Netflix To Add Streaming TV?

Netflix celebrates Q4 success of 1 million new subscribers and eyes bigger growth ahead; Roku too

By Richard Lawler posted Jan 28th 2010 9:36AM

At our last update after Q1 '09, Netflix had just triumphantly smashed through the 10 million customer barrier, although that's well in the rear view mirror now that the company is celebrating the addition of 1 million customers in the last quarter alone. With a subscriber base of 12.3 million (48% of whom have checked out a movie on Watch Instantly last year) its next step is to expand beyond U.S. borders, with plans to offer a streaming-only package to an unnamed new country in the latter half of this year; Hacking Netflix guesses Canada or even the UK could be potential expansion targets. Even the possibility of a Disney/Starz fallout affecting streaming didn't dampen the mood, during the earnings call CEO Reed Hastings seemed confident it could keep doing deals for compelling movies going forward, with WB, Sony, MGM, Paramount and others either signed up or renewed during Q4 alone. Still, don't expect those dealings to extend to new releases -- Hastings is comfortable sticking with a cable-like viewing window for internet delivered movies in combination with the existing disc rentals, for now.

Even Roku, closely tied to Netflix's internet-to-TV efforts since they began, is thinking big. As CEO Anthony Wood tells Bloomberg, we can expect the box itself to reach the low, low price of free sooner rather than later as the company works out revenue sharing deals with various subscription and video on-demand services, bringing it up to "the same kinds of channels that any cable operator can offer." It's set goals of 1 million set-top boxes sold by the end of the year (already over 500,000) and 100 channels, we figure another half-off sale or two should get things done in no time.


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Animated Joe Dirt Coming to TBS

Source:TBS

January 28, 2010

Marking its third foray into the animation arena, TBS has closed a deal for a pilot script from comic actor David Spade, Sony Pictures Television and Happy Madison Productions for an animated version of the movie The Adventures of Joe Dirt. The project, entitled "Joe Dirt," will follow the exploits of a mullet-sporting, muscle-car-loving loser with a heart of gold.

"David Spade is a hugely popular comic talent who has created a funny, yet lovable, character in 'Joe Dirt,'" said Michael Wright, executive vice president, head of programming, for TBS, TNT and Turner Classic Movies (TCM). "We look forward to seeing how he and his fellow writers and producers take this character in new directions as TBS continues exploring the world of primetime animation."

The pilot script for "Joe Dirt" will be written by Spade; Fred Wolf, Spade's frequent writing partner, including scripts for The Adventures of Joe Dirt and Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star; and Donick Cary ("The Simpsons," "Lil' Bush," "Bored to Death"). All three will serve as executive producers, along with Doug Robinson of Happy Madison Productions.


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Industry Analyst Believes Warner Deal Will Hurt Netflix

January 26, 2010

HomeMediaMagazine reports that Industry Analyst Michael Pachter from Wedbush Morgan thinks the Warner Deal will hurt Netflix:

“The new release window may erode Netflix’s market share in favor of Redbox in the future, as the latter can secure new titles through retail workarounds,” Pachter said in a Jan. 25 note.

The analyst said he projects Netflix’s revenue growth to fall below 20% over the next several years, with downward pressure on average revenue per subscriber as increasing numbers of members join just for streaming and not DVD/Blu-ray Disc rentals.

Pachter, who maintains an “underperform” rating on Netflix shares, still expects the service’s recent consumer electronics partnerships to drive 750,000 new annual subscribers.

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Wal-Mart & Target Limiting New Release DVD Purchases to 5 Copies?

January 27, 2010
HomeMediaMagazine reports that Wal-Mart and Target are limiting customers to 5 copies of new releases, in an attempt to force Redbox to wait 28 days for new releases.

Wal-Mart Stores and Target Corp. have apparently begun limiting quantity purchases of new-release DVD movies to five copies per title — a move that further underscores an emerging sellthrough window and could pose a serious challenge to rental kiosks.

The world’s largest retailer, and Target, which represent two of the largest retailers of new-release DVD and Blu-ray Disc movies for the studios, instituted the policy Jan. 26 in time for the weekly new releases, according to Ted Engen, president of the Video Buyers Group, which represents more than 1,000 video stores.

via Davis Freeberg.

