Category Archives: Online Media

Netflix Rewrites Rules of TV

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How the Return of Netflix’s Arrested Development Will
Rewrite the New Rules of TV Watching

The landscape of television is changing, and for proof, you have to look no further
than the revival of Arrested Development on Netflix, where creator Mitch Hurwitz
has reunited the original cast to produce a parcel of new episodes coming next year.

Suddenly, a show that was incredibly low-rated on Fox is being touted as a game-
changer for an upstart streaming-video company. It’s a move that will surely have a
ripple effect on TV development, but the audience at home is going to find their
viewing habits tested, too, since Netflix head Ted Sarandos announced yesterday that
the ten new episodes of Arrested Development will all premiere on a single day. How

will recap culture cope? Here are four of the open questions raised by the
announcement.

Should you watch all the episodes in one sitting?

Arrested Development’s most avid superfans have been waiting for this day since the
show was canceled in 2006, but now they’ll be consuming an entire new season of
Arrested Development the way a johnny-come-lately would: all at once, like a person
stumbling upon the DVDs years after the show went off the air. Still, while a newbie
might take his time with Arrested Development, many longtime fans of the series will
feel pressure to rip through all the episodes in a single day, and is the show best
served by watching it that way? And what if the new Arrested episodes bow on a
weekday, God forbid? Would an entire demographic leave work for lunch and never
return?

How do you talk about it on Twitter?

The rise in DVRs and time-shifting have changed the way people watch TV, but savvy
fans know to avoid Twitter if they haven’t yet caught, say, the new episode of Mad
Men: The social-networking service explodes every Sunday night with viewers live-
tweeting, quoting, and discussing Don Draper or Fat Betty in depth. (Pity viewers on
the West Coast and abroad, who are in constant danger of being spoiled until they
can catch up.) If the new episodes of Arrested Development were debuting in weekly
installments on a network, Twitter users could assume some base level of communal
viewing and tweet freely, but with the new episodes bowing at the same time, how
can you be sure who’s watched what? Can you already start discussing episode ten
when your friends may be on episode seven, or even episode one?

Will this nip buzz in the bud?

We won’t shed many tears over Twitter users unable to spoil their favorite shows in
real time, but it’s worth noting that the plugged-in Twitter audience comprises
Arrested Development’s main demographic. To be sure, those fans will be hyping the
new AD episodes for weeks and months before the premiere (in fact, they already
are), but we wonder whether the thwarted tweeting may take a toll when the episodes
all debut at once. Which would Netflix prefer: ten weeks of fans obsessively
dissecting each episode and speculating about the next, or a jumbled few days when

the most ardent viewers speed-watch the whole season, then quickly move on to
discussing the week’s shocking new episode of Breaking Bad?

How will it affect the recapping craze?

The Wire creator David Simon recently groused about the explosive trend of online
episode recapping, suggesting that critics should evaluate the series as a whole and
not in weekly installments. Looks like he got his wish! It’s not going to be easy to
provide overnight reviews of each new Arrested Development episode when all ten
premiere on the same day, and TV viewers who’ve gotten used to watching an
episode and then reading a variety of online reactions to it will have to adjust: They’ll
now be able to burn through an entire season without weekly consultations of an
online echo chamber. When Fox canceled Arrested Development, they gave it what
was considered an ignominious end: burning through the last four episodes on a
single night (opposite the Olympics, no less) instead of letting fans savor the last few
weeks. Years later, that all-at-once strategy will be the show’s new normal. As GOB
might ponder: Are they making a huge mistake?

By Kyle Buchanan – 18 April 2012 – nymag.com

Virtual buccaneers escape to plunder another day

Film, Latest News, Online Media, Television,

The pirates themselves are too hard to catch individually, and suing customers is
not a good look for film studios.

THE High Court has decided that an internet service provider (ISP) is not liable for
any copyright piracy by its customers.

Even though the Hollywood movie studios and television networks had notified the
ISP of the bad conduct of several customers, that was not sufficient to make the ISP
liable. The decision is not a surprise. Australia Post is not liable for copyright
infringement if it delivers a pirated DVD. The court has confirmed that the same
rules apply to ISPs.

