News
Mix: NBC/CBS on-demand, Fruitcast, Shufflicious, Usability Awards
NBC and CBS yesterday announced separate plans to make select prime-time shows available on-demand for 99 cents an episode. NBC shows will be available on DirecTV, while CBS shows will be available through Comcast cable.
Fruitcast is a new service that inserts ads into podcasts. “We download a podcast’s MP3 audio files, add the advertisements on the fly, and then send them to the podcast’s subscribers,” explains the Fruitcast team. “Each time a podcast episode is downloaded, the advertiser is charged a certain amount, and a significant portion of that amount is credited to the podcaster.”
The creator of the Shufflicious iPod shuffle case has written an interesting article about his experience in bringing such an iPod case from idea to market.
The iPod’s click wheel interface has been named Best Consumer Product at the UK Usability Professionals’ Association (UK UPA) Awards 2005. The awards highlight “stuff that takes you along the curve… stuff that’s designed to be learnable and doesn’t keep ‘reminding you how elegant and smart it is’ by getting in the way.”
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1
“Each time a podcast episode is downloaded, the advertiser is charged a certain amount, and a significant portion of that amount is credited to the podcaster.�
Following which, the subscriber never again listens to said podcast because NOBODY WANTS ADS IN THEIR PODCASTS.
Posted by PushButtonAction in Atlanta, GA on November 8, 2005 at 10:53 AM (PDT)
2
Note to self:
Delete podcasts with advertisements and never download them again.
End note:
Posted by JRoDDz on November 8, 2005 at 12:04 PM (PDT)
3
“Following which, the subscriber never again listens to said podcast because NOBODY WANTS ADS IN THEIR PODCASTS.”
“Delete podcasts with advertisements and never download them again.”
Yeah! Because I hate it when people get rewarded for their hard work. Everything should be given to me for free with no adds or anything. Maybe delivered by a hot swimsuit model. Yeah! Me! Me! Me!
Posted by nosedive51 on November 8, 2005 at 1:50 PM (PDT)
4
It’s not that everyone wants stuff for free, but it’s that the old ad model is broken. Nobody wants advertising anymore, as we see with podcasting and TiVo. Ads are just plain annoying. I would like to pay for content WITHOUT ads. It’s that simple.
The reason Google is making a killing is because their ads are not annoying, but most importantly, the are targeted. So I’m not getting ads that make no sense in relation to what I’m looking at / searching for.
Posted by m.sherman on November 8, 2005 at 2:46 PM (PDT)
5
nosedive, I couldn’t have said it better myself. Ads will be a blessing in this burgeoning market, because it will validate the content in a way not even iTunes can.
Posted by coreywhompus on November 8, 2005 at 2:46 PM (PDT)
6
The ads in Fruitcast are allegedly just a spoken sentence or two along the lines of “This podcast brought to you by so and so, the leader is thus and such. Visit us on the web at blah blah dot com.”
If that makes you never download a show again, you’re a jerk. Plain and simple.
I bust my a** for almost 30 hours a week to do my show. I’ve spent over a thousand dollars in equipment. I spend 200 bucks a month on a decent fast server…I’m seriously considering this model to try to get *SOMETHING* resembling my money back.
Posted by stark23x on November 8, 2005 at 3:39 PM (PDT)
7
stark,
You do realise that podcasts already costs subsribers money. They already paid for it by paying for bandwidth. Like earlier poster said the current ad model is broken. Now you have to compete for user’s attention !!
Like the user mentioned with this development, users wil pay for no ads,
Posted by sleelk on November 8, 2005 at 6:42 PM (PDT)
8
“99 cents is a nice price, but they should have gone through iTunes. I’m not going with OnDemand. I could care less about it.”
I doubt that .99 would be the price if they had chosen iTMS as their distributor. And your attitude is exactly why CBS and NBC are going the route that they are. Neither of their approaches cares about a 5G iPod’s dinky little 2.5” screen. Evidently they would rather have their precious digital content played on a plasma, large LCD or DLP monitor instead (where they probably feel it belongs and is most appropriate), and potentially recorded onto a DVR if one absolutely has to save a copy of it.
It may not be initially portable, but it’s also providing the buyer optimal content and resolutions for a regular TV format, instead of Apple’s dumbed down downloads. It’s that ease of using one’s TV straight away that CBS, NBC, DirecTV, and Comcast are banking on. But it’s just too bad that both couldn’t do deals so that they both provide content to the same providers at the same time.
Posted by flatline response on November 9, 2005 at 9:26 AM (PDT)
9
“You do realise that podcasts already costs subsribers money. They already paid for it by paying for bandwidth.”
That’s simply retarded.
Posted by stark23x on November 9, 2005 at 12:39 PM (PDT)
10
“You do realise that podcasts already costs subsribers money. They already paid for it by paying for bandwidth.�
—-
“That’s simply retarded.”
Gotta agree with you there. Thats one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard.
And ads on the web…personally I dont agree with ad-clocking programs. The people who make, care, and pay for their websites deserve money for their efforts. They deserve to make profit from it. And if that means ads I have no problem at all with them. If I find a site useful, I’ll generally look at the ads and click one or two of them.
Its the same with podcasts.
And sleelk, if you were offered the choice between downloading a podcast with ads, or paying $2 or so for an ad-free version, you’re saying you’d pay for it?
Posted by kitp8u on November 9, 2005 at 2:02 PM (PDT)