Here is Michael Rosenblum in a tour de force nailing why TV is dead. No fuzziness - Just the straight math!
Every Board member in Public TV should see this and know why simply trying harder means death. Thanks to John Proffitt who is in the pub Radio/TV world in Anchorage whose Blog - Gravity Medium is becoming a centre of the debate about the future of public media.
The other day I was driving with my 16-year-old at a certain speed down the highway. We needed to get her to her new job at the pizza parlor on time, and were making the usual desultory conversation along the way. She had opened her Macbook and started editing photos taken earlier that day. She was also surfing six or seven radio stations looking for songs she liked, and texting three or four friends.
Suddenly her dispersed attention sort of gathered itself into a rising column of interest. Her neck craned, her body turned, her eyes peered intently as we passed what seemed to me to be a perfectly nondescript van.
“Did you see that?” she said excitedly, adding that the vanity plate said something about Elvis — I’d not noticed. She was peering intently into the van. I tried for a quick look, but entirely missed seeing the driver — a woman, according to my daughter, encumbered by one of those giant hairdos of yore, brilliantly blond, genus fanatica, species elvisia, ca. 1958.
All I saw was the van. All my kid saw was the Elvis attributes — Elvis happens to be one of her longest running crushes — on the license plate and inside. The thing is, given the way her attention had been deployed moments before, I have no idea how it pulled that particular bit of data from the parallel lines of traffic we were passing at 84 mph.
This jogged my memory of a theme surfacing at FASTForward08: How JP Rangaswami, Don Tapscott and others had talked about how multi-tasked kids are, how their synapses seem to have been rewired to do things we can’t do.
We — ok, I – am of the generation of the single node receptor, the seemingly receptive eye/I, waiting idly to be served up something whole to look at, to take in. I turned off my TV off in 2000 and have not looked at it for more than 210 minutes in toto since; nevertheless, I remain a sort of virtual reclined potato, lying in wait for something to actively consume my vacancy.
My daughter and her peers are not like this. They seem constantly pre-occupied, moving between ongoing processes — mySpace, texting, photoshopping, searching — and yet, somehow, they catch more. Not “more” as in all that is going on, and perhaps more worryingly, not more as in the big picture. More within that ambiance that is vital and relevant to their current and ongoing passions and curiosity.
One other thing that seems worth noting: we Boomers are voice-oriented — we listen to voices, discourses, “messages,” till we grow utterly sick of them. Kids excel in tuning voices — and not just those of their parents — out, and in. They instead have selected conversations, not via the paths of the larynx, tongue and ear — exchanges proceeding against a silent, or music-filled, background. The “openness” of the couch potato is not their openness, but they aren’t closed, either. Just differently available.
To address this sort of optative “user,” a mode of address that attempts to fill up all the space with its active, grandstanding, vocal presence is probably not going to get far.
Something moving sidelong and not so showy — less big, less direct, less controlling — might be more suitable. Something decentered, linked to or associated indirectly to what is already moving them.
The battle-cry of this mode of address could be, “It’s the metonymy, stupid!”
Where are these links to be found? In the messiness of what David Weinberger calls the “unowned order” — the unpredictable realm of data and metadata, or, in his metaphor, amid the wild hedgerows before the topiarists arrive — the realm of advanced search.
I should mention that my five-year-old, who has not yet begun to surf, twit, or google, demonstrates thinking and attentional processes that are linear, Aristotelian, and complete. We have great old-fashioned conversations, as humans once did, in the wayback days. It’s pretty cool.
I have a sister-in-law who just turned 50 who has been until recently remarkably (and determinedly) resistant to online activities. She has basically not ever used the Internet for anything but email, and even that sparingly. Part of her reluctance and resistance is lack of familiarity (beginner’s embarrassment) and the other equally strong aspect has been her clear sense of how online can encroach on or steal time from what many will call "real life".
