Without providing much supporting evidence, Netflix has proclaimed “House of Cards” a success, which is plausible (if a trifle irritating) given mostly favorable reviews and front-page stories about whether the distributor’s binge-viewing format would reinvent TV as we know it. From a subscriber standpoint, “Hemlock Grove” — a horror concept from director Eli Roth —... Read more
Read MorePerhaps you’ve heard that Netflix is showing “ House of Cards ,” a new TV series starring Kevin Spacey. But maybe you don’t have an $8-a-month Netflix subscription, or don’t want to try the service’s free one-month trial. Or maybe you just don’t like streaming video. Here’s your answer: You can buy the series, on DVD, this summer. From Amazon, Netflix’s most serious video rival. This isn’t a cost-effective solution — the series’ first 13 episodes will cost $44.96 on standard DVD , and $52.99 on Blu-ray – but presumably some of you will find value in a physical object. (For one thing, you can re-sell your discs .) The bigger (but smallish) point here is that even though this is a series commissioned for and funded by Netflix, it still isn’t Netflix’s series. Netflix’s money bought it an exclusive first “window” to stream the show. But Media Rights Capital, which actually produced the show, has the rights to sell it in other venues; Sony is handling distribution duties in the U.S
Read MoreThe creators behind Rogue, DirecTV’s first foray into the original scripted series realm that debuts April 3 on the satellite’s Audience Network, are confident they have a premium offering right up there with HBO’s Boardwalk Empire and Netflix’s House of Cards.
Read MoreLicensing theatrical movies to TV goes back more than a half century, but it’s suddenly a hotbed of change requiring strategic thinking.
Read MoreThe Securities and Exchange Commission is not pursuing any enforcement action against Netflix CEO Reed Hastings for posting corporate news on his Facebook page, and instead is giving the green light to public companies to make use of social media to disclose information as long as investors know that is where they should turn. The... Read more
Read More“Literally, it’s a game-changer.” That’s the clever line Rovio strategist Andrew Stalbow is using to talk about the company’s forthcoming animated series, “Angry Birds Toons.” The show, first announced nearly a year ago, will be distributed primarily through an update to the Angry Birds game for smartphones and tablets. The cartoons will also be available on Comcast’s on-demand services, Roku’s set-top boxes and Samsung’s smart TVs, and will be broadcast on TV in 12 countries — but not the U.S. — one day before each new episode comes to the apps. Why is American broadcast TV not getting the show? It seemed like a natural fit, especially since Nickelodeon aired one of the first pre-series shorts in the run-up to Angry Birds: Space. The absence of Nick (or any other American station aimed at the younger set) from Rovio’s press release this morning was conspicuous. Parents who would rather park Junior in front of the tube and keep the iPad for Mommy and Daddy, don’t despair. Stalbow left the door wide open for a future TV run in the States, even if initial talks didn’t result in a deal. Andrew Stalbow “We talked to everyone, and we’re friends with all of the different channels out there, but we needed a good place to start,” he said. “This is just the start.” Rovio will roll out one new episode of “Angry Birds Toons” per week, with 52 of the three-minute to five-minute shorts planned so far. Unlike Netflix’s “House of Cards” episode dump , serialized installments will give players a reason to open the app more frequently over a longer period of time, and likely expose them to new game features and cross-promotions for other games. Plus, even though downloads of Rovio’s games still tick up and up and up (crossing the 1.7 billion mark recently), engagement seems to be dropping: Onavo Insights estimates that active iPhone users of the original Angry Birds app dropped 22 percent in January. After all, there are only so many ways to kill a pig. Stalbow called the new series Rovio’s “transition from being a mobile games company to a fully-fledged entertainment company.” That’s markedly different from Cut the Rope makers ZeptoLab’s claim that “we’re a gaming company first,” in spite of a planned TV show of its own. Stalbow said, though, that games are still the “engine driver” of Rovio’s IP. So, what about those other games: Bad Piggies, which stars the villains from Angry Birds, and Amazing Alex, which takes place in a different world? I asked if they, too, would get the animation treatment, and again Stalbow left the possibilities open. Stalbow said the focus right now is on the Angry Birds “classic world” (read: sorry, Bad Piggies fans), but that he expects animation to have some staying power within the company — it’s already one of the three pillars of Rovio’s new business, the other two being games and merchandise. The first episode of “Angry Birds Toons” hits international TV on March 16, and games and on-demand services on March 17
