Newspaper print advertising sales have fallen to their lowest level in a decade, according to statistics from the Newspaper Association of America.

Print revenues in the first six months of this year totaled $20.3 billion, the lowest since the $19.7 billion in sales recorded in the first half of 1997. Print ad sales in the first half of this year were 8.3% below the depressed level recorded in the same period in 2006.

The drop reflects two larger trends: people are shifting their��attention to online media��& advertisers are shifting their ad budgets to online media.��

While the Newspaper Association touted a 19% increase in online ad sales to $796 million, print ad sales represented a bit more than 93% of the industry���s total volume of $22.49 billion in the first half of the year. At this rate, online ad sales won’t come close to replacing the lost revenue from declining print ad sales.

via Newsasaur

Apple today announced that it will not be selling NBC television shows for the upcoming television season at the iTunes Store. According to Apple, the move is a result of disagreements over per episode pricing, which NBC wanted to increase from $1.99 to $4.99.

“We are disappointed to see NBC leave iTunes because we would not agree to their dramatic price increase,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of iTunes. “We hope they will change their minds and offer their TV shows to the tens of millions of iTunes customers.”

The split will take its toll on iTunes TV show sales. NBC supplied iTunes with three of its 10 best-selling TV shows last season, accounting for 30 percent of iTunes’ TV show sales.

A Losing Strategy

Revenue from Internet video downloads is still fairly insignificant, so it’s smart for NBC and other content producers to look for ways to keep Apple from dominating digital video sales like they have come to dominate music downloads.

However, NBC appears to be pursuing the same losing strategy that the music industry has taken – trying to establish new proprietary standards. NBC is a partner in a new entertainment portal, Hulu, that will offer shows via a custom player.

The problem with this approach is that people are used to getting their media in standard forms, CD & DVDs. You don’t have to worry if a CD is from Warner or Universal; if it’s a CD, you can expect it to work in your CD player. The same holds true with DVDs.

The major music labels have tried over and over to create their own closed standards for digital music downloads and failed, because nobody wants to be limited to one label and nobody wants to have to think about the underlying mechanics. People just want to buy their music.

Proprietary portals, like Hulu, also have a long history of failure. NBC would be better off keeping its content in iTunes and working with other networks to create open standards for commercial video downloads. This would create a competitive environment for digital video sales and increase competition among portable media manufactures.

Even more important for the major networks, though, establishing an open standard for digital video sales would help them avoid a digital video download market that’s dominated by a single vendor, Apple.

Alex Iskold has penned an article over at Read/WriteWeb that asks “Will Podcasting Survive?”. The article suggests that podcasting is stagnating, that podcasting is losing steam, and that it’s even going out of fashion.

Here are the points Read/WriteWeb offers to support their claim that podcasting is stagnating:

• Podcast technology inherently limits interest;
• Podcasting startup PodTech is in trouble;
• Search requests for podcasting peaked two years ago;
• Podcasts face competition from other stuff that’s more interesting;
• There are few times when you can listen to a podcast;
• Monetization is a challenge;
• Big companies are making podcasts.

Iskold’s conclusion is that “It appears that podcasts are not picking up steam, and rather, podcasting is actually slowing down.”

Iskold’s argument is not just bad, but spectacularly bad. Not only does Iskold fail to understand what a podcast is, but he apparently doesn’t understand basic technology adoption patterns.

Because Read/WriteWeb typically offers more thoughtful analysis, we think it’s important to take a look at their reasons for asking whether podcasting will survive…..

Sony today took the wraps off two new Walkman players that not only support audio – but support video and podcasts.

According to Sony, the new NWZ-A810 and NWZ-S610 series of Walkman digital music players support an open platform alternative to iTunes/iPods, providing more choices for downloading and managing music and video collections online.

Users can download movie trailers, music videos, podcasts and video clips from the Internet and use readily-available shareware to convert the clips for use with the Walkman video players. Sony Pictures Entertainment has also provided video content for both of the new players, which is hosted at www.sonystyle.com/walkman.

While Sony states that the new Walkmans offer podcast support, they don’t currently offer the tight integration between software and hardware that the iTunes/iPod platform provides.

The video players have a Quarter Video Graphics Array (QVGA) LCD screen that displays video at 30 frames per second. QVGA is a display mode for small screens in which the resolution is 320 pixels vertically by 240 pixels horizontally.

