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Here’s an indication of how NOT to communicate internally…

Last summer, as the explosive popularity of YouTube became obvious to the older media companies, the marketing department at the Cartoon Network decided to use the site to promote its shows. So it posted some video clips there, hoping the promos would get forwarded in emails, linked on blogs and MySpace pages, and otherwise spread through the Internet, strengthening the channel’s fan base and drawing in new viewers.

Happily, people noticed the videos. Unhappily, some of the people who noticed the videos worked for the Cartoon Network’s legal department, who mistook their colleagues’ new marketing tactic for an unauthorized appropriation of the firm’s intellectual property. They promptly sent cease-and-desist letters demanding that the clips come down.

Molly Chase, the executive producer of Cartoon Network New Media, told this story at the Futures of Entertainments Conference at MIT last weekend. “You have to communicate well internally,” she concluded, as appreciative laughter rippled through the auditorium.

OA by Jesse Walker is here: http://reason.com/news/show/116826.html

An “unknown” gadget reviewer has been signed up as a BBC presenter after her video weblogs were spotted on YouTube.

Susi Weaser impressed producer Mike Worsley, who said her “upbeat, quirky” style was perfect for Sunday lifestyle show Something for the Weekend.
She was believed to be the first person plucked from the video-sharing site to be a host on mainstream UK TV, he said.

“All her videos were already online so we had an idea of how she would be before we had even met her,” he added.

Talent search
Mr Worsley, who works for programme-maker Princess Productions, said he had ventured online while looking for gadget companies, reviewers and bloggers. He had spotted Ms Weaser’s technology reviews for the Shiny Shiny website, which had also been posted on YouTube.

She can be seen on the show in the UK on Sundays at 1000 GMT
“I wouldn’t say that I had ever done that before. It wasn’t my first port of call but it was a great discovery nonetheless,” he told the BBC News website.

“Because the videos were quite short at a minute long, it was exactly the sort of demonstration we wanted on the programme.

“It was like having a showreel online, and we got her in and screen-tested her, and she was great.

“She’s young, she’s female - which is nice in that field as well because typically it’d be a guy that you would presume would be doing something like that - and she’s been very popular.”

He said Ms Weaser would be featuring during the BBC2 programme’s current 10-week run and was likely to return next year for a second series, which had already been commissioned.

OA: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6157948.stm

A new report from the London School of Economics (LSE) predicts that the adoption of mobile TV will give way to a more personal and private TV experience than that of traditional broadcast TV, with significant implications for users, content providers and advertisers.

The report, commissioned by Nokia, says that users will be able to receive content anytime, anywhere, choose what is most relevant to them and even create and upload their own television content, while content providers and advertisers will be able to tailor their offerings more specifically to the user.

The report This Box Was Made For Walking was written by Dr Shani Orgad, from the Department of Media and Communications at the LSE, based on a review of existing literature, analysis of mobile TV consumer trials, interviews with experts in the fields of television, mobile media, advertising and other media, and attendance at industry events.“For mobile TV to become more than just television on the move, it will have to build on existing channels, programmes, and ways of watching television and using the internet,” said Orgad.

“Mobile TV will become a multimedia experience with an emphasis on personalisation, interactivity and user-generated content.”“We are currently entering a new era in television, that of personal TV and video consumption,” said Harri Männistö, director of multimedia at Nokia. “This LSE report highlights the opportunities for both broadcasters and advertisers in this new mobile television era.”

According to the report, the current trend of user-generated content, as seen by the phenomenal growth of YouTube, will be a key feature of mobile TV. As consumers increasingly use their mobile devices to create video content, new broadcast platforms will emerge to distribute this content to other mobile users. The US television channel, Current TV, is a good indicator of the future with 30pc of its programming consisting of user-generated content.

Orgad examined the impact of mobile TV on the advertising industry and predicts new opportunities for the industry as it is able to better target and interact with key audiences. On mobile TV, advertisers will be able to pinpoint their messages to users according to very specific levels not possible with traditional TV and at success rates higher than those of the internet.

