The BBC announced today that it would start offering its TV shows on its iPlayer service for longer than the seven days it originally offered them.  According to the organization, its “series stacking” initiative is one that should see more people watch its shows.

Prior to this announcement, BBC only allowed shows to air for seven days before it took them down.  But after realizing that most customers didn’t approve of such a policy, it reversed its stance and said that videos would be left on the site ‘indefinitely’ to allow users to catch up to their favorite shows.

Perhaps more importantly, the BBC announcement also included a point that would see the entire season of shows be made available and not just a select number.  According to the BBC, that more than anything this should see customers find more reason to use iPlayer.

But the BBC announcement runs in direct contrast to what’s currently offered on services like Hulu or Fancast, which only offer a select number of episodes from shows for a finite amount of time.

The BBC’s decision to do this runs directly against the services currently being offered on Hulu.  For its part, Hulu offers shows like The Office for a limited amount of time and only does so at about four to six episodes at a time.  That said, shows are made available (usually) right after they’re aired live.

Regardless, it creates an important dynamic in the space and could put the onus on US sites to do the same sort of thing.  After all, don’t users want to have constant access to as many shows as possible?

The BBC has made the right move in this regard.  It has finally realized that allowing people to watch shows and do what they want with available videos is the key to its success on the iPlayer.  And if it proves to be a success — and it probably will — look for Hulu and others to follow suit.

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Video hosting provider Hulu has announced a distribution partnership with the Food Network today. Actually the deal is with Scripps Networks who owns Food Network and will also include clips from Fine Living, HGTV and DIY. The initial batch of clips range from 2-4 minutes and most carry a 30-second pre-roll video ad. That’s some ratio of content to ad!

I actually had the opportunity to spend a week at the Food Network studios about two years ago. It’s amazing the talent that they have - from the stars in front of the camera to the massive work behind the camera. If you think it’s hard to get a movie star to do what the producer wants, just imagine what it’s like to keep a cake in perfect condition for an hour under the studio lights. The food is very pampered!

I am not sure if these Scripps Networks clips can be viewed worldwide but if they can, it would be an excellent way for Scripps to draw in a brand new set of viewers.

Check out my post about Food Network star Giada DeLaurentiis and what she can teach you about passion-centric communities.

Here’s a sample of the Food Network clips on Hulu:

More CN Coverage:
– Docstoc
– Scribd
– Twitter

Regator, the feed reader and blog search engine that has been in private beta for about a month now, is launching its public beta, which a lot of people can be happy about. Mashable’s Paul Glazowski sang Regator’s praises with his review of its private beta early last month, and after trying out Regator for myself, I can easily see why.

Straddling the search engine and feed reader demographics, Regator attacks the simple concept of helping you find great Web content with one fatal swoop, presenting a tool that’s very attractive to both the average Web surfer and the early adopter crowd. Regator’s highly customizable capabilities for content you find through the site or add yourself means that it presents itself as a customizable feed reader for any type of user with a wide array of interests.

As a starting point for someone that may be entirely new to the blogosphere or simply doesn’t know where to start for a new topic of interest, Regator’s search and recommendation engine works quite well. The user interface is also very easy to use and makes customization of content while surfing simple as well.

With additional exporting options via RSS for things like your Favorite blogs you’ve saved on Regator or a given keyword, you’re able to leverage Regator’s service even if you’re not on its site. I imagine even more direct exporting options will be provided some time in the future, as Regator already offers Twitter, Facebook and email sharing options for content featured on its site. With more integrated direct export options Regator will be able to offer even more customization on a cross-network basis. Lastly, as a collaborative or group tool for shared content within a team or organization, Regator could do a great deal of growth in this direction if it ever sees fit, for both consumer and business applications.

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Source:Mashable!

Video search and aggregation tool Magnify has an update today, which is something we haven’t seen explicitly from the company in a while–it’s been busy launching completely new features and spin-off services.

There are two major prongs to Magnify’s release today: one addresses the need for additional video sources that it aggregates from, and the other concerns the search capabilities of its service. With the added support for video sites including MySpace, Hulu, Vimeo, College Humor, Howcast and MTV Overdrive, Magnify is broadening the Web content from which it pulls, so that you can have a bigger pool in which to cast your net.

This particular upgrade seems like a no-brainer, but it also reminds us that there’s a growing number of sites where video content can be found, and that there’s an added value in supporting more than just YouTube and a handful of other video-sharing sites for its aggregation purposes.

And as expected, Magnify has tweaked its search tools, which goes hand in hand with the added support for the handful of new video services. Magnify has more than doubled the speed of its Automatic Video Discovery service, which means you’ll be able to search all of its supported sites very quickly. It also allows Magnify to reportedly increase its potential for new videos added, from 100,000 daily to 1 million per week.

Speed isn’t the only factor that Magnify improved for its search capabilities. Its search has been enhanced with new channel options allowing users to search by other users, date, and review scores. Search results can then be exported via RSS as well.

