Tubefilter: YouTube TV Unveils $20 ‘4K Plus’ Add-On Package, Sports-Specific Features Ahead Of Olympics. “Ahead of the Olympics kickoff next month, YouTube TV is releasing a series of new features, including a 4K add-on package, as well as 5.1 Dolby Audio, which is gradually rolling out for free to all members.”
TV Technology: Social Media Use While Watching TV Can Result in Memory Loss. “A new study by Stanford University has found that watching TV while also scrolling social media can lead to memory loss. The research, published in Nature, found that people who reported engaging in multiple forms of digital media at once, such as watching TV while texting and browsing social media, had a poorer memory than those who concentrated on just one.”
ZDNet: Best free video streaming services in 2020: Crackle, IMDb TV, Pluto TV, and more. “There are currently 11 good free services to try, and good old-fashioned over-the-air (OTA) antenna TV. Yes, you do have to put up with commercials on all of these — and there’s not a DVR features to be seen — but they are free. With so many selections to choose from, I can guarantee you’ll find something to watch that won’t hurt your pocketbook by even a single penny.”
CNET: Ransomware hits TV search engine popular among political campaigns. “One of this year’s first hacks to affect the 2020 US presidential election happened Thursday. TVEyes, a broadcast television search engine used by political campaigns to monitor opponents and track ads, said Friday it was hit with a ransomware attack.”
Android Community: YouTube TV now available in 8 more US cities/regions. “While there are already several video streaming apps, those who also want to have the ability to watch Live TV when you want to. Well, doing it without the usual cable subscription or on a mobile device. YouTube TV is one such service, but it’s only available in selected areas in the US. Now they’re expanding to 8 more cities and regions, specifically Austin, Albuquerque, Sacramento, Birmingham, Norfolk, Greenville, Portland, and Raleigh. Just last July they added 10 more markets which means they are getting a bit faster in terms of expanding it to the rest of the major areas in the country.”
Recode: Amazon’s Twitch wants to stream some ‘choose your own adventure’ TV shows. “Twitch wants to stream original programming, according to COO Kevin Lin, but with a catch: It wants to stream TV shows that are actually written and produced along the way with input from Twitch’s viewers. A kind of ‘choose your own adventure’ TV show.” TV McTVshowface.
Engadget: Facebook could launch two dozen ‘TV-like’ original shows in June. “Facebook might be getting ready to make its video dreams a reality: According to Business Insider, the social network plans to launch two dozen original shows in June. Its no secret that the company has been looking for partners that can create unique programming since 2016 and even tapped CollegeHumor co-founder Ricky Van Veen to lead the effort.”
New-to-me: a database of computer appearances in film and television. “Starring the Computer is a website dedicated to the use of computers in film and television. Each appearance is catalogued and rated on its importance (ie. how important it is to the plot), realism (how close its appearance and capabilities are to the real thing) and visibility (how good a look does one get of it). Fictional computers don’t count (unless they are built out of bits of real computer), so no HAL9000 – sorry.”
Knowledge@Wharton: How Facebook’s Big Bet on Video Could Change TV. “Facebook is aggressively ramping up its video strategy, cultivating content whether it comes from users, advertisers or Hollywood, or is developed internally. With its nearly two billion monthly users, the social network could make a big dent in traditional TV and help usher in a major shift towards social TV, Wharton experts say. The social network’s latest video push is partly due to a need to find more ad spaces. In its latest earnings call, Facebook says growth in the second half of 2017 will slow due to a peaking ad load, or how many ads are served up to users.”
If you’re not interested in the football but don’t want to miss the commercials, Quartz has a full list of them for you along with links.
Is Facebook building a streaming TV app? “Facebook hasn’t been shy about its recent push into video. The social network has been rolling out new video ad products and going so far as to reward longer and more engaging videos with better distribution on its platform. Now, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal, Facebook is going all-in on TV and developing its own app for streaming TV boxes.”
Facebook will start selling TV advertising. “Facebook has been marginally successful in eating into TV ad budgets with its super-targeted but mostly direct-response ads. Now, the social network is taking a more straightforward approach to that market. The social network has a plan to start selling video ads to set-top services like Roku and Apple TV through its third-party ad network.”
In development: an archive of local TV programming in Seattle, Washington. “The archive’s stated mission is to be an open-ended, publicly accessible research project ‘aimed at recovering, archiving and publicizing the local history of television in Seattle’ and to serve as a site for original scholarship on the history of television.”
The Internet Archive will keep tracking political ads right through election day. “As the Democrats and Republicans convene at their national party conventions in coming weeks, the general election kicks into full swing. Thanks to generous support from the Rita Allen Foundation, we are delighted to announce that the Political TV Ad Archive, a project of the Internet Archive, will be ramping up to track political ads airing in eight key battleground states in the lead up to Election Day.”
The University of Georgia is getting a huge trove of local news footage. “Hundreds of video tapes, loaded with stories that have aired on WTOC over the years, are headed to the UGA libraries…. The video tapes will be digitized and preserved for future generations.” “Some” of the contents, according to the story, will be made available to the public.
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