The report also reveals that advertisers are currently experimenting with five and seven second-long ad spots to be better suited to the ’snacking culture’ of mobile TV viewing. The report predicts that mobile TV programming will be a combination of original content from broadcast television and new content made specifically for mobile. It is expected that the most popular genres and programmes on mobile TV will be news, entertainment (soaps, reality shows, comedy, animation), sport, music and children’s programmes.

Moreover, the content will be tailored with the mobile viewer in mind, including much shorter and more concise news bulletins, user interactivity in the plots of reality TV shows and game shows, growing importance of user-generated content and new distribution formats. In China, for instance, the movie Kung Fu Hustle was made into 10 segments for mobile TVThe mobile TV viewing experience is also likely to see new programme formats emerging. These include talking heads and close ups; due to the small screen size, broadcasters will need to focus on talking heads, where viewers will be able to watch close-ups and see the details, rather than capturing a wide screen.

It will also see the advent of ‘snackable’ content such as mobisodes — fragmented and small made-for-mobile episodes that cater to bite-sized portions of content on the go. Broadcasters are likely to see a new midday prime time with mobile TV, according to the report. This is backed up by consumer trials of mobile TV in Europe which revealed heavy usage of mobile TV during the day as well as during the more traditional early morning and late evening prime times.

Original article by John Kennedy is here: http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/news.nv?storyid=single7340

THE OTHER DAY IN MEDIAPOST’S “Section 2: Around the Net in Online Marketing,” there was an interesting juxtaposition of articles. Heading up two stories about Google’s legal issues with YouTube was a link to another: “YouTube: Better ROI Than Super Bowl.”

Over the past few weeks, what felt like a googol of articles about YouTube have been written. The surprising part was the total lack of coherence in any of them. The best coverage of the video phenomenon I’ve seen was “Rip Off,” a bit done on “The Colbert Report” on Nov. 1. The segment focused on an aspect of the story that too few articles seem to have remembered: the users who create user-generated content, who are not receiving ad revenue despite contributing popular content. This is the real “Rip Off,” suggested the “Colbert” segment, “The Word”–which should be required viewing for anyone discussing the topic.

There’s been an oft-repeated comparison between YouTube–if rights deals are not secured–and post-litigation Napster. YouTube is not Napster. The P2P networks had almost no user-generated content, and what little they did have was impossible to find because it operated on a search–as opposed to a portal–interface. If you look at the most-watched videos on YouTube, a handful are clips pulled from the offerings of the big media companies. However, a large number of the other most-watched clips, and especially the “long tail” of watched clips, are videos that the user base puts up for other users to see and comment upon. For every popular clip of “The Daily Show,” there’s an even more popular clip of a teenage driver crashing his dad’s new car through the garage wall.

YouTube’s greatest asset is its audience. While it may be true that access to illegally posted content aided its rapid rise to fame, at this point it holds control over enough of the online video market share that even if the illegal content were removed, much of the user base will remain–because, simply, that’s where the other eyeballs are. This looks to be a very likely possibility with the emergence of Brightcove, which is tailored to the control of Big Media. YouTube was created with a focus on the ease of uploading and syndication of its content for use by the masses, and as such isn’t really suited for the needs of TV networks.

YouTube does still have threats to its market dominance. The biggest threat is a loss of its audience to competitors. Companies like Revver, which have profit-sharing ad models that split revenue with content creators and syndicates, could pull a number of the UGC uploaders and posters from YouTube–and with them, its audience.

The other issue still revolves around copyrights. While reposting segments of TV shows is a clear-cut infringement, the more complex issue revolves around rights management in UGC. The famous “Guma Guma” video’s creator likely did not obtain synchronization rights from the publisher and from the recording owner, nor did the video really fall under the stipulations of “fair use.”

Regarding market share, YouTube is looking into pushing content to mobile handsets. If this is launched, and especially if uploading from video on the phone is enabled, YouTube will cement itself in the UGC market for the youth demographic.

