Took ’em long enough. After weeks of rumor and speculation, Walt Disney Co. has finally taken a stake in Hulu, the video-streaming site operated by NBC Universal, News Corporation and Providence Equity Partners. Financial terms and the structure of the deal weren’t disclosed, but sources say Disney’s stake in the venture will be 27 percent.
It’s been well over two years since the $1.65 billion acquisition and Google has yet to truly monetize YouTube. To wit, a report this week from Credit Suisse that predicts YouTube will earn $240 million in revenue in 2009. Which wouldn’t be half bad were it not for the fact that YouTube is on track to lose $470 million in 2009.
Not only is iTunes the world’s largest music retailer, it’s apparently also the world’s most popular online TV store. This according to proprietor Apple, which said today that iTunes has sold some 200 million TV episodes.
Leave it to ABC to devise a service that offers all the convenience of video-on-demand with all the annoyance and vapidity of broadcast TV in one joyless package. This morning the network and its affiliates announced fast-forward-disabled video on demand, which prevents viewers from bypassing commercials.
Tonight, tech’s highest roller gave what may have been his final Vegas performance. Sadly, it was far from his most memorable. All glitz and very little glory–certainly not the sort of glory befitting such an iconic figure. In the end, the memory of the event that lingers longest is not Gates reflecting on his storied [...]
Rupert Murdoch is in an unusually generous mood these days, isn’t he? This morning Fox Broadcasting said it would make season-premiere episodes of seven of its TV shows available for free through Apple’s iTunes store. Beginning this week and continuing through the two that follow, the network will offer free downloads of such series [...]
ABC has bombed again. This time, however, it’s not the American network in a Nielsen cave, but the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that has fallen prey to Second Life vandals who trashed ABC Island, leaving a vast crater where the company’s virtual oasis once stood. ABC Amphitheatre, the Ecohouse, Dreamtime Cove and the Island’s favorite destination, [...]
Looks like Walt Disney has finally come up with a theory to explain plummeting ratings at ABC and ESPN–as well as a plan to fix them. The company’s two big networks have struck a deal with Cox Communications to offer free on-demand broadcasts of hit shows and sporting events, as long as Cox disables its fast-forward feature that lets viewers skip advertisements.
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183.
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
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