At this time of year every blog, zine, site, and paper writes their End Of The Year wrap-up for whatever field it is that they cover – so I guess that means that I should be doing the same.

I’m not going to do it.

It would take too long and the play-by-play doesn’t really matter. All that matters is the outcome. At the end of 2009, only five links count in Online Television. Here they are.

1. Hulu – OK, there have been hints that they’re going to end the all-free gravy train. One of the three big partners got 51% swallowed by Comcast. And you still can’t watch it on an iPhone. It doesn’t matter. That ton of dough they dropped in 2009 worked and Hulu is a household name in more non-geek households than anybody.

2. Netflix – After killing Blockbuster, they’re going after PPV in a big way. They’re positioning themselves less as a DVD rental company and more of an entertainment delivery company. It’s working. Netflix is becoming THE name in net-connected devices from Blu-Ray Players and videogame consoles to the Boxee Box and even HDTVs themselves.

3. YouTube – Sure, Old Media loves portraying YouTube as a bunch of shaky cellphone videos and latter-day Wayne’s World clones – and the tech press still loves to poo-poohs them over techy things like getting stingy with their API, but Aunt Fran and Uncle Steve can’t be swayed. They know all about the YouTube and have spent a lot of fun time there. Through 2009, YouTube has still made comparatively few deals with TV and Movie networks, but they’ve given birth to more Internet Originals than anyone could count. Did anyone care how many radio stars the TV networks had in 1949? You Betcha! Did anyone care how many radio stars the TV networks had in 2009? Not in the least. We’re still very early in the first inning, folks. This will be a long game. And don’t forget, YouTube beat Hulu and Netflix to the iPhone by going on three years. Don’t underestimate the power of portability.

4. InstantWatcher – I’ve seen a few proto-aggregates pop up from time to time (including at this very website), but none lasted. At the end of 2009 the shining star seems to be InstantWatcher. It’s clean, fast, and easy. It’s like the Craigslist of finding streaming content on Netflix. Let’s hope they expand to include more sources.

5. iTunes – Apple customers can go out and get content from a variety of sources, but if you want to sell stuff TO those customers you have to go through Apple first. Apple doesn’t restrict me from using Handbrake or Evom and filling my iPhone with free content from the net and DVD rentals, but there is only ONE built-in “just press here” way to get content: the iTunes Store. Apple banks on laziness and ineptitude. It doesn’t matter if these tools have gotten “just five clicks and you are done” easy, most people don’t know this and don’t care enough to find out. The iTunes Store is relatively cheap, very easy, and (most importantly) right there. Who cares if it costs a dollar more? For most people it’s worth the dollar to save the time and effort to learn the other way. That’s not even taking free podcasts into account. Apple doesn’t sell (or even host!) podcast content, but they are the largest aggregate of Internet Originals and Studio Content, both free and paid. That’s nothing to sneeze at.

That’s it. That’s Who’s Who at the End of 2009. Don’t sweat it too much. At this point it’s likely to change as often as the weather and every player in my List of Links ( —-> —-> —-> —-> —-> —-> —–> —-> —-> —-> ) will be vying for number one.

Disagree? That’s what the comments are for.

Electronista reports:

Entertainment magazine Variety claims to have heard from movie studio executives that the retailer is talking to CinemaNow and “other online movie services” to establish a link between itself and one of these services.

Dan Frommer writes:

Hulu is in the process of developing an app for Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone and iPod touch, we have learned from a plugged-in industry executive. The app is coming soon (within a few months) and is “badass” — as excellent as Hulu’s Web site. Video will work over both wi-fi and 3G, we’re told

via Business Insider

My computer is my TV and my TV is my computer, which means my entertainment center must also pull double duty as my desk.

The keyboard drawer is deep enough for two keyboards (the very clicky Matais Tactile Pro and the very quiet Apple Keyboard) and wide enough for the mousepad to rest on one side, and iPods/iPhones can rest on the other.

Currently to the immediate left of the “stand” is the “component shelf”. This houses my Mac (which had to be configured to output multi-channel sound), My 7.1 amp, my DVD player, my printer, and it used to hold my Roku Netflix Player (before I sold it).