As for the second issue of rights clearance, there is a solution, but it would require Big Media to come to terms with its hubris. Content owners should really be viewing UGC that utilizes works under copyrights they own as an untapped “long tail” market. Under current rights clearance methods, things are too complex, too costly, and take too long for users uploading content to be expected to clear rights. If the burden was on the “Guma Guma” creator to research who owned both required rights, pay an estimated $5,000 for the distribution rights, and wait for up to a month to clear the rights, the video would never have been posted.

If content owners can revise rights clearance for the UGC age, plugging it into YouTube’s uploading step would be a no-brainer. Also, Google reigns king with tracking and catering to long-tail business. It would be fairly simple for Google to track views and ad revenue of content tagged with rights belonging to content owners and give them their fair share.

YouTube and Google are not in trouble. There isn’t yet a legal precedent to allow them to be sued for hosting copyright content, as long as they take it down if requested. If the posting of copyright content is controlled and removed, the core audience remains for what YouTube offers as a portal to user-generated content–much like a modern-day “Funniest Home Videos.”
YouTube could help cement its position in this area by moving into mobile phone uploading and streaming, profit-sharing with uploaders of original content, and working with content owners to streamline rights management and clearances. However, it is crucial to note that despite what has been said in recent weeks, YouTube’s core business is not based upon copyright infringement. YouTube’s core business is tailoring to the long tail of content creation–or, as it’s more popularly called, “user-generated content.”

Original article is here: http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=50929

As if the commercial TV companies needed any more trouble… Now it looks as if Ofcom will ban TV advertising opf junk foods from our screens. The warning came as Ofcom the media regulator, announced tough rules to ban advertising of food high in fat, salt or sugar sduring programmes intended for under 16’s.

But advertisers are sure to seek alternative marketing channels for their products, to be sure they dont miss out on their lucrative markets, and it seems certain that Internet advertising will benefit, according to Neil Jones, MD of ad giant Carat.

Ofcom reckons the ban will reduce broadcast revenues by up to £39m a year. Companies like ITV and GMTV may lose up to 0.7% of revenues, and childrens’s and youth oriented cable and satellite channels could lose as much as 8.8% of theirs. Dedicated childrens channels will fare worse losing as much as 15%.

by Alex Donohue Brand Republic 16 Nov 2006

LONDON - The BBC wants to employ more user-generated content and has firmed up its policy on the issue to help journalists deal with the thousands of emails and images it receives every day. A BBC spokesperson told Brand Republic that the corporation receives more than 10,000 emails and images a day from viewers, and although the vast majority are not used for broadcast, it is keen for the general public to participate in user-generated content.

Under the new guidelines, the BBC emphasises that it considers payment for submissions that are deemed to be “particularly editorially important or unique”, but stressed it did not want to encourage audiences to believe that that payment is the norm.

The BBC guidelines say: “Audiences should not be encouraged to think that payment is the norm, or in any way encouraged to take risks, put themselves in danger or break any laws in order to secure what they perceive to be material of high monetary value.”

Payment for viewer submissions is not a new policy at the BBC, but major news events can result in an avalanche of user-generated content. The corporation received more than 20,000 emails after the July 7 London bombings last year, and more than 5,000 responses to the Buncefield oil depot fire in Hertfordshire last December.

In August, Nokia unveiled the winners of its inaugural Citizen Journalism Awards, with an anonymously submitted image of the July 7 Tavistock Square bombings winning outright; David Otway’s aerial shot of the Buncefield oil depot fire coming second; and another image of the 7/7 bombings by Alexander Chadwick completing the top three.

American broadcaster CNN has already launched a user-generated content portal on its homepage, featuring video, audio and written reports of what it calls citizen journalism.

Channel 5 said it would pay up to £100 for viewer contributions used for broadcast.

The BBC guidelines state: “Our starting point is that we should aim to apply the same approach to pictures, audio and video supplied by members of the public, as we do to any other material we handle as journalists.”

