SeeSaw Internet TV Service Launches in the UK
SeeSaw’s online TV service has launched in full for British internet users after less than a month of beta testing on 20,000 users. The service offers viewers the chance to catch up for free on 3,000 hours of archive and recent programmes from the BBC, Channel 4 and Five.
Seesaw is funded by advertising – viewers see unskippable 60-second ad breaks before and during each show. Advertisers including Ikea, Diageo and Kraft have already signed up.
SeeSaw was born from technology bought by Arqiva from the aborted Project Kangaroo, an internet TV service supported by several UK broadcasters that was blocked by the Competition Commission. Seesaw’s platform controller, John Keeling, told BBC News that the site would roll out a premium service in the next few months, which would involve customers making micropayments to view or “rent” major shows. The company is still in negotiation with several US studios for their content.
Viewers choosing to rent a programme will have 48 hours to stream it without ads or return to it to watch again, he explained. The BBC iPlayer offers viewers the chance to download and own programmes for 30 days but Seesaw’s user testing indicated that its customers would rather stream video, Mr Keeling said.
SeeSaw not Spotify
He denied that SeeSaw was following in the footsteps of online music service Spotify with the two-tiered service.
“I can see the comparison but Spotify is more of a free and subscription hybrid – we’re looking at free and transactional pay-per-view hybrid,” he said.
While the service will initially be purely a streaming outlet, there are plans to add social networking elements to the Seesaw site, said head of product and technology Richard Dines, who previously worked on Project Kangaroo. Both Mr Dines and Mr Keeling were reluctant to make comparisons between the two initiatives.
“It’s a different story,” said Mr Keeling. “Lessons were learned by the shareholders of Kangaroo. We have a different model – we don’t have broadcasters as shareholders.”
However he credited the catch-up services developed individually by the major broadcasters – such as 4OD, the BBC iPlayer and Demand Five – for opening up a market for internet TV.
Source: BBC News
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YouTube Introduces Automatic Captions for Deaf Viewers
According to this BBC article, YouTube’s parent company Google has announced on its blog that automatic captions are to begin to roll out across the site.
The machine-generated captions will initially be generated in English. At first they will only be found on 13 channels.
These include National Geographic, Columbia, as well as most Google and YouTube channels.
The software engineer behind the technology, Ken Harrenstien, is deaf.
Currently YouTube offers a manual captioning service but video makers tend not to use it.
“The majority of user-generated video content online is still inaccessible to people like me,” Mr Harrenstien wrote in the Google blog.
His solution combines automatic speech recognition with the current caption system.
The translation is not always perfect (in a demonstration the phrase “sim card” becomes “salmon” in text), but Mr Harrenstien says that the technology “will continue to improve with time”.
Posted in: General
Streaming Of US TV Shows & Movies Has Doubled In A Year
Recent media research firm IPSOS has found that twice as many Americans are streaming TV shows and movies as were doing so a year ago.
In the past 30 days, 26% of online Americans have streamed a full-length TV show and 14% have streamed a full-length movie. This is more than double the levels measured in September 2008.
Young adults 18 to 24 years of age are the most ardent supporters of this medium. In the past 30 days, 30% have streamed a full-length movie and 51% have streamed a full-length TV show, which represent dramatic increases from last year.
Despite the popularity of Internet television, people still have a clear preference for viewing video on their televisions rather than a computer.
Currently, the average American with Internet access watches 15 hours of television per week, compared to less than two hours on their PC. Even among digital video users, 64% would rather watch hour-long dramas and half-hour comedies live on their TV than rent or purchase them, or watch them on their PC or portable device.
Check out the research here.
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A Career In Social Work Video And Audio Podcasts
Our latest project for the Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA), focusing on promoting ‘a career in social work’, went live on the LG Careers website recently.
The podcast series consists of a video profiling qualified and trainee social workers, who explain their differing routes into the profession and three audio podcasts, each featuring one of the social workers from the video exploring their own colourful story in more depth.
Check out the video and audio podcasts on the LG Careers website.
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Tips For Optimizing Your YouTube Videos
This video by Gideon Shalwick (Become a Blogger) offers a pretty in-depth look at 7 ways to optimize your YouTube videos.
7 Great Tips For Optimizing Your YouTube Videos
- Create outstanding content
- Optimize your YouTube Channel
- Use keywords cleverly and in the right places
- Add URL’s in the right places
- Link to your videos from where ever you can
- Provide plenty of social proof for your videos
- Ping your YouTube channel as soon as you add new content
Posted in: General
YouTube blocks UK music videos
YouTube is blocking all premium music videos to UK users after failing to reach a new licensing agreement with the Performing Right Society (PRS).
