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The Internet Media Television Businesses

YahooTV 61

Posted by Zonk from the media-and-the-web-shaking-hands dept.
SpaceAdmiral writes "The New York Times is running a story on Yahoo TV. The story focuses on Lloyd Braun's plan to expand Yahoo! News into a more TV-like format." From the article: "Mr. Braun's handiwork is just starting to be seen at Yahoo. And as he increasingly puts his stamp on the company, the rest of the media - both old and new - are watching carefully, if not nervously. As chairman of ABC's entertainment group, Mr. Braun had a penchant for big offbeat concepts like 'Lost,' which won the Emmy for best drama. At Yahoo, why not create programs in genres that have worked on TV but not really on the Web? Sitcoms, dramas, talk shows, even a short daily humorous take on the news much like Jon Stewart's 'Daily Show' are in the works."
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YahooTV

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  • He's real? (Score:5, Funny)

    by RiotXIX ( 230569 ) on Sunday September 25, 2005 @07:30AM (#13643695) Journal
    Huh, I thought he was just some guy in Seinfeld...

  • Retrograde? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ScaryMonkey ( 886119 ) on Sunday September 25, 2005 @07:37AM (#13643711)
    It seems to me like kind of a retrogression to try and implement a TV format on the internet; TV evolved the format it has (i.e. half hour shows with commercial breaks) for reasons that make sense in terms of the medium; And the TV medium is changing as it is, what with TV on demand, Tivo, and so forth. But the internet works on a completely different paradigm. Not to say that it might not be successful; Just kind of sounds like a round peg in a square hole.
    • ...given that the cost of bandwidth that can comfortably support Internet TV is till prohibitively high for most Americans. There were statistics which indicated that most Americans with access to the Internet still do it via dial-up. Clearly, those will be out of Yahoo TV's loop!
    • "Not to say that it might not be successful; Just kind of sounds like a round peg in a square hole."

      But TV shows via Internet is *already* successful, its just a pirate market at the moment with p2p download. Its just that *streaming* of television isn't successful, but then having tried to watch The Daily Show with John Stewart via http://www.comedycentral.com/ [comedycentral.com] its often stop-start-stop-start, and small window only, its nearly unwatchable. Streaming sucks. They should take a look at how p2p works and send
      • I don't know about others, however I only recently began downloading a TV show from the internet. Why? Because it moved to Friday on UPN -- the same slot UPN uses to kill shows it doesn't want. For the last three weeks that it's been on UPN, it's been usurped by MLB each week (on both WPIX and WWOR). I simply had no other choice than to not watch, and I don't like that choice. It's one of the few TV shows I watch as it is and I don't want to give it up.

      • It's only popular amongst a small set of jobless geeks with high-speed Internet access. Most people won't want to spend hours and hours downloading a 20 minutes TV show and then watch it in a tiny window on the computer.

        Maybe in 20 years when every house has unlimited, 100mbps, quota-less Internet like electricity or water, and it just plugs into the TV without having to fuck about with p2p or mythtv, then it might be possible.
        • " It's only popular amongst a small set of jobless geeks with high-speed Internet access. "

          They're sharing full screen DVD movies in DIVX format, so I don't think thats true. Suppose I could tell my computer I want to watch 'John Steward', its a half hour show = approx 200MB at DVD quality, a lot less at TV quality.

          I have a slow 600kbps currently connection to my flat, bittorrent gets about 50k/sec thats just over an hour to download the show. Sure its not realtime, but thats my point, I should be able to t
  • Why can't your media conglomerate be more like Lloyd Braun??!!

    I'll tell you what, I just don't think this whole idea has much weight. I mean, nametags?!?! NAMETAGS?!?! If he can't handle Dinkins election campaign, how can he possibly spearhead YahooTV?

  • Yeah that's original (Score:3, Insightful)

    by coupland ( 160334 ) * <<moc.liamtoh> <ta> <esahcd>> on Sunday September 25, 2005 @07:38AM (#13643713) Journal
    When your idea of being "offbeat" involves cloning a terrific show like "The Daily Show," chances are you aren't too hip...