Even though I have a 7.1 amp, I only have 5.1 sound (the amp has a setting to down-sample 7.1 content to 5.1 speakers) right now. I feel no rush to buy another pair of speakers before I get a BluRay player to take advantage of them. I haven’t permanently hung the speakers, because I am planning on spinning the room 90 degrees. The left front speaker is in the corner, as is the subwoofer. The center speaker is directly behind the monitor. The front right is on top of a bookshelf.

One rear speaker is on top of the filing cabinet, the other on top of the DVD Shelf.

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My Old Entertainment Center

My last TV was so giant, only a giant entertainment center would house it. When we moved into a cabin in the woods for a year, it took almost a week for me to get all of it out there. (I had to carry it in a wheelbarrow)

When our year was up, we moved out – but left the TV and entertainment center there.
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My Ever-changing Desk

My desk is made of industrial shelving.

Originally built in 1998 as an editing workstation, it has been re-built again and again.

It has been low and wide, it’s been flat, it’s been bottom heavy, and top heavy.

The first attempt at turning into an entertainment center was a bit gigantic.

But now it’s under control. (and broken into three pieces)

The evolution of television is really just the continued evolution of our greatest interpersonal communications system. It was born out of language, matured with writing, and continues to evolve today through interfaces such as the web.

— Aaron Smith

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Warner Bros on Monday became the first studio to open its film vault to “made-to-order” DVDs, as it sought new revenues in a slumping DVD market by making it possible for fans to buy decades-old films.

Warner Bros, owned by Time Warner Inc, made an initial batch of 150 titles available for purchase online at www.WarnerArchive.com , including 1943 comedy-romance “Mr. Lucky” starring Cary Grant and the 1962 release “All Fall Down” with Warren Beatty and Eva Marie Saint.

Sales are not expected to approach those of new releases on DVD, but the service gives Warner Bros another way to make money from a film archive it already exploits by selling titles for broadcast in the United States and internationally.

The on-demand service allows Warner Bros. to avoid the risk of manufacturing too many copies of old or obscure titles and shipping them to retailers because customers directly order only the titles they want to buy.

“This way you’ve completely eliminated the risk of not selling them. You’re not going to make them until they’re sold,” said Tom Adams, president and senior analyst with Adams Media Research.

Warner Bros. said that each month it will make about 20 films and television programs from its archive available for purchase through this DVD-on-demand program.

The new Warner Bros. initiative comes as the movie industry faces declining DVD sales. Last year, amid the ongoing recession DVD sales fell by 7 percent to $21.6 billion, the Digital Entertainment Group said.

Studios are mainly looking to the emerging Blu-ray disc market to counter declining DVD sales, Adams said.

Last year, sales of Blu-ray discs quadrupled to nearly $750 million, the Digital Entertainment Group said.

But with the new DVD-on-demand service, Warner Bros can supplement its sales by appealing to collectors and fans.

The Warner Bros film archive has 6,800 titles. Since it entered the DVD market in 1997, the studio has released only around 1,200 of those titles from the vault. By comparison, the company expects by the end of the year to have more than 300 titles available via the DVD-on-demand service.

“I think ultimately the odds are very good that every film ever made will be available on this kind of basis, because why not?” Adams said.

Warner Bros. is charging customers $19.95 per title, plus shipping, for the new service. Titles also can be downloaded directly to a customer’s computer.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis: Editing by Bob Tourtellotte and Gunna Dickson)

Via Reuters

Media Analyst Don Cole traveled 200,000 miles per year annually for decades visited with local TV stations, cable interconnects, magazines, clients, client prospects, and all sorts of new media sales teams.

He believes that Nothing Can Replace Television and It Almost Has!

He gives wonderful write-up on the progression that the cancer that network tv is suffering from.

He begins with where the symptoms are worst and (ironically) least visible: Local Affiliates.

What I see and hear stuns me. The broadcast media, as a group, are in almost complete denial about what is going on in our world of media. When the relentless march of broadcast fragmentation is brought up, local station people respond with “have you seen our local news. It is extraordinary.” I have and it is not.

