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Netflix doesn't have to sweat losing its big Starz Play movie library because viewers come to the Internet for their television fixes and Netflix has built up a pretty valuable store of TV selections in the last few months. As of last fall, the streaming service's executives estimated that show watching made up 50 to 60 percent of total viewing and analyst Richard Greenfield puts it even higher at 80 percent, reports The New York Times' Brian Stelter. Meanwhile, viewing of new release movies has gone down from 8 to 2 percent in the last year. And it's not just on Netflix. All over the Internet, TV reigns. 

RELATED: How to Survive on the Post-Starz Netflix

On Hulu, for example, the entire first page of top played content is full of television show episodes and not a single movie. As of September 2010, iTunes had sold over 450 million TV episode downloads, compared to 100 million movie downloads. This phenomenon says more about the nature of television watching, than it does about preferences. As long, addictive movies, TV shows have the potential hook users for longer periods of time than movies. A season of Mad Men, just one popular show Netflix offers, has four seasons available for streaming, 13 episodes per season, 48 minutes per episode, so there are hours and hours more to watch than any single movie. Numbers aren't available, but there's a good chance that by sheer volume, Netflix may have more television content in its library than movies, which could skew the stat. 

RELATED: The Movies You Won't Be Able to Watch on Netflix Anymore

We also think the Internet-television phenomenon has to do with what the Atlantic Wire's Ray Gustini calls small screen syndrome. Laptops look like television sets; not like big movie screens. We're conditioned to watch hours of bitty televisions shows on that type of screen, rather than films. It just feels natural. 

RELATED: No Matter What Time Warner Says, Cord Cutting Is Happening

Whatever the cause, this all works out for Netflix, as it is about to lose its Starz Play and has since invested in shows. Since news of the failed renewal deal Netflix has signed contracts with the CW, AMC; IFC; Sundance; WE; TLC; Discovery and Animal Planet on top of investing in its own original stuff. With hours more television options, Netflix won't feel empty. Plus, the Starz movie selection wasn't that great, anyway. 

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The Internet Was Made for Television

Wired up: These fiber-optic cables provide one-gigabit-per-second data to 150,000 homes and businesses in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Chattanooga Electric Power Board

City with Superfast Internet Invites Innovators to Play

A Tennessee city with one-gigabit-per-second Internet runs a $300,000 contest to find ways of using it.

Tuesday, February 28, 2012 By David Talbot

Citizens in Chattanooga, Tennessee, have access to one-gigabit-per-second Internet—that's 100 times the U.S. national average, and fast enough to download a two-hour movie in about five seconds. The only question is: what to do with it?

The city is hoping a contest with $300,000 in prize money will help answer that question. Entrants are invited to come up with clever ways of making use of the city's blisteringly fast Internet, which was installed in late 2010 with a $111 million U.S. Department of Energy grant, as part of federal stimulus efforts that also built out the city utility's long-planned smart grid.

Some early entries include health-care applications, such as transferring larger files like CT scans in real-time so that specialists can serve a larger area. Ideas contributed by students include a platform for high-definition video debates, and international collaborations with students in Sri Lanka, London, Jamaica, and elsewhere.

But even if some great ideas come out of the contest, the fact remains that most people in the U.S. still have access to only relatively slow Internet connections. Late last year, the United States ranked 25th in the world for average available Internet speed. By the end of this year, South Korea, a world leader in Internet speed, will provide one-gigabit service nationwide for about $27 a month.

Furthermore, where superfast Internet is available in the U.S., it is typically prohibitively expensive. The Chattanooga service has been available for more than a year to 150,000 residential and commercial customers for $350 per month, but it has so far found only eight residential subscribers and 18 commercial ones.

Even so, in Tennessee they are optimistic that the contest will bring rewards. "Eventually, these fatter pipes will get filled with bandwidth-eating applications," says Jack Studer, partner at the Lamp Post Group, a VC firm in Chattanooga that, along with companies including Alcatel, Cisco, and IBM, is sponsoring the contests.

