By GARY GENTILE, AP Business Writer
LOS ANGELES - Kids who earn virtual cash in the popular online world "Club Penguin" can give some of it to charity as part of a program announced Monday by the Web site.
"It's showing the kids they can truly make a difference," said Lane Merrifield, a co-founder of Club Penguin, which is based in British Columbia and was purchased last summer by The Walt Disney Co.
In the Club Penguin world, kids win gold coins by playing games such as sled racing and, with a paid membership, buy virtual items like furniture and clothing.
Starting Dec. 14 and running through Dec. 24, kids can choose to donate their virtual money to support the environment, children's health or children's education.
The company will then split $1 million in real dollars among three charities — the World Wildlife Fund, the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation and Free The Children.
The Canadian Web site donated a little more than $30 million to charity after Disney agreed to pay $350 million for it. The sellers could get another $350 million if certain profit goals are reached.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071203/ap_on_hi_te/virtual_charity_2;_ylt=AnSNP0dZVO74mi9qd8C6Gl9k24cA
Monday, December 3, 2007
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
An Allowance That’s Measured in Minutes, Not Cents
By JULIE BICK
Published: November 25, 2007
HOWARD AND LIZZIE SHERMAN, ages 15 and 9, know that they need to complete all their homework and chores in order to receive their weekly allowance. The amount may be a little less than usual if they’ve misbehaved, or a bit larger if they have done some extra work around the house.
When the children want to use their allowance, though, they don’t go to the mall. They turn on the family’s computer or television because there’s a parallel economy in place at the Sherman home, with a currency most often known as “screen time.”
Screen time can be spent playing computer games, watching TV or movies or, for older children, visiting social networking sites like MySpace or instant messaging with friends. This new currency, used in a growing number of households, works as an allowance because screen time is highly valued by children and teenagers, and usually restricted by parents.
They may feel that their children’s time would be better spent reading a book, playing outside or talking directly to another person, according to Richard N. Bromfield, a psychologist on the staff of Harvard Medical School. But for the most part, screen time is seen as acceptable in moderation.
Families dole out the commodity in a variety of ways. Some have their children keep a log book of time used, or have them “spend” it from a stack of 30-minute allotted “tickets.”
For parents who don’t want to keep track themselves, there are devices that will turn off the television or computer automatically when the user has reached a time limit — (although some of today’s children may be more likely to know how to reset the device than their parents do). Some families grant extra screen time based on how much a child reads or practices piano, for example, or the number of days that they’ve avoided fighting with a sibling.
Kathleen Dayton of Seattle lets her twin 10-year-olds, and their little brother, age 7, earn extra screen time for minutes spent on extra math drills. “We reinforce things they’re learning in school,” she said, “and screen time is a really a strong motivator — it makes math happen in my house.”
Household chores stay out of the equation, though. Setting the table, unloading the dishwasher and putting away groceries, come with being a family member, Mrs. Dayton says: “They’re not negotiable.”
And while she sees the value in doling out screen time, she doesn’t want to overdo it. “Screen time isn’t evil — it’s fine in small doses,” she said, “but I feel pretty mixed about giving them much extra.”
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no more than two hours of screen time a day, and many parents feel that less is better.
Screen time can be a useful currency for teenagers who might be earning their own money through baby-sitting or other jobs, leaving parents looking for a new form of incentive or punishment.
Karen Vekasy of Stow, Ohio, said that as her son Mike Bailey “grew out of being sent to his room” at about the age of 11, she found that “electricity” — the family’s name for screen time — was his most valued commodity. “It’s entertainment to him and it’s social because he meets his friends online,” she said.
Mike, now 15, earns additional time by assisting his mother with office projects including PowerPoint presentations and video editing, or helping his grandfather with grocery shopping and other household maintenance. “I like the system,” Mike said, adding that it made him more likely to do extra work and less likely to break household rules.
Ms. Vekasy also used a reward of extra electricity to encourage Mike to start volunteering at a hospice. “These days he enjoys going, but without the incentive I don’t think I could have convinced him to try it out,” she said.
Sarah Chana Radcliffe, author of “Raise Your Kids Without Raising Your Voice,” (BPS Books), views screen-time allowances as a great motivator for children. She takes a long-term view of it. “Which adjectives do you want your child described as when they are 20?” she asks. “Do you want them, for example, to be known as responsible, respectful, generous and determined? Then start rewarding them for those behaviors from a young age and slowly phase out the rewards as the actions become more automatic.”
She tells parents to find a currency that their children care about, like screen time.
Mrs. Dayton sympathizes with her son’s desire to check sports scores on the Web and spend time on a Wii game console. “I read the news online; I do my e-mail,” she said. “I like my screen time, too.”
A household’s screen-time allowance system may morph over time. A few years ago, the Shermans, who live in Basking Ridge, N.J., established the rule that all homework, chores and instrument practice had to be completed before their children were allowed to turn on the television or play a video game. “It made sense in theory, but it turned out the kids would just rush through their work in a slapdash way, to get to the electronics,” their mother, Amy Sherman, said. “So we got rid of the weeknight time entirely.”
The Sherman children have learned to abide by the system. Howard knows he needs to keep his grades up or he won’t be allowed to join his friends at the local Friday night video game hangout place. His little sister Lizzie takes care of her real pet dogs before she feeds and pampers her Webkinz, penguins or other online pets. Mrs. Sherman says her children’s screen-time allowance has taught them about prioritization and how putting in extra effort can yield more of what they want out of life.
Dr. Bromfield, the author of “How to Unspoil Your Child Fast,” (Basil Books), cautions parents not to overuse household currency systems. Children are motivated both externally by pleasing their parents or by getting a reward, he said, as well as intrinsically, where they want to do the right thing, or high-quality work, because it feels good inside to do so.
REWARDING all a child’s good behaviors with toys, points, money or screen time can override the child’s burgeoning sense of self-motivation. “When used too much, rewards can quash a child’s internal desire to do well and do right,” Dr. Bromfield said. “Then a child’s attitude may turn to: ‘What’s in it for me?’”
As long as screen time or another reward system is part of a larger arsenal of flexible parenting strategies, Dr. Bromfield said, it can be very effective.
And parents can aim to use it to their best advantage. Or, as Mrs. Sherman says: “My son doesn’t ask for more computer time. He asks if he can do the dishes this week.”
Permalink
Published: November 25, 2007
HOWARD AND LIZZIE SHERMAN, ages 15 and 9, know that they need to complete all their homework and chores in order to receive their weekly allowance. The amount may be a little less than usual if they’ve misbehaved, or a bit larger if they have done some extra work around the house.
When the children want to use their allowance, though, they don’t go to the mall. They turn on the family’s computer or television because there’s a parallel economy in place at the Sherman home, with a currency most often known as “screen time.”
Screen time can be spent playing computer games, watching TV or movies or, for older children, visiting social networking sites like MySpace or instant messaging with friends. This new currency, used in a growing number of households, works as an allowance because screen time is highly valued by children and teenagers, and usually restricted by parents.
They may feel that their children’s time would be better spent reading a book, playing outside or talking directly to another person, according to Richard N. Bromfield, a psychologist on the staff of Harvard Medical School. But for the most part, screen time is seen as acceptable in moderation.
Families dole out the commodity in a variety of ways. Some have their children keep a log book of time used, or have them “spend” it from a stack of 30-minute allotted “tickets.”
For parents who don’t want to keep track themselves, there are devices that will turn off the television or computer automatically when the user has reached a time limit — (although some of today’s children may be more likely to know how to reset the device than their parents do). Some families grant extra screen time based on how much a child reads or practices piano, for example, or the number of days that they’ve avoided fighting with a sibling.
Kathleen Dayton of Seattle lets her twin 10-year-olds, and their little brother, age 7, earn extra screen time for minutes spent on extra math drills. “We reinforce things they’re learning in school,” she said, “and screen time is a really a strong motivator — it makes math happen in my house.”
Household chores stay out of the equation, though. Setting the table, unloading the dishwasher and putting away groceries, come with being a family member, Mrs. Dayton says: “They’re not negotiable.”
And while she sees the value in doling out screen time, she doesn’t want to overdo it. “Screen time isn’t evil — it’s fine in small doses,” she said, “but I feel pretty mixed about giving them much extra.”
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no more than two hours of screen time a day, and many parents feel that less is better.
Screen time can be a useful currency for teenagers who might be earning their own money through baby-sitting or other jobs, leaving parents looking for a new form of incentive or punishment.
Karen Vekasy of Stow, Ohio, said that as her son Mike Bailey “grew out of being sent to his room” at about the age of 11, she found that “electricity” — the family’s name for screen time — was his most valued commodity. “It’s entertainment to him and it’s social because he meets his friends online,” she said.
Mike, now 15, earns additional time by assisting his mother with office projects including PowerPoint presentations and video editing, or helping his grandfather with grocery shopping and other household maintenance. “I like the system,” Mike said, adding that it made him more likely to do extra work and less likely to break household rules.
Ms. Vekasy also used a reward of extra electricity to encourage Mike to start volunteering at a hospice. “These days he enjoys going, but without the incentive I don’t think I could have convinced him to try it out,” she said.
Sarah Chana Radcliffe, author of “Raise Your Kids Without Raising Your Voice,” (BPS Books), views screen-time allowances as a great motivator for children. She takes a long-term view of it. “Which adjectives do you want your child described as when they are 20?” she asks. “Do you want them, for example, to be known as responsible, respectful, generous and determined? Then start rewarding them for those behaviors from a young age and slowly phase out the rewards as the actions become more automatic.”
She tells parents to find a currency that their children care about, like screen time.
Mrs. Dayton sympathizes with her son’s desire to check sports scores on the Web and spend time on a Wii game console. “I read the news online; I do my e-mail,” she said. “I like my screen time, too.”
A household’s screen-time allowance system may morph over time. A few years ago, the Shermans, who live in Basking Ridge, N.J., established the rule that all homework, chores and instrument practice had to be completed before their children were allowed to turn on the television or play a video game. “It made sense in theory, but it turned out the kids would just rush through their work in a slapdash way, to get to the electronics,” their mother, Amy Sherman, said. “So we got rid of the weeknight time entirely.”
The Sherman children have learned to abide by the system. Howard knows he needs to keep his grades up or he won’t be allowed to join his friends at the local Friday night video game hangout place. His little sister Lizzie takes care of her real pet dogs before she feeds and pampers her Webkinz, penguins or other online pets. Mrs. Sherman says her children’s screen-time allowance has taught them about prioritization and how putting in extra effort can yield more of what they want out of life.
Dr. Bromfield, the author of “How to Unspoil Your Child Fast,” (Basil Books), cautions parents not to overuse household currency systems. Children are motivated both externally by pleasing their parents or by getting a reward, he said, as well as intrinsically, where they want to do the right thing, or high-quality work, because it feels good inside to do so.
REWARDING all a child’s good behaviors with toys, points, money or screen time can override the child’s burgeoning sense of self-motivation. “When used too much, rewards can quash a child’s internal desire to do well and do right,” Dr. Bromfield said. “Then a child’s attitude may turn to: ‘What’s in it for me?’”
As long as screen time or another reward system is part of a larger arsenal of flexible parenting strategies, Dr. Bromfield said, it can be very effective.
And parents can aim to use it to their best advantage. Or, as Mrs. Sherman says: “My son doesn’t ask for more computer time. He asks if he can do the dishes this week.”
Permalink
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
TV Tied To Blood Pressure In Obese Kids
Doctors Recommend Limiting Television To 2 Hours A Day And Forbidding TV While Eating
(WebMD) A new childhood obesity study links watching lots of TV to high blood pressure in obese children.
The researchers advise parents to heed recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) about limiting kids' TV time.
The AAP doesn't recommend TV for children aged 2 or younger. The AAP recommends no more than one to two hours per day of educational, nonviolent programs for older children.
Other tips include removing TVs from children's bedrooms and forbidding TV watching while eating, note the new study's authors, who included Perrie Pardee and Jeffrey Schwimmer, M.D., of the pediatrics department at the University of California, San Diego.
Television and Obese Children
Pardee, Schwimmer, and colleagues studied 546 obese kids and teens (average age: almost 12).
The children sought obesity treatment between 2003 and 2005 in San Diego, San Francisco, or Dayton, Ohio.
The kids had an average BMI (body mass index, which relates height to
weight) of 35.5, putting them in the top 5 percent of BMI for their age and sex.
The kids' parents reported how much TV their child watched on a typical day.
Children aged 8 and older helped their parents report TV time.
More than three-quarters of the kids -- 78 percent -- reported watching at least two hours of TV per day.
The children got their blood pressure recorded once for the study. Nearly half of the children -- 43 percent -- had a blood pressure reading that was in the hypertension range.
The heaviest children were the most likely to have a high blood pressure reading -- and to watch lots of TV.
Children who watched 2-4 hours of TV per day were 2.5 times as likely as kids who watch no more than two hours of daily TV to have high blood pressure.
Cause and Effect Unclear
The study, which is due to appear in December's edition of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, has some limits.
As an observational study, it doesn't prove cause and effect. That is, the findings don't prove that watching TV raised the kids' blood pressure; other factors may have been involved.
An editorial published with the study raises these questions for further research:
# Why is obesity increasing while TV viewing isn't increasing?
# Why does obesity increase in adolescence, when TV viewing decreases?
# Why do boys, who watch more TV than girls, show less obesity and more physical activity?
"Focusing on just one set of behaviors may not be enough," writes editorialist Stuart Biddle, Ph.D.
For instance, Biddle points out that turning off the TV doesn't make for a more active child if that child just starts playing computer games.
Biddle works at the School of Sport and Exercise Sciences at Loughborough University in Leicestershire, England.
By Miranda Hitti
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/10/30/health/webmd/main3432331.shtml
(WebMD) A new childhood obesity study links watching lots of TV to high blood pressure in obese children.
The researchers advise parents to heed recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) about limiting kids' TV time.
The AAP doesn't recommend TV for children aged 2 or younger. The AAP recommends no more than one to two hours per day of educational, nonviolent programs for older children.
Other tips include removing TVs from children's bedrooms and forbidding TV watching while eating, note the new study's authors, who included Perrie Pardee and Jeffrey Schwimmer, M.D., of the pediatrics department at the University of California, San Diego.
Television and Obese Children
Pardee, Schwimmer, and colleagues studied 546 obese kids and teens (average age: almost 12).
The children sought obesity treatment between 2003 and 2005 in San Diego, San Francisco, or Dayton, Ohio.
The kids had an average BMI (body mass index, which relates height to
weight) of 35.5, putting them in the top 5 percent of BMI for their age and sex.
The kids' parents reported how much TV their child watched on a typical day.
Children aged 8 and older helped their parents report TV time.
More than three-quarters of the kids -- 78 percent -- reported watching at least two hours of TV per day.
The children got their blood pressure recorded once for the study. Nearly half of the children -- 43 percent -- had a blood pressure reading that was in the hypertension range.
The heaviest children were the most likely to have a high blood pressure reading -- and to watch lots of TV.
Children who watched 2-4 hours of TV per day were 2.5 times as likely as kids who watch no more than two hours of daily TV to have high blood pressure.
Cause and Effect Unclear
The study, which is due to appear in December's edition of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, has some limits.
As an observational study, it doesn't prove cause and effect. That is, the findings don't prove that watching TV raised the kids' blood pressure; other factors may have been involved.
An editorial published with the study raises these questions for further research:
# Why is obesity increasing while TV viewing isn't increasing?
# Why does obesity increase in adolescence, when TV viewing decreases?
# Why do boys, who watch more TV than girls, show less obesity and more physical activity?
"Focusing on just one set of behaviors may not be enough," writes editorialist Stuart Biddle, Ph.D.
For instance, Biddle points out that turning off the TV doesn't make for a more active child if that child just starts playing computer games.
Biddle works at the School of Sport and Exercise Sciences at Loughborough University in Leicestershire, England.
By Miranda Hitti
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/10/30/health/webmd/main3432331.shtml
Parents limiting kids' TV time; education a concern
November 1, 2007
BY STEPHEN OHLEMACHER
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON -- Parents are taking a more active role in raising their children than they did a decade ago, setting greater restrictions on television watching and reading more to youngsters, the Census Bureau reported Wednesday.
The findings suggest that adults are reacting to a more dangerous world, while both parents and students are dealing with increased competition to get into good colleges, experts said.
"Whether it's a realistic panic or not, things like school shootings or child abductions or pedophile predators, that has a certain group of American parents pretty worried," said Angela Hattery, a sociology professor at Wake Forest University.
The report is from the Census Bureau's 2004 survey of income and program participation, which had a sample of 46,500 households. The results were compared with answers from the same survey questions in 1994.
In 2004, about 47% of teenagers had multiple television restrictions, including limits on program types, the time of day they could watch and how much they could see. That compares with 40% in 1994.
Nearly 71% of children age 6 to 11 had such limits in 2004, compared with 60% a decade earlier.
"All you have to do is own a TV," said Hattery, a parent. "I'm shocked at what you can see at 8 o'clock."
Parents also are feeling peer pressure to spend more time with their kids, and guilt when they don't, said Elizabeth Cooksey, a sociology professor at Ohio Sate University.
"We've really moved into this cultural expectation that this is what good parents do," Cooksey said. "It's more a cultural consensus, that if we are going to be parents, we are going to have to put time into it."