That there are forms of emergent social isolation and alienation, and addictive behaviours, that have developed as the online world has grwon and spread is irrefutable … just as the number(s) and types (s) of connections and interactions have multiplied and led to interesting behaviours and outcomes.
Back to my sister in law. She is also a very good cook (let’s say amateur gourmet chef) and a talented amateur photographer. As she has grown in her capabilities with a digital camera, she has also gotten more familiar with online environments. Bit by bit, her attitude has been changing. Recently she discovered StumbleUpon, and has almost become an evangelist, taking time out from conversations to show people who visit the interesting things that one can stumble upon just by clicking once. It was also interesting to see her and her girlfriends’ initial reaction to finding people they knew on Facebook.
Slowly and surely, more and more people will use services and tools on the Internet as it weaves its way into and throughout our lives. And as that happens, people will notice more and more the smooth sides and sharp edges of ways this spreading and weaving will impact the ways we live and work .. as will whatever the Cloud becomes.
"2008 is the year that sees Microsoft’s ambitions challenged" is a line halfway through the movie posted below. Eerily prescient, no?
What also seems certain is that even if Microsoft does not acquire Yahoo !, other acquisitions and mergers (and the concomitant convergence and integration) are sure to happen over the next decade
Maybe EPIC 2015 (originally released as EPIC 2014 in 2004 by Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson) does not seem so weird or impossible today ?
Wouldn’t it be something if Public TV and Radio got together to cover the election? Would it be great if the local stations got together with the big producers to cover the election?
Well it’s more than a dream now - CPB is funding just such a Mashup - The beginning I think of the key new force in public media - a Real Network of Many to Many.
Many of us had had a problem wit the term “Network” in Radio and TV. What it really means is one powerful producer using a system to distribute its product. Of course a real network is a diverse multi node system that where many nodes add value to the whole.
This is what is being “born” in Public radio and TV. Our hope a year ago was that the Election would be a powerful enough incentive to help the current large players to grit their teeth and really share and work with each other. This is working.
Earlier today, NPR and its partners announced that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is awarding more than $1.3 million dollars to a consortium of public media organizations to expand our coverage of election 2008 across multiple platforms. The consortium, led by NPR and including American Public Media/Minnesota Public Radio, Capitol News Connection, KQED, PBS, PRX, PRI/Public Interactive and The NewsHour, will work together to produce election-related content and interactive tools available to the entire public broadcasting system.
“By pooling content produced locally and nationally — for radio, television, and online — we will discover new ways of doing business to better serve the public,” said NPR CEO Ken Stern in a note that went out today to the public radio system. “We are pleased to have succeeded in coming together to deliver on the commitments made at the 2007 Annual Meeting.”
“This grant underscores CPB’s support of innovative projects that move public radio and television into the digital future so they can help individuals better connect with their communities wherever they are,” added Pat Harrison, CPB President and CEO. “This ambitious project will provide us with new ways of looking at how we serve the public on existing and emerging media platforms.”
The basic premise of the project was built around a simple reality - many public broadcasters were planning to create on air content and interactive modules for their websites, but we didn’t have a structure in place to work together during the election cycle. Around a year ago, NPR and PBS began conversations around editorial partnerships for the election, including the creation of an interactive map that would work on both of our websites, as well as on the TV show NewsHour. While that conversation was taking place, I co-organized a group discussion at the February 2007 Integrated Media Association conference for public broadcasters to talk about the Election 2008 social media plans and how those activities might be replicable across the system.
The conversation kicked into high gear at NPR’s annual meeting last April, where you may recall I blogged about some of the ideas that were brewing among those of us present at the event. We organized breakout conversation in which we laid out what was at stake and how we might collaborate. It didn’t take long to realize that we had an opportunity that might quickly slip through our fingers if we couldn’t get our act together. We needed to pull together a SWAT team and get to work……….
Now with NPR Music - we are seeing a real network emerging. With a real network, there will come the network effects for all concerned.
