Top Pick
Mobile is changing how fans are watching sports. Here's how Verizon is leading the charge
Live sports TV is make or break for many TV networks. As soon as the rights are bought, the countdown clock is on to maximise value from the games. Linear TV schedulers hope for good K.O. times, great team pairings, and legendary sporting moments.
Two of the most-watched pro leagues’ TV agreements expire next decade: the NFL in 2022 and the NBA in 2025. What will live sports viewing look like in a mobile-first, AR-first environment? According to Yahoo, the answer lies in personalisation, and context for the time of day people are watching.
“We’re aiming for Yahoo Sports to become the first screen,” said Yahoo Sports gm Geoff Reiss. “That means a mobile-first, mobile-best, mobile-centric road map … to serve our fans lots and lots of video.”
Features
Apple adding voice activation, and water resistance to new AirPods models
Apple has released plans for 2018's AirPod model. It comes with an improved wireless chip, and a new voice command feature. With this new feature, you can activate Siri using the simple voice command "Hey Siri". Presently, you have to tap on one of the wireless earbuds to make that happen.
It's suggested that a future AirPod model will also include water resistance which makes us wonder what is next for this technology, will implants be next?
Future of TV
Netflix taken $3-$6 billion of TV ad revenue off the table
Some remarkable numbers have been released regarding Netflix's impact on traditional TV ad revenue. It seems the industry's greatest fear has already started to come true. It's estimated Netflix has wiped between $3 and $6 billion worth of TV ad time from the traditional industry.
The average television channel airs around 14 minutes of advertising per hour. Assuming 30-second ads, the average U.S. Netflix subscriber misses out on seeing 35 ads per day, and all of Netflix’ U.S. subscribers miss nearly 2 billion ad views per day.
Advertisers will need to get even more creative in the future to capture their audience's attention.
Streaming video is NBC's fountain of youth at the Winter Olympics
It seems NBC's $12 billion investment in the TV, mobile and internet streaming rights for the Winter Olympics might have paid off. NBC reports that more younger viewers are choosing to stream the Olympics than ever before.
NBC said 76% of the online viewers for Pyeongchang are between the ages of 18 to 49, up from 61% for the 2016 Summer Games in Rio. The median age for TV viewers watching the Summer Games in Rio was 52.
Interactive Media
HBO is building the town of Sweetwater for an immersive Westworld experience at SXSW
Unsurprisingly for a TV show set in a futuristic AI theme park, HBO's Westworld has had some fantastic VR and real-life tie-ins over the years. This year the entire Westworld town of Sweetwater will be recreated as a theme park experience at next months SXSW festival.
Transporting a universe and its characters from TV into a real experience isn't a new idea—hello Disney, hello cosplayers—but it's an incredible way to connect with your audience. Let's just hope that this Westworld recreation isn't 100% faithful to the show...
BBC4 Seriously... Podcast - 'The Medium Is the Message'
"We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us."
Sometimes to understand the future, we must look to the past. Take a trip down memory lane with BBC4’s Seriously… podcast, and the pre-Internet theories of media visionary Marshall McLuhan.
In the 1960s, McLuhan coined the phrase ‘global village’. This episode explores McLuhan's many theories about the impact of media technology on humanity.
Hat tip David Scanlon for sharing this gem with us.
This AI tool generates personalised Shakespearean sonnets to give to your love
Something for the lovebirds to bookmark for next year. Is anything more romantic than using AI to generate and send a personalised Shakespearean sonnet to your crush? Here's one we made for you, Rerun.
The team then created inputs to let users enter characteristics about their crush, such as their name, favorite color, favorite season and best physical trait. For example, if a user said their heartthrob’s favorite color is blue, the Markov chain would pull lines that related to words such as “water,” “sea,” “sail” and “sorrow.” If they said red, it would look for “fire,” “birth” or “desire.”
Storytelling
How writing closed captions turned me off TV for good
In the following piece, a writer recounts his time as a Caption Writer for TV. At Rerun, we think the observations made between the influence of TV on language, and vice versa, are interesting.
Every caption is data, and data takes time to load.
There are, the writer points out, as many technical rules to caption writing as grammatical ones. These rules mean the writer has to optimise language to keep the meaning. And drop any non-critical sentence structure; all whilst being grammatically correct.
The big question is - will this new language structure impact how language evolves 🤔?
Virtual Reality
Samsung will let people hold the Galaxy S9 in augmented reality — and of course it leaked early
By the time Samsung’s Unpacked event for the Galaxy S9 rolls around, there will be very little (if anything) left to the imagination.
According to XDA Developers, Samsung is going to let attendees at its Mobile World Congress visualise what it would be like to have the new handset in your hand with the help of augmented reality. One Reddit user managed to download the 'Unpacked 2018' mobile app and discovered the hidden software, furthermore adding to Samsung woes.
Facebook will share its 'Biggest AR/VR news to date' at F8
Andrew Bosworth, who is head of VR, AR and hardware in Facebook, promised that the company would be sharing “the biggest AR/VR news from Facebook to date", at its developer event. Yet they have not revealed any other details, but they have time as it is 70 days away.
We hope it is a lot better than last year when a cartoon Mark Zuckerberg toured the recently hurricane-struck Puerto Rico...
An interactive, audio-responsive music video for popcorn
Check out this 'generative 3D experience' from Popcorn_10 and Always & Forever. Each frame's created in real time with code—nothing is pre-rendered. So you’ll never see the same video twice!
That's all for our 150th issue, feel free to get in touch by email, and make sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram
Team Rerun