Category: General

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Item of Interest

The Terence and Philip Show Episode 6

The Terence and Philip Show Episode 6 http://bit.ly/9Q31QN

The episode when Philip explains how QuickTime’s flexibility caused difficulties when imported to Final Cut Pro, which leads to a discussion on what is QuickTime; how the event-based nature of QuickTime isn’t ideal for video and what would need to change. Plus what is a framework, QTkit and what development has happened in the Cocoa-ization of QuickTime, necessary for any future Cocoa 64 bit Final Cut Pro. And a short discussion on the pleasures of Flash.

Note: Although Philip says “no QT on an iPhone” the player shows the QT icon but that’s the only thing in common with QT on OS X.

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Apple Item of Interest

iTunes at 99c per series per month?

iTunes at 99c per series per month??? http://bit.ly/cINIzR

Right now it’s a single-source rumor so it can hardly be taken seriously, but the price point is “right”: about the same net revenue to the network as from advertising. We watch about 10 shows in any typical month, and $10 would feel very right to me.

I guess we’ll know next week.

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Apple Item of Interest

Steve Jobs, Circa 1997, Reintroducing Apple

Steve Jobs, Circa 1997, Reintroducing Apple http://nyti.ms/ctAEHP

Steve Jobs, uncharacteristically in shorts, presenting to what seems like a mostly in-house audience in the Campus Town Hall space discussing what Apple stands for.

It’s very, very valuable to understanding the mind of the man who runs Apple and turned it around from near-death to “bigger than Microsoft”. A focus on people rather than MHz and the like, right back then.

He’s leading into the launch of the “Think Different” campaign, which moved me even at this distance.

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The rebels. The troublemakers. The ones who see things differently. While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”

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Item of Interest

Leo Laporte’s TWiT Making Millions from Ads and Fans

Leo Laporte’s TWiT Making Millions From Ads and Fans http://bit.ly/av14Da

I’m always pleased to read of people doing well from podcasting and “new media” and this report on TWiT covers the subject well. What I found particularly interesting was this:

The story goes on to say that while the majority comes from ad revenue, Laporte himself takes his salary from fan donations, capping his personal income at $10,000 a month and putting the rest back into the company.

The fact that Laporte’s salary is covered by audience contributions speaks to the increasing power of the crowdsourced funding strategy. More and more examples of this approach to supporting online content keep popping up, whether it be Kickstarter campaigns to fund web series or post-download donations for free torrents of films.

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Item of Interest

Oliver Peters was kind enough to review Matchback Magic.

Oliver Peters was kind enough to review Matchback Magic http://bit.ly/bMob5D

Matchback Magic “protects” files against human error by “injecting” metadata from the full-quality master files into the proxy media files. Once that’s done, no matter what happens to the proxy media – change timecode, reel numbers, files names, etc. – Matchback Magic can conform an edit so that the final sequence frame-accurately matches the rough cut and media is properly relinked.

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Item of Interest Monetizing

Is Renting TV Shows in 2010 Like Selling Bottled Water in 1970?

Is Renting TV Shows in 2010 Like Selling Bottled Water in 1970? http://bit.ly/cOuese

Jumping right to the conclusions:

From $30 to own a full season outright, to somewhere between $25 – $50 per month to watch and discard as many episodes you can bear to watch. How does $.99 to rent a single episode measure up? At just one episode per day you are already at the similar costs of the alternatives, and that does not include the hidden costs of distribution and storage. So is it then worth it to rent a-la-carte from Apple in convenient individual packages, or is it still much better to just pay for the water hook-up represented by cable and Netflix and drink from the tap whenever you like?

99c for a rental is outrageous for a “half hour” show, where the best the major Networks can get is 25c from advertising revenue. Add Apple’s markup of 14c and the maximum that’s reasonable is 39c for a rental. And that’s for premium, first run content off one of the major networks. Lesser content should be priced *below* that.

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Business & Marketing Distribution Item of Interest Monetizing

Is $10 The Magic Number In Online Publishing

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.

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Distribution Item of Interest

Blockbuster plans mid September Bankruptcy.

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.

Categories
Distribution Item of Interest New Media

New Numbers Reveal: Cord Cutting is Real. Or not.

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.

Categories
Item of Interest

US movie tickets get biggest price hike in history!

US movie tickets get biggest price hike in history http://bit.ly/bcGiRu

If the US cinema industry was really under pressure there’s no way they could get away with a price hike! Despite the wailing of the MPAA, movie revenue continues to set new records every year. Whatever problems they have are their own business model ones.

Don’t weep for the movie biz. While still concerned about camcording and P2P piracy, the industry has been hauling in the cash at the box office. 2007, 2008, and 2009 all set new historic highs for movie theater revenue in the US and Canada, and 2010 looks poised to do even bigger business.