Clips: IFP Panel on "Big Ideas for the Small Screen"

These are the clips I would've shown in this morning's IFP Filmmaker Conference panel on "Big Ideas for the Small Screen." (Conference venue couldn't show video from the Internet.)

- Thom Woodley's Web series "The All-for-Nots," produced for Michael Eisner's Vuguru.

- "Prank War" video from College Humor

- Animation project, "Animalia," raising money through Kickstarter

- One of the more popular "$99 Music Videos" from Next New Networks

TV Ennui: Are Viewers Totally Content, or Just Really Averse to Change?

There's a great collection of stories in today's NY Times, focusing on efforts to change the way we watch TV (online and in our living rooms.) The overall message is that viewers are either pretty happy with the cable/broadcast/satellite programming that finds its way into their living rooms, and that most media companies (except Sony) have pretty much given up trying to produce original shows for the Web. There's also the obligatory piece about 3-D TV.

Links to the stories below, along with a short excerpt from each one:

- Sony's Bet on Sticking With Web Shows

Sony Pictures Entertainment has continued to pour money into Crackle.com, ordering Web shows that cost up to $1 million each. Why is Sony still betting so big? For one, it thinks it has hung around long enough to learn important lessons about consumer psychology when it comes to the Internet. But Sony also has a potential ace up its sleeve when it comes to funneling Crackle video to TV sets.

Analysts point out that Crackle could become the primary entertainment channel for Sony’s PlayStation Network, a fast-growing video service that pumps games and online content into the living room via PlayStation 3 consoles.

- Crowded Field for Bringing Web Video to TV

Start-ups and tech giants alike are offering what they say are easy ways to pipe shows and movies to a TV, hoping to win over people who might want a cheaper or more diverse alternative to cable and satellite service.

These companies have a lot of convincing to do. Most people do not have the tech-savviness to tackle the hardware and software setup that these products often require. And the companies are not able to offer access to many shows and channels that are on traditional pay TV, nor bundle services like phone service and Internet access at a discounted rate, as TV service providers do.

- TV Makers Predict a Bright Future for 3-D

If all goes as analysts predict, 3-D TV could account for half of all television sales within five years.

So far, 3-D TV is a sliver of the overall market, accounting for about 2.5 percent of new television sales in the United States in the last quarter, according to a survey by the market researcher iSuppli.

- Plenty to Watch Online, but Viewers Prefer to Pay for Cable

These are confusing times in the living room. The proliferation of Internet video has led to much talk of “cord-cutting” — a term that has come to mean canceling traditional pay TV and replacing it with programming from a grab bag of online sources.

But so far Americans are not doing this in any meaningful numbers. “Nor is there any evidence of it emerging in the near future,” said Bruce Leichtman, the president of Leichtman Research Group, which studies consumer media habits.

- DIY TV: How Are You Watching?

Everything I watch is from various online sources, or is viewed at the apartment of a generous friend or at one of the bars around New York that hold screening parties for popular cable shows.

Although we’re still in the minority, some like me are cobbling together a patchwork way to watch our favorite primetime and cable TV shows without ever signing up for Comcast or a similar provider.

Chad Hurley Interview Notes from 2005

YouTube is marking its fifth anniversary this month.

It felt like a good time to go back to the notes from my October 2005 interview with co-founder Chad Hurley; I'd interviewed him while working on this New York Times story about video-sharing sites, which compared YouTube to other start-ups that helped publish your videos, like Vimeo and Blip.tv.

When Hurley and I spoke, the company was still being funded only by its founders; by the end of the year, they'd taken a $3.5 million investment from Sequoia Capital, and by October 2006, Google had acquired YouTube for $1.6 billion.

These are interview notes from my phone conversation with Hurley, lightly cleaned up. It's interesting how determined Hurley was to make the site easy to use for consumers, and to attract up an audience first before introducing advertising.

Video, we felt, really wasn't being addressed on the Internet.

Last summer, I was in Italy, and I took some video clips on my cell phone. But with cell phones or still cameras [that could record video], you'd get it onto your computer, and there was no easy way to share it, no services like Ofoto or Shutterfly. [Co-founder] Jawed [Karim] has thousands of clips on his computer.

There were problems with all the different formats [and whether you had the right plug-ins to view the video in your browser.] We were focused on making a product that had a consistent kind of experience. We started encoding these video files on the fly into Flash video, so they would seamlessly integrate into the Web page.

