The National Basketball Association has joined Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League on Joost, the broadcast-quality Internet television service.

The NBA and Joost announced today the launch of the NBA Channel, which will provide fans around the world with access to “Instant Classic” games and video highlight packages for the remainder of the 2007-2008 season. Content also includes a variety of “Top 10” lists from the NBA Video Vault.

“By making games, highlights and shows available on Joost, the NBA is ensuring that its fans can enjoy the action where they want, when they want, while simultaneously interacting with other fans around the world,” said Yvette Alberdingk Thijm, Joost executive vice president for content strategy and acquisition

The NBA deal comes months after a similar partnership was negotiated between Joost and Major League Baseball. Joost also offers a channel for the NHL.

The addition of the NBA on Joost is another example of a major U.S. professional sports league evolving its Internet and new media strategies to reach beyond its Website to provide its content and brand to as many distribution channels as possible.

From YouTube’s continued dominance, the television networks’ newfound willingness to experiment online, the rise of the desktop Internet TV application, and a number of new PC-to-TV devices and set-top boxes — it’s been a big year for Internet TV in all shapes and forms. In this post we look back at 2007 through the lens of last100’s coverage, highlighting some of the important stories and trends, and how they point to what we might expect for Internet TV in 2008.

Also see: Digital music: 2007 year in review

YouTube dominates

While the market for Internet TV is growing steadily — survey after survey shows that people are consuming more video online than ever before — as 2007 draws to an end, Google-owned YouTube is still the number one video destination site.

This isn’t just true in terms of traffic but also in terms of “mind share”; when people talk about online video they often refer only to YouTube. As a result, a number of hardware companies have added YouTube support to their devices in 2007, such as YouTube-compatible cameras and mobile phones capable of viewing and publishing video to YouTube.

And then there’s the strong relationship between Google and Apple, which this year has led to YouTube support being added to both the AppleTV and iPhone, with a change in the video format to boot. Apple successfully persuaded YouTube to start re-encoding its video catalog to the much higher quality (and Apple-preferred) H.264 codec.

Not one to rest on its laurels, YouTube introduced a number of new features of their own, including a redesiged player, the introduction of interactive overlay ads, better copyright filtering, and — like many Google properties — improvements to its mobile offering. Continue reading »

Steven Soderbergh is being followed by a Jackass.

Soderbergh, the acclaimed director of such hits as “Erin Brockovich”, “Ocean’s Eleven”, and “Traffic”, tested the traditional delivery method of Hollywood films by debuting the low-budget 2006 movie “Bubble” simultaneously in theaters, on HDNet, and four days later on DVD.

Soderbergh’s experiment was a far cry from the usual practice of debuting a major film in theaters first. One slight deviation has been films released straight to DVD, but those are usually low-budget, low-brow entertainment.

Now Paramount Pictures is releasing what it says is the first studio-backed feature film to premier online. On Dec. 19, the studio will make the latest installment in the “Jackass” franchise — the cleverly-named “Jackass 2.5” — available through Blockbuster’s Movielink service (The New York Times).

“Jackass 2.5” will include footage left over from “Jackass 2”, which earned more than $70 million at the box office, and new antics before “Jackass 3” is released in 2008. “There’s more vomiting, nudity, and defecation,” one executive told The NYT. “The stuff that consumers really want.” Continue reading »

This is a guest post by Guinevere Orvis. Guinevere is a Web Producer in Toronto, Canada working both freelance and in the broadcast industry for Alliance Atlantis, CTVglobemedia and currently CBC. She has 10 years experience in the online space and specializes in social media, online marketing and content production.

If you’re a TV exec, there’s a magical number that you worship to measure your show’s success… those digits handed down on high from Neilsen ratings. Traditionally, little else mattered, but the television landscape is drastically changing. Is it time our success measurement tools change too?

Our online audience numbers have grown to a level where they’re demanding serious attention. Show promotions, trailers and clips that broadcasters are pushing on YouTube and other video sharing sites are getting more views than some shows do. Television is reaching a milestone where online is veritably driving on air viewership. Neilsen TV isn’t the only game in town anymore. If we are going to understand what our audience wants, we have to consider a bigger picture.

So, if YouTube numbers matter, what about members on a Facebook fan group? What about mashups and fan art? How about BitTorrent downloads? Yeah you heard me: maybe we should use unsanctioned downloads of our shows as a measurement of legitimate demand. Continue reading »