Netflix returned from MIPCOM last week with several new foreign TV shows it hopes will draw interest from its 25 million subscribers.
Programs include Norwegian gangster drama “Lilyhammer” starring Steve Van Zandt, French/German co-production “Borgia,” and the British supernatural drama “Being Human.”
The slate of foreign programming will join the remake of BBC drama “House of Cards” as Netflix turns to original, first-run drama series.
“Netflix has already committed to a second season of both ‘Borgia’ and ‘Lilyhammer,’ suggesting its taste for original and foreign-made fare is no passing fancy,” according to The Hollywood Reporter. “The company is also in a bidding war with Showtime and Hulu for the rights for the relaunch of cult comedy series ‘Arrested Development.'”
Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos points out the strategy is in response to customer demand, since TV shows account for 50-60 percent of total viewing on Netflix.
“We’ve moved very aggressively into this space,” Sarandos said. “The growing audience for these 1 hour serialized dramas is typically on pay TV: Showtime, HBO or Starz, those ones who are least likely to want to sell their shows to me on our (second-run) season-after model. So we have to develop the muscle to create and distributing these shows ourselves.”
Microsoft is getting a boatload of new content for its Xbox video service intended to help it serve as a digital media hub. The company has struck deals with Comcast, Verizon, HBO and others.
Verizon and Comcast will be joining AT&T’s U-Verse to provide content, although while Verizon will include live video TV and video on demand, Comcast is testing the waters with its VOD library only. HBO Go streaming access will provide HBO original programming and movies from Warner Bros., Fox Searchlight and Universal Studios. Bravo, EPIX and Syfy are among the cable networks that will be available. Xbox’s international content will include the BBC, Channel 4, Channel 5 and LOVEFiLM in the UK; Antena 3, RTVE and Telefonica in Spain; and Televisa in Mexico.
But how do you get to the movies, TV shows, games and music that you want? Microsoft hopes you will command your Xbox with voice control, motion control and a Windows smartphone.
“This is incremental stuff but it’s still interesting. A source who’s played with the new service says it’s genuinely cool. Just as important, given that Microsoft has sold some 50 million compatible machines, it has (potential) leverage to do some really interesting stuff,” reports All Things D. “This is where Google TV would like to be, and it’s why Google is out pitching content guys for a relaunch this fall.”
An upgraded iHeartRadio will be released by Clear Channel in a few weeks, to be kickstarted by a two-day music festival in Las Vegas.
The service is Clear Channel’s answer to Pandora, which now has more than 100 million users.
A key feature of the new iHeartRadio app will be playlist creation based on an “intelligence platform” from Echo Nest that will reportedly incorporate 5 billion pieces of information collected from 15,000 music blogs.
According to Echo Nest CEO Jim Lucchese, his company has processed 30 million songs in the past 12 months, while Pandora has categorized 800,000 tracks in the past 10 years.
“Echo Nest provides similar technology to MTV, The BBC, MOG and Rhapsody,” reports Radio Ink.
Sony is developing special subtitle-enabled glasses that could be in UK movie theaters as early as next year.
According to the BBC, one in six people have some level of deafness and are not being served well by the movie industry. In fact, many film fans with hearing issues wait for films to be released on DVD when subtitles are available.
“What we do is put the closed captions or the subtitles onto the screen of the glasses so it’s super-imposed on the cinema screen, [making it look] like the actual subtitles are on the cinema screen,” explains Tim Potter of Sony.
“The good thing about them is that you’re not refocusing. It doesn’t feel like the words are really near and the screen is far away. It feels like they’re together,” said test subject Charlie Swinbourne, who is hard of hearing.
“It was a great experience,” he added. “I think it’s a massive opportunity to improve deaf people’s lives and I think there’s great hope that this would give us a cinema-going future.”
If the glasses prove popular in the UK, we should expect to see them in wider availability in the near future.
The BBC’s popular iPlayer is an on-demand broadband television and radio service that has been available in Great Britain for four years.
As of last week, the service is now available through an iPad app to 11 countries in western Europe (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Ireland, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland) — with plans to launch in the U.S., Canada and Australia by the end of the year as a pilot program.
The app will allow users to stream programs over 3G and Wi-Fi, with the option to download for later viewing offline. International users will have access to some content for free, while full access will be subscription-based.
Luke Bradley-Jones, managing director of BBC.com, describes iPlayer as a VOD service: “We will have content from the last month, but also the best from the catalog stretching back 50 to 60 years.” He added, “What we’re trying to test in the pilot is the ability to drive exploration and discovery through a programming approach rather than an algorithm-based approach. We’re not trying to compete against a Netflix or a Hulu. This has to be tailored and hand-crafted, so we can create a tone of voice.”
Exactly who owns a media company-branded social media account is coming into question as individuals change jobs between companies and take their followers with them.
Lost Remote provides the Twitter account @BBCLauraK as an example. Former BBC chief political correspondent Laura Kuenssberg recently took a job at rival ITV, and changed her account name to @ITVLauraK, effectively shifting 60,000 Twitter followers from BBC to ITV.
The account name change raises interesting issues. “If she built the account on the backs of BBC — under its brand — does she have the legal right to shift it to ITV?” asks Lost Remote. “Conversely, if she doesn’t convert the name, the account becomes useless unless the BBC can convert it to someone else. But are people following the person — or the content the person represents?”
Possible solutions may include creating Twitter accounts in a person’s name, without including the brand — or creating co-branded accounts for content verticals — or even creating two separate accounts. However, co-branded accounts may be problematic if people follow people first, and brands second.
We should expect this to be become a bigger issue as media companies continue their interaction with social networks. ETCentric staffer David Wertheimer asks, “Who owns your followers?”
BBC News reports that police in the UK are planning to use new laser scanners at the location of serious motor vehicle accidents to create 3D images of the sites and, in turn, clear the roads more quickly for other motorists.
It is expected that the technology will save the time required to “painstakingly log everything at the scene” and will save the economy hundreds of thousands of pounds each year.
The 3D laser technology uses a special tripod-mounted scanner that records a 360-degree image of the crash site down to a resolution of less than one millimeter. Each sweep takes about four minutes.
ETCentric contributor Phil Lelyveld comments: “This technology could be useful for location scouting for 3D shoots, as well as recording positions for later reshoots.”
A consortium in the United Kingdom that includes Microsoft, BT and the BBC will test a white space radio service in Cambridge to determine effectiveness and any possible interference with TV transmission.
White space radio has been proposed to complete the UK’s broadband coverage.
Data rates range from 10kbps to 16Mbps depending on distance from the base station.
UK could be covered with 6,000 base stations on existing cell towers and provide low bandwidth services.
