Categories
Distribution Item of Interest The Business of Production

Maybe New Media are closer to being media than we thought? [Updated]

Yahoo IS Focused: “We’re A Content Company” http://tinyurl.com/286g7dv See update at end.

Yahoo’s CEO Bartz made an interesting statement in light of yesterday’s The Truth about the Future of Media post: Yahoo – one of the new media companies listed – has come out firmly that they are a Content Company.

On stage at Web 2.0 last month, CEO Carol Bartz said Yahoo is focused on content. Technology is important to personalize that content to users, but editors are important as well–for instance, no algorithm could have predicted that users would be interested in the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico earlier this year, since a similar event hadn’t happened in a long time.

Now here’s where it gets interesting. When I posted the link yesterday I really felt that it was a stretch to consider Google, Yahoo, Twitter, Apple et al “new media” as we think of it from a content perspective, but the above post and some other items today make me wonder.

There’s an unsubstantiated rumor that Apple are negotiating a deal with Howard Stern for an exclusive agreement after his Sirius radio contract ends, although I do feel it’s unlikely.

Stern’s contract with Sirius is up in January, and the response from the media has been mostly skeptical. Objections include the expense and short term of the deal, Steve Jobs’ stated dedication to keeping iTunes family-friendly, the FCC fines Stern has accumulated in the past, and the probable angry reaction from the many fans who have paid to follow him on satellite radio.

Apple are showing some signs of intending to be a distributor. They have an exclusive period with the Beatles collection until some time in 2011. They also have an exclusive deal to distribute a single from Michael Jackson’s posthumous album via Ping. But these are distribution deals, not content creation like the Howard Stern deal would be.

Then on another note Facebook CEO is quoted as saying:

“Facebook expects insurgent entrepreneurs to “reform” the film, TV, news, e-commerce and music industries with the help of Facebook. Some of these companies will be incumbents. Some will unseat incumbents.  Facebook will then – perhaps through credits or advertising, but also perhaps some other way – tax these companies in exchange for the value it has added”  Here is “Zuck” quoted:

“Anything that involves content or specific expertise in an area – games, music, movies, TV, news, anything in media, anything e-commerce, any of this stuff. Over the next five years, those verticals are going to be completely re-thought. There are going to be some really good businesses built. Our view is that we should play a role in helping to re-form and re-think all those industries, and we’ll get value proportional to what we put in. In gaming, we get some percentage of the value of those companies through ads and credits. But that’s all because we’re helping them…”

This suggests Facebook see themselves as playing a role in the inevitable changes that are coming to media production and distribution (and want a cut).

So, of the “new media” companies identified in yesterday’s quoted post, Yahoo and Facebook are both focused on content creation at some level, with Apple a possibility. I hypothesized about this about a year ago when I wrote What if Apple or Google simply bypassed Networks and Studios?

[Update] Not even an hour after I initially posted this the news comes that Google has purchased content distributor Widevine (from Google’s announcement):

“So we’re pleased to announce that we’ve agreed to acquire Widevine. The Widevine team has worked to provide a better video delivery experience for businesses of all kinds: from the studios that create your favorite shows and movies, to the cable systems and channels that broadcast them online and on TV, to the hardware manufacturers that let you watch that content on a variety of devices. By forging partnerships across the entire ecosystem, Widevine has made on demand services more efficient and secure for media companies, and ultimately more available and convenient for users.”

Now its getting interesting.

 

Categories
Distribution Item of Interest

DirecTV Kicks Niche Content to the Curb [Updated]

DirecTV Kicks Niche Content to the Curb http://tinyurl.com/27j6278

If networks carrying niche content don’t find distribution with the traditional cable and satellite broadcasters their only recourse will be to find distribution via the Internet. Once people get used to consuming content through that infrastructure – because they were forced to in order to watch the content they enjoy – it becomes that much easier to drop the rest of DirecTV (or your cable provider) and go all IP.

So, good on DirecTV for driving the conversion to IP based networks and the eventual lack of need for DirecTV.

