Broadband Content Bits: CBSSports-SEC; Seth MacFarlane; Spike Lee; Logo; Adobe-DirecTV-NFL; HBOlab
This story was written by Amanda Natividad.
-- CBSSports.com to stream SEC games live: Following ESPN's $2.25 billion deal for some Southeastern Conference (SEC) rights, including live streaming, CBSSports.com says it will simulcast its SEC football schedule live starting with this weekend's Georgia-South Carolina game. CBS (NYSE: CBS) ios paying $825 million for its 15-year SEC deal. The 17 games will be exclusively on CBSSports.com and accessible through links on CBS affiliates' sites.
-- Seth MacFarlane brings comedy shorts to YouTube: The Family Guy and American Dad creator will on Sept. 10 premiere a series of 50 animated comedy shorts on his own site and YouTube. The Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy features random characters poking fun at pop culturethough not sure how that's any different from Family Guyand will feature a contest with a Burger King dinner with MacFarlane as first prize. Burger King is sponsoring 10 shorts and the sites will be updated weekly with new cartoons.
-- Spike Lee launches Babelgum online festival: Filmmaker Spike Lee launched the 2nd annual edition of Babelgum's online film festival in Toronto last week and reprised his role as jury chairman. Variety reports the cash prizes include the Spike Lee Award (20,000 euro) given to the top films in each category; Looking For Genius Award to one outstanding filmmaker in any genre (20,000 euro) and Professional Jury Award to the films chosen by an industry jury and the Babelgum audience (prize TBD). Films can be submitted until Dec. 31 and online voting begins in Jan. 2009. Last year, more than 1,000 films from 86 countries were submitted and the categories included short film, animation, mini masterpiece and documentary.
-- Logo launches online roundtable on 365gay News: The MTVN (NYSE: VIA) subsidiary launched 365gay News: Roundtable, a nationally televised and online Face the nation-style roundtable on issues of importance to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender audience. The first installment, focusing on the Republican National Convention, is available on 365gay.com and highlights will air on Logo's 365gay News.
-- *DirecTV* and *Adobe* powering NFL's SuperFan service: The companies have announced a partnership to make available the NFL Sunday Ticket SuperCast service available online via Adobe (NSDQ: ADBE) Flash and AIR to SuperCast subscribers. Users will be able to stream live NFL games, view DirecTV's (NYSE: DTV) Red Zone Channel and get up-to-the-minute scores and stats in their browsers (with the Flash plugin). DirecTV is also providing a downloadable rich Internet application (RIA) build on Adobe AIR that will provide real-time content in high-quality video, alerts and Red Channel's highlights and stats. Release.
-- HBOlab launching Web series featuring Internet celebs: HBO's experimental offshoot is launching an online series featuring Internet celebs, Jessica Rose (of LonelyGirl15 fame), YouTube talent and video bloggers sxePhil and KevJumba, Reuters/THR reports. The 10-episode series entitled Hooking Up will pemiere on YouTube, MySpace and hookingupshow.com on Oct. 1. The official site will be supplemented with social net capabilities and the series' characters will have their own Facebook pages. Though the first season will not feature ads, HBO may bring sponsors on board if the series becomes a hit.
By Amanda Natividad