We all have parents on the east coast and in the Chicago area, and we wanted to make something that everyone could use, easily.

We're receiving thousands of public videos per day, and serving up hundreds of thousands of views every day.

We let people upload files of up to 100 megabytes, which is a very generous amount of space. But we're trying to prevent people from uploading 'Spiderman.'

[As for people posting copyrighted content to YouTube,] as we expand, we're hoping the community will become more responsible.

We feel like the video market is in a place where the digital photography market was a few years ago. We think we have a good head start on the rest of the competition. In the next few years, users are going to start adopting video more widely.

We're purposely trying not to add too much to the site. We want to just empower people with video. With our PayPal experience [all three founders had worked at PayPal previously], we allowed anyone to accept payments, which really empowered them. We want to do the same thing for video, and create a solution for everyone. You don't need to be an advanced videoblogger to know what's going on. We're making a straightforward product that people can use.

Right now, we're concentrating on the user experience. We feel that's the most important thing — serving customers. But it's clear that we're going to be an advertising-based product. We're not sure what direction we're going to head with that, but we won't do force-fed video commercials in front of a video, like where CNN forces you to watch a 15-second commercial before you see a video clip.

We've been taking video of the genesis of the company, shooting with digital [still] cameras. They take pretty good movies.

Wonder if that video has ever surfaced....

Disney's CEO, YouTube's Founder, and Wired's Editor Debate the Future of Monetizing Content

"The Digital Chiefs," a lunch panel earlier this week organized by the Hollywood Radio & Television Society, was one of the best conversations about digital media I've been to in a long while.

That was primarily due to the organizer's choice of a moderator: Disney chief executive Bob Iger. Having Iger asking the questions offered a really interesting window into what's on the mind of at least one major media CEO.

And that was mainly how Disney and other media companies will earn money from their content.

Iger's panelists were Wired editor Chris Anderson, YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley, Hulu CEO Jason Kilar, and Jonathan Miller, chief digital officer at News Corp.

I'm posting some audio (a little quiet, but listenable) below, along with a few rough notes from the discussion.

My notes:

Iger opened by mentioning that TV took thirteen years to reach 50 million people. It took Facebook nine months to get 100 million members. 400 million videos were streamed on Hulu last month. YouTube offers more than 100 million videos (there are 526,000 search results for "Disney.")

Chris Anderson noted that iTunes succeeds in getting people to pay for content by selling convenience. While you can get music for free, the iTunes version saves you time, and ensures you're getting something of good quality.

Iger said he was "mildly encouraged by that -- not giddy, but encouraged."

Chad Hurley said YouTube is introducing more ad formats to help the site's partners earn money, so they can continue to create high-quality content. Iger wanted to know if there will be ad messages online that can sell a product as well as a 30-second spot on television. Hurley didn't have a forceful answer, noting that online there are multiple formats, from text ads, graphical ads, and 5, 10, and 15-second video ads. What's important, though, is that these digital ads can be targeted and relevant, unlike typical broadcast ads.

Iger said that monetizing social networks remains a big question mark. He asked Jonathan Miller whether MySpace fell prey to a "next-best-thing" phenomenon (being supplanted by Facebook), or just didn't stay on top of its game. Miller conceded that MySpace forgot that there is a continual need for reinvention.

Picking up the theme of targeting, Miller suggested that advertisers will pay more for online ads as behavioral targeting increases (targeting ads based on what you do online and interests you express), though he admitted that online ads may never achieve the same prices that network television commands.

Miller touched on the idea that the costs of content creation may need to go down in this new world, if advertisers aren't paying the prices they once did. (That's a point we discuss pretty frequently here at CinemaTech.)

Jason Kilar said that Hulu has been finding that people remember brands in the ads on its site better than they do on TV, even when it's the very same ad placed in the very same program. People are simply more engaged online, he suggested. They've made a conscious choice to watch that piece of content. By virtue of placing fewer ads in a show on Hulu (relative to the same half-hour on television), Kilar said, they can charge more for them.

Kilar also said that when Hulu's team designed the site, they didn't want it to look like "Tokyo at night," with lots of features and buttons and teasers. They very deliberately focused visitors' attention on the shows and the ads.