The decision by pay TV providers to drop low-rated networks is happening as distributors are coming under pressure to pay ever-increasing fees to programmers. In most cases, those costs get passed on to the consumer in the form of higher cable bills. But with cable bills rising about 8 percent over the past year, it’s clear that continually raising rates is unsustainable. Rather than pay increasing fees, some consumers have begun canceling their cable or satellite subscriptions altogether, as the number of people who pay for TV hasdropped for two consecutive quarters.

[Update] It was pointed out by Austin Wallender, via Twitter, that G4 was rating poorly on DirecTV and was owned by a competitor so it’s dropping was from “normal business practice”. I can support the low ratings but if ownership by a competitor is really driving DirecTV’s programming, that’s a bigger and more worrying issue.

Categories
Business & Marketing Distribution Item of Interest Media Consumption New Media

Here’s The Truth About The Future of the Media Industry

Here’s The Truth About The Future Of The Media Industry http://tinyurl.com/2627upb

The presentation takes a very liberal view of media – essentially anything that is presented with ads beside it to support it (and I’d disagree with that definition but whatever) – but makes the point that “new media” companies are as large and important as “old media” companies.

Slide 8 of the deck shows the relative sizes (market cap) of new and old media and the companies that are included.

Slide 12 introduces the question of “the next battleground: Video” and shows that the trend to IP-delivered video entertainment is “real”.

Good stuff – hard to copy and past images of graphs but clicking through is worth the effort.

Categories
Distribution Item of Interest

Hey Hollywood: Netflix Isn’t the Enemy.

Hey Hollywood: Netflix Isn’t the Enemy, Old Thinking Is http://tinyurl.com/3xasbo7 Netflix wants to pay “Hollywood” good money but no….

The studios and networks helped create this monster by selling Netflix streaming rights to their content, and now they’re finding that they can’t control it. The feeling from content owners — that Netflix is going to eat their lunch if they aren’t careful — has got many rethinking their dealings with the company, and how they distribute digital content in general. But instead of blaming Netflix, movie moguls need to figure out how to make money as their industry moves online, just as moguls in the music and media industry are trying to do today with varying levels of success.

Categories
Item of Interest Monetizing The Business of Production

McRibs and the Art of Artificial Scarcity

McRibs and the Art of Artificial Scarcity http://tinyurl.com/2ebms7v

I loved the Disney example in the article – it’s a perfect attempt (a good one) at creating artificial scarcity. It’s easy to take a physical good off the market – like the MacRib – but with Snow White, I wonder if the artificial scarcity will be as successful when beautiful digital copies get “out there”.

And that’s the problem with artificial scarcities on digital goods: they don’t work. DRM is an attempt to force artificial scarcity and it’s cracked time, after time, after time. If your customer and hear and see your product, it can be reproduced infinitely for little cost.

So the ultimate question is: what are the real scarcities surrounding a film or TV project and how do we monetize them?

Categories
Item of Interest

The Terence and Philip Show Episode 15.

The Terence and Philip Show Episode 15: Workflow vs “just Cutting”. http://tinyurl.com/2vfhrh6 Can you ignore workflow and “just cut”?

Terence and Philip discuss the importance of designing workflow as opposed to simply jumping in and cutting. How have the roles of Assistant changed. The inevitable sidetrack covers the role of “independent film” when so many get made but never return their investment, and what’s the better alternative.

We also discuss the workflow for reality TV.

Categories
Interesting Technology Item of Interest

Microsoft Silverlight Rough Cut Editor

Microsoft Silverlight Rough Cut Editor http://tinyurl.com/ydyzcy9

Just had this bought to my attention, and – to the best of my recollection – I’ve never heard of it before. Doesn’t seem to be a “live” project anymore. Anyone know anything more?

Categories
Item of Interest

Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate it

Happy Thanksgiving to those who Celebrate today. As an outsider, I’ve always thought a holiday to give thanks made the most sense. Relatively low commercial intrusion, no gift giving tradition and no religious divisions.