"What we are trying to do is inject some capital into innovation, with the goal of driving demand for higher-bandwidth networks and jump-start adoption across the country and world," Studer says. "We plan to do this for multiple years—in the second and third year, we may see a revolutionary jump to things we may not be thinking about now."

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City with Superfast Internet Invites Innovators to Play

February 28, 2012, 2:43 PM EST

By Belinda Cao

Feb. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Chinese Internet stocks climbed, led by Sina Corp., after the company said its Twitter-like Weibo service may start contributing to sales in the second half.

Sina, owner of China’s third-most visited website, jumped the most in four months and was the biggest gainer on the Bloomberg China-US 55 index of the most-traded Chinese stocks in the U.S. which added 1.7 percent to 108.57 by 1:08 p.m. in New York. Youku Inc., owner of China’s largest video sharing website, surged to a six-month high while Baidu Inc., operator of China’s biggest search engine, climbed to the highest level since Feb. 16 based on closing prices.

Shanghai-based Sina has jumped 37 percent this year as Weibo users rose by about 50 million to more than 300 million in the past three months, according to Chief Executive Officer Charles Chao. Prospects the government will take further steps to preserve Chinese growth, the fastest of major economies, has helped drive a 13.4 percent gain in the Bloomberg China-US 55 measure in 2012. Policy makers cut the reserve ratio for banks for the second time in three months on Feb. 24.

“China’s Internet stocks, especially the bigger names like Sina and Baidu, still have lots of room for growth going forward,” Agnes Deng, a Hong Kong-based portfolio manager whose $405 million Greater China Fund invests in Chinese equities, said in an interview at Bloomberg’s headquarters in New York yesterday. “China’s economy will be able to maintain growth of more than 8 percent” this year, she said.

Shanghai-based Sina leaped 13 percent to $71.25, poised for the biggest daily gain since Oct. 13.

‘Meaningful Monetization’

The company plans to start “meaningful monetization” from Weibo in the second half of 2012, CEO Chao said in a conference call yesterday.

“We do not expect that total monetization on Weibo will be significant this year,” he said. The company will start a Weibo-based display advertising system in the second quarter and several fee-based services beginning in the second half, Chao said.

Weibo may contribute $20 million to $30 million to Sina revenue in 2012, Andy Yeung, a New York-based analyst at Oppenheimer & Co Inc. wrote in a research note issued yesterday.

Net income of Sina totaled $9.3 million in the fourth quarter, from a net loss of $100 million a year earlier and a loss of $336.3 million in the previous three months, it said in a Feb. 27 statement.

Deng at the Greater China Fund said she is looking for better “valuation levels” to buy Internet stocks including Sina, after selling holdings of the company when its stock price reached $140 in April. The fund she manages has increased 18 percent this year after posting a 23 percent loss in 2011.

China ETF Climbs

The iShares FTSE China 25 Index Fund, the biggest Chinese exchange-traded fund in the U.S., climbed 1.5 percent to $40.31 yesterday, extending a 3.8 percent advance this month. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index added 0.3 percent to 1,371.57, set for the highest close since June 2008.

Beijing-based Youku advanced 8.3 percent to $24.93 in New York and was poised for the highest close since Aug. 31.

The company is scheduled to report its fourth-quarter results on March 14. Sales for the quarter probably rose 97 percent from a year earlier to 300.07 million yuan ($47.6 million), according to the average estimate of five analysts in a Bloomberg survey. That would exceed the company’s previous forecast of 297.3 million yuan.

Youku competitor Tudou Holdings Ltd., China’s second- largest video sharing website, advanced 4.5 percent to $15.89. Renren Inc., a Beijing-based social networking website, jumped 8.6 percent to $5.58, set for the highest closing level this month.

Beijing-based E-Commerce China Dangdang Inc., the biggest Internet-based online book retailer in China, advanced 8.1 percent to $6.79 in New York, the biggest gain in a month. Baidu jumped 2.7 percent to $138.12.

