7.7 Million Watch BET Awards | Survivor’s Probst Looks at Daytime Talk | Social TV Round-up

Published on June 28, 2011

• Global pay TV revenues will climb to $173 billion by 2016, an increase of $49 billion overall since 2006, but with a slowing rate of increase after 2010, with adding $18 billion, or 12% of the total growth , according to “The Digital TV World Revenue Forecasts,” from Digital TV Research. On-demand revenues will increase much faster than subscription revenues, though on-demand will only reach US$5.7 billion (or 3.3% of the total) by 2016.
• The BET Awards 2011 Sunday, June 26, drew 7.7 million total viewers, making it the top awards show in cable this year, and the second-most watched telecast in BET history, behind the 2009 ceremony honoring Michael Jackson, the network said. As well, producers counted 7.5 million tweets about the program throughout the weekend of June 26-27, and said that there was an average of 11,500 tweets per minute during the live telecast, peaking at nearly 21,000 tweets per minute at 11:05 p.m.
• Jeff Probst, host of reality show, Survivor, has signed a development deal with CBS Television Distribution to star in his own daytime talk show that would debut in fall 2012. CTD is shooting a pilot in the middle of next month that it plans to shop to stations. Probst will remain host, executive producer and mastermind on Survivor, reports Broadcasting & Cable. 
• Wells Fargo Securities analyst Marci Ryvicker said that FCC’s prposed spectrum reclamation is a priority – but says that it won’t come quickly, reports Radio Business Report. Ryvicker said that the National Broadband Plan seeks to reclaim 500MHz of spectrum, with 120MHz coming from the television broadcasters via incentive auctions, but the route to share those proceeds with the public safety network on the D block spectrum, is not yet paved with legislation.
• LostRemote has a round-up of the happenings in social TV, and the arenas where social TV is quickly gaining traction. Starting with the April 2010 buyout of IntoNow TV-listening app by Yahoo for about $20-30 million, the article also discusses this month’s $32 million funding for music-listening app Shazam to start work on TV-commercial tagging.