Marketing and Technology News

Amazon’s IMDb wants in on the streaming-video business in a big way: founder Col Needham said the company, which dominates the movie-database business, wants to be able to give users one-click access to the 1.3 million titles in its index.

Of course, that’s a mammoth task—Needham said it was a goal for 2009 “and beyond,” per [...]

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Over the past 20 years, there’s been much speculation about what the convergence of computers and TV would ultimately look like. Paul Graham says that we now know the answer: computers.
“Convergence” is turning out to essentially be “replacement.” Why did TV lose? Graham identifies four forces: 1. The Internet’s open platform fosters [...]

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Leading media buyer GroupM’s Marc Goldstein praised NBC’s gamble to put a Jay Leno-fronted show weeknights at 10 p.m. Critics, he said, say NBC is making the move due to declining ratings and network economic models in flux.
But Goldstein called it a “stunningly innovative step” and added it “remains an original and [...]

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The Hollywood union strike between the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers is turning into an all-out war. Last week, the WGA made more threatening demands, but the Alliance refused to budge, choosing instead to reply with rhetoric aimed at turning rank-and-file writers against the union’s “power-hungry” leaders. [...]

If you haven’t noticed it yet, the TV industry is in a bit of trouble.Between the writers’ strike, Arbitron’s delay of the TV “piracy” — it’s tough to see a happy future for the traditional television business.
Like any giant industry in its death throes, the TV folks aren’t taking the end of their business model [...]

Hollywood studios are missing out on a lucrative revenue source by limiting the distribution of download-to-own movie titles through their insistence on negotiating individual rights deals with stores including Movielink, Google Video and CinemaNow, according to this columnist. “Sooner or later they will come to their senses and deliver all of their content online in [...]

Downloading content is yet to catch on in a big way, but is the natural progression from online rentals. Walt Disney recently reported that, in just three months, movie downloads via iTunes have already exceeded the 1million mark. PricewaterhouseCoopers forecast the Internet video download business to be worth around $3.7 billion in 2010, and DVD [...]