• Small Business Gets Its Own Branded Entertainment, And It Doesn't Suck
    If you are trying to grab the attention of small businesses with a branded entertainment play, then an office situation dramedy seems like a no-brainer. But can it work? Given the wooden delivery, hit or miss writing and almost mandatory bad timing that occupies most webisodics, one wouldn't expect much from a series produced by a small business insurer targeting SMBs and their entrepreneurial streak. But "Leap Year," from Hiscox Small Business Insurance and its agency, CJP Digital Media is surprisingly good.
  • Survey: Sure, We'll Ditch Cable...Make an Offer!
    The Internet TV habit has grabbed hold of Americans in just a few short years of streaming prime time onto anytime access. And while we still don't have a firm sense of whether the proverbial "cable cutting" is occurring in any appreciable way, the video natives are growing restless. This is some of what I take away from the latest Harris Interactive poll taken with Adweek about use and attitudes toward the Web's relationship to TV.
  • Michael Jackson, User-Generated, Heavily Directed
    We're not sure how "user-generated" the Michael Jackson "Behind the Mask" Project can claim to be when it launches this morning on the late pop singer's Facebook page. The idea was to piece together snippets of fan-made and uploaded video snippets into a video that was spun off of the song collection released late last year and selling 3 million units, according to Epic records. For the past few months, fans were sent to a page on the Behind the Mask site to choose from highly specific assignments and suggestions for what to record and upload.
  • Building the Modern Heartthrob Audience: The Dave Days Story
    Can Justin Bieber strike twice now that every boyish, sexually non-threatening mophead in America is posting his hummings to YouTube? Back in the days of Bobby Sherman and Tiger Beat, teen heartthrobs were built by TV studios and record companies who knew exactly when a secondary character (anyone remember Sherman's stuttering brother role on Here Come the Brides?) was attracting fan mail. The wave of talk show appearances, bad records and summer TV spin-off shows commenced to hit while the iron was hot.
  • What Happens in Vegas...Probably Didn't
    Las Vegas has done such a good job of establishing its own naughty mystique, you wonder why anyone would want to mess with it. After all, "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas," has become one of the catchphrases of our culture and a remarkable example of wink-and-a-nod messaging. Don't worry, the subtext implies, we will cover your ass. In what other city does one leave feeling almost guilty if you didn't cross some line somewhere? So it is curious that Vegas.com comes into the municipal branding fray with a new campaign that highlights people's transparent tall tales about coming …
  • Video Lessons from T.S. Eliot
    If most of us remember anything at all about T.S. Eliot's great modernist poem "The Waste Land" it is that we were hopelessly lost after the first memorable line - "April is the cruelest month." Eliot filled his masterpiece with so many obscure allusions to literature past and pop culture present that it seemed designed to appeal to scholars, not the rest of us. As a former academic, I will let you in on a trade secret. Even some of us in the field used to debate whether this poem was worthwhile or meaningful to anyone but bickering grad students …
  • Rachael Ray's 'Buddies' Teach You 'eHow' to Cook at Demand Media's New Foodie Channel
    Demand Media continues its ongoing project to create more traditional media destinations and brands, often linked to high profile celebrities. This week, on-screen and print darling Rachael Ray lends her name, face, if not her video presence, to a new eHow Food section. Titled "Rachael Ray and Her buddies" the series of recipes and video walkthroughs are hosted by Ray's "friends" who do most of the video heavy lifting. Ray lends her name to a blog and gives the cast of buddies her highly effective imprimatur of personable, accessible style.
  • Video Aggregation Done Right - Newsy Relaunches on iPad
    We spent a good deal of time at yesterday's MediaPost event ,Tablet Revolution, focusing on video. Early-in advertisers love embedding clips into their ad units, and the first iAds for iPad are just rich with streaming media. In many respects, the iPad feels like a portable DVR. I myself use it every day to watch Netflix, HBO, and the morning's cup of MSNBC's Morning Joe (usually ready for download by 9:30 each weekday. But the iPad is an interactive device, after all, and advancing the possibilities of the platform beyond time-shifted TV takes more careful thought. Video news aggregator Newsy …
  • Gaming Gets Video...Finally
    Video gaming can't even seem to buy its way into aesthetic respectability. Three decades after games like Tempest, Galaga and Red Baron first captivated me in the bars and arcades of '70s America, the industry has become one of the economic powerhouses of entertainment...and most critics continue to pay empty lip service to questions about "whether it is an art form?"
  • Over-the-Top! 488 Million Households To Be OTT-Capable by 2016
    Replacement cycles, the on-demand habit and relaxed content distribution restrictions will help make over-the-top digital video available to 488 million households worldwide in five years, says The Diffusion Group. Which is not to say that all those eyeballs will be tuning in to your cross-platform video wares. TDG estimates that barely a majority of those homes (51% or 250 million) will access OTT. About 106 million worldwide viewed digital feeds on their TVs in 2010. But there is a huge gap between those who actually have the connected devices/TVs and broadband service and those who use them. TDG argues that …
« Previous EntriesNext Entries »