Wondering how confident MTV is that its Eventful campaign for Savage County will reach 100,000 Demands, thereby leading to a television premiere?

Here’s how confident it is: The network has hired Nina Bargiel, who masterminded the Streamy-winning transmedia experience behind Electric Farm’s Valemont, to create another interactive web-based narrative to accompany the Texas Chainsaw Massacre-inspired slasher film.

Savage County Official Trailer from Savage County on Vimeo.

“The transmedia experience isn’t a full-fledged [Alternate Reality Game], but there are ARG elements,” Bargiel said via chat. “There’s a full narrative if you pay attention, with clues embedded throughout.” The “trailhead” can be found at SavageCountyGazette.com, the small town newspaper for the area where the film’s mayhem takes place. Links there take you to a number of Twitter and Facebook accounts, and clues there will lead to at least one other website within the experience. (Bargiel hinted that the personals section might be key there.)

And this isn’t even “the main course” — that’s waiting on the approval and launch of a Savage County iPhone and iPad app, which will bring with it even more content. “The one scary part of this is that they can take however long they want to approve the iPad app, so I have to be flexible with the story,” Bargiel said. “But that’s why I’m a writer!”

While Bargiel did not work with the MTV New Media team on Valemont, Savage County director and MTV new media producer David Harris said that internally, she had a lot of admirers based on her work on that project, which led to her being approached for the project. And while the project’s only been online for a week, Harris said that the page views have been pretty high so far, and the early traction has come from fans of Nina and her work. “I think it marks a level of sophistication in the audience that they care about who makes this stuff,” he said via phone.

Harris said that the budget for the transmedia experience makes up a significant part of Savage County‘s marketing budget, but that it’s been given license to experiment with the project to see what kind of audience it can capture. “The great thing about the Eventful campaign is that people feel real ownership over the fate of Savage County. If they can also feel ownership of the story then it’s a win-win,” he added. “We’re bringing in people who care about a world more than about a genre.”

The question is — can a website be as scary as a horror film? “Because the audience member structures the pace of the experience, it’s a different kind of scary than the film,” Harris said. “It’s like picking a scab and realizing the wound is much larger than you thought is was. We can’t jump out at you when you see what’s coming, but we can plant something horrible for you to find if you go digging. It’s more like a haunted house than a movie.”

“While you want this to feel REAL, there’s an ethical question about making it too real. There was some stuff that David and I ended up nixing because while it would have been downright terrifying, it also would have resulted in people calling the cops,” Bargiel said.

Harris expects the Eventful campaign to top 100,000 Demands by either the end of this week or next week, thanks to some upcoming email blasts. If that proceeds accordingly, Savage County may premiere during the first week of October, just in time for horror movie season.

Related GigaOm Pro Content (subscription required): Are Sponsored Apps the Key for Traditional Media in Mobile?

The BBC released the latest version of its iPlayer on Monday, with more social capabilities and integration with more connected TVs, Blu-ray players and other devices. The new design is aimed at making the player more personalized and driving user engagement by allowing users to more easily interact with friends.

The Beeb is releasing the new iPlayer several months after enabling users to access it as part of a public beta in May. In that release, the public broadcaster sought to enable users to make the site their own, surfacing more personalized content so that users don’t have to search too hard to find the videos they want to watch. The new iPlayer also has more a more social feel, connecting with sites like Twitter and Facebook so that users could share what they were watching with friends, and quickly tune into what their friends were watching.

While it’s still early days, the BBC has seen some takeup of the new social features. According to a blog post on the BBC Internet blog, the broadcaster had 18,000 beta users connect their accounts with their Twitter or Facebook profiles. Beta users added more than 700,000 programs to their favorites, with an average of 2.5 favorites a piece. Beta users quickly made up 8 percent of all iPlayer usage, which jumped to 10 percent before the new features were rolled out as a more general release. And beta users watched slightly more programming on the beta site than users of the old iPlayer, with 2.4 programs per day compared to 2.3 for old iPlayer users.

In addition to rolling out social features on the web version of the iPlayer, the BBC announced that it is working with consumer electronics manufacturers to make the application more widely available on connected TVs, Blu-ray players and other devices. At the IFA show last week, the BBC announced that it was partnering with computer manufacturers like Sony to pre-install the iPlayer AIR application on its laptops. The broadcaster is also working on an app for the iPad, after the BBC Trust granting it the ability to release mobile apps.

While the BBC said it would work with CE manufacturers like Toshiba on iPlayer implementations, it is relying on the big-screen iPlayer, which is accessible from devices that have web browsers — such as the Sony PlayStation 3 or the Nintendo Wii.

Related content on GigaOM Pro: Got a Cable Subscription? There’ll Be an App for That (subscription required)

Two guys start filming their friend/younger brother as he enters into an online relationship with a young artist and her family — that’s the genesis of the documentary Catfish, which enters wide release on Sept. 17. Given that the movie is mostly shot with handheld digital cameras, when I got the chance to interview “star” Nev Schulman and directors Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost, it made sense to bring along my own Flip cam.

