HRH Prince Edward, Earl Of Wessex Visits Nickelodeon Land UK; Meets SpongeBob SquarePants And Dora The Explorer; Unveils Plaque

From The Daily Mail:

Prince Edward enjoys two days in Lancashire with SpongeBob Squarepants

It's a tough job but one's got to do it: While Harry gets sent to sunshine of the West Indies, Prince Edward enjoys two days in Lancashire with SpongeBob Squarepants

Earl of Wessex meets kids' favourites in Blackpool as Harry prepares to jet to Jamaica

His nephew may be about the jet off to the West Indies, but Prince Edward nonetheless did his bit for the royal family when he made an appearance at a seaside attraction closer to home.

The Earl of Wessex today found himself part of a less conventional royal photocall when he was pictured with SpongeBob Squarepants and Dora the Explorer at Nickelodeon Land in Blackpool, Lancashire.

The 47-year-old met the children's TV favourites during his visit to the seaside attraction, where he unveiled a plaque to mark his visit to Nickelodeon Land.

Royal approval: A slightly awkward-looking Prince Edward poses next o to SpongeBon Squarepants and Dora the Explorer at Nickelodeon Land in Blackpool

HRH Prince Edward is shown around the £10m attraction by officials, Dora and SpongeBob during his visit

Prince Edward is taking part in a two-day tour of Lancashire which started yesterday.
The £10.3million Nickelodeon Land was officially opened by former Baywatch star David Hasselhoff in 2011 on the resort's Pleasure Beach.

The attraction has 12 rollercoaster and other fairground rides featuring characters that appear on the children's TV channel.

During his tour of Blackpool to make the Queen's Diamond jubilee year, the Prince also visited the 'Comedy Carpet' featuring comedy catchphrases of top comics etched in granite and concrete.

In slightly sunnier climes meanwhile, Prince Harry will jet to Jamaica next month during his diamond jubilee tour of the Caribbean and Central America.

All smiles: The Prince unveiled a plaque in Blackpool to mark his jubilee year visit to Nickelodeon Land

He's behind you: SpongeBob looms behind the Prince as the royal continues his stroll around the Blackpool attraction

While Prince Edward today met SpongeBob Squarepants, Harry will chat to Usain Bolt when he meets the Jamaican sprinter in Kingston as part of his visit.
It is expected that Bolt, who defends his Olympic 100-metre title at London 2012 this summer, will give Harry a few pointers about starting a sprint but - luckily for the royal - not actually race him.

The second-in-line to the throne is said to be ‘bouncing’ in anticipation of his first solo overseas tour on behalf of the Queen to mark the monarch's 60-year reign.

Also, posted by Nickelodeon UK and Ireland's Press Office on their official Twitter profile page (@NickelodeonUKPR):

what do i see reading the paper this morning #SpongeBob rubbing shoulders with royalty at #NickelodeonLand http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2012/02/08/edward-s-heir-and-square-115875-23740336/

And:

#SpongeBob and HRH Prince Edward at #NickelodeonLand who knew they were such good mates! http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2097894/Prince-Edward-enjoys-days-Lancashire-SpongeBob-Squarepants.html

Demand Economy

From C21Media:

Demand economy

Independent video-on-demand services in North America might lack the marketing spend of the majors but they offer indie suppliers audience data and a route to bigger deals. Sean Davidson reports.

Four years is a long time. Back in 2008, oil still cost less than US$100 a barrel, George W Bush still lived in the White House and streaming broadcast-quality video into people’s homes – or laps or palms – was a tricky and expensive undertaking.

Which is why when kids’ video-on-demand service Ameba TV launched that fall, it was set up so subscribers would first download shows on to set-top boxes rather than streaming them, bit-by-bit, straight to their TV sets.

It seemed like a good idea at the time – the BitTorrent-powered boxes allow for fast downloads and good picture quality – though Ameba president Tony Havelka admits the market took a dim view of the hardware nonetheless. “We met some scepticism from some of the rights holders. They wondered how many of those things we would sell,” he recalls.

About a thousand, as it turned out, before the ground changed under the feet of the Canadian company and other VoD outfits. “There was a tipping point” towards late 2009, Havelka says, when streaming was suddenly cheap and Ameba was forced to rethink its plan – partnering with box maker Roku and in late 2011 with TV set maker LG in favour of streaming. Smart TVs, once dismissed as a dead-end, were suddenly a key ingredient of the company’s operations, though it continues to market set-top boxes.

Since linking up with LG, Winnipeg-based Ameba has expanded its reach to some seven million homes in Canada and the US. Another 25,000 have downloaded its Roku app, though Havelka won’t reveal how many paying subscribers are onboard. “It’s growing,” he says of the subscriber base. Ameba programmes include Busytown Mysteries, Roboroach and Dudley the Dragon. “Streaming really popped it right open.”

