D2D News

Integrated film programme from Clear Channel and Relativity Media

Clear Channel Communications and Relativity Media have announced an “unprecedented” multi-media agreement to promote a number of major film releases over the next 12 months. This relationship, the companies said, “is designed to drive box office sales and promote upcoming entertainment properties by tapping into Clear Channel’s monthly reach of 237 million in a creative and compelling manner”.

[caption id=“attachment_2654” align=“alignleft” width=“384” caption=“The collaboration kicked off with Limitless, starring Robert De Niro and Bradley Cooper”][/caption]

The collaboration officially kicked off with the promotion of the film Limitless, starring Bradley Cooper, Abbie Cornish and Robert De Niro, and which finished top of the box office during its opening weekend in March. “For Limitless, we feel the Clear Channel promotion significantly impacted our awareness and helped drive our successful opening weekend,” said Ryan Kavanaugh, CEO of Relativity Media. “As the consumer looks more and more to digital and interactive content, Clear Channel’s cross-platform deal is a critical step in providing Relativity a direct link to its movie-going audience.”

The Limitless campaign was executed across a broad combination of Clear Channel’s assets, including national and local radio programmes, digital and mobile ad units, digital outdoor billboards in strategic locations around the country like Times Square, and national and local commercial inventory. The promotional strategy included custom interviews with exclusive insight into the film; ‘limitless’ radio music hours (“You’re listening to the Z100 limitless music hour sponsored by Limitless”); social media integration on station Facebook pages offering listeners the chance to win Limitless music; media overlays featuring Bradley Cooper walking onto home pages to promote the film; and countdown clocks both on-air and on-line to provide high frequency reminders to the listeners.

Bob Pittman, chairman of Media and Entertainment Platforms for Clear Channel Radio, commented: “We look forward to developing even more creative campaigns going forward that will drive attendance for Relativity releases.”

www.clearchannel.com
http://www.RelativityMedia.com

UK retail giant Tesco enters streaming arena

In the UK one in every six pounds spent at retail goes into a Tesco cash register – or so the most commonly quoted figures run. The retail giant has now moved its powerful bulk into the world of content streaming with the announcement that it has acquired a majority stake in video-on-demand pioneer blinkbox. Tesco has bought an 80% stake in the UK’s leading movie streaming service from Eden Ventures and Nordic Venture Partners.

[caption id=“attachment_2647” align=“alignleft” width=“152” caption=“Tesco's Richard Brasher: "Linking physical purchase to the building of digital collections"”][/caption]

Richard Brasher, Tesco’s UK CEO said, “Whether customers want to own the DVD, download a digital movie, stream a rental or all three, Tesco is committed to giving customers choice. We want to allow them to decide how they access entertainment content and on which devices, whether it’s on PC, TV or tablet.”

Launched in April 2008, blinkbox has over two million visitors per month and is the only service of its kind to have a combined free/pay ‘freemium’ offering, allowing users to stream paid-for feature titles alongside free, advert-supported TV and film content.

This deal, Brasher added, positions Tesco for the next stage in the internet-driven revolution in home entertainment. “The acquisition of blinkbox, together with a range of other services currently in development, means we can link physical purchase of a product to the building of digital collections in a new and seamless way. Working with the blinkbox team and our content partners, we will bring these compelling propositions to life for our customers.”

blinkbox CEO Michael Comish commented: “We are pleased that our partnership with Tesco allows us to bring the best in entertainment from our library of over 9,000 titles to even more people across the UK. It’s a hugely exciting time, looking at how accessible entertainment is becoming for consumers. This partnership represents another step forward, bringing the leading movie streaming service together with the UK’s biggest retailer.”

www.tesco.com

Is the internet free ride over?

Users and bloggers are waxing eloquent and indignant about the AT&T announcement to cap data usage, due to: “A dramatic increase in the amount of data” being driven through its networks. The company says that the top 2% of customers use about 20% of its total capacity on our network, and “a single high traffic user can utilize the same amount of data capacity as 19 typical households”. That fits in with Tom Moran’s Digital Insight in the current issue of Digital2Disc, where he ponders the strain being put on the current internet infrastructure. “In data volume terms, just one feature film is probably more data than every email attachment you have received in the last three years combined,” he points out.

[caption id=“attachment_2631” align=“alignleft” width=“199” caption=“Tom Moran of Savvis: "The internet is something that has a finite capacity"”][/caption]

“We often think of the internet as this all-encompassing, ever-present and ever-expanding presence in our lives, so it is hard to understand it as something that has a finite capacity. This is especially true because when that capacity is exceeded there are often no specific indicators that this is the case. Sure, a flash crowd can bring down a single web site, but there is no tangible evidence that exceeding the capacity of the system is the reason that your internet is slow or your streaming movie has started to glitch.”