  • HQ Videos (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Unsus ( 901072 )
    It would be really nice if they released high-quality videos; however, I don't see them doing this unless they embrace torrents to minimize the bandwidth costs. World of Warcraft utilized users' upload for patches even though they charge a monthly fee. I can't imagine yahoo releasing HQ videos of shows without doing the same.

  • Yet another reason I'll never look at Yahoo (Score:4, Insightful)

    by shoppa ( 464619 ) on Sunday September 25, 2005 @07:41AM (#13643722)
    The instant that Yahoo went from being a fairly vanilla search engine to a "web destination" I stopped using it. (Not that I used it much before, but I would occasionally sample the different search engines. At the time it was yahoo, altavista, northernlights, probably some others that I forget.)

    Google still rules in terms of places I start at - Incredibly lightweight in terms of "splash" but incredibly heavy in terms of "usability".

    Not much else to say otherwise. If I want random examples of what somebody else thinks is important I'll still go to slashdot :-).

    • Probably this kind of comparison became common for everyone who loves google. Please come out of it. If you love google for search go for it, beyond search there are lot more possibilities on internet.

      FYI: Yahoo never been termed as "vanilla search engine". Its largest human built web directory (now its DMOZ) and they used google's services for some time. Yahoo is a Web Portal PERIOD
    • I quit visiting Yahoo when I got disgusted about getting paid ads, presented in a very sneaky way. Did they change that? Is it safe to visit again?

      A yahoo [reference.com] "is a crude or brutish person". Lesson: Don't trust programmers to name a company. Programmers will invent a name that sounds to them like a great intelligent joke, but causes problems later. How many people who aren't computer professionals know that the joke is "Yet Another Hierarchically Ordered Oracle"?

      Another reason programmers don't name thing

      • A yahoo [reference.com] "is a crude or brutish person".

        Most people know the word "yahoo" as an exclamation of happiness. "I won the lottery!" "Yahooooo!"

        Lesson: Don't trust programmers to name a company.

        The programmers did not name the company. They named their web site listing while they were still students, just as the Google guys named their prototype search engine. In both cases, the sites became incredibly popular under those names long before they became companies. At the time Google and Yah

      • Because they became a stool-pigeon for the Secret Police in the PRC.

        "F**k the Declaration of Independance! Our shareholder's demands for a Chinese market trump the aspirations of humanity every time!"

      • " I quit visiting Yahoo when I got disgusted about getting paid ads, presented in a very sneaky way. Did they change that? Is it safe to visit again? "

        Sure, if you use ad blocking software in your browser.

        " A yahoo "is a crude or brutish person". Lesson: Don't trust programmers to name a company. Programmers will invent a name that sounds to them like a great intelligent joke, but causes problems later. How many people who aren't computer professionals know that the joke is "Yet Another Hierarchically O

      • You install Yahoo once, and you can never get rid of the crap. Bleargh!!!

        I watch clips from Jon Stewarts Daily Show from a LiveJournal feed. It's very entertaining, but I slice it with my friends list. I think that yahoo wants to be everywhere. Yahoo won't want me creating my own mix-n-match entertainment. Typically, they'll want complete control, trying to make me watch what they want me to watch and at times that are convenient to them. I want to watch what I want when I want it. Notice how the two aims c
    • i use GNU/Linux (slackware) as my desktop OS, using Mozilla/Firefox with the flash plugin & RealPlayer http://news.yahoo.com/video [yahoo.com] used to work until they changed to this new format, (which requires Flash i know of, as far as media player i tried RealPlayer and i tried MPlayer compiled from source with the codecs package and MPlayerplig-in compiled from source with gecko-sdk and Yahoo/news/video still does not work!!! so out of frustration i an serously thinking of abandoning Yahoo too...

      and i WILL N
    • Way, way back, maybe when you were still in grade school, Yahoo! was THE internet directory. And still, it is.

      I too use Google most of the time, but, to the best of my knowlege, Yahoo! is still the only major big-time web directory. This has always been it's strong point, not it's search abilities. Sometimes, I intentionally use Yahoo! search when I want to do a less-googlish search, because I've found Google to be too good.

