The 2012 NAB Show®, the world’s largest gathering of media and entertainment professionals, is more than a hands-on proving ground of 1,600+ exhibiting companies. It’s a global knowledge base to help you leverage today’s media to create actionable intelligence.
This event offers world-class education for the entire digital media industry: 7 conferences, 2 training programs, general sessions, super sessions, info sessions, content theater and tons of on-floor sessions. See full education details here.
Super sessions:
CAMERON | PACE group: the secrets of making 3D profitable
Featuring GigaOM, Harman, Aha Radio, Rovi Corporation, PlayStation Digital Platforms, Digital Living Network Alliance, SocialGuide, Simple.tv, Strategy Group
TV syndication going “over the top”
Featuring the Los Angeles Times, Debmar-Mercury, Warner Bros., CBS Television Distribution
Conversation with: Bruce Rosenblum, President, Warner Bros. Television Group
Featuring Broadcasting & Cable Magazine
Taking risks with technology
Featuring Sundance Media Group, Original Productions, Contour, Donald Schultz
Predictions from the street: the power players behind the great content shift
Featuring The Shindler Perspective Inc., Piper Jaffray & Co., Wedbush Securities, Roth Capital Partners, LLC
Register for an education package to attend super sessions.
Special offer: Register using code EP46 for a free exhibits-only* pass!
suraj.sun writes "Netflix and Hulu are convincing millions of cable, satellite and telco subscribers to cut the cord and dive into video streaming. That's the conclusion of a new report released this week by the Convergence Consulting Group, which finds that 2.65 million Americans canceled TV subscriptions between 2008-2011 in favor of lower-cost internet subscription services or video platforms. Though Convergence co-founder Brahm Eiley projects that the number of people opting out of TV subscription services will begin to slow in 2012 and 2013. Part of the problem, Eiley argues, may be the rising price tag for streaming rights to programming which could cause fiscal fits for Netflix."
Users aren’t completely ditching pay-TV subscriptions, but a new report says 3.58 million people in the U.S. will have cut the TV cord by the end of 2012.
From 2008 to 2011, the Convergence Consulting Group estimates 2.65 million — 2.6% of the U.S. population — ended their pay-TV subscriptions and replaced them with online streaming services such as Netflix. More than 40% of U.S. pay-TV subscribers became non-subscribers by dropping their service in 2011. According to the report, Canadian TV services have seen a slower bleed — about 83,000 Canadians, or .7%, dropped their pay-TV subscriptions in 2011 to watch online subscription services.
Compared to 2010, U.S. TV services added 160,000 fewer subscribers in 2011. The number dropped from 272,000 in 2010 to 112,000 in 2011. Convergence Consulting estimates 185,000 people will start new TV subscriptions in 2012.
“Kiosk, mail and now streaming rental (assuming sufficient usage) offer a lower-price value proposition and have radically altered the rental channel while negatively impacting DVD/Blu-ray/Download sales, and encroaching on TV subscription,” the report said.
Online TV watching is expected to increase in 2012 and years to come. In 2011, about 18% of U.S. broadcast specialty-network viewers watched an average of one to two shows online per week — an increase from 16% in 2010.
Advertisers are following their viewers onto the web. The research firm says online ad revenue is increasing. Broadcast and cable network’s online TV advertising revenues reached $1.9 billion, or 2.8% of U.S. Broadcast/Cable Network TV advertising revenue, in 2011. Online TV network’s ad revenue is expected to climb 3% in 2012, Convergence Consulting estimates.
Which do you prefer to use: TV subscriptions or online subscriptions? Tell us in the comments.
To be fair, when we heard that Time Warner Cable's TWC TV app for Android tablets might add live TV streaming by the end of March it was described as a "very loose" projection, so it's not much of a surprise we're still waiting for it now, in April. It is still coming however, and a new post is up on the blog teasing the above image of the app in action and promising to make the feature available in the next few weeks, certainly by Memorial day. we should also note, it's for Ice Cream Sandwich loaded tablets only -- they have the required "security and stability" (read: DRM) necessary. Also noted is that developing a live video streaming app for iOS was easier simply because of the limited number of manufacturer, OS and hardware combinations, which mirrors what we heard previously from Netflix. Still, it's on the way, so if you're looking to use your slate as an extra TV screen in the home, you should look next to your manufacturer to make sure it's been updated with ICS.