Miller pointed out that on Hulu, 70 percent of the ad revenue goes to the content creators. Iger followed up by saying that 70 percent of much fewer ad dollars than television generates may not be enough money for media companies to continue to invest in high-quality content.

Talking about paid rentals and downloads, Hurley said that YouTube will begin experimenting with both with its content partners.

Diving into some of the topics covered in his book Free, Chris Anderson suggested that for digital products, free samples are becoming a replacement for advertising. "The products sell themselves," he said.

Jason Kilar said that the content that will do best in this new world is stuff that is unique, totally original, and can't be substituted with anything else. He offered NBC's "30 Rock" as an example.

Toward the end, Iger asked his panelists what new things they're following. Anderson said he was watching videogames, iPhone apps, and "more granular social networks" like Ning that bring together groups with narrow interests. Kilar said he was following changing consumer tastes using search.twitter.com, mostly related to Hulu. He said that Hulu makes changes to its site based on what people are saying on Twitter.

I left a bit before the panel was over to head to a meeting, but here's more coverage of the panel from the LA Times' "Company Town" blog and from Variety. (Seems like I didn't miss much...)

And here's a 30-minute audio segment from the panel (just click play below, or download the MP3 file.) Bob Iger is the first and last to speak in this clip.



Photo of Chad Hurley and Bob Iger, above, courtesy of Getty Images.

The Internet Rewards Authenticity (Not Fakery)

One topic I find myself discussing with all kinds of creative folks these days is how the Internet rewards authenticity. Even when the production values are so low as to be subterranean... people can sense when something is for real, and they gravitate to it.

Check out these two marriage-related videos, one shot at an actual wedding with a single, shaky handheld camera, and one staged by Disney executives to spread the message that their theme parks are a great place to get engaged (and shot with multiple cameras).

Authentic:
"JK Wedding Entrance Dance" - 19+ million views (several different copies of the video are posted on YouTube)



Fake:
"Disneyland Musical Marriage Proposal" - 1.6 million views
(I'm a Disney fan, and this is a little too cheese-a-rific even for me...)



Interestingly, the "JK Wedding" couple also got invited to perform on NBC's "Today Show", which reaches more than 4 million viewers. (But somehow, the "Today Show" reprise feels inauthentic.)

What do you think?

Does Length Matter? ... Distribution Strategy for 'Lovely by Surprise' ... A First Film for Cinetic Film Buff

- This piece from yesterday's NY Times suggests that attention spans on the Web are getting longer (though the average video is still just 3.4 minutes in duration). Microsoft blogger Don Dodge offers more on length, based on a recent chat with MTV executive David Gale. Dodge writes:

Building the story from the ground up with a couple scenes in an 8 minute sequence works well for the web, and easily transitions to the 30 minute TV format. However, trying to work backwards from a 30 minute show and break it into web length clips doesn’t work so well, for obvious reasons.

- I wonder what the turn-out was like today at the 88 movie theaters that offered a live simulcast of the Michael Jackson memorial service.

- Jake Abraham has a nifty piece on Filmmaker Magazine's Web site. (Abraham was part of the founding team at InDigEnt Entertainment.) He writes:

We decided on a “day-and-date” release for two reasons. One, we’re a tiny group and can only sustain this level of attention for so long. Two, as momentum has grown over the past few months of promotion, we think its time to get the film out there while awareness is still high and let people consume the film in any way they want. Unfortunately, this meant that we’ve had to pass on some deals that required exclusivity.

For example, the IFC FestivalDirect VOD deal requires that the DVD release be held back ninety days from the VOD release date due to deals with the cable operators (they don’t want to compete with Netflix). With the lengthy backlog to get on the service, we were looking at a DVD release as late June 2010. While I love IFC and was excited that they liked the film, there was no way we wanted to suspend our entire operation just so the film could be carried on a consignment basis through cable monopolies starting sometime next year.

- Anne Thompson reports that 'New Orleans Mon Amour' will be the first film distributed by Cinetic Film Buff, a new cable VOD service. No info about Film Buff on Cinetic Media's 1997-era Web site, but there is a Twitter feed.

Two from the LA Times

Two pieces on the digital media future that ran in the LA Times this week:

'Hollywood hits the stop button on high-profile Web video efforts' and 'Digital technology and dollar signs' (an op-ed piece I wrote.)