Thousands of videos became unavailable to YouTube users from late yesterday.
Patrick Walker, YouTube’s director of video partnerships, stated that the move was “regrettable”. Steve Porter, head of the PRS, said he was “outraged… shocked and disappointed” by YouTube’s decision.
In a statement, Mr Porter said the move “punishes British consumers and the songwriters whose interests we protect and represent”.
The PRS has asked YouTube to reconsider its decision as a “matter of urgency”.
Posted in: General
New video and audio podcasts for the IDeA
One of our latest client projects went live recently – audio and video podcasts for the Improvement and Development Agency for local government (IDeA).
The podcasts were recorded at an event in Manchester exploring how the integration of workforce strategies can support partnership working. The day also included a review of the key learnings from the integrated workforce strategy project.
To see the podcasts ‘in-situ’ on the IDeA’s web site click here.
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Video at the heart of The Queen's new look website
According to this article on the BBC, the Queen has this week redesigned (obviously not personally!) and relaunched her website.
The site went live at a Buckingham Palace reception attended by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, widely recognised as the world wide web’s inventor. The royal site, which started in 1997, now includes more video material as well as historical documents.
About 250,000 people around the world visit the site each week.
Apparently, The Queen stood in front of a bank of nine screens and clicked a remote control to re-launch the site. The Monarchy site’s homepage appeared showing a range of simple menus and tabs which it is hoped will make it easier to navigate.
To check out the revamped site visit Royal.gov.uk
It’s also worth noting that Royal.gov.uk is not the only presence the Queen has on the internet. In 2007, she launched her own channel on the video-sharing website YouTube.
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Record 13% monthly growth in US online video viewing
Internet traffic measurement company comScore recently released data from their December 2008 “comScore Video Metrix” service, indicating a huge jump in Internet video-viewing among US Internet users. A record 14.3 billion online videos were viewed during the month, representing an increase of 13 percent over November’s viewing stats.
YouTube led the Internet video portals, accounting for 49% of the incremental gain in December videos viewed versus the previous month.
In December, Google sites ranked as the top U.S. “video property,” with 5.9 billion videos viewed (41% online video market share), thanks to YouTube.com, which accounted for more than 99% of all videos viewed at the property.
Fox Interactive Media ranked a distant second with 445 million videos (3.1%), followed closely by Yahoo! sites with 330 million (2.3%) and Viacom Digital with 291 million (2.0%).
Hulu continued its growth trajectory, climbing 6 percent over its November viewing numbers, to 241 million videos viewed.
Despite ranking fifth among video properties for number of videos viewed in December, it should be noted that Hulu scored the longest average duration for individuals’ online video viewing, just over 10 minutes.
Nearly 100 million YouTube video viewers (98.9 MM) watched 5.9 billion videos, for an average of 59 apiece.
In terms of unique viewers of Internet video, nearly 150 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 96 videos apiece in December 2008. Google sites crossed the 100 million online video viewer mark during the month, representing two out of every three Internet users who watched video. Fox Interactive ranked second with 56.9 million viewers, followed by Yahoo! Sites (42.8 million) and AOL LLC (31.5 million).
Other notable findings from December 2008 include:
- 78.5 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video
- The average online video viewer watched 309 minutes of video, or more than 5 hours
- 98.9 million viewers watched 5.9 billion videos on YouTube.com (59.2 videos per viewer)
- 48.7 million viewers watched 367 million videos on MySpace.com (7.6 videos per viewer)
- The duration of the average online video was 3.2 minutes
- The duration of the average online video viewed at Hulu was 10.1 minutes, higher than any other video property in the top ten
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New Workforce Strategy Video and Audio Podcasts for Local Government Employers
Our latest project for LGE went live last week – we planned and produced a set of new video and audio podcasts focusing on ‘Local Government Workforce Strategy’.
The podcasts featured an array of the UK’s leading experts on the topic including Joan Munro – National Advisor Workforce Strategy at the IDeA, Jan Parkinson – Managing Director of LGE, Phil Howe – Assistant Chief Executive Human Resources at Rotherham MBC and Liz McQue – Chief Executive of North West Employers.
Check out the video and audio podcasts on the LGE podcast page or have a quick look at the video below.
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