GRD Google Fans

The low rumble of angry fans who won’t be able to watch this week’s Packers Cowboys football game will be a roar by game time Thursday. Tens of thousands of football fans will pack local bars and living rooms of friends with DirectTV to watch the game on NFL Network.

All season long the NFL has e-mail blasted fans in attempts to pressure cable operators into offering the channel, and to do so as part of their basic package. More recently the league has stepped up the propaganda war, with a…

The Republicans face off tonight in another CNN/YouTube debate. 4,927 questions have been submitted for the eight candidates, more than double the submissions for the CNN/YouTube democratic debate.

James Kotecki has been chosen by YouTube to curate the debate homepage, and has selected some of the most worth watching user-generated political videos (above). The questions, as they were last time are pretty good.

Meanwhile, the debate over CNN’s right to select questions rages on, as do Ron Paul nuts supporters. Giuliani has emerged as the Republican front runner with 29%-33% support depending on…

Well, that was OK I guess. To be honest I didn’t make it through the whole thing, but was back to see the gay general make his awkward speech at the end after they turned his mic back on after cutting it off the first time.

Standard talking points were pretty much the name of the game, whether or not they answered the questions asked. From what I saw the selections were more stale than in the democratic debate, or it could just be that the novelty has worn off.

Some highlights…

UVNTV. “It works actually on a mac believe it or not.” That’s a hell of a catchphrase for Ice Cube’s new Silverlight powered online video portal being pimped on MSN Soapbox as “the biggest network in the world coming”

Above: Ice Cube Promotes UVNTV in Silverlight via Synergist

Ice Cube has fallen so far since being Doughboy in Boyz in the Hood. But enough making fun of his cameo as online video entrepreneur, everyone else is already doing that. UVNTV is actually kind of cool.

So far, the portal consists of 13 channels programmed by the…

You’d think that people would learn. Conference after conference, panel after panel, article after article, the pre-roll conversation rolls on. And, from my humble observations, it feels like we’re making some progress. The discussion isn’t just about the format being good or bad, but has moved into targeting, ad-to-content ratios, appropriate types of content, and protecting the user experience.

Turns out, though, that some people simply refuse to listen. Maybe it’s a last gasp of desperation from a desperate company. Maybe they didn’t sell these ad units. Maybe…..I dunno. But…

Not really sure what to make of this, other than being personally disappointed. I’m a big fan of Brightcove’s personal services, providing much better quality than YouTube. I never liked putting my personal videos up on YouTube, especially clips of friends and family. And for mixing a few clips together, Aftermix was a more than adequate mash-up / non-linear video editing tool. I never thought that enough people were using Brightcove that these personal, unmonetized streams and pages would be such a financial burden as to shut it down. But they…

Sports Business Daily announced the results of their third annual reader survey yesterday with some interesting stats.

The most surprising to me: nearly 80% of respondents think YouTube and Google are good for sports properties and networks.

YouTube: Friend or foe for networks and sports properties:
Friend: 79.9%
Foe: 20.1%
Responses 2,071

Digital partner you’d most like to have:
YouTube/Google 52.0%
Facebook 11.2%
MLB Advanced Media 10.8%
Yahoo! 10.6%
Myspace/Fox Interactive Media 9.6%
Responses 2,046

Contrast the YouTube finding with the fact that the top two league websites in the survey, MLB.com and NFL.com have arguably been the most restrictive of their online content.

League/property…

Yahoo! Video visits fell 27.5% from September to October, reports the Compete blog, ouch. But Yahoo!’s audience is pretty loyal, unique visits were steady, and the word on the street is they’re planning yet another relaunch of their video product.

MSN meanwhile was loving October, with 25.3% visitor growth.