Broadband Content Bits: ESPN360.com; Network Sites' Visits; UK, Canada iTunes; MySpace; Hulu
This story was written by Amanda Natividad.
-- ESPN (NYSE: DIS) reports audience growth across online and TV viewership: ESPN's NBA coverage has grown across the company's online and TV platforms. Its broadband network ESPN360.com provided live coverage of 101 NBA games with 29 of them in hi-def. Fans watching games on this site averaged 60-plus minutes of time spent viewing, over 20 times the average time spent viewing online video. Visits to ESPN.com during the Conference Finals were up 53 percent, with visits to NBA content up 54 percent from last year. As for TV viewing, coverage of the 2008 NBA Playoffs broke the network's record for most views at 3,149,000 households from 2,994,000 households in 2006.
-- CBS.com visits increase while those to ABC.com and NBC.com decrease: Visits to CBS.com increased 41 percent for the 2007-08 season compared to the 2006-07 season, ranking third place and marking the largest growth in average visits among the six leading broadcast network sites, Hitwise reports. ABC.com was the most visited network site for the season
with 27.14 percent of US visits, down 9 percent from the previous season. NBC.com came in second with 27.01 percent of visits, down 18 percent from the previous season.
Fox came in fourth with 17.54 percent, followed by CWTV.com at 6.61 percent and MyNetworkTV.com at .19 percent. The CW website received the second largest growth in average visits, receiving a 27 percent increase.
-- Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) launches UK, Canada iTunes movie store: Apple has begun offering over 700 titles for sale or rent to its UK and Canadian iTunes users. New releases will be available for download on the same day they are released on DVD, 10.99 for purchase or 3.49 for rental. Customers have 48 hours to finish watching a filmtwice as long as U.S. customers have. More details at our sister site paidContentUK
-- MySpace to stream Coldplay album, adds RSS: MySpace users will have the chance to listen to Coldplay's new album from 6pm today, in advance of its official worldwide release on June 17, reports NMA. Full tracks from Viva la Vida will be streamed through the bands profile page, marking the third time Coldplay has streamed their content over the site. In other MySpace news, it has finally added RSS feeds to MySpaceTV, enabling users to subscribe to any video channel or chart.
-- Hulu adds search within embeds: Hulu just added its new search within embeds feature, reports NewTeeVee. Now, users can search for other videos on the Hulu clip embedded on a different site. The search feature directs users to outside content Hulu content isn't available.
By Amanda Natividad