Tagged as “the other Facebook movie,” Catfish is hard to explain but hard to forget, and the twist the film takes makes it hard to discuss it without actually seeing it. In keeping with that trends, in this interview we don’t talk a lot about what the film’s actually about. However, we do discuss the technology that made the film possible, especially the way in which digital storage affected their filmmaking, and why people don’t believe the film’s events really took place.

By the way, if you’re in San Francisco, you can check out a free screening with the NewTeeVee and GigaOM team this Thursday night — just RSVP at Universal’s site.

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Apple’s recent media event solidified what we all knew was coming: Rentals and non-local storage is the future of our digital content. Ask any teenager if they’d rather watch TV or YouTube and they’ll answer Google’s on-demand free service full of people doing stuff on video is their preferred entertainment. Give that teen an iPhone or iPad and YouTube is where they’ll go first. It’s appealing to have content that’s not stored locally streamed instantly and Apple/Google aren’t the only companies leading this initiative.

Right now, most of the content you own is stored locally on our Macs or iOS devices. This content includes apps, books, videos, music and documents. The cutting edge techies have embraced Gmail, Google Docs and cloud services like DropBox and Box.net. The only thing keeping you from storing movies in the cloud and viewing those on your iPad is Internet speed. What if I told you the copy of Finding Nemo you bought from iTunes can be streamed instantly to any Apple device no matter where you were in the world — a café, driving down the interstate or in the London tube? It’s almost here.

Our future is wireless at speeds that meet what we have in our homes. This may be a decade away and if carriers make wireless data truly unlimited this will be a reality, but it scares me for a few very obvious reasons that simply can’t be fixed by technology.

Corporate Control of Our Data

Control by a single entity is my main fear. Cloud storage isn’t democratized and it isn’t open. Currently, when you buy something, it’s stored, owned and managed by the company you purchased it from. Apple has maintained DRM in its iTunes Store since 2003. I’ve authorized files that I bought the day Apple’s store opened and they still play on any one of my Apple devices. If I lose that song, Apple can allow me to re-download it after some back and forth with its support team. My apps, movies, music and music videos are locked to its devices. The same goes with Amazon’s Kindle platform. Buying a book from Amazon’s Kindle Store means that file is locked to its software and hardware. If it ever abandons Kindle, your books are useless. There’s no reason for either of these companies to do this, but people who bought music from stores that are now defunct are in a bit of a pickle with the content.

An example of a failed system is Microsoft’s PlaysForSure DRM. A number of music stores and MP3 players adopted this, but most of those stores and hardware companies have shifted directions or gone out of business. The hundreds you spent on music may be playable right now but no one can guarantee you’ll be able to in 10 years.

Let’s simply alter my argument a bit and change the delivery of this content from DRMed files stored on your hard drive to music stored on the cloud operated by Napster or Real’s Rhapsody Store. If those services go away, the music you “own” is no longer playable…ever. Going all in on a service that is cloud based is risky business. The same goes for content stored on Google Docs, Flickr, MobileMe and YouTube. If you’re not keeping hard copies of your content uploaded to these services, you’re a fool. Hard drives are cheap. Store your content and don’t rely on these web services that have been around for less than a few years to store your content forever. Personally, I use Backupify.com to keep secondary backups of all my data from Gmail, Google Docs, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and WordPress. I download copies from Backupify once a month to my hard drive.

Remember when Amazon ironically pulled copies of 1984 from Kindle devices without warning? Cloud based companies can do this. They might give you a warning but no one can come into your house and take a book. Unless what you’re storing is illegal or your hard drives are compromised, the data in your home and on your computer is safe for years as long as you’re careful. Keeping a backup of your computers on an external drive at home and a duplicate at your office is good enough and I suggest anyone do that no matter how insignificant the data is. If you store photos, music and documents on your computer, back it up off-site — no exceptions.

Apple is playing it safe with its new Apple TV. Allowing us to stream rented movies and TV shows is a good way to get us comfortable with streaming content. You can still buy the same content on your iOS and Mac devices and stream those to the Apple TV but, if you’re on a TV browsing iTunes, the only option is to rent the content.

It won’t be like this forever. Soon, streaming will be offered as a more convenient and less expensive option for us. Apple and other companies will present products where you can hit play on anything you’ve ever purchased and it starts instantly as long as you have an Internet connection from your phone, tablet and computer. Invite a friend to borrow your copy of Braveheart and they can watch it as well. This convenience will not be without problems.

In Apple We Trust

Apple is on top right now. Its mobile devices are envied by every CE company, but this won’t be the reality forever. I own 300 iOS apps, 1,200 movies, 200 music videos and over 18,000 songs where over 5,000 of those songs were purchased in iTunes. I’ve invested thousands of dollars in Apple. Thanks to limited kindness of the music industry, my music is now DRM free in iTunes Plus format so it can be played on any other MP3 player, but the other content is stuck. When Apple’s devices aren’t the best and someone else takes over, I’ll be stuck to the Apple ecosystem. The same can be said for Mac software when you make the switch to Windows 7 (for whatever reason) but it’s a reality we all need to deal with.