From the first piece, by Ben Fritz and Dawn Chmielewski:

Conceived with great fanfare, big media's attempt over the last two years to capitalize on the Internet video phenomenon embodied by YouTube and "Saturday Night Live" digital shorts has fallen victim to recession-triggered cuts and inflated expectations about the advertising revenue they would command.

"It's very similar to what happened in '99 and 2000, where everyone saw gold in the hills," said Mika Salmi, the former head of digital media for MTV Networks and now a technology venture capitalist, in reference to the first dot-com boom. "The reality is that it's much harder to make money than everyone thought."

It mentions the recent shut-down of 60Frames Entertainment, Disney's Stage 9 Digital studio, and earlier failures like NBC's DotComedy Web site and SuperDeluxe.

Meanwhile, in my piece, I argue that perhaps Hollywood hasn't been experimental enough with the Web, or taken users' behavioral changes seriously enough. (The top talent in Hollywood still wants to make feature-length, big budget content for cinemas, I'd argue...not short clips for mobile phones.)

From that piece:

Many in Hollywood still deride the wacky, user-generated videos that occasionally turn into viral hits on YouTube, the top website for video viewing. And it's true that one of the most-watched videos ever uploaded to the site is titled "Charlie bit my finger -- again!"

But a number of young creators -- many of them working outside of Hollywood's orbit -- have been feverishly experimenting with new ways to tell stories and generate revenue. An office worker in Connecticut created the catty entertainment commentary show "What the Buck" on YouTube, and suddenly found he was making more from the site's "partner program," which offers creators a cut of ad revenue, than he was at his desk job, which he promptly quit. Lance Weiler accents his suspense films with cellphone and Web-based "alternate reality games" that enable players to explore the story and interact with characters after they've left the theater. Robert Greenwald, a Culver City-based documentarian, has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars online to support his left-leaning films and Internet videos on such topics as the mortgage crisis and the war in Afghanistan. And Gregg and Evan Spiridellis are building a new kind of animation studio in Venice, where they produce a series of viral videos about current events and politics, and sell subscriptions to a vast collection of customizable digital greeting cards. This month, they'll debut their latest video for President Obama at the Radio and TV Correspondents Assn. Dinner in Washington.

Business models for content on the Internet are still evolving. But it's already becoming clear that $100-million movies like "Land of the Lost," or even $10-million independent films, may not represent the future of the industry. And new technologies like YouTube, the iPhone and next-generation gaming consoles are opening up all sorts of new, creative possibilities. The artists and business people who will succeed in this new environment are those who are paying attention to the changing behaviors and tastes of this new digital audience -- rather than trying to ignore them or, worse, explaining why they are wrong.

Your thoughts?

All Your Questions, Answered

I had fun today doing a live Webcast (which will eventually be on iTunes) about building an audience and a business model in the digital age. It was hosted by PermissionTV, and they took a number of questions via Twitter. (I also gave away a couple copies of Fans, Friends & Followers to a few lucky viewers.)

But we didn't get to all the questions during the hour-long Webcast, so here are some quick takes on other questions. (Please add your thoughts...)

Q. bobwoolsey: What is the best way to get advertisers for programs?

A. If you can sell ads or sponsorships to companies on your own, that's going to let you pocket the most money. Otherwise, you can have Google or another ad sales firm (like Brightroll, Blip.tv, or ScanScout) place ads in or around your video and cut you in on a portion of the revenue.

Q. kellyannlive: Is there a good balance between providing valuable content for your "fans" and letting them run the show?

A. I think this will be different for everyone. Some people, like Matt Hanson with 'Swarm of Angels', seem to enjoy creating content in collaboration with the community. Others will want to pick specific tasks, like when Jonathan Coulton invited his fans to submit a solo for the song 'Shop-Vac.' How much you want to let fans do is entirely up to you.

Q. marcaross: do blogs still matter?

A. Obviously, I think so. There are some people I enjoy hearing from in bursts longer than 140 characters. Blogs are also indexed by Google... which is not as true with messages on Twitter and some social networking sites.

Q. jonarcher: Wondering what the difference is b/n #kirsner's FF&F model and the 1000 True Fans model.

A. I like Kevin Kelly's "1000 True Fans" idea, although there has been considerable debate about the sorts of artists it will work for. With my Fans, Friends & Followers research, I certainly was trying to explore the same terrain as Kevin -- how does this new relationship with fans work, and how can you earn a living? -- by talking to people I identified as pioneers, and analyzing some of the lessons they've learned.

