Television

MONACO — Yahoo! seeks to expand the footprint of its video programming through Apps on connected TV, on tablets and viewing on a new "second screen" companion viewing App, says Rich Riley, EVP and Managing Director at Yahoo! EMEA.

MONACO — With the recent introduction of the Open Graph Platform, Facebook has become a “massive distribution mechanism for video on the Web,” says Christian Hernandez, Director of Platform Partnerships for Europe, Middle East and Africa, in this interview with Beet.TV.

YuMe, the big online video ad management and software solution company, announced today that LG Electronics has embraced the YuMe advertising platform to serve a major campaign into its line of smart TV's. The first big campaign is for Toyota.

Social media buzz can translate into higher ratings for a TV show, according to a report from NM Incite, a Nielsen/McKinsey company.

LOS ANGELES — Jane Espenson, veteran television writer of “Buffy” and “Battleship Galactica,” has a new online video series about gay marriage called “Husbands.”

LOS ANGELES — Social TV is growing quickly for consumers, brands and media companies and with good reason, said Lori Schwartz, Chief Technology Catalyst for McCann Worldgroup, North America in this interview with Beet.TV.

TVGuide.com, a comprehensive guide to broadcast, cable, web and downloadable video, claims 23 million monthly unique users. 

ABC is the only television network with an App for episodes for the iPad.  Since the launch, the App has been downloaded two million times and 28 million episodes have been streamed, says Albert Cheng, EVP for Digital Disney/ABC Television.

BOSTON — The television doesn't need additional fragmentation, but a simple platform to deliver IPTV via Apps, says Sam Chang, GM of Innovation and Development for LG.

Video is in a period of dramatic transformation as consumers can now access content across multiple devices. 

DramaFever, New York-based destination site for Korean dramas for audiences in the US and Canada is expanding its content offering and has just landed a $4.5 million investment, according a report in GigaOM.

Norway's Opera claims 140 million worldwide users, most of whom are on smart phones using Opera Mini.   In an interview at CES, Opera's Jeremy Forrester tells Beet.TV that the popularity of the browser on iPhone has come from its speed which is "four-to-five times faster than the native" (Mobile Safari) browser on Edge and 3-G […]

LAS VEGAS — The success of 3-D TV in the near-term could be determined by the number of theatrical films released.  Andy Parsons, Chairman of the Blu-ray Disc Association tells Beet.TV that the industry will release 70, 3-D Blu-ray discs in 2011.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif — Google TV was never intended to replace subscriptions to cable or satellite TV, but to integrate Web video and Apps with television offerings, says Google's Saluhuddin Choudhary, project manager, in this interview with Beet.TV

Vimeo, the fast-growing IAC unit,  is throwing a two-day online video festival and awards program to celebrate the community of video creators.

LOS ANGELES — Disney’s Web original studio has a distribution deal for its I Heart Vampires series to run on BeeTV, the Japanese mobile broadcaster.

SUNNYVALE, CA — Yahoo's connected TV initiative, which brings Web video to Internet enabled television sets, has over 1000 content sources and has opened up its platform for publishers with available  API's and certain media RSS feeds.

SAN BRUNO, CA — In anticipation of the launch of Google TV this fall, YouTube introduced its new living room play “YouTube Lean Back” yesterday.

Following ABC's lead, Fox and NBC are also upping the ad load in their online shows, and that's because most advertisers aren't willing to pay a huge premium for online video ads. 

In the last year, the nation's largest TV providers added more than 1.7 million new video customers, suggesting that cord cutting is not a trend, according to fresh research from Leichtman Research Group.