More parents read to their children in 2004 than a decade earlier. Wealthier, better-educated parents were more likely to do so than parents with lower incomes and less education.
Overall, 51% of parents with children age 3 to 5 said they had read to them at least seven times a week in 2004, compared with about 47% in 1994.
Students also are feeling pressure at school, with increased testing at all grade levels and tougher requirements to get into college.
It is no wonder: About 85% of parents said in 2004 that they expected their children to graduate from college.
To help, there were significant increases in students taking classes outside the regular school day, including lessons in music, dance, languages, computers and religion. About 29% of teenagers took such classes in 2004, compared with 19% in 1994.
The share of teens who played sports dropped during the decade, from 42% to 39%.
In addition to improving a college application, extracurricular activities help students feel accepted among their peers, said Ellen deLara, an assistant professor of social work at Syracuse University who works with adolescents.
"The notion of being activities that are worthy, whether it is community service or the band, that is extremely important to them," deLara said. "Adolescents who don't have the opportunity for that may feel alienated at school or in society in general."
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071101/NEWS07/711010353/1009
BY STEPHEN OHLEMACHER
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON -- Parents are taking a more active role in raising their children than they did a decade ago, setting greater restrictions on television watching and reading more to youngsters, the Census Bureau reported Wednesday.
The findings suggest that adults are reacting to a more dangerous world, while both parents and students are dealing with increased competition to get into good colleges, experts said.
"Whether it's a realistic panic or not, things like school shootings or child abductions or pedophile predators, that has a certain group of American parents pretty worried," said Angela Hattery, a sociology professor at Wake Forest University.
The report is from the Census Bureau's 2004 survey of income and program participation, which had a sample of 46,500 households. The results were compared with answers from the same survey questions in 1994.
In 2004, about 47% of teenagers had multiple television restrictions, including limits on program types, the time of day they could watch and how much they could see. That compares with 40% in 1994.
Nearly 71% of children age 6 to 11 had such limits in 2004, compared with 60% a decade earlier.
"All you have to do is own a TV," said Hattery, a parent. "I'm shocked at what you can see at 8 o'clock."
Parents also are feeling peer pressure to spend more time with their kids, and guilt when they don't, said Elizabeth Cooksey, a sociology professor at Ohio Sate University.
"We've really moved into this cultural expectation that this is what good parents do," Cooksey said. "It's more a cultural consensus, that if we are going to be parents, we are going to have to put time into it."
More parents read to their children in 2004 than a decade earlier. Wealthier, better-educated parents were more likely to do so than parents with lower incomes and less education.
Overall, 51% of parents with children age 3 to 5 said they had read to them at least seven times a week in 2004, compared with about 47% in 1994.
Students also are feeling pressure at school, with increased testing at all grade levels and tougher requirements to get into college.
It is no wonder: About 85% of parents said in 2004 that they expected their children to graduate from college.
To help, there were significant increases in students taking classes outside the regular school day, including lessons in music, dance, languages, computers and religion. About 29% of teenagers took such classes in 2004, compared with 19% in 1994.
The share of teens who played sports dropped during the decade, from 42% to 39%.
In addition to improving a college application, extracurricular activities help students feel accepted among their peers, said Ellen deLara, an assistant professor of social work at Syracuse University who works with adolescents.
"The notion of being activities that are worthy, whether it is community service or the band, that is extremely important to them," deLara said. "Adolescents who don't have the opportunity for that may feel alienated at school or in society in general."
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071101/NEWS07/711010353/1009
Friday, October 19, 2007
Parent Groups to Promote 'Good' TV Shows for Kids
Alliance Launches Positive Push Instead of Slamming 'Bad' Programming
By Ira Teinowitz
Published: October 16, 2007
WASHINGTON (AdAge.com) -- Publicizing good shows rather than ripping bad ones is the best way to improve TV for children. That's the verdict of a coalition of groups including the National PTA and the National Education Association, which are unveiling a Smart Television Alliance to tout better programming to parents, caregivers and advertisers.
"Much of children's television stinks," Susan Scanlan, chair of the National Council of Women's Organizations, said at a press conference today. "We don't need a poll to learn that children have all-too-easy access to violent, indecent, inappropriate or just plain stupid TV programming."
She said aim is to increase ratings and advertiser support for better shows. The urging will come in a twice-a-month newsletter and a website that members of the groups can access. The website, smarttelevisionalliance.org, won't rate shows itself but will list shows recommended by child experts. Ms. Scanlan said the alliance, which is being formed with funding from TiVo, may meet with networks, advertisers and program providers.
"Rather than sit back and wait and wait for something to change, [the alliance] is going to change children's television ourselves," Ms. Scanlan said.
Not enough
National PTA CEO Warlene Gary said the media industry hasn't done enough on its own. "Those in the television industry have had years to provide parents and families with the tools they require and deserve," she said. "Unfortunately these efforts have fallen far short of even basic needs. The PTA was intimately involved with the negotiations that created the television rating system. We had high hopes for it, but those hopes have not been realized."
NEA President Reg Weaver said teachers, too, have been eyeing children's TV. "We have long been concerned about the impact of television, particularly violent television on children," he said. "Studies show that average child spends about 900 hours in the classroom during the course of a school year but 1,023 hours in front of a TV. Think about the level of violence to which they are frequently exposed. Thousands of studies have been conducted on children, television and violence, and according to a majority, kids who watch violent programming are more likely to exhibit aggressive behavior."
Other groups in the alliance include the Afterschool Alliance, the Association of Jewish Family and Children's Agencies, the Coalition for Quality Children's Media, Kids First, Common Sense Media, the Parents' Choice Foundation and the YWCA.
An alliance official said one reason for the positive focus was a fear that bashing programs could be counterproductive, potentially making "bad" programs more appealing to kids.
http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=121203
By Ira Teinowitz
Published: October 16, 2007
WASHINGTON (AdAge.com) -- Publicizing good shows rather than ripping bad ones is the best way to improve TV for children. That's the verdict of a coalition of groups including the National PTA and the National Education Association, which are unveiling a Smart Television Alliance to tout better programming to parents, caregivers and advertisers.
"Much of children's television stinks," Susan Scanlan, chair of the National Council of Women's Organizations, said at a press conference today. "We don't need a poll to learn that children have all-too-easy access to violent, indecent, inappropriate or just plain stupid TV programming."
She said aim is to increase ratings and advertiser support for better shows. The urging will come in a twice-a-month newsletter and a website that members of the groups can access. The website, smarttelevisionalliance.org, won't rate shows itself but will list shows recommended by child experts. Ms. Scanlan said the alliance, which is being formed with funding from TiVo, may meet with networks, advertisers and program providers.
"Rather than sit back and wait and wait for something to change, [the alliance] is going to change children's television ourselves," Ms. Scanlan said.
Not enough
National PTA CEO Warlene Gary said the media industry hasn't done enough on its own. "Those in the television industry have had years to provide parents and families with the tools they require and deserve," she said. "Unfortunately these efforts have fallen far short of even basic needs. The PTA was intimately involved with the negotiations that created the television rating system. We had high hopes for it, but those hopes have not been realized."
NEA President Reg Weaver said teachers, too, have been eyeing children's TV. "We have long been concerned about the impact of television, particularly violent television on children," he said. "Studies show that average child spends about 900 hours in the classroom during the course of a school year but 1,023 hours in front of a TV. Think about the level of violence to which they are frequently exposed. Thousands of studies have been conducted on children, television and violence, and according to a majority, kids who watch violent programming are more likely to exhibit aggressive behavior."
Other groups in the alliance include the Afterschool Alliance, the Association of Jewish Family and Children's Agencies, the Coalition for Quality Children's Media, Kids First, Common Sense Media, the Parents' Choice Foundation and the YWCA.
An alliance official said one reason for the positive focus was a fear that bashing programs could be counterproductive, potentially making "bad" programs more appealing to kids.
http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=121203
Friday, October 12, 2007
Ad dollars flood Web, but will they go far enough?
By Paul Thomasch Fri Oct 12, 12:42 PM ET
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Companies will spend a record $31 billion this year to advertise everything from toothpaste to home loans on the Internet, supporting countless news sites, social networks, video exchanges and blogs.
But some media veterans worry that expectations for online advertising may be getting out-sized.
Increasingly, they say, too much media depends on advertising as the only source of revenue. With new players from software makers to cable operators also trying to cash in, the dollars simply may not stretch far enough.
"I'm getting to the point where I feel like every answer to every business development pitch is 'We're going to be advertiser supported'," said Beth Comstock, president of Integrated Media at NBC Universal, which this year set up a fund to invest in media and digital companies.
"It's just not going to be possible," she said at a recent advertising conference. "There are not going to be enough advertising dollars in the marketplace. No matter how clever we are, no matter what the format is."
NBC Universal's television networks, cable channels and Web sites compete for advertising dollars with everything from niche blogs to big media peers like Time Warner Inc (TWX.N) and Walt Disney Co (DIS.N). In addition fast-growing Internet companies like Google Inc (GOOG.O) are snatching up advertising budgets.
But new rivals are entering the market. Comcast Corp. (CMCSA.O), the largest U.S. cable operator, expects at least $1 billion in online advertising in the next five to six years.
Verizon Communications (VZ.N) and AT&T (T.N) are looking at advertising opportunities on their video and wireless services, while startups like social network Facebook are seen as a new frontier for Web marketing.
Even Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) has made a bold move into advertising with its purchase of Web marketing firm aQuantive.
THE MONEY FLOW
Until recently, the focus was squarely on how much money is moving into online advertising, rather than whether too many companies are making a grab for it.
There is little doubt today that a hefty portion of advertising dollars will shift to the Internet from TV, radio, print and elsewhere in the coming years. ZenithOptimedia forecasts that online ads worldwide will rise 28 percent in 2007, while the rest of the market grows at 3.7 percent.
Next year, ZenithOptimedia forecasts it to rise by 21 percent, and climb another 13 percent to $43 billion in 2009.
At that point, Web advertising would represent almost 10 percent of the $495 billion spent on advertising worldwide -- yet would trail spending on newspapers, magazines, and TV.
"There are billion of dollars that can still move," said Craig Lambert, Chief Digital Director of Colangelo, an integrated marketing agency based in Darien, Connecticut.
"Is there enough money flowing to support the businesses out there? I'd guess there is, just because there's so much money that has always been spent on TV and print," he added.
BIG SITES GET BIG DOLLARS
Others also take the position that there should be sufficient advertising money to spread around.
Jeff Brooks, Chief Executive of digital and direct marketing agency Euro RSCG 4D, sees a "huge gap" between the amount of time people spend on digital media and the amount of advertising money it attracts.
"The thrust of ad spending online, while dramatic in its growth quarter over quarter, still represents a disproportionately small percentage of total advertising dollars," he said.
The catch, according to some, is that much of the money flowing toward the Internet is concentrated on a few dozen of the most popular sites. That has left smaller, less well-known sites at a severe disadvantage when it comes to attracting advertising money and surviving.
In the United States, the top 50 Web sites accounted for more than 90 percent of the revenue from online ads in the first half of 2007, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers. The top 10 sites accounted for 70 percent of the revenue.
All the while, the number of Web sites continues to grow, creating more competition for audiences -- and advertisers -- who can also choose among video games, movies, TV, portable music and every other type of media entertainment.
"It's not like the old days, when it was 'if you build it, they will come,"' said Jonathan Sackett, Chief Digital Officer at Arnold Worldwide, a Boston-based advertising agency. "Now if you build it, they probably won't."
One alternative for Web sites would be to bank on subscriptions rather than advertising revenue, but few existing outlets have been successful with that model.
The reason is that unless the site offers extraordinary content, people simply refuse to pay for it, said Mark Miller, president of RMG Connect, an advertising and marketing agency.
"If Warren Buffett wanted to put out his own subscription newsletter online, well, I'm sure he'd get a bucketful of people to subscribe to it," Miller said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071012/tc_nm/advertising_web_dc_1
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Article: Movie downloads: Digital will generate valuable incremental revenue for the movie business
London 4th September 2007: The latest report from Screen Digest (www.screendigest.com) released today examines how the individual Hollywood Studios are adapting their businesses to online movie distribution. Notably, the report finds that a viable business will emerge in the US and W Europe for movie downloading, but warns that the Studios are following a fragmented path to digital distribution, with each major following a different strategy. This is likely to hamper the development of movie downloads and ultimately confuse and fragment the consumer market. The research provides detailed analysis and forecasts of the movie distribution business in the US and W Europe, and reveals that the overall winners in this market will not only be the Studios who own the content, but major device manufacturers such as Microsoft, Apple and Sony. Unique to the report entitled 'Online Movie Strategies: Competitive Review and Market Outlook' are trade level revenues and forecasts of the market for movie downloads, both rental and retail. Screen Digest predicts the market will be worth $1.3bn in 2011 in the US and W Europe combined. Of this, $720m will be generated in the US and $572m in W Europe. The majority of the revenue in 2011 will be taken by the Studios and content owners, at $530m in the US and $405m in W Europe, leaving service and solutions providers to scramble for the remaining share.
For some hardware manufacturers, selling digital movies will be used as a marketing tool to sell devices. In this highly competitive climate, the Studios are able to cash in and command high margins: Screen Digest's analysis reveals that the Studio wholesale price on movie downloads to service providers ranges from 70% to 105% of consumer price on the latest new film releases. As such, for service providers, movie downloads will become a low-margin and potentially loss-making endeavour, and only those service providers who have a strong hardware proposition and are able to absorb the cost, such as Apple, Microsoft or Sony, are likely to succeed.
According to Screen Digest, the online digital movies segment will constitute 3 per cent of all movie home entertainment revenues in the US and W Europe by 2011. This may be smaller than some observers were expecting, but is still a significant market and will bring much needed incremental revenue to the movie business as DVD growth falls away. Arash Amel, Senior Analyst and author of the report says "At Screen Digest we have re-evaluated our 2006 forecasts of the digital movie market value in response to consumer reaction to existing services. It is becoming increasingly apparent that people want to watch films they've downloaded on their large screen TVs and home entertainment systems. To do that, they need a new device, such as an Apple TV, an Xbox, a PS3 or a plain old media extender, which can link their broadband connection to the TV set. At present, there simply isn't adequate penetration of these devices – and the idea that people will en masse watch a two or three-hour movie on the PC just isn't realistic. It will take time to reach a wider market penetration with these new devices, and we believe that this will start to become more main stream beyond 2011.
In the competitive analysis section of the report, the different strategies and tactics employed by the Studios for exploiting digital movie content are compared. Unlike the introduction of the DVD, where the Studios agreed a single format and approximate business model, digital is being handled very differently. Every Studio has its own view and approach to this new era, resulting in the development of a fragmented market, which will undoubtedly hinder the future development of digital.For example, some Studios are likely to adopt a 'day and date' strategy for film release, making content available across all platforms on the same day, from the physical DVD to online downloads. Others will continue with different release dates depending on the delivery medium. As Amel concludes "How the Studios react is crucial. It's a delicate balancing act between maintaining their relationships with their highly important DVD customer base – the powerful retailers like Walmart and Tesco – whilst meeting growing consumer demand for immediate online downloads."
For more information please contact:
Screen Digest:
Fay Hamilton
PR Manager
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7424 2847
fay.hamilton@screendigest.com
Media enquiries:
Lucy Green
Tel: +44 (0) 7817 698366
lgreen@greenfieldscommunications.com
About this research
The data in this press release is taken from Screen Digest's latest report 'Online Movie Strategies: Competitive Review and Market Outlook'. The report focuses on the online distribution of digital movies in W Europe and the US, and contains detailed analysis of the strategies of the major Hollywood Studios. Comprehensive data includes consumer spending on movie downloading, as well as trade level revenues generated by content owners, together with the value of the total movie home entertainment market. The report also details the penetration of technology: including broadband connectivity, portable video device data and in-home broadband-enabled entertainment device forecast. The company profiles section of the report presents key details on eight Hollywood Studios, including the size of libraries prepared for digital distribution and a comprehensive benchmarking of service deals struck in the US and W Europe.
About Screen Digest - Global media intelligence
Screen Digest is the pre-eminent firm of industry analysts covering the global media markets. We employ a team of 30 specialist analysts covering television, broadband, mobile, home entertainment, cinema and gaming. Our online services and reports provide the information and analysis that hundreds of media companies worldwide base their decisions on.
To find out more, please contact Screen Digest sales/sales@screendigest.com
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7424 2820. www.screendigest.com
http://www.screendigest.com/reports/07onlinemoviestrat/press_releases_04_09_2007/view.html
For some hardware manufacturers, selling digital movies will be used as a marketing tool to sell devices. In this highly competitive climate, the Studios are able to cash in and command high margins: Screen Digest's analysis reveals that the Studio wholesale price on movie downloads to service providers ranges from 70% to 105% of consumer price on the latest new film releases. As such, for service providers, movie downloads will become a low-margin and potentially loss-making endeavour, and only those service providers who have a strong hardware proposition and are able to absorb the cost, such as Apple, Microsoft or Sony, are likely to succeed.
