Broadband Jungle Blog

The Yahoo! Current Network arrives

Current TV co-founder and figurehead Al Gore yesterday announced the launch of a multi-channel VC2-themed collaboration between Current TV and Yahoo!, lavishly called the Yahoo! Current Network.

So far, four channels went live today:
Yahoo! Current Traveler, featuring the familiar mix of Current TV contributors with the occasional celebrity video thrown in. U2 front man Bono’s delicious launch present is a series of segments depicting “A Day in the life of The Edge”, showing an initially reluctant guitar player being woken by his singer in Miami.

Yahoo! Current Driver is celebrating the thrills of horsepower-hungry, gas-guzzling subcultures in surprisingly unashamed manner, considering that the network was founded by ‘Ozon-Man’ himself, as FishbowlLA so endearingly called Al Gore after An Inconvenient Truth opened in the spring.

Yahoo! Current Action takes on the extreme sports crowd that’s otherwise been abandoned outside of x-games season. Skateboarders, FMX fans, surfers and snowboarders will find everything they need here.

Yahoo! Current Buzz seems to be a compilation channel for now, with an occasional nugget from the Current TV archives thrown in.

News about an upcoming Current TV broadband collaboration with one of the Internet’s pioneers had been posted on the news podcaster’s website since early summer. Evidence pointed more towards Current TV shareholder and Yahoo! nemesis Google, on whose board the former vice-president resides. Google even hosts a branded viral clip segment on Current TV that’s now been moved to every hour on the half hour.

All in all, a great move for the cable network to increase their broadband foothold, but there’s a lot in it for Yahoo! as well, especially with their once very ambitious video content divisions all but abandoned up until now.

Broadband Brewers—Bud.TV & Man Laws

Something’s fermenting among America’s mainstream mega-brewers, and the full flavor would do a micro brewery proud: Miller is scoring big with its self-deprecating Man Laws round table TV ads that found a permanent home on Miller’s broadband player. It can’t hurt that the guys are wrangled by non other than Burt Reynolds, according to Miller “possibly the best loved Man icon of all time.”

Annheuser Busch wetted their broadband appetite during last season’s Super Bowl with a dedicated micro-site designated to ‘big game’ commercials and related branded content.

Rumors were flying high immediately that America’s favorite Lager would eventually roll out a branded multi-channel broadband player, but it took until September to follow up with a formal announcement.

Scheduled for the day after Super Bowl 2007, the brewer will launch a full-blown broadband network with 8 channels of original content. According to AdAge, this is how they intend to monetize their $60 million player:

“Bud.TV will be the largest piece of an online budget that will command 10% of the brewer's $607 million media largesse, said Tony Ponturo, VP-global media and sports marketing. He said the bulk of the spending would come at the expense of prime-time and late-night TV.”

DDB, Chicago apparently packaged much of the channel content that includes footage from the A-B sponsored Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy tour, viral clips and ads, collaborations and contests with Kevin Spacey’s Bud-sponsored TriggerStreet community and a Matt Damon / Ben Affleck created broadband version of Project Greenlight, billed as the world’s largest online filmmaking contest.

For the broadband era, Bud.TV would be the first time a corporate entity sets out to start a competitive network to package compelling content while peddling their ware. Modern day sponsors obviously left a lasting imprint on programming since the dawn of network television. A-B’s commitment, however, seems to be a watershed moment by bringing together a new generation of advertisers with content creators and in front of a hungry (and thirsty) audience at exactly the right moment in time.

Could it be that the brewers actually succeed and do a good job at it?

Rocketboom

Looks like Rocketboom is way over the Amanda Congdon dramedy from earlier this summer: Joanne Colan, her successor, is already knee-deep into starting her own legacy. Who would have thought?

Joanne’s obviously done her homework and got a terrific sense of the complexity of current events in new media land. And she gets the subcultures involved. Blending well into Rocketboom’s quirky sense of humor, she brings great energy and professionalism to the table. When was the last time you saw an anchor give a cohesive interview in pitch-perfect French on any American network?

Rock on.

Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone, in America

CNN / NBC / Yahoo! correspondent Kevin Sites recently completed his mission of spending an entire year in the Hot Zone of traveling through 22 armed conflicts in 19 countries in true 2.0 fashion: The journalist filed his compassionate reports of mostly unspeakable events from around the globe by blogging and writing an online diary, keeping a photo journal on Flickr and uploading video segments straight to the site.

What seemed like a trip to hell actually brought tremendous insight as he recounts in the post “Our Journey so Far:”

“That is one of the two most important lessons that I believe were revealed to me on this journey. First, that the world is indeed filled with conflict, pain and suffering, and that amazing people overcome it everyday.”