Copyright owners prefer to bring legal actions against intermediates, rather than end
users. It is not a good look to sue customers, even if they are engaged in infringing
activities. Also, it is harder work to find and sue each person who downloads a
pirated movie. Bringing legal proceedings against ISPs, which are the gatekeepers to
the internet, seemed like a more efficient approach to stopping infringement. But the
High Court has taken away that weapon for copyright owners in this instance.

Continue reading Virtual buccaneers escape to plunder another day →

Hulu Announces New Shows

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The video website reports $420 million in revenue last year, but it is spending even
more to develop new shows, including series from Adrian Grenier and Michael
Wendschuh.

At a presentation to ad buyers Thursday, Hulu touted its growth, saying its more
than 2 million paid subscribers have made its $8-per-month video subscription
service the fastest growing in U.S. history. The company also reported $420 million
in revenue last year and expressed a commitment to original programming with new
series including The Awesomes, fromSaturday Night Live star Seth Meyers.

Hulu was the first of many online giants scheduled to roll out their content and meet
with advertisers in TV industry style upfront presentations during the next two
weeks. In a room that included Meyers,Smash star Megan Hilty, Morgan Spurlock
and Adrian Grenier, the company touted that Americans watched 2.5 billion videos
on Hulu in February — about 1,000 videos a second. Hulu also said it held 20 percent
of the online video market and 40 percent of the premium video market.

Continue reading Hulu Announces New Shows →

Hollywood loses final appeal in piracy case

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Downloaders be warned, the film industry suffered a blow in the High Court but
copyright holders still have means to attack pirates, says lawyer David Moore.

A damaging blow has been dealt to the giants of the film industry in the High Court
today after it decided to dismiss their copyright infringement appeal case against
internet service provider (ISP) iiNet in a landmark ruling.

The High Court’s five judges unanimously dismissed the appeal. In a summary the
court observed that iiNet “had no direct technical power” to prevent its customers
from illegally downloading pirated content using BitTorrent.

But copyright law experts say the case is not the end of the story as more ISPs could
be targeted in future and pressure will remain on internet providers to do something
about piracy on their networks.

Today, the court said iiNet’s power to prevent customers from pirating movies and
TV shows “was limited to an indirect power to terminate its contractual relationship
with its customers”.

Further, the High Court judges said that infringement notices sent by the film
industry to iiNet did not provide the ISP “with a reasonable basis for sending
warning notices to individual customers containing threats to suspend or terminate
those customers”‘.

Continue reading Hollywood loses final appeal in piracy case →

Is Facebook making us lonely? No.

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Is Facebook making us lonely? No, the Atlantic cover story is
wrong.

Facebook Isn’t Making Us Lonely. And Americans aren’t all that lonely, either.

For all our talk of self-reliance and rugged individualism, Americans are actually far
less likely to live alone and enjoy key forms of personal autonomy than people in
other countries

Americans devour books that say we’ve never been lonelier or more disconnected.
The Lonely Crowd, The Fall of Public Man, and The Pursuit of Loneliness rank
among the best-selling sociology texts in history. In recent years, Bowling Alone and
Alone Together won significant attention and generated widespread debate. Often,
these books lament the loss of a Golden Age when Americans had better marriages,
stronger communities, safer streets, and greater happiness. They warn that we’ve
grown dangerously isolated, and after we read them we return to our friends,
families, and colleagues to discuss why we no longer spend time together.

In this month’s Atlantic cover story, “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?” the novelist
Stephen Marche offers an unusually extreme claim about the state of our disunion:
“[W]e suffer from unprecedented alienation,” he writes. “We have never been more
detached from one another, or lonelier. In a world consumed by ever more novel
modes of socializing, we have less and less actual society. We live in an accelerating
contradiction: The more connected we become, the lonelier we are.”

Continue reading Is Facebook making us lonely? No. →

Net gets with the program

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The rise of television via broadband is finally giving pay TV viewers a choice,
writes David Braue.

Let’s face it, when it comes to pay TV options in Australia, there hasn’t been much of
a choice: Foxtel (or Austar in regional areas). No wonder writer and 10-year Foxtel
customer Anna Spargo-Ryan was amazed to find she was paying more for pay TV
than she needed to. Like most of us, she thought she had no alternative.

