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Viodi View Newsletter - November 1st, 2006

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The Content Conundrum - What I Meant to Say

By Ken Pyle
ken.pyle at viodi.com

• Yesterday
• Content Business Is at a Cross Roads
• New Models Will Arise from the Ashes
• The Times They Are a Shifting and So, Are the Places
• The More Things Change……

I have called this presentation the Content Conundrum because content can sometimes be a bigger challenge than the technology. Getting content on terms that still allow for a business case is a complaint I repeatedly hear as I travel around the country talking to independent telcos.

Still, as Ed McKell of Horizon Chillicothe said at last week’s OPASTCO Tech Symposium, Bandwidth is king, while content is queen. Of course content owners would probably reverse that order, but it doesn’t really matter as content and bandwidth are symbiotic. One can’t live without the other. At the same time, there is a tension between the globalization and the localization of content

We will be talking about these things in the next 15 minutes. We will do this by taking a high level look at where the content business has been, where it is and where it is going. We will do this by briefly taking a high level look at how it evolved and where it is today.

Yesterday……

When we were kids, there weren’t too many ways to consume media. The only option my parents had was the movie theater, while I actually could watch black and white television with rabbit ears. Sometime in the early years of television, the content owners developed relationships with merchandise and retail distributors and lo behold, many of us were soon carrying the Snoopy lunch pail. The soap operas my mom watched, such As the World Turns, were sponsored by the big consumer goods companies like Procter and Gamble – hence, the soap opera.

Then, came along cable television, which was initially a rural phenomenon. Cable TV was more about extending television to otherwise un-served areas than it was adding new channels. In fact, many of independent telcos became cable operators, because no one else would step up to the plate and serve their small, remote communities. At one point, in the late 1970s, early 1980s, bandwidth actually exceeded content. Cable operators realized that they had to help fill this void with content that they controlled, as opposed to the content provided by the Big 3 networks - NBC, CBS and ABC.

Another invention, the video tape, opened up an entirely new market; home video. At first, the content owners saw this as a threat and almost sued the video recorder out of existence. Over time, content owners realized this to be a very profitable business.

The DVD was more readily accepted by the content owners. Content owners release of content and willingness to experiment with new models, such as retail sales, caused DVD players to have one of the quickest consumer adoption rates ever. The low cost nature of the DVD together with the ability to add interactivity and bonus features, freed content owners to begin selling content that they would have never been able to in a VHS world. They often call it repurposing.

So, the long and short of it, is the content owners developed multiple distribution channels – each profitable on a stand-alone basis. There was some cross-over, but, to some extent, these were separate silos within the bigger organizations; each with their own marketing group, affiliate sales, promotion, etc. With expense accounts and club memberships, life was good.

Content Business Is at a Cross Roads

Today, things have changed. Michael Rosenblum of Rosenblum Associates put it best when he suggested that the content business has been like the monk-scribes in the middle ages. Rosenblum predicted that Technology would destroy the content business culture, much like what happened to the monk’s hundreds of years ago.

But all of that has changed in the last few years. The content business, like so many others, is in a state of turmoil. As David Irwin, the prominent Washington DC–based telecom attorney likes to say we have entered the ICE age – the Internet Changes Everything. Some of this creative destruction is good and some of it is not so good. It just depends on where you sit in an organization and how well connected you may be.

So, what has the Internet done to the content business? Well, we all know the obvious things like the Napsterization of audio content and now the YouTubing of content. And we are seeing real world fall out from these things. An example from a few weeks ago is the demise of the once powerful Tower Records, which used to be the premier retail location for getting music.

On a video retail side, we see the explosive growth of NetFlix, which is fundamentally powered by the Internet which is now doing close to a billion dollars in business and on track to surpass Blockbuster at current rates. To be fair, it is more than just the Internet, it is the complementary technologies that allow content to created, manipulated and displayed at costs approaching zero that is also changing the content business.

What’s changed is the fundamental way of doing business for content owners and everyone involved in the content chain.

The Internet has become an entirely new medium competing for the attention span and advertising dollars associated with television eye balls. This has forced the network operators to look at cutting costs and eliminating departments and even consider things that would sacrosanct a few years ago, like DVD releases that are day and date with theatrical. Thanks to the reporting and interactive nature of the Internet, the pressure for television networks to provide real eyeballs is increasing. Advertisers are looking for the most effective media, regardless of where it is.