User-generated content, the holy grail of the new media world for some, is getting a serious lift across the pond. According to a report in The Guardian, the BBC will soon begin paying for some content submitted by users (hat tip, Media Bistro). That the BBC is going down the road of potentially making everyone a freelance journalist is not an insignificant step. From the

Guardian: New guidelines tell BBC staff they can make payments to members of the public who send in footage from mobile phones or cameras, but “audiences should not be encouraged to think that payment is the norm”. The new guidelines on paying for content are a departure for the BBC.

The new editorial policy guidelines state: “Material is submitted to the BBC under published terms and conditions. These give us a free, non-exclusive licence to publish on any platform, and the person who took the footage/pictures retains copyright. “However, on very rare occasions where material is particularly editorially important or unique and depicts something of great significance, we may consider making an appropriate payment.

Plenty of news organizations accept and even post user-generated content, mostly in areas walled-off from the rest of the news. On the surface, paying for pictures or video is only fair if a news organization wants to use such images — freelancers and stringers are an integral part of the business, after all. To extend that network to anyone with a camera phone or digital camera (basically everyone) makes sense. You can’t always get your vetted professionals to the immediate scene of news, but you can bet someone is capturing the images so why not tap into that? But there is a reason user-generated content is almost always carefully segmented – authenticity.

When a site like CBSNews.com uses a picture or video from a stringer, freelancer or news services like the Associated Press, there is a high level of comfort that the material is being legitimately represented – that it is what it claims to be. Of course, we’ve seen plenty of cases where even those sources are called into question.

Are freelance photographers who they claim to be? Do those taking the pictures understand what they’re seeing? Remember all those controversies of the past? There is a certain level of trust involved in taking any material at face-value, but for the most part, organizations have built that up over time. What happens when news organizations begin to receive content from sources they’ve never dealt with before? How can they be verified? It may be tempting to tap into the vast number of potential citizen journalists out there but it’s also worth remembering that everyone with a digital camera also has access to some pretty fancy editing equipment as well, not to mention the capability to stage images.

Back in the day, Hollywood presented Forrest Gump in conversation with President Kennedy and it was hailed as special effects magic. These days, however, a skilled Photoshop user can generate images even more convincing. When news organizations begin offering financial incentive for user-generated content, they add to the potential for manipulated or staged pictures getting passed off as genuine. Let’s hope press outlets are as busy beefing up their standards as they are their networks of citizen journalists.

Universal Music Group and its publishing companies have sued MySpace and its parent company News Corp., alleging that the wildly popular site facilitates and encourages “rampant” infringement of thousands of UMG’s copyrights. The action, filed Friday in federal court in Los Angeles, seeks maximum statutory damages of $150,000 for each copyrighted work infringed either directly or indirectly and an injunction barring further infringing acts.

Said UMG in its suit: “The foundation of MySpace is its so-called ‘user-generated content.’ However, much of that content is not ‘user-generated’ at all. Rather, it is the ‘user-stolen’ intellectual property of others, and MySpace is a willing partner in that theft.” The action continues, “Notwithstanding MySpace’s frank admission that it is ‘unable,’ i.e., prohibited by law, from offering its music and video services without first obtaining the permission of the copyright owner, MySpace has knowingly and intentionally operated its business on the fiction that it has obtained the licenses it needs from members that MySpace well knows are not the true copyright owners.

“MySpace harbors no illusion that the countless MySpace members who have posted these bootleg videos and pirated sound records to MySpace have done so lawfully. MySpace simply ignores its own admonition in its terms of use about first obtaining the permission of the copyright owner.”

The suit cites U2, 50 Cent, the Black Eyed Peas, Mariah Carey, the Killers, No Doubt, Kanye West and Prince among dozens of acts whose recordings or compositions have allegedly been pirated on the site, which is described in the complaint as “a vast virtual warehouse for pirated copies of music videos and songs.”

UMG notes that rapper Jay-Z’s much-anticipated album, “Kingdom Come,” which will not be released until Tuesday, already is “widely available for streaming and downloading on MySpace.”