David Weinberger will be speaking at the Fast Forward conference in Feb. I mention this in the context of his helpful thoughts about how the world is going to be “organized” when there is so much content available.
It appears that Micorsoft sees the value in enabling people within enterprises to discover the “Wisdom of Crowds”. No longer does the Enterprise have to Organize its information in an ever more cumbersome and complex hierarchy. What Microsoft hope they can offer the user is easy access to anyhting inside the organization - just as Google is allowing us such access outside. With this approach to search, the full power of the enterprise knowledge can be accessed relatively easily. This might actually start to change things?
This leads me to another point about Media, TV and Radio.
TV and radio Content is today largely organized as a library or worse. Much of the content is simply a set of lists or even worse a set of Banker’s Boxes with stuff in it that you have to rummage through to find. Look around station or Producers sites - I wont embarrasss them by linking. You will see a catalog or worse a long, long list of stuff with no way of finding it or finding out whether the content is worth looking at.
My sister lost a 4 carat diamond a few years ago while cleaning out the horses in her barn. The diamond remains latently valuable but only if a person was to find it. That is what it is like for most stations and producers. If you have diamonds, they are in the shit somewhere and no one knows how big they are. PS her old farm is in new Jersey.
So many in TV and Radio have not got one of the key value issues in the new media. If I cannot find it easily and if I cannot evaluate whether I should use my precious time, no matter how good the content is - it has little or no value.
Organizing content to be found and to be evaluated will be a critical source of value in the new media when content will approach the infinite.
The end of the world of the fixed schedule and the monopoly of geography gets closer every day. Comcast CEO will announce today Comcasts plans to deal a blow not only to local TV stations but also to the cable approach of restricting choice. (NYT) Maybe Mr Roberts may talk today at CES about “Project Infinity”? which they plan to offer more than 1,000 titles.
In an interview last week at Comcast’s Philadelphia headquarters, Mr. Roberts said his goal was “to give consumers the ability to watch any movie, television show, user-generated content or other video that a producer wants to make available on demand.”
The plan, which Brian L. Roberts, the chairman and chief executive of the Comcast Corporation, will describe in a keynote speech at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, is aimed at making a nearly limitless supply of movies and television shows available on television, where Comcast subscribers could view them on demand, and through the Internet, where anyone with Web access could watch them.
Although the television component is still at a nascent stage — Comcast’s existing video-on-demand service has about 300 titles, compared with the 6,000 it eventually hopes to offer — the Web portion is further along.
Comcast has set up a site called Fancast.com where viewers can watch more than 3,000 hours of television shows from NBC, Fox, CBS and MTV and where they will soon be able to remotely program the digital video recorders in their homes. The shows on Fancast are available free. Comcast has yet to say how it will price the rest of the content as its plan moves forward.
My prediction is that in 2008 we will see a Tipping Point. Mainstream viewers will be offered ways of having TV on demand. Currently Innovators and some Early Adopters already have this - they use Torrents and YouTube. It helps to recall what happened to Music. For a long time the Innovators and Early Adopters also had to work to get their music. But then the iPod and iTunes made the process easy.
The mainstream are prepared to pay for convenience.
They will pay to have a convenient way of accessing high quality TV on demand. Not a lot but in aggregate the dollars will be a lot. For instance a copy of a Nature film on PBS is $19.99 plus shipping plus all the time it takes to get to me by mail. Few are going to make this transaction. The PBS Nature page already allows me to get a preview streamed online - why would anyone wait for a DVD?
What are some of the emerging business models?
On iTunes there is a small charge per transaction. In Canada I can get an episode of South Park for $1.99. I would pay more for an hour of say Nature or Nova. How much more? Maybe $5.0. If it was easy to find and easy to get.
On XBox with 10 million members there are 2 levels of membership - one is free and one is pay. We are all very used to this idea by now. The Free Flickr service gets you a taste, the Pro gets you the goods. I can see this working too.