Unlike other new digital media offerings, which tend to come on strong only to fizzle out or prove themselves later, independent VoD services aimed at kids faced a hard march in their early years. This was down to ever-changing technologies and competition from heavyweight kids brands such as Disney, Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon and ascendant over-the-top services like Netflix and Hulu, all of which offer their own takes on VoD for two- to 12-year-olds. Netflix had some 23.6 million subscribers by last spring, around the same time that Hulu’s paid subscribers passed the one million mark.

Harder still has been the tepid response from rights holders who would rather knock on the door of a known brand than roll the dice with lesser-known players like Ameba and US-based Kabillion, which carries titles including Wild Grinders, Bobby’s World and Totally Spies. Suppliers grouse that such services tie up rights while paying only pennies.

“There are a number of VoD and SVoD services that have launched over the past couple of years and they’re basically going out and aggregating whatever content they can find,” usually by striking revenue-sharing deals, notes Richard Goldsmith, executive VP of global distribution at The Jim Henson Company. “But because they have no acquisition or marketing budget, the content they’re able to aggregate is often bottom of the barrel.” (Goldsmith did not single out any particular service and it should be noted that Henson’s own Sid the Science Kid is carried by Ameba.)

On paper, the large and well-regarded Henson library – which includes Fraggle Rock as well as Sid the Science Kid – would be a good fit for long-tail, parent-approved services. But the US studio has shied away, preferring to stay close to iTunes and others, says Goldsmith.

“The future is Netflix,” he says, while also nodding to Comcast’s infant-aimed VoD service Baby Boost and BT Vision in the UK. “Major media players – whether Netflix, BT or Comcast – will be the drivers of on-demand services for kids because they have the marketing power, the distribution platforms and the financial resources to acquire content that’s actually the best in the world.”

Others remain sceptical. “I wonder how well VoD services will do against traditional services like Cartoon Network, Disney and Nick,” says Ira Levy, executive producer of Toronto-based Breakthrough Entertainment (Jimmy Two Shoes, My Big Big Friend). “I assume they’ll bring independent content but there’s less and less of that around,” because of increasingly aggressive outreach from the established children’s brands, he notes.

Like Havelka, Kabillion president Nicolas Atlan concedes that his company got off to an uncertain start following its launch in 2007, in part because of lagging ad revenue. “It was very hard the first year because the model is based on ad sales and it wasn’t really working out,” he says. “But in the past year, year-and-a-half, there’s been a shift and little by little revenue is starting to come.”

Again echoing Havelka, Atlan says Kabillion recently crossed a tipping point. The US-only service in late 2010 launched on Time Warner Cable – after debuting on Comcast – and now reaches some 45 million households. It is estimated that the service connects with six million children a month. “This shows we’re here, and we’re very established,” he says.

However, there is still some fine-tuning to be done. Kabillion plans to re-launch its under-used website and will drop most of its social media elements in favour of straight game and video content that will better support the service’s dual role as both a broadcaster to kids and a marketing tool for animated properties.

“There will be much more connection between the VoD and the online,” says Atlan, driving viewers to the main service and its corresponding YouTube channel. The site may also drop its K-Cash – virtual monetary units bought with real cash, that subscribers use on the current site to unlock special items.

Drawing cash out of young viewers/users has cast other content producers in an unfavourable light recently – most notably the now-infamous Tap Zoo app – and Atlan admits the issue has been “part of the conversation” about the site’s future.

Havelka concedes that programme suppliers are, broadly, right to complain about lack of revenue and rights tie-ups. Both are problems that need to be fixed across the sector, though he adds that Ameba does not take exclusive rights to its programmes.

“We tell people all the time, ‘Never give away your rights,’” he says, an approach also embraced by recent arrival Toon Goggles. Both companies cite the need for rights holders to selectively push their titles through all available services, such as a YouTube channel, without getting tied up by exclusivity.

“YouTube is critical for kids’ content but it’s also very difficult,” says Havelka, because of its low return on views. “You’ll get an audience, you’ll get 100,000 hits and you’ll get a cheque for US$2,” he quips. “Or if you get a million or hundreds of millions of hits you will get paid. But look at the standard VoD profit shares. If you bring that same library [to VoD] you will get that money back.”

Looking forward, indie VoD services remain at pains to distinguish themselves from the majors. Ameba and Toon Goggles see themselves as the VoD equivalent of indie cinema, bringing foreign and lesser-known content to North American kids. Kabillion is also well-stocked with European content thanks to its part-ownership by French animation powerhouse Moonscoop Group. But Kabillion also sells itself to suppliers as a marketing tool.

