Beet.tv‘s Andy Plesser reports that the co-producers of lonelygirl15, Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried, have raised $5 million in venture funding for their new company, EQAL.

They’re building a digital media studio and working on product placement and licensing deals.

“We’re going to teach Hollywood how to do it right,” said Beckett.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Warner Music Group losses increased in the fiscal second quarter as the company continues to struggle with a drop-off in sales of compact discs as consumers shift toward digital music.

The company remains “excited about the long-term prospects for our business”, according to Chairman and Chief Executive Edgar Bronfman Jr. said, despite the fact that “an uncertain economic backdrop and evolving recorded music industry make a conservative approach to our balance sheet a prudent strategy.”

For the quarter ended March 31, the recording company reported a net loss of $37 million, or 25 cents a share, compared with a net loss of $27 million, or 19 cents a share, a year earlier. The latest results include a two-cent loss from discontinued operations.

Revenue rose 2% to $800 million, although in constant currency it fell 3.6%. The mean estimates of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters were for a loss of 12 cents a share on revenue of $780 million. Gross profit margin climbed to 48.4% from 45.5%.

Radionomy, a Belgian startup, is a site that lets you create a free, ad-supported Web radio station

The site, now in beta testing, is designed to make creating a Web radio station trivial, letting you browse through vast music, jingle and content libraries made available by Radionomy. You can also integrate your own musical creations or recordings.

Radionomy also supports a variety of social networking features, including tagging, embed code and station sharing. Here’s an example embed:

Radionomy broadcasts your station free of charge and bears all the costs, including copyrights. Radionomy is supported through audio ads broadcast with the stations. Radionomy offers a revenue share based on your station’s audience.

The name Radionomy come from the merger of two concepts: Radio + Autonomy. The founders of Radionomy thought that Internauts should be able to create radio with full autonomy.

Following two class-action lawsuits, Apple Canada is offering $45 credits to Canadian residents who purchased first-, second- or third-generation iPods before June 24, 2004.

The proposed settlement is the result of two iPod owners suing because rechargeable batteries in the second year of use conked out after just three hours, contrary to the advertised claim of eight hours between recharges.

Apple agreed to a settlement covering both claims. As many as 80,000 Canadians could be eligible, including 11,310 Quebecers, said Montreal lawyer Philippe Trudel, who represented Lenzi.

Speculation is running wild on the Web about Microsoft possibly building a content censor into the Zune software.

It comes as a result of a New York Times article that looked at why NBC pulled its TV content from Apple’s iTunes store and is now distributing it for the Zune.

NYT’s Saul Hansell writes:

Late Tuesday afternoon I reached J. B. Perrette, the president of digital distribution for NBC Universal, to ask why NBC found Microsoft’s video store more appealing than Apple’s.

He explained that NBC, like most studios, would like the broadest distribution possible for its programming. But it has two disputes with Apple.

First, Apple insists that all TV shows have an identical wholesale price so that it can sell all of them at $1.99. NBC wants to sell its programs for whatever price it chooses.

Second, Apple refused to cooperate with NBC on building filters into its iPod player to remove pirated movies and videos.

Microsoft, by contrast, will accept NBC’s pricing scheme and will work with it to try to develop a copyright “cop” to be installed on its devices.

Microsoft’s official word has been to deny this. According to Microsoft’s Cesar Menendez:

We have seen some chatter in the blogosphere over the last 24 hours around a couple of posts speculating about what Zune may or may not do in terms of putting content filtering features directly into the Zune family of devices in future releases.

We know you guys are following this discussion closely, and wanted to be absolutely clear on this issue:

We have no plans or commitments to implement any new type of content filtering in the Zune devices as part of our content distribution deal with NBC.

We think some folks in the industry were expressing hopes for how the entire industry, not just Microsoft, would come to look at content distribution, and some speculation has ensued. Again, no plans are in place toward this end.

Menendez’s comment are unlikely to clear up the controversy.

There Are Good Reasons To Fear Microsoft’s DRM & Content Filtering

Microsoft has demonstrated that it’s more than happy to screw its customers with DRM in order to cut costs, even as it rakes up profits of 4.4 billion in a quarter.

DRM is still a major stumbling block limiting the consumption of digital video. With Microsoft’s dismal record with DRM’d media, the NBC deal is doomed to failure.

If NBC, and other networks, are serious about digital media, they are going to have to either figure out viable ad-supported free content models or go the way of the music industry, and sell unencrypted content that will work on any player.

Other World Computing announced today the availability of 802.11n WiFi Adapters that promise to let any Macintosh computer upgrade to 802.11n wireless connectivity via USB, PCMCIA, or PCI card options.