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Social Media Marketing: How Pepsi & Mountain Dew Got It Right

1.28.2010 @4pm Leah Betancourt
Social media marketing campaigns are proving to be goldmines rich with customer engagement and insight that companies wouldn’t likely have otherwise. Companies like PepsiCo are going to extensive lengths to foster this type of collaboration with fans, and the payoff has been big.
The company’s Mountain Dew division is several stages into its DEWmocracy campaign — a plan to launch a new Mountain Dew flavor with the public’s involvement at all levels of the process, and PepsiCo also just launched the Pepsi Refresh Project on January 13th. Rather than spending money on Super Bowl television ads this year, the company is spending $20 million on a social media campaign.
Jay Baer, founder of the social media strategy company Convince & Convert, said brands are realizing they need to market for the long haul. “I do think it’s a good move for Pepsi. I don’t know if every brand can pull it off,” he said.
The Pepsi Refresh Project and the DEWmocracy campaigns are part of a crowdsourcing effort that’s part of the larger PepsiCo plan to more closely integrate consumers with the brand. “Driving consumer interest and engagement takes imagination and often a certain amount of reinvention, so it’s fair to say we’re rethinking everything we do from product development to marketing campaigns across our entire portfolio,” said Bart Casabona, a Mountain Dew spokesman.

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A Closer Look at Mountain Dew’s Social Media Campaign

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The first DEWmocracy campaign launched in 2007. This inaugural DEWmocracy effort let consumers choose Dew’s new flavor, color, name and graphics, and resulted in more than 470,000 people voting and an overall 1 million people taking part in some phase of the process, according to the company’s DEWmocracy media site. The winning new flavor, Voltage, hit store shelves in January 2009.
Brett O’Brien, Mountain Dew’s marketing director, said that for the first campaign a site was built for people to interact with, which made sense at that time.
Fast forward to July 2009, when the second DEWmocracy campaign launched. The multi-stage effort tasks die-hard Mountain Dew fans to narrow seven sodas down to one final new flavor that will become a permanent part of the Mountain Dew family, using social media platforms 12seconds.tv, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube in the process.
O’Brien said that with the explosion of social networking, they felt it was best to interact with people where they are.

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Flavor Nations Play a Large Role

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The second iteration of the Mountain Dew campaign is fueled by the 4,000-strong DEW Labs crew, an online community of die-hard fans. The DEW Labs are divided up into three Flavor Nations for the three Mountain Dew soda finalists: Typhoon, WhiteOut and Distortion. Once the three flavors debut in April, the Flavor Nations must talk up their flavor and get people to vote for it to become the permanent new Mountain Dew soda. That one winning new permanent soda flavor will debut on Labor Day, according to the company’s DEWmocracy media site.
O’Brien said the several stages involved are really part of the normal product innovation process. He said if they were going to be totally transparent the whole time in launching a new Mountain Dew flavor, they needed their customers to be there the whole time.
Every part of the campaign involves the fans and the public — from picking flavor names, to voting on the best user-submitted ad campaign.

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Collaboration With Consumers

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“What we’re calling it [is] collective intelligence,” O’Brien said. “It’s less about crowdsourcing, but more about collaboration.” PepsiCo looks at DEWmocracy, which has literally been driven by word of mouth, as a way of doing business rather than an ad campaign, he said, and the most important thing to recognize is the passion consumers feel for Mountain Dew is like nothing that’s out there.
According to O’Brien, PepsiCo looks at social media as the best way to get direct dialog with their fans and for the company to hear from those fans without filters. “It’s been great for us to have this really unique dialogue that we normally wouldn’t have,” he said. “It really has opened our eyes up.”
Convince & Convert’s Baer said the DEWmocracy campaign fits with Mountain Dew’s brand and customer profile. He said giving customers ownership of the brand is a fantastic idea.
“What they’re trading off is reach for depth and they’re trading short-term impact for long-term impact,” he said. Baer sees this the process of brands asking customers to craft better products or services as a trend. He pointed out that companies aren’t just soliciting customer input, but they’re putting it into practice. And some business decisions are now based solely on customer feedback.
“To me, that’s tremendously exciting,” he said. “To me, that’s the social media story.”



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R.I.P. Miramax Films: 1979 - 2010

Source:The Wrap

January 28, 2010

The writing was on the wall when Disney made this announcement, but The Wrap is reporting that today the studio will be closing the New York and Los Angeles offices of Miramax Films and 80 people will lose their jobs.

The site says that six movies awaiting distribution, including Last Night, The Debt and The Tempest, will be shelved or get a tepid release.

