The French online antipiracy authority has sent out 1.1 million warning emails, and is happy so few of those will have legal consequences

Sep 05, 2012 – Just 14 of the 1.15 million emails warning of copyright infringement sent out by the French online antipiracy authority have resulted in a case file being sent to a court — but Mireille Imbert-Quaretta, president of the Commission for Rights Protection, is happy with that.

Imbert-Quaretta chairs the body that applies France’s “three strikes” policy on online copyright infringement, receiving complaints from rights holders and sending out warnings to Internet subscribers that their connections are involved in illegal downloads. She sees her role not to prosecute, but to educate and dissuade, she said at a news conference Wednesday.

Read more at IT News

September 6, 2012 – AMSTERDAM. Two starkly different business models have emerged between major US content brands Disney and Discovery Channel as to how to deal with emerging platforms such as on demand and OTT.

Speaking in the session The Rise and Rise of Broadcasting, Catherine Powell, general manager, media distribution, Europe, Walt Disney Company said although the majority of programming was watched live, for some shows 50% of the audience was timeshifted.

Disney supports its TV partners through social media and second screen activity. “We as content providers give exclusive clips, access to talent, and sneak previews.” She said that the launch of on demand portals within a branded area helps new content to be discovered and drives viewers back to linear partners.

Read more at Broadband TV News

September 6, 2012 – It was meant to be the cure for the woes suffered by so many pay-TV subscribers – too much content was being split up between Singapore’s two service providers. If you were a subscriber to one provider and if the rights to the show you wanted to watch had been bought by the other, tough luck. You had to either subscribe to the other provider, or go without.

But one year on from the implementation of the Government’s rule aimed at curbing the rise of content locked up behind walled gardens, trying to get a fix on how much consumers have been helped is like watching a blurry television channel. Some parts of the picture will snap into focus, but other parts remain murky.

The cross carriage rule sought to loosen the grip on content by Singapore’s duopoly of cable television providers, SingTel and StarHub.

Read more at Straits Times

New Delhi, Sept 5: A technical committee to oversee the design of an audience measurement system for television will be formed within a week, under the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC).

The Indian Broadcasting Foundation (IBF), Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) and Indian Society of Advertisers (ISA) — the three stakeholders of BARC — are learnt to have told the Information and Broadcasting Ministry that the technical committee will be formed within a week, sources said. The committee has already missed the July deadline.

In a meeting chaired by I&B Secretary Uday Kumar Varma, with the three bodies, the Government took stock of the progress on BARC. It was also decided that the technical committee will have representation of the Directorate of Advertising and Publicity (DAVP), besides a statistician and other key members.

Read more at The Hindu Business Line

September 3, 2012 – The government has asked The Nielsen Company and Kantar Media Research to respond to concerns over sample size, methodology and creditability of TV viewership ratings provided by their Indian joint venture TAM Media Research.

The information and broadcasting ministry has also sought telecom regulator Trai’s recommendations on creating alternate rating systems to measure television viewership, a ministry official said.

Read more: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/media/entertainment/entertainment/government-tells-nielsen-and-kantar-to-clarify-concerns-over-tv-viewership-ratings/articleshow/16229195.cms

(1 September 2012) NEW DELHI: A Parliamentary Committee has strongly criticised the Information and Broadcasting (I&B) Ministry for never having ‘bothered’ to monitor the implementation of the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act 1995, a central legislation.

In a report presented recently, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology has also said the ministry ‘never attempted to know as to how the issue of transmission of anti-national content by various service providers is being addressed internationally’.

Read more: http://www.indiantelevision.com/headlines/y2k12/sep/sep13.php

27th August 2012: WPP has released a statement stating that it welcomes NDTV’s decision to not get into a prolonged trial. It has also mentioned that NDTV and WPP have been working together to make improvements, and that settlement talks between NDTV and WPP have been carried out as late as August 21, 2012. The company also noted that it’s not unusual for channels to blame TV rating system for their falling ratings, and also said that NDTV has used TAM ratings as and when it suited them.