Kind of what happened last week with our newsletter, I guess – as you may have noticed, it went out considerably later than normal, due to our email service provider having problems with their server traffic.

www.digital2disc.com/magazine-viewer

Social media as a business tool

A Digital2Disc straw poll of executives in the content delivery arena shows that many business to business companies are using social media as a way of getting their own message across, as well as finding out what their customers want, and what the competition is up to. The article appears in this month’s issue of the magazine (www.digital2disc.com/magazine-viewer, page 28), and shows that people who use social media often use sites like Twitter to keep up with what’s happening in their own particular sector, so that they can be more reactive to the industry.

However, recent research shows that college faculty are twice as likely as other workers to be using social media as part of their job, and more than 80% of faculty are using some form of social media in their teaching. The survey, by the Babson Survey Research Group and Pearson, of nearly 2,000 faculty, found that more than 90% of college faculty use social media in the workplace, compared to 47% of employees in other industries.

“Faculty are big users of and believers in social media - nearly 80% use at least one online social media site to support their professional career activities.  More than three-quarters have visited a social media site within the past month for personal use, with half of them posting content,” said Jeff Seaman, PhD, co-director of the Babson Survey Research Group.

www3.babson.edu
http://www.pearson.com

Ad-supported Kindle: the future of gadgets?

According to Dan Frommer of businessinsider.com it is. “Not everything you buy will eventually be subsidized by advertising, but for the devices where it makes sense, we expect to see a lot more of it,” he said of the new, $25 cheaper version. In this case, he said, it’s not a bad thing – the ads aren’t that annoying, and the concept is more of a special discount club than being besieged by ads. Other benefits include the obvious: cheaper, and maybe one day free gadgets of this type, and higher profits for the device manufacturers.

The Kindle continues to be Amazon’s best-selling product, and the initial offers that come with the recently-released Kindle include $10 for $20 Amazon.com Gift Card, $1 for an album in the Amazon MP3 Store, and a $100 Gift Card with a new Amazon Rewards Visa Card.

“We’re working hard to make sure that anyone who wants a Kindle can afford one,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com Founder and CEO. “Kindle with Special Offers is the same #1 bestselling Kindle - and it’s only $114. Kindle is the best deal in consumer electronics anywhere in the world.”

Amazon is also introducing ‘AdMash’ - a free Kindle app and website where customers choose the most attractive and engaging display advertisements that will become Kindle sponsored screensavers.

www.amazon.com

3D awareness up but glasses still an issue

Consumer awareness of 3D has grown dramatically in the past six months, according to The NPD Group, and Blu-ray is the favourite medium for watching 3D. 3D Blu-ray player awareness nearly doubled, jumping from 15% to 26% between September last year and February this year. The number of consumers aware of 3D LCD TVs grew from 28% to 36% in the same time period, while 3D plasma TV awareness rose from 21% to 32%.

[caption id=“attachment_2596” align=“alignleft” width=“148” caption=“NPD's Ross Rubin: "Glasses are becoming a more prominent inhibitor"”][/caption]

That’s the good news. The bad news is that increased awareness of technology also means increased awareness of the drawbacks of the technology: in particular, TV price points, which remain an issue for many consumers – and the thorny subject of glasses, which has just about overtaken grumbles about pricing.

“Concerns about price and an aversion to 3D glasses both saw relative increases as inhibitors to adopting 3D televisions,” said Ross Rubin, executive director of industry analysis at The NPD Group. “However, as prices and price premiums for 3D TV decline, glasses are becoming a more prominent inhibitor, and are poised to overtake price.”

And back to the good news: lack of content is becoming slightly less of an issue of consumers. Of the existing content, it seems that 3D Blu-ray movies are the hot favourite for 68% percent of consumers interested in 3D TV. Just under 40% expressed interest in sports and cable or satellite programming as their choice of viewing for 3D TV.

www.npd.com



Rebrand award for Cinram's Delivering Excitement

Cinram has received a Merit Award in the ‘Industrial, Manufacturing, Media, Entertainment, Supply Chain Management’ category of the 2011 REBRAND 100 Global Awards, which recognize excellence in brand repositioning. “Our new logo, with an arch in the A for Cinram represents the bridge between current technology into the new worlds,” Steve Brown, Cinram CEO told Digital2Disc, “and it’s bridging Cinram across the physical and digital worlds.”

The new branding was designed to reinforce the company’s transformation into a global supply chain solutions provider across all media channels including digital. A new logo and a series of photographs capturing the consumer’s experience and excitement illustrates the new approach, and the elements are used consistently throughout all brand communications including web, brochures, signage, sales materials and sizzle videos, among others.

“Our new positioning reflects evolution, but, most importantly embraces Cinram’s continuing customer-centric approach that has established us as an industry leader for over four decades,” said Steve Brown, Cinram CEO. “The Delivering Excitement message illustrates the proactiveness of Cinram’s approach and sets the company apart as a leading provider of global supply chain solutions in both digital and packaged media.”