In a separate statement, UMG said: “Businesses that seek to trade off on our content and the hard work of our artists and songwriters shouldn’t be free to do so without permission and without fairly compensating the content creators.” UMG — whose chairman and CEO Doug Morris has been outspoken about his intention to protect the company’s music against online infringers — filed suit in October against peer-to-peer sites Grouper.com and Bolt.com, seeking similar damages.

The UMG suit against MySpace was filed almost simultaneously with an announcement from the site that it planned to launch a tool that will make it easier and faster for copyright holders to remove content they allege is unauthorized.

The tool — currently being tested with Fox and MLB Advanced Media — will allow copyright holders to digitally flag any user-posted video containing content that they own and allege is unauthorized. MySpace would then remove any of the flagged videos. MySpace recently announced a licensing deal with Gracenote implementing fingerprinting technology that would bar the posting of unauthorized music on the site.

News Corp. acquired MySpace in September 2005 as part of a $580 million acquisition. On Thursday, Fox Interactive president Ross Levinsohn, whose divisional oversight included MySpace, resigned (HR 11/17). His departure followed the Nov. 3 resignation of FIM chief operating officer Mark Jung. A statement from MySpace about the UMG suit said in part: “We have been keeping UMG closely apprised of our industry-leading efforts to protect creators’ rights, and it’s unfortunate they decided to file this unnecessary and meritless litigation. We provide users with tools to share their own work — we do not induce, encourage or condone copyright violation in any way.

“We are in full compliance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and have no doubt we will prevail in court. Moreover, we proactively take steps to filter unauthorized music sound recordings and have implemented audio fingerprinting technology. We will continue working to be the gold standard in protecting creators’ rights as well as the world’s leading lifestyle portal.”
Several defendants in previous copyright-infringement suits have failed in attempts to shield themselves with the DMCA’s so-called safe-harbor provision, which applies in situations involving the mere hosting of Web site material. The UMG suit claims that MySpace also reformats material “uploaded by their users in order to facilitate the further copying and distribution of such works to and by as many users as possible.”

Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the studio in last year’s MGM v. Grokster decision, it’s considered scant defense to claim that a site also engages in the swapping of legal materials. But it could bear watching if MySpace uses its planned copyright-protection tool as a defense in the UMG suit.

“One question is whether it is sufficient to make the tool available to the content owner and make the content owner responsible to police the site,” said Jeffrey Liebenson, an intellectual property attorney with the New York law firm of Herrick, Feinstein. “One of the raging controversies is whether the obligation to monitor infringing content is the responsibility of the content owner or the online user.”

The matter also is at the heart of pending litigation involving some book publishers and the Google search site, Liebenson noted. Yet for all the technical arguments at the heart of the dispute, a judge could end up ruling on the UMG suit based on more simple fairness issues, he added.

“The Grokster case was a really good example of the Supreme Court using common sense and not getting all wrapped up in technicalities,” Liebenson said. “They said there’s something intrinsically offensive about what (Grokster) was doing.”

Original Article is here: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/business/news/e3i0680ee274458ce79117cdaaa59abbb3d

ZIM launches ZIMTV and ZIMTV mobi

Mobile entertainment and internet TV provider ZIM Corporation has launched ZIMTV and ZIMTV.mobi, an English-based peer-to-peer TV platform for the internet and mobile phones.
ZIMTV provides a complete internet TV broadcasting platform enabling content owners to distribute their content to millions of potential online viewers worldwide.

Features of the new product are to include free channels containing sports, movies, television, news, animation and educational video content, plans for pay per view channels for premium content and English language content, and plans to include international language content in the future.

Sponsored by a consortium of companies including Google, Nokia and Microsoft, ZIMTV.mobi will enable content to be distributed to mobile phones and PDAs worldwide, further expanding ZIMTV.

“We are excited at the opportunity to provide broadcasters worldwide with a platform to distribute their video content on the internet and on mobile phones,” said Dr Michael Cowpland, president and CEO of ZIM. “ZIMTV offers content providers an attractive opportunity to create new revenues and new customers.”

