Television

At Beet.TV, we cover a lot of stories around online video, but a reverse phenomenon is going to reach half of the television homes in America this year, according to Dalen Harrison, CEO of interactive TV company Ensequence.

Microsoft’s IPTV platform, called Mediaroom, will be deployed in Russia through an association with big broadband carrier Corbina TV. Both companies made the announcement today. Mediaroom is deployed by AT&T’s U-Verse service in the United States.  Mediaroom is in over 20 countries.  At NAB in March, I interviewed Microsoft’s Jim Baldwin who gave a demo.  […]

While YouTube has the overwhelming share of video streams, Yahoo! has the greatest amount of TV programming from series to music videos to news programs, leading AOL and MSN.  It has the "most monetized video streams," a Yahoo! spokesperson told Beet.TV, citing comScore data.  Although revenue is not disclosed, this must be a substantial business […]

Click To Play Larry Kramer, the former newspaper editor who started MarketWatch, is one of the most accomplished innovators in online video journalism. He says that the value of presenting video online is the ability to present "unfiltered" information directly to the consumer.    He explains that video is not the medium of all news […]

Click To Play In Las Vegas last week at NAB, we sat down with Bob Hesskamp, the head of engineering for CNN.  Bob received the 2008 Technology Leadership Award from Broadcasting & Cable magazine for his pioneering work in creating CNN HD, the first news network in HD.  Bob gave us an update on the […]

Smart TV’s and other devices that use CableCards are going to have a profound impact on how consumers watch television, according to Forrester television analyst James McQuivey.  There is a big feature on this emerging technology in today’s New York Times. I asked James what he thinks of these new cards. He told me it’s […]

Click To Play At the Streaming Media East conference last week, I sat down with Forrester’s television industry analyst James McQuivey. James made some big waves last week when he issued a bleak report (for purchase) about the future of paid video downloads. He think the advertiser-supported is the future. In our chat we spoke […]

Click To Play NBC Universal and News Corp announced plans to create a giant distribution and advertising platform for video programming. At that time, AOL announced it would be associated with the new entity by providing its massive platform to present the videos and related advertising. Earlier this week, I spoke with Fred McIntrye who […]

CNN online video clips of news surrounding the Virginia Tech shootings totaled 11.4 million views on Monday, far more than the daily average of 2.1 million streams and exceeding the previous one-day record of 7.7 on December 30, 2006, the day after Saddam’s execution. These are internal traffic numbers provided by CNN to Beet.TV. Nielsen/NetRatings […]

Click To Play View a transcript of this interview This week at the AlwaysOn On Media conference, I had the good fortune to catch up with two profound media observers: blogger Jeff Jarvis who consults to major newspaper companies and Andrew Heyward, former president of CBS News.  Jeff says that newspapers and media sites should […]

It’s farewell to my buddy Kate Lyon who has been an important part of Beet.TV since we launched last spring.  She’s interviewed guests, booked and edited segments.  She joined my firm in ’05 after graduating from Dartmouth.  Well, Kate’s been hired away by nbbc, the new online video business which is majority owned by NBC […]

Kathy and I were sad to read the news this morning about the passing of musical trailblazer James Brown. He was one of the great performing artists of our lifetime. Fortunately, there is a good deal of video of his performances. Here’s a wonderful vintage clip I just found on YouTube.  Long live the "Godfather […]

Click To Play Earlier this month I met Smith Forte, VP for Online at Current TV, the new San Francisco-based television network.  The company, headed by Al Gore, has set off on an intriguing business. The network pays contributors to create video segments which are used on the network. The network is a bonafide cable […]

Here’s a demo and explanation of TVU by CNET News.com’s Greg Sandoval Click To Play You have to see this story by CNETNews.com reporter Greg Sandoval about a small Shanghai-based company that is streaming hundreds of broadcast and network TV channels to a free desktop solution.  I spoke with Greg in the CNET newsroom on […]

Click To Play CNET has  been at the forefront of technology television since the company was formed over 10 years ago.  Over the past few years, it has amassed a huge video clip library of news, product reviews, interviews and "how to’s".    All this video content was launched recently in a nifty portal called […]

Click To Play Here’s the second installment of our interview with Brian Buchwald of NBC Universal. Brian runs nbbc, the new Internet content/advertising distribution platform which has launched in beta. Video consumption has been migrating from the TV to the computer in a big way — and this has had a huge impact on network […]

Click To Play Here’s the second part of our interview with Shelly Palmer, who heads up the the new media committee for the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.  Shelly sees an inexorable movement of television content distribution traveling through the public Internet.  But, he says that not all video will migrate from the […]

Click To Play Shelly Palmer heads the committee charged with following the evolution of television for the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, better know as the Emmys. Shelly is truly a Renaissance man, an accomplished television director, author, celebrated composer and television visionary.  We had an expansive discussion with him about the transformation […]

This has been a bit under the radar, but JumpTV, the Toronto-based startup that aggregates foreign broadcast channels onto the public Internet, has raised over $200 million in an IPO managed earlier this month by Morgan Stanley. The company is public on both the Toronto and London exchanges. I caught up with company president Alex […]

Click To Play CNET Networks started out some ten years ago as an accomplished producer of technology programming that was syndicated on local and network television.  A few years later, the company stepped back from the video world as it built a hugely successful technology news and e-commerce site. More recently, the company has produced […]