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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."
Huh, I thought he was just some guy in Seinfeld...
"You know you don't act like a scientist, you're more like a game show host." Dana Barret
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.
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?
When your idea of being "offbeat" involves cloning a terrific show like "The Daily Show," chances are you aren't too hip...
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.
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 :-).
http://www.mirrordot.com/find-mirror.html?http://w ww.nytimes.com/2005/09/24/technology/24yahoo.html
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/, 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.
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
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?
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
George's Nemesis on Seinfeld? Serenity now...insanity at Yahoo later!
Lloyd Braun
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 even the same) program doesn't scale as nicely as traditional TV. Quite frankly, until ultra high bandwidth connections are ubiquitous amongst users and providers can support the load, this service cannot take off. 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 a larger TV with room for everyone? Once those high bandwidth connections are in place, we would then need to make sure there is a computer in every living room. I think the ideas listed are great but they are ahead of their time. Until the issues I've listed are taken care of, shows like this will remain the territory of a small percentage of users.
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Bored? Photo gallery time.
...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!
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 "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 things well is they think it is cool to be self-deprecating. That seems to the reason for "Yet Another".
Notice that using a search engine is called "Googling". That indicates the popularity of MSN and Yahoo.
"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/ 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 the programs via p2p with ads embedded in the middle rather than try to stream.
From Merriam-Webster:
Main Entry: retrogression
Pronunciation: -'gre-sh&n
Function: noun
1 : REGRESSION 3
2 : return to a former and less complex level of development or organization
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 have a seance?
Why not go mad?
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
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 homepage for a long time, and now they've monkeyed around with it such that it doesn't work in Opera, regardless of what browser-agent string you use. Oh well.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
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 kind of contact with the outside world in terms of tv. I think that yahoo should go for streaming tv. If not for anyone in this country, then at least for the folks stuck overseas. They need to be connected!
"The laws of science be a harsh mistress." --Bender
Yahoo's been down this route before. They had Yahoo! Financevision which they shut down in 2002. I guess we really are going full-circle.
the Chinese Gulag. Criticize it and you too will end up in laogai.
sulli
RTFJ.
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.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
Maybe they are finally going to get some use out of broadcast.com's technology that they bought for billions?
" 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 tell the PC what I'm interested in, and it obtains it for me to watch when I get spare time. Its no different than waiting till 11:30 for a show to come on TV, or seeing an advert on Wednesday for a Mega Movie and going to see it on Friday night at the movies.
They may be starting in Korea and Japan, but there's a market in the slower bandwidth countries too. They just need to get the recipe right.
" Serenity now, insanity later. "
- Lloyd Braun, in "The Serenity Now"
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
The Super Network Why Yahoo! will be the center of the million-channel universe
e.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
The obligatory bugmenot link: http://www.bugmenot.com/view.php?url=nytimes.com
I'd rather ponder on the work of Robert Von Braun..
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
static narratives (tv,film) are in a permanent downtrend, look at the stats, they are not blips. online gaming is in a permanent uptrend. the fact that yahoo execs are chasing "tv on the web" demosntrates how out of touch they are. its 2005 folks, people don't want to watch a movie, they want to be in it.
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/
Jamie
james.love@keionine.org
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/
Jamie
james.love@keionine.org