Week of March 20, 2006

The Power Of Old Media Reach

Monday, March 20, 2006

Still untapped in many ways, we got a glimpse of the power of combing old media reach and online capabilities via CBS' webcasts of the NCAA March Madness tournament:

• More than 14 million streams

• More than 4 million individual visits

• And nearly 2 million registrants, including over 250,000 VIPs.

The VIP slots filled so fast that CBS had to cut them off early.

March Madness Webcast: It's Additive

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

One of the concerns about having an open webcast of March Madness for CBS was how it would impact the network's TV ratings. The results were as good as could be hoped for: The webcast was a huge success and the television ratings were at record levels.

Sirius Reaches Agreement With Labels

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Preparing to launch a device that will allow users to time-shift the channels they listen to, Sirius hit a snag with getting permission from record labels. The issue was resolved with Warner's and Universal getting a fee for each of the tuners sold. Agreements with Sony BMG and EMI are still unresolved.

Google Launches Google Finance

Thursday, March 23, 2006

This is a big move outside of Google's comfort zone. Google, which aggregates content and facilitates searches of that content, has created a site that is pure content. This is a move to take on Yahoo Finance, and will make the coming year interesting in seeing how Google expands its offerings beyond just search.

Yahoo Not Standing Still

Friday, March 24, 2006

Nearly the same time Google announced Google Finance, Yahoo announced a better integration of local news in its MyYahoo web portal, adding a lot more content providers to its list of resources.