That changed when she found most of the same channels she, her partner and
children liked could be watched for about $20 a month, plus the cost of a broadband
connection. She switched to FetchTV, a fast-growing pay-TV provider that delivers
the National Geographic Channel, Animal Planet, E!, MTV and free and on-demand
movies through various internet service providers (ISPs).

”We were getting frequent price increases on Foxtel and it got to the stage where it
just seemed like too much to pay for TV,” Spargo-Ryan recalls.

Increasingly, people are questioning their subscription choices as television via the
internet – known as IPTV (internet protocol TV) services – begin to push their way
into more homes via ADSL, cable, video game consoles and mobile connections.

In many cases, internet service providers are presenting them as lower-cost
alternatives with more choice than free-to-air TV. ISPs such as iiNet, Internode,
Adam Internet and Optus offer services from FetchTV to their subscribers but they

are not alone. Foxtel offers its services over IPTV to Xbox 360 users, while Telstra’s
T-Box has more than 300,000 users who access IPTV channels and Foxtel via its T-
Box. TPG Internet has offered IPTV for years – it includes 17 primarily overseas-
based channels in its broadband subscription package.

Lack of big-name licensing content agreements had kept IPTV on the fringes and
viewer reluctance to download high-quality TV over internet connections measured
by strict monthly quotas didn’t help. But download quotas and perceived quality
issues have all but disappeared. Bundled broadband and IPTV packages now offer
quota-free and quality-guaranteed services.

Telstra moved early in this space, promoting its T-Box to its massive BigPond
internet customer base with great success. It has been aided by incentives such as
early access to newHomeland episodes and extensive AFL coverage.

Thanks to mainstream support for IPTV and moves to exempt it from monthly
quotas, access prices are expected to come down and offerings expected to expand
significantly in coming years. Analysts from research firm IDC Australia believe the
market will grow rapidly, particularly on the back of the National Broadband
Network – Australia’s newest national infrastructure project – which promises faster
internet speeds.

IPTV is also becoming popular thanks to smart TVs (our story last week), with
brands such as Samsung, LG, Sony and Panasonic offering on-demand IPTV
services, although they are usually not quota-free.

FetchTV – fetchtv.com.au

Set-top box delivers quota-free channels, free-to-air channels and on-demand video
to your lounge room. Supports recording, time-shifting, iPhone app and more.

Cost: Full service about $20 a month, basic service $10 a month; must rent a set-top
box and subscribe to Adam Internet, iiNet, Internode or Optus.

Foxtel on Xbox 360 – foxtel.com.au/xbox/packages

Xbox 360 users can subscribe, then access IPTV channels such as MTV, National
Geographic, Nickelodeon, Discovery Channel and more. Unmetered for BigPond
internet customers, so if you’re with a different ISP, ensure you have an internet plan
with a large download quota (more than 100 gigabytes).

Cost: Basic service $19.50 a month; sports $10, Showtime movies, Movie Network
and Entertainment ($15 each) add-ons available.

Telstra T-Box – telstra.com.au/tv/tbox

Set-top box includes Foxtel channels, free-to-air and other content. Records, rewinds
and has an iPhone app.

Cost: Buy the box outright for $299 or pay $35 + $11/month on 24-month contract.
Add plans at $19.50 a month; sports $10 and Showtime movies, Movie Network and
Entertainment ($15 each) add-ons are available. Unmetered for BigPond internet
customers.

David Brue, SMH – April 22, 2012

ABC gets head start in race to mobile TV

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TV viewing on mobile devices is set to rocket in the next year.

THE ABC is set to steal a march on its commercial rivals when its popular catch-up
TV service is made available on iPhones within weeks, signalling in earnest the
beginning of the mobile TV revolution.

The corporation has confirmed it is putting the finishing touches to the technology of
its iview service that will enable the 3.7 million users of iPhones in Australia to watch
shows on the smallest of the four screens – computers, tablets, TVs and phones – used
to view TV content.

TV viewing on mobile devices is set to rocket in the next year as data plans for mobile
phones get larger and come down in price, thereby allowing people to watch TV on
the go.

