Disney.com Revamps With Personalized Content – As expected, Walt Disney Company has unveiled the next phase of its digital offerings–the long-awaited revamped Disney.com Web site. Speaking at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas yesterday, Bob Iger, president/CEO of Walt Disney Co., said the new Disney.com will allow users to personalize content–including sharing of videos, TV shows, and other Disney video content as well as listening to music, and playing video games.
Comedy Central Kicks Off New Broadband, Web Lineup – Comedy Central is expanding its web presence, adding 11 new original broadband shows and 25 original Web shows in 2007. Among the new broadband shows launching is “The Watch List,” the first series to feature a lineup of exclusively Muslim-American comedians and “Judge Fudge,” another first. It’s a Web series developed from a character in a successful network show, “Drawn Together.”
What Happened to Skype? – eBay Chief Meg Whitman has been widely tipped by industry prognosticators not to make it through the year. One reason, among many, is eBay’s inability to integrate voice over IP provider Skype, which the auctioneer purchased in 2005 for $2.6 billion in cash and stock. At the time, Whitman said, “By combining the two leading e-commerce franchises, eBay and PayPal, with [Skype], we will create an extraordinarily powerful environment for business on the Net.” Whatever its performance targets, Skype certainly isn’t getting much help from eBay, as the two companies still remain more or less mutually exclusive. As Laura Martin, an analyst with Soleil-Media Metrics says, “Strategic questions remain about Skype. It’s still unclear how it benefits the core eBay platform. And monetization [on eBay's investment] has been slower to occur than we had hoped.”
Citizen Journalism Adds To Media Mix – The Internet public has also shown it has an appetite for user-produced content, in the form of video, blogs or social networking pages. On Web sites like YouTube, MySpace or even CNN, citizen journalism is on such a rapid rise that it may one day change the news business forever. The New York Times and CNN may choose material from a vast pool of user submitted-videos and stories instead of hiring full-time staff. With the rise of the Web, the barrier to entry gets lower and lower everyday.
‘Time’ Marches On to New Web Strategy – It remains to be seen whether Time’s highly touted revolution within the past week – primarily issuing the magazine on Fridays instead of Monday and website relaunch today – will give Google News, Drudge or Digg a run for their money, which are the stated goals of the magazine’s executives. In an age where consumers value the ability to customize their content, especially when it comes to deciding “what the most important news,” a part from the cosmetic changes, Time seems to be standing still by relying on long opinion pieces by the likes of William Kristol, Walter Isaacson, Andrew Sullivan and Michael Kinsley.
Viacom’s Paramount To Add Movies To iTunes; Catalog Titles Only; Second Studio After Disney – So the WSJ is reporting: Viacom will be brave enough to join Disney on the iTunes store, selling movies from its studio Paramount. But in an effort to not ruffle Wal-Mart and Target’s feathers, the deal will only cover Paramount’s back catalog, including titles such as “Forrest Gump,” “Mission: Impossible” and “The Truman Show.”
P&G Extends Social Networking To Women’s Health and Entertainment – Major marketers take note, as advertising bellwether Procter & Gamble unveils two social networking sites: one devoted to women and another devoted to making the People’s Choice Awards an everyday event. The packaged goods giant insists that actual advertising on the women’s issues site— Capessa (Latin for “striving to reach a place”)—will be fairly light. The main focus of Capessa, which is the product of a partnership with Yahoo and digital brand builder ZiZo Group, is to mine female consumers’ habits and interests in connection with health and career concerns.
Chernin: News Corp Digital Media Revenues Already Off Charts – News Corp. president and chief operating officer Peter Chernin said Tuesday that he expects his company to exceed its goal of $500 million in digital revenue for the current fiscal year and that online video advertising has the potential to be “the single best (business) story” for media companies in 2007. He also said the digital operations will be profitable for the fiscal year even when including the cost for management retention and amortization, which the company had said would have to be excluded to write black ink.
IAC/InterActiveCorp Planning New Content – IAC/InterActiveCorp Chief Executive Barry Diller, who is best known for organizing a fourth network at Fox that challenged dominant players ABC, CBS, and NBC, said Tuesday that IAC will announce several new content initiatives within the next two to three months. Now is an ideal time to pursue such plans given the rise in use of video online, Diller said.