Just as the rumors indicated, Comcast has revealed its subscribers will be able to access the standard HBO Go app on the Xbox 360 starting "early next week." The only bad news? There's still no news on when / if those Comcast logins will ever give HBO Go streaming access through other connected TV platforms like Samsung's Smart TV apps or the Roku box, and Time Warner cable customers are still on the outside looking in altogether. That's the business for now, Comcast customers can check out the app's video preview after the break to see what they've been missing
Oprah may have retired from her daytime talk show nearly a year ago, but she’s hardly out of sight from her fan base. In fact, her latest series airing on OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network is perhaps one of the most advanced shows in the social space right now, as she connects with her home and live audience in almost unprecedented ways.
Oprah’s Lifeclass — which is currently in its second season, airing on Monday nights at 8:00 p.m. ET/7:00 p.m. CT — features various motivational speakers and guests who aim to help viewers overcome challenges. Last season recapped lessons, revelations and aha moments over the past 25 years on The Oprah Winfrey Show.
But this isn’t your typical Oprah show. She is incorporating social media and interactivity into every episode across various platforms, from Facebook and Twitter to Skype and Instagram. For example, Oprah encourages viewers at home and in the audience to live tweet responses to the topics mentioned on the show and then discusses them in real-time with her guests.
“We have a team backstage that monitors the tweets that come in, and we push out some for Oprah to see and discuss live on the show,” a spokesperson for the OWN Network told Mashable backstage at a live taping. “We tell the audience and everyone at home to use their phones and interact with the show as it airs, and people couldn’t be more excited to do so.”
During most episodes, Oprah is positioned in front of several TV screens that display the tweets. Backstage is a room dedicated to what the show calls “Skypeville,” where fans can be Skyped in to the live show and interact with Oprah.
During last week’s episode — which was filmed live at Radio City Music Hall in New York City as part of a multi-city tour — several viewers were Skyped in from Australia and London to parts of the U.S. to discuss some of their biggest fears.
“It allows Oprah to truly interact with her audience in new ways, and makes her feel that much closer to her audience — and they feel the same way,” says the spokesperson. “It creates for a much deeper on-air discussion, too.”
Oprah’s Lifeclass also incorporates Facebook polls into the show and offers real-time results. Those viewers tuning in online are awarded with a behind-the-scenes look at what happens during commercial breaks. In essence, the camera never stops rolling, and only those watching online are privy to that footage. Fans can also post comments on the site and interact with others watching the show.
To make the experience even more personal, Oprah snail-mailed journals to her fans so that they could take notes during episodes.
Apart from the show, Oprah is extremely active on social media, especially Twitter. “Every tweet she sends is hers — the marketing team isn’t allowed to go anywhere near her Twitter account,” says the spokesperson.
Although Oprah’s Lifeclass doesn’t have too much formal marketing, it relies mostly on word-of-mouth marketing. It invites a traveling blogger corp. to its live shows to tweet during each episode and feature behind-the-scenes commentary.
As OWN aims to boost viewership of the show and its network, its buzz on social networking sites is thriving. The Oprah team says in the last week alone there were 414,780 mentions on Facebook and 3,026 answers posted to the Lifeclass wall on Oprah.com, along with over 29,000 views to the wall. Meanwhile, the web cast brought in nearly 2.6 million viewer minutes from 149 countries.
What do you think of Oprah’s use of social media to interact with viewers in real-time? Should other shows be taking a similar approach? Let us know in the comments.
A recent report from Nielsen shows that folks in the US and UK enjoy using their mobile devices while watching TV, while those in Germany and Italy prefer to do one thing at a time says a report in CNET.
