broadcasters

Bleacher Report, one of the largest sports news sites on the Web, was acquired today by Turner Broadcasting System.

The San Francisco-based startup focuses on delivering targeted sports news to about 10 million unique users a month. But unlike many sites whose content is written by a limited in-house staff, Bleacher Report relies on a wide network of mainly volunteer contributing writers around the country and the world who are passionate about the teams they love and who pen opinion and reaction pieces at a heavy pace in exchange for a prestigious slot on the site.

Terms of the deal … Read more

Roku, the maker of a popular player for streaming Web content to TV sets, has closed a new round of funding.

The company has landed a $45 million investment from companies including News Corp. and British Sky Broadcasting, it announced today.

Also participating in the round were prior Roku venture investors Menlo Ventures and Globespan Capital Partners, as well as an unnamed strategic investor. In addition to the cash injection, News Corp's chief digital officer, Jon Miller, has joined the Roku board of directors, while Roku CEO Anthony Wood remains chairman.

"Our philosophy is to give consumers the … Read more

NEW YORK--Broadcast TV is the last frontier for Web video, and Aereo founder Chet Kanojia has just stuck a tiny antenna into the virgin turf to claim it for himself.

Last week, a federal district court denied a request for a preliminary injunction against Aereo that was sought by two groups of TV broadcasters. The injunction would have required Aereo, a Web TV service, to halt operations. In their lawsuits, broadcasters such as NBC, Fox, ABC and CBS (parent company of CNET) accuse Aereo of ripping off their programming without compensating them.

Aereo says consumers are the ones accessing this … Read more

Fresh from a legal victory against the TV networks, controversial streaming service Aereo expects to expand beyond New York to other large U.S. cities, Aereo backer and billionaire Barry Diller said today.

"We're going to really start marketing," Diller said in a Bloomberg Television interview at the Allen & Co. annual retreat in Sun Valley, Idaho. "Within a year and a half, certainly by '13, we'll be in most major [markets]."

For $12 a month, the streaming service allows subscribers to receive and record programs on any Internet-connected device over a dime-size antenna. … Read more

A federal judge has denied a request by the major TV networks to prevent Aereo, the streaming service backed by Barry Diller, from rebroadcasting their programs over the Internet.

Judge Alison Nathan for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York rejected a requested preliminary injunction today, according to a Reuters report. Nathan said that while both sides had demonstrated possible harm in the situation, the "balance of hardships" did not "decidedly" tip to broadcasters' favor.

For $12 a month, the streaming service allows subscribers to receive and record programs on any … Read more

NEW YORK--Wave goodbye to watching the Super Bowl for free if Aereo is allowed to operate, lawyers for the nation's largest broadcasters told a federal court yesterday.

Aereo's attorneys scoffed at that notion. They said that Aereo's Internet video service will only make it easier for users to access freely available over-the-air broadcasts, which they have every right to do. The two sides generated plenty of drama in a Manhattan federal district court as two days of arguments were wrapped up. The judge now must decide whether to shut down Aereo.

The parties were in court as … Read more

Tout lets you create, share, and watch 15-second video status updates, all from your mobile device. But more than just a video app, Tout is its own self-contained social network, where you can find and follow other users, as well.

Because Tout is all about quickly shooting and sharing short videos, its interface is decidedly simple. There's a large Tout button always at the bottom of the screen, which lets you very quickly shoot and share videos. When you tap it, you can choose to either start recording a new video or upload an existing video from your device. … Read more

While Socialcam appears to be one of the better video-sharing apps on iOS, I certainly can't say the same about its sibling on the Android platform. After taking some time to review Socialcam for Android, I realized that the app is fraught with problems and in need of some major attention from its developers.

The first problem I encountered was that Socialcam on Android only offers you the option to log in using Facebook, and much of the time even that doesn't work. I tried logging in using two different accounts on two different devices and found this … Read more

One of the first apps that showed off the power of early iPhones was Shazam, the app that let you hold up your iPhone to "listen" to music playing and could identify the artist and offer you options to buy that music.

Today, Shazam Entertainment announced a new update with Shazam 5.0 that makes the app even better than before. The company says the app now launches a second faster to let you identify media much more quickly. It also can take as little as 1 second to identify media once you touch the button, and even starts "listening" the second you open the app in case you're trying to identify media in a hurry.… Read more