Week of March 30, 2009

More on Boxee

Friday, April 3, 2009

Yesterday we talked about an open source software called Boxee that allows you to watch online video on your TV set. With over 14 billion videos viewed online in December '08 (up 41%) you can see that consumers have an enormous appetitive for online video and TV. So far ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC with Hulu.com have obliged with a lot of their programming. But now there seems to be some trepidation. NBC for example recently forced Boxee to remove content from NBC's Hulu.com. The problem is that the networks have yet to make online programming profitable and their collective concern is that online viewers that receive network offered video for free may never want to pay monthly fees for cable TV again.

Introducing Boxee, Competitor for Set-Top Box

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Cable and satellite TV are going to be around for a long time but the competitive pressure from online TV will increase from this point forward as software like Boxee makes it easier to consume online TV programming. While Boxee may require a visit from the geek squad to install, it provides a set-top TV guide to a lot of Internet programming. Once installed Boxee allows you to watch Internet video on your television. According to Business Week CBS's video quality "approximates standard definition broadcast TV." For several years now CBS has offered all the NCAA Tournament basketball games online for free. With software like Boxee you can now watch your favorite team on your TV instead of your computer regardless of whether your local CBS affiliate is carrying the game. While online viewing through your TV set lacks the clarity of HD and the overall channel selection opportunities you can see where the competition will be coming from for cable operators.

Cell-Phone-Only Households Growing

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Once upon a time, Arbitron didn't sample cell-phone-only households in their diary surveys. Recently, the policy has changed and PPM (which always included these households) and dairy markets now include cell-phone-onlies in their sample. Arbitron has vowed to get their sample of cell-phone-only households in PPM markets to 15%, and up to 12.5% for diary-based markets, by the end of 2009.

Just in time, too. Data from the U.S. CDC (Centers for Disease Control) estimate that as of February 2009, 17.5% of all U.S. households are doing without a landline. The highest markets are dominated by states in the Plains, Midwest and the Rockies. The top states for cell-phone-only households were:

Utah 25.5%

Nebraska: 23.2%

Arkansas: 22.6%

Iowa: 22.2%

The lowest penetration of cell-phone-onlies? Connecticut with just 5.6%.

Hulu: It's A Hit!

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

To be precise, in February, according to comScore's VideoMetrix, Hulu was #4 with a bullet among US video sites. Hulu passes Viacom and Microsoft in total viewers and video streams and it's right on the heels of #3 Yahoo! Here are the comScore numbers:

While catching up to Yahoo! might happen soon, Hulu has a ways to go to reach the top spot. That's occupied by YouTube with 5.3 billion streams.

March Madness

Monday, March 30, 2009

CBS has released it's online user data for NCAA March Madness On Demand and during the first day of the basketball tournament the increase in On Demand usage was staggering. On Demand users increased from 1.75 million up 56% to 2.7 million unique users. Usage of the comical "Boss Button" generated 1.5 million clicks. CBS didn't release sales figures for the $4.99 MMOD app which allows I-Phone users to watch any of the 63 games real time as long as they have WiFi access. However the MMOD app is the most popular paid app in the store.