unprecedented level of collaboration between a Hollywood studio and a videogame company, will facilitate simultaneous co-development between DreamWorks’ 3D-animated features and Activision games based on those films.

“This announcement marks an unparalleled step in the convergence between Hollywood and videogames,” stated Robert Kotick, chairman and ceo, Activision Inc. “For the first time, we will be able to align our games’ production schedules with the movies’ from the pre-production phase onward. This will allow us to fully leverage the movie assets and storylines, in addition to collaborating closely with the talented production teams at DreamWorks to develop storylines that expand the movie experience in new and compelling ways.”

While Hollywood has a very spotty track record turning games into films, the gaming industry has done a good job of increasing the quality of their output to become more “cinematic.” As every E3 convention every year shows, movies and videogames have long been on a collision course, especially since large chunks of nearly every studio film has gone through digital manipulation of some kind.

<big> + </big> <big> = ? </big>

Loyal BBB readers may remember a little gem we posted back in August ‘05 about Tivo starting to roll out TV-downloads-from-the-Internet. It seems that today Tivo has the first true fruits of this endeavor:

TiVo will unveil Tuesday a deal that will enable about 400,000 subscribers who have their machines connected via broadband Internet access to use their TVs to watch Web videos delivered by Internet video and ad sales service Brightcove. Specific programs to be offered — possibly as early as June — have not been named, but Brightcove clients include Discovery Communications, MTV Networks, Reuters, The New York Times, National Lampoon, SmartMoney and Farmers’ Almanac TV.

While the details haven’t quite been worked out yet, the writing is indeed on the wall. Since the deal between the two is non-exclusive, we can see a future in which TV watchers can start downloading video podcast-like content from the ‘net without any kind of middleman at all.

Tivo: give us a call when we can add RSS feeds and we’ll talk. Until then, we will have to settle for hope.

You’ve probably already heard:

Introducing Yahoo! Go™ on your TV

Now you can take Yahoo! off your computer and put it in your living room for everyone to see. View photos, search for video clips and watch movie trailers on your TV. Plus, your own digital video recorder (DVR) lets you record and watch your favorite shows anytime for free.
Be part of the Yahoo! Go for TV Beta!

If Google, Fox, and Apple are doing it you can bet that Yahoo is not far behind. Interestingly, Yahoo’s service actually hooks up your PC to your TV in a sort of Tivo-esque blend. Definintely a novel approach considering the traditional firewall between TV and PC.

Unfortunately, everyone in the BBB labs are left out:

A Windows®-based PC with minimum system requirements

* Windows XP® operating system (Yahoo! Go™ for TV is not compatible with Macintosh® or Linux)

One of you will have to give it a try for us and give us an update in the comments.

We will not bore you with the details as you’ve probably read this quote eight different times today already:

“Conventional wisdom, it’s an enemy at a time like this,” said Beth Comstock, president for digital media and market development at NBC Universal, part of General Electric. “In media today, I don’t think there is a single rule that can’t--and frankly, probably shouldn’t--be broken.

“This isn’t just about driving growth,” she added. “It’s about staying in business.”

Normally we’d just chalk this up to hype but then we learned that even the Emmys are changing their tune:

“iPOD” EMMY NOMINATION!

We just got word that It’s JerryTime has been nominated for a 2006 Emmy Award in the brand new “original entertainment programming created specifically for non-traditional viewing platforms” category. The award ceremony is on April 22nd. Orrin and I wanted to share this great news with you and to thank you for your support!

Now here is something you don’t see every day:

“We made a big mistake,” Mayer, who oversees all of Google’s search products, said Tuesday. “You can’t come out and launch a product like Google Video and say ‘CSI’ and ‘Survivor’ are there if they’re not on the home page.”

The video service has “fallen far short” of competitors such as Apple Computer Inc.’s iTunes music and video offering, said Allen Weiner, an analyst at Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner Inc. “What Apple has done with the iTunes store sets the bar really high.”

New York Times technology reviewer David Pogue said Jan. 19 that Google’s video store was “appallingly half-baked” and that the site “doesn’t live up to Google’s usual standards of excellence.”

We don’t know which is more shocking: the admission of error or the praise of uber-competitor Apple.

