BBC may lay off quarter of online staff and close 6Music radio station | Media. The BBC's web output could be cut in half, with online staff numbers and budgets to be slashed by 25% following director general Mark Thompson's strategic review of the corporation's scope and activities. Other cuts being given serious consideration as part of the review include axing digital radio stations BBC 6Music and the Asian Network, putting a cap on spending on sports rights at 8.5% of the licence fee, or about £300m a year, cutting the £100m foreign film and TV show acquisitions budget by 25%, and selling off BBC Magazines, according to today's Times.
Other proposals include the closure of cross media brands BBC Switch and BBC Blast, which are aimed at teenagers. The proposed cuts would save £600m which would be reinvested in UK-originated content and are based on the assumption that the licence fee would be frozen in 2013, the Times reported. The BBC is expected to announce the outcome of the review next month, or possibly in April if further debate is needed. BSkyB chief: questions remain over BBC | Media. The BSkyB chief executive, Jeremy Darroch, has voiced concerns that the hastily concluded BBC licence fee settlement will prevent further scrutiny of the corporation's scope and funding. Darroch, speaking today as Sky beat analysts' forecasts with its results for the three months to the end of September, also hinted that a deal with the BBC backed video-on-demand service YouView may make strategic sense. Sky has been a staunch critic of YouView.
"It is what it is, a settlement has been agreed," he added. "As you'd expect I understand why the government thinks the BBC has got to do its fair share in the cuts coming through. However questions remain about [the BBC's] footprint, scope and where public money should be spent. " On Tuesday the BBC and the government concluded a six-year deal to freeze the BBC licence fee at £145.50, with the corporation agreeing to take on funding commitments including the World Service, BBC Monitoring and most of S4C's budget.
8 Companies That Are Reinventing TV Online. Web television has matured significantly in 2009; we've seen the introduction of the Streamy Awards, Dr. Horrible seized control of the Emmys, and the launch of more internet TV-related startups than we can count. TV-over-IP is starting to hit television sets thanks to set-top-boxes, TVs, and disc players with built-in streaming capabilities, and like print media before it, traditional broadcast television is beginning to grapple with the inevitability of an Internet-driven future. Here are several companies that believe they are well-positioned for the transition — big and small, old and new. This isn't a complete list by any stretch, but these samples will give you an idea of where the industry is headed in 2010. 1. Along with TV networks' own websites, Hulu has been one of the de facto destinations for users seeking network television programming on the web.
At the 2009 Digital Hollywood conference NBC executive Mark Graboff said, "Hulu is basically an anti-piracy move. " 2. 3. 4. Dr. Web TV Right Now – And the Future. This is a guest post from Patricia Handschiegel, an aspiring serial entrepreneur and founder of Stylediary.net (sold 2007) and The 9 Group, a digital consulting and content/production company that leverages entertainment and Internet experience. My first work in Web TV dates back long before Web 2.0, at the infrastructure level, as I come out of the Internet telecom space – or the industry that makes the Web do what it does as we know it.
It’s a cool part of the business. The Internet is ultimately a sophisticated communications infrastructure designed to modify or replace other, older platforms, like landline and mobile phones or TV. It also holds a lot of the secrets to what’s ahead on the Web. For example, a good year (or more) before video exploded online, things on the back end were pointing to just that. Information moves online in packets, and video is the heaviest. Here are a few ways I believe to win: Forget Webisodes…for Now. Understand the Money. With Internet TV Booming, Blip.tv Raises $10.1M. Blip.tv announced today that it has raised $10.1 million in its third round of institutional funding.
Led by Canaan Partners and existing investors Bain Capital Venture, this new round comes as blip.tv approaches its fifth birthday. We spoke with co-founder and CEO Mike Hudack about what the new investment capital will mean for blip.tv and why blip.tv has continued to grow in such a crowded and competitive industry. Hudack told us that when blip.tv was founded in 2005, the idea was simply "to change the entertainment industry by making independent show production sustainable and scalable. " Hudack told us that a core part of blip.tv's mission over the last five years has been to bridge the gap between the computer and the television and to bring quality online content everywhere.Blip.tv debuted at the very beginning of the web video boom.
Along with services like YouTube, blip.tv was one of the earliest places that users could upload their own content to then serve via their own sites. The Future of Apple TV: iOS Apps, 720p and an ‘i’ Name [RUMOR] New rumors suggest that an upcoming refresh of the Apple TV will bring iOS app support, as well as a new name for the device. According to Engadget, the next version of the Apple set-top box will be called the iTV.
Mac history buffs will recall that this was the original name Apple announced for the device back in October of 2006; we can only assume the company has settled the trademark disputes over that name if it intends to go forward with a change. In addition to supporting iOS applications and a long-rumored streaming iTunes service, Engadget also reports that Apple will be downgrading the video output on the device to 720p. Previous reports indicated that playback would be in 1080p, but Engadget's sources claim the version of the A4 chip being used in iTV isn't powerful enough to push full HD video. On the one hand, that's a blow to videophiles (who aren't the target market anyway), on the other, it makes sense if only from a streaming and downloadable content perspective.