Up to 88 percent of US tablet owners and 86 percent of US smartphone owners use their device at least once a month while watching TV. Some (26 percent) use their tablet in front of the TV several times each day. In the UK, the trend mirrors the US with 80 percent of tablet owners and 78 percent of smartphone owners relaxing with their mobile device at least once a month while gazing at the TV. Twenty-four percent admit to using their device while watching TV several times each day.
Italy and Germany buck this trend with more than thirty percent of people saying they have never used a tablet while watching TV. When people around the world multitask with their tablet and TV, most people use the tablet to check email or research information about the TV show or movie the they are watching.
Simon Fuller’s XIX Entertainment has partnered with yap.TV to create an immersive second-screen experience around the multilingual international hit ¡Q’VIVA!.
¡Q’VIVA! The Chosen is reality competition show featuring Jennifer Lopez, Marc Anthony and Jamie King as they travel across Latin America in search of “The Chosen Ones.” The best talent is brought back to the United States and tasked with becoming part of a big Las Vegas show dubbed “the greatest Latin show ever.”
The show debuted in January on Univision and an English-language version first aired in March. Thus far, the show has more than 30 million viewers worldwide.
We write a lot about social TV and the second-screen apps and experience, but it’s almost always in the context of English-only programming focused on U.S. audiences.
That’s what makes the ¡Q’VIVA!/yap.TV partnership unique. Rather than simply looking to recreate the same old staid second-screen experience, yap.TV and the ¡Q’VIVA! producers looked at how to reach fans across the international and multilingual spectrum.
Although yap.TV has its own iOS app, the platform is also accessible on other platforms thanks to HTML5. That means Latin American viewers can access the yap.TV ¡Q’VIVA! experience from other mobile devices. and HTML5 means BlackBerry — a device popular in Latin America — can still get support, even without a native app.
Social From the Start
In addition to synching with the live experience with the show — showcasing social feeds, photos and conversations — the app also works as a way for users to monitor social conversations and tweets about the show. Moreover, Mark Shedletsky at XIX tells us that social was part of the DNA behind ¡Q’VIVA! from the very beginning.
Users can chat in real time, take polls and browse Twitter feeds from those associated with the show. The app experience uses audio-fingerprinting to deliver custom information for that particular moment in the show. Users can even shop for J. Lo’s various looks from within the app experience.
To that end, the producers considered building a branded app or using a more agnostic destination service. While yap.TV actually powers third-party branded apps (including USA Network’s USA Everywhere app), the advantage of being part of the core experience is that the show can get more promotion across the website and iOS apps and become part of the existing community at large.
The English and Spanish versions of ¡Q’VIVA! are at the top of yap.TV’s leaderboard of most popular and most-discussed shows, so that decision has paid off.
The Future
What’s next? Shedletsky tells us XIX will be making the social and digital layer a priority in upcoming programs, noting that “the second screen is the future.”
We feel this way, too. At Mashable Connect next month, I’ll be moderating a panel discussing the evolution of the second screen, talking with app makers and programmers about how programming is changing to encompass these second screen experiences.
If the second screen is to take off the way many in the industry hope it will, the experiences will have to be multilingual and multiformat. To that end, it’s great to see Spanish and Portuguese social TV fans getting some love.
Let us know what you think about yap.TV and ¡Q’VIVA!‘s plans for the second screen in the comments.
From May 3-5, 2012, join Mashable for our biggest conference of the year and explore the future of digital. Our annual destination conference brings our community together for three days to connect offline in an intimate setting at the Contemporary Resort at Walt Disney World®. At this year’s conference you’ll hear from leaders like Joe Trippi, Lawrence Lessig, Roger McNamee, Hilary Mason, Pete Cashmore and others about how emerging digital media and technology will shape our lives now and in the years to come.
Waiting a day or so, of course, means that prime-time programming on Hulu Plus and Netflix has you mostly covered; but that loses you local news, sports and talk. Even single channels, brands or sports leagues (ESPN, NBA Courtside, MLB At Bat) are getting into the action -- but getting live access means hefty subscription fees, being an existing cable/satellite customer, or both.