Q. MichaelKolowich: @scottkirsner Can you comment on need for good production values in web video? Do they matter? Someday, a "flight to quality"?

A. I think Web video is always going to have an aesthetic that's different from broadcast TV, in part because it needs to grab your attention in a short period of time, and in part because lower production values can feel more intimate and authentic. So far, the number of pixels doesn't seem to have mattered much -- but decent lighting and sound are always nice. Lately, I have been thinking that if we start watching Web video on our TV sets in a couple years, that will change and HD will be important.

Q. bobwoolsey: What is the easiest way to get to the book?

A. Google works, or you can visit this page to find out how to buy it as a paperback, PDF, or Kindle download.

How to Lose $1.87 Million on YouTube

Great article in today's NY Times about the Susan Boyle phenomenon -- and how it has generated zero online advertising revenue for the creators of "Britain's Got Talent."

From Brian Stelter's story:

The case reflects the inability of big media companies to maximize profit from supersize Internet audiences that seem to come from nowhere. In essence, the complexities of TV production are curbing the Web possibilities. “Britain’s Got Talent” is produced jointly by three companies and distributed in Britain by a fourth, ITV, making it difficult to ascertain which of the companies can claim a video as its own.

Before the current season of the talent show started on April 11, the parties tried to cut a distribution deal with YouTube, but they could not agree on terms, according to two people with knowledge of the talks. The people asked for anonymity before they would discuss confidential negotiations.

The article cites an estimate that about $1.87 million in ad revenue would have been generated by the Susan Boyle videos so far. (Here's some background data about Boyle's audience reach online.)

What can you as a content creator do to avoid a similar fate? Set up an account with YouTube's Partner Program as soon as you can (once you've met their criteria), so that when and if you have a big hit of your own, you're earning some coin from it.

Disney Joins Hulu: What Does It Mean?

I don't think the news this week that Disney will contribute content to Hulu is any sort of death knell for iTunes.

Today, Hulu is there for viewing content when you've got a reliable Net connection (at home or in the dorm, for instance). But iTunes is there when you want to download content and watch it later on your laptop or iPod or iPhone -- usually when you're in motion.

One thing that Apple has succeeded at -- wildly -- is getting you to create an account, and hand over your credit card info. That enables you to make impulse buys of movies, apps, music, and TV shows. Even if Hulu had a long term plan to start selling downloads one day, in addition to streaming content with ads, getting viewers to cough up payment info is no small feat.

But Disney's link-up with Hulu signifies that clearly, media companies don't want to hand over control of their customers entirely to Apple.

Here's more analysis of the news, from the Wall Street Journal.

Hulu Passes Yahoo, Takes Aim at MySpace

Interesting change: Hulu is now the third-place video destination, surpassing Yahoo. YouTube and MySpace are #1 and #2. (But there's a huge gap between #1 and #2.)

According to the story:

Viewers watched 5.9 billion videos on YouTube and other Google Inc. sites [in March 2009], and News Corp.'s fully owned sites such as MySpace.com provided 437 million viewings in second place.

Hulu served up 380 million videos in March, and Yahoo 335 million.

Assuming Hulu's growth continues, and MySpace keeps fading, Hulu will soon be in the #2 spot.

Why Shouldn't Video Sites Focus on Where the $$$ Is?

I found this NY Times storyyesterday to be a surprising and interesting read.

Brad Stone and Miguel Helft write:

Web companies that rely on advertising are enjoying some of their most vibrant growth in developing countries. But those are also the same places where it can be the most expensive to operate, since Web companies often need more servers to make content available to parts of the world with limited bandwidth. And in those countries, online display advertising is least likely to translate into results.

This intractable contradiction has become a serious drag on the bottom lines of photo-sharing sites, social networks and video distributors like YouTube. It is also threatening the fervent idealism of Internet entrepreneurs, who hoped to unite the world in a single online village but are increasingly finding that the economics of that vision just do not work.

Last year, Veoh, a video-sharing site operated from San Diego, decided to block its service from users in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe, citing the dim prospects of making money and the high cost of delivering video there.

Why not?

New Umbrella Site for PBS Video

Check out PBS' new video portal, launched today.