And I have so much to be thankful for.

Categories
Apple Pro Apps

What would a 2011 Final Cut Studio look like?

While I might have been skeptical about one “Steve Jobs” email, when there are multiple being published, it’s not so easy to think that Jobs is “off in the future already” and his “next year” is already 2012. But it doesn’t seem like that’s the case. There’s also activity around Cupertino that is more typical leading up to a new release, rather than many months away.

It’s possible that this activity is a consulting process to refine the planning, but overall I lean more toward something being released in 2011. Now, for all the reasons I’ve written about QuickTime and AV Foundation and OS X 10.7, I really doubt that a 2011 release could be 64 bit and have native support for MXF, RED and DSLR H.264. Because these have been such headline features for Adobe in Premiere Pro CS5 I really felt that Apple would be unlikely to release a version of Final Cut Pro that did not have them.

That is where I may well be wrong. For sure anything media related – 64 bit processing, native support and Mercury Engine-like performance – will almost certainly need to wait until after 10.7 is finalized (and released), but there’s a lot of other work they could do in Final Cut Pro that doesn’t necessarily revolve around those features.

Would a release of Final Cut Pro that did not have those three features help or hinder Apple? My assumption was that it would hinder, and I’m still inclined to believe that even as evidence gathers that there will be a 2011 release of Final Cut Studio. While Avid Media Composer is not (yet) 64 bit it does have native media format support via AMA. Media Composer’s current release also lacks anything akin to Adobe’s Mercury Engine, so it wouldn’t just be Apple with a lack in that area.

So what could Apple do in Final Cut Pro for a 2011 release that would excite us all and make it obvious to the worst naysayer that Apple are serious about the Pro Apps?

One thing for certain would be more rewritten code in Final Cut Pro. In Final Cut Pro 7 we got a completely rewritten Speed Control: evidence is the different look and feel, additional features and that if you feed it XML you get a slightly different result in Final Cut Pro 6 than in 7. Similarly my programming partner tells me that the XML writer/parser was very, very likely rewritten for Final Cut Pro 7. While the rewritten Final Cut Pro 7 XML import/export (and the features in that version) are great for developers like ourselves, they don’t generate a whole lot of customer excitement.

So, rewriting to Cocoa from Carbon has probably been progressing between releases. There’s nothing to prevent rewriting the Transition Editor or dozens of other parts of the application that aren’t media or media metadata related. I was thinking that the rudimentary image recognition features of iMovie ’11 – how many people are in a shot, is it W, M or CU? – would be a great addition to Final Cut Pro 7, but that could require work on the Bin/Browser interface, and I think Bin/Browser will require some tools for reading QuickTime Metadata that are Cocoa based rather than old Carbon code, but perhaps not.

Editing features, or perhaps even templates, could come over from iMovie ’11 without taking out any professional level features. This would be much like Aperture 3, which included iPhoto features without losing or dropping “professional features”.

What headline features Apple are  likely to put into a 2011 Final Cut Pro release kind of eludes me, but I’m no longer prepared to say “No 2011 release” only that a 2011 release is unlikely to be the release that everyone is expecting, and I don’t know if that will help Apple (“See, we are still interested in Pro Apps!”) or give an opportunity for people to continue the “If Apple were serious we’d have 64 bit and native support, and better performance by now” meme.

As always, we will see when we see it. I fully admit that I have never run a marketing department even the size of the Pro Apps marketing, and I fully expect they know better than I!

Categories
Business & Marketing Distribution Item of Interest Monetizing

The Terence and Philip Show Episode 14

The Terence & Philip Show Episode 14: The future of PBS & Alternate Distribution. http://tinyurl.com/39am779

The discussion starts with KCET’a exit from the PBS network and the implications – including loss of revenue to PBS – does it signal the end of PBS. Will there be a PBS of the Internet?

Will direct producer-viewer connections drive the future. Remember too, that independent production is a business and needs the business model being determined before production starts. How do we fund production?