What’s strange really is that Google has a long history of releasing “half-baked” products. For example, Google News which has been in “beta” for over three years has only just now been released as a finished product. Why should the Video product be any different? In the technology world where product cycles are so short and competition is fierce, releasing a half-baked product early is often the difference between first-mover advantage and complete obscurity. Frankly, comparing yourself to Apple is always bad news: Apple has far more experience in pleasing, user-friendly interfaces that nearly any other tech firm around.

One day Google will realize that it cannot be all things to all people. It needs to concentrate on what it does well and leave the eyecandy to others. Unfortunately, Google has decided to take the Mega-Media-Takeover approach using its inflated stock to fuel its way into all sorts of places. In the long run, you cannot outspend Microsoft and you cannot out-design Apple. Google’s genius lies in innovation, rather than taking over traditional media they should concentrate on redefining media on the internet.

The New York Times isn’t exactly renowned for its technology coverage, so you can safely assume that by the time they cover anything that it is a pretty safe bet:

In the battle for the living room, cable, satellite, and increasingly, phone companies are trying to defend their turf by offering more choice through an array of content in video-on-demand programs.

But fending off the Internet’s openness will be a struggle, one that the online companies themselves lost years ago.

At the onset of the dot-com era, large online service companies like AOL, Compuserve and MSN tried to lock customers into electronic walled gardens of digital information. But it quickly became apparent that no single company could compete with the vast variety of information and entertainment sources provided on the Web.

The same phenomenon may well overtake traditional TV providers. Potentially, IPTV could replace the 100- or 500-channel world of the cable and satellite companies with millions of hybrid combinations that increasingly blend video, text from the Web, and even video-game-style interactivity.

We’re not usually Markoff fans over here but we found this analogy to be uncharacteristically apt. [via BoingBoing]

And then the empire struck back:

AT&T;Inc. and BellSouth Corp. are lobbying Capitol Hill for the right to create a two-tiered Internet, where the telecom carriers’ own Internet services would be transmitted faster and more efficiently than those of their competitors.

There is a saying about a genie being out of the bottle. Perhaps you know that one? [via BoingBoing]

Sprint is announcing today that they are making available downloadable feature-length films to certain phones:

Among them are “One-Eyed Jacks,” the Marlon Brando-Karl Malden Western, as well as “Angel and the Badman” with John Wayne. Other titles include “Night of the Living Dead” and the most recent—“Short Circuit” from 1986.

“This is what we could get rights to quickly,” said Dale Knoop, Sprint’s general manager for multimedia services. He said the company and MSpot are in negotiations for more current content, but declined to say which studios are involved.

Now we could make fun of the terrible movies, but that is simply too easy. Instead we are going to wonder who would pay money to watch a two hour movie on a two inch screen.

Read this review:

You may have streamed the NBC Nightly News to your Web browser. You may have watched the Video Music Awards at MTV.com. But you’ve never seen Internet television quite like this. Yesterday marked the official debut of CNN Pipeline, a 24-hour, commercial-free online television station broadcasting from its own Atlanta control room with its own news anchors.

And that only begins to describe this breathtaking new service. It streams not one, but four live video feeds straight to your desktop. If you get bored watching the latest White House press conference, you can switch to a live report from Iraq or footage of hurricane recovery efforts in New Orleans. And if the live news isn’t what you want, you can choose from dozens of on-demand news reports, spanning everything from politics and business to sports and entertainment.

The snitches over at ThinkSecret are reporting on Steve Jobs’ next front in the war on TV:

Apple’s Mac mini will be reborn as the digital hub centerpiece it was originally conceived to be, Think Secret sources have disclosed. The new Mac mini project, code-named Kaleidoscope, will feature an Intel processor and include both Front Row 2.0 and TiVo-like DVR functionality.

We should know in about a month Apple (at MacWorld Expo in SF) whether this rumor is true and if it is Apple’s answer to Tivo. Better buckle up.

Yet another announcement for the day:

“We’re talking to them about a whole slew of things including video-on-demand, including video search,” Moonves told Reuters in an interview regarding Google, ahead of Reuters’s Media and Advertising Summit next week.

Now these guys are just grasping at straws. “We’re talking to them about a whole slew of things” is Hollywood code-speak for “we have no fucking clue what’s going on but I want to make sure I’m not fired first.”

You think that these PR people would realize that a short 3-day Thanksgiving week is not exactly the time to do all these earth-shattering TV-Internet alliance announcements. By next week we’ll have all forgotten about it and they’ll have to whip up a whole new campaign for our attention.