Founded in 1979 by Bob and Harvey Weinstein, Miramax was a leading independent movie distribution and production company before it was acquired by Disney in 1993. In 2005, the Weinsteins decided to leave the company and founded The Weinstein Company.

"I'm feeling very nostalgic right now," Harvey Weinstein told the site yesterday. "I know the movies made on my and my brother Bob's watch will live on as well as the fantastic films made under the direction of Daniel Battsek. Miramax has some brilliant people working within the organization and I know they will go on to do great things in the industry."

The Weinsteins have tried to buy the name of their former company back. Disney has not responded. But Bob Iger has made it known that he would be willing to sell Miramax outright – for about $1.5 billion.

For more on this, click here. You can check out Miramax's "Signature Films" at its official website.


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Why PC?

Editorial: I don't want what everyone else wants.

by Steve Butts

January 8, 2010 - I've been playing video games for around thirty years now, from first playing Adventure on my neighbor's Atari 2600 to recently plowing my way through Assassin's Creed 2 on my 360. And though I've been a fan of most of the gaming systems that have come and gone along the way -- from arcade cabinets to handhelds to the living room consoles -- but my truest gaming love is and has always been the PC.

It makes me unique here at IGN. While most of the editors have long-lasting love of video games, I'm the only one who's still playing most of his games on the same platform we were all using to play Populous, SimCity and Prince of Persia back in 1989. Sure, I've switched out hardware year-by-year and replaced entire machines outright, but all along the way I've been consistently encouraged, enlightened and entertained by the PC catalog. As we move into 2010, the entire gaming industry is in the midst of some interesting shifts that will have a profound impact on the PC. Whether or not those changes are positive or negative will depend not only on the efforts of publishers and developers but also on our own expectations.

Over the last decade or so, the PC has seen some of its core strengths absorbed or challenged by the compromises of cross-platform development and the realities of a tougher economic climate. The democratic development environment usually associated with the PC has spurred much of the creativity in the industry, from the creation and preservation of entire genres to the development of hardware and software formats that make developing and sharing content easier across all platforms.

The PC offers a unique range of experiences.

We've often joked that the greatest strength and weakness of the PC is that anyone can make a game. It's a strength because there are no limits based on what a publisher will or won't approve, either with regard to content or genre pigeonholes. It's a weakness because the glut of poor titles encourages publishers to cling to established franchises and merely iterate on the successes of the previous year. Interestingly, we're seeing Xbox Live Arcade and the iPhone open the doors for greater creativity outside of the traditional PC development arena, but the sky is still truly the limit for the makers of PC games.

That's sometimes at odds with the mass-market mentality that tends to knock the rough edges off of most console games, a mentality that has tremendous significance depending on your individual perspective. PC gamers sometimes complain about the "dumbing down" of the PC catalog and point to a particular franchise's new console direction as the reason for lowered expectations in the PC marketplace. I've been guilty of it myself, particularly with regard to franchises that I really enjoyed, like MechWarrior or Rainbow Six. Yes, the streamlining of these and other franchises is a consequence of adapting to the consoles' limited controller options, but it also reflects a more important trend that has publishers and developers reaching for broader markets.

The difference between the console and PC markets is kind of like the difference between network and cable TV. NCIS and Dancing with the Stars will always have more mass appeal than Iron Chef or SpongeBob simply because they're designed and positioned to attract a larger demographic. But the specific appeal of the cable show is in finding a smaller niche or an underserved segment of the market and delivering the content they're not able to get from the major networks. The mass-market games like Madden or Street Fighter or Mario are a great fit for the consoles, but I don't think that the most profitable future for PC games is in trying to adopt that same mentality. To the extent that the PC catalog reflects this thinking, it fails to serve the individual gamers who want their war games, racing sims, or sports management titles to have a depth of detail that only the most hardcore can appreciate.

Should all PC games strive for mass appeal?

It's often perceived as a necessity on the console side to make a particular game as appealing as possible to every person who owns a console. The problem is that game publishers have let that thinking creep over into the PC market so now the development and marketing is driven by a need to make a single game that suits everyone. We see it all the time in the dreaded promise of all press releases that a game "will appeal to casual and hardcore players alike." (And if it's a licensed game, this is usually followed by the equally obnoxious claim that it will please both "fans and newcomers.") It's time to stop making such ridiculous claims, and more than that, to stop letting them be the sole consideration that determines how games are made and which ones get published, particularly on the PC.


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