Here’s WPP’s statement:

“We welcome NDTV’s statement that it has no desire to get into a prolonged trial by media. We have issued statements only in order to correct selective and misleading statements in the media.

NDTV raises some detailed questions, which will be and have been addressed in the proper forum: with the industry, or in the proper court, not in an exchange of media statements. As we have noted several times in previous statements, TAM welcomes the opportunity to address the facts. In the meantime, TAM continues, as it has done in the past, to work to improve its system, with the support and involvement of its many stakeholders and its highly respected management.

http://www.medianama.com/2012/08/223-ndtv-vs-wpp-round-up-of-news-on-the-tam-ratings-spat/

Other links:

http://www.livemint.com/2012/08/29162658/WPP-asks–NY-SC-for-dismissal.html?h=A1

http://www.moneylife.in/article/ndtv-vs-wpp-defamation-suit-against-sir-martin-sorrel-by-ndtvs-law-firm/28151.html

http://www.exchange4media.com/47784_ndtv-vs-tam-lawsuit-transcends-from-statements-to-war-of-words.html

August 31, 2012 | Tim Bradshaw / FT: After five years of trying to force the TV world to “go Google”, the search company has abandoned its scheme to trade broadcast ads in the same way as it does online banner ads.

In a victory for the traditional media establishment against a digital insurgent, Google quietly announced in a blogpost on Thursday evening that it would close its TV Ads in Adwords product later this year.

The service, which at one stage partnered with NBCUniversal and the Hallmark Channel, was supposed to combine the speed, flexibility and targeting capabilities of the web with the emotional punch of the 30-second spot.

But amid resistance from some parts of Madison Avenue, Google struggled to obtain enough airtime upon which to sell ads.

http://techcircle.vccircle.com/500/google-abandons-tv-ad-ambitions/

Durham, NH — August 14, 2012 — Leichtman Research Group, Inc. (LRG) found that the seventeen largest cable and telephone providers in the US — representing about 93% of the market — acquired about 260,000 net additional high-speed Internet subscribers in the second quarter of 2012. Net broadband additions in the quarter were the fewest of any quarter in the eleven years LRG has been tracking the industry.

Other broadband findings for the quarter include:

• Overall, broadband additions in 2Q 2012 amounted to 71% of those in 2Q 2011
• The top cable companies added about 330,000 subscribers, representing 118% as many additions as in 2Q 2011
• The top telephone companies lost about 70,000 subscribers — compared to a gain of about 80,000 in 2Q 2011
• AT&T and Verizon added 669,000 fiber subscribers in the quarter (via U-verse and FiOS), while having a net loss of 763,000 DSL subscribers
• Both AT&T and Verizon had fewer net broadband adds in Q2 2012 than in any previous quarter in the past eleven years
• The top cable broadband providers have a 57% share of the overall market, with nearly 11 million more subscribers than the top telephone companies — compared to about 9 million at this time a year ago

“The seasonally weak second quarter again proved to be a slow quarter for industry growth. Net broadband additions in 2Q 2012 were over one million less than in 1Q 2011, and about 100,000 fewer than in last year’s second quarter, making 2Q 2012 the weakest on record,” said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group, Inc. “Yet, over the past year, the top broadband providers have added nearly three million subscribers, with cable providers accounting for 83% of the net additions.”

http://www.leichtmanresearch.com/press/081412release.html

The significant increase in revenue will be driven by the growth of TV Everywhere and Over-the-Top (OTT) video, including Comcast Xfinity, HBO Go, Netflix, iPlayer, and Sky Go. Companies in video delivery and management, online video platforms (OVPs), managed video platforms (MVPs), content management systems (CMSs), and content delivery networks (CDNs) are growing at impressive rates.

Akamai, has a commanding lead of the video delivery market, with about $475 million in 2011.

http://www.telecomlead.com/inner-page-details.php?id=11111&block=Tower