Continue reading ABC gets head start in race to mobile TV →

Social media free how-to guide

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Email + Twitter + Facebook: 22 Tips to Cross-Channel Success

Download a free guide from Lyris, Inc. a global digital marketing expert

Leverage the power of email plus social:

Today, one in every nine people on earth is a Facebook user, Twitter generates an
average of 190 million tweets per day and more than 107 trillion emails were sent last
year. If you’re not engaging customers via social as well as email, you’re not reaching
your audience where they live, work and play.

Cross-channel marketing pulls it all together:

This guide highlights key takeaways for marketers on why cross-channel marketing
makes good business sense, and outlines tips and techniques for aligning Email,
Twitter and Facebook to deliver value and drive measurable revenue growth.

Starting with a simple subject line can launch a powerful 3-pronged campaign
Luxury appliance retailer, Dacor, grew their list 3X via social promotions
Apparel retailer, JOY the Store, grew revenue 5x via segmentation and social
You can get from the starting line to the bottom line: list growth, brand awareness
and increased revenue

Download the Complimentary Guide:
www.studio5design.net/pdf/Email-Facebook-Twitter-22-Cross-Channel-Tips-and-Takeaways.pdf

Promoting your film online – Hunger Games

Film, Latest News, Online Media, , ,

Selling a movie used to be a snap. You printed a poster,
ran trailers in theaters and carpet-bombed NBC’s Thursday night lineup with ads.

Today, that kind of campaign would get a movie marketer fired. The dark art of
movie promotion increasingly lives on the Web, where studios are playing a wilier
game, using social media and a blizzard of other inexpensive yet effective online
techniques to pull off what may be the marketer’s ultimate trick: persuading fans to
persuade each other.

The art lies in allowing fans to feel as if they are discovering a film, but in truth
Hollywood’s new promotional paradigm involves a digital hard sell in which little is
left to chance — as becomes apparent in a rare step-by-step tour through the
timetable and techniques used by Lionsgate to assure that “The Hunger Games”
becomes a box office phenomenon when it opens on Friday.

Continue reading Promoting your film online – Hunger Games →

Jim Schembri departs The Melbourne Age after 28 years

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AFTER a number of Twitter indiscretions, The Age’s long-serving entertainment writer Jim Schembri negotiates an exit.

In a memo sent to staff last night, editor-in-chief Paul Ramadge wrote: “After 28 years of dedicated service and hard work bringing a distinctive voice to The Age’s entertainment coverage as a film and TV critic and feature writer, Jim has decided to embrace other challenges.”

Last week, website Crikey erroneously reported Schembri had been “sacked from his position following revelations he had reportedly dobbed on the employers of his Twitter critics and hinted at taking legal action under the auspices of Fairfax Media”.

In fact, management only asked Schembri to take early leave after Crikey broke news of his Twitter transgressions. It is understood Schembri had a substantial amount of time owing and Fairfax Media did not comment on Schembri’s misdemeanours.

Schembri has since negotiated his departure. It is believed he will continue writing  on pop cultural matters elsewhere.

He is the published author of more than 40 books, including the memoir Room For One and eight novels for young children.

Schembri was one of the best-loved and contentious writers at The Age, with his Modern Fable series in the 1990s a particular favourite with readers. He cultivated a strong film blog, Cinetopia, for the newspaper and occasionally attracted the opprobrium of the film industry for his strident views on the industry despite his championing of comedy and certain filmmakers.

While presenting at this year’s AACTA Awards, A Few Best Men’s director Stephan Elliott asked Schembri to “stop the poison pen” and “hate” after the journalist wrote his film was “unreleasable”. It went on to earn $5 million.

At the 2008 AFI Awards, The Black Balloon’s co-writer, Jimmy Jack, responded to Schembri’s criticism of his film by reading the review before saying “Jim Schembri. F*** you.”

And last year, The Chaser’s Hamster Wheel program named its segment on internet discretions ‘The Schembris’ after the journalist revealed a major plot twist in his review of Scream 4 before retracting it and writing it was merely a ruse to fool the “Twittersphere.”

In the memo to staff, Ramadge thanked Schembri for his contribution and wished him well. He added Schembri “has chosen to forego farewell drinks and will arrange an informal gathering soon.”

Michael Bodey – The Australian, 16/3/12