The battery life allows up to eight hours of video playback for the NWZ-A810 series and nine-and-a-half hours for the NWZ-S610 series. The battery also provides up to 33 hours of music playback for both series.

The players support security-enhanced Windows Media Audio (WMA), as well as non-secure AAC and MP3 music formats, plus JPEG files for photos, in addition to the AVC (H.264/AVC) Baseline Profile and MPEG-4 video codecs.

Pricing and Availability

The NWZ-A810 series of Walkman video music players come in three different capacities and five colors:

• The NWZ-A815 player has a total capacity of 2GB; comes in white, pink, black, blue and silver; and will cost about $140.
• The NWZ-A816 player has a total capacity of 4GB; comes in white, pink, black and silver; and will cost about $180.
• The NWZ-A818 player has a total capacity of 8GB, comes in black and silver, and will cost about $230.

The NWZ-S610 series of Walkman music players come in three different capacities and four colors:

• The NWZ-S615F player has a total capacity of 2GB; comes in black, pink, red and silver; and costs about $120.
• The NWZ-S616F player has a total capacity of 4GB; comes in black, pink, red and silver; and costs about $160.
• The NWZ-S618F player has a total capacity of 8GB, comes in black, and costs about $210.

The NWZ-B100 series of Walkman music players come in two different capacities and colors:

• The NWZ-B103F player has a total capacity of 1GB, comes in black, and costs about $60.
• The NWZ-B105F player has a total capacity of 2GB, comes in black and white, and costs about $80.

The players will be available in September.

SplashCast has updated its embeddable media player. The SplashCast service lets you create streaming media ‘channels’ that mix together video, music, photos, narration, text, as well as RSS feeds, PowerPoint presentations and PDF documents.

“We‚Äôre really excited about all the changes we‚Äôve made,” said SplashCast’s Marshall Kirkpatrick, “We believe that our new player scores super high in both feature richness and accessibility.”

Here are the highlights of the new version:

• Item level navigation, with preview thumbnails and captions.
• Inline, multi-media commenting – text, video and audio – with easy publisher moderation.
• “Follow me” email subscription to future shows by any publisher.

Here’s an example of the player in action:

Rain Recording has announced their first AMD processor-based audio workstation line, called Solstice. Solstice workstations are a new addition to Rain’s line of computers, which are built specifically for the needs of professional audio and video production.

Powered by AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual-core processors, the Solstice 01 and 02 workstations can support demanding audiovisual applications, according to Rain, without the potential bottleneck of a traditional front side bus.

Here are the specs:

Solstice O1
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+

• CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 5000+ with HyperTransport
• RAM: 2GB (800MHz)
• OS Drive: 250GB
• Audio Drive: 250GB
• Price $1,499.95

Solstice O2
AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+

• CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 6000+ with HyperTransport
• RAM: 4GB (800MHz)
• OS Drive: 250GB
• Audio Drive: 500GB
• Price $1,799.95

KickApps Corporation, a hosted social media platform, today announced a service for sharing videos for use with iPhones. Videos uploaded to KickApps-powered social media sites can be viewed on the iPhone using the device’s Safari web browser.

With today’s announcement, KickApps is the first social media platform to support web video viewing and sharing on the iPhone. You can see an example of a KickApps site optimized for the iPhone at KickFlix.net.

A&P has unceremoniously sacked brothers Mark and Matthew D’Avella for using the company facilities to film a faux-gangsta rap video, Produce Paradise. The brothers, aka Double D and Razor Blade, made the video of themselves performing as the Fresh Beets.

Here’s why Double D calls himself “the Vanilla Ice of our generation”:

The brothers were canned over “inappropriate acts”, which presumably includes filming a gangsta rap video on company property, urinating on the produce and dropping your pants at work.

In a statement, A&P spokesman Richard De Santa said, “Producing a video that intentionally and unjustly depicts our company in a negative light, and utilizing company facilities without management knowledge of the specific content involved, is obviously a blatant violation of our policy.”

