CBS has sold out of its March Madness on Demand inventory, pulling in about $37 million in online ad sales. That’s up 20% from last year.
The network sold as many ads for its live web coverage as it did for its TV coverage, reports AdAge. March Madness on Demand revenue has increased from $4 million in 2006 - the first year it offered its free service - to $32 million last year. That’s compared...
Continue Reading »
CBS has said that it has agreed to experiment with Apple in reducing the price of some of its shows on iTunes, cutting prices from $1.99 for most shows to 99 cents for some.
Les Moonves, chief executive of CBS Corp., said on a conference call with analysts last week that certain shows would sell for 99 cents, but he did not yet know which those will be. Those in the industry doubt the...
Continue Reading »
NBCU is expecting to lose at least $250 million on its coverage of the Vancouver Games due to slow ad sales and other factors.
NBCU paid big for rights fees for the Winter Olympics, in part because of the locale of the Games, which meant more than half of the U.S. will be able to watch the events live.
NBCU’s Skyrocketed Bid Was ‘Faulty’
NBCU paid big for rights fees for the Winter Olympics,...
Continue Reading »
Apple hopes to spur demand of TV shows offered on its iTunes store by pressuring TV nets to reduce TV show prices.
Networks, however, are resistant to reduced pricing, worried that what happened with the music industry - the simple and inexpensive pricing structure of $1 per song helped boost digital downloads but depressed album sales - will happen to TV.
The move is seen as a part of...
Continue Reading »
Hulu is considering charging users to access certain popular shows in the hopes of increasing revenue and experimenting to find the fine line between what viewers expect to see for free online, and what they are willing to pay for, according to people familiar with the matter (via the Los Angeles Times).
One possible plan includes allowing users to access the five most recent episodes of TV...
Continue Reading »
Time Warner’s agreement to pay Fox a per-subscriber fee for its TV stations could have significant repercussions for media and consumers alike.
Neither Time Warner nor Fox would reveal the financial details of the retrans deal. Reports have said Fox wanted $1 per subscriber per month, while Time Warner wanted closer to 25 cents per subscriber. Some analysts believe the deal was for around 50...
Continue Reading »
People who subscribe to cable, satellite or telco TV service can register now to view live streaming Olympics coverage on NBCOlympics.com, in a concept similar to the cable industry’s TV Everywhere initiative.
“Olympics Online Connect” will allow viewers who pay for TV service to view more than 1,000 hours of live Olympic streaming events and replays, reports MediaPost. Most large cable and...
Continue Reading »
Radio hosts on Clear Channel Radio will soon be promoting a new show from American Idol producer Simon Fuller. People can audition for the show, If I Can Dream, on MySpace, and the show will air not on television but on Hulu and other websites.
The show will feature five would-be actors and musicians as they live and search for fame together, with their lives streaming 24/7 via website...
Continue Reading »
AOL plans to revive itself after Time Warner spins it off next month by becoming the top creator of digital content on the web.
The company’s chief executive, Tim Armstrong, says that content is the one area on the web that hasn’t seen its full potential, and he plans to significantly increase the amount of content AOL produces. The company currently employs 3,000 journalists, and that number...
Continue Reading »
Rupert Murdoch is determined to change the way print content is treated on the web. In addition to being one of the first and largest media companies to plan a full-scale switch from free to paid content models for its newspapers, Murdoch is saying he will block News Corp content from being indexed by Google.
The move will certainly significantly decrease by a large margin the amount of traffic...
Continue Reading »