Insider Chatter by Donna Bogatin

As the Cable industry lobbies the FCC to bolster future opportunities, the motion picture and television industry fight over the future is underway on entertainment’s frontlines: The Studios.   

Alex Trbek happily is in Jeopardy! at Sony Studio in Culver City daily. During a taping of his quiz show yesterday, he told me he hopes striking studio writers will not be in “jeopardy” much longer.

I am in Los Angeles to speak at the closing panel of the Kelsey Interactive Local Media conference kicking off today and have been taking in the “entertainment captal of the world” sights. While enjoying the stars’ footprints at Mann’s Theater Monday, I was invited to be part of the studio audience of Jeopardy! The Sony ticket rep regrettted nevertheless that he had no sitcom tappings to offer me, due to the Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike.

When I arrived at Sony Studios to enjoy a complementary viewing of Jeaopardy!, followed by a $25 dollar fee studio tour, I was required to break the striking WGA writer picket lines at Sony Entertainment gates.

I asked one of the about 30 strikers how he felt that I ”broke” the picket line to enjoy Sony Entertainment. Luvh Rakhe, one of about a dozen staff writers for ABC’s Caveman series, told me writers don’t have “bones to pick” with the executives on the lot.

Rakhe did express his displeasure with Sony corporate though: “It is a 90% profit margin business. studios tell Wall street how much money they will make off of the Internet, but tell us they don’t know anything about how the Web will play out.”

The WGA is striking because members don’t want to make the same “stupid” mistakes they did over the years with video and DVD residuals at this contract negotiation period, Rakhe indicated.

Rakhe said: “In ten years all TV will be on the Internet.” Writers are determined to make sure they will be paid for their work ten years from now.

I asked Rakhe about his work: “It is an incredibly fun job. I get to sit in a room–from 10am to 10pm–with ten other people who have been vetted for their senses of humor and tell jokes, create stories.”

On the Jeopardy! set I asked Trebek if he had any words of encouragement for the writers manning the Sony sidewalks: “I just learned today that some Jeopardy! writers are on the lines, I will have to bring doughnuts for them tommorow. I hope the strike is over soon, that egos don’t get in the way. In any event, we have shows in the can to last us till 2025,” he quipped.

The Caveman’s funny men, however, are not joking around about their futures.

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I underscored Friday that Google’s mulit-billion dollar online AdWords machine is NOT inherently transferable to all media platforms, analyzing Google’s failure to sell radio advertising profitably. I also predicted that Google would pin its offline advertising hopes on television.

Google has confirmed my hypotheses today, in announcing its deal with Nielsen Company to add a “layer” of demographic data to set-top box activity tracked by Google: In heralding how a Nielsen product “improves Google’s measurement capabilities,” CEO Eric Schmidt acknowledges Google TV ads are NOT Google AdWords.

What’s more though, despite the new “enhanced by Nielsen” twist, Google TV ads remain a poor, distant cousin of their rich AdWords family.

Contrary to Google’s PR spin, and popular perception, an overlay of Nielsen data will not yield a seemingly magic “maximization of advertiser return” from Google TV ads.

The data that Nielsen will be giving Google is “representative television ratings panels.” In other words, extrapolations about national viewing habits created by using self-reported consumer usage information from a small sample of U.S. homes, out of the tens of millions of television viewing households.

Google is well aware of the persistent short-comings of its TV ads product. Mike Steib, product manager:

We want to help make TV advertising more effective and more relevant for advertisers…(BUT) When you talk about AdWords, there’s a person sitting there with a mouse and a computer that can go right to a Web site and give youi instant accountability. That doesn’t exist in television.

Nevertheless, the Google worldwide advertising domination fantasy is hard to repress: Google “expects” its TV ads to eventually boast the same type of “immediacy” as the Internet “backchannel.”

The Google offline advertising diversification track record does not support such a rosy forecast, however. 

Unfortunately for Google, a Googley long two years out of the Google-DMarc Broadcasting gate, Google has NOT succeeded in bringing its touted AdWords ”accountability” to “old-school” radio advertising. SEE: Radio Ads Stall: Google Pins Offline Advertising Hopes On TV

ALSO: Interop: Citrix XenSource Flys as Google Crashes and Google Confirms: Enterprise Apps is NO Microsoft Office Killer

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CBS creates EyeLab to woo Web surfers, AWAY FROM YOUTUBE!

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery? CBS is flattering YouTube, big time!