When you want to switch to a cooler and better mobile platform, will you be okay with giving up the thousands spent on DRMed content that can’t be played on the new device? If Apple remains the dominant leader for the next 20 years, can we trust it to be kind to its loyal fans who trust when we buy a movie stored exclusively on Apple’s cloud to always be playable and never be pulled, removed or changed? Will my copy of Braveheart always work no matter where I am or will I be greeted with an error when I’m in China with, “this movie is not licensed to be played in your region.” Where the hard copy stored on my iPad would play just fine no matter where I was? We’ll see. Apple is not a movie studio so its hands are tied when it comes to content and how that content plays just as much as any other company when it comes to music and movies.

The White Album Argument

Maybe I’m not seeing the big picture. There’s another side to this where if you ask anyone over the age of 50 how many times they’ve bought The Beatles’ White Album and they won’t be able to keep count. There was record, 8-track, tape, cassette and maybe even mini-disk. They probably also bought it in CD form the first, second and third time it was remastered. You may have bought this album eight times since it was first available in record stores.

Perhaps that’s how it’s going to be when it comes to our digital music. Perhaps, you’ll buy the same content over and over again well into your old age because there would have been a few music services between 2000 and 2050. On my 70th birthday, I may lament to my grandkids that I spent thousands on music in iTunes and they’ll laugh because music is like $20 a song now and I shouldn’t be complaining that it cost 99 cents back then.

Planning for the Future

Whatever happens next, consumers are in control. We decide with our cold hard cash. We already voted that digital is the future since iTunes sales will pass the sales of physical CDs very soon, but if we go all-in on cloud content trusting in the corporations storing and delivering it, the world may shift immensely and when you take a vacation to the mountains with your family where there’s limited cell reception, the music, movies and important work documents will all be inaccessible stored in some server that’s unreachable and you’ll have to laugh because this was the future we all wanted that corporations gave us.

Maybe I’m skeptical, but the best content is physical (bookshelf) with a digital version (non-DRM) and a backup of that digital copy off-site. If your house burns down, you’ll still have the book or CD digitally but the world we’re entering into is all digital with single corporations holding the DRM keys and now they want to store the content as well. It’s unclear what’s going to happen next. Let’s hope we know what we’re doing.

Related GigaOM Pro Research: How to Manage Access to Digital Content

Samsung may look to build TV sets with the Google TV Internet and video platform built-in, despite concerns about the high cost of components necessary to run the software, according to a Bloomberg report. The decision to use the software could come down to which content providers Google brings on board to develop apps for the Android-based OS.

While Google TV is getting a fair amount of buzz ahead of the introduction of products from Sony and Logitech running the operating system, consumer electronics companies like Panasonic have complained that the cost of components necessary to power the platform are too pricey. Based on the cost of materials alone — including an Intel Atom processor and 4 GB of flash memory — Google TV is estimated to add a $300 premium to the price of TVs and other devices that use the OS.

Added cost isn’t the only reason that Samsung may choose not to deploy Google TV; while Google’s TV OS seeks to corner the market for TV applications, Samsung already has a fairly successful TV app platform of its own. At a press event last month, Samsung said it already had 80 applications available through its connected devices, and expects to have more than 200 on its platform by the end of the year. Samsung said it has more than 6.5 million connected devices in households worldwide, and claims to own 60 percent market share for connected TVs and Blu-ray players.

Samsung is looking to entice app developers in the U.S. with its “Free the TV Challenge”: a contest through which it will give away more than $500,000 in prizes to developers for new and innovative TV apps. The “Free the TV Challenge” follows a developer contest held in South Korea earlier this year, and the CE maker plans to hold a similar contest in Europe in the fourth quarter. Altogether, Samsung expects to spend more than $70 million marketing its Samsung TV app platform worldwide.

While still a nascent market, TV apps are expected to be a huge business soon. According to a report by GigaOM Pro, apps distributed through set-top boxes and connected TVs will generate close to $1.9 billion by 2015, and Samsung wants to be at the forefront of that market.

Despite having its own successful TV apps platform, Samsung’s decision to deploy Google TV in some of its products may come down to which content is available through the Google TV platform. Bloomberg reports:

“We will have to see, but we are reviewing” whether to use Google’s Android operating system, Yoon Boo Keun, head of Samsung’s TV business, told reporters today on the sidelines of a forum in Seoul. A key question is whether South Korean movie, TV and music providers will cooperate with Google, he said.

Related content on GigaOM Pro: Got a Cable Subscription? There’ll Be an App for That (subscription required)

YouTube is following up on the next phase of its ambitious Life In A Day project by making video submissions from around the globe available through a new gallery page. The gallery captures many different views of what life was like on July 24, the day that YouTube asked users to record as part of the project.

Life In A Day is a collaboration between YouTube, acclaimed producer and director Ridley Scott (Alien, Blade Runner), and Academy Award-winning director Kevin Macdonald (One Day in September, The Last King of Scotland). Together, they’ve aimed to create a feature film from user-generated video submissions. The goal is to choose representative clips from the submissions and edit them into a documentary that will be unveiled at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. YouTube will also debut the film online on the same day that it is screened at Sundance.

