Discovery Network is looking to snare a young, male-centric audience online with the launch of its free, ad-supported video network, TestTube. The video network was the brainchild of Revision3, an Internet television studio acquired by Discovery Networks last year. "If you had to think about what Discovery would look like if you invented it today for the millennial generation, TestTube is that image," J.B. Perrette, chief digital officer of Discovery Communications, says. Read the whole story...
CBS' plan for five new sitcoms for the upcoming season just moved to six. The network issued a late series pick-up for single-camera comedy "Bad Teacher," based on the Cameron Diaz film. It stars Ari Graynor as an inappropriate former trophy wife who masquerades as a teacher in order to find a new man after her wealthy husband leaves her broke. Read the whole story...
"It's basically outright warfare going on," says one source. "None of us wanted to be part of the Philly.com ship of entertainment and sex." But the site remains in "power because they still control our main portal to the world. Nobody knows about Inquirer.com." The tension is longstanding. In March, the creation of the Inquirer.com and PhillyDailyNews.com sites gave both papers handsome websites and the online editorial control they had long been denied. But Philly.com conspicuously fails to advertise either site, and their peculiar structure suggests that they may have been built to benefit Philly.com to the papers' detriment: Newspaper content is on Philly.com for free, while the papers' sites guard the same content with a hard paywall. Read the whole story...