Family Guy 'most social' TV show

Interesting article on the 'most social' TV shows.....first time I have seen this

Family Guy 'most social' TV show

Family Guy was the US show that attracted most social network activity in July, according to research by New York-based SocialGuide.

The social data firm monitors comments about TV shows aired on US terrestrial and cable networks, analysing activity on check-in services and social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.

Based on a sample of more than 10.5 million 'social TV comments,' Family Guy took a 5.9% share of comments attributed to unique users and 2.6% of overall comments.

More at http://www.c21media.net/news/detail.asp?area=1&article=62030

I am delighted to be joining the board of Enteraction as a non-executive director. Enteraction are unique in Europe in being able to provide a platform (called Gameshaper) for social games and applications for 3rd party brands and media properties.

I hope to work with Enteraction to provide strategic and business development support for their projects and to use Gameshaper for some of my own developments in the social gaming space.

Peter, CEO Spirit digital media

Zev Suissa joins Spirit

Digital content business Spirit Digital Media hired digital specialist Zev Suissa as Creative Director to oversee a development slate of original properties for multiple platforms. He previously worked for Agility Studios. Spirit Digital Media is a UK media firm headed by former Endemol executive Peter Cowley.

Can 'The Daily' ever make money

News Corp's Ipad newspaper 'The Daily' launched this week in New York http://www.thedaily.com/. The digital newspaper has cost $30m to get to launch and will cost $500k per week to run.

Subscriptions will be $0.99 per week or $39.99 per year.

Whether the content is good or not is being debated widely on blogs and in news articles, so I want to focus on whether it can make money from it's cover price alone. Of course, if the newspaper gains enough subscribers it can attract advertising money, but in its growth period, it will be reliant on subscription revenues.

To cover the running costs for a year ($25m) it will need to gain over 600k annual subscriptions, and that is before it has paid for the investment ($30m). The Times paywall in the UK has only attracted 50k+ subscribers after many months of marketing.

digital books sales may 'overtake' print sales by 2014

As reading moves to eReaders and book sales move on-line, publishers and retailers will struggle in this new world

• 10.5m people in the US now own a dedicated e-reader
• 10m iPads sold in the US in 2010
• $1b was spent on eBooks in 2010
• half of book sales in 2014 will be digital

More details from the Bookseller

On-line Video Views pass 6 billion/month

UK viewers watched more than six billion online content videos and 527 million online video ads in November last year, according to ComScore figures

Full release here

Google (mostly via YouTube) ranked highesr for viewing viewing sessions, attracting 34.4 m people watching 2.8 billion videos.

ITV served the most on-line video ads:

Book publishing finally goes digital ready for 2011

There are a number of interesting news articles coming out about the rise of eBooks and how digital media is being used by book publishers to innovate and diversify.

The bookseller published an article in September 2010 that started to suggest that e-book sales are beginning to cannibalise printed books, especially in the genre of romance and science fiction.

The Times published a story on 1st January 2011 analysing the growth of romance e-books. According to Nielsen BookScan data, in 2009, 2% of all traditional books sold were in the 'romance and sagas' category, compared with 14% f all e-books sold in 2009.

In the last week of December, Amazon said its Kindle machine was the best selling product in the retail website's history. Amazon is believed to have sold 8m in 2010, up from 2.4m in 2009. There have been 14m sales on iPads since it launched in early 2010.

US bookseller Barnes & Noble said digital books were outselling physical ones of it website, with the retailer selling nearly 1 million e-books on Christmas Day alone.

According to the Bookseller, Random House Groups Uk's e-book sales increased 800% year-on-year in 2010. Random House also launched an innovative new book 'Mortal Kiss' with teen website Stardoll. In the US, the group believes they could achieve 10% of sales via eBooks in 2011.

And finally Daniel Winner's blog analyses the market after attending a recent conference. He is taken with Pearson's diversification in to its on-line world 'Poptropica' and predicts a rich future for digital book publishing if the industry embraces the opportunity.

Also, keep an eye on The Bookseller's website http://www.thebookseller.com/.

Yahoo! extends its crowd sourcing of content to match AOL

Yahoo!has created the Yahoo! Contributor Network a platform for user contributed content. This is in addition to its recent purchase of Associated Content earlier in 2010.

AOL already has a similar platform called 'AOL SEED network'.

Check out the Wall Blog for more analysis.

News International unveils first paywall figures

Brand Republic's story on News International's paywall figures:

"News International has revealed for the first time that it has had over 200,000 people pay for its digital edition of The Times and Sunday Times since putting up a paywall in July.

Half of those have paid for a joint print/digital subscription, which could include "some duplication" while around 105,000 have paid for digital-only packages."

can be interpreted in two ways:

1) News International have successfully launched their paywall strategy and have added to their overall 'subscribers' to The Times/Sunday Times.

2) The low number of digital subscribers to the The Times/Sunday Times proves that the UK audience don't feel there is (yet) enough value behind the paywall to pay.

ITV launches Corrie Nation social game

Corrie Nation has now launched in to beta.

Start with the Rover's Return and start building 'The Street' by acquiring Corrie Gold through tasks & stocking the shops/houses with relevant virtual goods. Different virtual goods give off XP & Corrie Gold after a time period. Charicatures of the cast cast be added to the Street and they will give you tasks to perform which can yield yet more Corrie Gold.

The game is still a little buggy, but is a good move in to driving a new revenue stream from ITV.com. Give it a go and start building The Street level by level.