YouTube asked users to submit clips from their lives on July 24, and they responded in droves, uploading more than 80,000 submissions from 197 countries around the globe, according to the YouTube blog. The Life In A Day gallery page showcases a number of videos in the shape of a globe and can be searched by geography or tags, depending on what the viewer is looking for. YouTube has even built a heat map to show which countries were most active in submitting videos.

Videos are being added to the gallery page as they are reviewed by Macdonald and his team, so more will become available as time goes on. With 80,000 entries, the director has his work cut out for him in whittling the submissions down into a feature-length film — but Sundance isn’t until January, so he still has several months.

Related content on GigaOM Pro: A Guide To Online Video Monetization Options (subscription required)

DVD kiosk rental firm Redbox hit a major milestone over the weekend, announcing its one billionth movie rental. As a result, it is giving away free rentals to its users and launching a new contest to give away a free trip to the People’s Choice Awards or a Sony Entertainment System.

Redbox, which enables users to rent DVDs from automated kiosks for just $1 a day, has grown dramatically since launching in Denver just six years ago, as the company now has more than 24,000 rental kiosks throughout the U.S. From those thousands of locations, Redbox says users rent an average of 9.5 million rentals a week. The company’s one billionth rental was a copy of Clash of the Titans, which was rented from a kiosk in Tampa, Fla.

While Redbox has been successful in its kiosk business, it is looking to expand its services with Blu-ray rentals and possibly launching a streaming service by the end of the year. The company has already made Blu-ray discs available in more than half of its kiosks around the U.S., with those discs available for $1.50 a night.

It is also reportedly readying a streaming offering that would put it in competition with Netflix. According to reports, the new streaming service could be announced as early as October, and would offer access to movies online for a $3.95 a month subscription and would include four free kiosk rentals per month. That compares to Netflix’s subscription service, which costs $8.95 a month and includes a one-out DVD-by-mail rental.

As a result of its one billionth kiosk rental, Redbox is giving away a free one-night movie rental to all users, and launching a contest to give away prizes, including a trip to the People’s Choice Awards or a Sony Entertainment System, to members. To qualify, users need to enter a unique DVD code from their rentals on redbox.com/thanks.

Related content on GigaOM Pro: Slow and Steady, Netflix Pulls Ahead in Streaming Video (subscription required)

By no means is Philips the first company to turn to web video as a means for spreading their brand, but the “online sitcom” Nigel and Victoria, launching internationally today, does bring a big burst of meta with it.

The fauxmentary-styled series focuses on Nigel, a British executive with a crush on Victoria, the Dutch actress starring in his company’s new line of commercials. What is Victoria advertising? Surprise! She’s shilling Philips products, and Nigel, in his role as Philip’s marketing manager, is on set monitoring (and interfering with) the advertising — making the product integration seamless and painfully obvious at the same time.

Victoria is played by Dutch actress Victoria Koblenko, ostensibly playing herself, while Nigel is played by British comedian Ben Willbond. While the pair don’t have a lot of chemistry, their interactions have an improvised nature that comes across as fairly natural and real. Victoria (the character) will be Twittering away as @victoriareviews, while the pair are both accessible on Facebook as well.

Alas, while the production looks great and the social networking is engaged, that doesn’t make the content funny; the humor is so deadpan that it just comes off as bland and lifeless. While I was initially intrigued by the premise of an “unromantic comedy” (as the show is described on YouTube), that seems to boil down to “Nigel acts like a prat and Victoria hates him as a result.” Granted, that’s after watching only three of the eight episodes Ostensibly, things will improve for the pair going forward, but that still didn’t give me much incentive to continue watching.

All that said, I have a confession to make: I really want the Philips laptop cushion/speaker system plugged in the first episode. Oh, and the waterproof headphones advertised in the second episode. Curse you, branded content! Your tricks have worked once again.

Related GigaOm Pro Content (subscription required): Fact or Fiction: Where Is Branded Online Video Going?

On Monday, Sept. 6, the final round of voting begins in Kia’s “Who’s Next” online talent competition on YouTube, with one of four finalists going on to receive a $10,000 grand prize for best conceptualizing the slogan “a new way to roll.” What’s interesting about the contest is that unlike traditional talent competitions, the finalists feel like an organic representation of current YouTube talent.

That shouldn’t be too surprising, as the original eight finalists were selected by YouTube stars LisaNova, ShayCarl and Smosh, leading to a pool of entries that reflects a lot of trends in popular and original online content today.

From the original entries, there’s baller David Kalb performing some jaw-dropping basketball trick shots…

A quirky music video about sunglasses by Charlie Puth…

A musical mash-up of live-action and animation by Travis Betz (aka The Receptionist)…

And a clever comedy sketch by Dan Bakst.

I mean, there’s no diversity here — all four finalists being relatively young white dudes — and the definition of talent ranges from “good at throwing a ball into a hoop” to “good at writing, directing, editing and animating.” But if Kia was looking to this contest as a way of proving that they know what the kids are watching on YouTube, they did pretty well for themselves.

