Death and Rebirth:The Clinton Era; The TV Upfront; The Web's Legal Limbo; Opening Up Social Nets - MediaBizBuzz for May 12

If you39re not moving you39re standing still Whether it39s the Big Mo of politics the urgency for innovation in business dynamism is a differentiator Not that restraint doesn39t also have its place Microsoft39s long walk away from its Yahoo tender Rupert Murdoch passing over Newsday unwilling to top Cablevision39s offer In the Democratic primary after Clinton39s stunning rout in North Carolina and near draw in Indiana Obama became his party39s presumptive nominee For the first time in the race Obama surpassed Clinton in superdelegates but they didn39t run for the exits The mantra from party elders showing greater deference than the media became quotShe has timequot But as others have observed the clock is ticking Even as technology has forced the hand of television the recording industry and Hollywood implementing change much less stepping aside is fraught The RIAA is a textbook case in inertia While labels like Warner Music are moving into the light the trade organization is still living in 1999 flailing its arms as if Napster were new to the scene And to an extent it39s been aided and abetted Somehow the 110th Session has morphed from the quotDo Nothingquot Congress to The Nanny State Note to the judicial branch When lawsuits become a primary source of revenue that39s a sign that business models are broken What39s a mogul to do As an Obamanaic might say quotBe the changequot Upfront and CenterDespite the Bureau of Advertising39s finding that adults continue to spend more than half of their media hours with TV there39s no denying broadcast viewer erosion Hell even TV Guide39s on the block Viewing might even be up 2 but that hardly reassures Merrill Lynch analyst Jessica Reif Cohen who predicts that the overall market for prime time broadcast TV will be down at least 2 and as much as 14 Not that we39ll see a commensurate uptick in online Tim Hanlon EVP of Publicis39 Denuo Group tells Silicon Alley Insider that quotThe reality is that people buying media are at least a generation or so removed from the way in which people are truly consuming video and mediaquot Yahoo didn39t get that memo it hopes to sell up to 50 of its online ad inventory in conjunction with Upfronts a 30 increase over last year And somehow Spot Runner which aids marketers in buying TV ad spots on local cable and broadcast has raised another 51M in funds implicitly validating its model and allowing it to go global The paint is hardly dry and the Wall Street Journal wonders if online sales teams will soon go the way of the Dodo So barely recognizable is the landscape that approaches to the Upfronts themselves are diverging Our Ed Martin writes about MTVN and how in their case content took a back seat to marketing messages He isn39t alone both AdAge and MultiChannel News remarked on the participation of Dove Pepsi and LG as much as Jon Stewart and Justin Timberlake NBC39s Zucker between full court press for Financial Times and TVWeek announced that WNBC was going hyperlocal as a 24hour news channel The CW entered into a partnership with MRC to produce its Sunday primetime block With anxieties running high as the February 2009 Dday for the Digital TV transition approaches the FCC has finally committed to a September test down in Wilmington NC The NAB approves but understands that the Devil is in the Details Boston39s Backchannelmedia which is tracking to go live in February 2009 just began an Interactive TV Ad trial with HearstArgyle ABC affiliate WCVB partnering with Horizon Media for its TV to Internet clickthrough ad platform for a crossmarket campaign to launch Horizon client MGM Grand at Foxwood If this has a few of your cylinders firing you might want to check out this QampampA with VC guru Steve Jurvetson The Constant Search for Disruption With the IAB39s release of Digital Video standards last week it39s timely to discuss online video39s explosive growth PDF of guidelines HERE Quarterlife be damned an 8minute nature documentary Battle at Kruger garnered 30 million views on YouTube and will be developed for NatGeo Can Wonky Win ForaTV which hopes to distribute intelligent elite discourse from CSpan thinktanks showcasing TedTalks and the like raised 4M in a first round Take that Flava Flav Hulu exploited the Long Tail putting up 13 episodes of Speed Racer just before the weekend feature release of the classic animated show one episode quickly cracked the Top 20 for Hulu in a sense outperforming the film39s mediocre box office As an SAG strike looms AMPTP walked away from the table last week production of features is coming to a standstill What39s more Warners39 Peter Chernin shuttered quotindie studiosquot Warner Independent Pictures WIP and Picturehouse If folks question the rationale behind the Dolans39 desire for Newsday they are slightly less puzzled that their Cablevision has snapped up Sundance for 496M to bookend perhaps IFC Filmmakers themselves are divided In last week39s Think Tank Jack Myers looked at how magazine and online publishers are reinventing their business models not merely to survive but to flourish The piece examines ContextWeb39s ADSDAQ Exchange AOL39s Platform A and how New York Magazine has become a digital ad success doubling its yearto year ad revenues We also profiled Daylife a news aggregator and emerging platform for publishers advertisers and developers Sadly the riskaverse among us have been contracting in size Hachette counterintuitively made cuts to its online divisions of ElleGirl and Premiere Reuters Media positioned its personnel moves as