What’s particularly beneficial to Magnify’s upgrades is the fact that the company has spent so much time building out its feature set, to include certain webcam support, social network features, and an integrated search tool for bloggers. Given Magnify’s growing platform, the addition of new sites, improved search and filter and sharing capabilities means that Magnify already has an established set of services that will immediately be improved as a result of this new roll-out, affecting its entire user base, regardless of the type of user that employs a certain Magnify service.

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What is it with us denizens of the Internet?  Free isn’t cheap enough for us, apparently. When a band like Radiohead comes out with an album, puts it up on a website for us, and gets more press coverage than just about any album release in recent memory, and says “Hey, pay us for it if you want to,“  we still feel the need to “steal it” off Bittorrent.

So says a research paper from P2P monitor Big Champagne, according to PaidContent today. By the numbers, according to the paper, around 2.3 million folks decided that free wasn’t cheap enough and went to BitTorrent to grab the files instead of going to Radiohead’s In Rainbows website to grab the album while it was still legally available as free.

The obvious answer is the one that the report gives - venue familiarity. The theory goes that folks are far more familiar with downloading files through these networks than they are with going to Radiohead’s website, and so it was far simpler just to click around till they found it there rather than go to the site. It certainly has a ring of truth to it, but PaidContent’s Robert Andrews isn’t convinced:

But that’s wishful thinking. In Rainbows torrent downloads peaked on the first day data was collected, October 27, at 400,000 - what Page and Garland call “a bloody big number”. How big? More than double the top torrent through March and May (Panic At The Disco’s Pretty Odd) got in a whole week (ie. 10 times Panic’s daily average).

[…]

Counterpoint - Nine Inch Nails’ free The Slip album was downloaded more from NIN.com than torrents. And In Rainbows reached number one on both sides of the Atlantic on proper sales.

I’m a bit puzzled at the counterpoint, and don’t have a ready answer, but the hypothesis put forth by the research paper certainly jives with some of the correct analysis I’ve put out in the past with regard to the same issue in the video market.

Remember when we were all talking about the foolishness of NBC pulling out of iTunes and YouTube so that they could make sweet sweet love to their new fling, Hulu?

NBC’s withdrawal from other sites like YouTube and iTunes mean that Hulu is a step backwards instead of forward. Was it worth it for NBC to remove their content from YouTube and iTunes? Absolutely not. As I’ve stated before, they’ve significantly limited their distribution, and therefore the advertising inventory and marketing footprint online. There are, without a doubt, less people who will view NBC’s content as a result of them pulling it from iTunes and YouTube. This means less money in advertising from online views, less purchases of individual episodes and season passes, and ultimately less profit. In effect, they’ve looked at everything successful about new media and done the opposite.

Same thing, and we’re seeing it reflected in the numbers.  Hulu is absolutely dwarfed by the usage of YouTube, and by not using it as a distribution platform, the Old Media set severely cut the legs out of the potential of what is possible in terms of viewership numbers.  You take the content to the users, not make the users trek on over to where your content is.

Bringing it back around to Radiohead for a minute though, that simply isn’t something that’s possible for bands right now.  There really isn’t much of an option for bands like Radiohead who want to do a “name your own price” scheme where one of the options is free where they can expect to have absolute mainstream audiences.

That not withstanding, they did alright for themselves, particularly when you realize that estimates on their earnings for the release are comparable to other major record label’s yearly net revenues.

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Last night we wrote about the new set of embeddable widgets that video streaming service Hulu has launched. It sure seems like the widgets load very slowly. While watching the widget load, I noticed that they are grabbing data and pushing it to Omniture’s tracking beacon. This is the same beacon we wrote about with regards to Adobe and their potential spyware.

There’s nothing in the Hulu privacy policy regarding the widgets and any sort of tracking. There’s also no notice of tracking on the Hulu widget page. Should there be? And more importantly, should I as the person embedding the widgets understand what it is that Hulu is tracking? Trust me, I am a tracking freak so I understand the need for Hulu to understand how and where their widgets are being used. But I’d also like to see some transparency regarding what it is that they are tracking. How can I be assured that they aren’t tracking items outside of their widget? What information isbeing passed back to Hulu from my site and more importantly, my site visitors.

I’d like to see Hulu create a checkbox that the person lifting the widget has agreed to the terms of the widget which must include what it is that Hulu is tracking.

This is a simple example of a topic which will need to be discussed as an industry at some point in the very near future. Are all widgets considered a form of advertising and ad-based rules apply? When I embed a widget on my site, what responsibilities do I and the widget source have in communicating privacy and terms with regards to the widget(s)?

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Women’s vertical network Glam Media is announcing the launch of a new channel in the network, Glam Wellness. The initial launch partners include: BeThree.com, Conscious Living TV, EcoFabulous, EatingWell, Lifescript, Low Impact Living and Spaparazzi.

Glam claims this new wellness channel will launch with 3 million monthly uniques and the total Glam network has over 640 content publishers and comScore reports 77 million global monthly uniques.