Funny how Hulu has suddenly become the gold-standard for video sites. My initial impressions are that PBS' site is not as fluid to navigate... that the videos aren't as well-described in text as Hulu... and that it isn't as clip-oriented. You have to dive in to watching a half-hour or hour-long program.

But according to a post on the NY Times' Bits blog, it will soon have a participatory element that sounds pretty cool:

The site is built on new technology that will also allow users to upload video, make comments and otherwise interact with the site and one another. For example, in conjunction with the Ken Burns documentary series “The National Parks,” which will be introduced this fall, users will be invited to upload videos of parks.

What do you think?

What, You Mean the Academy Should Actually *Update* Their YouTube Channel?

The Academy of Motion Pictures really *gets* YouTube.

At least when it comes to promoting the annual Oscars telecast.

Not, however, when it comes to sharing content that might keep people talking about the Oscars in the days after the broadcast... and ensure that the Oscar brand remains pre-eminent among all the other awards shows.

The Academy now has its very own YouTube channel, but the most recent content on it is from the week before the Academy Awards, and the most prominent video clip is a 30-second ad encouraging you to watch the ABC broadcast.

Meanwhile, YouTube users continue to post their favorite moments from the show without permission, like the Hugh Jackman/Beyonce musical number and the Tina Fey/Steve Martin schtick.

Also: there's really no video at all on the official Oscars.org site, or a link to the YouTube channel. (You guys do know how to link to other sites on the Web, right?)

And they didn't event post this opening montage, which wasn't part of the telecast, but was shown to the attendees at the Kodak Theater. Instead, they leave that to Vanity Fair.

Am I crazy, or could the Academy have a better Web video strategy than just putting up archival material and promoting the telecast on YouTube?

One thought would be to pick 10 or 12 highlights from the show, and put them online in a way that encouraged people to blog about them, rate them, and comment on them. You might even conduct a poll, and put out a press release a few days later announcing the top three moments from the show, as judged by the Interweb community.

(I wrote a piece in Variety about the Academy's relationship to YouTube back in 2007.)

The nuts and bolts of viral video

The Wall Street Journal has a great piece that highlights some of the ways that Internet videomakers build up big audiences.

There's also a nifty video accompanying it, where Judson Laipply, the guy from "Evolution of Dance," talks about how he's trying to generate revenue with his recently-released sequel.



From the story:

"We have a pop-up at the end of the video that says 'Click here to see all of our other videos and subscribe,'" [Charlie] Todd [of ImprovEverywhere] says. "That's one thing that everyone should do on YouTube." As a result, Improv Everywhere has 105,000 subscribers who receive notifications whenever he posts a new video.

Mr. Todd also promotes his videos to bloggers, and he spends time reading blogs to see which ones would likely be interested in a particular video. But he prefers to do his promotion anonymously, usually by e-mailing a tip to a general blog address. "I think that's probably better than tracking down the e-mail address of the person who runs the blog and will get irritated," he says. "Just send it in and say check it out."

Monday Links for Your Reading Pleasure

- The Wall Street Journal offers a round-up of technologies changing the way we watch movies, from BD Live to iTunes to holograms to in-store DVD kiosks.

- Bloomberg News says that the continuing credit crunch will likely slow the deployment of 3-D projection technology in U.S. cinemas.

- The New York Times assesses two new video search technologies from VideoSurf and Digitalsmith. Both use facial recognition software to try to determine who is appearing on screen.

- Last week's 3-D broadcast of an NFL game didn't go off sans snafus, according to Wired News.

- Filmmaker Rob Spence is installing a camera in his eye socket, to replace the prosthetic eye he has previously worn.

Great Reading from the Times

In late November, the NY Times published a special edition of its Sunday magazine called the "Screens" issue. There's so much in there.... a great piece by Kevin Kelly on "screen literacy," a piece about Netflix's recommendation technology, and interviews with David Lynch and Jennifer Aniston. Also an A.O. Scott piece about whether the movie theater is endangered.

Here's the explanatory intro:

Every fall the magazine publishes a special issue about Hollywood, a celebration and investigation of that unique experience called moviegoing: sitting in a dark theater for two hours with a few hundred strangers and being entertained by flickering lights and amplified sound. This year, we’ve stretched the issue to reflect a new reality: when you watch moving pictures these days, a theater is the last place you are likely to be. Cable, YouTube, DVDs, DVR, news briefs in the elevator and cartoons on your cellphone — through a variety of media, we now consume fragmented narratives on multiple screens. From a 16-second panda-sneeze video to 60 straight hours of “The Wire,” this is the way we watch now.