So, in general, what the Internet and technology is doing is helping to collapse the silos that existing between the various distribution channels a content owner had and is changing the old business models.

This translates into things like Reductions in Workforce and the associated uncertainty and tension of an environment in flux. For example, just last week, NBC Universal announced big cut-backs across the board from movie studio to television channels at the local level.

In a word, it is about globalization.

Yes, globalization is affecting every other industry from software to automobiles to health procedures, so why not content.

Globablization truly starts at the pre-production and production level. Shooting in other countries, such as Canada, has been common for a long time. What the Internet and associated technology enables is other relatively labor intensive operations, such as animation to be outsourced to lower labor cost areas. The advancement in technology and even the change in the way things are shot have in many instances allowed lesser skilled people to move into the content game. It also means the cost of distribution is next to zero.

New Models Will Arise from the Ashes

Consumer devices, like PCs, Game Consoles and iPODS along with broadband are changing the way we consume media and, in some cases, making it a more interactive experience. These devices are changing the way we want our media – we want it when we want it and where we want it.

Another way it is changing our behavior is that we are beginning to interact with the programming. I quite often interact with a television show based on a web site displayed, say on a commercial, or if I want to get background on a character. This is a two screen experience and allows me to interact with the programming while my wife continues to watch the show uninterrupted.

Another two screen experience is the intersection of the cell phone and television. This is evidenced by the millions of votes via the cell phone for American Idol. People will interact with television programming via their remote control. There are television advertising channels, thinly disguised as game networks, which award people monetary prizes based on participation. These are sponsored networks where people are awarded for answering questions.

And then there are the streaming and download models. Of course, there are the over the top companies like the Googles and thousands of others that have established an instant presence and have created a whole new medium for delivering video.

Maybe as interesting as these Video Vonages, are the content owners themselves. The dream of many of them has been to have direct relationships with customers. They finally have the technology to potentially cut out the middleman. To some extent, we are seeing the beginnings of this with what ABC/Disney is doing with some of their popular shows, such as Desperate Housewives and Grey’s anatomy, where they allow consumers to stream it at no charge (except for a commercial or two).

These ventures will not always succeed, as evidence by ESPN’s recent mobile phone mis-adventure. And the content owners will be careful not to jeopardize their existing sales channels. Like any business, however, they will continue to evaluate their distribution methods and will protect those that work and discard those that do not.

So, from an interactive perspective, will it be one screen, two screens or three screens? Yes.

The Times They Are a Shifting and So, Are the Places

We are just beginning to see the power of the Internet and technology with things like the iPOD, TIVO and Sling Boxes; devices that allow time and place shifting of content. These type of devices offer a glimpse of what life will be like in a world where once disparate distribution media, such as television, the Internet and mobile connectivity, truly converge.

Place shifting and time shifting are causing the seemingly contradictory effect of globalization and localization. Maybe a better way to put it is to use Chris Anderson’s “Long Tail” metaphor; that is the cost of content distribution has dropped so much that it is now possible to distribute content that could only garner a small audience. It used to be when a show went off the air, it may never be seen again. Now, its possible to find a video on YouTube for what seems like everything that has ever been produced The audience for some content may be small on a per location basis, but can be relatively large on a global basis. Local is also about personalizing and connecting. Or, as Mary Wilder from HBC said, local content is all about emotions.

And telcos can capitalize on these trends by finding content that is relevant to their community. And as many telcos have found, there communities are not monoliths. Some have a large hispanic population, for instance. It is critical to be able to customize not only the content, but the presentation of the content – the user interface if you will - so that consumers can find and access what they want, when they want.

Of course, as many of you know, Viodi’s passion is the creation of local content. We hear it all of the time that local is the ultimate differentiator. Tim Mahoney of Mahoney Media, an independent film producer and industry outsider, suggested that telcos have a real advantage in this area since they are so close to and really part of their audience. He suggests producers covet that sort of relationship as it helps them to produce content that will be watched.

The More Things Change……

Now, despite all the changes, I am sure some things will remain the same for a long time. People will still demand their MTV, ESPN or Fox – any of the marquee cable brands.

Content companies will still be difficult for small operators to deal with because, like the rest of us, they are overworked and have to focus on those projects that yield the greatest returns.

The other thing that is truly here and will be here is convergence – a trite word – but Internet Protocol is the thing that will bring this once disparate electronic media together.

Bringing content that your customers want from wherever in the world will always be a winning approach.

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