The four finalists each have to create a new video for the final round, upon which the last votes will be determined. Who are you voting for? Tell us in the comments!

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Any launch of a new set-top box gets people wondering if it’s right for them, and now that Apple TV is no longer a “hobby” for Apple, but a new and tiny solution for streaming digital media to your TV, users will consider it one of many options for streaming video to the TV.

Ryan’s comparison of Apple TV to Roku and Boxee shows just how competitive the market currently is, especially since a hundred-dollar box isn’t the only way to get content on your TV. That’s why we want to know if you’re planning on finding a place for Apple TV in your home entertainment system — or if you’re happy with another solution.

View This Poll
online surveys

Feel free to sound off in the comments!

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Latest Skype Beta Offers Group Video Calls for 10; the 10-person group video calling feature follows a five-person beta test and is being offered as a “free trial,” which suggests users will eventually have to pay for the feature. (ComputerWorld)

BBC iPlayer Coming to More TV Devices; the the BBC iPlayer will be on the iPad, as well as pretty much any modern internet-connected TV with a browser. (BBC Internet Blog)

Plex and LG Bring TV To All Your Devices; today LG announced that in 2011 it will integrate Plex into its range of Netcast-enabled HDTVs and Blu-ray devices, making Plex a video solution for mobile, PC and TV. (VentureBeat)

Video: Here Is Google TV Running On Sony Internet TV; Sony unveiled a connected TV running the Google TV OS, with a number of apps, including a Chrome browser used to browse the web. (paidContent)

Netgear and Roku Team Up for the Roku XD Player; according to an FCC fling, the Roku XD Player has the model number NTV250 and features 802.11 b/g/n wireless as well as HDMI, composite and Ethernet connectivity. (Wireless Goodness)

Hurt Locker Subpoenas Arrive With Higher Demands; US Copyright Group have finally gotten around to getting subpoenas out to ISPs in the Hurt Locker lawsuit. (TechDirt)

Being popular on YouTube isn’t just a money-maker in its own right — it can also be a great way to get jobs with other companies. Today’s example: a new Break.com viral video created to promote the release of Machete, Robert Rodriguez’s gory Mexploitation flick.

Michelle Rodriguez’s Machete Fail, featuring Rodriguez and stars Danny Trejo and Michelle Rodriguez, was conceived by the Break Media creative team — but shot and directed by Freddie Wong, whose special effects skills have made him a YouTube star.

Michelle Rodriguez’s Machete Fail – Watch more Funny Videos

Wong has worked with other YouTubers — like Mystery Guitar Man recently — but the Break video represents a real leap in star power for him.

Strangely enough, when Wong tweeted out a photo of him posing with the cast, some commenters didn’t believe it was real, and thought he had Photoshopped himself into it. “I’m going to have to call BS on this. But Fantastic!” said ReliantFilms.

A Break representative wrote via email that Wong was the first choice of directors for creative lead Andy Signore, who “knew that Freddie’s style of shooting and the repeated success of his other videos made him the perfect choice.” According to the rep, Break’s relationship with Wong will continue for future projects.

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Online video is entering the mainstream, and nowhere is that more evident than in the growth of live video services over the past year. While on-demand video services, like YouTube and Hulu, get all the press, live-streaming services have posted dramatic increases in the amount of time viewers spent watching live video online over the last year.

comScore analyst Andres Palmiter reports that the amount of time online audiences spent watching YouTube and Hulu videos increased 68 percent and 75 percent in the last year, respectively, which is impressive. But it’s nothing compared to the 648 percent growth of viewership on live streaming platforms such as Justin.tv, Ustream, Livestream, LiveVideo and Stickam.

According to a new entry on the comScore blog, the amount of time Americans spent watching video on those major live platforms has grown to 1.4 billion minutes. That’s still a relatively small amount, compared to the amount of time that viewers spend watching on-demand video content. But it’s indicative of a shift in how viewers approach live video online.

Not only have the live streaming sites shown impressive growth in the number of minutes that consumers have spent with them in total, they’re also leading on-demand video sites in viewer engagement and in drawing attractive audience demographics. According to comScore, the average live video streamed online is viewed for 7 percent longer than on-demand video.

Much of this live viewing time could possibly be attributed to July’s biggest sporting event: the World Cup. While the live streaming platforms didn’t have official deals with rights holders to stream the soccer matches, some live video sites have become (in)famous for hosting unauthorized streams of live sporting events.

The post also has some interesting stats on the top live streaming video platforms. comScore reports that in July Ustream had more than 3.2 million unique visitors, compared to 2.6 million on Justin.tv and 2.4 million on Livestream. But Livestream delivered more videos than the other two, with 160 million streams in July, compared to 130 million from Justin.tv and 20 million from Ustream. Ustream videos, perhaps due to the site’s focus on media and entertainment events, were viewed on average for eight minutes longer than Justin.tv videos and a full 17 minutes longer on average than Livestream videos.

