Recently in Video for Green Messaging Category

Gaming is rapidly becoming the phenomenon equal to the explosion of the Internet on the communications scene. If you're not familiar with the role of gaming in today's business, advertising and public discourse, you might want to click your way through this overview of today's gaming world. Gaming is strategy. Gaming is revenue...in the making for a wide swath of the business marketing and communications sectors.

Discovery Studios Develops original content for Planet Green and other Discovery media

Discovery Studios Discovery Studios is the recently-created division of Discovery Communications charged with developing and producing original series, specials, theatrical documentaries and short form content for Discovery’s television networks. Veteran television executive Nancy Daniels has been named Vice President of Development and Production for Discovery Studios. Based in Burbank, Calif., Daniels will oversee all West Coast production and development activities for Discovery Studios. Projects now under her supervision include programs for TLC, Travel Channel, Planet Green, Discovery Health Channel and others. About Discovery Studios Discovery Studios is devoted to the creation of original television series and specials, theatrical films and short-form content within Discovery Communications, the number-one nonfiction media company reaching more than 1.5 billion cumulative subscribers in over 170 countries. Through TV and digital media, Discovery's 100-plus worldwide networks include Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet, The Science Channel, Discovery Health and Discovery HD Theater. Discovery Communications is owned by Discovery Holding Co. (NASDAQ: DISCA, DISCB), Advance/Newhouse Communications and John S. Hendricks, Discovery's founder and chairman. For more information about Discovery Communciations visit www.discoverycommunications.com. For more information about Planet Green visit planetgreen.discovery.com For more information about SUBMISSIONS visit submissions.discovery.com

Discovery is introducing Planet Green, a cable brand promoted as the first 24-hour channel dedicated to eco-friendly living. The 24-hour eco-oriented lifestyle network will launch with 50 million cable homes. It is the highest-profile cable channel introduction of the year, and an equally risky one. By wrapping itself in the planet, Discovery is betting that “eco-tainment” will appeal to viewers.

The channel’s programming is studded with celebrities such as

• Chef Emeril Lagasse hosting a cooking show featuring organic and locally grown foods, and "Entourage" star Adrian Grenier living a green life.
• "Greensburg," a 13-episode documentary series, follows the story of a small Kansas community coming together after being hit by a 5-rated tornado in May 2007. The series is produced by Leonardo DiCaprio's production company, Appian Way, along with Craig Piligian's Pilgrim Films & Television.
• "Hollywood Green," a weekly entertainment magazine, will showcase earth-conscious celebrities.
• "G Word," a daily series hosted by two news correspondents
• "Wrecklamation," billed as recycling on steroids.

The channel has almost all original programming — partly because there was not an available vault of entertaining environmental programming to tap into. Part of their challenge has been educating the production community that may have had certain expectations of what green content is.

Planet Green's Target Audiences

Planet Green will speak to people who want to understand green living and to those who truly want to make a difference by providing tools and information to meet the critical challenge of protecting our environment. Planet Green's platforms include leading eco-lifestyle website TreeHugger.com and the recently launched solutions-oriented PlanetGreen.com.

Discovery is also launching Discovery Education Green, a K-12 service that hosts dynamic media content correlated to state standards. Discovery Education Green will help teachers integrate Green lessons into their curriculum and empowers students to make more environmentally conscious decisions.

Planet Green's Promotion

Timed to the switch from Discovery Home to Planet Green, Discovery marketers are conducting “Random Acts of Greenness.” At the Indianapolis 500 last month, they handed out T-shirts and beach balls to consumers who exemplified green living, and sponsored the cleanup day after the race. The giveaways will continue in New York, Milwaukee; Washington; and San Diego, San Francisco and Oakland, Calif.

On launch day, Wednesday, June 11, 2008. Mr. Zaslav will throw out the first pitch in Washington, and the stadium’s JumboTron will count down to the channel’s 6 p.m. debut. Also that day, all the Discovery cable networks will show green logos.

The New York Post is going green on Wednesday, too: the newspaper will turn its flag green that day and feature advertisements for the channel all week. The newspaper will also give away 250 bicycles with Planet Green branding.

