The present and future of post production business and technology

Piracy Is Promotion, Says CEO of Porn Multinational http://bit.ly/aAqEFN

Not your usual CEO approach to piracy but one that is consistent with his conclusion:

Milton believes that entertainment companies should look beyond piracy, and explore alternatives business models as the battle against piracy is one that can’t be won.

“I think it’s a lost battle,” Milton said, adding: “I look at my own kids, because that’s the best way to know where the market is going. It doesn’t matter if I tell them that it is illegal to download. As soon as they close the door to their room, they download.”

“They are not afraid of someone who’s tracking their IP-address. They just don’t care, Milton said. “It’s a new world and we have to accept it.”

So instead of following the RIAA and MPAA down useless fan-tagonistic approaches he suggests:

In the video Milton says that his company will focus more on selling the ‘private lifestyle’ which includes luxurious vacations with an adult theme, and toys and tools that may come in handy while reenacting pirated videos.

With slow progress on human cloning and the 3D-printer, Milton’s bet on selling the sex ‘experience’ rather than videos seems to be a safe one for now.

Rather Than A Record Label, How About A Musical Affinity Group? http://bit.ly/bKibhF

If the Record Labels have a future maybe it needs to be a different future?

I was reminded of this a bit, two years ago, when Topspin’s CEO, Ian Rogers, penned an open letter to Guy Hands, the head of (struggling) EMI, suggesting that rather than think of itself as a “record label” focused on promotion and distribution (two things that are easier and cheaper than ever before), it could instead focus on being the smart filter for music listeners today, struggling to find the music they love amidst so much musical abundance in the world. The suggestion was to take some of the key, iconic, bands under the EMI roof, and put them under affinity-based “mini-labels” with other less well known bands, that would appeal to people who liked the more well known band. It seemed like a great idea, which, of course, EMI has not done.

Then again, isn’t Apple’s new Ping in iTunes heading in that direction, but with a more social component that doesn’t really require the record labels.

Viral Video bad for producers and advetisers http://bit.ly/dqgBKi

Jim Louderback is one smart guy. Revison3 is doing well, building strong audiences and yes, getting enough advertising support to make a business. In this article he debunks the idea that going for “viral video success” is the wrong strategy for producers:

Let’s start with producers and show creators. Media is all about building habits. Successful producers bind an audience to their creation, building an insatiable hunger for the next installment, next episode, next post. But when you focus on viral success, you throw that focus on repeatability out the window. By its nature, viral videos are designed to surprise, titillate and entertain. They are, by nature, unique…

They do nothing for the producer long term (with some exceptions) but worse they’re not good for advertisers either:

Viral videos may be bad for creators and publishers, but they are actually worse for advertisers. Your typical viral video gets passed around, yes, and drives a lot of views. And yes, those can translate into impressions for an advertiser. But as we’ve seen at Revision3, advertising associated with viral videos has only a small fraction of the impact of an ad that runs inside, or alongside, an episodic video program. We’ve seen tremendous results from putting brands next to our long-running episodic programs — those with real communities, high comment-to-view ratios and predictable views. We’ve seen terrible results by associating the same brands and services with the few viral-focused shows we’ve tried out over the last five years. And if you try creating those viral-focused videos yourself, you are in for a real surprise. It is overwhelmingly likely that you’ll end up with closer to a thousand views than a million.

Concentrate on building an audience? What a concept.

Is $10 The Magic Number In Online Publishing? http://bit.ly/d9NS5x

Now that advertising isn’t going to be the only way to fund film and TV distribution, there are all sorts of ideas on how to fill the gap.

While this article is really focused on news, it’s not that removed from the idea of “1000 true fans” although with the true fans meme it is an average of $10 a month that you’re looking for from some “valuable consideration” – doesn’t have to be directly paying for content.

For example, as Shanahan notes in his blog, where he tries to compare ARPUs of public sites, People’s print magazine clocked a high $409 per customer in 2009 while Demand Media, many of whose users don’t hang around longer than to read a how-to article, notched just $1.60 per reader per year.

Blockbuster tells Hollywood studios it’s preparing for mid-September bankruptcy – LA Times http://bit.ly/cktTTb

Coming as no surprise after losing $1.1 billion in the last few years, and after closing 1000 stores, Blockbuster has been caught between business models: streaming and avoiding the store all together, and the Redbox cheap (and in convenient locations) machines.

Blockbuster post bankruptcy plans on increasing “non-store” revenue (streaming and kiosks).

I guess there’s a role for the store in movie rentals? But when Netflix delivers from a selection approaching 100,000 titles, and the average Blockbuster carries just 5000 titles, how can it really compete?

The studios would likely be protected from any significant losses on payments Blockbuster might owe them at the time it files for bankruptcy under the proposed plan. But they would lose revenue from any stores shut down.

The parties most impacted would be Blockbuster’s junior debt holders and the landlords of leases that would be canceled under the proposed bankruptcy. It remains to be seen whether they would attempt to challenge a plan that left them with a fraction of what they are owed.

After delisting the company is worth only $24 million with a massive debt attached.

