WARNER BROS. will begin a trial-run of releasing movies to VOD and DVD on the same day. The experiment begins on July 10th with “The Astronaut Farmer,” which underperformed at the box office.
YOUTUBE will soon begin testing home-grown video fingerprinting to identify copyrighted material. Content owners of identified clips will have the option of removing them, or licensing them for revenue-sharing. DISNEY and TIME WARNER will participate in the initial tests.
VERIZON will offer local TV to V CAST-enabled cellphones in 50 markets. Local news, weather, and sports will be available on a dedicated channel, as part of a partnership with Local Solutions Network.
NBC will be engaging advertisers earlier in the program-development process, a change brought on by new Co-Chairman Marc Graboff. The goal is to fight the ad-skipping “TiVo effect” by uniting the creative teams in Los Angeles and the advertising team in New York.
AT&T and VERIZON were part of a jointly-filed brief in support of Cablevision’s desire to allow TV recording capabilities on network servers. Cablevision is appealing a March ruling that found its “network DVR” infringed on copyrights.