At The Kelsey Group, we’ve come to appreciate that our new owner, BIAfn head Tom Buono, is a major strategist. While Buono’s roots are in the finance of traditional TV, radio and newspapers, he’s mostly thinking about their next steps…
Earlier this week I went to hear an economist offer his take on the current economy and how soon it would recover. Long story short, I believe the speaker, who had outstanding credentials, was overly optimistic. (I really believe he may…
Interactive television once vied with the Internet (and dedicated online services) as the best conduit for interactive content. That fell by the wayside in the mid-1990s. Today, ITV solutions are largely limited to simpler Internet-like apps like photo collections, Yellow…
Pegasus News, the Dallas hyperlocal site, was seen as a great model for other markets when Fisher Communications, a leading broadcaster in Seattle and the Northwest, bought the site in July 2007. But the roiled market in broadcasting apparently stifled…
Comcast, the nation’s largest cable TV company, is set to upsell its vast body of video advertisers via a new deal with Mixpo, the Seattle-based venture-backed company dedicated to making video "actionable" across multiple platforms. For Mixpo, the deal represents…
"Extraordinary change means extraordinary opportunity," Merrill Brown, founder and principal of MMB Media, told the audience at last month's Drilling Down on Local conference. Few people are more knowledgeable about the impact of new technologies on society than Brown. Before…
Two separate but related news items caught my eye today. First, Comcast has acquired social networking technology provider Plaxo in order to integrate social network-like features that let viewers share programming, among other things. Second, Turner Entertainment Networks announced a…
The CBS-TV owned and operated stations are making a pitch to local bloggers and hyperlocal sites to add value to their sites with various news headline and video widgets, and take a share of ad revenues. The CBS effort to…
Former AOL President and MTV founder Bob Pittman has lately focused on investments as head of the Pilot Group (he is a pilot). In an interview with broadband consultant Will Richmond's VideoNuze on the eve of the NATPE show in…
What keeps a TV station working with a Web enabler after it has earned enough money to do it itself? That’s a question for all the leading Web enablers -- WorldNow, Internet Broadcasting Systems and Broadcast Interactive Media. All three companies have…
The numbers are looking very, very good for the Interactive Local Media:07 conference in L.A. Nov. 28-30. Internally, we think this one is a record breaker. Register and book the hotel while you can. The latter tends to sell out.…
Splitting up a company’s assets is quite an exercise. You try to maximize synergies, position for the future, and get buy-in from Wall Street and the IRS. At the beginning of October, that’s what Belo did. As I reported, Belo…
Name the three countries that ZenithOptimedia predicts will be the fastest-growing ad markets by percentage growth from 2006 to 2009. Not even your ad agency friends are likely to get that question right. I have always taken umbrage with any company that…
Big names, interesting people, compelling research. Forgive the commercial message here, but we’re set to deliver the goods at The Kelsey Group’s Interactive Local Media 2007 (ILM:07), Nov. 28-30 in L.A. I think there’s something for everyone. And this year,…
While I am in Reston, VA, attending Kelsey's Directory Driven Commerce conference, I thought it would be a good time to start talking about our next show, which I am co-producing: Interactive Local Media 2007. The show is being done…
It must be tough running online newspaper sites right now. After many years of strong annual growth in the 30 percent range, online revs are beginning to plateau. And in most markets, the rest of the ship has begun to…
With the probable exception of Yelp, standalone review sites haven’t figured out a way to make money. In the past year, Insider Pages was sold off to Citysearch, and Judy’s Book, famously, changed its model to coupons. So why would…
The National Hockey League and its 30 teams, unable to score exposure on major media networks, are going local and on demand, with extensive game, team and community programming being launched next season. The service, produced by NeuLion, a technology integrator…
Summary Comcast has begun to serve coverage of local events on its on-demand programming menu. This includes things such as high school sports, local parades and local interest news stories. This is an interesting move for Comcast, and one that…
Summary CBS announced today that it has acquired London-based social networking site Last.fm for $280 million. The site claims about 15 million monthly users (4 million in the U.S.) and hangs its hat on music video distribution – thought to…
