BRANDING UNBOUND

‘Battlestar Galactica:’ Podcast, Web-Only Episodes Lead To Season Premiere

Battlestar is back.

The series Rolling Stone has called “the smartest and toughest show on TV” is priming the pump for its big season three premiere October 6 with a series of Web-only “Webisodes” for play on the Web, iPods and other handheld devices.

Beginning today and every Tuesday and Thursday, new episodes, each just a few minutes long, will follow two soldiers in a new city built by humans fleeing the evil robotic Cylons, tying the climactic season two finale with the October 6 episode.

“This is a way to get people talking about the show a month before it airs,” Craig E. Engler, general manager of SciFi.com – the official Web site of network SciFi – says in today’s New York Times.

You can watch the first show right now at SciFi.com. Titled “The Resistance,” the first episode focuses on Web-only characters, but does include several faces familiar to longtime viewers. The best part – today’s episode includes a season three preview.

The effort is part of a broad array of interactive initiatives launched by the show’s producers. EP Ronald D. Moore, for instance, creates a blog and a weekly podcast designed to be listened to while watching each new episode. Another EP, David Eick, keeps a video-blog about the making of the show. And “Battlestar” was among the first shows viewable via Apple’s iTunes service.

A one-hour recap of the show, titled “The Story So Far” will air this month on several NBC Universal channels – including Sci Fi, USA, Sleuth, Bravo and Universal HD, and later on via SciFi.com, iTunes, YoutTube, Yahoo.com, on United Air Lines flights and at Universal theme parks beginning today, according to the Times.

It remains to be seen if the season lives up to all this promotion.

Then again, this is probably the most critically-acclaimed shows on TV, and millions of viewers have yet to discover it. We’ll see if this new effort preaches to the converted or helps create a whole new legion of fans.

BRANDING UNBOUND the book takes an inside look at how shows like 24, The Simple Life, Drawn Together, The Real World and others use new interactive technologies to connect with consumers via iPods, mobile phones and other personal devices.

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BMI’s Podcast Series Heats Up With New Artists

BMI has ranked among the leaders in the music industry in using digital media to cross-promote and cross-sell its artists. Its next “See It Hear First” podcast features up-and-comers like Oh No! Oh My, God or Julie, Justin Nozuka and O.T.I.S. Since its launch in 2005, this series has attracted more than one million listeners from around the world who hope to tap into new music from a wide array of genres. Podcast listeners can vote for their favorite artists for the chance to win a CD duplication package and 1,000 discs (to heck with piracy fears). Check it out at bmi.com/podcast. BRANDING UNBOUND was the first general business book to talk about podcasting, and how BMI, EMI, and others are using it to connect to a whole new generation of music fans.

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Coming To iPods: Aniston & Aquaman

Friends don’t let friends go without “Friends.”

Warner Bros. Television has signed a deal to bring shows like “Friends” to iTunes for the first time. According to Variety, the deal will even bring the pilot for WBTV’s “Aquaman” to the online media service. Unable to swim with the tides of shows adopted to the new CW network, Aquaman’s sunk, for now, on TV – but could find life online. Carton classics “The Flintstones” and “The Jetsons” will soon bow on iTunes, too.

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6.6% of Internet Users Download Podcasts

There aren't many pod people – yet.

Nielsen/Netratings has released a new report that finds just 6.6% of the US adult online population, or roughly 9.2 million Web users, have recently downloaded an audio podcast. Just 4%, or 5.6 million Web users, have recently downloaded a video podcast.

Interestingly, Web users between the ages of 18 and 24 are nearly twice as likely as the average Web user to download audio podcasts, while 25-34 year olds are more likely to download video podcasts. And overwhelmingly, all of these people tend to be Apple users - from iPods to computers to Web browsers (Safari).

Hey, it's not all bad news. 6.6% is still higher than the 3.9% who check out online dating sites.

