Thought Equity Motion and the NCAA give old highlights new life on the Web
The NCAA and digital video partner Thought Equity Motion are testing whether March Madness fans will want to watch old highlights on the web.
The NCAA and Thought Equity Motion partnered to create the NCAA Vault, a fan-friendly archive of video highlights from past March Madness tournaments.
Most people are glad to see March arrive. For some it’s the start of spring and warmer weather; for others, it’s the month-long celebration of college basketball called March Madness.
The NCAA has little control over the temperature, but it did turn up the heat for basketball fans last week with the launch of the NCAA Vault, a user-friendly archive of video highlights from March Madness tournaments over the past decade.
Fans can search for plays by teams, players, or games; or scan highlights of dunks, blocks, or shots. They can share their favorite moments via Twitter or Facebook. The site even has an open application programming interface (API) that allows for the clips to be published on other sites or plugged into apps built by third-party developers.
It’s all possible thanks to the NCAA’s partnership with Thought Equity Motion, which specializes in digitizing video footage and helping the rights-owners to cash in on it. Thought Equity Motion claims to have 10.5 million hours of content under management through partners like the NCAA, NBC News and Paramount Pictures.
Opening up the archive
In July 2009, the NCAA was facing a conundrum. Despite the exuberance around March Madness, the tournament’s website wasn’t getting equal play.
“I noted that ‘We seem to have a lot of visitors come to the site, but they don’t stick around that long’,” explains Greg Weitekamp, director of broadcasting for the NCAA.
Weitekamp mentioned this to Kevin Schaff, CEO of Thought Equity Motion, which has represented the rights to the league’s archive of tournament footage since 2005. “I said, ‘We think it’s an asset that’s been underdeveloped — there’s more that can be done with it.’”
Schaff and his team came back with the idea for the “NCAA Vault,” believing that the league’s archival footage was an underleveraged asset. Prior to the launch of the Vault, fans could only watch a small selection of past tournament games on a CBS site that linked to NCAA.com.
“The competitive advantage of sports and news rights is going to come out of the archive,” Schaff says, pointing out the value of rapidly inserting historic footage of relevant events into live broadcasts to provide context.
An offer they couldn’t refuse
Thought Equity Motion was already charged with preserving the NCAA’s footage by digitizing it, and was managing to pull in some revenue by selling memorable games to cable channels like ESPN Classic.
But by breaking the games up into bite-size chunks and assigning each clip a URL, the footage could become even more valuable. Viewers could share clips, bloggers could link to them more easily, and most important for new ad revenue, marketers could advertise against them more easily.
“Dunkin’ Donuts could buy the word ‘dunk’,” Schaff suggests, meaning that any video tagged with that word — presumably because the clip shows a player dunking the ball — could be paired with an ad for the donut purveyor.
Plus, Thought Equity Motion had insight into what footage was most searched for.
“We run algorithms to look at where conversations are, what teams, what games are in demand,” explains Schaff, who compares his model to that of web startup Demand Media. Meanwhile some have questioned Demand Media’s assembly-line approach to churning out content based on algorithms that determine which topics will garner the most traffic and ad revenue.
Finally, there was the reality that the Web is a different medium than broadcast; people don’t want to watch entire games when they already know the final score, but would rather to jump in at the most memorable points.
“We’re embracing the fact that consumers want to consume media on their own time in a way that fits them,” says Thought Equity Motion’s VP of marketing and products, Dan Weiner.
Still early in the game
Thanks to Thought Equity Motion’s technology platform that digitizes and dices video, the company says the NCAA Vault was created at a much lower cost than what the league would have paid to go it alone.
Still, it will be a while before the NCAA knows if the Vault will provide a return on the investment. While it expects site traffic to be high during the tournament, the hope is that viewers will continue to visit year-round.
The NCAA is using its most popular event as a test case, but would eventually like to expand the Vault to include other sports like women’s basketball, and men’s baseball.
But, Weitekamp says, “Nothing like this has ever been done before. We didn’t want to be out there with 10,000 hours of content without the business model proving itself first.”
At press time, no ads have appeared on the Vault, other than banners promoting live streaming of March Madness games on CBSSports.com. CBS has the rights to the live NCAA games; Thought Equity Motion licenses the non-live content on the NCAA Vault for CBS to sell and receives a cut of the revenue.
The result of this experiment may be even more crucial for Thought Equity Motion, which, having established itself as a source for stock footage, is now increasingly focused on how to syndicate the non-live content in its library to drive ad revenue.