Related content on GigaOM Pro: A Guide To Online Video Monetization Options (subscription required)

Smaller cable networks might see their renegotiation leverage being stripped away, as cable companies and other pay TV providers commit more of their spending to “must carry” channels like ESPN, TNT, Discovery and CNN. That’s the key takeaway from AT&T’s negotiations with Crown Media for carriage of the Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movie Channel.

AT&T allowed its contract with Crown Media to lapse, essentially dropping the Hallmark cable networks when the deal expired at midnight on Sept. 1. According to JP Morgan Chase analyst Imran Khan, “there has been no sign of progress toward reaching a deal,” suggesting that AT&T might not bring those stations back to its U-verse pay TV service.

The decision to let the deal lapse might not be too surprising, as most subscribers probably won’t even notice that the Hallmark-branded channels have disappeared. In a consumer survey that JP Morgan Chase conducted in April, neither the Hallmark Channel nor the Hallmark Movie channel cracked the top 50 list of “must carry” networks. That means that less than 10 percent of respondents said they would change pay TV providers if the network disappeared.

While cable companies have done a good job of bundling a diverse group of networks as a way to give consumers a wide range of programming to choose from, that intense fragmentation means that very few networks establish a significant audience. As industry heavyweights, such as Time Warner and Disney, push ever more-expensive packages of their cable programming, the smaller networks will lose leverage to negotiate their own deals. As a result, they could see less favorable deals or risk being dropped altogether.

The average amount that consumers pay for their cable subscriptions has increased about 8 percent over the past year. While some of that increase comes from the adoption of premium cable packages and value-added services such as HD DVRs, the top pay TV firms have increased their basic subscription rates anywhere from 3.7 percent to 7.1 percent during that time. Those types of increases are untenable, especially in a weak economy. Last quarter, the cable industry saw the number of pay TV subscribers decrease for the first time ever, as 200,000 households decided to cut the cord and do away with their cable bills altogether.

Rather than run the risk of alienating more subscribers with ever-higher cable bills, pay TV providers may begin to look more closely at their programming spend and deciding which content is most important to retaining its existing subscriber base and attracting new subs.

Stacey Higginbotham at GigaOM reported earlier this year that some smaller cable companies, like Broadstripe, were already evaluating their content mix more closely due to the cost of content. But the fact that AT&T may drop Hallmark shows that even big-name pay TV providers are also taking a closer look at which content is worth paying for, and which isn’t.

Related content on GigaOM Pro: How Online Video Is Shaping the Next Round of Retrans Fights (subscription required)

YouTube’s ability to monetize user-uploaded video content has increased substantially over the last year, with the Number 1 online video site serving ads against two billion videos a week, according to a report in the New York Times. That’s an increase of about 50 percent over last year, the Times reports.

While YouTube has been working hard to strike content deals of its own, much of the increase in monetization has come from content owners who’ve chosen to run ads against copyrighted material uploaded by regular users. The site’s Content ID system, which it unveiled three years ago at the behest of content owners, enables YouTube to instantly identify videos that have been uploaded without the rights holders’ permission.

According to the New York Times, about one third of all videos that show ads were uploaded without the copyright owners’ permission but left up in this way. That’s a pretty large number, and indicative of a major shift in the way that content owners approach user-generated content. Whereas many content owners had previously used Content ID to take down infringing videos, they’re now using the same system to place ads against that content.

While monetization has increased substantially in general, the vast majority of YouTube content isn’t ad-friendly. The Times reports that only about 14 percent of all YouTube video views have ads run against them. That’s not a lot, especially when compared to premium video sites like Hulu, on which 80 percent of all videos shown are ads. Even so, analysts expect YouTube to finally reach profitability this year, with some forecasting nearly a billion dollars in revenues at the online video site.

Related content on GigaOM Pro: A Guide To Online Video Monetization Options (subscription required)

About Those 99-Cent TV Episodes Being Sold On Amazon; Amazon still has to pay the contracted rates for electronic sell-through TV shows, so it’s taking a loss on all 99-cent videos sold. (paidContent)

Sezmi, Amazon Team Up to Sell TV 2.0; Sezmi is partnering with Amazon to make its television service immediately available to viewers in 36 markets across the U.S. (The Wrap)

IAC’s Vimeo Doubles Growth with Non-Commercial Fare; the video sharing unit of IAC has more than four million registered users and 30 million monthly unique visitors, nearly doubling those numbers over the past six months. (Beet.TV)

Skyfire Submits Flash Video Enabled Browser to App Store; the startup will try to break through Apple’s Flash blockade with the submission of its mobile browser that transcodes Flash into HTML5 in real time. (ReadWriteWeb)

Ranking the Digital Living Room Barbarians; the clear winner in Apple TV is Netflix, which has navigated the digital entertainment landscape better than anyone. (ZDNet)

Exclusive Deals Make 3-D TV Audience Even Smaller; avid sports fans can watch 3-D broadcasts of live sporting events, such as the U.S. Open, but exclusive distribution deals limit who gets to see what. (CNET)

5min Media Partners With IGN Entertainment; IGN Entertainment has joined the 5min Video Games Channel to semantically match short-form videos such as game reviews, instructions and news from top gaming brands across the 5min network of more than 800 sites. (press release)

Disney and Time Warner Cable have settled their retransmission negotiations, finalizing a deal that will keep ABC, ESPN and Disney networks on Time Warner Cable and Bright House Network cable systems. But the big news from an online video perspective is that Disney is creating its first authenticated, TV Everywhere-type broadband video service for its ESPN networks as part of the deal.