Ask industry people about how DVR’s are changing the effectiveness of TV as an advertising medium and the more mature (in age only) say something to the effect that they hope they will be retired before the effects are truly felt in the marketplace. What kind of answer is that?.

He touches on our POV a bit.

Today’s consumers are now in control and they are not going back to being passive viewers again. Life “on-demand’ appeals to people. DVR’s, blogs, You tube, Hulu.com, The Slingbox, streaming video, new cable platforms, and many other possibilities have permanently upset the TV landscape. Watch how a young adult uses media–are you positioning your campaigns to reach young people well or at all for that matter?

…but then goes into Protectionist Mode.

There is also a terrible danger with the presence of legacy mentalities out there. People sit in meetings and nod vigorously when I say that TV is losing its luster as a sales medium. But, moments later they say something to the effect that the solution to TV’s slow death is simply adding more weight. Add more weight? They will still miss the people that they are missing now! All additional weight will do is add significant frequency to the same folks they reach now who are heavy TV viewers and not always the most desirable prospects.

He does touch on TV’s tool as a currently-ubiquitous communication medium and laments the loss of roadblocks and vertical strikes, but fails to understand that the underlying goal that those tools provided – to get information out to a majority percentage of the population – will not die with it.

Just as the death of newspapers doesn’t mark the end of journalism, the death of TV isn’t killing mass-media.

The middlemen will shift. Those that adapt will survive. Those who would apply radio rules to magazines and billboard rules to TV will try to get TV rules to apply to the internet.

Watch.

The event, held in NYC, drew a large and diverse crowd

Vincent Polidoro, a 25-year-old filmmaker in New York who persuaded Mr. Clemons to attend the gathering, said he had recently joined the ranks of those who adore the service, which many people use to pipe video from a computer to a TV screen.

“It’s nice to have an alternative way to get content,” he said. “I’m sick of being married to Comcast or some other service provider.” Attending the Boxee event, he said, reinforced the idea that “the Internet is our medium and finally, here is a service that gets how we want to use it.”

Looking around the room and seeing his peers, he said, made him like the service even more.

Tom Conrad, chief technology officer at Pandora, the streaming music service, said he was amazed at the turnout and by the makeup of the audience, which he said seemed fairly mainstream. This could indicate a larger shift in the way audiences are consuming entertainment: “Just the fact alone that 80 percent of Boxee users have it connected to their television, that stat alone amazes me,” he said.

New York Times

An Internet Poll asks: Have you switched from Cable to The Internet?

In early results, 52% says they either stream or download shows, and a full 24% of those who responded answered “Yes! I’ve cut the cable and am a 100% internet TV watcher.”

I’ll keep you posted if things change.

Digg @ Digg.com

Tiny Arrow URL: http://➹.ws/ﱴ

Speaking of Boxee, if you live in New York (or will happen to be there on March 24), then you should check out the boxee meetup.

They will be releasing a new alpha version during the event and will “share some concrete plans for the beta”.

If you DO attend, send me some pictures.

When I cut the cable six months ago, there was almost nothing to watch online (legally). Now you can get almost every network TV show, many cable TV favorites, watch live sports, get cable and network news, local weather, and even watch full un-cut movies – legally and free.

I’m beginning to see more and more articles about cutting cable and streaming everything. I don’t think the internet is quite ready for that. I still download over half of my content, but I am streaming more and more.

After my technophobic brother took to Hulu, I started wondering how far streaming has come in six months and how newbie friendly it is. Most of the Networks are doing a good job pimping their websites, so I figure this is how most newbies would take their first steps.

Broadcast Networks: Primetime

ABC
http://abc.go.com/

The American Broadcasting Company’s page is filled with clicky goodness, and free episodes is in large red lettering. OK, it’s a giant advertisement for their linear-delivery network – but it seems internet-delivery friendly enough. A loop of 8 short videos plays in a flash player and they do a pretty good job of explaining the ins and outs of watching TV on the web between the commercials for Scrubs and Desperate Housewives. If only watching the episodes themselves was as simple.