If you're not interested in the supra-broadcast offerings that cable or satellite can deliver -- or if you just can't stomach the idea of paying $60, $75 or more per month to watch television -- there is this ancient and hoary concept called "over the air." Yes, Americans are still benefiting from their divinely granted inalienable rights to free TV, but they need antennas and reasonable signal strength, not to mention TVs. Elgato's HDHomeRun product works well to take your TV programming to your Mac or PC, but it's a $179.95 cost and you can't really carry it around with you.
That's why Aereo's offering -- $12 a month for broadcast TV to your iPhone, iPad, Roku box or browser, as long as you live in New York City -- is so intriguing. Aereo has chosen to deliver over-the-air television programming straight to the browser, rather than through a native iOS app, and the result is remarkably smooth and easy to use. By combining your device with a remote antenna/DVR combo, and allowing easy AirPlay/Apple TV streaming or Roku integration for big-screen viewing, the service seems to have found a way to deliver a premium live and recorded programming experience without the steep price.
The geofencing limitation on Aereo's market is a consequence both of the technology that Aereo has invented and the television industry's regulatory ecosystem. Aereo is working around the legal minefields of "rebroadcasting" to customers by making every subscriber the renter of a tiny bit of New York real estate -- a pair of teensy HD antennas, each the size of a dime, rack upon rack of them in the company's datacenter. Through the subscriber website, you can browse and search the live TV program guide, assign episodes for recording on a 40 GB DVR, share viewing choices with Twitter or Facebook contacts -- it's all there, and all pretty easy.
The proof of any streaming service, however, is in the video quality. Aereo allows users to force a low, medium or high quality setting, plus an automatic setting that adjusts to available bandwidth. In my testing of Aereo's service, I made a point of sticking to high-speed WiFi on my iPad 2 to give the video quality the best chance to show off -- and show off it did. The video clip above gives you a taste, but keep in mind that you can quickly take the video full-screen (I didn't do that in the demo, as it would have broken my recording). The full-screen streaming looks fantastic; it's largely indistinguishable from broadcast at its best, and even when it chunks up a bit it's still very watchable.
Aereo is offering 90 days of free trial service to New Yorkers on a rolling invitation basis as it spins up into full operation. There are still a few rough edges to fix; if you're timeshifting a program by a few minutes, for instance, it has a habit of cutting off when you reach the scheduled stop time (rather than just rolling forward as it would on a conventional DVR). Building the service on a pure HTML/mobile web platform, however, gives the company space to iterate rapidly and fix bugs faster than Apple's review process would allow. Support for more browsers and more devices is also in the immediate plans.
If I was in a cord-cutting mood -- but I still wanted to keep my DVR capability and supercharge my TV mobility -- I'd put Aereo at the top of my service list. It remains to be seen how well customers take to it and what kind of geographic range the service will eventually cover; if you don't live in NYC then (forgive me for this) you'll have to stay tuned.
What can influence how quickly your injuries heal, whether or not you catch the flu, and the health of your cardiovascular system?
The answer: inflammation! Inflammation is part of the vascular system’s complex response to harmful stimuli. The tissues and blood cells that keep your body healthy are intertwined in a complex network that makes up your vascular system. It plays a critical role in maintaining your body’s immune system and heart function. Inflammation affects everyone – and tends to become harder to control as you age – but it is especially important for athletes to control inflammation in order to be able to compete at peak performance.
Measuring inflammation
One of the best inflammation indicators we have is a protein in the blood that acts as a proxy for inflammation, called C-reactive protein (or CRP). Levels of CRP rise and fall in response to inflammation, so knowing your CRP measurement tells you a lot about what’s going on in your body. The American Heart Association and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have designated a CRP concentration of below 1.0 mg/L as low risk for heart problems; between 1.0 to 3.0 mg/L as average risk for heart problems; above 3.0 mg/L as high risk for heart problems. Very high levels of CRP (more than 10 mg/L) can also indicate an impaired immune response or inflammatory disease.
