Versus took its name in 2006 after spending its first 10 years as OLN (the Outdoor Life Network), broadcasting plenty of hunting and fishing before reaching a larger audience with Tour de France coverage. 

Since its renaming by Comcast in 2006, the network has  focused more and more on mainstream sports and is now going totally that way as it rebrands itself NBC Sports Network, starting in January, according to USA Today.

"This is more than just a name change for Versus," said Mark Lazarus, the former Turner Sports exec who became the chairman of NBC Sports Group in May. "It's a complete repositioning of the brand."Continue reading...

Qatar-based Al Jazeera finally has a toehold in Manhattan after months of persistent pressure on U.S cable and satellite systems.

Al Jazeera English (AJE) is now being simulcast in New York City 23 hours a day on RISE, a cable channel adjunct to WRNN, which is carried by Time Warner Cable and rival Verizon FiOS. The deal makes AJE available starting today on Time Warner Cable's channel 92, with FiOS channel 466 adding the feed in the coming days, for a total reach of 2 million New York area homes.

As part of its carriage contract, RISE must carry one hour of daily local programming; now, the other 23 hours will be a live feed of AJE. While the contract gives Al Jazeera a presence in a key U.S. market, it's hitting the Big Apple via a sublease deal as opposed to outright carriage deal, which means its opportunities for marketing and branding are hindered.

“It’s all about leverage in this business, and they don’t have any,” observed Paul Maxwell, a cable industry consultant, to the New York Times.Continue reading...

Amazon results beat Wall Street estimates as ad-supported Kindle tops e-reader sales.

American Apparel partners with eBay.

Comcast and NBC launch TV's "holy grail" — dynamic VOD advertising.

Dunkin' Brands prices IPO at $19/share for $2.4 billion valuation; but can it grow coffee biz?

Facebook launches new portal to help brands better target their marketing.

FOX narrows window on free streaming of network programming, with Dish Network first to sign on.

Google targets small business ad market, while interest in Hulu raises speculation.

Kraft begins global pitch for Trident.Continue reading...

Air New Zealand's Rico is back, this time with David Hasselhoff, who was down under last month to promote...Continue reading...

Meet Gayle Evans, an American Family Insurance agent in Maple Grove, Anytown, U.S.A. She's also the star of a digital series produced by NBCU Digital titled, In Gayle We Trust.

The character has been featured in two seasons of webisodes on NBC.com (final episodes will continue through this fall), and was introduced last year as part of NBC's ramped up branded entertainment push — an initiative that NBCU's new owners at Comcast recently killed off in lieu of producing webisodes tied to NBC's current on-air programming, not brands' characters and storylines.Continue reading...

Hollywood's wagons are circling against content theft with a new coalition, Creative America, to fight piracy and protect creative works and jobs.

The entertainment industry coalition states “that halting the looting of America’s creative works and protecting jobs must be a national priority."

Statistics cited on the group's homepage:

• Websites trafficking in stolen film and TV content get nearly 150 million visits every day, more than 50 billion visits per year. 
• Content theft isn’t just about movies. TV shows are illegally streamed and downloaded millions of times each week.  
• Content theft threatens over 2 million jobs supported by the film and televisio n industry in all 50 states and D.C. 
• The vast majority of workers in film and TV are middle class, earning $55K a year on average. These are the people hurt by content theft.  
• Content theft has already cost 140,000 U.S. jobs, along with $5 billion in wages and revenues for residuals and pensions. 

The founding members — including NBC Universal, SAG, Sony Pictures Entertainment, AFTRA, CBS, the DGA, IATSE, Twentieth Century Fox, Viacom, Disney and Warner Bros. — call themselves a “grassroots organization” supporting 2 million Americans whose jobs are in creative fields.Continue reading...

How leading industry brands are performing in social media customer service comes under the microscope in a new study released by market researcher Alterian — specifically, how effectively 12 brands are using social media to resolve customers' issues and the impact on their marketing efforts.

Microsoft was the top performer in the report — titled "Social Media Report Cards: Measuring Brand Engagement" — across all industries, achieving the highest overall score for social media customer service. 

Alterian's researchers examined brand leaders in six industries: travel, banking, cable, mobile, gaming and consumer electronics, and concluded that higher scores went to brands showing “a correlation between rapid customer service response times and positive consumer sentiment on social media.”Continue reading...

Chipotle raises prices.

Disney's Pixar nabs No. 1 spot at weekend box office with Cars 2.

Dunkin’ Donuts and LinkedIn IPOs boost Wall Street morale.

Duracell and Energizer miss out on personal-device boom.

Hulu weighs possible sale of site (without Comcast's approval) and looks to UK for content.

Jeep sponsors Dave Matthews festival.

JetBlue sponsors PBS kids’ summer-reading program.Continue reading...