New Numbers Reveal: Cord Cutting Is Real http://bit.ly/920KcM

I’d love to believe that “cord cutting” – dropping a cable subscription in favor of web delivered video – is growing and that Internet distribution is a raging success. Except it’s not. At least not yet.GigOm quote some statistics – and for sure this is the biggest quarterly drop that cable subscription numbers have experienced  - but the reality is:

… much of those losses seem to be attributable to customers who subscribed to pay TV early last year due to the broadcast digital transition. Now these customers see the prices for their introductory packages going up, and quite a few of them have decided not to stick around.

Another GigOm post says that “45% of TV viewers get their shows online,” which makes a great headline, until you read the body of the article:

Almost half of all consumers watch TV content online every week, according to a new study released by the Ericsson ConsumerLab today

Watching a single video on YouTube would qualify you in that 45% so there’s no news there, particulalry when the same article presents:

However, linear TV content still reigns supreme: 93 percent watch plain old television every week.

So, watching online video doesn’t diminish the watching of conventional Television.

There are definitely “cord cutters” out there – ourselves among them – who have dropped cable or satellite (and over the air).

As an aside I couldn’t help noting the end of the article:

Apple, on the other hand, should be encouraged by Ericsson’s findings. 37 percent of consumers are very interested in a touch-screen tablet as a remote control for their TV.

That’s what I said months ago. It’s the logical solution to the problem.

If you want to give it a go (cord cutting) Salone has an article today Cut the cord: A guide to free TV but that article’s point one is to “adjust your expectations”! Right.

The most sane commentary on the subject in the last day or so comes from Silicon Alley Insider’s Judge The Success Of Web Video By Real Business, Not Hype Like “Cord Cutting.” I’m big on “real business results” since that’s what ultimately we judge on. The always sensible Dan Rayburn (president of StreamingMedia.com) concludes a very long and excellent counterpoint to the unreasonable optimism from “online video” proponents with:

Notice almost no analyst talks about what’s taking place today? It’s almost always about the future and three or four years away yet there are plenty of opportunities right now. This industry survived the crash in 2000 because expectations were re-set and consumers, vendors, VCs and others all came back down to reality of what was real and what was hype. Many of us don’t want to see the industry go through another correction like that, even though in the long run, it was the best thing that could of happened at the time. It will sound odd to some, but for those in the industry at that time, they will most certainly agree with me that our industry needed to go through that in order to survive and be where it is today.

Don’t let the hype in this industry become the metrics for how we judge true success in the market.

RT @ccrask: HUGE NEWS via @ NewTeeVee MPEG LA: H.264 Streaming Will Be Free Forever http://dlvr.it/4Gp93 No reason not to be HTML5 as the default but the open source purists will find a way.

It’s late. Read the article. It’s good news.

RIAA: The DMCA Isn’t Working http://bit.ly/96D0Cg

I just love the insanity that is Carey Sherman of the RIAA who states:

“You cannot monitor all the infringements on the Internet. It’s simply not possible,” says RIAA President Cary Sherman. “We don’t have the ability to search all the places infringing content appears, such as cyberlockers like [file-hosting firm] RapidShare.”

But expects that ISPs can do that which he has just said isn’t possible.  Insanity. Either these people are shameless, shameless liars, or simply totally incompetent. I vote for totally incompetent having grown up on monopoly “rents” they simply cannot adapt to changing circumstances where their role is nearly irrelevant (if there is still a role for Record Companies at all in five years).

As the article concludes:

As it is, the DMCA protects online service providers — especially smaller ones — from living in fear of lawsuits and having to spend money and resources to patrol for infringing material. The most important question, however, is whether private corporations such as ISPs (which can monitor all of your online communication) should really be responsible for figuring out who’s breaking the law.

Red Princess Blues distibutes movie via iTunes App http://bit.ly/a7jzvJ

A long time ago I started a post titled “The future of distribution is an out-of-browser experience” thinking something like apps. This was before iTunes apps were even available. More recently I postulated on how a production could use an App as its central home in a post facetiously titled How do you get Disney to fund your next production that used a combination of iAds for funding and app for video (both pre- and production content) with in-App commerce.

Well, Red Prince Blues have done the distribution side already – see the iTunes App link above. But making an app is challenging for creative filmmakers or TV producers, so maybe we need an Xcode project template like Chris Mayer has provided for publishing a book as an iDevices App.

BBC: HTML5 Is Not Ready For Video And Sailing Off-Course http://bit.ly/ckjcQS

The corporation’s future media and technology director Erik Huggers writes:

“The fact is that there’s still a lot of work to be done on HTML5 before we can integrate it fully into our products. As things stand, I have concerns about HTML5’s ability to deliver on the vision of a single open browser standard which goes beyond the whole debate around video playback.”

I think it’s widely agreed that HTML5 is not a complete replacement for every use of Flash at this time of the technology’s development, but this attack is hard to separate from the fact that there is a long-standing agreement between the BBC and Adobe to transition the BBC’s video to Flash.

The BBC is invested in a long-standing strategic relationshipsigned with Adobe late in 2007, allowing it to move its media delivery away from RealMedia to Flash. So it’s Flash on which one of the world’s most popular VOD services is now built – BBC iPlayer served 100.2 million online requests in June.