Archive for April 26th, 2007
Hollywood’s Loss of the Public’s Trust
Hollywood has been forced into a prisoner’s dilemma by new technology, where the industry seems convinced that its self interest and that of the audience are at odds. In fact, if they could trust each other (see below), they might both get what they want.
Two recent pieces illustrate this schizophrenic split between Hollywood’s public statements and their private fears. On the one hand, consumers are king, and Hollywood just wants to give them what they want. On the other, consumers are thieving bastards who can’t be trusted.
Lunch with Carson Daly
Down at the EconSM conference in Beverly Hills, we had the unique experience of having lunch with Carson Daly, currently the host of Last Call with Carson Daly on NBC. Prior to lunch, Daly had sat on a panel about social media and Hollywood, where he posited his MTV Total Request Live show of the late ’90s as a pioneer of social media on television, “turning over an hour to users.”
Teaming up with Demand Media for an online video-related project launching next week (more on that later), Daly was excited to talk about the rise of the “semi-pro” in music and video. As he sucked down bloody marys and toyed with his BlackBerry 8800, Daly told the stories of securing development deals with NBC for Nobody’s Watching and Brookers (embedded above). A development deal, I asked, is that really the apex?
“It’s a colossal step for somebody outside of the old boy network to get in,” he replied. “Here’s a 19-year-old secretary in Connecticut, and now she’s getting paid by NBC to sit in her bedroom and make videos.”
Is There a Place for Long-form Internet TV?
Last week I met Yuri Baranovsky, the co-writer, director, and star of an internet sitcom called Break a Leg. The show, a dead-pan comedy featuring warring guilds, a meta-TV show, and a bunch of goofballs, is a poor man’s Arrested Development, and I say that out of love.
It’s a self-funded project, with only two episodes so far — the second one, debuting this week, took three months to make. (Episode 2, part 1 is embedded above.) But here’s the problem: the episodes are a half-hour long. The first 10-minute section of the pilot has 27,575 views on YouTube — a small triumph for the cast and crew. But it drops off dramatically for parts 2, 3, and 4 — and it’s easy to see why. It’s hard to watch a video in the little fuzzy YouTube screen, out of computer speakers that are less than flattering to the variable Break a Leg sound quality.
Cheaper Options for Video Streaming
With all the how-will-they-make-money questions surrounding the online video sharing site businesses, there is a bit of good news from the infrastructure end: New and cheaper ways of streaming video are arriving on the scene, which may help trim the bandwidth costs for all the YouTube wannabes still in search of their Google payoff.
The cable-guy reporters over at Light Reading yesterday talked about how SeaChange International has plans to use flash memory technology in cable and telco video-on-demand deployments, a move that could cut power, cooling and administrative costs vs. traditional hard-disk based VOD systems. Is flash ready for big-provider prime time? According to the LR post, SeaChange will tell more at the Cable Show in Vegas the second week of May.
On the hardware side, Sun Microsystems showed it’s paying attention to the surge in video with its release of some specialized video streaming hardware that should draw looks from tire-kickers in the network-closet arena. ZDNet’s Dan Farber, who’s been around long enough to remember Sun’s first computers, has a good take and a rack-mountable photo op over at the Between the Lines blog.
Forbes, Big Biz Hype New Media — Again
The hype machine is in full swing if the recent interest in new media by big business is any indication. At the Milken Institute conference Wednesday, Forbes managing editor Dennis Kneale moderated a discussion with News Corp. COO Peter Chernin, former AOL CEO Jonathan Miller, Yahoo CEO Terry Semel and Michael Lynton of Sony Pictures. The topic? “Predicting the Future in a Fractured Media World.”
According to Variety, Chernin said that News Corp.’s revenue from digital offerings could increase to 30% in 10 years, while Lynton suggested Sony could be getting half its revenue via web distribution in the same time frame.
Is it ironic or simply scary that such hype is coming from an event hosted by Michael “Junk Bond King” Milken? And that it comes on the heels of a Forbes special report from last week focusing on ‘Networks.’ Maybe I’m still smarting from the dot-bomb, but the interest from big business in new media is starting to make me nervous.
Watch ‘Can We Do That,’ Win iPod
How do you get users to watch your web show? One way to do it is bribery. A new quiz vlog from the creators of online comedy show Can We Do That? called “3V” asks users to watch an episode, and then message them through video sharing site Veoh to be entered in a drawing for a free video iPod.
The best part is, Veoh is paying for the iPods, in addition to splitting ad revenue 50-50 with the Can We Do That? team. Cory Tyler, the producer behind Can We Do That?, struck up a conversation with Dmitry Shapiro, Veoh’s CEO, by sending him a message through Shapiro’s Veoh user page. After trading messages online, they met for a tete-a-tete in San Diego and came up with the idea for the giveaway.
Following up on an interview with Tyler when I last visited L.A., I talked to him Wednesday about the team’s ongoing plans for the show.
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