According to Screen Digest, the online digital movies segment will constitute 3 per cent of all movie home entertainment revenues in the US and W Europe by 2011. This may be smaller than some observers were expecting, but is still a significant market and will bring much needed incremental revenue to the movie business as DVD growth falls away. Arash Amel, Senior Analyst and author of the report says "At Screen Digest we have re-evaluated our 2006 forecasts of the digital movie market value in response to consumer reaction to existing services. It is becoming increasingly apparent that people want to watch films they've downloaded on their large screen TVs and home entertainment systems. To do that, they need a new device, such as an Apple TV, an Xbox, a PS3 or a plain old media extender, which can link their broadband connection to the TV set. At present, there simply isn't adequate penetration of these devices – and the idea that people will en masse watch a two or three-hour movie on the PC just isn't realistic. It will take time to reach a wider market penetration with these new devices, and we believe that this will start to become more main stream beyond 2011.
In the competitive analysis section of the report, the different strategies and tactics employed by the Studios for exploiting digital movie content are compared. Unlike the introduction of the DVD, where the Studios agreed a single format and approximate business model, digital is being handled very differently. Every Studio has its own view and approach to this new era, resulting in the development of a fragmented market, which will undoubtedly hinder the future development of digital.For example, some Studios are likely to adopt a 'day and date' strategy for film release, making content available across all platforms on the same day, from the physical DVD to online downloads. Others will continue with different release dates depending on the delivery medium. As Amel concludes "How the Studios react is crucial. It's a delicate balancing act between maintaining their relationships with their highly important DVD customer base – the powerful retailers like Walmart and Tesco – whilst meeting growing consumer demand for immediate online downloads."
For more information please contact:
Screen Digest:
Fay Hamilton
PR Manager
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7424 2847
fay.hamilton@screendigest.com
Media enquiries:
Lucy Green
Tel: +44 (0) 7817 698366
lgreen@greenfieldscommunications.com
About this research
The data in this press release is taken from Screen Digest's latest report 'Online Movie Strategies: Competitive Review and Market Outlook'. The report focuses on the online distribution of digital movies in W Europe and the US, and contains detailed analysis of the strategies of the major Hollywood Studios. Comprehensive data includes consumer spending on movie downloading, as well as trade level revenues generated by content owners, together with the value of the total movie home entertainment market. The report also details the penetration of technology: including broadband connectivity, portable video device data and in-home broadband-enabled entertainment device forecast. The company profiles section of the report presents key details on eight Hollywood Studios, including the size of libraries prepared for digital distribution and a comprehensive benchmarking of service deals struck in the US and W Europe.
About Screen Digest - Global media intelligence
Screen Digest is the pre-eminent firm of industry analysts covering the global media markets. We employ a team of 30 specialist analysts covering television, broadband, mobile, home entertainment, cinema and gaming. Our online services and reports provide the information and analysis that hundreds of media companies worldwide base their decisions on.
To find out more, please contact Screen Digest sales/sales@screendigest.com
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7424 2820. www.screendigest.com
http://www.screendigest.com/reports/07onlinemoviestrat/press_releases_04_09_2007/view.html
Article: Cartoon Network New Media Invites Kids to Rule After School with Master Control
Starting Sept. 24 kids can join interactive teams at CartoonNetwork.com where they will vote for their favorite shows; winners gain domination over the network’s after-school airwaves
Just in time to take some of the sting out of back-to-school season, Cartoon Network New Media launches the 15-week first season of Master Control on Sept. 24. Master Control is an unprecedented multiplatform initiative that gives kids control over the after-school time block on Cartoon Network and builds an engaging fan network online at CartoonNetwork.com.
As Master Control kicks off, fans can visit CartoonNetwork.com and join one of three Master Control teams. Team members can vote online for which Cartoon Network show they’d like to see air Monday through Thursday in the 5:30 p.m. program slot. The team that casts the most votes each Friday decides the entire 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. programming block for that day (all times are ET, PT).
“We are committed to delivering multiplatform activities that will spark engagement and empowerment for the Cartoon Network audience,” said Paul Condolora, senior vice president and general manager of Cartoon Network New Media. “Master Control does that and offers a Cartoon Network twist to online voting for television programming.”
Master Control teams will have home pages that serve as virtual clubhouses with themed logos in addition to branding that will carry through to network promotions and on-air bumpers.
At launch, kids can choose to join one of three Master Control teams, switching allegiances as they like throughout the season. In the spirit of fun and over-the-top adventure, the teams are:
Shadowmark: Stealthy and mysterious, Shadowmark achieves its goals by any means necessary.
Vikinators: Fiercely competitive warriors, the Vikinators never back down.
Blastadons: Elite warlocks by birthright, Blastadons wield powerful and ancient magic.
“The team home pages will serve as a rallying point for members,” said Art Roche, Cartoon Network New Media creative director. “We think kids will love the interactive element of competing against other teams. Fans really will control the destiny of everything, working together to beat their opponents from week to week.”
As the Master Control season progresses, Cartoon Network will roll out more team-themed activities and extras, culminating in a tournament-play round, the winner of which gains even more days of control over the network lineup.
About Cartoon Network New Media
Cartoon Network New Media is responsible for the production of Cartoon Network’s popular Web sites, which include CartoonNetwork.com, ToonamiJetstream.com, Awesomehouseparty.com and CartoonNetworkYa.com (the Spanish-language site for kids). These sites are some of the most popular entertainment sites in the world for kids, currently attracting an average of more than 6 million unique users each month in the U.S. (Nielsen//NetRatings). The top attraction is their roster of games, which drew more than 2 billion game plays in 2006. In addition, Cartoon Network New Media is the creative force behind Cartoon Network’s video-on-demand offerings, interactive TV and mobile offerings, which include partnerships with such major carriers as Sprint, Cingular and Verizon.
About Cartoon Network
Cartoon Network (CartoonNetwork.com), currently seen in more than 91 million U.S. homes and 160 countries around the world, is Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.’s ad-supported cable service offering the best in original, acquired and classic animated entertainment for kids and families. Overnight from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. Monday through Saturday and 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. Sunday (ET, PT), Cartoon Network shares its channel space with Adult Swim, a late-night destination showcasing original and acquired animation for young adults 18-34.
Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., a Time Warner company, is a major producer of news and entertainment product around the world and the leading provider of programming for the basic cable industry.
CONTACTS:
Jessica Wolf MPRM Public Relations (323) 933-3399 JWolf@mprm.com
Tim DeClaire Cartoon Network (404) 575-9283 tim.declaire@turner.com
http://www.turnerinfo.com/newsitem.aspx?P=CARTOON&CID01=61c020bb-e491-44c3-838c-31f94231020f
Just in time to take some of the sting out of back-to-school season, Cartoon Network New Media launches the 15-week first season of Master Control on Sept. 24. Master Control is an unprecedented multiplatform initiative that gives kids control over the after-school time block on Cartoon Network and builds an engaging fan network online at CartoonNetwork.com.
As Master Control kicks off, fans can visit CartoonNetwork.com and join one of three Master Control teams. Team members can vote online for which Cartoon Network show they’d like to see air Monday through Thursday in the 5:30 p.m. program slot. The team that casts the most votes each Friday decides the entire 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. programming block for that day (all times are ET, PT).
“We are committed to delivering multiplatform activities that will spark engagement and empowerment for the Cartoon Network audience,” said Paul Condolora, senior vice president and general manager of Cartoon Network New Media. “Master Control does that and offers a Cartoon Network twist to online voting for television programming.”
Master Control teams will have home pages that serve as virtual clubhouses with themed logos in addition to branding that will carry through to network promotions and on-air bumpers.
At launch, kids can choose to join one of three Master Control teams, switching allegiances as they like throughout the season. In the spirit of fun and over-the-top adventure, the teams are:
Shadowmark: Stealthy and mysterious, Shadowmark achieves its goals by any means necessary.
Vikinators: Fiercely competitive warriors, the Vikinators never back down.
Blastadons: Elite warlocks by birthright, Blastadons wield powerful and ancient magic.
“The team home pages will serve as a rallying point for members,” said Art Roche, Cartoon Network New Media creative director. “We think kids will love the interactive element of competing against other teams. Fans really will control the destiny of everything, working together to beat their opponents from week to week.”
As the Master Control season progresses, Cartoon Network will roll out more team-themed activities and extras, culminating in a tournament-play round, the winner of which gains even more days of control over the network lineup.
About Cartoon Network New Media
Cartoon Network New Media is responsible for the production of Cartoon Network’s popular Web sites, which include CartoonNetwork.com, ToonamiJetstream.com, Awesomehouseparty.com and CartoonNetworkYa.com (the Spanish-language site for kids). These sites are some of the most popular entertainment sites in the world for kids, currently attracting an average of more than 6 million unique users each month in the U.S. (Nielsen//NetRatings). The top attraction is their roster of games, which drew more than 2 billion game plays in 2006. In addition, Cartoon Network New Media is the creative force behind Cartoon Network’s video-on-demand offerings, interactive TV and mobile offerings, which include partnerships with such major carriers as Sprint, Cingular and Verizon.
About Cartoon Network
Cartoon Network (CartoonNetwork.com), currently seen in more than 91 million U.S. homes and 160 countries around the world, is Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.’s ad-supported cable service offering the best in original, acquired and classic animated entertainment for kids and families. Overnight from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. Monday through Saturday and 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. Sunday (ET, PT), Cartoon Network shares its channel space with Adult Swim, a late-night destination showcasing original and acquired animation for young adults 18-34.
Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., a Time Warner company, is a major producer of news and entertainment product around the world and the leading provider of programming for the basic cable industry.
CONTACTS:
Jessica Wolf MPRM Public Relations (323) 933-3399 JWolf@mprm.com
Tim DeClaire Cartoon Network (404) 575-9283 tim.declaire@turner.com
http://www.turnerinfo.com/newsitem.aspx?P=CARTOON&CID01=61c020bb-e491-44c3-838c-31f94231020f
Article: Is Vudu the iPod of for-Pay Internet Video?
The Internet video download market has had a rough go of it lately. With Google (GOOG) bailing on its efforts to sell shows on Google Video, Blockbuster (BBI) buying Movielink for pocket change, and even Apple’s (AAPL) video business still accounting for only a smidgen of music sales two years after its launch, it’s a wonder that some pundits aren’t saying the future of Internet video is one that is going to be entirely ad-supported.
Oh wait, they are.
Call me crazy, but I think for-pay video on the Internet has a future as well. Sure, the majority of TV shows, user-generated content and all sorts of other video will mainly be paid for using ads, but there are some types of content for which consumers will pull out their credit cards. And I’m not just talking porn and Major League Baseball.
Where I think the pay market has a particularly bright future is the movie business. After all, we all love movies, and we love watching them in our homes — regardless of how they’re delivered. And movies that get released to home video aren’t about to show up on any ad-supported streaming sites anytime soon, at least not legally.
So what will it take for the for-pay Internet video market to take off? Simply put, when it gets its iPod.
The Internet video market today is much like the digital music market pre-iPod, with lots of solutions, services, and software, none of which work particularly well together where it matters most – the delivery device. What the Internet video market needs, then, is a device that looks at home next to the TV, outputs at DVD- and eventually HD-quality, and works without headache.
Maybe it will be Apple TV. But it won’t be with this version, because for all of the advances it has brought to the connected entertainment market, this product currently has some key shortcomings, most notably the absence of both direct download and an option to rent.
So who will bring the for-pay Internet market its iPod moment? So far the most eligible product I’ve seen comes from Vudu. (Our original post on Vudu.) The box, which the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company loaned me to tinker with over the past week, does most of what I consider necessary to bring Internet video to TV in an almost entirely pain-free fashion:
* Instant, or nearly instant, streaming of movies
* A wide catalog of movies across all major studios, with enough of a back catalog to make things interesting
* The ability to rent or own
* Easy network and video connection setups
* Intuitive and engaging user interface
I started using the Xbox 360 Video Marketplace when it came out, but stopped using it after I’d downloaded the only three or four movies in the service’s small library in which I had any interest. I also found I would get bored waiting for the movie to download, something Vudu avoids by nearly instant streaming.
It’s this instant-watch capability that had me most intrigued. The folks at Vudu told me that their technology to enable streaming is based on P2P, and while I have yet to connect with their CTO to talk about the specifics, I was and still am a little skeptical about the ability to do instant streaming using P2P. But, whatever they are using, be it a CDN, P2P or pop cans and string, I found that over the course of the last week I’ve been able to select and watch shows nearly instantaneously. At times I was told my Comcast connection wasn’t fast enough (the user guide told me I needed a consistent 1.7 Mbps connection), but then within ten minutes or so it would say it was ready to watch the show. Other times it has allowed me to watch the show instantly, and the quality has been DVD quality (they say they will be rolling out HD in the future).
Vudu has yet to roll out their box at retail, and I’ll be watching very closely to see whether — once they’re in wide release — these boxes all work as well as the one I’ve been using this past week. As we all know, new services tend to have performance issues once mass rollouts happen, as we saw with Joost’s entry into wider beta. And even with the smoothness of the service’s performance, I still have problems with pretty much all Internet VOD service limited usage rights – including Vudu’s. (Why, oh why, can we only have 24 hours to watch a movie once we start it – doesn’t anyone in Hollywood fall asleep watching movies?).
For now, I’m sticking with my belief that Internet pay VOD will eventually take off, and with the release of Vudu, that could happen sooner than later.
Mike Wolf is the Director of Digital Home Research for ABI Research (www.abiresearch.com) and writes about Internet Video and other topics. He also blogs occasionally between report deadlines on Internet TV and other topics here.
http://newteevee.com/2007/09/05/is-vudu%e2%80%99s-the-ipod-of-for-pay-internet-video/#more-1996
Oh wait, they are.
Call me crazy, but I think for-pay video on the Internet has a future as well. Sure, the majority of TV shows, user-generated content and all sorts of other video will mainly be paid for using ads, but there are some types of content for which consumers will pull out their credit cards. And I’m not just talking porn and Major League Baseball.
Where I think the pay market has a particularly bright future is the movie business. After all, we all love movies, and we love watching them in our homes — regardless of how they’re delivered. And movies that get released to home video aren’t about to show up on any ad-supported streaming sites anytime soon, at least not legally.
So what will it take for the for-pay Internet video market to take off? Simply put, when it gets its iPod.
The Internet video market today is much like the digital music market pre-iPod, with lots of solutions, services, and software, none of which work particularly well together where it matters most – the delivery device. What the Internet video market needs, then, is a device that looks at home next to the TV, outputs at DVD- and eventually HD-quality, and works without headache.
Maybe it will be Apple TV. But it won’t be with this version, because for all of the advances it has brought to the connected entertainment market, this product currently has some key shortcomings, most notably the absence of both direct download and an option to rent.
So who will bring the for-pay Internet market its iPod moment? So far the most eligible product I’ve seen comes from Vudu. (Our original post on Vudu.) The box, which the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company loaned me to tinker with over the past week, does most of what I consider necessary to bring Internet video to TV in an almost entirely pain-free fashion:
* Instant, or nearly instant, streaming of movies
* A wide catalog of movies across all major studios, with enough of a back catalog to make things interesting
* The ability to rent or own
* Easy network and video connection setups
* Intuitive and engaging user interface
I started using the Xbox 360 Video Marketplace when it came out, but stopped using it after I’d downloaded the only three or four movies in the service’s small library in which I had any interest. I also found I would get bored waiting for the movie to download, something Vudu avoids by nearly instant streaming.
It’s this instant-watch capability that had me most intrigued. The folks at Vudu told me that their technology to enable streaming is based on P2P, and while I have yet to connect with their CTO to talk about the specifics, I was and still am a little skeptical about the ability to do instant streaming using P2P. But, whatever they are using, be it a CDN, P2P or pop cans and string, I found that over the course of the last week I’ve been able to select and watch shows nearly instantaneously. At times I was told my Comcast connection wasn’t fast enough (the user guide told me I needed a consistent 1.7 Mbps connection), but then within ten minutes or so it would say it was ready to watch the show. Other times it has allowed me to watch the show instantly, and the quality has been DVD quality (they say they will be rolling out HD in the future).
Vudu has yet to roll out their box at retail, and I’ll be watching very closely to see whether — once they’re in wide release — these boxes all work as well as the one I’ve been using this past week. As we all know, new services tend to have performance issues once mass rollouts happen, as we saw with Joost’s entry into wider beta. And even with the smoothness of the service’s performance, I still have problems with pretty much all Internet VOD service limited usage rights – including Vudu’s. (Why, oh why, can we only have 24 hours to watch a movie once we start it – doesn’t anyone in Hollywood fall asleep watching movies?).
For now, I’m sticking with my belief that Internet pay VOD will eventually take off, and with the release of Vudu, that could happen sooner than later.
Mike Wolf is the Director of Digital Home Research for ABI Research (www.abiresearch.com) and writes about Internet Video and other topics. He also blogs occasionally between report deadlines on Internet TV and other topics here.
http://newteevee.com/2007/09/05/is-vudu%e2%80%99s-the-ipod-of-for-pay-internet-video/#more-1996
Article: French toon export sales down
As several hundred delegates today prepared to depart TV France International's annual sales market Le Rendez-Vous in picturesque Biarritz, the organization released industry stats for 2006. They paint a less-than-rosy picture for France's largest programming export - animation. The genre's international sales were down 6.1% last year to US$58.3 million.
French animation distributors experienced significant sales drops in the UK (down 32.6%) and North America (37.6%), in particular. Latin America proved to be a bright light, with animation exports to the region shooting up by 21.6% last year. In general, TV France's year-end report cites stiff competition in the global sector as the chief reason for the downturn.
