Category Archives: radio & TV

The Release Windows Archaism

November 25, 2012 – 8:40 pm

Tweet  Television and media industry are stuck in a wasteful rear-guard fight for the preservation of an analog era relic: the Release Windows system. Designed to avoid destructive competition among media, it ends up boosting piracy while frustrating honest viewers willing to pay.   A couple of months ago, I purchased the first season of [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Tagged , | Comments (66)

Fantasy Apple TV

August 19, 2012 – 10:58 pm

TweetOn August 15th, The Wall Street Journal published yet another story about Apple’s imminent invasion of the TV business. According to people who are “familiar with the matter”, the Cupertino company is… …in talks with some of the biggest U.S. cable operators about letting consumers use an Apple device as a set-top box for live [...]

Edited by Jean-Louis Gassée | Tagged | Comments (56)

Shift Happens…

May 22, 2011 – 6:06 pm

TweetBehold Netflix. This really is a special company, one that was long adored by its customers for its DVD rental service by mail. Success made the company one of the largest if not the largest US Postal Service customer. Then — and this is where the “really special” part comes in — Netflix managed to [...]

Edited by Jean-Louis Gassée | Comments (19)

The News Cycle Heartbeat

July 18, 2009 – 1:04 pm

TweetHow do mainstream media and blogs interact? How do they feed each other ? Everyone in the newsmedia would love to get a better view of the mating dance. A few weeks ago, scientists at the Cornell University unveiled a thorough analysis of the relationship between the two universes. Borrowing from genomics techniques, they dug [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Also posted in crowdsourcing, journalism, newspapers, online publishing | Tagged , | Comments (10)

Monetizing a social network, the Skyrock case

June 21, 2009 – 4:38 pm

TweetIn the social network business, the European success story is called Skyrock. Built on top of the #1 FM radio station for 18-25 year-olds, it first expanded into a blog platform, then into a full-blown social network making full use of links users waved between themselves. In Europe, according to ComScore, Skyrock.com ranks #3 among [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Also posted in advertising, social networks | Comments (17)

The success story of a technology-enhanced media brand

June 7, 2009 – 10:07 am

Tweet‘A fan of ours wrote an iPhone application, just for the sake of it.’ How many media companies can make such a bragging statement? One does: NPR, the American National Public Radio. Bradley Flubacher, is a professional programmer who moonlights as a volunteer firefighter in a small Pennsylvania town. A few months ago, Brad decided [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Also posted in online publishing | Tagged | Comments (12)