And in today's paper, Laura Holson has a piece headlined, 'Who Needs a TV? I'm Watching on a Laptop'

Just as more and more people have abandoned land-line telephones for their cell phone, it seems that the next trend is abandoning your home cable connection (and TV) for laptop video viewing.

VideoNuze Panel: How to Profit from Broadband Video's Disruptive Impact

Will Richmond, editor of VideoNuze, was kind enough to invite me to a breakfast panel he organized today, as part of the CTAM Summit, a conference for the cable and telecom industries. Despite the fact that it was held at 7:30 AM on a Monday morning, there was a great turnout.

A few notes....

- Roy Price, who runs digital video at Amazon, asked of traditional media producers: if you're too cautious about keeping content off the Web, are you creating an opportunity for someone else [other content creators] to be there?

- Peter Stern of Time Warner Cable said, "If consumers can get the content they want, when they want it, they will opt for the highest-resolution screen available to them at the time." That seems true, but often these days they're watching low-res Web video on their laptops because Time Warner Cable doesn't actually give them access to any content they want, when they want it.

- Fred Seibert of nextnewnetworks said that all of the new format possibilities available to content creators can be confusing. 'There's some real comfort in knowing that you need to make a show that's 30 minutes long or 60 minutes long, or a movie that's two hours long." But those formats won't necessarily be the most appealing to Web viewers. "Shorter has turned out to be better, and shorter creates certain disciplines," he said, adding that it's still possible to create short content that is simply short and bad... not short and good.

- Deanna Brown of Scripps Networks said that "all of the activity around video is really exciting and important to explore," like commenting, reviewing, annotating, and sharing it. Brown mentioned that an online community called 'Rate My Space' (it's like "hot or not" for interior design, with users posting pictures of rooms in their homes) had developed quite quickly into a TV show for HGTV.

- David Eun of Google talked about the "head" and the "tail" of Chris Anderson's "long tail" model. He said that in between the two (basically, between big hits and narrowly-focused content that appeals to a tiny audience), there's a "torso": high-quality specialty niche programming. "That's what drove cable TV," Eun said, "and that will be a sweet spot for Internet video."

- Eun urged the audience to try not to define what "good" is. Viewers don't care what professional programmers and cable execs think is good; sometimes they're happy to watch dogs on skateboards. Thinking narrowly about what "good" programming is can be limiting.

- Moderator Will Richmond asked his panelists what their 2009 priorities are. Eun said "monetization," since YouTube hasn't figured out how to turn a profit on all those videos it delivers. Roy Price of Amazon said that it's continued growth in video selection, continued integration with the expanding universe of connected TVs and devices, and exploring new business models.

- Richmond made a great point, I think quoting someone else: "In the past, scarcity [making content available only in one place] bred value... but in the present and the future, scarcity breeds piracy."

- After the panel, I had a chance to sit down for a chat with Fred Seibert, which I've posted as a podcast.

The Future of the Internet Video Business, with Fred Seibert

I had a chance this morning to chat with noted smart guy Fred Seibert.

Fred has been a key creative force at Nickelodeon, MTV, and Hanna Barbera, and he now runs nextnewnetworks and Frederator, both of which focus on creating and distributing content for the digital realm, and building communities around it.

I recorded most of our conversation. In it, we covered:

- What sorts of content has been successful on nextnewnetworks
- Whether advertising can support high-quality content
- Whether viewers care about production values
- How to build loyalty for on-going Web series
- How to turn viewers into participants and collaborators
- Opportunities for new formats and approaches to making content.

People creating content for the Web today may only be earning "digital pennies," Fred told me. But just as the music and movie and TV businesses were tiny at the start, Fred's a big believer that digital dollars are not far off for producers of digital entertainment.

Here's the file: MP3 audio, 31 minutes long.

The Internet: Bigger Than TV?

I've never been called a "historian" before... and I'm sure plenty of real historians would object... but here's an interview I did with Liz Gannes of NewTeeVee last Sunday night.

In it, I make the claim that the Internet as a delivery mechanism for video is more important than television. Television was great, but it only enabled media companies to distribute their content in a new way. The Internet allows anyone to distribute content, reach global audiences, and, ideally, make money.