Live Internet Television

ivi, Inc. with its channel partner Africast, is carrying all the final matches of the Orange Africa Cup of Nations live online through the downloadable ivi TV player. There is a free promotional period of the preliminary round matches Jan 10th through the 23rd, where some matches will be rerun. The real fun starts when the finals start on Jan 24th, where ivi is offering 1/4 Finals, 1/2 Finals, 3rd Place, and the Final match for Pay-Per-View of the COCAN sponsored events. This marks the first time that viewers can watch live football from Africa to the world on the Internet.

Viewers will be able to choose per day bundles, or pay to watch the entire finals according to the live CAN Angola airing times:

PPV Events:

Orange Africa Cup Playoffs Complete Package LIVE – All Matches

Starting Jan 24, 2010 (16:00 UTC) – Jan 31, 2010

Orange Africa Cup Quarter Finals LIVE Jan 24, 2010

Angola v. Ghana (16:00 UTC)
Cote d’Ivoire v. Algeria (19:30 UTC)

Orange Africa Cup Quarter Finals LIVE Jan 25, 2010

Egypt v. Cameroon (16:00 UTC)
Zambia v. Nigeria (19:30 UTC)

Orange Africa Cup Semi Finals LIVE Jan 28, 2010

Winner 25 v. Winner 28 (16:00 UTC)
Winner 26 v. Winner 27 (19:30 UTC)

Orange Africa Cup Third Place Game LIVE Jan 30, 2010

Loser 29 v. Loser 30 (16:00 UTC)

Orange Africa Cup Final LIVE Jan 31, 2010

Winner 29 v. Winner 30 (16:00 UTC)

Andrew Vanacore’s interesting piece running in the Huffington Post and in the Seattle Times today about the endangered state of free TV really underscores how direly TV needs a new model, as ad revenue erodes and viewership splinters.

The business model is unraveling at ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox and the local stations that carry the networks’ programming. Cable TV and the Web have fractured the audience for free TV and siphoned its ad dollars. The recession has squeezed advertising further, forcing broadcasters to accelerate their push for new revenue to pay for programming.

That will play out in living rooms across the country. The changes could mean higher cable or satellite TV bills, as the networks and local stations squeeze more fees from pay-TV providers such as Comcast and DirecTV for the right to show broadcast TV channels in their lineups. The networks might even ditch free broadcast signals in the next few years.

As people discovered in ‘08 with the Beijing Olympics, it can be hard to watch what you want live online, even if it’s heavily promoted as being “live online.” To protect its TV ad revenue by keeping viewership up, NBC made sure that a lot of its live online content was not available to US customers (Silicon Alley Insider).

With the upcoming Vancouver Olympics, NBC is trying something a little different (Media Daily News):

The system, tabbed “Olympics Online Connect,” allows people to prove via an authentication process that they pay a provider for TV service. That measure opens the gate to more than 1,000 hours of live Olympic streaming and full-event replays.

“TV Everywhere” is a concept designed to prevent customers from dropping their pay TV service if the same content is available online gratis.

This is exactly the kind of mindset — in effect, keeping people from accessing the content they want by making it too expensive in a bundle — that ivi seeks to make obsolete.

Want to be among the first to experience the first true live Internet TV?

Download the promo-version of the free ivi player we put together for NewTeeVee Live.

We hope you’ll also post any comments you have on the experience.

“The trail may be cold, but the stories are hot!”

By ivi blog Guest Contributor Dr. Rob Moore

---

In this series, we have seen examples of how Hollywood stardom has come to many who were willing to dream, develop world class skills, and persevere. We have also stressed that, often, the process of “becoming” a star is more rewarding than actually “arriving.”

In this article, we will acknowledge that, despite the exceptions who do indeed succeed in climbing the Everest that is Hollywood ambition, the odds are small an individual with modest personal resources (primarily contacts and money) will become a major player in motion pictures.

For perspective’s sake, one could say the same of becoming the CEO of a major US corporation…with the caveat that there are many more Fortune 500 CEOs than there are successful film stars.

With that as background, let us take a look at casting agencies, and the challenges they face, standing as they do between  ambition and big screen success.

We need to be clear. In the real world of northwest Los Angeles, equal opportunity is seldom the rule of thumb.

Why is this so? How can there be such a chasm between what prominent performers say about  social inclusion and the behavior of the industry they represent?

The answer is to be found in every Economics 101 classroom. The law of supply and demand.

For instance, in a previous article, we mentioned  that 3000 actors auditioned for the leading male role in the  TV series Moonlighting opposite Cybill Shepherd. Bruce Willis was chosen for the part, and the rest is TV history.

This number of persons may seem outsized. However, at least this many resumes are considered any time a good part in a film is opened to relatively unknown talent.

And, with technology now being used by casting agencies, the number of persons considered for each role of this kind may eventually reach the tens of thousands.

So what do casting agencies do?

On the low end of the prestige spectrum, we have agencies that primarily take orders for film extras. Those are the people you see in films crossing streets or dining in a restaurant when a staged gang hit takes place.

Then there are casting agencies established by former mid-level stars whose careers have run their course, but who wish to use their industry contacts both to make a living and also to help others obtain work, starting with extras and perhaps working up to some minor players. The hope of these agencies is to hit it big with a few performers, demonstrate their worth to noteworthy personalities, and, by word of mouth  graduate to the “big time.”

And finally, there are the big timers like the William Morris agency which serve functions somewhere between the casting agency and personal agent.  These are the kinds of agencies where newcomers need not apply unless they have serious contacts in the industry. If one is a daughter of Meryl Streep, fine. If one is the daughter of a Milwaukee bus driver, better apply to the city of Milwaukee for a driver’s license. Read the rest of this entry »