      But, I'm annoyed at them right now because I've had my.yahoo.com as my browser ho
    • Umm...Isn't google doing the same thing? Yahoo News -> Google News...Yahoo Shopping->Froogle...YahooTV -> ummm haven't we been talking about GoogleTV?

      Type a phone number (a listed one) using the (xxx) xxx-xxxx into Google's search and you get a directory listing back. Sounds likes Yahoo's people search, except its built into the search. Oh what abouts maps.yahoo.com -> maps.google.com

      And Google is getting into webmail and into messenging and that crazy toolbar. Oh my. Your argument sort

  • Interesting Concept.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by One Childish N00b ( 780549 ) on Sunday September 25, 2005 @07:49AM (#13643741) Homepage
    This looks to be an interesting concept for Yahoo, and maybe an admission that they've lost the just-plain-search battle with Google (that said, I'm a big fan of http://search.yahoo.com/ [yahoo.com], Google-like interface with Yahoo's faster-updated index - and they don't seem to index half the link-farm 'blogs', not that I've seen how well the Google Blog Search will filter those out of the mainstream search engine) and are moving into being the web's first site-based multimedia provider - browse the index, click the show you want and watch it, full-screen streaming.

    Yahoo has always been the type to move towards multimedia content such as this, with their emphasis on cramming everything into one page versus Google's 'just search, but if you poke around we do other things too' mentality. (not criticising either one, they both clearly work well as both have produced highly profitable companies) The bandwidth for doing something like a site supplying news broadcasts and other traditionally TV-based media - and have it watchable for most normal people - is almost here, and if Yahoo manages to get on the bandwagon early and build up their range between now and the time when Joe Average has the bandwidth to have good-quality full-screen video, they could get the jump on Google to provide, like Braun suggests, things like news broadcasts, and maybe sports shows and other TV shows besides - like the DRM'ed download system the BBC suggested for their site a while back, only with streaming video rather than downloading - a system that, with the proper protections, will be easier to swallow for the content providers - the media conglomerates - too.

    This could be very interesting.

  • I know a show they can do! (Score:5, Funny)

    by jht ( 5006 ) on Sunday September 25, 2005 @07:59AM (#13643768) Homepage Journal
    How about they make a show about a bunch of Gen X people in a big house with a history on the coast in California. Each person can represent a "type", and they can even have blog entries combined with the media, talking about the subtext of each episode. It's a soap opera, updated for the web! To make it even cooler, they could have a dog that sort of "comes with the house" as the mascot, and have the dog provide blog entries that give us insights on the characters.

    I even have a good name for it. They could call it "The Spot". Does that sound pretty cool and original?

    Then, they could follow that monster hit up with a show about a college grad trying to figure out what she wants to do with her life. The gimmick here can be that she has a camera in every room of her house, that can follow her everywhere and watch her doing everything. And she can blog about her life, too. I think we could call that one "Jennicam" - I think nobody's used that name before!

    After all, why re-do "The Daily Show" when there are so many new, original ideas to develop?

  • Is this the same Lloyd Braun? (Score:3, Funny)

    by ZuggZugg ( 817322 ) on Sunday September 25, 2005 @08:10AM (#13643798)
    George's Nemesis on Seinfeld? Serenity now...insanity at Yahoo later!

    Lloyd Braun [stanthecaddy.com]

  • Transport not the media is the current problem (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I honestly feel like all the creative genius in the world when it comes to media content cannot overcome the problem of transporting it online to consumers. Recently I moved to a new location which has left me with crummy dial-up access. My browsing habits have changed to better accomodate my lack of bandwidth and that has resulted in media-heavy sites being the first on the chopping block. Furthermore, TV over the internet is further hindered by the fact that multiple computer users watching different (or
    • " Quite frankly, until ultra high bandwidth connections are ubiquitous amongst users and providers can support the load, this service cannot take off."

      We're already seeing video feeds from a variety of sites. As the years go by, this only gets better. Admittedly, though, life would be a lot easier if they'd toss the need to stream and go with downloadable formats.