4 Major Internet TV Apps Compared. With internet TV being praised everywhere as the next big thing, I just have to wonder if all the hype is really true. Is it possible that cable and satellite providers will go down the drain, and a new form of television using your Internet connection take control? With the launch of newcomer VeohTV last week, we spent the weekend taking 4 major internet tv applications for a test run. Veohtv Veohtv, released last week, promises to go above and beyond what Joost has done so far. The interface is slick and the content is plentiful. There's a wide range of content, too: you can view almost any type of video online, including media from CBS, FOX, PBS, and more.
(However, Veohtv doesn't have partnerships with all the providers, which could be a problem in future.) Our favorite feature: thanks to a partnership with widget/startpage provider yourminis, there's an interactive, widgety page that lets you add modules within the player itself. Babelgum Joost Democracy And the winner is... DivX and LG Prepare to Bring DivX TV to the Living Room. Today DivX and LG Electronics are announcing a strategic alliance to bring the new DivX TV Internet TV platform to the next generation of LG's Blu-ray players and home theater systems. Internet TV is a hot trend at CES 2010, with tons of manufacturers lining up to show off devices that promise to make it easier to connect to your content, whether it's on TV, a computer or a mobile device.
Like Boxee and the Boxee Box, DivX TV aims to bring Internet content to your TV screen and allows you to stream local media from your computer. Check out this video: When DivX TV launches it will include a number of channels and partnerships for different video, movie and music services — plus social networking and photo-sharing sites. The current list of DivX TV partners and channels include: Associated Pressblip.tvBreakCNETRoxio CinemaNowDailymotionDiggnationPandoraPicasaRevision 3RhapsodyTEDTekzillaThe Street.comTwitterVBS.TV What do you think about the future of Internet TV? 25+ Apple TV Plugins And Hacks. Leopard is coming soon, and some reports claim that the new Front Row is going to borrow its look from Apple TV. In the meantime, Apple TVs themselves are cheaper then ever, but Apple is strangely quiet about it.
Is Apple TV the future of home entertainment or is it Apple's blunder which will probably disappear from the market in the years to come? You decide. In the meantime, we've created a toolbox with over 25 plugins and hacks to make all you AppleTV owners smile. Plugins Apple TV RSS Plugin - Configure and read various RSS feeds right on your Apple TV.
ATVLoader - Install many plugins from a large database. NitoTV - The biggest and best plugin of them all. Road Trip - GPS plugin that works with any USB GPS adapter, fetches maps from MapQuest. Sapphire - Best way to manage TV Shows and Movies. Sports Scores - This plugin allows you to check sports scores. Streamer - Stream internet radio through your Apple TV. MPDControl - Control your MPD server easily from your Apple TV. Hacks. PREDICT THE FUTURE: 20+ Prediction Markets. Everyone wishes they knew the future, and with prediction markets popping up everywhere, it is now far easier to get a good idea of where something is going - although we still don't recommend betting on the basis of this information. We've gathered 20+ sites to help get you started predicting the future!
Financial HedgeStreet.com - Predict not only the stock market, but higher power occurences like hurricanes that can impact the economy. Jambaz.com - This service lets you predict the stock market, and the more you're right, the more of a trusted member you become. Motley Fool Caps - From the infamous Motley Fool, get together with other stock market aficionados and try to predict where the market is going. PredictWallStreet.com - A simple prediction site where you enter a ticker symbol, press the red or green button, and see what the majority picks on that stock for the next day. TheUpDown.com - Get together with other stock market enthusiasts and try to predict where the market is going. Social TV: Watch Hulu with Your Facebook and MySpace Friends. Watching TV with friends is a time-old tradition. But what if you don't have any friends around and still want to have that TV-on-the-couch experience?
A few months ago, Splashcast and Hulu hooked up to bring Hulu to social networks via applications on your Facebook or MySpace page. Tomorrow, Splashcast will officially announce new, more engaging features for these apps: they're calling it Social TV. In actual fact, Social TV has been quietly tested over the past two weeks; the central differentiating feature being something called "Chatter".
Chatter allows users and friends to talk about a show via microcomments (comments don't update your Facebook status). The cool thing is that this is not done in real-time, but instead any time you chatter, it is synced to the video. We don't think TV will be replaced completely by these "watch with friends" applications: sometimes you just want to kick back, relax, and passively consume a TV show. The Future of TV. Soon after the iPad was released, @bondigeek tweeted from 10,000 feet in the air that he was streaming movies on Netflix through the airline's in-flight Wi-Fi service.
In that moment, it seemed as if science fiction had become reality. Technology is evolving faster every day, fueling disruption in every industry from music to publishing and now television. The once amorphous future of TV is quickly taking shape, though differently than anyone anticipated. One thing is certain: Similar to the music industry, the future of TV will see exponentially more content available to consumers, and will be produced, distributed and monetized much differently than in the past. These shifts will create a new playing field with consumers ultimately emerging as the winners.
Just a few years ago, there was widespread debate about whether consumers would watch lengthy content on their mobile devices. TV is not impervious to the ubiquity of social media. Continue to next page →