Changing Viewing Habits the Key to Winning the Streaming Video War http://t.co/IDLK7vDg

My first thought when reading that headline was “well, d’oh”, because it seemed like an oversimplification of the scale of the problem. Sure, if everyone switched over to streaming video for their media consumption, then we’d be in a different position. Trouble is, people generally are watching more television than ever, via more traditional channels than internet delivered streaming content. (more…)

Someone Forgot To Tell Reality That The Entertainment Industry Was Dying http://t.co/htUEeWBA

According to the Department of Labor statistics, employment in the entertainment industry has increased: (more…)

Will we be outsourced or automated out of existence? http://t.co/ytsovtbR

In this episode Terence and Philip discuss the outsourcing of editing jobs, remote (a.k.a cloud) editing and automation in production. What’s happening now and how will it evolve in the near future. Philip also sneaks in a preview of an interesting show he’ll be involved with in 2012.

How the long tail cripples bonus content/multimedia http://t.co/PoDriUI7

I have a friend who used to do a large amount of bonus material for one of the major studios as they progressed through releasing their back catalog. He has already noted that, as of about two years ago, that work dried up completely and now is no longer part of his business, which fortunately is still fairly healthy for him.

This is a depressing reality check, and is probably the counter argument to “the year of Transmedia“. Transmedia is seriously expensive to produce!

The same thing that happened to music is going to be true of books. The typical ebook costs about $10 in out of pocket expenses to write (more if you count coffee and not just pencils). But if we add in $50,000 for app coding, $10,000 for a director and another $500,000 for the sort of bespoke work that was featured in Al Gore’s recent ‘book’, you can see the problem. The publisher will never have a chance to make this money back.

Sure, there will be experiments at the cutting edge, but no, they’re not going to pay off regularly enough for it to become an industry. The quality is going to remain in the writing and in the bravery of ideas, not in teams of people making expensive digital books.

The market didn’t really make a conscious choice here, but the choice has been made: it’s not a few publishers putting out a few books for the masses. No, the market for the foreseeable future is a million publishers publishing to 100 million readers. Do the math. Lots of choice, not a lot of whistles. And no bells.

Someday, Writing Code Could Be As Common As Farming Or Factory Work http://t.co/iysOdDMI

Now, I’d want to take issue with the assumption that factory work or farming is that common as a career/employment these days – certainly not farming – but I think the point was rather that “Someday, writing code could require as few skills as farming or factory work”. (more…)

Apps Are Media http://t.co/8G8sFrcL

About 18 months back I started a blog post “Apps are the future of distribution” but beyond the title, didn’t really have my thinking clear enough to finish the post. Fast forward and now Erick Schonfeld expresses what I could not. (more…)

Top Photographer On Why He Doesn’t Care If His Stuff Is Pirated

From the article:

All of my stuff is pirated. Everything from my HDR Video Tutorial to eBooks to Apps. Fine. It’s all there on PirateBay and MegaUpload and all that stuff. Here are the reasons why I don’t mind: (more…)

What The Business Of Video Will Look Like In 2012 http://t.co/72GsqhBN

Of course all predictions are subject to change but Steven Rosenbaum takes a shot at it in this Fast Company article. Naturally Fast Company are going to be more focused on the business side, rather than production side, so no “large sensor” type predictions here instead the five predictions are below with my comments. (more…)

The Death of Television http://t.co/B7PGGnvk While many are writing about the imminent death of Television, Evan Shapiro has a much broader take: (more…)

I was watching the highly recommended Editor’s Lounge series of videos from the Why we make the Edit night and naturally the discussion turned to the increasing pressure to get work done faster. Derek McCants noted that where once he would have three weeks to cut an allocated segment, the expectation was it would now be done in one week. (more…)