“You can’t compare us to Nickelodeon,” says Atlan. “If we started to compete with them we’d never win.” Kabillion is more of a marketing platform for brands in the US, he adds, such as Bratz, Wild Grinders or Cosmic Quantum Ray, the 1x26’ CGI sci-fi toon that was picked up by The Hub following its debut on VoD. Other shows have sold to PBS Sprout and Nick Tunes thanks to the visibility gained by their runs on Kabillion, he says.

Toon Goggles’ VP of new media Stephen Hodge – who likens his catalogue to the discounted DVDs sold in grocery stores and other shops – also offers his clients viewership data that can be used to wrangle other broadcast and licensing deals. “Content on Netflix is already licensed. We’re not licensing content and we’re not standing in the way of any deals,” he says.

Hodge notes that the otherwise obscure Asian import Origami Warriors (“Unfold the power!”) has caught fire on the site, setting the stage for bigger things on other platforms and channels. “This cartoon has potential and now we can prove it,” he says.

Back at Ameba, Havelka suggests the power of brands like Disney and Nickelodeon could actually work in the favour of indie VoDs. “A lot of our user base is not overexposed to that content but already exposed through cable or other distribution. So they’re looking for alternatives, which puts us and rights holders in a good position because now we can take stuff to market that they’ve been sitting on and doing nothing with. The revenue might not be high, but it’s higher than zero which is what they were getting before.”

So the argument seems to be: hand over some of your content to these indie VoD players, get a little revenue back, use the audience data to land a bigger, more lucrative deal elsewhere. Given how hard it is getting slots on the majors, it might be the only way into the US for some.

Sean Davidson
07-02-2012
©C21Media

World Screen Interviews Hans Bourlon and Gert Verhulst‎, The Creators Of Nickelodeon's "Het Huis Anubis" And "House of Anubis"

The official website of World Screen, a publication which covers the international media business, has posted an exclusive interview with Studio 100's Hans Bourlon and Gert Verhulst‎, who created Nickelodeon's hit teen mystery drama "Het Huis Anubis" and it's English version "House of Anubis", which you can view here on WorldScreen.com (paid WorldScreen.com premium subscription required to view the article).

Amazon Announces Increased Prime Instant Video Selection For Kindle Fire And Amazon Prime Customers Via Digital Video License Agreement With Viacom

From Business Wire:

Amazon Announces Increased Prime Instant Video Selection for Kindle Fire and Prime Customers via Digital Video License Agreement with Viacom

Prime Instant Video now offers thousands of TV episodes from MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, TV Land, Spike, VH1, BET, CMT and Logo—including past seasons of popular shows such as Jersey Shore, Chappelle's Show, Hot in Cleveland, Yo Gabba Gabba, iCarly and more

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) today announced a licensing agreement with Viacom that will allow Amazon Prime members to instantly stream TV shows from MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, TV Land, Spike, VH1, BET, CMT and Logo. This deal will bring the total number of Prime Instant Videos to more than 15,000. Amazon Prime members can enjoy this selection on over 300 different devices, including Kindle Fire—the Kindle for movies, TV shows, music, magazines, apps, books, games, and more. Right out of the box, Kindle Fire users experience the benefits that millions of Amazon Prime members already enjoy — unlimited, commercial-free, instant streaming of movies and TV shows with Prime Instant Video and the convenience of Free Two-Day Shipping on millions of items from Amazon.com.

“Over the last year we have received fantastic customer feedback about Prime Instant Video. We are constantly working to improve the service by adding the shows that our customers enjoy the most”

Prime members will have access to thousands of episodes from Viacom through Prime Instant Video over the next several months. Titles will include kids’ favorites, stand-up comedy, and reality TV. Amazon will offer MTV shows including The Hills, Jersey Shore, The Hard Times of RJ Berger, several seasons of The Real World, and Comedy Central shows such as Chappelle's Show and The Sarah Silverman Program. For kids, Amazon brings Nickelodeon episodes of iCarly, Dora the Explorer, SpongeBob SquarePants, Yo Gabba Gabba, along with TV Land favorite, Hot in Cleveland.

"Over the last year we have received fantastic customer feedback about Prime Instant Video. We are constantly working to improve the service by adding the shows that our customers enjoy the most,” said Brad Beale, director of video content acquisition for Amazon. “This deal with Viacom brings Prime customers and Kindle Fire users thousands of comedies, kids’ shows, reality TV and much more from some of the best cable networks available. We now offer more than 15,000 movies and TV shows in Prime Instant Videos and are working hard to add even more great content.”

About Prime Instant Video

Prime Instant Video is a benefit for paid Amazon Prime members. Prime members get unlimited, commercial-free, instant access to more than 15,000 movies and TV shows. Since the launch of Prime instant videos last year, Amazon has secured licensing deals from partners such as CBS, Fox, PBS, NBCUniversal, Sony, Warner Bros, Disney-ABC Television, Viacom Media Networks and many more.

