All Things Digital

Bear with me for a minute, because I’m about to tell a long and self-involved tale. Ultimately I think it might say something interesting about platforms for television consumption, but of course that’ll be up to you to decide.

Before last fall, I barely had a television in my house and had only ever really watched TV shows over the last five years on DVD or iTunes. But then I started watching “Dancing With the Stars” through ABC.com’s downloadable player (the one that’s powered by Move Networks). I had personal connections to a few of the “celebrity” contestants–like our favorite web video hater Mark Cuban–and also wanted to use some of the software I was writing about. But let’s just say I went above and beyond just research.

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Wow, just when we question those EQAL guys’ reasoning for doing something dumb by pulling a hit series, they show they have something much more interesting up their sleeves. Wednesday at CBS’ upfront, a major partnership between the network and the just-funded start-up was announced.

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Man, there’s been a lot of comics-related news this week. Marvel Entertainment is keeping it going with its serious push into online territory. Marvel just hired former Sony Pictures Digital EVP Ira Rubenstein to head up its new Global Digital Media Group. With big budget high-profile motion pictures like Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk on tap for this summer, what does Rubenstein have in mind for online?

I spoke with Rubenstein yesterday about his plans. Since he just started his new gig, he wouldn’t get too specific about budgets or plans to launch dedicated web series, but he definitely has the Marvel faithful in mind.

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With technologies like TiVo and text messaging taking over the world, marketers are being forced to rethink their approach to advertising.

The New York Times writes that NBC is hearkening back to its roots by moving beyond the 30-second commercial to form bigger, longer-term relationships with advertisers.

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Seesmic is a video start-up I’ve shied away from writing about too often, because I’m not sure I really get it. But I figure if so many smart people think there’s something good going on here, I should keep an eye on what the company is doing. So last week we had founder and CEO Loïc Le Meur on the “GigaOM Show,” where I and co-host Joyce Kim got to ask him what’s the big idea.

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During a recent earnings call, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen said that his company will “work with Apple” to ensure that Flash apps would run on the iPhone. This after Steve Jobs publicly dissed Flash as being “too slow to be useful” and its stepsister Flash Lite as “not capable of being used with the Web.”

But like Glenn Close in “Fatal Attraction,” Flash is not going to be ignored.

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Now that professional writers are done protesting the Web, will they flock to it? In this quick video interview, Patric Verrone, president of the Writers Guild of America West, tells us which parts of the new WGA contract the Guild is happy about, what new Web ventures are coming down the pike (and whether they’ll stick around) and makes a case for the continuing value of writers.

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Now that Revver has been sold to LiveUniverse, and LiveVideo has been officially launched, what’s the future for Revver’s business model? After all, it was just a few months ago that Revver revealed they’d paid $1 million to content creators since opening their doors to the public.

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Troubled video site Revver was bought by Brad Greenspan’s LiveUniverse last night for a price “many multiples more” than the $500,000 to $1.5 million reported recently, according to a source close to the deal. Our source would not disclose the selling price, but said “I wouldn’t say anyone got rich, but everybody was happy.” Revver had raised $12.7 million from Comcast, Turner, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Bessemer Venture Partners, Draper Richards and William Randolph Hearst III. The Revver team will continue working under the new ownership.

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Next year’s switch from analog to digital TV broadcasts could produce more noise than signal, disrupting service for millions of people even if they have the proper converter box, according to a new study from market research firm Centris.

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Yahoo is close to acquiring enterprise video start-up Maven Networks for between $160 million and $170 million, according to sources familiar with the deal. Maven provides video hosting and distribution services for Gannett, Hearst, Fox News, Sony BMG, the Financial Times, Univision, TV Guide and others.

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Out of work and newly wise to the state of content being distributed online, a group of professional writers is looking to start their own production and distribution company. Aaron Mendelsohn, writer of the Disney film “Air Bud” and an active Writers Guild of America member, is captaining the efforts, and says he has gotten a group of “A-list” film and TV writers on the team. He’s also partnering with online community experts from Silicon Valley and raising “north of $30 million” in venture capital, with the idea of launching a company called Virtual Artists later this year.

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How was the first Republican CNN-YouTube debate? So exciting I fell asleep! I missed the last six questions and had to catch them in YouTube’s helpful playlist from the night. There’s also live-blogging coverage from the New York Times, ABC News and Mahalo.

There were no melting-snowman questions to trivialize Mitt Romney’s participation, but there was some goofiness, like this homemade candidate roundup ditty. As for content, CNN’s efforts to make sure the questions weren’t too left-leaning–a.k.a. “weed[ing] out the obvious sort of Democratic gotcha grenades”–meant that things like health care and climate change weren’t even mentioned.

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