Category: The Business of Production

Categories
Item of Interest The Business of Production

YouTube May Buy NextNew Networks

YouTube May Buy Video Production Company http://tinyurl.com/2ck84rz

Mmm, my prediction may be paying off. http://tinyurl.com/37e5b5g It might be easier for Google (and Apple) to commission their own work instead of relying on user submissions. At least with internally generated content Google know the quality and “salability” of the content.

As companies like Hulu and Netflix offer more shows and videos online, and as Google tries to lure people to watch YouTube on their televisions through its Google TV software, YouTube is increasingly focused on providing professional content and figuring out how to attract audiences and advertisers to the programming.

Next New Networks, a start-up based in New York, was founded in 2007 to create original Web television shows, and has found success with series like “Barely Political” and “Indy Mogul.”

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
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 Business of Production

The Walking Dead produced for about 50c per viewer

The Walking Dead produced for about 50c per viewer http://tinyurl.com/28er76d So why a 99c rental? Should be no more than 70c to be fair.

The advantage in producing six episodes in a row was continuity, Ms. Hurd said, keeping cast members in character and the same crew members employed. “It was also, to be hones, far more cost-effective,” she said.

The episodes were filmed almost entirely on location in and around Atlanta, where a roughly 30% tax credit cut down costs. AMC declined to comment on the show’s budget, but two people with knowledge of the production said each episode cost $2 million to $2.5 million, a price that puts it in line with other high-end dramas on cable, though still below the equivalent prices on broadcast television.

It seems like 50c per viewer is right in the middle of current production costs, and right in the middle of typical ad revenue per viewer per show.

Categories
Business & Marketing Distribution Item of Interest The Business of Production

Who Needs TV Networks?

Who Needs TV Networks? Mattel Grabs Whitney Port and Goes Right to Hulu http://tinyurl.com/2ej52pz

In what I think will become the dominant trend, Mattel are creating their own programming and going public with it via Hulu. Traditionally Advertisers/Brands rented the eyeballs that Networks and Cable aggregated (in a neat bait and switch to the viewer).

But why should Brand “rent” an audience when they can buy their own? It’s generally cheaper and more effective.

The real story here is the end-around the brand is playing here, bypassing a large spend on traditional TV with a non-trivial spend sent right to an online network (Hulu) for an original web series. Hulu and other online networks like YouTube have proven they have the scale of audience to deliver on what the brand wants to reach. So why bother with bloated TV budgets? The significance of this isn’t lost on Hudsun Media’s CEO Michael Rourke.

“What we are doing with Mattel and Genuine Ken is a complete game changer, ” said Rourke. We have created a wildly compelling, network-quality reality show that, for the first time, can be distributed directly to the viewer in a non-traditional but very effective way.”

All those charts that get marched out in board meetings about how ad spending for online video is shooting up, have projects like this to thank for such lofty forecasts. With some $70 billion spent by brands on Television, the measly $1.4 billion or so in online video seems marginal, but the shift is on.

Categories
Item of Interest The Business of Production

Pirate Bay Documentary Raises $51K on Kickstarter

Pirate Bay Documentary Raises $51K on Kickstarter

While certainly not a huge budget by mainstream media measures, $51K for a documentary on The Pirate Bay isn’t bad seed money to get a show started, or even complete if it’s a lean production. That it was funded from “fan funding” via Kickstarter makes me wonder if fan-funding isn’t a viable method for the future. Kind of “pay in advance” for the content so that it actually gets made.

If this were a TV series maybe people could subscribe to the future shows in order to get them made?

The Pirate Bay documentary has received full funding throughKickstarter. They received $51,434 from 1737 backers, adding up to $29 per backer. With an initial goal of $25,000 to fund a professional editing staff and studio, the filmmaker behind the campaign exceeded all expectations by 104%. Over the course of one month, 400,000 visitors from more than 170 countries checked out the campaign. Asked why a filmmaker would want to make a film about an organization that is undercutting his future ability to make money, he responded that he believes that new ways of supporting creativity will emerge.

Categories
Item of Interest The Business of Production

Jim Jannard asks “What is professional to you?”

Jim Jannard asks “What is professional to you” http://tinyurl.com/344nbgs

The minimum definition of “being professional” would mean “Getting paid to provide a service someone will pay for.” but there’s more too it than that. I think being professional involves an attitude to the work and an attitude toward your fellow creatives of respect and being able to do your job and do it well among those people.

But how does that translate when we’re talking about “professional gear?”

Categories
Business & Marketing Item of Interest Monetizing The Business of Production

Top 5 Ways to Fail at Crowdfunding

Top 5 Ways to Fail at Crowdfunding http://tinyurl.com/234p3co

Of curse, do the opposite if you want to succeed.  From a documentarian’s perspective, slightly rewritten by Documentary Tech.

The film version:

  1. have an online support network in place before you start
  2. Keep your goal realistic
  3. Know who your audience is – particularly your “first audience”
  4. Keep the crowdfunding campaign tight
  5. Offer imaginative perks for donors.

Categories
Business & Marketing Distribution Item of Interest The Business of Production

‘Ride the Divide’ a case in DYI Distribution

‘Ride the Divide’ a case in DIY http://tinyurl.com/2d3edl7

I love an article about a filmmaker that starts with:

Hunter Weeks went into his work on the feature documentary  “Ride The Divide” with a solid sense of how to get the film out once it was done.

This is so important and yet so overlooked by most filmmakers. It’s a business and you have to think about the Return on Investment right from the start, because you’ll have to be creative about it.

They took on a corporate sponsor and encouraged participants to wear the corporate beanie (but not compulsory). They targeted a limited number of film festivals and when they missed the larger, more public ones, they went straight to distribution.

The film has screened at about 100 times in theaters, in about 70 cities in all, in shows we’ve produced ourselves – sometimes one night, or sometimes three nights in a row in the same place. We also had a licensing fee to screen the film for $295, and we tapped into these hotbed cycling communities – mountain-bike extreme groups all over the country, especially in the mountain region. We had these tremendously successful shows. And that helped sell the DVDs in a pre-release version over the last six months.

One other approach has been to  offer 500 “Living Room Screening Packages” for $99, for which 50 percent of the proceeds go to cyclist Lance Armstrong’s Live Strong Foundation. The kit includes a  DVD or Bluray in  wood laser-engraved box by karvt.com, a limited edition t-shirt byMighty Karma, a SmartWool Beanie, Tony Hsieh’s Best Selling book – Deli

Categories
Distribution Item of Interest The Business of Production

TV is Dead. Long Live Web Video

TV is Dead. Long Live Web Video. http://tinyurl.com/2cb9xuu But Web video isn’t television. It’s something else. Web Video abandoned TV.

So much has changed – Cameras, Bandwidth, YouTube – provide a trifecta of change plus the cognitive surplus we have as a result of being less “couch potato” and more “active creator” leads to a whole new thing: not TV, not web video as it’s been.

But Web video isn’t television. It’s something else entirely. And in the past 5 years, from 2005 to 2010, as Web video has moved to become the fastest growing and most prevalent form of traffic emerging on the Web, something else happened.

Web video abandoned TV. It moved on.

There are plenty of examples of this — but the perhaps most dramatic one is the growth of TED Talks. TED Curator, Chris Anderson, calls this emergence Crowd Accelerated Innovation. His thesis is that Web video accelerates the cycle of humans creating, sharing, and iterating.