With a tremendous gift to gain trust wherever he went, Sites often pointed his camera directly at the lives of civilians affected by war. He’ll repost these stories in the order he experienced them over the next few weeks.

“This will give you a chance to see the full scope of our year's work in a condensed time period, while also allowing us to rest and retool for the launch of the next phase of the Hot Zone, which will primarily focus on putting a face on the untold stories in America.”

Way to go!

Reel Pop

Online media and technology reporter Steve Bryant just launched Reel Pop, a terrific (and long overdue) new media blog for the Hollywood Reporter. He’s equally specific and all over the place, which is exactly how this unruly field evolves while everybody involved is sweating to figure things out (read: monetization).

Covering the breakneck speed at which convergence is talking place, his first post is a most comprehensive rundown of milestones in our young industry, the brilliant A Brief History of Online Video (in Pictures).

Here’s Reel Pop’s chart, read the article!

Dropping Knowledge into our own Tower of Babel

Berlin is once again proving its well-worn reputation for being one of Europe’s most exciting and forward thinking cities. Saturday, September 9, a 2.0 community event of the third kind is taking place in the heart of the city: Assembling 112 of earth’s great luminaries, Table of Free Voices revisits the Tower of Babel at the cutting edge of the Internet, new media and an old fashioned town hall meeting.

Writes John Borland in Wired News:
It won't be pretty. Seated at a round table the size of a helicopter landing pad, they'll be speaking over each other, all at once, into video cameras instead of to each other. Every word will be transcribed, translated and archived online as the seeds of a sprawling discussion site operated by a Berlin-based group called Dropping Knowledge.

The site has been soliciting questions under their ‘ask yourself: can one question make a difference’ motto and visitors rated the top 500 ‘as those most likely to initiate open dialog on a social topic of most relevance to them.‘ Co-moderators actor Willem Dafoe and Nigerian activist Hafsat Abiola ask the final 100, including questions about economy, war, peace and climate change.

Mostly financed with a 3 Million Euro grant from German insurance company Allianz, participants include film directors Wim Wenders and Terry Gilliam, futurologist Bill Joy as well as activists, scientists and progressive thinkers from around the planet. Intentionally reflecting the incessant media blast all around us, each participant has their own web camera pointing at them to record questions and answers. Ultimately all 672 hours of video generated will be available on the Dropping Knowledge archive.

Kate Moss, agent provocateur

Talk about super-rich media: Ubiquitous Kate Moss stars in a four-part web movie by Academy Award nominated director Mike Figgis. Produced for British lingerie maker Agent Provocateur, the cinematic foursome is called “Dreams of Miss X.”

Dream 1,‘Shadows,’ features the supermodel in her first speaking part as Miss X. She’s quite convincingly narrating a disturbing dream while walking around an eerily deserted mansion wearing Agent Provocateur underwear. Once word got out about the steamy one-reeler, the ensuing groundswell of excited traffic brought the label’s website to a quick crash.

Having previously created Timecode, one of the first movies shot on mini DV that received a theatrical release, Figgis is no stranger to new technologies. An extensive interview with the director is also available on the micro-site.

Dreams 2, 3 and 4 are scheduled to launch November 1, January 1 and March 1.

Rehearsals.com music player

CenterStaging are experts for high quality rehearsal spaces with a breathtaking list of top music acts among their clients. They also run a hi-end music portal called rehearsals.com right out of their Burbank studio warehouses.

“Rehearsals” by artists like Tom Petty and the Pussycat Dolls resemble very intimate living room settings and are recorded hi-def at their own state-of-the-art broadcast facility by remote-controlled cameras.

The broadband player’s offering also includes a variety of other terrific programs, such as Lessons from the Legends, an Emerging Artists showcase and weekly The Newz.

Little Loca alias Ooolalaa

Looks like our favorite Chicana has been moonlighting on YouTube as Ooolalaa, lip-syncing her way through the great American indie songbook with Violent Femmes and No Doubt songs.

What’s more, the talented gal has increasingly been interviewed as herself, Stevie Ryan, a young actress/model living in Los Angeles. She’s even got her own fansite.

Apparently, Loca/Ooolalaa/Stevie already feels the pressure of being a celebrity on the 2.0 web-film circuit. Forget hair and make-up, this girl plays dress up the wired way, as reported by Greg Sandoval on Cnet.com.

"I go whole hog," the 22-year-old Ryan said.She spends hours scouring the Web for video-effects software and has plunked down big money for digital fonts. She says she has to keep up with YouTube's growing list of serious video makers, who produce increasingly sophisticated clips.”