ABC still insists on using their Full Episode Player, which is a separate browser plug-in. The last time I used it it was slow to load, choppy to navigate, and had only one episode of each show online at a time. Yikes. I was reluctant to click it. I shouln’t have been.

What a great improvement! Not only in stability and speed, but in usability.

There isn’t a very big archive, but if you want to watch new episodes, ABC.com has you covered.

Choose a Show

NBC
http://www.nbc.com/

After ABC’s clean site the National Broadcasting Company’s site looks like a barrage of text, a newspaper.

I scanned the page several times before I saw Watch Video or Watch Full Episodes.

Their navigation system is confusing, and what shows up on the page depends on how you navigate to it. If you first click Watch Video in the toolbar then choose a show, you can never get to the same info as you would have found had you clicked “Watch Full Episodes”.

NBC’s site has a lot of content, but considering it’s all mirrored at Hulu, It’s hard to find a reason to go to NBC.com.

CBS
http://www.cbs.com

The Columbia Broadcasting System is the farthest behind. The page is one giant advertisement for their liner-delivery method. It’s filled with clips, re-caps, behind-the-scenes fluff pieces, and teaser-trailers for upcoming episodes. The kind of shovel-ware content that DVD producers have been calling “Special Features” so every release can be called a Special Edition. Every click on their site brings another auto-playing video Blackberry ad.

CBS makes the availability of full episodes less-than-obvious, and when you DO find them CBS makes you join a chat room in order to watch it. Yes, you can opt out but you have to log in first. I chose Late Late Show with Craig Fergeson… which, after a looong load time, I joined in progress. It didn’t start at the beginning! Clicking “Watch By Myself” starts it from the beginning. I guess you can’t be social AND watch from the beginning unless you have impeccable timing or a lot of patience.

Also, CBS viewer is the only Flash Player I’ve ever seen with advertising logos. The social interaction allows you to put the Intel Inside logo and chime on the video, for everyone else watching to see. I don’t know what to say.

CBS has a YouTube Channel, but the content is just as lame.

FOX
http://www.fox.com

News Corp. owns 20th Century Fox which owns FOX Television which owns FOX on Demand. F.O.D. is easy to navigate and content is plentiful. The site even seems to put a priority on streaming over broadcast. Didn’t see it when it was on the air? Watch it here! Watch it now! it invites.

It even has little niceties like when an episode will show up online and what episode in the list is currently playing.

The CW
http://www.cwtv.com

Born from a union of Warner Brother’s The WB and Paramonunt’s UPN, The CW is the hot network for young adults. The Full Episodes link on the main page is small, but the content makes up for it. During the regualr season, all the latest episodes are available for instant viewing.

However, today, there are only a handful available for viewing.

PBS
http://www.pbs.org

Like CBS, the Public Broadcast System’s home page is a barrage of text. Watch Episodes is easy enough to spot, but the collection of videos is a just a fraction of PBS’ archive and it doesn’t seem to be updated with any regularity. Perhaps we should get the new President to put more than just his weekly address on YouTube.

Broadcast Networks: News and Sports

ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com

ABC News pulls up like any other news site. In fact, the Watch Video link is so subtle, you might underestimate how Streaming Friendly this site really is. Like it’s parent channel’s site, ABCNews.com use the Full Episode Player, but instead of being designed around Prime Time Programming, it centers on ABC’s News division. Good Morning America, Nightline, World News Now, 20/20… they’re all there in their entirety.

NBC News and NBC Sports
http://www.nbc.com/News_and_Sports/
http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/

Not very video friendly at all. With some clicking around I found some clips of the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams hosted on an msnbc server.

CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/

Not very video friendly at all. The word Video is in TINY print, then it’s mostly just clips. Full Episodes are rare and hard to find. I’d give it a C+.

Cable Networks: Primetime

ABC Family
http://abcfamily.go.com/

I used to think of this as the easy to use ABC Network site but with the radical improvement to the Full Episode Player @ ABC.com and ABCNews.com, ABC Family now seems clunky. There’s lots of content, both new and vintage, including some Made-for-TV movies. Full Episodes, Clips and Previews are well balanced.