French co-productions didn't fare much better. The value of French-initiated animation co-pros dropped by 18.8%, while foreign investment in French animation was down 48.6%. However, French-majority co-pros were up by 30.4%, boosted by new financing options including regional subsidies and tax credits. In all, animation co-pros accounted for 423 hours of programming last year, bringing in US$20 million in foreign capital.
http://www.kidscreen.com/articles/daily/20070906/french.html
French animation distributors experienced significant sales drops in the UK (down 32.6%) and North America (37.6%), in particular. Latin America proved to be a bright light, with animation exports to the region shooting up by 21.6% last year. In general, TV France's year-end report cites stiff competition in the global sector as the chief reason for the downturn.
French co-productions didn't fare much better. The value of French-initiated animation co-pros dropped by 18.8%, while foreign investment in French animation was down 48.6%. However, French-majority co-pros were up by 30.4%, boosted by new financing options including regional subsidies and tax credits. In all, animation co-pros accounted for 423 hours of programming last year, bringing in US$20 million in foreign capital.
http://www.kidscreen.com/articles/daily/20070906/french.html
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Article: Jetix launches on-demand channel in Singapore
by Gary Rusak
Walt Disney Television International has launched the first Jetix-branded subscription VOD service in Asia. Kids in Singapore will get a chance to order up content on IPTV SingTel's brand new digital cable mio TV service.
Aimed at kids six to 14, the service will offer series such as W.I.T.C.H., Get Ed, Super Robot Monkey Team Hyper Force Go and A.T.O.M.. All in, 20 hours of Jetix content will be available on the channel at any given time, with 25% of it being refreshed monthly.
The mio TV Rent-A-Pack nine-channel offering that includes Jetix will cost subscribers US$4.20 per month.
http://www.kidscreen.com/articles/daily/20070830/singapore.html
Walt Disney Television International has launched the first Jetix-branded subscription VOD service in Asia. Kids in Singapore will get a chance to order up content on IPTV SingTel's brand new digital cable mio TV service.
Aimed at kids six to 14, the service will offer series such as W.I.T.C.H., Get Ed, Super Robot Monkey Team Hyper Force Go and A.T.O.M.. All in, 20 hours of Jetix content will be available on the channel at any given time, with 25% of it being refreshed monthly.
The mio TV Rent-A-Pack nine-channel offering that includes Jetix will cost subscribers US$4.20 per month.
http://www.kidscreen.com/articles/daily/20070830/singapore.html
Monday, August 20, 2007
Article: Pass the Popcorn. But Where’s the Movie?
By RANDALL STROSS
Published: August 19, 2007
AS consumers by the millions install new flat-screen, high-definition TV sets this year, more than half of which will have 50-inch or larger screens, they can proudly say that they are doing their part to modernize the movie-viewing experience at home.
Cable operators have done their part, too, building a video-on-demand infrastructure that can supply viewers with a nearly limitless choice of movie titles, available at any time of day. No trips to the rental store. No vigils at the mailbox for discs from the subscription service. No purchases of additional computer hardware to transport downloaded movie files to somewhere else in the house. Just a couple of clicks of the cable remote control.
All is ready — except an unstinting supply of movies. The studios have balked.
According to Craig Moffett, vice president and senior analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, cable’s video-on-demand is well positioned, technically speaking, to be the preferred way that movies reach the home, but the Cable Guys cannot get access to Hollywood’s products: “They built a Ferrari of a delivery engine, but the content owners didn’t show up.”
The movie studios are preternaturally suspicious of the new and unfamiliar. Their fear has nothing to do with crunching the numbers, but rather with large organizations’ tendency to lose sight of their interests — not to mention their customers’. Thanks to the efficiencies of digital delivery, the studios actually earn three times the margin on each video-on-demand viewed that they earn on a store rental, while charging the same $4.
Comcast now has secured rights to offer only about 300 movie titles on-demand on any given day, excluding premium channels like HBO; about 50 of those are high-definition. It has a long way to go to match the comprehensive coverage of Netflix’s 80,000 titles or Blockbuster Online’s 75,000.
But the on-demand menu does not have to attain comparable size immediately, especially since Netflix’s and Blockbuster’s lists mostly consist of the long tail of backlist titles for which demand is low — and high-definition versions are scant. The overwhelming bulk of viewers’ requests could be met simply by having the newest releases on hand in all formats.
To their credit, the major studios have shown a willingness to re-examine the artificial limits they have placed on video-on-demand. Late last year, six studios began an experiment with Comcast in Denver and Pittsburgh, making their newest releases available for viewing on demand the same day the DVD went on sale. Time Warner Cable is in the third month of a similar, six-month trial in Austin, Tex., and Columbus, Ohio.
The studios contend that the trials are necessary so they can be certain that DVD sales are not hurt by immediate availability of video-on-demand. This is supposed to be a $16 billion question, which is the size of the domestic DVD market, the lifeblood of the industry. The sum dwarfs the $10 billion in total box-office revenue or the $8 billion from movie rentals. Because prospective DVD buyers have always had a less-expensive alternative the day when DVDs go on sale — namely, renting the title — it is hard to see why video-on-demand poses a different cannibalistic threat.
Comcast has not yet released details of its findings. Earlier this month, however, Jeffrey L. Bewkes, Time Warner’s president and chief operating officer, offered some encouraging tidbits. He said that when a movie title was made available on-demand the same day the DVD was released, revenue from video-on-demand rentals increased 50 percent — and retail sales actually went up 5 to 10 percent. To explain the somewhat surprising gains in stores, Mr. Bewkes speculated that sales of a new title were depressed in the past by the almost-instant availability of used DVDs for sale at rental stores like Blockbuster.
The movie studio is paid only once — when the DVD is sold the first time — and not when it is resold used. For the studios, digital delivery of a rental eliminates the problem of a physical product being resold, cutting into the sales of new copies without generating additional royalties. And studios are paid every time an on-demand video is viewed.
The digital delivery system of video-on-demand offers many advantages to consumers, too. The immediate gratification provided by instant fulfillment of a viewing request is no trifle. The Netflix model assumes that the lag between the time a subscriber enters a requested title and when that title finally shows up in the mailbox does not matter all that much — that as long as a consumer has at least one unwatched DVD on hand at any time and the queue of requested titles is kept full of good stuff, the customer shouldn’t care when a particular title reaches the top of the queue and wends its way through the postal system to the home.
Netflix customers apparently do care, however. The company has had to build out its shipping centers from one at its founding in 1998 to 44 today, in an effort to minimize transit delays. Even so, the time that elapses between a Netflix user’s request and the delivery of a title is measured in days. With video-on-demand, it’s seconds.
Netflix also struggles to have enough copies of the hottest titles on hand. The swords-sandals-and-pecs hit “300” was released on the last day of July and immediately became the top rental in the nation. Two weeks after its release, however, subscribers were warned on their on-screen queues that they faced a “very long wait.” (Blockbuster Online could not do better.)
So, too, with the No. 2 rental title, “Hot Fuzz.” In fact, in mid-August, Netflix had on hand, ready for shipping, only 4 of the top 10 titles nationally listed as the most popular DVD rentals the week before. With digital transport, a single master can simultaneously supply as many households that wish to view the DVD; inventory management problems — and “very long wait” notices — disappear.
AMERICANS have never failed to show their appreciation for services that provide speedy gratification; the instant variety is preferred most. Once the cooperation of the studios is secured, video-on-demand will become the most popular means of renting movies.
When Netflix made its debut almost 10 years ago, many movie viewers discovered that sitting at a desk at home and using a Web site to select rental titles was considerably easier than going to a store to choose a rental. Video-on-demand offers the next enhancement: ordering by remote control
while stretched across the living room couch.
Randall Stross is an author based in Silicon Valley and a professor of business at San Jose State University. E-mail: stross@nytimes.com.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/19/business/yourmoney/19digi.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
Published: August 19, 2007
AS consumers by the millions install new flat-screen, high-definition TV sets this year, more than half of which will have 50-inch or larger screens, they can proudly say that they are doing their part to modernize the movie-viewing experience at home.
Cable operators have done their part, too, building a video-on-demand infrastructure that can supply viewers with a nearly limitless choice of movie titles, available at any time of day. No trips to the rental store. No vigils at the mailbox for discs from the subscription service. No purchases of additional computer hardware to transport downloaded movie files to somewhere else in the house. Just a couple of clicks of the cable remote control.
All is ready — except an unstinting supply of movies. The studios have balked.
According to Craig Moffett, vice president and senior analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, cable’s video-on-demand is well positioned, technically speaking, to be the preferred way that movies reach the home, but the Cable Guys cannot get access to Hollywood’s products: “They built a Ferrari of a delivery engine, but the content owners didn’t show up.”
The movie studios are preternaturally suspicious of the new and unfamiliar. Their fear has nothing to do with crunching the numbers, but rather with large organizations’ tendency to lose sight of their interests — not to mention their customers’. Thanks to the efficiencies of digital delivery, the studios actually earn three times the margin on each video-on-demand viewed that they earn on a store rental, while charging the same $4.
Comcast now has secured rights to offer only about 300 movie titles on-demand on any given day, excluding premium channels like HBO; about 50 of those are high-definition. It has a long way to go to match the comprehensive coverage of Netflix’s 80,000 titles or Blockbuster Online’s 75,000.
But the on-demand menu does not have to attain comparable size immediately, especially since Netflix’s and Blockbuster’s lists mostly consist of the long tail of backlist titles for which demand is low — and high-definition versions are scant. The overwhelming bulk of viewers’ requests could be met simply by having the newest releases on hand in all formats.
To their credit, the major studios have shown a willingness to re-examine the artificial limits they have placed on video-on-demand. Late last year, six studios began an experiment with Comcast in Denver and Pittsburgh, making their newest releases available for viewing on demand the same day the DVD went on sale. Time Warner Cable is in the third month of a similar, six-month trial in Austin, Tex., and Columbus, Ohio.
The studios contend that the trials are necessary so they can be certain that DVD sales are not hurt by immediate availability of video-on-demand. This is supposed to be a $16 billion question, which is the size of the domestic DVD market, the lifeblood of the industry. The sum dwarfs the $10 billion in total box-office revenue or the $8 billion from movie rentals. Because prospective DVD buyers have always had a less-expensive alternative the day when DVDs go on sale — namely, renting the title — it is hard to see why video-on-demand poses a different cannibalistic threat.
Comcast has not yet released details of its findings. Earlier this month, however, Jeffrey L. Bewkes, Time Warner’s president and chief operating officer, offered some encouraging tidbits. He said that when a movie title was made available on-demand the same day the DVD was released, revenue from video-on-demand rentals increased 50 percent — and retail sales actually went up 5 to 10 percent. To explain the somewhat surprising gains in stores, Mr. Bewkes speculated that sales of a new title were depressed in the past by the almost-instant availability of used DVDs for sale at rental stores like Blockbuster.
The movie studio is paid only once — when the DVD is sold the first time — and not when it is resold used. For the studios, digital delivery of a rental eliminates the problem of a physical product being resold, cutting into the sales of new copies without generating additional royalties. And studios are paid every time an on-demand video is viewed.
The digital delivery system of video-on-demand offers many advantages to consumers, too. The immediate gratification provided by instant fulfillment of a viewing request is no trifle. The Netflix model assumes that the lag between the time a subscriber enters a requested title and when that title finally shows up in the mailbox does not matter all that much — that as long as a consumer has at least one unwatched DVD on hand at any time and the queue of requested titles is kept full of good stuff, the customer shouldn’t care when a particular title reaches the top of the queue and wends its way through the postal system to the home.
Netflix customers apparently do care, however. The company has had to build out its shipping centers from one at its founding in 1998 to 44 today, in an effort to minimize transit delays. Even so, the time that elapses between a Netflix user’s request and the delivery of a title is measured in days. With video-on-demand, it’s seconds.
Netflix also struggles to have enough copies of the hottest titles on hand. The swords-sandals-and-pecs hit “300” was released on the last day of July and immediately became the top rental in the nation. Two weeks after its release, however, subscribers were warned on their on-screen queues that they faced a “very long wait.” (Blockbuster Online could not do better.)
So, too, with the No. 2 rental title, “Hot Fuzz.” In fact, in mid-August, Netflix had on hand, ready for shipping, only 4 of the top 10 titles nationally listed as the most popular DVD rentals the week before. With digital transport, a single master can simultaneously supply as many households that wish to view the DVD; inventory management problems — and “very long wait” notices — disappear.
AMERICANS have never failed to show their appreciation for services that provide speedy gratification; the instant variety is preferred most. Once the cooperation of the studios is secured, video-on-demand will become the most popular means of renting movies.
When Netflix made its debut almost 10 years ago, many movie viewers discovered that sitting at a desk at home and using a Web site to select rental titles was considerably easier than going to a store to choose a rental. Video-on-demand offers the next enhancement: ordering by remote control
while stretched across the living room couch.
Randall Stross is an author based in Silicon Valley and a professor of business at San Jose State University. E-mail: stross@nytimes.com.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/19/business/yourmoney/19digi.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
Sunday, August 19, 2007
How To: Tunneling BitTorrent over SSH
Have you ever been on a network somewhere where Bittorrent simply doesn’t work? The ports might be blocked, the packets are inspected, etc…? Well, after a little research and a buck i’ve managed to come up with a pretty good solution. I’d heard about tunneling content through SSH, but never really figured out how to get it working. That is, until now.
I was really excited my first day at Blue Lava when I heard that they had a 20mbps connection. I was told I could download full Linux ISO’s in ten minutes. Pretty quick. Sadly the ports for Bittorrent were blocked and my downloading spree never began.
Right now I am sitting in a Starbucks right near the south shore of Oahu, Hawaii. I’ve got Azureus open and its downloading at a steady pace of 170kbps, I’ve pretty much maxxed out the connection over here. The funny (or cool) thing is, the ports are blocked! So how can you bypass your corporate firewall or public hotspot (like Starbucks T-Mobile WiFi) and work out your download muscle? Read on!
First of all, you are going to need some sort of shell account to tunnel everything through. I’ve already tried using my Silenceisdefeat account, but their SSH server is not configured the way that we want it, so that won’t work. A friend of mine told me about Disflux, a service almost exactly like Silenceisdefeat. Disflux has their SSH servers configured the way we want em though, so that is what we are going to use.
UPDATE: Turns out that Disflux died or something. But! Don’t flip out! As it turns out (Thanks Chris! - #19) Silenceisdefeat.org, which is my choice of shell anyway, does work with this guide. However, it will only work if you connect to ssh.silenceisdefeat.org!
So I shelled out the $1 for my disflux Silenceisdefeat.org shell account (I actually already had one, best thing ever), and went on my merry way figuring out how to configure everything else. Some may think that paying for something like this is nuts, but honestly, Bittorrent has become a part of my everyday life, I depend on it like a crack addict depends on his crack. One buck is totally worth the hours of glee BitTorrent has to offer.
First thing you need to do after buying your shell account is open up a terminal (in OSX its in the Utilities folder), or download putty if you’re on Windows. If you are on Linux and don’t know how to open a terminal I feel sorry for you.
In the terminal type “ssh username@domain -D portnumber”, this goes for OSX and Linux. Now, with PuTTY on Windows I am not quite sure how to go about doing this. I am pretty sure you would just type “-D portnumber” into a extra flags option box or something, but I am really not quite sure. Edit: Scroll down for Eberth’s Windows guide! Or you lazy people can clicky.
For example, I use: “ssh whalesalad@ssh.silenceisdefeat.org -D 7777″. You can use any port you want, but make sure it isn’t being used by anything else. I happen to like the number 7777 so thats what I chose.
Screenshot_3.png
NOTE: In the screenshots Disflux is used, simply replace shelly.disflux.com with ssh.silenceisdefeat.org after creating an account and you will have no problems!
Now, what does this do? This has your open SSH session act as a SOCKS proxy. This is what we are going to have Azureus or any other bittorrent client of choice use.
Once that terminal is open, just minimize or hide it, but leave it open. The proxy will only work if that terminal is open and connected, so try not to fiddle with it.
Now we have to configure our BitTorrent client of choice. I recently “switched” to OSX and am using Azureus, but if I had my way I would be using the greatest client ever: uTorrent. Because I can’t get the internet working in Paralells at the moment I can’t help explain how to configure uTorrent, but here is what you need to do to get Azureus up and running with our newly created SOCKS proxy.
First of all you need to enable the Advanced options area of Azureus. You can do this by re-running (or running if this is your first time using Azureus) the configuration wizard. On OSX this is under the Azureus menu, I’m not quite sure where it is on Windows (=P). Choose the advanced user option, this will let us configure Azureus to use proxies. Once this is done, open up the preferences area of Azureus.
Screenshot_4.png
From there open up the “Connection” sub items and then the “Proxy Options”. From there, check the “Enable proxying of tracker communications” and “I have a SOCKS proxy”. In the host field enter “localhost” and in the port field enter whatever number you used to start the proxy, for me thats “7777″.
Save your options and thats it! Now you should be able to head to any one of the online tracker websites and download away! Legal files of course, we don’t encourage piracy or stealing here at the salad. Make sure to leave comments if it works for you, and any other tips or tidbits you’d like to share!
Edit: For all you windows users out there, Eberth made a comment below on how to get this working. He did such a good job, I’m going to include it right here in my guide.
First you need to get PuTTY. It’s a great client, back when I used Windows it was my SSH client of choice. You can find a direct link to PuTTy here.