Sohu.com Inc., which owns the third-biggest search engine, rose 5 percent to $51.44 while online games operator NetEase.com Inc. climbed 4.9 percent to $53.60.

--Editors: Marie-France Han, Emma O’Brien

To contact the reporter on this story: Belinda Cao in New York at lcao4@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Emma O’Brien at eobrien6@bloomberg.net

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Sina’s Weibo Outlook Buoys Internet Stock Gains: China Overnight

By Belinda Cao - Tue Feb 28 18:40:11 GMT 2012

Chinese Internet stocks climbed, led by Sina Corp. (SINA) (SINA), after the company said its Twitter-like Weibo service may start contributing to sales in the second half.

Sina, owner of China’s third-most visited website, jumped the most in four months and was the biggest gainer on the Bloomberg China-US 55 index of the most-traded Chinese stocks in the U.S. which added 1.7 percent to 108.57 by 1:08 p.m. in New York. Youku Inc., owner of China’s largest video sharing website, surged to a six-month high while Baidu Inc. (BIDU), operator of China’s biggest search engine, climbed to the highest level since Feb. 16 based on closing prices.

Shanghai-based Sina has jumped 37 percent this year as Weibo users rose by about 50 million to more than 300 million in the past three months, according to Chief Executive Officer Charles Chao. Prospects the government will take further steps to preserve Chinese growth, the fastest of major economies, has helped drive a 13.4 percent gain in the Bloomberg China-US 55 measure in 2012. Policy makers cut the reserve ratio for banks for the second time in three months on Feb. 24.

“China’s Internet stocks, especially the bigger names like Sina and Baidu, still have lots of room for growth going forward,” Agnes Deng, a Hong Kong-based portfolio manager whose $405 million Greater China Fund invests in Chinese equities, said in an interview at Bloomberg’s headquarters in New York yesterday. “China’s economy will be able to maintain growth of more than 8 percent” this year, she said.

Shanghai-based Sina leaped 13 percent to $71.25, poised for the biggest daily gain since Oct. 13.

‘Meaningful Monetization’

The company plans to start “meaningful monetization” from Weibo in the second half of 2012, CEO Chao said in a conference call yesterday.

“We do not expect that total monetization on Weibo will be significant this year,” he said. The company will start a Weibo-based display advertising system in the second quarter and several fee-based services beginning in the second half, Chao said.

Weibo may contribute $20 million to $30 million to Sina revenue in 2012, Andy Yeung, a New York-based analyst at Oppenheimer & Co Inc. wrote in a research note issued yesterday.

Net income of Sina totaled $9.3 million in the fourth quarter, from a net loss of $100 million a year earlier and a loss of $336.3 million in the previous three months, it said in a Feb. 27 statement.

Deng at the Greater China Fund said she is looking for better “valuation levels” to buy Internet stocks including Sina, after selling holdings of the company when its stock price reached $140 in April. The fund she manages has increased 18 percent this year after posting a 23 percent loss in 2011.

China ETF Climbs

The iShares FTSE China 25 Index Fund, the biggest Chinese exchange-traded fund in the U.S., climbed 1.5 percent to $40.31 yesterday, extending a 3.8 percent advance this month. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (SPX) added 0.3 percent to 1,371.57, set for the highest close since June 2008.

Beijing-based Youku advanced 8.3 percent to $24.93 in New York and was poised for the highest close since Aug. 31.

The company is scheduled to report its fourth-quarter results on March 14. Sales for the quarter probably rose 97 percent from a year earlier to 300.07 million yuan ($47.6 million), according to the average estimate of five analysts in a Bloomberg survey. That would exceed the company’s previous forecast of 297.3 million yuan.

Youku competitor Tudou Holdings Ltd. (TUDO), China’s second- largest video sharing website, advanced 4.5 percent to $15.89. Renren Inc. (RENN), a Beijing-based social networking website, jumped 8.6 percent to $5.58, set for the highest closing level this month.

