Fey’s Palin video hits 6 mil on NBC.com
To no one’s surprise, that “Saturday Night Live” skit with Sarah Palin and Hilary Clinton has logged about 6 million views on NBC.com. (Some, however, were surprised to learn “SNL” was still on the air.)
That makes it NBC.com’s most-watched clip ever, swamping the previous champ “Dick in a Box” (with a mere 1 million views), the Hollywood Reporter says in a story about the monster week for online news and video. NBC.com’s meter says the count is 4.3 million, but there’s probably another version running around the site. Or they’re, like, really dumb liars.
NBC Universal rushed out the take-down order to YouTube as word spread about Tina Fey’s dead-on impersonation. There were a couple of crappy versions up on the ‘Tube as of Sunday morning.
Meanwhile, Apple and NBC reported that iTunes has racked up more than a million downloads for NBC Universal fare since the Sept. 9 return of Peacock content, some of it free.
Here’s the embed, all legal and nice, straight from NBC.com — anyone tired of this yet?
NBC shows back on iTunes, in HD
NBC shows are back on the iTunes store, ending a drawn-out and unusually messy dispute between NBC Universal and Apple.
The deal was announced at Tuesday’s unveiling of the new line of iPods. The iTunes 8 upgrade includes TV programs in high definition.
Here’s the Apple site’s plug for the HD TV shows, in a bit of a mash:
”Purchase select episodes of your favorite TV shows in high definition for just $2.99. Or get the whole season in HD with a Season Pass. And when you buy HD, iTunes doubles your viewing pleasure: You also get an iPod-ready version with a file size and resolution that’s ideal for smaller screens.”
The Apple-NBC dispute dates back to last September, when Jobs and NBC Universal’s Jeff Zucker duked it out over pricing flexibility. Jobs wanted to keep all TV shows at a neat and clean $1.99, while Zucker reportedly wanted to charge as much as $4.99 a show (NBCU denies this).
The new deal has regular shows at $1.99, HD at $2.99 and some catalog stuff for a buck. Apple is showing some flex with adoption of a “season pass” that allows viewers to save money on a bulk buy. The ability to bundle programs was one of NBC’s beefs with Apple.
“Basically we were able to achieve our goal that not all contents should be of the same value,” Zucker told CNBC. “When we achieved that, we were happy to be on iTunes.” Translation: iTunes Store users lost NBCU content for a year so Zucker could make fiscally meaningless adjustments in price.
NBC Universal is offering iTunes Store customers one free episode from each of their top series, in either SD or HD, for the next two weeks. The HD sounds great, but of course the shows are available for streaming over at Hulu for no cost.
The pre-broadcast previews of NBC shows “Knight Rider,” “My Own Worst Enemy,” “Life,” “Lipstick Jungle” and “Kath & Kim” will be available on iTunes as well as on Hulu and nbc.com
The deal includes content from USA Network, SCI FI Channel and Bravo. Programming from Oxygen, Telemundo and Mun2 is coming soon, the companies said.
Joost shifts to browser-based video
The P2P video service Joost is abandoning its proprietary desktop system and moving to a browser format, similar to Hulu’s.
Users still have to play host to a Joost plugin (18 MB or so), but by and large the move is another signal that the Internet’s video future will come without download applications that insist on control of your desktop.
NewTeeVee’s Liz Gannes got past the pre-beta password protection and posted an early review of the browser-based Joost. The influence of social media plays into the picture — Gannes reports that the home page has a Facebook-like component with which users can monitor what others are watching and interact, although not with IM (browser interface pictured).
Rivals Veoh and Jaman previously went to browser-rendered video.
CBS-backed Joost, only a year ago considered cutting edge, has been scaling back and adjusting its P2P video service for most of the year. Joost used live P2P streaming to carry March Madness games last spring.
Joost comes from Kaza and Skype founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom. The CEO is high-profile Mike Volpi, formerly with Cisco. Unlike YouTube and many other online video services, Joost focuses on professionally created content, but its offerings fall far short of the current pacesetter, Hulu, from NBC and Fox.
Moore docu a download: Can’t beat ‘em …
Saying he’s offering “a gift to my fans,” filmmaker Michael Moore confirmed that he’s premiering his new documentary via free online downloads.
The Sept. 23 release of “Slacker Uprising” is billed as “the first major feature-length movie by a noted director to debut for free on the Internet.”
Moore, of course, was the unwilling giver of free downloads of his last movie, “Sicko,” when the documentary about the health care system was leaked before its release and made available via BitTorrents.
“This is being done entirely as a gift to my fans,” Moore wrote on the “Slacker Uprising” sign-up page. “The only return any of us are hoping for is the largest turnout of young voters ever at the polls in November. I think ‘Slacker Uprising’ will inspire million to get off the couch and give voting a chance.”
The movie is about Moore’s tour of 62 cities in election swing states during the Bush-Kerry election. In an effort to get slackers off their asses and into his hard-left speeches, the celebrity filmmaker offered up “a clean change of underwear, Ramen noodles, and a promise that no event would start before noon and no politician would be allowed to speak. ”
GOP leaders in Moore’s home state of Michigan asked prosecutors to bring criminal charges against the leftie filmmaker for offering the clean skivvies and instant noodles as a “bribe” to get young people to vote.
The movie already made the rounds of film festivals, under the title “Captain Mike Across America.”
Downloads supposedly are restricted to downloaders in North America. The sign-up page verifies this by having you check a box, so who knows.
The movie was funded by Miramax founders Bob and Harvey Weinstein, as well as Moore. The free download is being organized and distributed by Robert Greenwald’s socially active Brave New Films. Card-carrying lefties all, as you’d expect. “None of us want to see any profit from this,” Greenwald said as he breathed life into the “Slacker Uprising” press release.
The free download will be available for three weeks. The “Slacker Uprising” DVD comes to market after the debut at a cheap price point of $9.95. Promising extras not on the download include “The O’Reilly Factor for Kids,” “My Pet Goat” and “More Ramen and Clean Underwear.”
“If you’re a McCain fan, this film should probably be rated X,” Moore said.
Hulu gets 5 NBC sneak peaks
The season debuts of NBC’s “Knight Rider,” “Lipstick Jungle,” “Chuck,” “Life” and “30 Rock” all are set to roll out on Hulu a week before their network TV broadcasts.
“Knight Rider” should draw the most attention, as it’s a true series premiere. Expectations for the updated tribute to man-car love are kind of low coming off the poorly received “Knight Rider” TV movie a while back.
Is the network just tossing the show to the Hulu fan-boy population? “Give us a chance! We haven’t even aired!” producer Gary Scott Thompson bellows. Hey, maybe the show’s so hot that they’re confidently going for hitmaking word of mouth … maybe. The “Knight Rider” premiere should hit Hulu about Sept. 17.
The other shows are middle-of the-pack fare, relatively low-rated: “Chuck” finished 63rd for the 2007-08 TV season, followed by “Life” (74th), “Lipstick Jungle” (99th) and “30 Rock” (111th, lagging “Cavemen”).
The shows also will be available early on NBC.com. Networks have used sneaks for season premieres before, but this is a first for Hulu, which officially launched just as the ’07-08 season was ending.
Meanwhile, the scofflaw journal Torrent Freak reported Tuesday that the return of Fox’s “Prison Break” inspired more than a million video downloads. NBC double-pumped the show Monday night (two episodes). The big number comes from a “representative sample of BitTorrent sites,” the Freak says.
The “Prison Break” episodes have been up on Hulu since shortly after the broadcast, but viewers can’t save them or shift them over to iPhones, of course. International downloads always play an important part in these guesstimates of illegal downloads.