About Amazon Instant Video

For customers who are not Prime members, or who are looking to instantly purchase or rent movies and TV shows, Amazon offers Amazon Instant Video. Amazon Instant Video is a digital video service offering downloads or streaming of more than 100,000 titles including new release movies, TV shows the day after they air, as well as contemporary and classic videos in SD and HD. Customers can instantly watch movies and TV shows from Amazon Instant Video or Prime Instant Video on a Mac, PC or directly on a TV with any of the 300 compatible devices, including the new Kindle Fire.

About Prime

Amazon Prime is an annual membership program for $79 a year that offers customers unlimited Free Two-Day Shipping on millions of items including books, home and garden products, electronics, video games, clothing, and much more. Amazon Prime members also get access to unlimited instant streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows and access to tens of thousands of books to borrow for free, as frequently as a book a month, with no due dates from a Kindle device. Customers who receive free Prime shipping benefits through our Amazon Student or Amazon Mom programs can upgrade to an annual paid membership to receive Amazon Prime’s digital benefits.

About Viacom

Viacom (NASDAQ: VIA, VIAB) is home to the world's premier entertainment brands that connect with audiences through compelling content across television, motion picture, online and mobile platforms in approximately 160 countries and territories. With more than 160 media networks reaching approximately 700 million global subscribers, Viacom's leading brands include MTV, VH1, CMT, Logo, BET, CENTRIC, Nickelodeon, Nick Jr., TeenNick, Nicktoons, Nick at Nite, COMEDY CENTRAL, TV Land, SPIKE and Tr3s. Paramount Pictures, celebrating its 100th year in 2012 and creator of many of the most beloved motion pictures, continues today as a major global producer and distributor of filmed entertainment. Viacom operates a large portfolio of branded digital media experiences, including many of the world's most popular properties for entertainment, community and casual online gaming.

For more information about Viacom and its businesses, visit www.viacom.com.

About Amazon.com

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), a Fortune 500 company based in Seattle, opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995 and today offers Earth’s Biggest Selection. Amazon.com, Inc. seeks to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices. Amazon.com and other sellers offer millions of unique new, refurbished and used items in categories such as Books; Movies, Music & Games; Digital Downloads; Electronics & Computers; Home & Garden; Toys, Kids & Baby; Grocery; Apparel, Shoes & Jewelry; Health & Beauty; Sports & Outdoors; and Tools, Auto & Industrial. Amazon Web Services provides Amazon’s developer customers with access to in-the-cloud infrastructure services based on Amazon’s own back-end technology platform, which developers can use to enable virtually any type of business. The new latest generation Kindle is the lightest, most compact Kindle ever and features the same 6-inch, most advanced electronic ink display that reads like real paper even in bright sunlight. Kindle Touch is a new addition to the Kindle family with an easy-to-use touch screen that makes it easier than ever to turn pages, search, shop, and take notes – still with all the benefits of the most advanced electronic ink display. Kindle Touch 3G is the top of the line e-reader and offers the same new design and features of Kindle Touch, with the unparalleled added convenience of free 3G. Kindle Fire is the Kindle for movies, TV shows, music, books, magazines, apps, games and web browsing with all the content, free storage in the Amazon Cloud, Whispersync, Amazon Silk (Amazon’s new revolutionary cloud-accelerated web browser), vibrant color touch screen, and powerful dual-core processor.

Amazon and its affiliates operate websites, including www.amazon.com, www.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.de, www.amazon.co.jp, www.amazon.fr, www.amazon.ca, www.amazon.cn, www.amazon.it, and www.amazon.es. As used herein, “Amazon.com,” “we,” “our” and similar terms include Amazon.com, Inc., and its subsidiaries, unless the context indicates otherwise.

Forward-Looking Statements

This announcement contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Actual results may differ significantly from management's expectations. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that include, among others, risks related to competition, management of growth, new products, services and technologies, potential fluctuations in operating results, international expansion, outcomes of legal proceedings and claims, fulfillment center optimization, seasonality, commercial agreements, acquisitions and strategic transactions, foreign exchange rates, system interruption, inventory, government regulation and taxation, payments and fraud. More information about factors that potentially could affect Amazon.com's financial results is included in Amazon.com's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent filings.

Contacts

Amazon.com, Inc.
Media Hotline, 206-266-7180
www.amazon.com/pr

The above Amazon.com news release/press release doesn't say whether Amazon's latest deal with Nickelodeon's parent company Viacom to stream programmes from Viacom's programme library on demand to Amazon customers will also be available to Amazon's UK and Irish customers through Amazon.co.uk.