CBS has long been Google’s greatest broadcast network supporter of its YouTube no need to pay for the use of copyright video content of others. Just seven days after acquiring YouTube, Google released a joint announcement with CBS asserting their “belief” that “YouTube has brought a significant new audience of viewers to CBS shows,” on CBS.

Quincy Smith, President CBS Interactive, underscored how “established media players” must “build bridges rather than construct walls”:

YouTube users are clearly being entertained by the CBS programming they’re watching as evidenced by the sheer number of video views. Professional content seeds YouTube and allows an open dialogue with a new set of viewers. We believe this inflection point is the precursor to many exciting developments.

For its part, YouTube took credit for “bringing new viewers to CBS broadcasts,” even though acknowledging “the success of CBS shows on YouTube is not the sole cause of the rise in CBS television ratings.”

Now, CBS has its own YouTube competing “EyeLab”:

An editing studio for creating CBS-based promotional content across CBS interactive platforms.

This next generation studio will be dedicated to creating thousands of original short-form clips that will enable users to easily engage with and sample video tied to CBS’ wide range of content.

George Schweitzer, president of CBS Marketing:

Clips about CSI or something from how a director shoots a scene in the show NUMB3RS, these are all things that link back to our shows.

For example, an EyeLab clip-culture, snack-sized montage of high-five scenes from “How I Met Your Mother” set to Strauss’s “The Blue Danube” waltz.

The ultimate YouTube-CBS irony? Former Google ad sales exec Patrick Keane is pushing the new CBS YouTube inspired promos, in his new role as Chief Marketing Officer, CBS Interactive. EyeLab can’t feed the CBS platform “too much content” Keane enthuses.

While on the Google team, though, Keane preached the value of the YouTube platform in building a TV network business.

Et tu, Keane?

ALSO: Zingku Backstory: Founder Sami Shalabi Newest Google Engineer? and With Facebook Platform as a Developer Friend, Who Needs Enemies?

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Power to the people! In the 60’s that meant political power. Today, consumers want all the power!

Fred Wilson renews his call for “the need for tools to engage with advertisments, like the way we engage with social media.” WHY? Because “Advertisers want to measure engagement without relying on clickthrough rates which aren’t always the best measure of advertising effectiveness.”

What is the BEST way to engage consumers with advertisements? HAVE THEM MAKE THEM THEMSELVES, of course.

BONUS: Ad creative and production costs are slashed! Such is the business model premise powering XLNTads, “run by a seasoned team of Internet marketing executives.” I met with one of them over lunch recently in New York City: Neil Perry, CEO.

Perry told me the company was created to “fill a void between the brand marketers and video creators engaged in the evolving world of consumer-generated advertising.”

“Only consumer-generated commercials will appear on XLNTads.com,” the company boasts:

XLNTads will soon become the recognized creative collaboration destination for consumer-generated video advertisements. XLNTads will challenge and empower minds of all ages and capabilities to submit work that might just get them noticed, get them a job, or maybe even get them a check for $20,000.

Don’t expect the typical YouTube video ad contest free for all, a la Intuit’s “Tax Rap” though. XLNTads at its business model core is a cost-effective, out sourced ad creative platform for brand marketers and ad agencies seeking to leverage independent creator talent, NOT a social media user-generated content endeavor.

The target creator audience of XLNTads is: “videographers, producers, publishers and entertainers who have gained recognition through video sharing sites such as MetaCafe and Revver.”

The XLNTads philosophy:

To run successful consumer-generated ad campaigns, it is imperative to harness the top video talent available to elevate the quality of submissions and reduce risk by weeding out poorly executed or inappropriate pieces.

Users are in control? In a controlled way, as XLNTads assures brand marketers:

XLNTads provides editorial reviews of all videos prior to posting to your brand pages. Our reviews assure the ads posted to your brand’s XLNTads pages will meet your brand identity’s standards and values while eliminating the time and expense of having your brand teams perform these tasks. Only approved XLNTads will appear on the site, so you won’t have to worry about your ad appearing along side videos of “Topless Women from Brazilian Beaches.”

Each brand has its own variety of materials to support commercial production. Individual brand assets may include pictures, logos, music or other materials that can help make a professional ad.

The bottom ad line: “With production of the average 30-second spot costing upwards of $300,000, brands can slash costs by rewarding the creator of a brilliant advertisement submitted throught the platform with as little as $20,000,” Perry told me.

