I traveled from San Jose to DC today and while I was en route a miracle happened, or so it seemed. The earth-changing event is, of course, the announcement by NBC-U and News Corp. that the two companies will create “the largest Internet video distribution network ever.”
Based on the unbelievable amount of breathless coverage and instant analysis of the decision by the two giant entertainment companies to offer thousands of hours of movies, TV shows and clips on a web-based ring of network affiliates (so to speak) you’d think that this still-fuzzy alliance is the second coming of Internet video. (That phrase, “the second coming,” occurred to me while I was scanning the mountain of blog items and press articles, and see that the always-fun-to-read Mathew Ingram beat me to the punch in using it in this context.)
Make no mistake, this deal is big news. Two of the world’s top TV programmers and movie distributors are going to offer in coordinated, pooled fashion their best TV shows and films online in a serious attempt to reach mass numbers. Not only are NBC-U and News Corp. going to develop a media player that will play the content on a central site, and presumably on their own individual corporate-run sites, but this player and the content will also appear across a major network of Internet video portals and sites, including AOL, MSN, MySpace and Yahoo!, which collectively reach 96% of the Internet audience, the companies contend.
Other “affiliates,” such as IGN and iVillage, will be brought on board over time. NBC-U and News Corp. will offer some of the content on a premium basis, but there is no doubt that this is a big advertising play — the companies will sell ads across the affiliated sites in combination with their regular TV packages.
Although early reports of this alliance had speculated that NBC-U and News Corp. were cooking up a YouTube killer, this deal is nothing of the sort. It’s merely traditional mass market, advertising-support TV transported to the Internet. While some clips and short films will appear in the circulated mix of videos, this is no YouTube, or at least YouTube in its current structure.
Fox’s Peter Chernin said straight out during a media call today that “This is obviously not a YouTube killer.”
“We’ve said for a long time we believe in the power and benefit of ubiquitous distribution. We are in fact willing to talk to anybody provided they are willing to meet our economic terms and our copyright protection terms.”
It’s a bold move and a smart decision by the tradtional TV content providers, which are being bitten to death by the rapidly proliferating video choices that appear on the Internet (a good chunk of which they own anyway). But, come on, these are broadcast networks and Hollywood studios looking to seize control of a world they barely understand, a world that anyone barely understands.
It’s tough enough for a savvy Internet operator like Google to navigate the rocky shoals of web-based video, but I can tell you that these guys (NBC-U, News Corp., along with Viacom and Time Warner and everybody else in Hollywood) are almost impossible to organize. If any evidence of the difficult feat of getting these kind of companies to move into action, work in a coordinated way, were needed, Dawn Kawamoto and Greg Sandoval provided it in their write-up of the media call convened to discuss the deal.
News of the new company appeared to be rushed out. Some of the partners were confused about important details, such as whether all of the content would be offered free of charge (most will but not movies and some TV shows). Organizers have yet to name the company or hire an advertising sales staff.
And I love Mike Arrington’s write-up of the media call, replete with side commentary (“They were really hazy on answers here,” “there are some serious red flags popping up around this service”) that hints that the two studios are putting on a big show with this announcement, with not a lot of pedal-to-the-metal forethought about how all this will work.
The new video-rich site of the venture (which of course doesn’t have a name yet, not even a working one because that would require three meetings, six phone calls, ten blackberry messages and a mogul-brokered deal to soothe the egos of all involved) is slated for launch this summer. Although I sound jaded, I’m really not. It’s definitely a step in the right direction, and a big development that solidifies the legitimacy of the Internet as a video distribution medium. But, NBC-U and News Corp. working hand-in-glove? Time will tell.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 11:16 PM | Print | Comments (0)It’s old news by now, but a video mash-up of Apple’s famed 1984 commercial is creating waves in the presidential race. The very effective video, which eerily incorporates footage of Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton into Ridley Scott’s atmospheric commercial, portraying her as an establishment big brother, has been watched 1.9 million times as of this morning.