Play it here:http://apps.facebook.com/corrienation/

Bin Weevils adds Cartoon Network content into its subscription

Kids MMO world, Bin Weevils seems to be the first service of its type to add in traditional media content to add value to its subscription service......at one level this seems sensible: give your customers more value to make it harder for them to move on....on the other it seems a backward step: do the kids care.

According to Brand Republic, http://bit.ly/aay1Yj:

Bin Weevils, the entertainment platform for children aged seven to 12, has signed a deal to offer Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon programming on a new "social video on demand" service.

From today members of BinWeevils’ ‘Bin Tycoon’ subscription service will be able to watch over 200 hours of on-demand TV content while communicating with their avatar-based friends on the site. Content from Turner Broadcasting-owned Cartoon Network includes ‘Ben 10’, ‘Chowder’, and ‘The Secret Saturdays’ and programming from Viacom-owned Nickelodeon such as ‘iCarly’ and ‘SpongeBob Squarepants. Additional programming on Bin Weevils will be provided from distributors such as Target Entertainment, Decode, Millimages and Cake Entertainment with further partners to be announced in due course.

More Co-Viewing: Million Pound Drop is Back

The Million Pound Drop

ITV has already bought back ITV Live to harness the on-line chatter around X-Factor and now Channel4 are at it as well.

The second series of Endemol's The Million Pound Drop was back on our screens all this week and the most exciting thing about the programme is the 'second screen' application on the web:

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-million-pound-drop-live

The first series showed that 'play along' games can be very successful (nearly 5% of viewers played along to series 1) if it is well integrated and relevant to the TV show. It will be interesting to see if these levels of participation can be maintained and how Channel4/Endemol monetise the 'engaged' audience.

Winning In Digital

Check out Daniel Winner's new blog, titled as 'strategies for success in the digital entertainment market':

http://www.winning-in-digital.blogspot.com/

It is definitely worth a read. So far, he has talked about Apple and iPads....perhaps there is a theme ;-)

ITV Live is back with XFactor

ITV Live is back with a ' follow along' X-Factor service.......chat, catch up on clips & watch live.

It still doesn't give me the 'twitter' effect that makes me feel I'm in the middle of a big conversation.

Spirit

No, not the booze, not the big guy in the sky, not the ghouls.....but a digital production company that intends to make the most of the digital spirit out there

http://www.spiritdigitalmedia.com

CAFE: A Strategic, Social Marketing Mode

from: http://www.clickz.com/3639620

If your goal is get as many people as possible to opt in to a relationship with you, stop reading this now and go start a contest to give away a trip to Hawaii to one lucky person following you on Twitter. It hardly matters what you are selling.

But if you are in this to create an actual business with long-running value, I invite you to explore a new model, called CAFE, which provides the four main building blocks of a strategic, social plan. CAFE stands for Content, Advocacy, Fans, and Engagement.

Content is the fuel that drives the plan. A brand must have some content to start an interaction. We can't wait for the consumer to come to us. That content could be an invitation to tell us what they are thinking. But, more likely it is something that communicates an idea about the product.

Advocacy is the newest kid on the marketing block. While we've always known that people make decisions based on advice from their peers, we've never been able to bake that into a plan the way we have now. Generating advocacy needs to be a real part of what you are planning to do.

Fans are important, of course. We've said they shouldn't be the only goal, but it is critical that when consumers do come to your content, you seek to establish a relationship with them, and following (or fanning) is an excellent way to do it. This is also the pathway to advocacy and earned media.

Engagement is the final piece and the one that most people, unfortunately, ignore. This is the long-term relationship that you intend to have. The work you do to bring people in to your world not only represents value to you, but also a commitment. When someone opts in, it's because they are looking to interact with you again and again. You need to be ready to do this.

More on ITV Digital

C21 report in more detail on what is happening at ITV Digital after te cuts

http://www.c21media.net/resources/weekly_detail.asp?id=783

Key points:
- £12m loss from Kangaroo
- TV Play to be shuttere! (what happens to PartyGaming deal)
- 80 digital jobs to go
- ITV.com made mistakes when building the site
- digital turnover at £36m and target of £150m scrapped

So, it is all pretty shit now and as everyone speculated, ITV has been badly managed for years.

A Big Day for ITV

http://www.itv.com/News/Articles/ITV-announces-600-job-losses-838920857.html

ITV job losses and the economic glum exposes the lack of a new business model at ITV. Selling Scoot & Friends Re-United.

Why is it that all that itv touches turns to 'coal':
- ITV Play ruins participation TV market in the UK
- ITV buys Friends Reunited just before MySpace/Facebook boom
- Project Kangeroo dies a death, even though it should have been good
-

Can Hollywood solve 'webtv' shows?

Warner Bros think so with www.theWB.com

Comments from CNET about the portal that launched in the summer:

TheWB.com: Big media's beacon of hope?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10073941-36.html?tag=mncol;posts

Also, Sony are showing the way with www.crackle.com

CRACKLE: New Webisodes Every Weekday Sony Revamps Old Grouper Video Network
http://www.webtvhub.com/crackle-new-webisodes-every-weekday-sony-revamps-old-grouper-video-network/

I say bring it on.....where there is a Hollywood studio, there is money.

Is this any good - i don't think so.

Wine Web drama for Middle Britain

http://if.futurescape.co.uk/2008/10/wine-web-drama-for-middle-britain.html

is this any good - i don't think so. Best bit is the sponsor - Jacob's Creek