“We have the content partners we want,” says Schaff, adding that the venture-backed company continued to grow during the recent downturn and predicts 50-70% growth in 2010. "But right now, even if you digitize it, video content needs to be broken down and curated to connect to the demand."
Schaff believes the value of the non-live rights to the NCAA’s footage could be 10% of the live rights. “Access creates demand,” he says.
Nukes in my backyard
They're lean, clean, power-generating machines. But would a town really bury a mini nuclear reactor under its streets?
By Brian Dumaine, assistant managing editor
Long left for dead, the U.S. nuclear power industry appears poised for a comeback.
President Barack Obama earlier this year announced an $8.3 billion loan guarantee to help the Georgia utility Southern Co. build two large reactors, and he wants to triple the amount of federal loan guarantees for plant construction to $54 billion. Obama hopes a slew of new plants will create jobs and lots of affordable, clean electricity.
The problem: Even with the help of loan guarantees, full-scale nuclear power plants remain insanely expensive to build (conventional plants start at $5 billion, industry executives say).
Top 5 moments from Eric Schmidt’s talk in Abu Dhabi
Google CEO Eric Schmidt answered questions from attendees at the Abu Dhabi Media Summit. Photo: Jon Fortt
ABU DHABI – Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s speech and Q&A here was probably the most popular event at the Abu Dhabi Media Summit; there was standing room only on Wednesday as he extolled the virtues of the Internet and the goodness of Google (GOOG). His audience, mostly a mix of tech-savvy locals, international media executives and tech insiders, greeted him with wary admiration. Here are his most memorable quotes:
“If you’re a famous television producer, you’ll build a show on the Internet first ….”
Schmidt told the crowd that Google’s top engineers now build services primarily to work on mobile devices; PC browsers are more of an afterthought. Mobile is a huge, exciting category where Google can reach a new audience. Similarly, he suggested that TV producers should soon begin releasing shows online before they appear on TV. Why? Not because the online audience is more lucrative than TV – it’s not – but because the Internet provides a test bed where content creators can find out what will resonate with an audience. More
How rich is Steve Jobs today?
His net worth is a rapidly moving target, thanks to his holdings in Apple and Disney
Photo: UPI/Jim Ruyman
Forbes' list of The World's Billionaires, published Thursday, estimated Steve Jobs' net worth at $5.5 billion, which made him the 136th richest person in the world.
But by their own admission, the list — the work, they say, of more than 40 reporters in 13 countries toiling for the better part of a year — is already out of date. It's a snapshot of wealth taken Feb. 12, and since then share prices have risen considerably — few more rapidly than Apple's.
Jobs is a lot richer today than he was on Feb. 12 — nearly $580 million richer, at least on paper — thanks partly to his Apple (AAPL) shares, but mostly to his holdings in Disney (DIS).
According to the two companies' proxy statements, the bulk of Jobs' net worth is in the form of preferentially owned stock:
ComScore: Android gains on the iPhone
Google's U.S. smartphone market share has more than doubled, while Apple's has stalled
Source: comScore
Wonder why Google's (GOOG) Android makes Steve Jobs nervous? Check out the chart at right.
It's from the comScore mobile subscriber report issued Tuesday and it shows Android registering the largest market share gains of the U.S.'s five leading smartphone operating systems.
Over the past three months, Google's share of the U.S. smartphone market grew to 7.1% from 2.8% — a 154% increase.
Apple's (AAPL) share, by contrast, grew only 1.2% — albeit from a base nearly 10 times larger. And since the whole U.S. smartphone market grew 18% between Oct. 9 and Jan. 10, iPhone sales were hardly standing still.
Meanwhile, Research in Motion's (RIMM) BlackBerry still dominates the smartphone space with 43% of the market and a share that's growing even faster than Apple's.
Microsoft (MSFT) and Palm (PALM) both lost ground in comScore's latest survey.
[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]
The second-richest man at the Oscars
Steve Jobs, with his tux and his iPad, is a force to contend with in Hollywood
Photo: Zadi Diaz. Click to enlarge.
At the end of his amusing Infoworld post Monday about the 82nd Academy Awards, the writer who calls himself Robert X. Cringely asks a series of rhetorical questions:
"Who was the richest person in attendance? Who has the most influence and commands the biggest audience? Who's the least bound to Hollywood's old ways of doing business?"