While this might not sound like big news, when you combine it with the launch last week of Glam’s developer platform Atako, the more blogs and content sites in the Glam network, the more distribution the developers will have access to. It will be interesting to see if Glam can "woo" developers to move off the sexy iPhone platform development and on theirs. The truth is that there could be nice returns building on the Glam network.

Partner Links
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Source:CenterNetworks

Techcrunch has the exclusive tonight on the launch of a set of embeddable widgets from Hulu. Hulu CTO Eric Feng and Techcrunch editor Michael Arrington sat down at the Techcrunch house for an interview. During the interview, Feng discusses the launch of a set of embeddable widgets. I have enjoyed using the Hulu service since their launch - it’s also growing quite well in terms of traffic and video views.

I’ve written about widgets before, spoken on panels about widgets and believe that widgets will change the advertising landscape over the next year or so. From my perspective, the Hulu widgets provide little to no real value and I don’t see why a content publisher (blog, MySpace profile, whatever) would embed these widgets.

The "Hulu’s Show & Movie Widget" which I’ve embedded below forces a user away from the content site to Hulu to watch the video. It’s a bit odd considering they allow embedding the shows online and how Feng talks about hyper distribution as the model Hulu is striving for. I’d prefer to see the ability to view the video directly inside or that the widget expands to view the show. If Hulu could provide this type of widget, it would be a real winner for Hulu, the video viewer and the content site owner. If you take their full, non-customizable widget, it will play the video inside the widget. But anyone who will want to embed a Hulu widget into their site or blog, will want their favorite or related shows in the embed (like Michael did with the DailyShow).

On the flip side, this is a great marketing play - if they can get users to embed the widgets, the users will provide Hulu with all the free marketing they could ever want - even while providing no value to the site that embeds the widget. Feng says Hulu is open to feedback on the widgets - so there’s my feedback - make all of the widgets play inside of the widget for maximum effectiveness.

In an announcement that some people are calling major, Amazon announced today that it will start streaming movies and TV shows on its own site – for a fee. Amazon’s Video-on-Demand service will feature 40,000 titles and hit the ground running today. And although it probably won’t turn a profit in the near-term due to the high royalty costs it’s forced to pay the film studios, I’m more than a little suspect of just how much Amazon can make by charging you to stream movies online.

Sure, at first glance, charging you to stream movies may look like the best alternative because it offers a guaranteed cash flow and is easier to regulate, but is it really best over the long-term?

The way I see it, free streaming movies should be the norm, not the exception.

Right now, you can surf your way over to Hulu.com and play some movies for free without a hitch. Granted, they’re not the best movies around and most aren’t even close to new, but that doesn’t mean we should downplay its significance.

Hulu movies can be viewed as often as you’d like and feature commercials before they start and a handful of commercial breaks between scenes. And while that works fine, it’s quite obvious that Hulu and the film studios aren’t willing to make it more compelling.

But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t happen.

Here’s how I see it working:

Streaming old or crappy movies just doesn’t work. Why would someone want to waste time sitting through Attack of the Puppet People?

But if new and extremely popular movies were made available, things would be totally different. If after a movie like No Country for Old Men leaves theaters, it’s made available on a free streaming service, can you imagine the advertising revenue the service could generate from it? And in turn, how much revenue the movie studios could generate as well?

But in order to generate serious revenue, the services would be forced to play commercials. Playing them before the movie starts is a good idea, but I’m not too fond of dropping them in-between. It not only proves to be an annoyance, but it takes you out of the movie and totally changes the flow of it. Instead, maybe the service should start overlaying ads during the playback, or, if need be, it still can resort to commercial breaks if that makes it more financially viable.

Either way, the point of streaming movies is to turn an even greater profit than making people pay for the stream and with enough viewers and a logical revenue scheme, it should work.

In just a few months, Hulu has already proven to be a cash cow for TV studios and its success is most easily shown in the number of networks that have joined the fray and allowed their content to be made available since its launch. We also shouldn’t discount the fact that Hulu is run by the networks themselves, meaning they get all the benefits of ownership.

Why can’t the film studios follow suit? Instead of trying desperately to stop piracy and spend too much cash on it, it should save its money, invest in a service like Hulu, break out from its foolhardy misconceptions about the Internet, and embrace it. Upon doing so, it can establish advertising schemes in the vein of Hulu and allow you to watch movies whenever you’d like for free.

Sure, it may run against the way things have always been done in the movie business, but as theater revenue continues to fall and rentals slowly go away, the film industry needs to find something to pad its bottom line and free streaming movies seems like a great place to start.

Consider the impact of being able to sit at home, stream brand new movies anytime you’d like, and only be forced to sit through a handful of commercials that companies are paying huge sums of cash for.

If Hulu can service millions of people each month and grow at such a rapid rate, why can’t a free streaming movie service grow just as fast?

Paying for streaming may be a temporary solution, but it won’t be enough to stop piracy, nor become the best way to watch movies. If nothing else, Google, Hulu, and countless other services should have shown the film industry that free use of media is what appeals to people and if you invite that kind of service and monetize it thorough advertising, it can prove to be an eve