SHELLY PALMER and KEVIN MARTIN will talk about the transition to digital television on BLOOMBERG TV today at 12:10 ET.
THE FCC is backing down from a plan to force TV stations to air up to 12 PSA’s per day warning viewers about the upcoming digital transition. Instead, the Commission is expected to accept a more lenient proposal from broadcasters that will give them the option of joining the transition effort. Participating stations will run 16 spots each week, with 4 occurring during primetime. The plan will also include screen crawls and a special 100 day countdown special. In other Commission news, the FCC is expected to imminently approve the year-old proposal under which Liberty Media would trade its 16.3% stake in News Corp. for a controlling stake in DirecTV.
CBS followed yesterday’s NBC news by announcing that its classic titles will also be available online for free ad-supported streaming. Star Trek, Macgyver, Melrose Place, The Twilight Zone and more will be added to CBS.com and across the CBS Audience Network. CBS Interactive president Quincy Smith said the new initiative is “solving for what the user wants.”
MICROSOFT claims it will make a major effort to share more technical information with software developers in an effort to satisfy EU antitrust requirements. The company will put 30,000 pages of formerly secret technical specifications concerning Windows and Microsoft’s server platform. The EU was not impressed, saying that Microsoft has already promised such efforts four times in the past. However, this time Microsoft may need to follow through to ensure approval of a Yahoo takeover.
ESPN360 broke new ground by offering the first HD stream of a live NBA game. The site was utilizing a new application from MOVE NETWORKS that automatically served HD quality video to users with fast connections and scaled down the quality for slower connections. The site will tap the technology again soon to present NCAA games in HD.
MTV will officially launch JackassWorld.com tomorrow, offering webisodes of the popular series and an interactive community of fans. The Jackass crew will takeover MTV all day tomorrow to promote the launch.