As part of the deal, Disney will establish an authenticated service enabling Time Warner Cable subscribers to view linear and on-demand content from ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNU networks online on their PCs and, at some point in the future, through mobile devices like the Apple iPad. According to earlier reports, online video was one of the key sticking points in the negotiations of the deal, which we now know includes the introduction of a TV Everywhere-type service for the ESPN networks.

It’s important to note that the new ESPN TV everywhere service is separate from Disney’s ESPN3 offering, which is not authenticated and doesn’t have a network equivalent. The ESPN3 broadband service has long been available to subscribers of some pay TV providers, like Comcast, AT&T and Verizon, that had affiliate deals with Disney. This deal will mark the first time that Time Warner Cable subscribers will also be able to access ESPN3.

While the establishment of the new ESPN service is clearly important, the more pressing issue was keeping Disney, ABC and ESPN programming on Time Warner cable systems. As part of the deal, Time Warner Cable will continue to carry ABC Family, the Disney Channel, Disney XD, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNEWS, ESPNU, ESPN Classic, ESPN Deportes, and SOAPnet, as well as ABC affiliate stations in New York, L.A., Raleigh-Durham-Fayetteville and Toledo. The agreement also adds Disney Junior, a new basic cable channel for preschool-aged children that will begin in 2012.

The deal also includes wide-ranging additions to Time Warner Cable’s video-on-demand services, including ABC On Demand, a VOD service that disables fast forwarding and ad skipping, local sports programming on demand in major metropolitan markets, a subscription VOD service for Disney Family Movies and a new pay-per-view VOD service for select Disney and ABC content. The deal also includes the launch of ESPN 3D on Time Warner Cable and Bright House Network cable systems.

Related content on GigaOM Pro: How Online Video Is Shaping the Next Round of Retrans Fights (subscription required)

There’s been an interesting debate going on in the web series community over the last day or so, sparked off by a strongly-worded TwitVid of former UTA agent and consultant Barrett Garese, about whether or not the web series as we currently understand it is doomed to be “derivative television.”

There has been some great discussion on the topic, including Gold creator David Nett’s Facebook response and Garese’s expanded thoughts, that are worth reading. No matter what side you agree with, if you’re looking for a recent example that defines the concept of “derivative television,” here you go: Alloy Entertainment’s First Day, a Kmart-sponsored web series that premiered this Tuesday.

Alloy, the production company behind youth-skewing TV series like Gossip Girl and Pretty Little Liars, has brought TV-level production values to this tale of an awkward adolescent girl (Tracey Fairaway) forced to repeat the first day of school over and over again. (Groundhog Day? What’s that? Kids born the year Groundhog Day came out, after all, are now 17 years old.)

While to watch First Day on the official site is to be barraged by Kmart-branded ads and graphics, the actual show is relatively free of branding. And though I’m not totally sure that First Day has its finger on the pulse of today’s modern teen (Um, do high school students still have journals? And re-enact the bus scene from Forrest Gump in the cafeteria?) it looks good, has a fast pace and an engaging lead actress in Fairaway.

But there’s absolutely nothing about it that makes it feel like content destined for the Internet, beyond the fact that if I like Cassie’s BONGO plaid shirt in episode 2, there’s a link to buy it right beside the video player.

The major concession to the show’s destiny is the casting of Molly McAleer, Internet famous as the video-blogging Molls. McAleer, in a phone interview, said that while she doesn’t watch a lot of television herself, the people who follow her online adventures are also big fans of Gossip Girl and other Alloy programming, which got her interested in joining the First Day cast as Cassie’s cruel science teacher. “[Teen dramas have] that wholesome irony we all love, like watching Saved by the Bell,” she said about why her fanbase is drawn to the genre. “It’s a little bit more cheesy than real life, but there’s something comforting and fun about it, it’s totally a guilty pleasure.”

Alloy’s launching two other web series this fall, one of which is an adaptation of a young adult novel series (Alloy’s bread and butter), the other of which, a drama/reality hybrid, sounds slightly more interesting. Both promise to please teen audiences (and older folk who enjoy indulging in teen fare). But it feels like more of the same — and lacking in innovation.

Related GigaOm Pro Content (subscription required): Fact or Fiction: Where Is Branded Online Video Going?

Since posting Kevin Tofel’s demo of Flash video on his Nexus One handset, we’ve received a ton of comments: some pro-Flash, some anti-Flash, some anti-Apple, some even anti-Kevin. One of the more interesting aspects of the debate is that many readers posted response videos, showing their own experiences with Flash on Android mobile handsets.

