Multichannel News
Starting Aug. 15, you'll need to wait until a week after their broadcast premieres to see Fox shows for free online -- unless your cable, satellite or telco TV provider has made a deal with Fox permitting you to do so. Dish Net is the first to sign up; its subscribers will need to log in with user name and password on such sites as Fox.com, Hulu.com and DishOnline.com. No word on the terms and conditions of the deal. And no change for Hulu Plus subscribers.
Fox Business
If you're suffering from "Mad Men" withdrawal and you're also a Netflix subscriber, today may be your lucky day. Perhaps it can also take some of that sting out of Netflix's rate increase. Yes, you can now watch any episode from "Mad Men's" first four seasons instantly! John Kell reports that in addition to its new deal with "Mad Men" distributor Lionsgate, Netflix has reached an agreement with CBS to stream previous seasons of such shows as "Dexter," "Californication" and "Medium" -- in Canada and Latin America.
Philadelphia Inquirer
While watching series episodes on demand from Comcast/NBCUniversal's USA Network, we get irritated by network promos telling us to tune in "tomorrow" to a show that actually aired a week earlier. So it's nice to hear that Comcast is bringing dynamic ad insertion to on-demand, starting with shows from USA, Bravo, Oxygen and E. Sure, it's designed to increase ad revenues -- Chrysler and Kraft have already signed up to participate, says reporter Bob Fernandez -- but we can only hope that the networks update their own in-show marketing too. And if Comcast isn't your cable operator, fret …
Rapid TV News
Households with broadband Internet but not multichannel TV service-- who make up 8% of all U.S. households -- aren't necessarily cord-cutters, according to new data from Leichtman Research Group. Only 5% of this group said they don't subscribe to a TV service because they can watch all the online video they want on the Internet, and only 2% mentioned Netflix as a reason for not subscribing. The main reason they don't subscribe to cable or other multichannel TV? Cost, cited by 28%, followed by 26% who said they don't watch much TV, and 18% saying they have no need for …
Adweek
Has anyone out there received a print copy of Google's new trade pub Think Quarterly? If so, you're one of just a "small number of clients and partners" receiving this "limited edition" mag, according to Lisa Gevelber, Google's head of global ad marketing. In a Q&A with Ki Mae Heussner , Gevelber reveals some of the mag's special features: for one thing, each issue is personalized with the recipient's name (hopefully, more so than every pub I get in the mail, all of which include my name on the cover right over my address!). Ok, the Think Quarterlycover …
Advertising Age
Back in April, "Mad Men" network AMC announced its first reality show, called "The Pitch," which would feature ad agencies competing against each other for new business.Three months later, no agency has agreed to participate. Rupal Parekh's comprehensive story provides lists of agencies who have said no, and those who have yet to decline, the pitch from "The Pitch." She also notes that other reality shows set in the ad industry have failed in recent years, such as Oxygen's "Ad Fight," cancelled after one episode, and another called "Jingles," which never even made it to air. But another corporate-based show …
Boston Herald
Oxygen removed a joke about Amy Winehouse from a Sunday night repeat of its hit reality series "The Glee Project."The joke was still visible via Comcast's On Demand service, however, and the unidentified
Herald blogger, while crediting Oxygen for its alert action, also says the network could have easily removed the entire "few seconds of pointless banter" that led into the joke without affecting the episode itself. Incidentally,
notes James Hibberd at "Inside TV" in following up on the
Herald story, the original airing of that episode of "The Glee Project" a week earlier brought in the series's highest …
ClickZ
The New York Times' out-of-home video network, consisting of 75,000 screens in such outlets as delis, coffee shops and convenience stores, is running a Groupon offer every 3.5 minutes, reports Christopher Heine. The offers come via the RMG ad network, which has an affiliate partnership agreement with Groupon. Viewers input a short-code text into their smartphones, which allows them to purchase a discount voucher from a Groupon web page. An RMG exec tells Heine that 300 to 400 mobile puchases are being made monthly. The program began in May.
The Hollywood Reporter
Discovery Networks International, which has an office in Oslo, said it has commissioned a one-hour documentary about Friday's Norwegian bombing and shooting spree, which killed at least 76 people (the death toll varies -- that's the number according to The Hollywood Reporter ). The special will air starting next month on Discovery Channel in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region. No word yet on Discovery in the U.S., says The Reporter's Georg Szalai, who points out that neither CBS, NBC or ABC broke into their regular programming to report Friday's breaking …
Broadcasting & Cable
Here's one way at least, that Rupert Murdoch may be doing something right. He was among the first, we believe, to own a local TV station (New York's Channel Five) and a newspaper (the New York Post) in one market, as regulation banning such ownership was eased. And now several FCC studies find "statistically significant evidence" that newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership has a "positive correlation" on local news,"according to Broadcasting & Cable. Which could mean lifting the ban for cross-ownership altogether.Another finding: "owning multiple stations in a market does not negatively impact local information programming and has a positive impact on the …