Double D Lawsuit

Unfortunately for the Fresh Beets, their trouble with A&P didn’t end with them getting fired. A&P is now suing them for a cool one million dollars. Here’s what “Razor Blade” has to say about the situation:

Hello everybody, this is the million dollar update that you have all been waiting for. Today the A&P has escalated this situation to the next level. We were informed by the Courier News that The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company has filed a lawsuit against myself and Double D. They have issued a cease and desist order on the video which demands we remove the video from both youtube.com and our site, fakelaugh.com. They are also seeking restitution in the amount of AT LEAST $1,000,000.00, that is not a typo. The A&P is suing two college students for at least one million dollars. Claiming that, because of the “Produce Paradise” video they have lost at least one million dollars. We have yet to see the actual lawsuit we were only briefed by a reporter as to its contents. As soon as we get a copy you can be sure there will be an update.

We’re not sure what A&P hopes to gain from the suit, since they are unlikely to get any money from a couple of college kids and the lawsuit will only bring more attention to the video.

If the D’Avella’s lose the lawsuit, maybe they’ll end up doing community service…..like making an Internet video that reminds you why you should always wash your produce.

Akamai Technologies, a leading provider of Internet content delivery services, has announced that it is offering services to help customers deliver the HD Web.

Akamai’s content delivery network works by distributing requests for files over a worldwide network of servers. That way, when you click on a link to play an Akamai-hosted video, you get the file from a server that can deliver the file to you quickly.

The Market is Ready For The HD Web

“As broadband video viewership has escalated, consumers have raised the stakes by demanding better and better content experiences,” said Will Richmond, president and founder of Broadband Directions LLC, a market intelligence and consulting firm specializing in broadband-delivered video. “To deliver against these requirements, media and entertainment companies need to offer higher bit rate files with enhanced online fidelity of video and audio files. Doing so in a scalable and cost-effective manner requires that the necessary infrastructure to support high definition content must be deployed.”

“The capacity to deliver high throughput files already exists at the ‘edge’ ‚Äì leveraging the massive build-outs occurring in hundreds of individual networks. The challenge comes from how you tap into that capacity. The only way to solve this problem is to deliver from within these networks,” according to Akamai’s Mike Afergan. “For example, on our distributed platform, we serve more than half of all the files, 500 MB or greater, at more than 1.4 Mbps, and this is only increasing. This demonstrates that, by leveraging the right architecture, there are already a large number of end-users capable of downloading higher quality content. This technical capability coupled with the market demand is exciting for the industry.”

Features of Akamai’s service include:

• Technology and an operational model to operate servers on the largest high-throughput networks around the world
• Support for delivery, storage, and management of files greater than 2 Gigabytes
• Support of VC-1 and MPEG-4 video standards, achieving visual parity with other broadcast video networks
• Support for files with resolutions of 720p, 1080i and 1080p
• Client-side technology that is deeply integrated into its delivery system to be deployed as appropriate

“As broadband connectivity becomes more ubiquitous, users are demanding ‚Äì and frankly should expect ‚Äì a high-quality, high-definition video experience on the Internet,” said Mike Afergan, chief technology officer, Akamai. “Delivering premium HD content is a critical way for our customers to attract and delight their audiences in today’s highly competitive media environment. We are just at the beginning of a very exciting market opportunity for delivering premium HD content. Consumer demand exists, broadband is ready, and businesses are looking for ways to maximize the value of their high-production HD content.”

Dave Winer, one of the creators of podcasting, offers his take on the process of syncing that is central to most people’s podcast consumption:

Why syncing sucks – I think synching is a bad idea, but Apple’s mobile technology is built around it. I dislike synching. I want my devices to go straight to the cloud, both ways. My podcast player should have a built-in podcatcher. And my podcast recorder should also be a publisher.

Seems unlikely that Google’s phone will depend on synching. It will be more Dave Winer-compatible than the iPhone is.

Winer’s main complaint about syncing appears to be the computer-centric way that it’s implemented with the current generation of portable media players; you subscribe to a podcast with your computer, which syncs content with a distant provider, and then the computer syncs podcasts with your portable media player.

As players get WiFi and other wireless Internet connections, portable media players should be able to access content directly, without a dependency on a computer. This may require better power management and new approaches to synchronizing content between computers and portable media players, but it will result in players with more timely content. This would make portable media players more suited to viewing/listening to things like news and sports.

Deemphasizing the computer could also help give a shot in the arm to the idea of mobile podcasting. Many phones and portable media devices can record audio and video, but it’s typically a geek-challenging task to publish this content wirelessly. As device developers¬†make better use of wireless connectivity, mobilecasting is likely to turn portable media player owners into Internet media publishers, just as blogging has turned many computer owners into Web publishers.