Michael Panzer, a reader from Germany, for instance, posted a video of his experience with Flash video on his Galaxy S. Unlike Kevin’s experience, movie trailers from Metacafe — including the HD trailer of Alpha and Omega — loaded just fine, despite a few stutters along the way, as did the trailer for the latest Resident Evil film, also in HD. However, Panzer didn’t record his attempt to watch videos on ABC.com or Fox.com, which were the sites that gave Kevin the most trouble.

Reader Dennis Forbes also posted a video response of his own. Using his own Android phone, he watched Kevin’s video on NewTeeVee (which is only slightly meta), debunking some of the claims of what mobile processors are capable of when compared to other processors, before moving on to watch some video on the device.

Forbes admits that he tried to duplicate Kevin’s experience with videos on ABC.com, Fox.com and Metacafe, but lays the blame on Kevin for “trying to play video streams that were too complex and has too high of a bit rate that the device just can’t handle.” He compares the mobile experience to one his son had on a Pentium 4 1.7 GHz PC that had been handed down: “I recall having similar problems; it was the same sort of deal… It simply couldn’t keep up.” Instead, he showed off how he’s “come to rely on [his Android handset] for some relatively low-grade needs,” including short videos from Zero Punctuation.

The strongest counterpoint comes from developer Paul Yanez, who recorded a video and posted a response on his blog entitled, “Video: Flash on Android Is Shockingly Great!!!” Yanez said he was surprised by our piece because he recently bought a Droid 2 and had had no problems with it playing Flash.

Yanez demonstrated the same episode of Bones that Kevin had trouble watching due to “seconds per frame” instead of “frames per second” being displayed during playback. In Yanez’s video “there’s no stutter, there’s no choppiness, the audio is synced up” when playing the 43-minute Bones episode, which leads him to conclude that “there’s nothing wrong with the Flash player” on the Droid 2. In his experience, the Flash player is stable, very powerful, and “there’s no difference between the Flash player in this mobile phone than on a desktop.”

What you need is optimal code, according to Yanez, who placed the Bones video on a blank HTML page before playback. As a result, he blames the Fox website for the issues that Kevin experienced during his demo, not the Flash video player itself. All Fox has to do to improve the experience for end users, according to Yanez, is make the video an image and launch the video player in a new window.

Image courtesy of Flickr user Lynn Wallenstein.

Related content on GigaOM Pro: HTML5’s a Game-Changer for Web Apps (subscription required)

So is Apple TV still only a hobby for Jobs and company? Because if it isn’t, then I’m missing something from yesterday’s presentation when the new iteration of Apple’s set-top device was unveiled. The new Apple TV is smaller, cheaper and sexier, I’ll grant it that, but what else does it really have going for it?

Let’s start with rental only. That’s right, you can only rent content from the Apple TV, not purchase it. It makes sense given the device’s lack of onboard storage, but does it make sense for a buying public that’s only just now moving past the point of physical media ownership? All of a sudden, not only do you not have a disc you own when you pay for content, you also don’t even have a file. Instead you get a window of opportunity.

Call me old-fashioned, but I like archiving my material and I like to have it available whenever I want to review it, or just revisit a favorite scene to make sure I remember it correctly. True, as Steve Jobs said in the presentation, I’ll be able to rent it multiple times for cheaper than I’d be able to buy it, but then I can’t lend it to friends and family, pass it on to my kids or view it again 50 years down the road when its gone out of print.

Putting aside the tyranny of streaming-only, at least you can access your media on your computer, where it is comfortably stored, right? Well, only if you’ve adhered to Apple’s way of doing media, and haven’t strayed to any of the other terrific and much more popular video formats out there. Apple TV remains closed, and as a result, any machine running Boxee hooked up to my TV remains a better option, even considering the price differential for the original purchase.

Speaking of price, let’s look at that $99 tag Jobs dangled in our salivating faces. It’s almost an impulse buy at that point, and I know a few people who indulged that impulse. But you know what else is a good price? $10 for a fancy razor with replaceable heads. Those heads will cost you $40 for a four-pack, sure, but that’s later. Apple isn’t going to make most (if any) of its money on the Apple TV itself (though without much onboard storage, it’s cheap enough to build), but on the gobs of media you’re almost forced to purchase from them as a result.

The inclusion of Netflix is one of the few genuinely impressive things about the new Apple TV. It means that people who already have a subscription don’t need to go in for Apple’s pricier rental options, and the implementation looks pretty impressive as compared to its counterparts on other platforms.

But even if you exclusively use the Netflix option, which means being behind in terms of release dates on TV and movies, you’ll end up paying much more for the hardware than you probably would if you opted for a media PC (or Mac mini, even) purchase and just depended on free streaming from network websites. Occasionally you’d still run up against content you have to pay for, but you can own it, and you options for sourcing that could equate to a much better per purchase price.

In general, I’m willing to deal with Apple’s closed systems and devices because of the trade-offs I get in terms of quality. But third-party apps and desktop software make it possible for me to still use Apple hardware with my own content, regardless of format and point of origin. That’s not likely going to be the case with the Apple TV, and until it is, it won’t find a place in my living room, regardless of cost and cosmetics.