At the moment most of the new suppliers of content on demand are still in the transaction world. At5 the moment, the traditional suppliers of content - our local TV stations both private and public are in deep shit. For On Demand Content for the mainstream is just around the corner.
What can be the best possible approach for a TV station and why might there be a business model that can put them and us the consumer back into a valuable relationship with each other?
A joint Microsoft-NBC Universal announcement provides just one indication of the power of software to change the way people experience online entertainment. NBC Universal and Microsoft will raise the bar for live and on-demand Internet broadcasting through an exclusive agreement where Microsoft and NBC will deliver NBCOlympics.com on MSN, the official U.S. online home of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.
In the first “long-tail” Olympics, online viewers will have access to more than 3,000 hours of live and on-demand content so they can watch their favorite athlete or sport, regardless of whether the sport has seven fans or 7 million. NBCOlympics.com on MSN will be available free and powered by Microsoft Silverlight technology, a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering high-quality video experiences on the Web.
“With Microsoft’s cutting-edge technology and MSN’s enormous reach, we will be positioned on NBCOlympics.com to enable Olympic fans to tailor their Olympic online viewing experience — they can watch Olympic sports content when and where they want,” said Gary Zenkel, president of NBC Olympics. “An on-demand Olympics means online viewers will be able to return to their favorite Olympic moments over and over or watch a performance they may have missed for the first time.”
I think that this looks close to where we may land for TV - The traditional TV show/event supported with much more web based content that is available at any time and easily accessible plus the last step - an affinity community that itself adds to the content.
Imagine your daughter is a pole vaulter at the Olympics - her family and friends are there too. What about their content and their desire to talk with others?
There is more. Microsoft is upping the ante for the Xbox as a TV channel.
Bach announced that hit TV programs from ABC Television and Disney Channel will join the Xbox Live programming available for download directly to the Xbox 360 console. In addition, MGM will bring its library of hit movies.
Under the agreement with Disney-ABC Television Group, later this month, all U.S. Xbox LIVE members will begin to have access to select TV shows and movies from the ABC Television Network, ABC Family, ABC News, Disney Channel and Toon Disney as part of an agreement with Disney-ABC Television Group. More than 500 hours of content, in both standard definition and high definition when available, will be offered including hit ABC Television shows “Lost,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Ugly Betty” and “Desperate Housewives.” Past and current ABC shows will be available on demand, with new episodes arriving on the service the day after they air on television.
Under the agreement with MGM, Xbox 360 will offer MGM’s legendary movie library on demand for Xbox 360 including such titles as “Rocky,” “Terminator,” “Legally Blonde,” “Silence of the Lambs” and “Barbershop.” United Artists, an MGM sister company, will also make select films available on demand.
With more than 10 million Xbox LIVE members and more than 3,500 hours of premium content, Xbox 360 has established itself as a premier platform for on-demand TV shows and movies, including impressive high definition experiences, for TV.
“Xbox LIVE Marketplace is the destination for high-definition movies, TV shows and music videos,” Bach said. “And, with the new Disney-ABC and MGM partnerships, we are bringing even more compelling high-definition content to people through their Xbox 360.”
My bet is that by 2009 the traditional channel of TV and the idea of making your money constraining viewers by a schedule and by geography will be dying fast.
So if this is the timeline for economic death, what is the new economic model for those in TV today?
Netflix and LG Electronics will deliver rental movies and TV series directly to TV sets, sidestepping the well-known red envelopes used by the DVD rental company.The companies announced Thursday that they will develop a set-top box that will allow users to stream movies and other content from the Internet to HDTV sets.
Netflix, which began to allow users to stream content to their PCs via the Internet last year, said the new system would bypass PCs. The companies said a networked LG player will be released to market by the second half of this year.
“Internet to the TV is a huge opportunity,” said Reed Hastings, Netflix’s founder, chairman, and CEO, in the announcement. “Netflix explored also offering its own Netflix-branded set-top boxes, but we concluded that familiar consumer electronics devices from industry leaders like LG Electronics are a better consumer solution for getting the Internet to the TV.”