ZIMTV focuses on streaming videos rather than downloading through the P2P infrastructure. It will also offer unlimited bandwidth for a flat rate.

OA is here: http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=F296B489-2B54-4C1C-9663-EC77AE7C8AF3

User-generated content sites like Revver, Metacafe, and Panjea are taking the next big step in the market’s growth by paying content creators and, in some cases, rewarding users for sharing videos.

The meteoric rise of user-generated content (UGC) has been one of the biggest ongoing stories in 2006. Some would say the high point for this nascent market was YouTube’s $1.65 billion payday courtesy of Google. Yet, in terms of impacting the overall market, the more significant announcement may have come more recently, when Google unveiled its plans to share advertising revenue with EepyBird, producers of the infamous Diet Coke and Mentos viral videos.

While this wasn’t the first time Google agreed to share revenue with a content producer, it was with a “user-generated” producer (of course, where the line should be drawn between “professional” and “user-generated” is a topic in and of itself, as that recreation of the Bellagio fountains was hardly amateur).

Adding to the significance of this deal was another announcement on the same day by Metacafe.com unveiling their Producer Rewards program . Though not a direct ad revenue share per se, Metacafe now offers its uploaders cash based on how many times their videos are viewed, with payments starting at $100 for twenty thousand views and going up $5 for every thousand views thereafter.

Not the First Kids on the BlockOf course, Google Video and Metacafe aren’t the first kids on the UGC revenue-sharing block. Not with companies around like Revver.com, which launched a year ago with a model whereby a post-roll ad was inserted at the end of videos and uploaders were paid a 50/50 revenue share based on however many viewers clicked on that ad. Their original claim to fame was that they were “the only video service that rewards content creators and owners for their original work”; it still says so on their Press Room page, though everywhere else it now refers to them as “the first viral video network that pays.

“Although if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Revver must be mighty flattered indeed, as 2006 has seen a spate of similar announcements regarding other UGC sites taking the lid off of the revenue-sharing honey pot.

In May, Blip.tv unveiled a pilot revenue-sharing program that offers a 50/50 split with uploaders based on the revenue generated from post-roll ads.Around that same time, a new UGC site called Panjea.com launched, promising anywhere from a 50 to 85% split on ad revenue, as well as the ability to earn points simply by visiting the site and enjoying content.

And in early July, the omnivorous UGC site Eefoof.com went live enabling uploaders to profit from videos, funny images, games, and other rich media content by sharing in the ad revenue from text and banner ads through a somewhat more complex formula based on how many hits a particular piece of content gets, the total number of hits the site receives, the total ad revenue generated by Eefoof, and their expenses.

And if that weren’t enough, it’s not just the uploaders who are benefiting from this burgeoning rev share market. It’s also those individuals who are sharing content and helping to drive that traffic. Guba.com offers $5 for every hundred leads brought to the site. Revver has joined in on this game by doling out a 20% of their ad revenue generated by the videos a user shares.

Growing Up Fast

The ongoing chorus surrounding UGC sites in the news has long been focused on the lack of high-quality content. When it comes to encouraging high-quality content, is there any better way then by putting money on the table? The power of the revenue sharing carrot has already been on display by high profile migrations of popular producers, like lonelygirl15, from non-paying sites like YouTube to paying sites like Revver. What’s been so amazing, though, is just how quickly this market has evolved, especially considering it didn’t really exist as recently as a year ago, at least not anywhere near its current level of popularity.

We’ve gone from most people not even knowing these sites existed, to some sites generating enough traffic to garner a billion dollar price tag, to the producers uploading this content benefiting from their hard work, all in the span of less than a year. Sure, the market’s still a long ways from maturity, and has a potentially troublesome adolescence to go through as the market steels itself for the potential spate of copyright lawsuits and the ever-shifting whims of a fickle audience, but the fact that internet giants like Google are stepping up to the plate and realizing that to compete in a UGC world they have to reward those users who are generating the content bodes extremely well for the future of this market.

Original article is by Geoff Daily is here: http://www.streamingmedia.com/article.asp?id=9454