But still, counter that to the number of people who own iPods. In 2005 alone, 32 million iPods were sold, and who knows how many other MP3-compatible devices were sold out there. And something like 800 million mobile phones - a growing percentage of which can download podcasts. And counter that to the number of people who pay bills online (51.6%).

It's like a Diffusion Group report released today on convergent consumer technologies. Metrics on the sales of consumer devices means nothing. Usage metrics does. Just because someone buys a device (say, an iPod) that they can listen to podcasts on doesn't mean they will. And clearly, podcasting has a ways to go before it becomes truly mainstream, even among today's Web users - and the marketers who sell to them.

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NPR: The Podcasting Champ

Today seems to be podcasting day.

So we’d be remiss to fail mentioning NPR’s major awards last week at the Webbys, where it picked up more awards than any other broadcaster. That’s in part due to its aggressive approach to podcasting.

The 36-year-old public broadcaster has 52 shows on Apple’s iTunes, and 313 titles in its online podcast directory, according to Ad Age. It has also been moving into edgier fair, including “Press Start” about video games, and two digital radio channels on Sirius and a new agreement with MobiTV’s MobiRadio, which brings NPR to cell phones. Next year, NPR plans to add broadband video.

As Ken Stern, NPR’s chief operating officer puts it in this week’s Ad Age: “The endgame is pretty clear. We do audio very well, and we’re going to exploit it to our advantage. We are looking to experiment in multimedia – to round out the offering beyond our core advantages in domestic news – to expand out globally from news to music. It is what public radio does. It creates a meaningful presence in the world.”

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Nick Jr. Launches First Video Podcasts Aimed At Preschoolers

Starting today, Nick Jr. is using video podcasts to whet kids’ appetites for its new animated series, “Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!”

The effort includes 10 music videos and “character segments” that will premiere every Tuesday over the next 11 weeks, leading up to the television premiere.

Now, I’m not completely sure how many preschoolers are schooled in downloading podcasts, but I’m sure there are enough tech-savvy parents out there who wouldn’t mind creating a portable “babysitter” for their kids.

Then again, we can always hope that’s not the case.

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Mopar Launches Video Podcast Series

Mopar is joining the ranks of corporate video podcasters with a new site and video podcast series featuring cool cars, events, and professional and grassroots racing action.

"The way people are finding entertainment and getting their information is rapidly changing," Kevin Miller, Senior Manager, Mopar Brand, Performance & Motorsports, recently told Podcasting News. "The new Podcast format gives Mopar enthusiasts a forum on which to show the world their spirit, using the hot new podcast communications medium."

Users can submit their own video content for consideration for the chance to win a one-year subscription to Mopar Magazine. “Mopar Nation” may never be the same.

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Bluetooth + Podcasts: News In The AM

From New Media Age:

Yesterday, London’s “City AM” financial and business newspaper has launched a new service that offers 5-minute podcasts of news to commuters.

Specially-equipped billboards from titan Outdoor entice commuters to turn on the Bluetooth function on their phones to download the podcasts to their cell phones.

Who says print and outdoor are history?

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The New Republican Edition iPod

Apparently the hosts of five “MyGOP” house parties that raise the most money for the Republican Party are using a “Republican edition iPod Video” (the GOPod?) as a premium. No word yet if it spies on your entertainment habits without a warrant.

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Podcasts: Nobody’s Listening

According to a new Forrester research study, just 1% of online households in North America regularly download and listen to podcasts. The study teases out important considerations for content creators and advertisers:

• People prefer podcasts of existing content from broadcast or Internet radio – not podcast-original content

• Audio versions of print content from newspapers barely ranks above podcast-original content

• Companies that are interested in using podcasts for their audio should focus not only on downloads, but also on streaming audio as a means to get their content and ads to consumers.

Forrester projects only 700,000 households in the US will use podcasting in 2006 – a figure that should grow to 12.3 million households by 2010. That’s still less than 5% of the US population.

So does Forrester think companies should put podcasting on the backburner? Not at all. Existing content in that form work well for certain segments of your audience that hates to listen to streamed audio on a computer.

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