Open up PuTTY and enter shelly.disflux.com into the host field.
Go to Connection > SSH > Tunnels, and write your port on the source port field (in this case i’m using the same as Michael, 7777) and select the “Dynamic” checkbox, click the add button.
I’d reccomend what Eberth explains in his comment, which would be to save your session so that next time you can just fire up PuTTY and double click your saved session to reload the same settings. Enter a name for the saved session and click save, its as easy as pie!
Now you’ve got your SOCKS proxy running, time to fire up your favorite BitTorrent client. Azureus users can use the same configuration that I have above, but if you’re smart you’re going to be using uTorrent. Here is a screenshot of the way Eberth configured his client:
Thanks Eberth!
http://www.whalesalad.com/2006/08/27/tunneling-bittorrent-over-ssh/
I was really excited my first day at Blue Lava when I heard that they had a 20mbps connection. I was told I could download full Linux ISO’s in ten minutes. Pretty quick. Sadly the ports for Bittorrent were blocked and my downloading spree never began.
Right now I am sitting in a Starbucks right near the south shore of Oahu, Hawaii. I’ve got Azureus open and its downloading at a steady pace of 170kbps, I’ve pretty much maxxed out the connection over here. The funny (or cool) thing is, the ports are blocked! So how can you bypass your corporate firewall or public hotspot (like Starbucks T-Mobile WiFi) and work out your download muscle? Read on!
First of all, you are going to need some sort of shell account to tunnel everything through. I’ve already tried using my Silenceisdefeat account, but their SSH server is not configured the way that we want it, so that won’t work. A friend of mine told me about Disflux, a service almost exactly like Silenceisdefeat. Disflux has their SSH servers configured the way we want em though, so that is what we are going to use.
UPDATE: Turns out that Disflux died or something. But! Don’t flip out! As it turns out (Thanks Chris! - #19) Silenceisdefeat.org, which is my choice of shell anyway, does work with this guide. However, it will only work if you connect to ssh.silenceisdefeat.org!
So I shelled out the $1 for my disflux Silenceisdefeat.org shell account (I actually already had one, best thing ever), and went on my merry way figuring out how to configure everything else. Some may think that paying for something like this is nuts, but honestly, Bittorrent has become a part of my everyday life, I depend on it like a crack addict depends on his crack. One buck is totally worth the hours of glee BitTorrent has to offer.
First thing you need to do after buying your shell account is open up a terminal (in OSX its in the Utilities folder), or download putty if you’re on Windows. If you are on Linux and don’t know how to open a terminal I feel sorry for you.
In the terminal type “ssh username@domain -D portnumber”, this goes for OSX and Linux. Now, with PuTTY on Windows I am not quite sure how to go about doing this. I am pretty sure you would just type “-D portnumber” into a extra flags option box or something, but I am really not quite sure. Edit: Scroll down for Eberth’s Windows guide! Or you lazy people can clicky.
For example, I use: “ssh whalesalad@ssh.silenceisdefeat.org -D 7777″. You can use any port you want, but make sure it isn’t being used by anything else. I happen to like the number 7777 so thats what I chose.
Screenshot_3.png
NOTE: In the screenshots Disflux is used, simply replace shelly.disflux.com with ssh.silenceisdefeat.org after creating an account and you will have no problems!
Now, what does this do? This has your open SSH session act as a SOCKS proxy. This is what we are going to have Azureus or any other bittorrent client of choice use.
Once that terminal is open, just minimize or hide it, but leave it open. The proxy will only work if that terminal is open and connected, so try not to fiddle with it.
Now we have to configure our BitTorrent client of choice. I recently “switched” to OSX and am using Azureus, but if I had my way I would be using the greatest client ever: uTorrent. Because I can’t get the internet working in Paralells at the moment I can’t help explain how to configure uTorrent, but here is what you need to do to get Azureus up and running with our newly created SOCKS proxy.
First of all you need to enable the Advanced options area of Azureus. You can do this by re-running (or running if this is your first time using Azureus) the configuration wizard. On OSX this is under the Azureus menu, I’m not quite sure where it is on Windows (=P). Choose the advanced user option, this will let us configure Azureus to use proxies. Once this is done, open up the preferences area of Azureus.
Screenshot_4.png
From there open up the “Connection” sub items and then the “Proxy Options”. From there, check the “Enable proxying of tracker communications” and “I have a SOCKS proxy”. In the host field enter “localhost” and in the port field enter whatever number you used to start the proxy, for me thats “7777″.
Save your options and thats it! Now you should be able to head to any one of the online tracker websites and download away! Legal files of course, we don’t encourage piracy or stealing here at the salad. Make sure to leave comments if it works for you, and any other tips or tidbits you’d like to share!
Edit: For all you windows users out there, Eberth made a comment below on how to get this working. He did such a good job, I’m going to include it right here in my guide.
First you need to get PuTTY. It’s a great client, back when I used Windows it was my SSH client of choice. You can find a direct link to PuTTy here.
Open up PuTTY and enter shelly.disflux.com into the host field.
Go to Connection > SSH > Tunnels, and write your port on the source port field (in this case i’m using the same as Michael, 7777) and select the “Dynamic” checkbox, click the add button.
I’d reccomend what Eberth explains in his comment, which would be to save your session so that next time you can just fire up PuTTY and double click your saved session to reload the same settings. Enter a name for the saved session and click save, its as easy as pie!
Now you’ve got your SOCKS proxy running, time to fire up your favorite BitTorrent client. Azureus users can use the same configuration that I have above, but if you’re smart you’re going to be using uTorrent. Here is a screenshot of the way Eberth configured his client:
Thanks Eberth!
http://www.whalesalad.com/2006/08/27/tunneling-bittorrent-over-ssh/
Friday, August 10, 2007
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Article:'Baby Einstein': a bright idea?
Infants shown such educational series end up with poorer vocabularies, study finds. Researcher says 'American Idol' is better.
By Amber Dance, Times Staff Writer
August 7, 2007
Parents hoping to raise baby Einsteins by using infant educational videos are actually creating baby Homer Simpsons, according to a new study released today.
For every hour a day that babies 8 to 16 months old were shown such popular series as "Brainy Baby" or "Baby Einstein," they knew six to eight fewer words than other children, the study found.
Parents aiming to put their babies on the fast track, even if they are still working on walking, each year buy hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of the videos.
Unfortunately it's all money down the tubes, according to Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Christakis and his colleagues surveyed 1,000 parents in Washington and Minnesota and determined their babies' vocabularies using a set of 90 common baby words, including mommy, nose and choo-choo.
The researchers found that 32% of the babies were shown the videos, and 17% of those were shown them for more than an hour a day, according to the study in the Journal of Pediatrics.
The videos, which are designed to engage a baby's attention, hop from scene to scene with minimal dialogue and include mesmerizing images, like a lava lamp.
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no television for children under 24 months.
The Brainy Baby Co. and Walt Disney Co., which markets the "Baby Einstein" videos, did not return calls from the Los Angeles Times.
Christakis said children whose parents read to them or told them stories had larger vocabularies.
"I would rather babies watch 'American Idol' than these videos," Christakis said, explaining that there is at least a chance their parents would watch with them — which does have developmental benefits.
amber.dance@latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/news/la-sci-babyeinstein7aug07,0,3226267.story?coll=la-tot-topstories&track=ntottext
By Amber Dance, Times Staff Writer
August 7, 2007
Parents hoping to raise baby Einsteins by using infant educational videos are actually creating baby Homer Simpsons, according to a new study released today.
For every hour a day that babies 8 to 16 months old were shown such popular series as "Brainy Baby" or "Baby Einstein," they knew six to eight fewer words than other children, the study found.
Parents aiming to put their babies on the fast track, even if they are still working on walking, each year buy hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of the videos.
Unfortunately it's all money down the tubes, according to Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Christakis and his colleagues surveyed 1,000 parents in Washington and Minnesota and determined their babies' vocabularies using a set of 90 common baby words, including mommy, nose and choo-choo.
The researchers found that 32% of the babies were shown the videos, and 17% of those were shown them for more than an hour a day, according to the study in the Journal of Pediatrics.
The videos, which are designed to engage a baby's attention, hop from scene to scene with minimal dialogue and include mesmerizing images, like a lava lamp.
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no television for children under 24 months.
The Brainy Baby Co. and Walt Disney Co., which markets the "Baby Einstein" videos, did not return calls from the Los Angeles Times.
Christakis said children whose parents read to them or told them stories had larger vocabularies.
"I would rather babies watch 'American Idol' than these videos," Christakis said, explaining that there is at least a chance their parents would watch with them — which does have developmental benefits.
amber.dance@latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/news/la-sci-babyeinstein7aug07,0,3226267.story?coll=la-tot-topstories&track=ntottext
Monday, July 23, 2007
Article: Mio TV Launched | Singapore Telecom Plans to Shatter Cable TV’s Monopoly
Singapore Telecommunications (SingTel) today launched its new IPTV service, mio TV. Available in the city-state, its initial offering is of 33 channels including blockbuster movies and offerings from the BBC.
Starting from tomorrow, willing subscribers will a minimum monthly fee of 15 Singaporean dollars per month for a mix of channels, ranging from $3.21 for Zee Music to $12.84 for programmes displayed in high-definition.
SingTel claims that its service will revolutionise the way Singaporeans watch television, by allowing viewers to indulge in what they want, when they want, without being tied down to fixed program schedules or rigid subscription packages.
A television shake-up
The firm hopes mio TV will shake-up the monopoly on pay TV in the country, currently held by StarHub, whose minimum cable fee stands at $29.96 Singaporean dollars.
To achieve this, SingTel is promising to pump $30 million into the project over the next fiscal year, offering the largest range of Video on Demand titles in Singapore.
There’s nothing like a bit of healthy competition, but can Singapore’s IPTV new kids on the block win out against a such deep-rooted opposition, and could similar IPTV business models spread further afield, threatening the likes of DirecTV in North America?
Singtel
Starting from tomorrow, willing subscribers will a minimum monthly fee of 15 Singaporean dollars per month for a mix of channels, ranging from $3.21 for Zee Music to $12.84 for programmes displayed in high-definition.
SingTel claims that its service will revolutionise the way Singaporeans watch television, by allowing viewers to indulge in what they want, when they want, without being tied down to fixed program schedules or rigid subscription packages.
A television shake-up
The firm hopes mio TV will shake-up the monopoly on pay TV in the country, currently held by StarHub, whose minimum cable fee stands at $29.96 Singaporean dollars.
To achieve this, SingTel is promising to pump $30 million into the project over the next fiscal year, offering the largest range of Video on Demand titles in Singapore.
There’s nothing like a bit of healthy competition, but can Singapore’s IPTV new kids on the block win out against a such deep-rooted opposition, and could similar IPTV business models spread further afield, threatening the likes of DirecTV in North America?
Singtel
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Article: Metcalfe's Law and Video
Metcalfe's Law and Video
Jul 9th 2007 12:47PM
Don't remember where I saw Metcalfe's law mentioned, but it got me thinking.
Metcalfe's law states that the more nodes connected to a network the more valuable the network is. Its a simple yet brilliant concept.
Since i have some time on my hands recovering from my hip replacement, I decided to ponder what laws applied to the value of video content and its viewers.
IMHO, there appear to be some simple "rules" that apply to the value of video content. Lets call them my hypothesis
1. The more people that see content when it is originally "broadcast", regardless of the distribution medium, the more valuable the content.
This is the example of "appointment viewing" or "breaking news". The more people who planned to watch, or did so as soon as they heard about it, the more valuable the content.
Call this the "heat check".
10mm people watching a tv show at the same time creates more value for the content than 10mm people watching the same show on demand over the course of time.
2. The greater the number of people that watch content simultaneously, the greater the emotional attachment of the viewer.
The greater amount of confirmation that a viewer can get from other viewers that there were others, like them that made an appointment to see a video or immediately changed their plans to watch a video, the greater the "we " effect and emotional attachment.
3. The longer the period required for content to saturate viewer demand, the cheaper the cost of delivery. Without the constraint of time, the originator to choose the least expensive method of delivery
4. The shorter the period required to saturate demand, the more expensive the cost. This is not intuitive. At first blush it may seem that broadcast technologies can reach an immense audience in realtime with a zero marginal cost of delivery to a new viewer.
However, there is a signicant cost to build a network that can saturate demand immediately. It usually takes constrained resources, whether it is spectrum for broadcast networks, the delivery infrastructure to reach an uncapped audience and the ability to deliver it without time constraints.
5. The greater the number of content alternatives at any given point in time, the more expensive it is for any given piece of content to acquire an incremental viewer. The cost may come in the form of investment into the production of the content, advertising, promotion or placement. It may come in the form of sweat equity from hustling to promote the content.
I thought this might create some interesting discussion that I could learn from, so here you go !
http://www.blogmaverick.com/2007/07/09/metcalfes-law-and-video/
Jul 9th 2007 12:47PM
Don't remember where I saw Metcalfe's law mentioned, but it got me thinking.
Metcalfe's law states that the more nodes connected to a network the more valuable the network is. Its a simple yet brilliant concept.
Since i have some time on my hands recovering from my hip replacement, I decided to ponder what laws applied to the value of video content and its viewers.
IMHO, there appear to be some simple "rules" that apply to the value of video content. Lets call them my hypothesis
1. The more people that see content when it is originally "broadcast", regardless of the distribution medium, the more valuable the content.
This is the example of "appointment viewing" or "breaking news". The more people who planned to watch, or did so as soon as they heard about it, the more valuable the content.
Call this the "heat check".
10mm people watching a tv show at the same time creates more value for the content than 10mm people watching the same show on demand over the course of time.
2. The greater the number of people that watch content simultaneously, the greater the emotional attachment of the viewer.
The greater amount of confirmation that a viewer can get from other viewers that there were others, like them that made an appointment to see a video or immediately changed their plans to watch a video, the greater the "we " effect and emotional attachment.
3. The longer the period required for content to saturate viewer demand, the cheaper the cost of delivery. Without the constraint of time, the originator to choose the least expensive method of delivery
4. The shorter the period required to saturate demand, the more expensive the cost. This is not intuitive. At first blush it may seem that broadcast technologies can reach an immense audience in realtime with a zero marginal cost of delivery to a new viewer.
However, there is a signicant cost to build a network that can saturate demand immediately. It usually takes constrained resources, whether it is spectrum for broadcast networks, the delivery infrastructure to reach an uncapped audience and the ability to deliver it without time constraints.
5. The greater the number of content alternatives at any given point in time, the more expensive it is for any given piece of content to acquire an incremental viewer. The cost may come in the form of investment into the production of the content, advertising, promotion or placement. It may come in the form of sweat equity from hustling to promote the content.
I thought this might create some interesting discussion that I could learn from, so here you go !
http://www.blogmaverick.com/2007/07/09/metcalfes-law-and-video/
Article: Sites let preteens network online
By ANICK JESDANUN, AP Internet Writer 11 minutes ago
This past spring, 10-year-old Adam Young joined other tweens on Club Penguin, playing games, throwing virtual snowballs and chatting with fellow kids who appear onscreen as plump cartoon penguins. A few weeks later, Adam asked Mom to pay $5 a month for extra features, such as decorating his online persona's igloo.
Karen Young demanded to learn more about what some have billed as "training wheels" for the next MySpace generation. She spent time on the site with Adam and consulted with her sister, the mother of another daily visitor.
"I said, `Well, what is it? What does it involve?'" Young recalled. "I wanted him to show me what he wanted and what it was about."
Drawing preteens as young as 6 or 7, sites like Club Penguin and Webkinz are forcing parents to decide at what age they are willing to let their children roam about and interact with friends online. They, along with schools, are having to teach earlier lessons on safety, etiquette and balance with offline activities.
"It's kind of like what happened in the real world with Cabbage Patch dolls and Beanie Babies," said Monique Nelson, executive vice president of Web Wise Kids, a nonprofit focused on Internet safety for children. "Their friends are doing it, so like kids who follow like sheep, they go online and go on these sites."
According to comScore Media Metrix, U.S. visitors to Club Penguin nearly tripled over the past year, while Webkinz' grew 13 times.
Peggy Meszaros, a professor of human development at Virginia Tech, said kids' identities begin to blossom by 8 and they start wanting to meet other children, so these sites may become their introduction to social networking. But she said kids that age would get much more "going to the swimming pool and meeting friends face to face," making parental oversight of online usage ever-important.
Young, a first-grade teacher in Louisville, Ky., ultimately deemed the environment relatively safe and agreed to pay for a membership. Unlike News Corp.'s MySpace, the anything-goes site frequented by Young's older son, Club Penguin limits what kids can say to one another, reducing the risks of predators and online bullying.
That sentiment was echoed by Tony Bayliss, father of 7-year-old Maisie in England. Club Penguin is the only site Bayliss lets Maisie visit unsupervised; Bayliss also has a cartoon penguin of his own and visits his daughter online while traveling.
"It's what the future is," Bayliss said of the online environment. "It's what she's going to be using for the rest of her life."
Club Penguin was started more than a year ago as "an online playground for kids," said Lane Merrifield, the site's co-founder and chief executive. "How can we take the fun pieces of these more grown-up and adult (social-networking) sites and surround them in a safe environment?"
Kids win gold coins by playing games such as sled racing and, with a paid membership, buy virtual items like furniture and clothing. Kids can attend parties and make friends by adding other penguins to their buddy lists.
