The carnage in the Japanese consumer electronics industry rolls on.
This morning, Pioneer Corp. announced that it will cut 10,000 jobs and close its TV operations. The company said it now expects a loss for the March 2009 fiscal year of 130 billion yen, or $1.44 billion, far worse than its previous estimated loss of 78 billion yen. The company said it will withdraw from the TV business by March 2010.
I’m not sure why the micropayments-as-the-savior-of-journalism meme seems to have taken off of late, but I’m glad there are lots of people trying to squash it: I’d particularly recommend Gabe Sherman and Clay Shirky. But in the case of Steve Brill’s “secret memo” on the subject, it’s worth responding to some of his specifics.
Social networkers are looking to score some airtime, with 36 percent of them wanting to access their networks via TV screens, according to an ABI Research survey released Thursday. Intel and Yahoo are both looking into the convergence of social networking and TV.
You’ve probably heard how much the microblogging service Twitter can help your business, or that being on social-networking site Facebook can boost your company’s profile. But what you might not have considered is the potential danger in over-relying on these start-ups that could go out of business, get bought out, or close your account if you aren’t familiar with their Terms of Service.
MyDamnChannel’s “You Suck at Photoshop” is a near-perfect series for the Web: short, funny and low-budget, it both doesn’t require viewers to commit to a series and actually provides some useful information for those of us who do, in fact, suck at Photoshop.
The year of hope and change is certainly off to a grim start in the tech world. Last week alone saw layoff announcements from stalwarts like Intel and Microsoft, as well as Web 2.0 companies like Digg, just to name a few.
On TV, content is king. But on the Web, community may reign supreme. Throughout television history, the way to lure most viewers was to air the best shows. It doesn’t necessarily work that way on the Web, where many shows can be seen on multiple sites.
Like many at the bustling Google campus here, Keval Desai has a degree in computer science and tends to view things through the lens of mathematics. Even the topsy-turvy world of TV advertising. “TV, for the most part, has been unmeasurable,” said Desai, program manager for Google’s TV ad efforts. “We’re making TV as accountable [...]
Granted, most of the recent TV buzz has been about, rightly, “Mad Men”: Who wouldn’t want to spend summer Sunday nights delving into the deeply misogynistic psychosexual underbelly of a Kennedy-era advertising agency?
Here’s the thing about the TV business: It’s only as profitable or as valuable as the people who watch it. And if the only people who watch it are senior citizens strapped by debt, it’s not worth much–not to advertisers, anyway.
There is a lot of money being spent trying to turn internet video into something it’s not. It’s not TV. It’s certainly not going to be HDTV. What is shocking about the entire attempt to turn the internet into a TV/HDTV distribution medium is how much people lie to themselves about what is actually happening.
Kevin Maney smacks his head: While you’re lusting over a new iPhone, think about this: Why can’t you watch free, regular, over-the-air TV on your phone? Isn’t that what you really want — not these bastardized TV offerings that you have to pay for, like AT&T’s Mobile TV and Sprint’s MobiTV?
As major TV networks in recent years have embraced the online video movement in big ways, viewers are slowly trickling in. While you generally won’t find entire libraries and back catalogs waiting for you, the major players have made serious efforts to make current content extremely accessible online.
Two things struck me about Roku’s newly announced $100 Netflix Player, a book-sized set-top box that lets people watch streamed video files from Netflix on their TVs. First, it was priced lower than anything I’d previously seen in the “digital media adapter” category (i.e., devices that bridge the gap between the Internet and the TV). And second, it delivered less than any of those other devices. All it can do, in fact, is connect to Netflix’s Web site, select a movie or TV show to stream, then display the chosen program on a TV set.
Time Warner subsidiary HBO has gotten a fair amount of credit today for persuading Apple to abandon its one-price strategy for TV shows at the iTunes Store. That’s an interesting development, and it could open the door for NBC to bring its shows back to the store. But what many of the reports overlooked was how little HBO decided to put onto the virtual iTunes shelves. The network is making available downloadable versions of older shows only, and charging premium prices for many of them to boot.
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