a realignment and Gannett announced buyouts among the staffs of its New Jersey papers Equally challenged THE object lesson for what not to do in the wake of sea changes is the recording industry Among the majors Warners showed signs of life While overall its revenues were flat on the digital front it grew 476 Edgar Bronfman professed joy with Amazon iTunes and was looking forward to fall39s MySpace Music launch Wired carried a speculative discussion of flexible pricing under consideration at Warners It also announced a second investment in music social network imeem The TorrentSpy decision 111M in damages to go unpaid since it39s declared bankruptcy makes an indexer or publisher culpable for copyright infringement This will have wide repercussions online video aggregators like Veoh are ever more vulnerable For this reason and more it39s not surprising that Google39s willing to fight Viacom over its YouTube suit all the way to the Supreme Court While Bob Pittman39s come around and told Portfolio that ultimately recorded music should be free acting as publicity for live performances not all of his peers are as enlightened Said the MPAA39s Fritz Attaway quotWe need DRM to show our customers the limits of the license they have entered into with usquot Microsoft39s loser to Attaway than Pittman it39s added increased DRM to its Zune All this while universities across America are taking issue with the RIAA39s push to hamstring P2P filesharing In time they39ll come to realize that what39s being created is a generation of hackers not consumers Turning to the legislature the few left that aren39t running for the presidency HR 5994 the Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act hopes to write Net Neutrality into law by amending the Clayton Act which would ban discriminatory network management practices HR 4279 the studiosponsored quotProIPquot law which many consider AntiIP added new penalties for piracy going so far as to create a Piracy Czar Microsoft In Rear View Mirror All Eyes Turn to FacebookAs the Yahoo misdeal retreats into the middle distance it39s Facebook called a quotfree radicalquot by some that39s absorbing the scrutiny Speculation began last week in whether or not MSFT paid too much for its stake in the social network When it was learned that Facebook turned to venture lender Triple Point Capital for 100M the rebukes were swift By the week39s end Facebook became second after MySpace and before Google to announce that it was unwalling itself and offering data portability In english users will be able to pull profile information from social networks into third party websites It39s genuinely exciting that these walls are coming down expect Yahoo39s Open Strategy to embrace the cause down the line Why the race First mover effect might signal one player39s control over user data In other social networking news VentureBeat believes that Allen ampamp Co is shopping around LinkedIn posturing a 1B valuation And Brightkite a locationbased social network is the flavor du jour Mobile and Gaming Full Steam AheadA new WiMax consortium merging Clearwire and the broadband wireless piece of SprintNextel was unveiled Boldface investors included Google Intel Comcast and TimeWarner Our Shelly Palmer weighs the challenges against the opportunities PaidContent39s MocoNewsnet leverages its expertise to handicap the effort TechCrunch thinks its an unmitigated disaster a 500M money pit for Google Talk of a merge between Helio and Virgin Mobile MVNOs makes sense to Silicon Alley Insider For at least half the day Sunday iPhones were unavailable at the online Apple Store Anything you want to tell us Mr Jobs Buoyed by the 500M first week take by Grand Theft Auto IV the gaming industry is ready for its close up Silicon Alley Insider reports that the annual revenue for gaming subscriptions in the US alone is 1B Timing then might be a factor in RealNetworks39 strategy to spin off its game division Casual gaming has also come of age witness the release of a quotBoom Bloxquot by game designer Steven Spielberg Both the Washington Post and USA Today give it a thumbs up Political AnimalsAs we head into Tuesday39s primary in West Virginia it will be fascinating to see how Hillary Clinton39s win is received Last week the New York Times came thisclose to rescinding its endorsement and Saturday Night Live whom Clinton has publicly thanked for carrying her message of unfair media bias took her apart having her AKA Amy Poehler freely admit to being a sore loser with racist supporters who will do anything to win Some trifecta Setting aside the satire for the straightforward Dipity has a cool mashup called TimeTube Enter a search term in this case HRC and see the videos plotted and captioned according to a timeline Let me leave you on an inspiring note The valedictorian of Morehouse College is unique not merely because he39s the historically black college39s first white student to hold the honor but because of his desire to spurn the Ivy League in search of uncharted experience As we navigate the unknown it39s a lesson for us all

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Death and Rebirth:The Clinton Era; The TV Upfront; The Web's Legal Limbo; Opening Up Social Nets - MediaBizBuzz for May 12

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Jerry Weinstein

"About That with Carl Mayer:" Alaina Donnellon (Episode 10: Political Spending) - By Carl Mayer

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Death and Rebirth:The Clinton Era; The TV Upfront; The Web's Legal Limbo; Opening Up Social Nets - MediaBizBuzz for May 12

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