The site, from Canada's New Horizon Interactive Ltd., does not try to keep out older users — after all, anyone can lie about age. Rather, it builds in controls meant to curb outside contact and harassment. The company says it has never had a problem with predators.
Parents can choose an "ultimate safe" mode, meaning chat messages sent and received are limited to prewritten phrases, such as "How are you today?"
In the standard mode, kids can type messages like any other chat program, but only the sender sees messages containing foul language and even innocent-sounding words such as "mom" — to prevent someone from asking, "Is your mom home?" Senders would think they are being ignored and not try tricks to bypass filters.
The filters also catch numbers that might form a phone number a kid is trying to share, even if someone tries to replace "1" with "one."
Veterans can apply to become "secret agents," responsible for patrolling the site and reporting bad behavior, and violations can get a kid banned for a day or longer.
Likewise, Webkinz limits chats by permitting only prewritten phrases, and e-cards go only to those already on friends lists.
Kids take quizzes or perform chores to earn "KinzCash" to buy furniture for their virtual room and food for their virtual pet. They must return to the site regularly to keep their pets fed and healthy; otherwise, it's a trip to Dr. Quack for medical care, though the pets themselves never die.
Unlike Club Penguin, though, access to the Canadian-based site from Ganz is restricted to those who buy a Webkinz plush toy at a retail store for about $15, many of which have been selling out because of high demand. Think Beanie Babies with an online component. A code on each toy unlocks the site for a year.
Both sites do require some reading skills, though younger kids can participate with older siblings or parents.
Other popular tween online hangouts include Millsberry, a General Mills Inc. site that promotes good eating but features product placements for its cereals, and Numedeon Inc.'s Whyville, where tweens play games and earn clams.
Although these social-networking precursors for tweens tend to incorporate more safety measures than MySpace, Facebook and other sites geared toward teenagers and adults, experts warn that parents can't simply sign their kids on and leave them there, especially during the summer months when kids have more time to spend online.
"We want them to develop and grow physically, spiritually and emotionally," Meszaros said. "If they are on the computer three or four hours a day, that's time they could be doing other things. Parents need to be monitoring."
Step one is to decide whether kids should be there at all.
Jane Healy, author of "Failure to Connect: How Computers Affect Our Children's Minds — for Better and Worse," said kids may feel they are "going to be a hopeless social failure" if they can't participate.
Advocates say the controlled environment can teach kids important lessons about typing, communicating, caring for pets and budgeting — they must learn to work and save for the trampoline they want for their virtual room.
But Healy said these sites also teach kids to be "a good consuming member of the consuming culture (and) to need stuff to be considered successful or good."
She urges caution in opening the door to "powerful forces out there trying to intrude into your family life and personal relations with your child." Not only do these sites introduce commercialism, she said, but they also can take kids away from offline environments where they can learn to pick up body language and facial expressions.
Software tools are available to help parents control Internet activities, including use of these sites. Monitoring software can record a kid's chat conversations and whereabouts — secretly if the parent wishes. Other tools, some available for free, aim to block porn or limit when or how long a child can be online.
Parents should at least keep computers in an open room and surf the Web side-by-side with their kids now and then. A discussion on time limits is important because rules are far easier to impose from the beginning, and Club Penguin will soon introduce a feature for parents to set such limits on the site.
"As soon as the egg timer comes up, we're going to have a list of activities they can do outside," Merrifield said.
Parents should also start addressing safety and online etiquette.
"They can't be there every time they go online .... so it's even more important to spend more time up front teaching them how to be safe and smart," said Susan Sachs, chief operating officer with the nonprofit Common Sense Media.
It helps that many parents are now using the Internet not just for work but also for recreation, information sharing and other social interaction.
"When kids start to use technology, (parents) can be much more part of the process, as opposed to, `Gee, this is all new and strange to me. I don't want you using it,'" said Peter Grunwald, a researcher who specializes in kids and technology.
Nonetheless, Grunwald said, "kids are using online services at an earlier age, and that means parents do have to exercise their role as parents and be mindful of it at an earlier age than, say, seven, eight or nine years ago."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070712/ap_on_hi_te/social_networking_tweens_4;_ylt=An67EhmxqAghabffGFZB2P8E1vAI
This past spring, 10-year-old Adam Young joined other tweens on Club Penguin, playing games, throwing virtual snowballs and chatting with fellow kids who appear onscreen as plump cartoon penguins. A few weeks later, Adam asked Mom to pay $5 a month for extra features, such as decorating his online persona's igloo.
Karen Young demanded to learn more about what some have billed as "training wheels" for the next MySpace generation. She spent time on the site with Adam and consulted with her sister, the mother of another daily visitor.
"I said, `Well, what is it? What does it involve?'" Young recalled. "I wanted him to show me what he wanted and what it was about."
Drawing preteens as young as 6 or 7, sites like Club Penguin and Webkinz are forcing parents to decide at what age they are willing to let their children roam about and interact with friends online. They, along with schools, are having to teach earlier lessons on safety, etiquette and balance with offline activities.
"It's kind of like what happened in the real world with Cabbage Patch dolls and Beanie Babies," said Monique Nelson, executive vice president of Web Wise Kids, a nonprofit focused on Internet safety for children. "Their friends are doing it, so like kids who follow like sheep, they go online and go on these sites."
According to comScore Media Metrix, U.S. visitors to Club Penguin nearly tripled over the past year, while Webkinz' grew 13 times.
Peggy Meszaros, a professor of human development at Virginia Tech, said kids' identities begin to blossom by 8 and they start wanting to meet other children, so these sites may become their introduction to social networking. But she said kids that age would get much more "going to the swimming pool and meeting friends face to face," making parental oversight of online usage ever-important.
Young, a first-grade teacher in Louisville, Ky., ultimately deemed the environment relatively safe and agreed to pay for a membership. Unlike News Corp.'s MySpace, the anything-goes site frequented by Young's older son, Club Penguin limits what kids can say to one another, reducing the risks of predators and online bullying.
That sentiment was echoed by Tony Bayliss, father of 7-year-old Maisie in England. Club Penguin is the only site Bayliss lets Maisie visit unsupervised; Bayliss also has a cartoon penguin of his own and visits his daughter online while traveling.
"It's what the future is," Bayliss said of the online environment. "It's what she's going to be using for the rest of her life."
Club Penguin was started more than a year ago as "an online playground for kids," said Lane Merrifield, the site's co-founder and chief executive. "How can we take the fun pieces of these more grown-up and adult (social-networking) sites and surround them in a safe environment?"
Kids win gold coins by playing games such as sled racing and, with a paid membership, buy virtual items like furniture and clothing. Kids can attend parties and make friends by adding other penguins to their buddy lists.
The site, from Canada's New Horizon Interactive Ltd., does not try to keep out older users — after all, anyone can lie about age. Rather, it builds in controls meant to curb outside contact and harassment. The company says it has never had a problem with predators.
Parents can choose an "ultimate safe" mode, meaning chat messages sent and received are limited to prewritten phrases, such as "How are you today?"
In the standard mode, kids can type messages like any other chat program, but only the sender sees messages containing foul language and even innocent-sounding words such as "mom" — to prevent someone from asking, "Is your mom home?" Senders would think they are being ignored and not try tricks to bypass filters.
The filters also catch numbers that might form a phone number a kid is trying to share, even if someone tries to replace "1" with "one."
Veterans can apply to become "secret agents," responsible for patrolling the site and reporting bad behavior, and violations can get a kid banned for a day or longer.
Likewise, Webkinz limits chats by permitting only prewritten phrases, and e-cards go only to those already on friends lists.
Kids take quizzes or perform chores to earn "KinzCash" to buy furniture for their virtual room and food for their virtual pet. They must return to the site regularly to keep their pets fed and healthy; otherwise, it's a trip to Dr. Quack for medical care, though the pets themselves never die.
Unlike Club Penguin, though, access to the Canadian-based site from Ganz is restricted to those who buy a Webkinz plush toy at a retail store for about $15, many of which have been selling out because of high demand. Think Beanie Babies with an online component. A code on each toy unlocks the site for a year.
Both sites do require some reading skills, though younger kids can participate with older siblings or parents.
Other popular tween online hangouts include Millsberry, a General Mills Inc. site that promotes good eating but features product placements for its cereals, and Numedeon Inc.'s Whyville, where tweens play games and earn clams.
Although these social-networking precursors for tweens tend to incorporate more safety measures than MySpace, Facebook and other sites geared toward teenagers and adults, experts warn that parents can't simply sign their kids on and leave them there, especially during the summer months when kids have more time to spend online.
"We want them to develop and grow physically, spiritually and emotionally," Meszaros said. "If they are on the computer three or four hours a day, that's time they could be doing other things. Parents need to be monitoring."
Step one is to decide whether kids should be there at all.
Jane Healy, author of "Failure to Connect: How Computers Affect Our Children's Minds — for Better and Worse," said kids may feel they are "going to be a hopeless social failure" if they can't participate.
Advocates say the controlled environment can teach kids important lessons about typing, communicating, caring for pets and budgeting — they must learn to work and save for the trampoline they want for their virtual room.
But Healy said these sites also teach kids to be "a good consuming member of the consuming culture (and) to need stuff to be considered successful or good."
She urges caution in opening the door to "powerful forces out there trying to intrude into your family life and personal relations with your child." Not only do these sites introduce commercialism, she said, but they also can take kids away from offline environments where they can learn to pick up body language and facial expressions.
Software tools are available to help parents control Internet activities, including use of these sites. Monitoring software can record a kid's chat conversations and whereabouts — secretly if the parent wishes. Other tools, some available for free, aim to block porn or limit when or how long a child can be online.
Parents should at least keep computers in an open room and surf the Web side-by-side with their kids now and then. A discussion on time limits is important because rules are far easier to impose from the beginning, and Club Penguin will soon introduce a feature for parents to set such limits on the site.
"As soon as the egg timer comes up, we're going to have a list of activities they can do outside," Merrifield said.
Parents should also start addressing safety and online etiquette.
"They can't be there every time they go online .... so it's even more important to spend more time up front teaching them how to be safe and smart," said Susan Sachs, chief operating officer with the nonprofit Common Sense Media.
It helps that many parents are now using the Internet not just for work but also for recreation, information sharing and other social interaction.
"When kids start to use technology, (parents) can be much more part of the process, as opposed to, `Gee, this is all new and strange to me. I don't want you using it,'" said Peter Grunwald, a researcher who specializes in kids and technology.
Nonetheless, Grunwald said, "kids are using online services at an earlier age, and that means parents do have to exercise their role as parents and be mindful of it at an earlier age than, say, seven, eight or nine years ago."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070712/ap_on_hi_te/social_networking_tweens_4;_ylt=An67EhmxqAghabffGFZB2P8E1vAI
Article: TV junk food ads feeding child obesity
The first study of child health in Queensland in more than a decade shows one-in-five children are overweight or obese.
The rates are slightly lower than in New South Wales and Western Australia, but Queensland Health Minister Stephen Robertson says the Commonwealth should act.
The university study also found half the state's children ate less than one serve of vegetables a day, while fewer than one-in-six boys and one-in-15 girls did an hour of daily moderate physical activity.
Health Minister Stephen Robertson says it is further proof of the need for the Federal Government to limit TV junk food advertising.
"We banned tobacco advertising years ago - why? Because advertising encourages people to smoke," he said.
"Why not apply that same rationale, that same commonsense, to the advertising of junk food during the hours when kids are most likely to be watching it."
http://abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/07/12/1976452.htm
The rates are slightly lower than in New South Wales and Western Australia, but Queensland Health Minister Stephen Robertson says the Commonwealth should act.
The university study also found half the state's children ate less than one serve of vegetables a day, while fewer than one-in-six boys and one-in-15 girls did an hour of daily moderate physical activity.
Health Minister Stephen Robertson says it is further proof of the need for the Federal Government to limit TV junk food advertising.
"We banned tobacco advertising years ago - why? Because advertising encourages people to smoke," he said.
"Why not apply that same rationale, that same commonsense, to the advertising of junk food during the hours when kids are most likely to be watching it."
http://abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/07/12/1976452.htm
Monday, July 9, 2007
Article: Kids Market Buoyed by Non-Traditional Categories Upfront Chronicles Part 9
By Jack Myers
Turner, Nick & Disney Bullish on Kids' Upfront Market
With spending power of $78.5 billion annually, kids are an increasingly vital economic force. A growing number of non-traditional advertisers are moving into kids television not only to reach them but to reach their parents in a relevant environment. According to Yankelovich Youth Monitor, 72 percent of kids say commercials influence their purchase decisions and a growing majority of adults admit they are significantly impacted by their children's requests and recommendations.
Until earlier this decade, the "Kids Upfront" market would typically move in February in conjunction with the Toy Market and would offer a telltale sign of what might happen in the general market. But, agree senior executives of Turner Entertainment, Nickelodeon and Disney /ABC Cable Network Group, the kids network television advertising business has changed dramatically and is now moving closer to the traditional Upfront season. In separate interviews Jack Myers Report spoke to David Levy, president of Turner Sports and Entertainment Sales & Marketing; Cyma Zarghami, President of Nickelodeon Television; Jim Perry, SVP Nickelodeon Ad Sales; and Tricia Wilber, SVP Ad Sales & Promotions for Disney/ABC Cable Networks Group.
Search
Wilber points out "the kids' business is different in two primary ways. First there is a smaller number of players so the competitive environment is different. At the same time, the market — the number of traditional kids advertisers — is smaller. We don't have the depth and breadth of kids advertisers we had in the past."
Credit: Nickelodeon
Levy comments, "products are now marketed to four age groups: birth to three, three to five, six to eleven and eight to fifteen. Manufacturers market products to these age groups and we're programming to them but they still buy media targeted to two age groups, two to six year olds and six to eleven. The growth of hand held gaming, computer gaming and electronic products for kids has resulted in greater market segmentation."
But, says Zarghami, "the kids' market is attracting several new categories. Non-traditional accounts have started to reach out to kids. Their influence on household purchases is significant and marketers are responding." She adds "there are a number of packaged goods advertisers using kids TV as a way to reach moms who are watching TV with kids. More pre-school programming is interactive," she explains, "and we attract more moms in Nick Jr. than many prime time programs."
Credit: Cartoon Network
Perry claims Nickelodeon's business from traditional categories has been steady. "Growth of our toy business isn't aggressive but all the major toy companies are introducing electronics products. The automotive, food and entertainment business has been incredibly strong over the last 18 months. The automotive category has been growing," he claims, with Nickelodeon already scoring campaigns from Ford, Dodge, Toyota, Mitsubishi and Honda and about to announce a sixth automotive partner. "Food manufacturers are reformulating products and coming out with new product introductions, so they have to spend to support them," Perry explains.
Levy agrees food manufacturers may be changing product ingredients and launching new brands. "That's a more positive way to look at the impact of regulatory concerns," he suggests. Wilber confirms the food industry's messages are changing and dollars associated with the category are still strong. She also says "the entertainment business seems to have a good slate of theatrical and DVD releases coming out. Video games are strong." Levy adds "the studios are coming out with more kid friendly and animated movies. The launches and the aftermarket are exploding."
Perry claims travel is also a growth category, with clients like the Cayman Islands, Embassy Suites, and Best Western. (Nick is opening its first Nickelodeon Family Suites by Holiday Inn on Memorial Day Weekend.)
Credit: Cartoon Network
Levy confirms the growing importance of packaged goods, DVD and new studio releases, gaming advertisers, and non-traditional categories, suggesting a key to the growth of this year's kids market will be how big these new categories grow and how much these advertisers spread their campaigns beyond the traditional "hard eight" weeks prior to Christmas and the two weeks prior to Easter.
Zarghami points out "while the Upfront plays a big part in the business, because of integrated promotions, licensing and tie-ins, we are doing business 52-weeks a year. We have a fairly significant percentage of business already wrapped up." Levy agrees "there are new opportunities for marketers trying to extend reach and find new opportunities."
Credit: Nickelodeon
"Levy believes the kids Upfront market should "break" just two to four weeks prior to the traditional Upfront market, meaning there remains six to eight weeks before kids' networks get a clear picture of market demand. "Buyers are not yet showing their cards," says Levy. "When one buyer moves, the whole market will follow. The market moves when toy and gaming advertisers need to get money down for the hard ten weeks." Three agencies, Starcom, Mediacom, and Summit Media are the primary drivers of the traditional kids market, followed by Mindshare.
Zarghami believes the kids Upfront market could be wrapped up by mid-April and says "we expect the market to be up in total revenues in the high single digits. Overall kids' gross rating points are down two percent but demand will be up." "The market is still forming." Wilber confirms. "Budgets are still being formalized, although we see it as a strong marketplace. We will definitely see growth in costs-per-thousand and we're waiting to see where the market will end up."
Nickelodeon and Turner's Cartoon Network are the major players in the kids advertising marketplace. Disney Channel is not a fully commercialized network but Toon Disney is in close to 50 million homes and is becoming a stronger force. Kids WB, which is packaged with Cartoon Network, is the only broadcast network with a strong Monday to Saturday kids presence and ABC Saturday morning continues to attract sizeable audiences. Additional competitors in the kids market are Fox Box and Discovery Kids, but Nickelodeon and Turner are the dominant market forces.