This year, Cinram shared Merit recognition with companies such as Audi, the Irish Stock Exchange and the Province of Alberta, among others.

www.cinram.com

Protecting VOD content

In the wake of the various announcements and debates about the plans for early release premium VoD content, two companies have announced a solution that should open up new opportunities in that space. Civolution, provider of technology and solutions for identifying, managing and monetizing media content, has announced that Digital Rapids has integrated the NexGuard PayTV & Online watermark pre-processing technology with its own StreamZ and StreamZHD studio encoding systems. The combined solution enables content watermarking and transformation in a single workflow step for delivery through over-the-top VoD services.

[caption id=“attachment_2549” align=“alignleft” width=“160” caption=“Brick Eksten: "Per-transaction watermarking will ultimately benefit consumers"”][/caption]

The NexGuard pre-release forensic watermarking technology, which won the TV Innovation 2010 Award for Content Protection, enables content owners to secure their high-value content during the production, post-production and pre-release distribution stages of the media life cycle. ”We are pleased to expand our support for Civolution watermarking technology with the addition of NexGuard PayTV & Online,” said Brick Eksten, president, Digital Rapids.

“The combination of our solutions enables exceptionally efficient workflows for content encoding and watermarking. Per-transaction watermarking will ultimately benefit consumers, who should be able to enjoy content such as movies at home in earlier release windows”.

The technology applies a unique identification number upon streaming the content to connected TVs, PCs, tablets or game consoles used in OTT VoD services. The imperceptible watermark introduces a deterrent against content theft and provides movie studios with the expected level of content security to deliver premium HD content on an early release window.

“The combination of NexGuard watermark pre-processing with Digital Rapids’ encoding solutions further benefits from Digital Rapids’ experience in transforming content for theadaptive bit rate streaming methods used in OTT VoD services”, said Jean-Michel Masson, SVP Watermarking Solutions at Civolution. ‘’Content can now be delivered from streaming servers or CDN edge servers with on-the-fly watermarking”.

www.civolution.com

Packaged media – good for another decade

Last week’s MEDIA-TECH Association (MTA)/Colonial Purchasing Cooperative joint conference in Las Vegas, ‘Packaged Media 2011,’ had an air of optimism not often seen in a gathering of packaged media executives. According to keynote speaker, Dave Rubenstein, president of Sony DADC Americas, while “Blu-ray is not for the weak of heart,” with its heavy seasonal spikes  and the dependence on major studio releases, “We are good for at least another decade.”

[caption id=“attachment_2523” align=“alignleft” width=“215” caption=“Conference keynoter David Rubenstein of Sony DADC”][/caption]

Rubenstein’s optimistic predictions had been presaged by Russ Crupnick, president, entertainment, The NPD Group, who opened the conference by saying: “We live in a physical world, except for reporters and bloggers.” This optimism carried on through to sponsors and attendees: “It feels like there’s still life back in media,” David Dering, principal of Dering Corp, whose CShell was among the event’s sponsors, told Digital2Disc. “People are energized. There is a little bit of hope.”

With both groups repositioning themselves in the packaged media supply chain, a joint event with the MTA and Colonial made a lot of sense to the 125-plus attendees. The primarily European-based MTA members are typically vendors to the Colonial members and this joining of hand across the Atlantic was further tightened with the announcement that Ray Zerrusen, president
of Charlotte, NC-based Optical Experts Manufacturing, Inc, was selected to head the US MEDIA-TECH replicators committee.

A full report will appear in Digital2Disc, Issue 7, due out mid-April.

www.colonialpurchasing.com
www.media-tech.net

CDSA expands its content protection role

As part of its commitment to expanding its role as the International Content Protection Association, CDSA has announced new senior-level appointments to its board of directors, with former Disney executive Richard Atkinson, chief piracy specialist & consultant, Anti-Piracy Worldwide, named as a strategic advisor. “The expansion of our worldwide content protection programs as well as the successful rollout of a new, industry-wide risk management software solution is at the forefront of CDSA’s new suite of anti-piracy and content protection initiatives,” said CDSA chairman Spencer Mott, also CISO of Electronic Arts.

[caption id=“attachment_2517” align=“alignleft” width=“268” caption=“Richard Atkinson speaking at last year's ESCA Edge event”][/caption]

Joel Bigley, senior vice president worldwide operations and business execution, Deluxe Digital Studios; and James Dunkelberger, general manager worldwide product release and security services, Microsoft, have been named to the CDSA board. “With the addition to our board of Joel Bigley, James Dunkelberger and with the ongoing strategic advice of Richard Atkinson, our industry association is in an even greater position to develop the most relevant, new advancements in collaborative activities for the protection of our industry’s most vital assets,” added Mott.

The CDSA has also announced that its second annual Entertainment Content Protection Summit is scheduled for December 8 in Los Angeles and, expanding on the success of last year’s event, a second, European, event will be held in London in September.

www.cdsaonline.org