New York
– Viacom’s (NYSE: VIA) Spike TV network on Thursday announced that it partnered with The
Ultimate Fighting Championship to launch a website that will feature every
episode, fight and fighter from all 10 seasons of Spike’s "The Ultimate
Fighter" TV series. Both UFC.com and Spike.com will now redirect all
traffic related to the show to the ad-supported site.
Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/v269g
Los Gatos,
Calif. – Online DVD service
Netflix (NASD: NFLX) on Thursday began shipping discs to subscribers that will allow them to
access its instant streaming video content via Nintendo Wii game consoles. The
company already offers similar streaming access to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation
3.
Related Links:
http://blog.netflix.com/2010/03/netflix-via-wii-coming-soon.html
Los Angeles
– News Corp.’s (NYSE: NWS) Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment said on Thursday that
it will add 27 additional MGM titles to the roster of films and TV shows that
consumers can purchase on-demand DVDs of from Amazon.com’s (NASD: AMZN) CreateSpace service.
Titles covered by the deal include films such as "The Best Man,"
"Man of Iron" and "The Whisperers," and TV series including
"Flipper" and "Highway Patrol."
Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/v25xz
Los Angeles – Movie theater
owners are hiking prices for tickets to 3D movies by as much as 26%, in
anticipation of the release of Paramount’s
kid-friendly "How to Train Your Dragon" tomorrow, Variety reported,
citing a report from BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield.
A survey of 10 theaters
in different U.S.
markets found an average 8.3% price hike for 3D locations, with the average
price for an adult 3D ticket rising from $13.60 to $14.73.
The report notes
that some theaters in New York and Los Angeles are charging
as much as $5 extra for 3D tickets.
Related Links:
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118016878.html
San Mateo,
Calif. – Smartphone Web traffic
in February increased about 193% from the same period a year ago, according to
a report from mobile ad network AdMob. The firm said smartphones accounted for
48% of its total worldwide traffic, up from 35% a year ago, fueled by heavy
application use by iPhone and Android handset owners.
Among smartphones, the
iPhone (NASD: AAPL) made up 50% of traffic in February, compared with 24% for Google’s (NASD: GOOG) Android, 18%
for Nokia’s (NYSE: NOK) Symbian, 4% for Research in Motion’s (NASD: RIMM) BlackBerry, and 2% for
Microsoft (NASD: MSFT) Windows Mobile smartphones.
AdMob noted that Android’s share grew
from 2% a year ago, while Symbian’s slid from 43%.
The firm also found that
mobile Internet devices (iPod touch, Sony (NYSE: SNE) PSP, Nintendo DSi) experienced the
strongest growth, increasing their share of traffic to 17%, from 7% last
February.
Related Links:
http://metrics.admob.com/2010/03/february-2010-mobile-metrics-report/
Palo Alto,
Calif. – Picklive, the operator
of an online fantasy soccer game, has raised an undisclosed amount of seed
funding led by Last.fm backer Stefan Glaenzer, TechCrunch reported.
Robert
Dighero and other angel investors participated in the round, which is thought
to be a six-figure sum.
Picklive began life as Football3s.com, and has now been
spun out from parent company Mint Digital.
Launched in beta in September 2009,
Picklive’s online game allows users to play social games while watching matches
live on television.
Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/v24s4
(TechCrunch)
New York
– Time Warner’s (NYSE: TWX) HBO is in talks with additional distributors about offering its
programming in a "TV Everywhere" scenario, where subscribers to a
digital TV service would also gain access to HBO shows online, Multichannel
News reports.
HBO has already experimented with the offering with Comcast, and Verizon’s
FiOS TV service, where subscribers can access more than 600 hours of HBO
content online.
The current talks are in stages ranging from creating billing
systems and marketing campaigns, to setting launch and deployment dates.
HBO
co-president Eric Kessler told Multichannel that additional distribution
announcements are expected over the next few months.
Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/v24bz
Los Angeles
– YouTube (NASD: GOOG) viral video star "Fred" has signed a deal with Viacom’s (NYSE: VIA) Nickelodeon
kids network to star in a series of TV movies, Variety reports. The videos
posted by "Fred," aka Lucas Cruikshank, have to date been viewed more
than 500 million times on YouTube.
"Fred: The Movie" will be produced
by Brian Robbins’ Varsity Pictures, written by David Goodman and directed by
Clay Weiner, according to Variety.
An order for a second movie has also been
guaranteed by Nickelodeon.
Related Links:
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118016890.html