“This is a new genre,” Ms. O’Neill said. “People don’t have any set expectations of what green media is, and we’re defining it — as really funny, engaging, entertaining and definitely credible.”

Planet Green: planetgreen.discovery.com

Discovery Studios: www.discoverystudios.com

MARYLAND
1 Discovery Place
Silver Spring, MD 20910
Tel: +1 (240) 662-2000

LOS ANGELES
2600 West Olive Avenue
5th Floor
Burbank, CA 91505
Tel: +1 (818) 333-5255

The award-winning show was based on Common Vision's  DVD "Planting the Vision." The special episode of "Natural Heroes" aired on PBS across the nation. This award is a huge tribute to programs like Natural Heroes and the featured groups that are working for positive change. We hope many more people will see the show and be inspired to plant a tree in their community!

Watch a 6-minute trailer for the DVD "Planting the Vision" below.

> Watch the Natural Heroes Fruit Tree Tour Promo on the Natural Heroes site

First The Association for Downloadable Media or ADM just announced best practices guidelines and standards to address some of the real obstacles that exist regarding scaled ad buys in the downloadable media space, particularly in measuring downloads and ad unit standards. They were formulated in tight coordination with the advertising industry through our organization's Ad Council.

Recent data shows podcasting is actually making a considerably large mainstream impact and that the business model is well underway towards profitability. Nope we are not completely there yet (think banner ads five years into public adoption of the internet) but these recent activities and new data suggest you might want to take a second look at this space.

The members of our trade group, comprised of RSS media host providers , big and growing content publishers (who are making money now, including my music discovery network IndieFeed, as well as shows that have significantly lower audience counts but with great loyal audiences), ad intermediaries, interactive agencies, and big brands including Apple, Microsoft, Nokia, Real Networks, Discovery Networks, Turner Broadcasting, MTV, Arbitron, Neilsen, NPR, PBS, PRI, Comcast, and in total well over 200 members, believe we can help address the clear hurdles to translate to effective, wide-scale ad-supported monetization.

If you take IAB and ad banner development as an example, we believe best practice guidelines have developed far quicker than other technology adoptions in the past. They are the first public step in a coordinated effort to create cross-system apples-to-apples and low friction commerce between publishers and advertisers. We are moving forward to secure funding for primary research to help bear out the power and immediacy of subscribable and downloadable media at the niche level.

Second, The Arbitron Edison Research Internet and Multimedia Survey of 2008 just came out, showing a roughly 39% growth in audio and 45% growth in video podcast consumption from last year. Nearly 54 million Americans have consumed podcasts (more than one in 5), predominantly 25-54 age bracket, 53% male 47% female, consumption occurring predominantly at the desktop. I encourage you to speak to Tom Webster at Edison Media Research for more details, he can be reached at twebster at edisonresearch dawt calm.

TWITTER

We all love Twitter but podcasts dwarf Twitter usage, in substance, unit production, and most importantly, reach. I'm not clear why this comparison needs to be made. Sure they are two emerging user-generated social technologies. Where Twitter is a growing, vibrant micro-blogging medium, primarily link and text based, how it delivers direct revenue generation for twitter publishers remains to be seen. It sure is a great amplification device to an extremely small group of 2.0 influencers.

BLOGGERS

As for commercial viability, the stratification of bloggers to commercially viable bloggers is likely the same as podcasters to commercially viable podcasters. You've seen the graphs, it looks a lot like an iceberg with the sea-level defining the monetization line. Today the focus is on the group above the line. 

Podcasting is not failing as a monetization model. Some publishers may never make money if they fail to deliver an opportunity to the advertiser, and vice versa. But many are and will fulfill this objective. It is not that RSS media enclosures are somehow a broken technology, it's tremendously powerful and monetizable. But systems will need to be adopted to accommodate scale and that is what our group is up to.

These recent indicators strongly suggest to our group that podcasting and episodic audio and video media is not only viable but a vibrant and exciting space for advertisers to reach loyal audiences drifting from traditional media.

Chris MacDonald
Chairman
Association for Downloadable Media
Wizzard Media
downloadablemedia.org