What is new is the discovery of the mash-up maker. Some had accused rival Barack Obama’s campaign of making the viral video, a charge that Obama’s people have denied. The Huffington Post, however, has identified the budding political video genius as Philip de Vellis, who was the Internet communications director for Sherrod Brown’s 2006 Senate campaign, and who now works at Blue State Digital, a consulting firm formed by Howard Dean’s crack Internet team.
de Vellis explained in an email to TechPresident why he created the controversial video:
The idea was simple and so was the execution. Make a bold statement about the Democratic primary race by culture jacking a famous commercial and replacing as few images as possible. For some people it doesn’t register, but for people familiar with the ad and the race it has obviously struck a chord.
He even posted a blog item on Huffington Post, offering further thoughts.
Let me be clear: I am a proud Democrat, and I always have been. I support Senator Obama. I hope he wins the primary. (I recognize that this ad is not his style of politics.) I also believe that Senator Clinton is a great public servant, and if she should win the nomination, I would support her and wish her all the best.
Unfortunately for de Vellis, his employer Blue State Digital counts Obama as a client and de Vellis has resigned from his job. But, I’m not worried for de Vellis and I suspect the offers are pouring in. The impact of this elegant ad has been enormous, indelibly painting Clinton with the old school establishment patina that Obama hopes to exploit.
Moreover, de Vellis may have forged new territory in the unchartered plains of Internet politics — the “citizen video” ad (granted, de Vellis is no ordinary citizen and there are those who don’t believe that somehow Obama’s campaign wasn’t truly behind the video). As he notes in his blog post, “This ad was not the first citizen ad, and it will not be the last. The game has changed.”
News of de Vellis’ unmasking is topic one among political bloggers and mainstream reporters alike. The New York Times’ Patrick Healy devotes his blog to the discovery today. Also, check out the Washington Post’s coverage.
Apple has pulled another design and engineering feat out of its hat, or so it seems from the first reviews to emerge on Apple’s just-shipped Apple TV unit. Although Apple is now expected to produce dazzling products that everybody (or at least everybody who is cool) loves, Apple TV’s debut during Steve Jobs’ keynote was almost a non-event in comparison to the stunning announcement and demo of the lust-inducing iPhone.
Moreover, Apple missed its end-of-February shipment deadline for the TV unit, stirring fears (at least in me) that something was wrong with the device, which aims to allow users to watch PC-based video on TV. But, the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg issued his review of Apple TV this morning, and it’s nothing short of a home-run rave.
Although Mossberg and his colleage Katherine Boehert quibble with a few drawbacks, most of which aren’t drawbacks (users can’t access iTunes directly from the TV set, the unit works only on HD sets), the review is a glowing one. An example:
In our tests, Apple TV is a pleasure to use. Setup was stunningly simple. We just plugged the unit in and hooked it up to the TV with a single cable (not included).
The New York Times’ David Pogue doesn’t gush quite as much, but he’s still pretty positive about Apple TV. Pogue likes the look of the thing in particularly, calling it “gorgeous” and lauding its superior form factor over the physical design of purported competitive devices, such as Netgear’s EVA8000 box . (Pogue concludes, rightly, that these rivals, which include Microsoft’s Xbox, fill different niches from the one occupied by Apple TV.)
Moreover, Apple TV works best with Apple’s products, such as iTunes, creating the proverbial walled garden. Still, Apple’s genius is not creation of new technology, but taking technology and making it easy and fun to use - think about how Apple turned the clunky MP3 player into a hip toy. Pogue writes
Apple TV offers a gracious, delightful experience — but requires fidelity to Apple’s walled garden.
Its rivals, meanwhile, offer many more features, but they’re piled into bulkier boxes with much less concern for refinement, logic or simplicity.
Pogue’s bottom-line: Apple TV is for the average, fun-loving, non-geeky user..
Apple, on the other hand, is going for everybody else, random people included (at least those with HDTV sets). And that, perhaps, is Apple TV’s real significance.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 1:27 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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