Read MoreHere’s the next step in the Cablevision/Viacom cable bundling fee fight : After back and forth between the two companies about which stuff they want to keep private, they have released a public version of Cablevision’s legal complaint. Scintillating, right? This isn’t the equivalent of the Viacom/Google data dump, where people like me got to wallow in all kinds of juicy notes, emails and spreadsheets that had previously been private. Instead, this is just a more formalized version of the argument Cablevision made last week, when it said Viacom had illegally forced it to take lots of crappy Viacom channels in order to get the ones it really wanted, like MTV and Comedy Central. You can read the whole thing, and/or peruse a highlight compilation the pay TV provider put together, at the bottom of this post. The one really interesting part in here should be where Cablevision explains just how much more expensive it is for them to buy a handful of channels instead of taking the whole package. Their contention is that while Viacom theoretically offers its channels to distributors on an a la carte basis, it charges so much for them that there’s no practical way anyone would do that, because it’s much cheaper to take the bundle. That is, it’s a choice without a choice. But at Viacom’s request, all the pricing information has been redacted from the complaint. So Cablevision can only say that the price difference between Viacom’s a la carte option and the bundle is something between $1 billion and $9 billion, and that that number is “more than Cablevision’s entire programming budget” for 2013. That sounds pretty eye-popping. But without a full look at the numbers it’s hard to place that in proper context. For starters, the price difference would apply to the length of the contract, and while I think even the length of the deal may be redacted, it is almost certainly five years or more. So whatever the price difference is, you’d need to divide it by five, or seven, or whatever, to figure out what it would actually mean to Cablevision
Read MoreBuying a house is already stressful enough, so Trulia wants to ease some of the pain — at least when it comes to finding your perfect home. Today, the real estate site released a new feature called Trulia Suggests, which aims to provide smarter and more personalized search results by learning your preferences. Now live on Trulia’s website , each home listing features a “Like” or “Hide” button. Once you’ve “Liked” a property, Trulia Suggests uses that information to surface similar properties, while filtering out homes that resemble those you’ve hidden. In addition, users can click a “Follow” button to get email and mobile alerts about a property. Lee Clancy, vice president of consumer products at Trulia, likened it to the personalized recommendations features on Netflix and Amazon. “Rather than saying here’s a search box and here are your results, we want to empower consumers with better and easier tools for finding a home,” said Clancy in an interview with AllThingsD . “Instead of inferring from checked boxes, we now have the ability to look at a user’s patterns and help them discover a new property they might not have seen through traditional search.” Trulia Suggests was developed by the company’s data-science team several months ago, and uses a proprietary algorithm to come up with the personalized search results. Trulia Suggests is just one way the company is trying to differentiate itself from competitors like Zillow and Homesnap , which launched a new website and announced plans for an Android app yesterday. Providing the best user experience and access to user-generated content, like neighborhood reviews and ratings, are also key focus areas for Trulia, Clancy said. Though launching just on the website today, Trulia plans to roll out the feature to its iOS and Android apps next quarter. After that, it plans to bring Trulia Suggests to rental listings, and envisions using the technology to help users find real estate agents and more.
Read MoreWho Gillian Jacobs Age 30 Accomplishments Stars as Britta Perry on NBC's Community ; appears in The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (in theaters March 15); Juilliard graduate Base Los Angeles What’s the first information you consume in the morning? I go to New York magazine’s Daily Intel blog . Then The New York Times, obviously; Gawker, Jezebel and Twitter. And sometimes I look at really weird Tumblr pages. What do you read or watch or listen to at the breakfast table? I am a public radio addict, so KPCC or KCRW. What occupies your mind in the car, on the subway, train or bus? KPCC. I very rarely listen to music in my car—a lot of people make fun of me for it. But sometimes I listen to music on YouTube. I’m like a teenager. Are you a TV junkie or on an airtime-restricted diet? I go through spurts. I find that when I’m working a lot, I mostly DVR stuff. RuPaul’s Drag Race is a can’t-miss. Then I watch Top Chef—I was very happy about the return of Kristen—The Office, Parks and Recreation, and Portlandia . And I’ve been watching House of Cards on Netflix—my friend Beau Willimon adapted it for the U.S. I didn’t own a TV until a couple of years ago, so I used to have to watch my own show on Hulu.
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