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MySpaceTV, a division of News Corp.’s MySpace, has been hunting for programming that will keep the social network’s young users logging on while at the same time appealing to advertisers.
MySpaceTV is now working on 12 pilots, including one called Dirty Soap, a reworking of Soap, the 70s sitcom about a dysfunctional family, writes BusinessWeek.
MySpaceTV was founded last year by MySpaces’s sales and marketing chief Jeff Berman, in the hopes of using professionally produced programming to compete with YouTube and other sites that rely primarily on amateur video.
The online network is intentionally writing elements that resonate with viewers into its scripts. For example, after research that showed online viewers love cute animals, Berman had a Chihuahua written into the Dirty Soap story line. MySpace viewers also asked for more scantily clad women.
MySpaceTV is doing things on the cheap in the hopes of being able to turn a profit. News Corp. is paying just $5,000 per three-minute episode. At such a rate, an hour-long drama would cost $100,000, rather than the $1 million-plus that networks typically pay.
U.S. internet users viewed more than 10 billion online videos in February - up 3 percent from January (despite February’s being two days shorter) and a 66 percent gain from February 2007, according to recent data from the comScore Video Metrix service.
Google Sites once again ranked as the top U.S. video property, with nearly 3.6 billion videos viewed (35.4 percent of all viewed videos), up 1.1 percentage points from the previous month. Google’s YouTube.com accounted for 96 percent of all videos viewed at Google Sites.
Hyper-conservative Rush Limbaugh - heard weekly by nearly 20 million listeners on about 600 radio stations nationwide - renewed his contract with Premiere Radio Networks and Clear Channel Radio, continuing syndication of The Rush Limbaugh Show.
The deal also includes…
WSJ.com’s traffic soared an impressive 94 percent in June compared to the same month last year, according to the company’s internal traffic numbers.
Total page views ballooned 45 percent, to 150 million, compared to the same month last year, writes Mediaweek.…
Kozy Shack, maker of rice and chocolate pudding, is sponsoring the New York Mets, with tubs of the pudding being sold individually at Shea Stadium as well as being included in children’s meals. And the snacks are selling so well…
Though U.K. advertiser investment committed for 2008 is staying put, discretionary spending is becoming shorter-term, at or slightly short of budget; still, WPP’s GroupM forecasts 4 percent growth in 2008 and 3 percent in 2009 for the U.K., thanks to internet…
Email is the most popular form of direct response marketing, with 35 percent of companies using it - compared to 25 percent that use traditional direct mail - according to a new survey conducted by Direct Partners (via Adweek).
The survey…
Without spam protection, the average web user can expect to get 70 spam messages each day, according to a survey by McAfee, the BBC reports (via MarketingVOX).
For the McAfee spam test, 50 people worldwide were asked to web-surf without a spam…
