Cordkillers Ep. 14 – Will Google Light a Fire?

Cordkillers / April 8th, 2014

Amazon unleashes their set-top box, the Fire TV, but we get word from The Verge that Google might fire back with their own TV box, but don’t they have the Chromecast? Also HBO Go becomes HBO No, and WWE is either a hit or a failure, depending on who you ask.

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CordKillers: Ep. 14 – Will Google Light a Fire?
Recorded: April 7 2014
Guest: None

Intro Video 

Primary Target

Secondary Target

  • This is Android TV 
  • “Android TV is an entertainment interface, not a computing platform,”
    – Controller arrow keys, enter, home, back. Optional game controller.
    – Voice input and notifications. Picks up where phone or TV left off.
    – Recommends content on home screen.

Signal Intellegence

  • WWE Smacked Down as Online Subscribers Fall Short of Estimate
  • Profit in Sight: Nearly 670,000 Subscribe to WWE Network
  • Sunday’s “WrestleMania 30,” which took place in New Orleans, selling out the Mercedes-Benz Superdome.
    – World Wrestling Entertainment reported 667,287 subscribers
    – Shares of WWE sank (WWE:US) 15 percent to close at $23.90 in New York, the biggest one-day drop since July 2001.
    – VARIETY: The WWE Network is close to turning a profit less than two months after launching.
    – The company will next roll out the WWE Network in Canada, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong and the Nordic countries in late 2014 and early 2015.
     

Gear Up

  • Xbox One original TV shows will include interactive extras 
  • Microsoft already has six TV series lined up for Xbox and more are coming
  • Ridley Scott is Master Chief of Halo ‘digital feature’
  • 6 series coming to Xbox One”
    Users can unlock bonus scenes, mini-games and subplots not featured in the actual show itself.
    IN PRODUCTION
    -“ Halo” television series, executive produced by Steven Spielberg
    – A multi-film documentary series produced by Simon Chinn and Jonathan Chinn of Lightbox. The first project centers on the rise and fall of Atari
    – Live event coverage of the Bonnaroo music festival in June 2014
    -“Every Street United,” an unscripted series focused on the global search for soccer’s most gifted and undiscovered street footballers
    -“Halo” digital feature project with 343 Industries and Scott Free Productions (EP Ridley Scott— Sergio Mimica-Gezzan directing)
    – a sci-fi show about robots called Humans — based on Swedish programme “Äkta människor”
  • IN DEVELOPMENT
    -“Fearless,” an unscripted series starring Paul de Gelder, an Australian Navy bomb clearance diver and shark attack survivor
    -A sketch comedy show with comedy collective JASH – founded by Sarah Silverman, Michael Cera, Tim and Eric, and Reggie Watts
    -A hybrid stop motion animation project by Stoopid Buddy Stoodios (Seth Green), creators of the longest running stop-motion show on television, “Robot Chicken”

Under surveillance

Front Lines

2014 Summer Movie Draft

  1. DTNS: $95,023,721
  2. Night Attack: $0
  3. The Morning Stream: $0
  4. GodsMoneybags: $0
  5. /Film: $0
  6. Amtrekker: $0

On Screen

Dispatches from the Front

  • CBS said maybe they would pull out of broadcast. Tom mentioned what they might do in changing programming on over the air broadcast. But doesn’t CBS statement go counter to their primary reason for lawsuit, and that is rebroadcast fees and how big a money maker it is. 

    Woody

 

  • Hope your week is going well! Not sure if you guys caught this story, but now that it’s officially public, I can talk about it.YouTube to Offer Advertisers Some Guarantees. With upfront season in full swing, Google is taking some new approaches in their agreements with advertisers. What is of particular interest is this. YouTube also plans to reserve space for advertisers that agree to buy in advance in the best performing 5% of its content across channels such as Beauty & Fashion, Comedy, Food, Music, and Sports. In the last few years, MCNs have been building up business models around selling ads around original content on YouTube. With YouTube looking take that top 5% of the best content on their platform, we may see a shift in how these companies work. There have always been questions about the profitability and sustainability to how these MCNs operated. In fact, as of late, we’ve seen major changes with companies like Machinima and Maker Studios, both of which made deals with major studios (well, Maker Studios got entirely acquired by Disney). It’ll be interesting to see how this new arrangement works out for all parties. Personally, I think we’re still in the middle of this shift in content delivery – we’ll probably continue to see these companies evolve over time. Anyways, this wasn’t meant to be an in-show email; just thought it might be a topic of interest for Cordkillers this week. Love to hear what you guys make of it.

    Best,

    Derrick

Links

www.patreon.com/cordkillers
Dog House Systems Cordkiller box

 

Cordkillers Ep. 11 – Breki-ing the law

Cordkillers / March 18th, 2014

Veronica Mars proves piracy still beats following the rules for now, and Popcorn Time makes it easy.

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CordKillers: Ep. 11 – Breki-ing the law
Recorded: March 17 2014
Guest: Breki Tomasson

Intro Video: 

Primary Target

Secondary Target

Signal Intelligence

  • Here’s why Amazon Prime can afford to raise prices
  • Amazon Prime US raised price from $79 a year to $99. Amazon was barely breaking even, or even losing money, on shipping costs for customers who ordered 20 packages year. That’s not counting the $40 per person it costs Amazon to license streaming media that Prime accounts get for free.

Gear Up

Under surveillance

Front Lines

On Our Radar

On Screen

Dispatches from the Front

  • There’s no clear consistency here in the UK about when broadcasters show US shows. Back in ye olden days, programmes like ER and Friends would be held back until January so that the UK broadcasters would get a clear run of 20-26 weekly episodes without having to take a break. However these days with torrents and spoilers and hype crossing borders, broadcasters don’t really know what to do – do they follow the US schedule (Fox show The Walking Dead in the UK the day after the US broadcast) or do they hold back (More4 are only a few episodes into the latest season of The Good Wife). Or do they go for a half-hearted mixture (Channel 4 started showing Agents of SHIELD in the same week as the US, but it’s only just returned from it’s Christmas break)? My question is this – will there ever come a time when the money gained from advertisers isn’t enough to dictate the schedules for the US broadcasters, and they gain more from subscriptions, overseas sales and re-selling to services like Netflix, and therefore the US broadcasters drop their ridiculous scheduling of showing a 20 week season in drips?

    John

 

 

  • Hi guys, love the show, just became a Patreon tonight. My wife and I (and two four year old twin girls) cut the cord a few weeks ago (cut the phone landline and cable tv, leaving only internet).
    I bought the Leaf for HD broadcast local channels, do you have any recommendations on a PVR to plug it into? My Tivo is old and doesn’t do DTV. Or is there a better way to get streaming broadcast show’s (like Big Bang Theory)… in Canada?

    Thanks, keep up the good work

    Lee.

 

 

  • I have been watching the various incarnations of this show for a very long time, and one of the recurring themes was how Netflix releases shows all at once, for a la carte binge viewing. The two of you have even argued the merits of binge vs. weekly releases. Imagine my surprise, when I got an email from Netflix announcing their new show, “”From Dusk Till Dawn””, and that they were releasing one episode per week! If this is not cord killing news, I don’t know what is!

     

Links

www.patreon.com/cordkillers

www.doghousesystems.com