Happy Friday!
This week Facebook made an ad about how bad Facebook has become ... but they are hoping to change things.
Let the scrolling begin!
Top Pick
Storytelling & interactive video – The Fourth Wall
Interactive video has massive potential to be applied to different industries. This article on our new design blog looks at 5 examples of how interactivity is being used to tell a stories.
Do you have other examples you've seen of creative, interactive storytelling using video? We'd love to hear about them. Let us know in the comments!
Features
Comcast's $31 billion bid For U.K. based Sky complicates Murdoch plans
Bidding wars! What are they good for? Well, absolutely every one of Sky's shareholders apparently. This evolving story includes some of the biggest companies in the world, the famous Murdoch family and it's complex past.
Exclusive: YouTube ran ads from hundreds of brands on extremist channels
YouTube is again in hot water over failing to censor its library of video content and advertising relationships. This time it has emerged that paid advertising from over 300 companies and organisations has appeared on extremist channels. Leading to these companies unintentionally supporting content promoting white nationalists, Nazis, pedophilia, conspiracy theories and North Korean propaganda.
Future of TV
Reinventing local TV news
This report by Nieman dives deep into the ways that local TV stations in the U.S. are reinventing themselves on their mission to inform and engage their local communities. This includes AR/VR labs, OTT platforms, clever use of social media, injecting more personality, and experimentation with story formats.
“Now more than ever, I think the audience is craving content that really matters to them and their daily lives, but they don’t want us deciding what that is for them. How do we give them choice? You have to get your audience engaged first.” — Shelley Leslie, audience development manager at Capitol Broadcasting
Amazon confirms Fire TV Cube is coming
The battle for the living room rages on and Amazon's Fire TV Cube could be heating things up. Though there are only a few details released about the new piece of hardware, if the rumors are to believed, this is a more substantial piece of kit. What we do know is that Alexa will play a big part.
Could Amazon's Fire TV Cube be the new core of your home cinema experience?
Stranger Things had the most-watched debut of any new Netflix series or movie in the last year
Stranger Things dominated Netflix's most viewed series and movie premiers over the last year according to Nielsen who has been gathering data about Netflix over the last year and the report is really interesting. Stranger Things had 8.9 million viewers on the launch day of their second season, with a total of 25 million across the entire season. In second place was Bright, starring Will Smith with 5.4 million views and in third place was The Crown with 1.6 million views.
The Young Turks debuts mobile app to grow its subscription business
The Young Turks (TYT) is launching its own mobile app. It knows it won't draw the same numbers as its content on YouTube, but it recognises the value of having a closer interaction with its audience.
“Fewer people are interacting with us on our platform, but those interactions are a lot more valuable to us in terms of data, understanding what people directly want or enjoy about our content as well as from a revenue standpoint. The per-user opportunity is much bigger when you own the distribution.” — Phillip Morelock, vp of product at TYT Network
Interactive Media
Unskippable six-second video ads are coming to Snapchat
Snap announced this week that they will be testing unskippable ads in its TV-like shows. It is a surprising decision as Snapchat were reluctant to force ads on its users in the past. It is rumoured that unskippable ads may feature in content by established TV networks like NBCUniversal, Viacom and Turner. The kind of content where users are accustomed to seeing ads.
Will this help after a tough year as a public company, or will it encourage users to leave the platform? Only time will tell but we fear it may be the latter.
Storytelling
BBC sound effects library opens up
The BBC has made 16,000 (16,013 to be precise) items from its Sound Effects library freely available online.
The project was supported by RES, a four year effort to improve access to public archives' digital collections. As well as being a great creative resource, this dataset is also a fascinating cultural document of the BBC itself.
There has been some controversy surrounding quite how you are allowed to use and re-use these sounds (tl;dr: free to use in non-commercial projects but one must license for commercial re-use). Controversy aside, here at Rerun we love this project and think this might be the best Terms of Use license you'll ever read.
Snapchat is making new lenses with built-in games
Snapchat is inviting us all to "Get our head in the game" with a new feature that lets users play games through touch, motion, or facial expressions. Whilst it might be fun to play in the dentist's chair, we reckon it's not one for the boardroom...
That is all from the Rerun team at Axonista, have a fantastic week and we look forward to sharing more news on the future of TV and interactive video next week.