"We look at Cartoon Network as being well positioned for this year's Upfront," says Levy. "Ratings are up year over year. Anytime you can show growth it is a great opportunity. We've had two new hit shows, and we're launching a pre-school block with two hours each weekday from 7 to 9 am. We have identified a great opportunity with Adult Swim from 11pm to 5 am. The demand will be there because ratings are up and supply is tighter."
Zarghami points to the continued leadership of Nickelodeon. We introduced 'Nick Toons' in the fourth quarter and it is already in 32 million households and on its way to 40 million. 'The N' digital network for teens was introduced last year and it's now in 42 million homes. We believe the combination of Noggin, Nick Jr. and the CBS Saturday morning programming is a powerful offering to reach pre-schoolers and moms. Our consumer products business is tremendous. Our sales and marketing groups are closely aligned with our programming groups and our multiple platform pitch has been significant."
Wilber claims the strength of the Disney/ABC kids platforms is the "ability to deliver targeted kids. If they're looking for targeted audiences we offer the most efficient ways to deliver them. We give marketers a place where they can get an incredible concentration of boys on Jetix, which has a 70 percent concentration of boys. Our Saturday morning offers the largest concentration of girls in the marketplace. Plus," she adds, "the uncluttered environment of Disney Channel is a place where marketers are breaking through and making emotional connections with kids."
http://www.mediavillage.com/jmr/2005/03/30/jmr-03-30-05/
Turner, Nick & Disney Bullish on Kids' Upfront Market
With spending power of $78.5 billion annually, kids are an increasingly vital economic force. A growing number of non-traditional advertisers are moving into kids television not only to reach them but to reach their parents in a relevant environment. According to Yankelovich Youth Monitor, 72 percent of kids say commercials influence their purchase decisions and a growing majority of adults admit they are significantly impacted by their children's requests and recommendations.
Until earlier this decade, the "Kids Upfront" market would typically move in February in conjunction with the Toy Market and would offer a telltale sign of what might happen in the general market. But, agree senior executives of Turner Entertainment, Nickelodeon and Disney /ABC Cable Network Group, the kids network television advertising business has changed dramatically and is now moving closer to the traditional Upfront season. In separate interviews Jack Myers Report spoke to David Levy, president of Turner Sports and Entertainment Sales & Marketing; Cyma Zarghami, President of Nickelodeon Television; Jim Perry, SVP Nickelodeon Ad Sales; and Tricia Wilber, SVP Ad Sales & Promotions for Disney/ABC Cable Networks Group.
Search
Wilber points out "the kids' business is different in two primary ways. First there is a smaller number of players so the competitive environment is different. At the same time, the market — the number of traditional kids advertisers — is smaller. We don't have the depth and breadth of kids advertisers we had in the past."
Credit: Nickelodeon
Levy comments, "products are now marketed to four age groups: birth to three, three to five, six to eleven and eight to fifteen. Manufacturers market products to these age groups and we're programming to them but they still buy media targeted to two age groups, two to six year olds and six to eleven. The growth of hand held gaming, computer gaming and electronic products for kids has resulted in greater market segmentation."
But, says Zarghami, "the kids' market is attracting several new categories. Non-traditional accounts have started to reach out to kids. Their influence on household purchases is significant and marketers are responding." She adds "there are a number of packaged goods advertisers using kids TV as a way to reach moms who are watching TV with kids. More pre-school programming is interactive," she explains, "and we attract more moms in Nick Jr. than many prime time programs."
Credit: Cartoon Network
Perry claims Nickelodeon's business from traditional categories has been steady. "Growth of our toy business isn't aggressive but all the major toy companies are introducing electronics products. The automotive, food and entertainment business has been incredibly strong over the last 18 months. The automotive category has been growing," he claims, with Nickelodeon already scoring campaigns from Ford, Dodge, Toyota, Mitsubishi and Honda and about to announce a sixth automotive partner. "Food manufacturers are reformulating products and coming out with new product introductions, so they have to spend to support them," Perry explains.
Levy agrees food manufacturers may be changing product ingredients and launching new brands. "That's a more positive way to look at the impact of regulatory concerns," he suggests. Wilber confirms the food industry's messages are changing and dollars associated with the category are still strong. She also says "the entertainment business seems to have a good slate of theatrical and DVD releases coming out. Video games are strong." Levy adds "the studios are coming out with more kid friendly and animated movies. The launches and the aftermarket are exploding."
Perry claims travel is also a growth category, with clients like the Cayman Islands, Embassy Suites, and Best Western. (Nick is opening its first Nickelodeon Family Suites by Holiday Inn on Memorial Day Weekend.)
Credit: Cartoon Network
Levy confirms the growing importance of packaged goods, DVD and new studio releases, gaming advertisers, and non-traditional categories, suggesting a key to the growth of this year's kids market will be how big these new categories grow and how much these advertisers spread their campaigns beyond the traditional "hard eight" weeks prior to Christmas and the two weeks prior to Easter.
Zarghami points out "while the Upfront plays a big part in the business, because of integrated promotions, licensing and tie-ins, we are doing business 52-weeks a year. We have a fairly significant percentage of business already wrapped up." Levy agrees "there are new opportunities for marketers trying to extend reach and find new opportunities."
Credit: Nickelodeon
"Levy believes the kids Upfront market should "break" just two to four weeks prior to the traditional Upfront market, meaning there remains six to eight weeks before kids' networks get a clear picture of market demand. "Buyers are not yet showing their cards," says Levy. "When one buyer moves, the whole market will follow. The market moves when toy and gaming advertisers need to get money down for the hard ten weeks." Three agencies, Starcom, Mediacom, and Summit Media are the primary drivers of the traditional kids market, followed by Mindshare.
Zarghami believes the kids Upfront market could be wrapped up by mid-April and says "we expect the market to be up in total revenues in the high single digits. Overall kids' gross rating points are down two percent but demand will be up." "The market is still forming." Wilber confirms. "Budgets are still being formalized, although we see it as a strong marketplace. We will definitely see growth in costs-per-thousand and we're waiting to see where the market will end up."
Nickelodeon and Turner's Cartoon Network are the major players in the kids advertising marketplace. Disney Channel is not a fully commercialized network but Toon Disney is in close to 50 million homes and is becoming a stronger force. Kids WB, which is packaged with Cartoon Network, is the only broadcast network with a strong Monday to Saturday kids presence and ABC Saturday morning continues to attract sizeable audiences. Additional competitors in the kids market are Fox Box and Discovery Kids, but Nickelodeon and Turner are the dominant market forces.
"We look at Cartoon Network as being well positioned for this year's Upfront," says Levy. "Ratings are up year over year. Anytime you can show growth it is a great opportunity. We've had two new hit shows, and we're launching a pre-school block with two hours each weekday from 7 to 9 am. We have identified a great opportunity with Adult Swim from 11pm to 5 am. The demand will be there because ratings are up and supply is tighter."
Zarghami points to the continued leadership of Nickelodeon. We introduced 'Nick Toons' in the fourth quarter and it is already in 32 million households and on its way to 40 million. 'The N' digital network for teens was introduced last year and it's now in 42 million homes. We believe the combination of Noggin, Nick Jr. and the CBS Saturday morning programming is a powerful offering to reach pre-schoolers and moms. Our consumer products business is tremendous. Our sales and marketing groups are closely aligned with our programming groups and our multiple platform pitch has been significant."
Wilber claims the strength of the Disney/ABC kids platforms is the "ability to deliver targeted kids. If they're looking for targeted audiences we offer the most efficient ways to deliver them. We give marketers a place where they can get an incredible concentration of boys on Jetix, which has a 70 percent concentration of boys. Our Saturday morning offers the largest concentration of girls in the marketplace. Plus," she adds, "the uncluttered environment of Disney Channel is a place where marketers are breaking through and making emotional connections with kids."
http://www.mediavillage.com/jmr/2005/03/30/jmr-03-30-05/
Atricle: Netflix’s Watch Now Tops the Online On Demand Movie Market
As we know, Netflix.com stands on top of the online video rental industry. Using U.S. monthly unique visitors as a proxy for subscriber-base, and thus overall success, Netflix currently doubles the closest contender, Blockbuster.com.
However, when you are atop any e-commerce industry you cannot become complacent. The second you loose your innovative edge you will become obsolete like the ’07 Yankees (oh snap!).
Back in January, Netflix released its Watch Now feature allowing subscribers to stream full-length movies and TV shows on their PCs. The service is offered free to existing Netflix members. The online on demand concept was certainly not invented by Netflix and there are plenty other players in the game. The space includes established sites like Vongo.com and Cinemanow.com, as well as new comers like Amazon.com’s Unbox. A look at the amount of people visiting these services shows that Netflix’s Watch Now has quickly grown into an industry leader.
*Cinemanow.com and Vongo.com are domain level counts. Netflix.com and Amazon.com counts are for the specific Watch Now or Unbox pages, respectively.
The executives at Netflix know that DVD’s will not be around forever. Being an early adopter to any new viewing formats will certainly help the company remain the king of the online movie business.
http://blog.compete.com/2007/07/06/online-on-demand-movies-netflix-watch-now-amazon-unbox-vongo-cinemanow/
However, when you are atop any e-commerce industry you cannot become complacent. The second you loose your innovative edge you will become obsolete like the ’07 Yankees (oh snap!).
Back in January, Netflix released its Watch Now feature allowing subscribers to stream full-length movies and TV shows on their PCs. The service is offered free to existing Netflix members. The online on demand concept was certainly not invented by Netflix and there are plenty other players in the game. The space includes established sites like Vongo.com and Cinemanow.com, as well as new comers like Amazon.com’s Unbox. A look at the amount of people visiting these services shows that Netflix’s Watch Now has quickly grown into an industry leader.
*Cinemanow.com and Vongo.com are domain level counts. Netflix.com and Amazon.com counts are for the specific Watch Now or Unbox pages, respectively.
The executives at Netflix know that DVD’s will not be around forever. Being an early adopter to any new viewing formats will certainly help the company remain the king of the online movie business.
http://blog.compete.com/2007/07/06/online-on-demand-movies-netflix-watch-now-amazon-unbox-vongo-cinemanow/
Monday, June 25, 2007
Docs: Pay Per Transaction Output Agreements
http://www.rentrakppt.com/content/services/output_programs.html
Actual PPT output agreements for Warner Home Video, Sony, 20th Century Fox, Lions Gate and First Look / DEJ.
Actual PPT output agreements for Warner Home Video, Sony, 20th Century Fox, Lions Gate and First Look / DEJ.
Article: Rev-Share Still Lives
Rentrak's Graham doesn't see studios budging much on selloff restrictions, since they don't want to risk cannibalizing their new sellthrough.
On the studio side, sources say three of the six majors — Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Universal Studios Home Entertainment and 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment — have opted not to enter into any long-term deals with the chains.
All the major studios have PPT deals with Rentrak, with variations. Most offer output deals for DVD and videocassettes, with Buena Vista's and Universal's PPT involvement limited to VHS. Upfront fees ranging from nothing to $1.50 (Universal and Buena Vista charge $3.75 and $6.75 for VHS). On average, retailers then keep 60 percent of the rental proceeds, and all but $1.25 to $3.80 of the selloff take.
Last March, Warner Home Video tweaked its revenue-sharing program to include a back-end minimum guarantee back to the studio.
Rentrak also has deals with a variety of smaller suppliers, including Wellspring, Ardustry and MTI. PPT programs also are available for some video games, with upfront fees averaging $8.50 to $12.50 and participating retailers getting 54 percent of the rental proceeds.
http://www.rentrakppt.com/content/news/news_09-16-05.html
On the studio side, sources say three of the six majors — Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Universal Studios Home Entertainment and 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment — have opted not to enter into any long-term deals with the chains.
All the major studios have PPT deals with Rentrak, with variations. Most offer output deals for DVD and videocassettes, with Buena Vista's and Universal's PPT involvement limited to VHS. Upfront fees ranging from nothing to $1.50 (Universal and Buena Vista charge $3.75 and $6.75 for VHS). On average, retailers then keep 60 percent of the rental proceeds, and all but $1.25 to $3.80 of the selloff take.
Last March, Warner Home Video tweaked its revenue-sharing program to include a back-end minimum guarantee back to the studio.
Rentrak also has deals with a variety of smaller suppliers, including Wellspring, Ardustry and MTI. PPT programs also are available for some video games, with upfront fees averaging $8.50 to $12.50 and participating retailers getting 54 percent of the rental proceeds.
http://www.rentrakppt.com/content/news/news_09-16-05.html
Article: Netflix discusses downloadable movies
Barry McCarthy, CFO of online movie rental company Netflix (ticker: NFLX), presented at the Morgan Stanley Small Cap Conference on June 15th. (That means that Morgan Stanley hosted small cap companies, not that Morgan Stanley is becoming a small cap stock...) Here's his argument why DVD rentals will not be displaced by movie downloading:
The studios make all of their money selling DVDs and almost none of their money theatrically. And they make practically no money at all on pay-per-view...
So, if you're a studio and you're trying to decide whether you're going to license content for electronic downloading, the decision is pretty simple. Two bucks electronic downloading, 18 bucks wholesale. Before you're going to license content for electronic downloading, you have believe that the market at two bucks of incremental revenue is so elastic that it's going to overwhelm the revenues you already generate from DVD and grow your business.
And no CEO is going to make that bet, which is why there's virtually no content licensable, on a subscription basis, for downloading. And that's the reason downloading is not the technology of the 21st century. Technology can do it. There will be a box in your home, that you can afford, that's going to drive that technology to the TV set. And there will be consumer demand for it. But there will not be content for it; not in abundance. And so that concept, I think, is DOA.
What is on the horizon is HDVD.
http://internet.seekingalpha.com/article/1408
The studios make all of their money selling DVDs and almost none of their money theatrically. And they make practically no money at all on pay-per-view...
So, if you're a studio and you're trying to decide whether you're going to license content for electronic downloading, the decision is pretty simple. Two bucks electronic downloading, 18 bucks wholesale. Before you're going to license content for electronic downloading, you have believe that the market at two bucks of incremental revenue is so elastic that it's going to overwhelm the revenues you already generate from DVD and grow your business.
And no CEO is going to make that bet, which is why there's virtually no content licensable, on a subscription basis, for downloading. And that's the reason downloading is not the technology of the 21st century. Technology can do it. There will be a box in your home, that you can afford, that's going to drive that technology to the TV set. And there will be consumer demand for it. But there will not be content for it; not in abundance. And so that concept, I think, is DOA.
What is on the horizon is HDVD.
http://internet.seekingalpha.com/article/1408
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Article: Viacom Snubs Web TV
By Tim Beyers June 19, 2007
If you want your MTV, parent company Viacom (NYSE: VIA) is there for you. But if you want your Web TV, go see Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL). Viacom wants nothing to do with you. Not yet, at least.
Who wants Web TV?
It's not that Viacom dislikes the Web -- CEO Philippe Dauman would just rather hog the remote. Here's how he explained it to attendees at a recent Deutsche Bank conference on media and telecommunications:
... We're very careful not to provide our content in a way that is competitive with the 24-hour channel offering that we have ... The "Joost" platform has a lot of content on it that hasn't appeared on air in many years. We now have a way to expose Beavis and Butt-head to audiences that haven't seen it in many parts of the world. I don't know if that's good for humanity or not.
Oh, come on, Philippe. What have you got against The Great Cornholio?
Actually, he has a point. Viacom derives nearly all of its profit from licensing and distribution payments from Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA), Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), General Electric (NYSE: GE), and other network operators. Competing with them is bad for business.
And it's not like Web TV is a big business yet. Netflix's (Nasdaq: NFLX) "Watch Now" library includes more films I'd rather avoid than see, though it's been fun to spend recent lunch hours with Lee Marvin and the rest of The Dirty Dozen.
Dauman knows that, which is why he's boosting Joost, which was created by the same guys who brought you Skype. Joost is similar technology in that it promises high-quality, free TV programming, using the Internet to deliver video.
Content is king, and it travels first-class
What's the allure for Viacom? Advertising. Beavis and Butt-head have been off the air since the '90s. They're dead as an advertising platform. Unless, of course, they earn an audience through Joost.
But Dauman is thinking even bigger, citing PepsiCo (NYSE: PEP) in his presentation at the Deutsche Bank conference:
They are [a] charter advertiser on our mobile deal with Sprint Mobile, where we are selling advertising for the first time on mobile ... We have a "Laguna Beach" virtual world where one of the prizes in that virtual world is to get a can of Pepsi. So it's really cool on that virtual site to be walking around with a can of Pepsi. That's a fantastic promotion for them, and they love it.
But will consumers' thirst for all things digital translate into a real thirst for sugar water? Everyone seems to think so. An online campaign -- even in virtual worlds -- contributes to online ad spending, which Jupiter Research predicts will exceed $19.9 billion in 2007 and rise to $35.4 billion by 2012.
The business of channel surfing
And yet the Web may be a bit player in Dauman's ultimate strategy: to create as much content as possible and cross-market it everywhere.
Sure, that sounds obvious, but don't underestimate the commitment it requires. MTV has suffered from lower ratings lately. So has BET, Viacom's channel aimed at African-American viewers.
But Dauman is investing in each, hoping to profit from a handful of hits that can produce licensing and advertising revenue for years to come. BET, in particular, has his attention:
BET [has] had very little original programming. So we've approved a three-year plan to dramatically increase the proportion of original programming on BET across many genres. We have 16 new shows launching this year. Most of them in the third and fourth quarter.