What is in it for the talent? A good shot at winning big in a professional independent video ad competition.

ALSO READ MY EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Qmecom Mass Personalized Video Ad Platform: Yahoo SmartAds, Digitas Beware

PLUS: Can Facebook, MySpace, YouTube Escape Junk CPM Ad Purgatory?

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ATTENTION ALL NEWS ORGANIZATIONS: Help Google achieve its goal of becoming the world’s defacto news destination–as it piggybacks on YOUR original, expensive to produce content–by diverting YOUR destination readers and viewers to Google News, just as CBS and Reuters are happy to do!

“Would you like video with that,” the Google News blog smirks in announcing who needs CBSNews.com or Reuters.com for news videos as the world’s hunger for news, the multimedia kind, can be satisfied going forward at news.google.com.

The days when Google News apologists can ridicule Sam Zell’s indictment of Google News’ Google-centric exploitation of the content of others are numbered; The erroneous assumption of a Google News “fair trade” link barter economy is being exposed, step by Google step.

First, Google announces its intention to divert news organizations’ commenters to Google News.

Now, it declares its goal of making sure visitors to Google News will never have to leave Google News to watch original news videos produced and financed by news organizations.

One of our goals at Google News is to offer as many different perspectives on the news as possible. That means bringing content from multiple sources together in a way we hope you find to be organized and relevant. Now we’re adding video to the mix: we’re showing related news videos along with our news articles to give you a broader spectrum of info available. You’ll see the prefix “Video” next to story titles, and clicking on these video links will open a video player directly on the page so you can watch the video right there.

Today, viewing news videos or other content types on the web can be a frustrating experience. You often get videos that don’t play, sites that require different video player downloads, or have misleading descriptions of the content.

Right, CBS and Reuters news videos are amateur hour! Google to the rescue, of course.

That’s why we’re working with YouTube so you can easily view online videos without any downloads required and regardless of what browser you’re using. For our initial launch, we have included several top news sources such as CBS, Reuters, and a number of local Hearst TV stations.

YAY! For Google shareholders, NOT for CBS, Reuters or Hearst though.

Is Google paying CBS, Reuters, Hearst for its for profit use of their proprietary, copyright videos? Unlikely, as the Google News video insertions come via Google’s no-need-to-pay-for-the-content-of-others-DMCA-fueled “business model” YouTube.

Google News doesn’t want to pay the producers of news it is dependent upon AND it increasingly doesn’t want to send traffic to the news organizations.

Google DOES want to continue to build Google News into a one-stop news destination though, at the expense of the destination traffic of the news organizations it piggy backs off of for free.

ALSO: Google News is a Joke: LA Times is NOT Laughing and When Bloggers Are Google Accomplices: Sorry Jeff, Google is NOT God

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Rupert Murdoch, Chairman & CEO of News Corporation pledges to be a “strong custodian” of the “world-class journalism” of Dow Jones, to the tune of approximately $5.6 billion.

The two companies have signed a definitive merger agreement, and an editorial agreement:

“The establishment of a five-member, special committee with the objective of assuring the continued journalistic and editorial integrity and independence of Dow Jones’ publications and services. The initial members of the special committee will be Louis Boccardi, Thomas Bray, Jennifer Dunn, Jack Fuller and Nicholas Negroponte.”

What does Richard Zannino, CEO of Dow Jones, like about Murdoch? His money and his salesmanship:

The transaction will deliver significant returns to our shareholders. It will also build on our recent, industry-leading earnings growth and make our company and journalism even stronger as our strengths are leveraged across News Corporation’s powerful global distribution and marketing platforms,

Murdoch is eager to build out ”one of the world’s greatest media franchises”:

With a portfolio of brands that has no equal in financial information and business journalism, in combination with News Corporation’s assets, The Wall Street Journal and the other Dow Jones operations will be even more formidable competitors as we profitably extend their invaluable information across our print, broadcast and digital platforms around the world.

L. Gordon Crovitz, Dow Jones’ Wall Street Journal publisher is on board:

I hope that as part of a larger company we can extend our journalism more broadly, to serve more readers better.

Crovitz can count on one guaranteed extension: Welcome Tom Anderson, Dow Jones’ newest friend!

ALSO: Mark Zuckerberg: Use Facebook at Your Own Risk! and Google Demands NBC Universal Spread YouTube Fair Use Gospel

PLUS: Google Smackdown: Susan Wojcicki vs. Eric Schmidt Boomerangs

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