The answer to all three, Cringely suggests, is Steve Jobs. I'm not sure about the second two questions, but having consulted Forbes' list of The World's Billionaires, released Thursday, I see that he's almost right about the first.
Unless one of the Google (GOOG) guys, the Microsoft (MSFT) billionaires or the Walton (WMT) gang snuck into the Kodak Theater unnoticed, Jobs — with a net worth in Apple (AAPL) and Disney (DIS) stock alone of more than $5.8 billion (Forbes, which hasn't caught up to Apple's recent stock increases, lists his total net worth at $5.5 billion) — had second-deepest pockets in the room that night.
Rupert Murdoch, who was also at the Oscars, is worth $6.3 billion according to Forbes.
Hollywood, of course, is full of rich and powerful people. David Geffin ($5 billion), George Lucas ($3 billion) and Steven Spielberg ($3 billion) come to mind.
But Cringely is talking about more than money.
The iPad changes everything
Will Apple’s tablet usher in a new era of computing, or simply dominate it?
Apple's iPad, rendered as the monolith from "2001: A Space Odyssey," will be examined and pondered by the rest of the computer industry.
Chipmaker Nvidia is helping invent a slew of cool technologies that hold the potential to change the way we work and play. The company, which makes processors that enhance images and boost the brawn of computers and phones, is pushing 3-D entertainment into homes and high-def video onto handsets. But the gadget Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang is most excited about? Touchscreen tablets such as Apple's forthcoming iPad.
"We have found our most personal computer," declares Huang, who notes that Nvidia (NVDA) is working on 50 different tablets. "This is big, and it's going to change the computer industry."
Not all of Huang's peers share his unbridled enthusiasm for tablets in general, and for Apple's (AAPL) version in particular. If the iPad, which will retail for as little as $499, is a success, it could indeed change the computing industry, but not necessarily to the liking of some of its biggest players.
In Abu Dhabi, rulers grill tech and media gurus on monetization
News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch is pushing officials in Abu Dhabi to open up, encourage creativity, and allow outside media companies to gain more of a foothold. Photo: Jon Fortt
ABU DHABI – News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch told government officials and financiers here Tuesday that the best way to grow a thriving media economy in the Middle East is to take risks. That, he said, will mean limiting censorship and opening up to foreign competition – even when it hurts.
Sure, the message was a little self-serving; Murdoch wants to expand his media empire in the burgeoning Middle East market, and the blessing of Abu Dhabi's rulers would help. But he's not the only media baron paying attention to the region. His comments opened the inaugural Abu Dhabi Media Summit, a tech and content confab that has drawn the likes of Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, and Barry Meyer, CEO of Warner Bros — which, like Fortune, is owned by Time Warner (TWX).
Apple hits another record high
Its market cap passes $200 billion as Wall Street suits up for the release of the iPad
Before the markets opened Tuesday, TheStreet.com advised Apple (AAPL) investors to sell! sell! sell!
But Wall Street wasn't buying it. When the dust settled and the markets closed that afternoon, Apple's share price had climbed nearly 4 points to hit $223.02 — its third record high in as many trading days.
Apple, always a volatile stock, has had its ups and downs over the past five years (see chart). But it's been on a tear for the past 12 months and it has soared more than 30 points since Feb. 4. That's when the initial skepticism that greeted the Jan. 27 unveiling of the iPad seemed to run its course.
Now that rumors of production hiccups have settled and a launch date has been set, hardly a day goes by without another analyst weighing in on the iPad's chances for success. Among Tuesday's crop:
What Cisco lacks in sex appeal it makes up for with speed
Behold the CRS-3! (photo: Cisco)
Cisco promised the world an earth-shattering response to Google's broadband ISP announcement. What it delivered was just more of the same from Cisco. That's good for surfers.
For all you folks who had dreams of flying cars or Cisco (CSCO) announcing the purchase of EMC, what CEO John Chambers revealed Tuesday after weeks of hype promising to “change the Internet forever” (and, it was hinted, take on Google (GOOG) in the process) was … a new router.
Dubbed the CRS-3 (in a sort of “Spinal Tap” marketing move, Cisco races past predecessor CRS-1 and goes all the way to three), this router is capable of delivering 322 terabits per second of data. To put that in some perspective that’s enough networking muscle to allow everyone in China to make a video call simultaneously, or to stream every motion picture ever created in less than four minutes, according to Cisco. You could also have half the population of China video chatting while watching half the movies ever made – or something like that.
The question of course, is does this new networking muscle change the Internet forever? More