Beijing-based E-Commerce China Dangdang Inc. (DANG), the biggest Internet-based online book retailer in China, advanced 8.1 percent to $6.79 in New York, the biggest gain in a month. Baidu jumped 2.7 percent to $138.12.

Sohu.com Inc. (SOHU), which owns the third-biggest search engine, rose 5 percent to $51.44 while online games operator NetEase.com Inc. (NTES) climbed 4.9 percent to $53.60.

To contact the reporter on this story: Belinda Cao in New York at lcao4@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Emma O’Brien at eobrien6@bloomberg.net

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Sina’s Weibo Outlook Buoys Internet Stock Gains in N.Y.: China Overnight

Russia's new Internet-savvy opposition is going online to protest and monitor the presidential elections on March 4, bringing its iPhones and Twitter into the fray against Vladimir Putin.

As jokes and spoof videos about Putin, expected to win back the presidency in Sunday's polls, spread like wildfire on social networking sites and YouTube, opposition activists are using the Internet to promote their cause.

After a slow start, Internet use has sky-rocketed in Russia in recent years and last year the country overtook Germany as having Europe's largest number of Internet users, a development the opposition have not hesitated to exploit.

This week a Moscow-based programme developer, Alexei Chistyakov, 29, presented a new iPhone app to allow election monitors at polling stations to instantly report violations.

It will link up to a call centre organised jointly by Yabloko liberal party and the League of Voters, an umbrella group of celebrities and bloggers who are using their clout to rally election observers.

"It's an easy way to report violations," Chistyakov said of the free app, which he designed and developed with a French company, fearing repercussions for the Russian company where he works.

The elections "are already unfair, let's start with that," he said. "We are doing all this so that people on the outside also acknowledge they are unfair."

Activist Ilya Yashin, 28, of the Solidarity movement said he feels equally at home with the audience of his blogs as when yelling out speeches at the mass rallies for fair elections.

"I feel comfortable with the Internet audience and with people who have never used the Internet. I feel that's my advantage, I was never just an offline politician or just online," he said.

Putin, who has slammed the Internet as "50% pornography", has barely entered the Internet battle. But worryingly for the Russian strongman, that's hardly representative of Russians today.

Forty-four percent use the Internet as one of their main news sources, a December poll by the independent Levada centre found, although state-dominated television news remains stronger, with 78 percent watching.

"Obviously there is a trend for the growing influence of the Internet, but of course the Internet cannot compete with television. The status quo remains that public opinion is shaped by television," said Yashin.

Aiming to change that are Internet sites such as Ridus.ru, a "citizens' news" service founded last autumn where anyone can submit a story and which covers the opposition rallies in detail.

"I think the Internet will become the main source of information for people who are interested in news. At the moment, it's television, but that's changing," said Timofei Vasilyev, a staff journalist at Ridus.

"Fewer and fewer people believe in the television. More and more people believe in the Internet."

The founder of Russia's largest social networking site, Vkontakte, Pavel Durov, ran an online poll ahead of December's parliamentary elections. Out of more than 4 million votes, only 21 percent were for ruling party United Russia.

Putin's campaign manager, film director Stanislav Govorukhin, recently called the Internet a "rubbish dump."

In a possible own goal, the campaign recently posted online television ads with celebrity endorsements of Putin.

The result -- bloggers and journalists pored over them and concluded a popular actress looked as if she could have been coerced into appearing to protect her children's charity.

And popular television and radio host Ksenia Sobchak went on to score far better online with a spoof video in which she demurely backed Putin, only for the camera to cut away to reveal guns pointed to her head.

Yashin was scornful of Putin's team's attempts to win hearts and minds on the Internet.

"I think it looks pretty ridiculous. They make quite a mess of it. We're not afraid of competition on the Internet," he said.

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Internet: Russia's new anti-Putin weapon