Smart move. Creating original programming will up ratings, create long-term value, and present licensing opportunities.
A Foolish finale
Dauman doesn't have it easy. A courtroom brawl with Gootube seems inevitable. And, with Tony Soprano gone and American Idol slipping in the ratings, TV isn't exactly the hang-on-the-edge-of-your-seat experience that it once was.
Fortunately, none of that should hurt Viacom. Not much, at least. Dauman is right. Between MTV, Comedy Central, BET, and Paramount Studios, Viacom has more than enough star power and plenty of distribution power ... for now.
What remains to be seen is whether Dauman can deliver more than classic recyclables like Beavis and Butt-head. He'd better. Today's investors are betting on it.
If you want your MTV, parent company Viacom (NYSE: VIA) is there for you. But if you want your Web TV, go see Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL). Viacom wants nothing to do with you. Not yet, at least.
Who wants Web TV?
It's not that Viacom dislikes the Web -- CEO Philippe Dauman would just rather hog the remote. Here's how he explained it to attendees at a recent Deutsche Bank conference on media and telecommunications:
... We're very careful not to provide our content in a way that is competitive with the 24-hour channel offering that we have ... The "Joost" platform has a lot of content on it that hasn't appeared on air in many years. We now have a way to expose Beavis and Butt-head to audiences that haven't seen it in many parts of the world. I don't know if that's good for humanity or not.
Oh, come on, Philippe. What have you got against The Great Cornholio?
Actually, he has a point. Viacom derives nearly all of its profit from licensing and distribution payments from Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA), Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), General Electric (NYSE: GE), and other network operators. Competing with them is bad for business.
And it's not like Web TV is a big business yet. Netflix's (Nasdaq: NFLX) "Watch Now" library includes more films I'd rather avoid than see, though it's been fun to spend recent lunch hours with Lee Marvin and the rest of The Dirty Dozen.
Dauman knows that, which is why he's boosting Joost, which was created by the same guys who brought you Skype. Joost is similar technology in that it promises high-quality, free TV programming, using the Internet to deliver video.
Content is king, and it travels first-class
What's the allure for Viacom? Advertising. Beavis and Butt-head have been off the air since the '90s. They're dead as an advertising platform. Unless, of course, they earn an audience through Joost.
But Dauman is thinking even bigger, citing PepsiCo (NYSE: PEP) in his presentation at the Deutsche Bank conference:
They are [a] charter advertiser on our mobile deal with Sprint Mobile, where we are selling advertising for the first time on mobile ... We have a "Laguna Beach" virtual world where one of the prizes in that virtual world is to get a can of Pepsi. So it's really cool on that virtual site to be walking around with a can of Pepsi. That's a fantastic promotion for them, and they love it.
But will consumers' thirst for all things digital translate into a real thirst for sugar water? Everyone seems to think so. An online campaign -- even in virtual worlds -- contributes to online ad spending, which Jupiter Research predicts will exceed $19.9 billion in 2007 and rise to $35.4 billion by 2012.
The business of channel surfing
And yet the Web may be a bit player in Dauman's ultimate strategy: to create as much content as possible and cross-market it everywhere.
Sure, that sounds obvious, but don't underestimate the commitment it requires. MTV has suffered from lower ratings lately. So has BET, Viacom's channel aimed at African-American viewers.
But Dauman is investing in each, hoping to profit from a handful of hits that can produce licensing and advertising revenue for years to come. BET, in particular, has his attention:
BET [has] had very little original programming. So we've approved a three-year plan to dramatically increase the proportion of original programming on BET across many genres. We have 16 new shows launching this year. Most of them in the third and fourth quarter.
Smart move. Creating original programming will up ratings, create long-term value, and present licensing opportunities.
A Foolish finale
Dauman doesn't have it easy. A courtroom brawl with Gootube seems inevitable. And, with Tony Soprano gone and American Idol slipping in the ratings, TV isn't exactly the hang-on-the-edge-of-your-seat experience that it once was.
Fortunately, none of that should hurt Viacom. Not much, at least. Dauman is right. Between MTV, Comedy Central, BET, and Paramount Studios, Viacom has more than enough star power and plenty of distribution power ... for now.
What remains to be seen is whether Dauman can deliver more than classic recyclables like Beavis and Butt-head. He'd better. Today's investors are betting on it.
Article: Kellogg Move Bodes Ill for Ads to Kids
More Than a Billion Food Marketing Bucks in Limbo as Companies Try to Satisfy the Critics
By Ira Teinowitz
Published: June 18, 2007
WASHINGTON (AdAge.com) -- Saturday morning will never be the same again.
Legions of kids who start their weekends with the boob tube and a bowl of sugary cereal won't be seeing Snap, Crackle and Pop. Instead, they'll soon be seeing ads for more-healthful foods -- or none at all. By agreeing to market to kids only the 50% of its brands that meet certain nutritional criteria, Kellogg has kick-started an industry trend expected to throw into play some $1 billion or more in marketing dollars.
Turning up the heat
It's a move that ratchets up pressure on the other 10 marketers in the so-called Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, which account for more than two-thirds of the food and beverage ads kids see. They are feverishly working to meet or beat a July 18 deadline to announce responsible-marketing pledges of their own at a government kids'-obesity forum.
Titans in the initiative, such as Hershey, McDonald's and General Mills, have already committed to devote at least half their TV, radio, print and internet marketing to kids under 12 to furthering "the goal of promoting healthy dietary choices and healthy lifestyles."
Each marketer will set its own individual standards, so it's impossible to say just how much spending will be affected. But judging by the breadth of the Kellogg plan -- which alone involves more than $200 million -- it's going to be a significant sum, particularly if you're a kid-focused media owner.
Healthy ad diet
Kellogg said it would advertise only foods that fit a particular nutritional profile in any medium that gets more than 50% of its audience from kids under 12. Products that fit the criteria will have no more than 200 calories per serving, no trans fat and no more than 2 grams of saturated fat. There are also limits on sugar. Some 30% of Kellogg's cereals don't meet the standard; oddly, Rice Krispies doesn't (too much sodium) while Frosted Flakes does.
According to President-CEO David Mackay, 27% of the company's ad spending in the U.S. is directed toward children under 12. According to Advertising Age estimates, Kellogg spent $765.1 million on total marketing in 2006, so a potential $206 million could be affected. Kellogg said it would no longer spend on kid-directed TV, print, radio and internet for the affected brands and would ditch "website activities directed to children, promotions/premiums, product placement and in-school marketing" for brands that don't meet its criteria.
Brand Identity
"Wherever possible, implementation of Kellogg commitments will begin immediately," Kellogg said in a statement. "For example, certain brands will feature better-for-you options in their advertisements. We will be making content enhancements to our child-directed websites, including adding automatic screen-time limits and healthy-lifestyle and nutrition messaging, plus limiting depictions of foods that don't meet our nutrient criteria in interactive activities like games, downloads and wallpaper."
Half Kellogg's products
But even Kellogg isn't sure whether it will be redistributing those ad dollars or not. Mark Baynes, chief marketing officer for North America, said about half of the company's products marketed to kids under 12 don't meet the new nutrition threshold, and it's still not clear which ones can be reformulated to meet the guidelines and still appeal to kids. "The challenge now is: Can we reformulate without too much a trade-off in taste?" he said. "If we can, we will, and [continue] advertising to children in much the same way we do now. If we can't reformulate our product and there is too much of a trade-off, we have to find a new target audience to make the brand relevant or, if we can't, stop advertising it all together."
Though kids' TV programmers are staying cool publicly, the winds of change are buffeting networks such as Viacom's Nickelodeon and Time Warner's Cartoon Network. Kellogg alone spent some $44 million on Nickelodeon advertising last year, according to TNS Media Intelligence (excluding Nick at Nite) and $22 million on Cartoon Network.
The groups that pressured Kellogg into its agreement, the Center for Science in the Public Interest and the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, also had threatened to sue Nickelodeon, but they've put that on hold. With the Kellogg settlement and an expected flood of similar efforts from other marketers, the groups appear to feel Nick will be punished enough.
Nick will be like "a used Edsel no one is buying," said Steve Gardner, chief litigation officer at CSPI, before hastening to add that kids' food marketers could still advertise on the network -- just with more-healthful products.
Nick 'thrilled'
Cyma Zarghami, president of the Nickelodeon/MTV Networks Kids and Family Group, said, "As a company that's been at the forefront of encouraging our partners to provide more balance in their offerings, we are thrilled that companies like Kellogg are taking initiative to provide us with opportunities to introduce healthier food options to kids." Cartoon Network had no comment.
One thing is crystal clear: Big Food is expected to almost universally step up to meet the challenge of Kellogg. Sen. Tom Harkin has called this the "defining moment in our nation's fight against childhood obesity."
By Ira Teinowitz
Published: June 18, 2007
WASHINGTON (AdAge.com) -- Saturday morning will never be the same again.
Legions of kids who start their weekends with the boob tube and a bowl of sugary cereal won't be seeing Snap, Crackle and Pop. Instead, they'll soon be seeing ads for more-healthful foods -- or none at all. By agreeing to market to kids only the 50% of its brands that meet certain nutritional criteria, Kellogg has kick-started an industry trend expected to throw into play some $1 billion or more in marketing dollars.
Turning up the heat
It's a move that ratchets up pressure on the other 10 marketers in the so-called Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, which account for more than two-thirds of the food and beverage ads kids see. They are feverishly working to meet or beat a July 18 deadline to announce responsible-marketing pledges of their own at a government kids'-obesity forum.
Titans in the initiative, such as Hershey, McDonald's and General Mills, have already committed to devote at least half their TV, radio, print and internet marketing to kids under 12 to furthering "the goal of promoting healthy dietary choices and healthy lifestyles."
Each marketer will set its own individual standards, so it's impossible to say just how much spending will be affected. But judging by the breadth of the Kellogg plan -- which alone involves more than $200 million -- it's going to be a significant sum, particularly if you're a kid-focused media owner.
Healthy ad diet
Kellogg said it would advertise only foods that fit a particular nutritional profile in any medium that gets more than 50% of its audience from kids under 12. Products that fit the criteria will have no more than 200 calories per serving, no trans fat and no more than 2 grams of saturated fat. There are also limits on sugar. Some 30% of Kellogg's cereals don't meet the standard; oddly, Rice Krispies doesn't (too much sodium) while Frosted Flakes does.
According to President-CEO David Mackay, 27% of the company's ad spending in the U.S. is directed toward children under 12. According to Advertising Age estimates, Kellogg spent $765.1 million on total marketing in 2006, so a potential $206 million could be affected. Kellogg said it would no longer spend on kid-directed TV, print, radio and internet for the affected brands and would ditch "website activities directed to children, promotions/premiums, product placement and in-school marketing" for brands that don't meet its criteria.
Brand Identity
"Wherever possible, implementation of Kellogg commitments will begin immediately," Kellogg said in a statement. "For example, certain brands will feature better-for-you options in their advertisements. We will be making content enhancements to our child-directed websites, including adding automatic screen-time limits and healthy-lifestyle and nutrition messaging, plus limiting depictions of foods that don't meet our nutrient criteria in interactive activities like games, downloads and wallpaper."
Half Kellogg's products
But even Kellogg isn't sure whether it will be redistributing those ad dollars or not. Mark Baynes, chief marketing officer for North America, said about half of the company's products marketed to kids under 12 don't meet the new nutrition threshold, and it's still not clear which ones can be reformulated to meet the guidelines and still appeal to kids. "The challenge now is: Can we reformulate without too much a trade-off in taste?" he said. "If we can, we will, and [continue] advertising to children in much the same way we do now. If we can't reformulate our product and there is too much of a trade-off, we have to find a new target audience to make the brand relevant or, if we can't, stop advertising it all together."
Though kids' TV programmers are staying cool publicly, the winds of change are buffeting networks such as Viacom's Nickelodeon and Time Warner's Cartoon Network. Kellogg alone spent some $44 million on Nickelodeon advertising last year, according to TNS Media Intelligence (excluding Nick at Nite) and $22 million on Cartoon Network.
The groups that pressured Kellogg into its agreement, the Center for Science in the Public Interest and the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, also had threatened to sue Nickelodeon, but they've put that on hold. With the Kellogg settlement and an expected flood of similar efforts from other marketers, the groups appear to feel Nick will be punished enough.
Nick will be like "a used Edsel no one is buying," said Steve Gardner, chief litigation officer at CSPI, before hastening to add that kids' food marketers could still advertise on the network -- just with more-healthful products.
Nick 'thrilled'
Cyma Zarghami, president of the Nickelodeon/MTV Networks Kids and Family Group, said, "As a company that's been at the forefront of encouraging our partners to provide more balance in their offerings, we are thrilled that companies like Kellogg are taking initiative to provide us with opportunities to introduce healthier food options to kids." Cartoon Network had no comment.
One thing is crystal clear: Big Food is expected to almost universally step up to meet the challenge of Kellogg. Sen. Tom Harkin has called this the "defining moment in our nation's fight against childhood obesity."
Article: Markey Demands McD's, Other Marketers Follow Kellogg's Lead
Congressman Tells Five Food Titans to Implement Kids' Advertising Limits
By Ira Teinowitz
Published: June 19, 2007
WASHINGTON (AdAge.com) -- The chairman of a congressional panel is ratcheting up pressure on McDonald's, Coca-Cola, General Mills, Kraft Foods and PepsiCo, demanding they follow Kellogg's lead and commit to kids' marketing limits -- or else.
Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass.
As part of a lawsuit settlement last week, Kellogg announced that in any medium that has a large audience of children under age 12, it would market only foods that meet new nutritional criteria. The marketer also went beyond rivals' initiatives, saying it would alter product ingredients to meet minimum health standards or quit advertising them to children.
Investigating impact of ads
Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., in letters to five of Kellogg's competitors, told those companies to implement similar limits, and announced new plans for a House hearing on the issue. Mr. Markey, who chairs the telecom panel of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said his panel's hearing this Friday on the impact of violent and tobacco-smoking images children see on TV will now also look at repercussions of the food ads children view.
The letters ask the companies to respond by June 29.
Mr. Markey cited a report from the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine that said marketing could have an effect on food choices. "I am concerned that the prevalence of advertisements on children's television for junk food, fast food and other foods wholly lacking in nutritional value is one of the root causes of America's childhood obesity epidemic," Mr. Markey wrote in the letters.
"I would like to know whether your company will commit to implementing the same marketing restrictions Kellogg has announced. Such information may inform the subcommittee and the public as to additional steps that may be warranted to safeguard kids from junk-food ads during children's television programming."
An aide to the congressman said the five companies were selected because of their extensive use of marketing to kids. At press time, a witness list for this week's hearing wasn't yet available.
Could bring in FCC
In an April 16 letter to several Federal Communications Commission commissioners, Mr. Markey said the FCC would need to play a more active role in limiting food advertising on kids' shows if marketers don't act voluntarily.
"There is no question that the commission has both the affirmative obligation and the statutory authority to examine whether placing limitations on certain food advertising to children would further the public interest," he wrote then. "If a 'core' educational program tells children to eat healthy foods and exercise, but the advertisements aired during the program encourage them to eat Twinkies and Fruit Loops, the ads have the potential to undercut the educational and informational value of the program."
By Ira Teinowitz
Published: June 19, 2007
WASHINGTON (AdAge.com) -- The chairman of a congressional panel is ratcheting up pressure on McDonald's, Coca-Cola, General Mills, Kraft Foods and PepsiCo, demanding they follow Kellogg's lead and commit to kids' marketing limits -- or else.
Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass.As part of a lawsuit settlement last week, Kellogg announced that in any medium that has a large audience of children under age 12, it would market only foods that meet new nutritional criteria. The marketer also went beyond rivals' initiatives, saying it would alter product ingredients to meet minimum health standards or quit advertising them to children.
Investigating impact of ads
Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., in letters to five of Kellogg's competitors, told those companies to implement similar limits, and announced new plans for a House hearing on the issue. Mr. Markey, who chairs the telecom panel of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said his panel's hearing this Friday on the impact of violent and tobacco-smoking images children see on TV will now also look at repercussions of the food ads children view.
The letters ask the companies to respond by June 29.
Mr. Markey cited a report from the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine that said marketing could have an effect on food choices. "I am concerned that the prevalence of advertisements on children's television for junk food, fast food and other foods wholly lacking in nutritional value is one of the root causes of America's childhood obesity epidemic," Mr. Markey wrote in the letters.
"I would like to know whether your company will commit to implementing the same marketing restrictions Kellogg has announced. Such information may inform the subcommittee and the public as to additional steps that may be warranted to safeguard kids from junk-food ads during children's television programming."
An aide to the congressman said the five companies were selected because of their extensive use of marketing to kids. At press time, a witness list for this week's hearing wasn't yet available.
Could bring in FCC
In an April 16 letter to several Federal Communications Commission commissioners, Mr. Markey said the FCC would need to play a more active role in limiting food advertising on kids' shows if marketers don't act voluntarily.
"There is no question that the commission has both the affirmative obligation and the statutory authority to examine whether placing limitations on certain food advertising to children would further the public interest," he wrote then. "If a 'core' educational program tells children to eat healthy foods and exercise, but the advertisements aired during the program encourage them to eat Twinkies and Fruit Loops, the ads have the potential to undercut the educational and informational value of the program."
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