Category Archives: television

Vancouver based Zite Acquired By CNN: Why are Canadian Media Companies Not In The Game?

August 22, 2011 – 11:19 pm
SAN FRANCISCO - MARCH 02: An attendee holds t...

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

So TechVibes is reporting that the Vancouver based iPad personal news application, Zite, is being bought by CNN for a reported $20-25 million.
At the time of this post there was no official confirmation on the Zite blog, but if true, it is great news for a Canadian start-up that was first germinated at the University of British Columbia.
According to TechVibes “Once official this acquisition story will be a huge feather in Vancouver’s and Canada’s startup cap. Zite evolved from technology developed at UBC and the company has been a poster boy for government programs with grants from Canada’s National Research Council and PRECARN.”

So the question is how does an American media company scoop in and pick up a promising Canadian startup?

The answer: Canadian media companies are asleep at the switch.

In fact, where are all the Canadian media companies? Where is Shaw? Where is Rogers? Where is Bell? Where is Telus?

Oh right there too busy lobbying the CRTC to protect antiquated market share, rather than throwing there hat in the ring and adding next generation news value to their properties.

Meanwhile, for those who don’t know Bell Globe Media owns a number of news outlets including CTV and the Globe and Mail. Shaw Media owns Global News. Rogers owns City TV and host of other news outlets and publications.

The point is not to single out Shaw or Bell  or Rogers but rather to highlight how risk averse all Canadian Media companies are – coddled by governments and regulators, propped up by taxpayers our media landscape is one of stay the course.

Simply put, there is a lot of innovation the start-up media landscape in Canada, the media companies in this country don’t really seem to carry.

The consequence: something that was nurtured and developed here in Canada is ignored by the very companies who may well need it for there future survival.

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Hacking into Teleprompter | News Anchors Beware

August 4, 2009 – 5:38 am

Now, this could be a fake – I did some snooping and it was hard to tell but hacking into a newscast’s teleprompter is theoretically possible I suppose – either way it is pretty funny except for the poor newscasters.

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television Video

Michael Jackson Memorial on Ustream

July 7, 2009 – 11:55 am

Live Broadcasting by Ustream

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television Video

Hulu Now In Canada…Well, not really but kind of…

June 16, 2009 – 10:51 am

In an earlier post I complained that Hulu was not easily available in Canada and that in order to access it  IP masking softare was requried to watch the content. That type of software is buggy at best and lately has not been working for me

Well now there is CANULU – a service that promises to give you 24/7 access to just about all the U.S. programming that is currently being blocked from intenret vewiers in Canada.

It costs $11.95 a month – not a bad idea but I wonder how long these cats will be able to do their thing, unfettered, before Canadian Broadcasters or even Hulu comes after them – All the power to Canulu but I hope they have deep pockets for legal a small army of lawyers.

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television Uncategorized Video

Canadian Media Companies & the Hulu Threat

April 29, 2009 – 2:46 pm

The television and broadcast industry in Canada are, simply put, a bloody mess and it may only get worse if Hulu fully flexes its muscles.

On the one hand you have the CRTC and the broadcasters squabbling over the fate and financing of local television

On the other hand, you have the most recent report from Comscore on Canadian online video viewing habits – it is through the roof. According to Comscore 21 million Canadians viewed 3.1 billion videos online in February 2009. That works out to about 10 hours per month per Canadian a 53% jump. The vast majority used Google or Youtube (53%  share) , followed by MSN (1.8%) and Yahoo(1.5%)

The only Canadian media company  to register was CTVglobemedia at 0.8%. Granted Canadian companies do use Yahoo and MSN as distribution channels for their content.

However, none of the broadcasters as far as I can tell are contemplating collaborating on a Hulu type model to meet the challenge of the Youtube.  Hulu by the way is now the number 3 video site in the USA, leap frogging past Yahoo.

hulu

Hulu of course is not officially available in Canada but it is easy enough to access by downloading an easily available proxy.

One of the reasons Hulu is not available are those pesky things called contracts – between US producers and networks and the Canadian Media companies.  Territorial restrictions in the broadcast contracts (many of which include digital rights)  prevent Hulu from streaming into Canada – a potentially lush secondary market.

If I was an executive over at Hulu here are the questions and calculations I would be making

1) When do these contracts expire? And are the digital rights the distributors hold negotiated in perpetuity? If so, who ever gave that up committed the biggest blunder in media history.

2) If Hulu can actually secure digital rights  can they then  stream  directly into Canadian households, while granting broadcast rights to the Canadian Networks for those shows? (likely not)

3) At what stage will streaming directly into Canadian household become more lucrative than negotiating these contracts?

Now, none of this will happen overnight but there will soon come a day when the delivery of those American movies and TV shows will make sense economically and technologically – but for those contracts it already does make sense.

The only thing the Canadian Broadcasters can do is somehow convince Hulu that they can serve the exact same function for online sector as they do currently for the television sector -  as a reseller of American content.

In the short term Hulu may well work out a deal with distributors  but in the long term I wouldn’t bet on it.

If they fail to come terms or if Hulu eventually phases out Canadian Broadcasters out of the equation? What will be the future of  the Canadian Private Broadcasting?

Meanwhile, I use the proxy server, and stream Hulu on my HD TV and more more of my friends do exactly the same thing.

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