Since CRP is a protein found in your blood, the only way you can get information about your levels is to have a blood sample analyzed through a service like InsideTracker. CRP is measured in the Performance Panel, along with testosterone, white blood cell count, potassium, sodium, zinc and chromium (in addition to the thirteen other biomarkers).
Inflammation and athletes
Athletes should be particularly concerned with monitoring their levels of CRP since performance is so closely tied to their cardiovascular fitness. Good news for athletes: consistent and moderate aerobic exercise is one of the best ways to lower inflammation. Regular exercise has actually been shown to reduce inflammation by 20-60% and to reduce white blood cell count (another marker for inflammation) during and after exercise. That’s why athletes, especially swimmers, have some of the lowest levels of CRP around.
Interestingly enough, inconsistent exercise can actually have the opposite effect on inflammation. For all you weekend warriors out there, keep in mind that engaging in intense, but inconsistent exercise can increase your white blood cell levels, increase inflammation and weaken your immune system. Research has shown that prolonged strenuous exercise (i.e. running a marathon) can actually triple white blood cell levels! And athletes who over-train or over-exert themselves during competitions can weaken their immune systems, making it more difficult to recover properly.
Controlling CRP through diet
What you eat also has an effect on inflammation. To keep your levels in check, avoid eating foods that are high in fat, calories, sugar, and salt (such as fast foods). Aim for foods that are high in antioxidants like vitamins C and E, fiber, calcium, fish oils, mono-unsaturated fats, and low on the glycemic index. Specific foods that have been shown to have an effect on lowering inflammation include garlic, grapes, herbs and spices, soy protein, nuts, olive oil, black and green teas, and vinegar. (Many of these foods are consistent with following a Mediterranean Diet, a good way to keep your CRP levels in the healthy range.) Aim to eat at least six servings of fruits and vegetables per day, which will benefit much more than your CRP levels. Discover new types of fruits and vegetables to work into your daily repertoire using InsideTracker’s Food Menu tool.
Alcohol’s effect on inflammation is complicated. Researchers agree that your best bet is to drink alcohol in moderation. Consuming moderate amounts of alcohol (such as no more than 2 glasses of wine, 1 pint of beer, or 4 oz. of liquor at a time) will actually lower your white blood cell count and CRP levels more than not drinking at all or drinking too much. That’s right; you’re better off drinking a little than not at all when it comes to CRP. Cheers!
When diet and exercise aren’t enough
When you can’t control inflammation through diet and exercise alone, supplements can help. Vitamins C, D, and E have all been linked to promoting healthy levels of inflammation. Taking 1,000 mg vitamin C per day may reduce your CRP levels by as much as 25%. Long distance runners or triathletes can cut their risk of developing upper respiratory tract infections in half by taking 600 mg per day of vitamin C for 21 days before a competition. This dosage works well to reduce the severity and duration of infections as well.
Vitamin D also appears to play a role in reducing inflammation for women. Those with adequate levels of vitamin D in their blood were less likely to develop inflammation, according to researchers. In fact, each 10ng/ml increase in serum vitamin D is associated with a 25% reduction of CRP. So make sure you soak up a few minutes of sunshine per day, or consider taking a supplement to get your D fix.
Some factors influencing inflammation are outside of your control. Environmental factors such as air pollution, second-hand smoke, and economic stress can all increase inflammation. But there is much you can do to ensure that inflammation doesn’t adversely affect your health. Engage in moderate, regular exercise and eat a diet that includes many of the foods listed above. If you smoke, quit. Make sure you get enough sleep (adults should aim for 7 – 9 hours), and lose weight if your weight is currently outside of a healthy range. If you need help with finding foods you like that can lower your inflammation, consider signing up for InsideTracker’s Performance Panel for a uniquely customized tool to help you make the most of your diet and exercise to optimize your well-being.