A&E
Bravo
The Discovery Channel, TLC and Animal Planet
E!
Food Network
HGTV
Lifetime
MTV, MTV2, and MTV Music
TBS
USA Network

Cable Networks: News and Sports

FOX News
CNN
MSNBC
CNBC
ESPN

Internet Original: News

The Presidential Address
Associated Press

Internet Original: Sports

????

Cable Networks

[NOTE: I wrote this fragment of an article on January 4. By January 6th, much of it was outdated. By January 15th all of my notes for the unwritten article were outdated, too. I'm publishing the article fragment as an "artifact of a long time passed". Yes, two months ago is a long time.]

My Mac doesn’t have a remote control. It predates the Apple Remote by a year (and even if it didn’t, towers don’t have IR sensors).

I could buy a USB IR sensor and an Apple Remote, buy I’d also have to buy software to make the IR sensor work. Total cost: $50+

For $30ish, I could just buy a RF remote with a USB dongle, but then I wouldn’t have the sleek Apple Remote. Instead, I’d be controlling my Mac with something that looks like a garage door opener.

Eight months have passed. IR remotes got worse and RF remotes got better, but I never bought either one.

Instead, my wife got an iPhone.

[She's nearly got me convinced that I can't live without one, but I'm holding off as long as I can. My trusty Nokia 6102i is barely two years old, but is breaking. Scotch tape has been holding it together for almost two months, but the other day a small metal piece popped out of the hinge and disappeared into the fourth dimension. Now, every time I flip it open it gets a little worse. I just need it to survive until June/July when the new iModels come out.]

On her phone we have VLC Remote, Remote, and Rowmote.

Currently Rowmote is getting the most use. It integrates directly with Front Row and behaves exactly like an Apple Remote, but Remote’s new iTunes DJ integration looks like fun.

The only problem is: When she’s not home, I don’t have a remote controller!

UPDATE: The guys at Boxee shot out an e-mail letting me know that they have a remote in the App Store, but until I get a new Mac or Boxee shows some PPC love, I’ll have to admire from a distance.

So sayeth Dave Winer:

I was bothered by Clay Shirky’s piece about the death of newspapers that got so much play over the last few days, and finally figured out why as I wrote this piece. He says that journalism is being replaced by nothing. This is why the press likes his piece so much, it’s been their main theme: You’ll miss us when we’re gone. The problem with this thesis is that while the press as been declining a new decentralized press has been booting up. I talk about this toward the end of today’s piece. The sources who no longer trust the journos, or aren’t being called by them when they have something to say, are going direct. This is what replaces journalism. It’s happening everywhere (Shirky’s piece is a great example of it). Sometimes the thing that’s hardest to see is what’s right in front of you.

I didn’t realize I was stepping into a pile of Shirky when I referenced it yesterday.

I believe Shirky is “half right”. He’s right about everything that’s crumbling, but he’s wrong about the lack of a replacement.

In a world of interconnected hypertext, I thought the irony was self evident. I was mistaken.

The (unspoken, and therefore way too subtle) joke was: “OH, noes! Print News is dying and there’s no replacement yet! We better build one!”

The newspapers think they have a lock on news and the death of their news distribution company means the end of news gathering.

Writers will starve!

Newspapers can’t conceive of not being the middlemen between well researched, well written journalism and the reader. Newsmen can’t conceive of a system where they don’t work for a “newspaper”. They get off on a tangent trying to redefine what a “newspaper” is (so the status quo isn’t inturrupted so much).

One side argues that they need to switch from dead trees to web pages and the other side complains about comments on fan blogs getting as much weight as “real newsmen”. Both sides think they need to hurry and neither side realizes that they’ve already been replaced.

They just don’t see it
The replacement was here before the old way started failing. It’s true in music. It’s true in Television and Movies. It’s true in news.

The RIAA thinks they have a lock on music distribution and they preach that the death of their music distribution company means the death of music writing and recording.

Musicians will starve!

The networks think they hav lock on “tv” distribution. They say that the death of their video distribution company means the death of well written, well acted, well produced television.

Actors will starve!

And if they mention the internet at all?
Blogs are unreliable! MySpace is Filled with Amateurs! YouTube Videos are all home videos!