Netflix said the move reflects its larger strategy to offer customers a variety of ways to rent and view movies and television programs. Those who buy the hardware will be able to rent titles cataloged on the Internet. Netflix already offers more than 6,000 titles via the Internet, and the company said it plans to expand its online catalog. The company offers more than 90,000 titles on DVD.
“Consumers crave compelling and immediate content, and the Netflix online streaming movie feature can provide instant gratification,” Ki Kwon, president of the consumer electronics division of LG Electronics USA, said in the announcement.
LG Electronics said the partnership will improve its position in the U.S. digital television marketplace.
I have no opinion about whether this will work but it is part of a mass of innovation that will somehow bear fruit soon. One of my predictions for 2008 is that we will see a moment when it finally becomes easy to both find and access Movies and High End TV Shows without having to wait for the show to air on a schedule. We will be able to have TV and Movies when we want - We will have it our way!
There seems to be an inevitability here that most agree with. Where I differ with some friends in TV is how quickly this will occur.
I think that enough progress will take place in 2008 to make 2009 the Annus Horribilis for Traditional TV that uses the artificial scarcity of its broadcast area and schedule as its economic model. TV will suffer as Newspapers are suffering.
So in a world where there is masses of great content to be had at any time, where is the value?
I think that it is in making it easy to find what you want - Navigation. Maybe just Google - But I doubt it - Maybe a series of Hubs that house niches - The Military Channel - The Opera Channel etc
These Channels would make it easy to find the good stuff - and also have a lot more information linked to the film and reviews.
Here it would be easy to share what you like and to comments on it. John Wayne fans unite and talk to each other about the Duke -
So what then will be left for the local TV stations - both private and public? I think that their domain is to leverage the national content and to win the hyper local wars. More on this as 2008 unfolds as some of my clients do the world to solve this challenge.
INEXPENSIVE broadband access has done far more for online video than enable the success of services like YouTube and iTunes. By unchaining video watchers from their TV sets, it has opened the floodgates to a generation of TV producers for whom the Internet is their native medium.
And as they shift their focus away from TV to grab us on one of the many other screens in our lives — our computers, cellphones and iPods — the command-and-control economic model of traditional television is being quickly superseded by the market chaos of a freewheeling and open digital network.
According to Move Networks, a company based in Utah that provides online video technologies, more than 100,000 new viewers jump online every 24 hours to watch its clients’ long-form or episodic video. During the first two weeks of November alone, more than twice the number of Americans were watching TV online than in the entire month of August.
The shift is proving quite inspirational to digital media entrepreneurs…….
But what happens to the television industry when the traditional way for content to find its audience becomes obsolete?
“There’s a lot of rewriting of the concept of windows in the TV network world today — the timing of when and where shows appear,” said Allen Weiner, the managing vice president for media and consumer technologies for the Gartner Group in Scottsdale, Ariz.
In the old days, after something appeared on TV, its release to other distribution channels was carefully staged — from the timing of reruns to the DVD release to when it would be available on-demand. “We’re seeing all kinds of new windows occurring, and no one knows what the magic formula will be,” he said. “A lot depends on advertiser reaction and on user behavior.”
One closely watched approach is the new online series “Quarterlife,” by Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, who produced “My So-Called Life.” Episodes first appear on MySpace TV, then are available the next day on Quarterlife.com, and a week later on YouTube, Facebook and Imeem. There is talk that they may even appear later on network TV — but as the last window, rather than the first.
As far as ON is concerned, Mr. McClanahan intends to put his programs in every single window he can find. Unlike other companies, ON optimizes all its shows for viewing on any video-capable device, a feature he calls “lifestyle distribution.”
That’s why he has deals with partners like iTunes and AT&T’s Television, Broadband and Wireless Services, both of which can deliver video programs to multiple devices, from plasma TVs to computer screens and cellphones.
