A day after Google offered up public-domain books online, Amazon.com announced its plans to offer digitized books on the web; Random House said it had come up with a business model for allowing people to pay to view its books online; and Microsoft announced a digitization deal with the British Library.
email this
permanent link
JCDecaux and Chinese outdoor company Beijing Gehua Cultural Development Group have signed a 30-year outdoor advertising joint venture to develop street furniture and other outdoor ad opportunities in Beijing, according to Brand Republic. The joint venture forms a new company, Gehua JC Decaux Outdoor Advertising, and will be equally owned by the two partners.
email this
permanent link
Random House and Focus Features have joined forces to form Random House Films, a venture through which the two entities will co-finance a series of book-to-film (and perhaps film-to-book) projects, according to Variety (via GalleyCat). Longtime Random House executive and novelist Peter Gethers will run Random House Films.
email this
permanent link
A processing predicament paused Nielsen’s release of ratings for more than 24 hours, releasing Tuesday night’s ratings on Thursday morning rather than Wednesday, Media Life reports. Nielsen released a statement that read: “Nielsen Media Research experienced a data collection issue early Wednesday morning due to an internal software upgrade, which resulted in an incomplete collection of data for Tuesday, November 1st, 2005. This impacts the National, Local and Hispanic metered market services.”
The snafu came at perhaps the worst possible time for Nielsen and its clients, as sweeps started last night.
email this
permanent link
Following Viacom’s split into two entities, CBS has signed an agreement to acquire College Sports Television Networks for $325 million, according to Mediaweek. CSTV will stay operated by founder and CEO, Brian Bedol, who will now report to Leslie Moonves, chairman of CBS and co-president and co-COO of Viacom.
email this
permanent link
Google launched its book search, Google Print, yesterday which utilizes the collections of the University of Michigan, Stanford, Harvard, the New York Public Library, and Oxford University, and allows users to search for and access the entire texts of books in the public domain, Mediapost reports.
email this
permanent link
Burger King will sponsor a series of short comedy videos designed to be downloaded for free and played on the new video iPod, Mediapost reports. The deal, with broadband video download site Heavy.com, is perhaps the highest profile move by an advertiser into the new medium. The video iPod was introduced just weeks ago, with a series of commercial-free programming.
Through the first six weeks of the new season, ABC has surpassed NBC in reaching the highly coveted affluent viewers, adults 25-54 in homes with household incomes of $100,000 or more, Media Life writes. NBC had dominated that demographic for decades, helping to make it the most lucrative network. ABC has also matched NBC in the percentage of its audience that falls into the affluent demographic, according to an analysis of Nielsen Media Research data released by Magna Global.
Microsoft, typically opposed to national privacy laws, seems to have thrown in with Ebay and Hewlett-Packard in supporting national legislation, AdAge reports. At a congressional luncheon yesterday, Microsoft’s senior vp-general counsel and corporate secretary Brad Smith cited growing worries about fading consumer trust in the internet and difficulties in complying with conflicting state legislation as reasons for the government to adopt privacy legislation.
email this
permanent link
The National Center for Database Marketing summer and winter conferences will be combined into one annual show, B to B reports. The show, co-produced by the Direct Marketing Association and Direct magazine, will now take place in winter, with the upcoming NCDM 2005 in December happening at the Walt Disney World Dolphin in Orlando, Florida.