      " The next issue is the user experience. Who wants to watch television on a little monitor for one person when going into the living room means

  • Yahoo TV in Japan (Score:3, Informative)

    by amoeba47 ( 882560 ) on Sunday September 25, 2005 @08:56AM (#13643995)
    Just a little information spiel... Here, in Japan, Yahoo is offering a TV package included with their broadband service. For an extra 2,000yen (about US$20) p/month you can select from around 1000 movies to watch, anytime, on your TV. YahooBB also allows free fixed-line telephone calls between YahooBB users and cheap international calls. It's about US$30 p/month for a 12M connection.
  • why not create programs in genres that have worked on TV but not really on the Web?

    Why not have a seance?
    Why not go mad?

  • While I was in the military and stuck overseas, the only tv that we recieved was AFN(Armed Forces Network). AFN was about half to a full session behind on everything except for CNN. The last three years of my second tour, I lived on the economy and could not recieve AFN, so I was stuck with Italian networks. The only source of information (streaming news casts) came from the web and that source was primary CNN. Then CNN drooled over the idea to charge people to watch thier streams. That was when I lost any
  • Yahoo's been down this route before. They had Yahoo! Financevision which they shut down [paidcontent.org] in 2002. I guess we really are going full-circle.
  • the Chinese Gulag. Criticize it and you too will end up in laogai.

  • Good.. cause' Fox News, CNN, and CNBC are JUNK. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by brxndxn ( 461473 ) on Sunday September 25, 2005 @10:02AM (#13644335)
    You can watch 24 hours worth of flipping through Fox News, CNN, and CNBC to get the same amount of news you'd get from 10 minutes of browsing through slashdot.org and fark.com...

    The news nowadays is just sensationalized crap completely edited for a bunch of sheep. If there's an article that may hurt the parent companies of any of the media conglomerates, it's not shown. If there's a motorcycle chase where the motorcyclist gets away, thus showing that the justice isn't 100%, it's edited and ignored. (happened about a month ago while I was watching Fox News)

    This Yahoo News is a good thing. Hopefully, they'll make a TV-like format that actually shows some NEWS and not just a bunch of small news made big to get ratings...

    Hopefully Yahoo will take a cue from Univision. You can get more news from a 15-minute halftime report in the middle of a soccer game on Univision than you can from a day of any of the American networks... and that's even if you don't speak Spanish!

    Oh wait.. Yahoo is already a big conglomerate allied with other big fat conglomerates.. Something tells me this will be more of the same, but with pretty new technology.

    • Re:Good.. cause' Fox News, CNN, and CNBC are JUNK. (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Hrm, can't really speak of the networks you've mentioned, but the BBC does quite a decent job at objectively reporting the news over here in the UK. I take it this is a "US" only discussion?
  • Maybe they are finally going to get some use out of broadcast.com's technology that they bought for billions?
  • The obligatory bugmenot link: http://www.bugmenot.com/view.php?url=nytimes.com [bugmenot.com]
  • Media Executives sit in meetings for hours on end
    just trying to come up with ways to show more than
    16 minutes of ads for every 44 minutes of program.

    That signal-to-noise ratio of less than 3:1 was too
    high, so they have now come up with a way to show
    15 seconds of commercials for 30 seconds of content.

    And their audience will clamor for more!

    --
    The common people know what they want
    and deserve to get it good and hard

  • I think this explains in part why Yahoo has focused so much effort into getting WIPO to create a new global treaty on webcasting. Unfortunately, that's not good news, and my guess is that few people actually doing technical stuff at Yahoo even understand how messed up the webcasting treaty langauge is, and what it would do to the web.
    More on this here: http://www.cptech.org/ip/wipo/bt/ [cptech.org]

    Jamie
  • I think this explains in part why Yahoo has focused so much effort into getting WIPO to create a new global treaty on webcasting. Unfortunately, that's not good news, and my guess is that few people actually doing technical stuff at Yahoo even understand how messed up the webcasting treaty langauge is, and what it would do to the web.
    More on this here: http://www.cptech.org/ip/wipo/bt/ [cptech.org]

    Jamie

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