Nevermind the fact that blogs became reliable, MySpace bands got big and Big Bands got MySpace, and The President of the United States got a YouTube Channel.

When I (poorly) made a sarcastic reference to Shirky yesterday, I should have written:

“OH, noes! TV is dying and there’s no replacement yet! We better build one!”

None of these “old media” players understand that the replacement is here already.

Linear delivery, aka “broadcast”, aka “Television as we know it” is dead, but no one has told it, yet.

The old powers are clinging to a delivery/business model that no longer works, demanding to know what’s going to replace television.

To paraphrase Clay Sharky: When someone demands to know how we are going to replace television, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution.

Clay Shirky writes:

They are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to.

There are fewer and fewer people who can convincingly tell such a lie.

He wrote it about newspapers, but everything he says applies to television too.

Every activity has a Social Networking angle. First it was just the online companies, trying to get you to IM. Then the entertainment companies trying to sell you music or movies. Then activities like drinking soda to buying shoes came with secret games and online cliques.

It was only a matter of time when anti-social activities attempted to get social. It happened with gamers, why not couch potatoes?

In my attempt at “social television”, I signed up for LivingSocial and Twitter, and activated the “Social” settings in Netflix, and the Hulu Social Network.

I’ve dragged my feet in creating a Neurotic Nomad Myspace or Facebook page, hoping that OpenID would allow me to take a lazy way out, but apparently it doens’t work that way.

Now that I’m set up, I should open up the dialog.

What’s the biggest question plaguing you right now when it comes to online TV?

.

.

(crickets)

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Hey! Hulu has a social network. Finally a reason to log in.

Somebody “Friend” me.

Paul Graham writes:

The TV networks already seem, grudgingly, to see where things are going, and have responded by putting their stuff, grudgingly, online. But they’re still dragging their heels. They still seem to wish people would watch shows on TV instead, just as newspapers that put their stories online still seem to wish people would wait till the next morning and read them printed on paper. They should both just face the fact that the Internet is the primary medium.

Why TV Lost

In a press release, Hulu writes “During Super Bowl XLIII this Sunday, look for the launch of Hulu’s ad campaign. Finally, we’ll reveal the secret behind Hulu.”

Caroline McCarthy said it best.

Ooh! Secrets! I love secrets! Clearly we will learn one of three things this Sunday:
1. Hulu is the Matrix.
2. Hulu is Luke Skywalker’s father.
3. Hulu is people.

Hulu (via Cnet)

Michael Calore of Wired writes:

Next time you’re dealing with a dreadfully slow internet connection, you can ask Google what’s causing the trouble.

The company announced a new open platform Wednesday called Measurement Lab, or M-Lab for short. As part of the initial launch, M-Lab includes three publicly accessible tools, including a tool called Glasnost that tests whether BitTorrent traffic is being blocked, throttled or otherwise impeded on your broadband connection.

Find the tests @ Measurement Lab (via Wired)

It seemed to me the Bittorrents for the last few Superbowls were mildy popular, but that’s just my observation. I have no stats to back that up. Superbowl broadcast ratings are down. They’ve been down for years. That’s well known.

What isn’t known is how the NFL plans to bring it’s product into the 21st century.

The NFL’s bread and butter has always been the play-by-play broadcast of their games. Other football leagues focused on ticket sales and merchandising or on community spirit. The NFL made their money hopping from network to network to show their precious games and sold the Big Game to the highest bidder. Big Brother even had to step in and make the NFL play fair and give everybody a turn, if I remember correctly.

Has there been ANY sort of an announcement of the NFL’s plans to accommodate the post-television generation? The Official Superbowl Page has a countdown clock and tons of hype… but nothing about how to watch the actual game.

Politics wised up. After a terrible online showing during the election gave bootleg streams of CNN great ratings, we were buried in options for streaming live video of the Inauguration. Will this be the moment that Sports learns the hard way?

There’s a ton of money on the table for the advertiser in the browser window of the re-streaming service that will be hosting the bootleg stream. Will it be uStream.TV this time, again, or will everybody be watching a freed Sling Stream?