With 802.11n, indoor ranges of up to 220 feet (outdoor up to 500 feet) and performance of up to 300Mbps are possible — or up to 5 times the range and performance of 802.11g. The 802.11n WiFi Adapters are fully tested and supported by OWC to work with any G3, G4, G5, or Intel processor-based Mac or PC with an available PCI, USB 2.0, or PCMCIA Card slot running Apple OS X 10.3.x or later or Windows 2000/XP and later.The new 802.11n WiFi Adapters offered by OWC also provide backwards compatibility for use on 802.11b and 802.11g networks.

Apple first introduced support for the 802.11n wireless protocol in January 2007. Until recently, the only Macs able to utilize 802.11n were the Mac Pro Quad/8-Way Towers or MacBook/MacBook Pro/iMac models with a Core 2 Duo processor.

Priced from $67.99, the OWC 802.11n WiFi Adapters are supported by OWC to work with any G3, G4, G5, or Intel processor-based Mac or PC with an available PCI, USB 2.0, or PCMCIA Card slot running Apple OS X 10.3.x or later or Windows 2000/XP and later.

HP today announced that it is making the video content of YouTube available through its MediaSmart “smart television” products, including the upcoming MediaSmart Connect digital media receiver and the high-definition MediaSmart TV.

HP joins Apple and others in a growing field of companies trying to make viewing Internet media on your television as easy as watching traditional television.

HP worked with YouTube to make it possible for people to watch and share full-screen videos on their HDTVs and to create multiple playlists from anywhere they watch TV: Viewers simply log into their YouTube accounts with a remote and start watching videos.

MediaSmart products aggregate digital media from multiple networked home PCs into one easy-to-view menu for HDTV playback using a remote control.

“People want to participate in the YouTube community in ways that fit their individual lifestyles,” said Jim Patterson, group product manager, YouTube. “To that end, we are excited to support HP in bringing YouTube into the living room through the MediaSmart platform.”

We’ve reported previously that newspapers are losing advertisers to Internet media, that young people are abandoning newspapers for Internet media and that newspaper revenue is tanking.

The result of these trends is that the value of traditional newspapers is in a freefall:

• Avista, the PE-fund that bought the Minneapolis Star-Tribune for $530 million in late 2006, has written down 75 percent of its original investment. The leverage fund only put up $100 million of its own cash, with the rest coming form financiers. A letter to the fund’s investors, denied a report saying it was on the brink of bankruptcy, though the firm has hired Blackstone to help it deal with its financial issues.
• McClatchy, the third-largest newspaper owner, has seen its shares go down over 60 percent since the end of 2006.
• Shares of Journal Communications, which operates dozens of newspapers and television stations, are down by over 50 percent.

According to the Star Tribune, the write-down, taken at the end of 2007, reflects the estimated loss of value and is consistent with the falling stock prices of other publicly held newspaper companies.

Newspapers need a reboot in order to remain relevant. Much of the content in mainstream newspapers is syndicated content that readers are likely to have seen previously online. In an age of Twitter communication, newspapers can’t provide timely coverage, either.

via paidContent

Family media firm Entertainment Rights has announced deals that will bring a variety of classic cartoons to the Web via YouTube, Joost and Babelgum.

The launches will see Entertainment Rights provide all three platforms with a selection of retro programming, including:

• He-Man
• She-Ra
• Trapdoor
• Felix the Cat
• Rocky & Bullwinkle
• The Archies
• Fat Albert
• Casper the Friendly Ghost.

“Entertainment Rights wants to be where the audience is and online video enables the company to exploit its brands which have strong retro appeal,” said ER’s Laura Turner Laing.

The deal formed with YouTube will see a new free-to-view channel launch – Retro Heroes. The channel will feature short form (2 and 5 minute webisodes). The deals with Babelgum and Joost will feature long form content.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has announced the release of its Digital Video In-Stream Ad Format Guidelines.

The guidelines focus on the most widely used current in-stream ad products, including linear video ads, non-linear video ads and companion ads.

They were created in order to meet the following needs:

• Simplifying digital video ad buying across multiple sites through minimum common ad specifications for video, overlay and companion ads.
• Achieving more efficient operations through a common set of creative submission guidelines.
• Increasing consumer understanding of ad interactions and environments through best practice recommendations for creative development and player environments.

“Consumers have been swift to embrace the digital video experience online, and marketers have incorporated it just as rapidly into their advertising plans,” said Randall Rothenberg, president and CEO of the IAB. “With the creation and adoption of these formats and guidelines, we see no end in sight to its potential for growth.”