“You can’t expect to control consumers and force them to come to prime time at 7 p.m. on a Monday night,” said Mr. McClanahan. “If the consumer wants it on their phone at 3 p.m. while they’re on the golf course, then that’s where we have to deliver it.”
I was sent this email from a client. It comes from John Wallace, NBC executive VP, television operations and production services (TOPS), the head of what was NBC TV - It’s our new reality - No matter how faulty the steps and the tools - one way broadcast TV is DEAD.
I’m extremely pleased to announce an exciting next step in our evolution as local content providers …we’re changing our name. As of today, our group will be known as the NBC Local Media Division. This is a much better reflection of who we are as an organization and a greater indication of the full scope of our capabilities.
Our stations already produce local content for a multitude of media platforms beyond our primary television channels. These include our diverse broadband offerings, like digphilly.com and yourLA.com; our multicast digital products; our growing presence in mobile distribution and multiple media platforms outside of the home. Our old name - the NBC Television Stations Division - just doesn’t do all of this justice.
Our stations are the core of what we do. They provide a platform in terms of our credibility, our service and our community connection. Re-branding our group is not about moving away from the traditional broadcast medium, but more about putting an equal value on all of the other mediums with which we are involved.
Our new name also sends an important message to the marketplace. Our clients are asking for integrated marketing solutions that incorporate television, broadband and other emerging platforms. That’s exactly what NBC Local Media offers. We can grow our clients’ businesses by delivering the power of GE and NBCU combined with local content, customized messaging and marketing solutions that engage consumers where they live, work and play.
This is an extremely exciting time to be a part of the NBC Local Media Division. Whether you’re an employee, a consumer of any of our products on any of our growing platforms, or an advertiser looking to reach your customers in new and different ways, NBC Local Media is the place to be.
As part of our focus on local media expansion, I’d also like to highlight two key leadership roles that we’re announcing today. Brian Buchwald has been named Senior Vice President, Local Digital Media and Multiplatform, and Mark French, Senior Vice President and General Manager of NBC Everywhere, a new unit focusing on our growing digital place-based network, available on numerous out of home media platforms. They will work closely with our stations to ensure the division’s continued expansion beyond the limits of the traditional television space.
In his new role, Brian will be responsible for developing new business models and enterprises with a focus on local video content that extend NBCU’s knowledge of local media to a broader geographic footprint. He will also explore alternative content production models, as well as new formats and channels for content distribution.
As General Manager of NBC Everywhere, Mark will focus on expanding our presence on alternative distribution platforms through content and advertising partnerships with a focus on our local markets. He will also work closely with NBCU’s sales and marketing groups to integrate place-based opportunities into their 360-degree offerings and with the NBC Agency and the local stations to program the various out of home channels.
This site is a companion blog to the FASTforward conference and summit series and is sponsored by FAST. The blog, like the conference series, aims to drive and deepen conversation about how today’s companies can use technology to place users in control of information, and is home to ongoing discussion about the user revolution and Enterprise 2.0 opportunities and challenges. More info here...
FAST invites you to join a hosted conversation between Greg Merkle, Vice President and Creative Director for Dow Jones Enterprise Media Group and Ned May, Director and Lead Analyst, Outsell.
Join us on May 21 at 11 PDT for a webcast featuring Outsell, a leading industry research firm serving publishers and information providers, and Dow Jones Enterprise Media Group. Learn how Dow Jones Factiva has expanded search beyond the traditional search box and results set to bring information liquidity to the intelligent enterprise.
Be sure to catch dozens of great interviews from this year's FASTforward. Among the topics discussed between host Jerry Michalski and the speakers, panelists, attendees, and contributors to this blog: enterprise 2.0, search, the user revolution, the future of content, and much, much more.
FAST recently released a white paper on the business and technology of recommendations. Entitled "Enhancing Content Discovery Through Recommendations Solutions", the white paper is free for those who register. Find out more and download the paper today.
