The New York Times’ Richard Siklos has this short piece today (Sunday) about a la carte and the debate between cable and the FCC on the unbundling of program packages. What’s interesting, though, is how he casts a spotlight on the current dichotomy of video programming. On the one hand, cable operators — with a few exceptions — are holding tight to the idea that programming economics dictate tiers of channels.
On the other hand, however, programmers are flocking to the web with individual programs, breaking down the video economics model to the level of a single show. But, ABC and Fox and the others aren’t distributing their programs on the web because they believe they will make a lot of money that way.
They’re doing it as a pre-emptive strike against P2P and other forms of video sharing that could totally wrest product control out of their hands.
All this is happening not so much because content makers sense gigantic riches in these new ventures, but out of fear that if they don’t make their programming more freely available, younger audiences will grow up accustomed to getting their favorite shows free via illegal file-sharing services and DVD’s burned by their pals.
So while programmers generate revenue from the video packages available on cable (and satellite), they’re hedging their bets by going online. Maybe Congress won’t have to mandate a la carte after all.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 10:28 PM | Print | Comments (0)
VoIP pioneer Jeff Pulver created a publishing and conference, not to mention VoIP, empire with the launch of VON ten years ago. At the time, VON stood for voice-on-the-net, but in this interview with the LA Times’ James Granelli, Pulver says he’s switching the focus of VON to video-on-the-net.
The next wave of disruption I see is going to be the broadcasting industry. It’s really hard to ignore the fact that the Internet has become a medium that absolutely will redefine the way we communicate, and can now come in as a substitute or replacement for broadcast.
He predicts that in ten years’ time, only about one-third of us will watch video en masse the way we do now.
The Internet is good enough now to use as an alternative way to watch television. Ten years from now, I’m guessing that only 30% to 35% of the time will people be having a shared common experience watching something while it’s live, whether it’s the Oscars or the Super Bowl or, God forbid, some natural disaster. We’re becoming a time-shifting, place-shifting society. If there’s a television series you like, the broadcasters will help you schedule it. You could watch it according to them, or you could go to some place on the Internet and download it now for viewing when it’s convenient for you.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:51 PM | Print | Comments (0)
I love reading Scott Karp’s Publishing 2.0. Whenever Scott blogs, he manages to kick up some dust with his non-politically correct attacks on Web 2.0 trends.
I also love the fact that Scott works for a traditional print media company that is itself coming to grips with the amazingly rapid transformations in the publishing industry. It’s hard for dead-tree publishers to grok the new lingo and quite a few old-timers are ducking for cover hoping this whole Web 2.0 business will blow over. Scott is clearly nudging his own company in new directions while maintaining sympathy for the guys hiding in the basement.
In other words, Scott clearly has a foot in both publishing camps — one which is racing ahead of its readers with all kinds of Ajaxian gizmos and the other which is baffled by this whole Web 2.0 thing. Today Scott chides one of the vanguards of the dead-tree world, Newsweek magazine, which is making a belated attempt to offer customized RSS feeds.
Aside from the fact that Newsweek’s customized RSS reader doesn’t seem to work very well, Scott takes on the language that Newsweek uses. First, he derides the magazine’s use of the word “content.”
First of all, the term “content” is very media company-centric. Most people don’t think of themselves as consumers of “content.” They read magazines, watch TV, surf the web, and listen to music.
Then he rails against OPML.
What percentage of Newsweek readers do you think know what OPML is? Maybe 0.0001%?
In an earlier piece, Scott deconstructed the terms “blog” and “user-generated media” and more or less found them wanting. I point out all these terminology criticisms because the words Scott dismisses are scary to old-time publishers.
These terms are new, they sound complicated and they require a new mind-set. Very, very frightening indeed to publishing houses that are used to cranking out the stuff and getting people to pay for it (through subscriptions or advertising). Some of these publishers have even gone so far as to build major Internet presences and think that their work ends there.
I disagree, however, with Scott’s notion that readers are as unfamiliar with or as scared off by those terms as he contends. For one thing, young adults fully understand such things as RSS or the term “content” — just hang out at any university for a while to see for yourself.
For another, the media world is changing and consumers are changing along with it. Even old folks are starting to grasp the difference between downloadable music and the radio, for example. They no longer think in terms of generic “music listening,” as Scott might have you believe.
Even most middle-age Internet users know the difference between surfing the web and “feed readers,” even if they don’t use the term “reader.” So, why not start talking in terms that distinguish among the growing number of ways available to consume video, audio and text material?
I’m not advocating that publishers ignore the fact that much of what’s happening on the Internet is too new for most consumers to understand. I’m saying that the real fear of all these Web 2.0 gee-gaws comes from publishers, not consumers. A Newsweek online visitor will ignore altogether its specialized RSS reader if the whole concept of RSS is too intimidating. On the other hand, a visitor accustomed to RSS will figure things out pretty quickly.
Rather than try to stuff the increasingly varied kinds of material (text, audio, video…text-with-audio, video-with-text, mash-ups containing text, audio and video) into the old labels (watch TV, surf the web, listen to music), why not use new terms?
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 6:01 PM | Print | Comments (1)
Thanks to Grant Gross at Network World, I stumbled upon a new DC think tank that focuses on communications policy. And it appears to be a rare species…a public interest group that doesn’t seem to be beholden to any special interest, although the group does seem to favor telco industry policies.
It’s the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), which seems to focus on nothing but promoting technology innovation and adoption. The ITIF describes itself this way:
ITIF is a non-profit, non-partisan public policy think tank committed to articulating and advancing a pro-productivity, pro-innovation and pro-technology public policy agenda internationally, in Washington and the states. Recognizing the vital role of technology in ensuring American prosperity, ITIF focuses on innovation, productivity, and digital economy issues.
The ITIF is co-chaired by two former members of Congress, Jennifer Dunn (R-WA) and Calvin Dooley (D-CA). The head of ITIF is Robert Atkinson, who most recently was a Vice President at the Progressive Policy Institute.
ITIF made a little news this week by releasing a policy brief (press release here, report here) that advocates exempting broadband service from all taxes for five years, relaxing video franchising requirements, refraining from imposing “build-out” requirements on competitive broadband providers and adopting tax incentives for greater broadband deployment.
The basic thrust of ITIF’s arguments is that the U.S. has slipped from fourth to twelth in the OECD rankings, a decline that bodes poorly for our economic strength. They argue, morever, that Iceland’s ascendancy to the top global broadband penetration slot contradicts those who say international comparisons aren’t valid because other countries have greater density, and therefore are expected to have higher broadband penetration. Iceland, they say, isn’t very dense population-wise.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 11:43 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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